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

God there would have to be a new impulse, and it is just this newness that
has to be denied. But, says Averroës, the whole basis of this argument is
wrong for it assumes in God a will like a human will. Desire and will can be
understood only in a being that has a need; for the Perfect Being there
can be no need, there can be no choice, for when He acts He will
necessarily do the best. Will in God must have another meaning than
human will.
Averroës therefore does not explicitly deny that God has a will, but will
should not be taken in its human sense. He has much the same
conception as Plotinus, who denies that God has the power to do one of
two contraries (for God will necessarily always choose the best, which
implies that God necessarily will always do the best, but this in fact annuls
the ideas of choice and will), and who regards the world as produced by
natural necessity. Aristotle also held that for the Perfect Being no
voluntary action is possible, and he regards God as in an eternal blissful
state of self-contemplation. This would be a consequence of His
Perfection which, for Averroës at least, involves His Omniscience. For the
Perfect the drama of life is ended: nothing can be done any more, no
decision can be taken any more, for decisions belong to the condition of
man to whom both knowledge and ignorance are given and who can have
an hypothetical knowledge of the future, knowing that on his decisions the
future may depend and to whom a sure knowledge of the future is denied.
But an Omniscient Being can neither act nor decide; for Him the future is
irremediable like the past and cannot be changed any more by His
decisions or actions. Paradoxically the Omnipotent is impotent. This
notion of God as a Self-contemplating Being, however, constitutes one of
the many profound contradictions in Aristotle’s system. And this profound
contradiction is also found in all the works of Aristotle’s commentators.
One of Aristotle’s proofs for the existence of God-and according to a
recent pronouncement of the Pope, the most stringent -is the one based
on movement. There cannot be an infinite series of movers; there must be
a Prime Agent, a Prime Mover, God, the originator of all change and
action in the universe. According to the conception of God as a Self-
Contemplating Being, however, the love for God is the motive for the
circular motion of Heaven. God is not the ultimate Agent, God is the
ultimate Aim of desire which inspires the Heavens to action. It is Heaven
which moves itself and circles round out of love for God. And in this case
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