Mir Damad on the Divine Will

Mir Damad’s view about the divine will can be divided into three sections: semantics, ontology and interpretation of the hadiths which imply that the will is an attribute of act. First, he defines God’s will as His knowledge of all beings and tries to differentiate between God’s and human’s will. Secondly, he proves that will is one of the essence attributes of God and not an attribute of act. Based on this, he criticizes the Kulayni’s theory which implies that the divine will is an attribute of act. Finally, according to Mir Damad, both hadith and philosophical argument have the same meaning about the God’s will. That is, God has this attribute in his essence, therefore he wants to create the world. On the other hand, all the creations are the God’s will in the level of action. Based on this, will has two meanings: will as the essence and will as the action according to which, we have to interpret the attribute of will in Shia hadith.