We ought
to understand that while God knows all things beforehand, yet He does not
predetermine all things . For He knows beforehand those things that are in our
power, but He does not predetermine them. For it is not His will that there
should be wickedness nor does He choose to compel virtue. So that
predetermination is the work of the divine command based on fore-knowledge. But
on the other hand God predetermines those things which are not within our power
in accordance with His prescience. For already God in His prescience has
prejudged all things in accordance with His goodness and justice.
Bear in
mind, too, that virtue is a gift from God implanted in our nature, and that He
Himself is the source and cause of all good, and without His co-operation and
help we cannot will or do any good thing. But we have it in our power either to
abide in virtue and follow God, Who calls us into ways of virtue, or to stray
from paths of virtue, which is to dwell in wickedness, and to follow the devil
who summons but cannot compel us. For wickedness is nothing else than the
withdrawal of goodness, just as darkness is nothing else than the withdrawal of
light. While then we abide in the natural state we abide in virtue, but when we
deviate from the natural state, that is from virtue, we come into an unnatural
state and dwell in wickedness.
Repentance
is the returning from the unnatural into the natural state, from the devil to
God, through discipline and effort.
Man then
the Creator made male, giving him to share in His own divine grace, and
bringing him thus into communion with Himself: and thus it was that he gave in
the manner of a prophet the names to living things, with authority as though
they were given to be his slaves. For having been endowed with reason and mind,
and free-will after the image of God, he was fitly entrusted with dominion over
earthly things by the common Creator and Master of all.
But since
God in His prescience knew that man would transgress and become liable to
destruction, He made from him a female to be a help to him like himself; a
help, indeed, for the conservation of the race after the transgression from age
to age by generation. For the earliest formation is called ‘making’ and not
‘generation.’ For ‘making’ is the original formation at God’s hands, while
‘generation’ is the succession from each other made necessary by the sentence
of death imposed on us on account of the transgression.
This man
He placed in Paradise, a home that was alike spiritual and sensible. For he
lived in the body on the earth in the realm of sense, while he dwelt in the
spirit among the angels, cultivating divine thoughts, and being supported by
them: living in naked simplicity a life free from artificiality, and being led
up through His creations to the one and only Creator, in Whose contemplation he
found joy and gladness.
When
therefore He had furnished his nature with free-will, He imposed a law on him,
not to taste of the tree of knowledge. Concerning this tree, we have said as
much as is necessary in the chapter about Paradise, at least as much as it was
in our power to say. And with this command He gave the promise that, if he
should preserve the dignity of the soul by giving the victory to reason, and
acknowledging his Creator and observing His command, he should share eternal
blessedness and live to all eternity, proving mightier than death: but if
forsooth he should subject the soul to the body, and prefer the delights of the
body, comparing himself in ignorance of his true dignity to the senseless
beasts , and shaking off His Creator’s yoke, and neglecting His divine
injunction, he will be liable to death and corruption, and will be compelled to
labour throughout a miserable life. For it was no profit to man to obtain
incorruption while still untried and unproved, lest he should fall into pride
and under the judgment of the devil. For through his incorruption the devil,
when he had fallen as the result of his own free choice, was firmly established
in wickedness, so that there was no room for repentance and no hope of change:
just as, moreover, the angels also, when they had made free choice of virtue
became through grace immoveably rooted in goodness.
It was
necessary, therefore, that man should first be put to the test (for man untried
and unproved would be worth nothing), and being made perfect by the trial
through the observance of the command should thus receive incorruption as the
prize of his virtue. For being intermediate between God and matter he was
destined, if he kept the command, to be delivered from his natural relation to
existing things and to be made one with God’s estate, and to be immoveably
established in goodness, but, if he transgressed and inclined the rather to
what was material, and tore his mind from the Author of his being, I mean God,
his fate was to be corruption, and he was to become subject to passion instead
of passionless, and mortal instead of immortal, and dependent on connection and
unsettled generation. And in his desire for life he would cling to pleasures as
though they were necessary to maintain it, and would fearlessly abhor those who
sought to deprive him of these, and transfer his desire from God to matter, and
his anger from the real enemy of his salvation to his own brethren. The envy of
the devil then was the reason of man’s fall. For that same demon, so full of
envy and with such a hatred of good, would not suffer us to enjoy the pleasures
of heaven, when he himself was kept below on account of his arrogance, and
hence the false one tempts miserable man with the hope of Godhead, and leading
him up to as great a height of arrogance as himself, he hurls him down into a
pit of destruction just as deep. (An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith,
Book II, Chapter XXX [NPNF2 9:42-44])
It is to
be observed that it is the custom in the Holy Scripture to speak of God’s
permission as His energy, as when the apostle says in the Epistle to the Romans,
Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel
unto honour and another unto dishonour? And for this reason, that He Himself
makes this or that. For He is Himself alone the Maker of all things; yet it is
not He Himself that fashions noble or ignoble things, but the personal choice
of each one. And this is manifest from what the same Apostle says in the Second
Epistle to Timothy, In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of
silver, but also of wood and of earth: and some to honour and some to
dishonour. If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel
unto honour sanctified, and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every
good work. And it is evident that the purification must be voluntary: for if a
man, he saith, purge himself. And the consequent antistrophe responds, “If a
man purge not himself he will be a vessel to dishonour, unmeet for the master’s
use and fit only to be broken in pieces.” Wherefore this passage that we have quoted
and this, God hath concluded them all in unbelief, and this, God hath given
them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they
should not hear, all these must be understood not as though God Himself were
energising, but as though God were permitting, both because of free-will and
because goodness knows no compulsion.
