s said in the person of the Lord: "I will speak
against a nation and against a kingdom, to root out, and to pull
down, and to destroy it; but if that nation shall repent of its evil,
I also will repent of the evil that I have thought to do to them"
(Jer. 18:7, 8). Therefore God has a changeable will.

Obj. 3: Further, whatever God does, He does voluntarily. But God does
not always do the same thing, for at one time He ordered the law to
be observed, and at another time forbade it. Therefore He has a
changeable will.

Obj. 4: Further, God does not will of necessity what He wills, as
said before (A. 3). Therefore He can both will and not will the
same thing. But whatever can incline to either of two opposites, is
changeable substantially; and that which can exist in a place or not
in that place, is changeable locally. Therefore God is changeable as
regards His will.

_On the contrary,_ It is said: "God is not as a man, that He should lie,
nor as the son of man, that He should be changed" (Num. 23:19).

_I answer that,_ The will of God is entirely unchangeable. On this
point we must consider that to change the will is one thing; to will
that certain things should be changed is another. It is possible to
will a thing to be done now, and its contrary afterwards; and yet for
the will to remain permanently the same: whereas the will would be
changed, if one should begin to will what before he had not willed;
or cease to will what he had willed before. This cannot happen,
unless we presuppose change either in the knowledge or in the
disposition of the substance of the willer. For since the will
regards good, a man may in two ways begin to will a thing. In one way
when that thing begins to be good for him, and this does not take
place without a change in him. Thus when the cold weather begins, it
becomes good to sit by the fire; though it was not so before. In
another way when he knows for the first time that a thing is good for
him, though he did not know it before; hence we take counsel in order
to know what is good for us. Now it has already been shown that both
the substance of God and His knowledge are entirely unchangeable (QQ.
9, A. 1; 14, A. 15). Therefore His will must be entirely unchangeable.

Reply Obj. 1: These words of the Lord are to be understood
metaphorically, and according to the likeness of our nature. For when
we repent, we destroy what we have made; although we may even do so
without change of will; a