Does God have a will?

Abstract
On May 24, 2025, the brethren of the Ordo Adamantis Atri convened to initiate a theological discussion on the concept of Divine Will. This article serves both as a report of that meeting and as a means of disseminating the speculative insights reached therein concerning the notion of will as it relates to the idea of God.

Premise
Samaelism, as a rational religion with a strongly philosophical vocation, has traditionally suspended judgment regarding the concept of Divine Will, maintaining a profoundly distinctive view of the Divine. Over the years, Samaelism has conceived of God as a final cause—an ontological horizon toward which all beings move, yet which remains forever unreachable. In Samaelite doctrine, God is an unknowable entity—a hollow name by which we refer to the personified Pharmakon, and who appears to us as elusive, nebulous, and mysterious. This sense of mystery—this eternal absence of God from Creation—has not only formed the foundation of our spiritual practice (cf. liturgy, prayer), but also, and more importantly, of many of our theoretical speculations, particularly those concerning freedom and free will (Ordo Adamantis Atri, Treatise on Samaelite Doctrine, 2023). Simply put, Samaelism would cease to be what it is without its foundational sense of mystery.

Aware of this limitation, our brethren gathered to argue in favor of the existence of a Divine Will.

Deus Vult
If God is the personification of the Pharmakon (P1), and if the Pharmakon is the locus of latency of all potency—that is, omnipotent (P2), containing within itself every potentiality of Being—then the question is not whether God possesses will, for this is evident. Rather, the question before us is whether this will is manifest in act or latent in potency. In other words, what we must demonstrate is that the attribute of divine will is not merely unexpressed but is actively manifest.

To do this, we may proceed along two lines of reasoning. The first is an a posteriori argument that assumes God is, ipso facto, the ontological horizon within which all beings operate. From this, we can infer that God shares certain characteristics with the beings that dwell within this horizon—therefore, that God possesses will in the same sense that human beings do.

By inverting the reasoning and proceeding a priori, we instead begin with the concept of the Pharmakon. If in the pre-creative state the Pharmakon is a place of latency—where all beings and attributes exist only in potentiality—it is equally evident that, in the creative state in which we currently exist, certain beings and attributes are indeed manifest in act.

Simply put, my brethren: we exist, and so do our attributes. One of these attributes is precisely volition. Therefore, since the Pharmakon in its creative state is not only a site of potentiality but above all a realm of manifest acts, we may infer that the attribute of volition is also manifest in act within the Pharmakon.

Thus, given that God is nothing other than the personification of the Pharmakon, we can logically deduce that the attribute of volition in act properly belongs to God.

Having thus demonstrated that God, in line with the tenets of Samaelite doctrine, not only possesses volition but necessarily possesses it in actu, certain questions remain to be addressed.

Question: Distinction between Participation and Identity
The a posteriori reasoning assumes that God shares the characteristics of the beings that exist within Him. But is it not possible that God is their cause without necessarily sharing every attribute of His effects? Human participation in will does not necessarily imply that God possesses it in the same form.

Answer:
Precisely. The a posteriori argument is used here to demonstrate that God possesses will—not that His will is identical in nature to human or animal will. Moreover, the very concept of will itself must be subjected to further discussion.

Question: The Nature of Divine Will
Even if we accept that God possesses will in actu, the question remains: what kind of will is it? Is it akin to human will (i.e., deliberative), or is it something altogether different? This argument opens the path to an active will, but it may be useful to specify—or at least problematize—its nature.

Answer:
Absolutely. As stated, the nature of Divine Will necessarily falls within the realm of faith more than reason, and thus, philosophically, the Samaelite must resort to apophatic silence when confronted with problems whose nature is unknown.
Furthermore, it is necessary to distinguish at least two types of will: the rational will proper to humans and the instinctive will proper to animals—of which only the former has self-awareness as its ontological condition. Regarding the latter, even the use of the term “will” may be problematic, as it has been demonstrated that in animals, instinct and genetics play the foundational role in deliberative processes (e.g., eating now or later, prioritizing the elderly in feeding, and so forth).

Question: Will as a Derived Attribute
If will is understood as an attribute that emerges within creation, one might ask: did God possess “will” even before creation, or does it only come into act with the moment of creation? If the creative act itself actualizes will, does this imply a change in God? This idea of change within God would be problematic within classical theological frameworks.

Answer:
Again, this is a field of inquiry to which apophatic silence should be applied. The pre-creative state can be analyzed through logical exercise only insofar as the objects of our inquiry are in some way analogous to those we can experience in our post-creative condition. The will of God, outside of its manifest existence, is not among those objects.