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Chapter 30. Concerning Prescience and Predestination.

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 flyings, 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 filly 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 ‘making1 and not ‘generation.1 For ‘making ‘ is the original formation at God1s hands, while ‘generation1 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 Creator1s yoke, and neglecting His divine injunction, he will be liable to death and corruption, and will be compelled to labor 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 immovably 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 God1s estate, and to be immovably 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 man1s 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.

Taken from the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 9. St. John of Damascus is a very important Orthodox Church Father. His eighth century Exact Exposition is seen as a very accurate summation and synthesis of Orthodox doctrine. It thus is a very authoritative compendium of the teachings of the Holy Orthodox Church.

go to and hunt through the Church Fathers section.

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We probably are guilty of presenting Calvinism that way (cartoonishly) too, unfortunately

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Thanks for the responses. I just went out to the Library and checked out od of the possible. I will probably have lots of questions. I am glad this board is so responsive. So are many here totally Arminian? Also how does one interpet John 6:44. The Calvinist would show that this is an problematic verse for the Arminian.

"No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day."

If the two hims in this verse are the same than it is true that all that are drawn will be effectively raised up. The next question then is.."Is everybody drawn?" If the answer is yes, then this verse seems to say that everyone will be rasied up since the effect of the drawing in this passage seems to be the raising up.

What think ye?

Post Tenebras Lux

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The twelve are apostles of the circumcision with the earthly hope of the kingdom which was promised to David. Our hope is heavenly.Their salvation was still conditional, just as Judas’s was, according to John 15:6: “If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.”

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OrthodoxBerean: what is the diference between that and saying that God could make a man so free that he can't move it.?

...has this view been debated with anyone in the classical view with any clout? Any philosophers? How can one be sure that the philosophical arguments for this view are sound? How have they been tested?

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The answer to your question, though, rather paradoxically, is that the second, the "free", is HARDER to do than the "heavy." But God is that mighty!

I'm reading a Russian Orthodox writer while attending a Dutch Calvinist (CRC) church. Evdokimov writes, and I think most Reformed people actually would agree, that: "The true greatness of God lies in the transcendence of His own transcendence." (p.207, WATSOTW)

What do you think, O.B.?

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what is the author refering to and what is on his mind when he said that?

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Let me get back to you here.

...............I'M BACK...............

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I am not sure I understand your reply to the question. That fact of the matter is according to the "opne view", is that a person cannot be "moved" at all correct? If so... then it is not a matter of being hard to do or not. It is simply impossible.

Concerning the greatness of God being in the transcendence of His transcendence, I am not sure I understand that either. It sounds pretty cool, but wouldn't that seem to impose greater than less than attributes to God's transcendence? It is as if there are two "types" of existence in God. A transcendent on and then one that is transcendent over that? I don't know, what is the author referring to and what is on his mind when he said that?

OrthodoxBerean

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O.B., you write: "I am not sure I understand your reply to the question. That fact of the matter is according to the "open view". I'm not O.V., so it does not matter to me. The use of "open" that is of value to me is that God is open with respect to taking on our suffering, and "transcending his transcendence." THAT is very important to me. The rest is a lot of wiring and plumbing. I'm fine if it all just works.

You also wrote: "It is as if there are two "types" of existence in God. A transcendent on and then one that is transcendent over that?" Want to know? First, lets disconnect the discussion from the term "types of existence" as that might bring alone baggage that needs looking after. Ready? In reverse historical order of doctrinal formation....

We HAVE a "two" in the God-man Jesus Christ. That is significant. I've also been reading how it is felt (I want to speak as vaguely as I can here--because even more than analogies can break down...statements must not take on a life of their own!!!) that God inclined Himself to loving creation before creation was begun. (I should relax. Scripture actually says that, doesn't it. But In being "begotten" and a son God is more like us than if he were only One, and not Three.

The other thing is the Trinity. Christology borrowed a term from Trinitarian dogma when it articulated that Christ was a "hypostasis" fully human ("fallen" humanity--everything in us that requires healing, but without sin)and divinity, without confusion, mixing, etc. (read the documents) The Calcedonian formula was that God is "three "hypostasis (persons) united in one essence." This definition was very un-pagan. Three persons are "personal." That can't be exaggerated--its too huge! God is recognized as having (anthropomorphizing here (MEPHY!)) stepped past being monolithic and distant. So, by God's very "type of existence" He transcends his transcendence!!!!!!!!!!!

But, no, there are not two (2). Doc has got to love the fact, that to the Eastern Fathers there are three (3) levels--if I can call them that. Personal trumps essential (in Modes' condensed jargon). That means that divine definitions -- the OMNIs -- are not straight-jackets on God!!! And also the ESSENCE of God is unknowable. (For instance, "no man has seen God and lived, except the Son.") But we CAN know him in his energies/acts/will. Person/Essence/Energies. This third one really comes home to me in this way. The "fruit of the Spirit" does not mean me mimicking good stuff. It is something worked/molded in me BY the Holy Spirit. It is not the result of something God creates and drops off at the drug-counter. It is the formation in me of a direct, a DIRECT relationship between me and the Spirit of God. it is something that we do/work together. A Byzantine Theologian and monk names Gregory Palamas did not make that one up, but did formulate the "essence" doctrines in the face of Latin humanism that was drifting east, and threatened to convince people that Grace was a created THING, that God was distant, and that they could not have a personal relationship with God! THAT threatened the salvation of many--and deserved/required the charge of heresy!!!

Do you want any of this clarified further?



Edited by - PotOnWheel on 10/24/2001 11:33:28 AM

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I have a question for you, it is obvious that you believe that Christ was crucified before the world began, that God called those that he would save before the foundation of the world, that they have no option other than to do that. They therefore were never lost.
Could you tell me then how the following verses line up with that mode of thinking?

Matthew 18:11, Luke 19:10

Also please comment on Matthew 9:13, Mark 2:17, Luke 5:32.

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It is called Mid-Acts Dispensationalism. I myself believe that the body of Christ church started with the salvation of the Apostle Paul.
In Christ, Bob Hill

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