The objects of a person’s desire and affection may be objective things...

The objects of a person’s desire and affection may be objective things, but may even be beyond the range of one’s power and ability, such as man’s affection for the beautiful and enjoyable things of the world (“ you desire the frail goods of this world ” (8:67)), or they may be one’s own voluntary actions, such as loving the good and worthy deeds which one performs, called generative will ( irādeh-ye takwīnī ), or they may be the voluntary actions of other people, such as desiring that another voluntary agent perform some deed by his own will, in which case they would be called cases of legislative will ( irādeh-ye tashrī‘ī ).

However, the will to order and to establish rules and regulations are in fact cases of the will to legislate rather than legislative will, and should be considered a kind of generative will. (Take note.) The Reality of Will Will, in the sense of wanting and loving, are psychic qualities of animals and men, but in the sense abstracted from this, it denotes aspects of the existence of immaterial things which may also be related to completely immaterial entities and to God, the Supreme.

As was previously indicated, love can be considered one of the essential attributes of God, which is basically directed toward the essence itself, and subordinate to this, to the effects of the essence in that they are good and perfect. Therefore, in this sense will can be considered an attribute of essence the reality of which is nothing but divine love, which is identical to His essence.

Will in the sense of making decisions is a passive quality in souls attached to matter, or one of the actions of the soul, and in either case, it is a created thing in the soul, originating in idea and assertion and desire. Such a thing cannot be attributed to completely immaterial things, especially not to God, the Supreme, for the sacred divine Being is free of the occurrence of accidents and psychic qualities.

However, it can be considered to apply to God, the Supreme, as a relational attribute of action (such as creation, providence, and ordering, etc.) which is abstracted by comparing the actions of creatures to the divine essence in that He possesses love of good and perfection. Since one of the terms of the relation possesses temporal and spatial qualifications, these qualifications can be considered to apply to the divine will, as well, from the viewpoint of the objects of the will.