Monday, March 6, 2017

Gregory of Nyssa on human free-will

In On the Making of Man, XVI, 11, in Nicene Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, 14:425, Gregory of Nyssa (335-394) wrote the following about the nature of man’s free-will:

Pre-eminent among all is the fact that we are free from necessity, and not in bondage to any natural power, but have decision in our power as we please; for virtue is a voluntary thing, subject to no dominion: that which is the result of compulsion and force cannot be virtue.


Such shows that Reformed theology is nowhere to be found in the patristic literature, just as there is no meaningful (exegetically-sound) biblical or patristic testimony to sola scriptura, the formal doctrine of the Protestant Reformation.