212. 1. A person asked: Is God eternally exercising His will?
Imam Jafar as-Sadiq (p): Volition cannot be without the objective willed. God is eternally All-knowing and All-Powerful and then He wills (whatever He wills).

213. 2. A believer: Is the knowledge of God and the Will of God the same or are they different from each other?
Imam Jafar as-Sadiq (p): His knowledge is not necessarily His will. Do you not remember that on most occasions you say ‘If God so wills I shall do this’ but you never say ‘If God knows I shall do this.’ Your own conditional words ‘If God so wills’ prove that in your opinion and belief God has not willed it as yet. And in case He wills whatever He wills will surely come to pass exactly as He wills. Hence His knowledge has priority over His Will.

214. 3. A person: Tell me about the will of God and the will of His creatures.
Imam Ali ar-Reza (p): The will of His creatures means what occurs in their minds and then what appears afterwards in the form of action. But in the case of God, the Sublime, willing results in actual happening of what is willed and is not distinct from it. This is because He does not plan or meditate or ponder. These qualities are negated from Him. These are the attributes of His creations. His will is His action, not different from it. He says unto it ‘Be’ and it comes into being (and it happens) without any word of mouth or utterance of the tongue, and without any planning and deliberation and there is no question of ‘how’ for these, as the connotation of ‘how’ is not applicable in His case.

215. 5. Imam Muhammad al-Baqir (p) was asked about the significance of the words ‘My anger’ occurring in verse: And he on whom My anger descends is surely ruined (Q, 20:81).
The Imam (p): His anger signifies His punishment. Verily whoever thought that God shifts from one state to another, ascribed to God the attributes of His creatures. Nothing can incite God, the Exalted, to bring any change in Him.

216. 6. An Atheist: Are pleasure and wrath applicable to God?
Imam Ali ar-Reza (p): Yes, but not like that which is found in His creatures. In His creatures, the pleasure is a condition in which it enters and is transferred from one condition to another, because the creatures are imperfect, compound and created. Other things can enter into them. But in our Creator, nothing can enter because He is One, the unity in its pristine essence and its meaning. His pleasure is His reward and His anger is His chastisement, without anything into Him or stimulating Him or changing Him from one state to another, since these are the attributes of His, powerless and dependent creatures.