His
permission, therefore, is usually spoken of in the Holy Scripture as His energy
and work. Nay, even when He says that God creates evil things, and that there
is no evil in a city that the Lord hath not done, he does not mean by these
word that the Lord is the cause of evil, but the word ‘evil’ is used in two
ways, with two meanings. For sometimes it means what is evil by nature, and
this is the opposite of virtue and the will of God: and sometimes it means that
which is evil and oppressive to our sensation, that is to say, afflictions and
calamities. Now these are seemingly evil because they are painful, but in
reality are good. For to those who understand they became ambassadors of
conversion and salvation. The Scripture says that of these God is the Author.
It is,
moreover, to be observed that of these, too, we are the cause: for involuntary
evils are the offspring of voluntary ones.
This also
should be recognised, that it is usual in the Scriptures for some things that
ought to be considered as effects to be stated in a causal sense, as, Against
Thee, Thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight, that Thou
mightest be justified when Thou speakest, and prevail when Thou judgest. For
the sinner did not sin in order that God might prevail, nor again did God
require our sin in order that He might by it be revealed as victor. For above
comparison He wins the victor’s prize against all, even against those who are
sinless, being Maker, incomprehensible, uncreated, and possessing natural and
not adventitious glory. But it is because when we sin God is not unjust in His
anger against us; and when He pardons the penitent He is shewn victor over our
wickedness. But it is not for this that we sin, but because the thing so turns
out. It is just as if one were sitting at work and a friend stood near by, and
one said, My friend came in order that I might do no work that day. The friend,
however, was not present in order that the man should do no work, but such was
the result. For being occupied with receiving his friend he did not work. These
things, too, are spoken of as effects because affairs so turned out. Moreover,
God does not wish that He alone should be just, but that all should, so far as
possible, be made like unto Him. (An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book
IV, Chapter XIX [NPNF2 9:92-93])
God in
His goodness brought what exists into being out of nothing, and has
foreknowledge of what will exist in the future. If, therefore, they were not to
exist in the future, they would neither be evil in the future nor would they be
foreknown. For knowledge is of what exists and foreknowledge is of what will
surely exist in the future. For simple being comes first and then good or evil
being. But if the very existence of those, who through the goodness of God are
in the future to exist, were to be prevented by the fact that they were to
become evil of their own choice, evil would have prevailed over the goodness of
God. Wherefore God makes all His works good, but each becomes of its own choice
good or evil. Although, then, the Lord said, Good were it for that man that he
had never been born, He said it in condemnation not of His own creation but of
the evil which His own creation had acquired by his own choice and through his
own heedlessness. For the heedlessness that marks man’s judgment made His
Creator’s beneficence of no profit to him. It is just as if any one, when he
had obtained riches and dominion from a king, were to lord it over his
benefactor, who, when he has worsted him, will punish him as he deserves, if he
should see him keeping hold of the sovereignty to the end. (An Exact Exposition
of the Orthodox Faith, Book IV, Chapter XXI [NPNF2 9:94])
John of Damascus also did not believe that
one’s then-future sins were remitted at conversion (which he placed at the
reception of water baptism):
Wherefore
to those who partake worthily with faith, it is for the remission of sins and
for life everlasting and for the safe-guarding of soul and body . . . (An Exact
Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book IV, Chapter XIII [NPNF2 9:83])
Further Reading
John of Damascus (675/76-749) was not a “Proto-Calvinist” (from his “Disputation between a Christian and a Saracen")
An Examination and Critique of the Theological Presuppositions Underlying Reformed Theology
