According to Catholic scholars, are the terms "God's Plan" and "God's Will" one and the same?

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Accepted answer

Catholic Douay-Rheims:

Ps. 106:11:

Because they had exasperated the words of God: and provoked the counsel (consilium) of the most High:

Micheas 2:3:

Therefore thus saith the Lord: Behold, I devise (cogito) an evil against this family: from which you shall not withdraw your necks, and you shall not walk haughtily, for this is a very evil time.

Acts 2:23:

This same being delivered up, by the determinate counsel (consilio) and foreknowledge of God, you by the hands of wicked men have crucified and slain.

St. Jerome uses the term voluntas ("will"), not "counsel" as in the quotes above, in his translation of, for example, I Thessalonians 4:3:

For this is the will (voluntas) of God, your sanctification

Richard Butler, O.P., Religious Vocation ch. 4:

Theologians distinguish the divine will itself between the will of good pleasure (voluntas beneplaciti), which is identified with God and which we cannot see, and the divine will of sign or expression (voluntas signi), which represents the recognizable effects of God's will in time. […]

God's will diagram

The divine will of good pleasure is most properly the divine will, and this we do not see directly or in itself [because in this life we cannot see God's essence]. The subdivision we make into antecedent and consequent simply indicates the difference between abstract and concrete considerations. Antecedently and abstractly God wills all men to be saved, just as a human judge wants all men to live. But consequently and concretely, considering the free human choices which are made, God saves only some of His people, just as the judge on the bench, in critical cases, allows only some of the criminals brought before him to live. In other words, we can look at the divine will prior to and consequent to what we do.

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