  William thinks the will is necessarily free; thus the fact that God creates through his will means that creation is an exercise of God's free will. This point serves to undermine another aspect of Avicenna's doctrine of the procession of creatures from God. For Avicenna posits not only a series of creators, but also holds that this procession is utterly necessary: the actual world must exist and could not have been other than it is.  William thinks this conclusion stems from a failure to grasp God's freedom in creation. Avicenna and others imposed “not only necessity, but natural servitude upon the creator, supposing that he operates in the manner of nature” (OO I, 614b; Teske 1998a, 72). Thus, they think the universe issued from God as brightness issues from the sun or heat from fire, and that God no more had it in his power to do otherwise than do the sun or heat. Against this William argues that it is a consequence of God's free creation that he had it in his power to create otherwise than he did.