Tahafut_al-Tahafut-transl-Engl-van-den-Bergh

I say:
an imposture where their principle is concerned, nay it
cannot be imagined that according to the trend of their
principle the world is the work of God, and this for three
reasons, from the point of view of the agent, from the point of
view of the act, and from the point of view of the relation
common to act and agent. As concerns the first point, the
agent must be willing, choosing, and knowing what he wills
to be the agent of what he wills, but according to them God
does not will, He has no attribute whatever, and what
proceeds from Him proceeds by the compulsion of
necessity. The second point is that the world is eternal, but
‘act’ implies production. And the third point is that God is
unique, according to their principles, from all points of view,
and from one thing-according to their principles-there can
only proceed one thing. The world, however, is constituted
out of diverse components; how could it therefore proceed
from Him?
Ghazali’s words ‘The agent must be willing, choosing, and knowing what
he wills to be the agent of what he wills’ are by no means self evident and
cannot be accepted as a definition of the maker of the world without a
proof, unless one is justified in inferring from the empirical to the divine.
For we observe in the empirical world two kinds of agents, one which
performs exclusively one thing and this essentially, for instance warmth
which causes heat and coldness which causes cold; and this kind is called
by the philosophers natural agents. The second kind of agents are those
that perform a certain act at one time and its opposite at another; these,
acting only out of knowledge and deliberation, are called by the
philosophers voluntary and selective agents. But the First Agent cannot be
described as having either of these two actions, in so far as these are
ascribed to transitory things by the philosophers. For he who chooses and
wills lacks the things which he wills, and God cannot lack anything He
wills. And he who chooses makes a choice for himself of the better of two
things, but God is in no need of a better condition. Further, when the willer
has reached his object, his will ceases and, generally speaking, will is a
passive quality and a change, but God is exempt from passivity and
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