In discussing issues related to the Orthodox doctrine of Predestination, St. John of Damascus is careful to maintain a right tension between God’s sovereignty and man’s freedom. To examine this, the present discussion will explore the relevant treatments of Providence and Predestination in chapters 29 and 30 of Book 2 and also chapter 19 of Book Four from his magnum opus, On the Orthodox Faith (abbr. OF), (Saint John of Damascus: Writings, trans. Frederic Chase, from The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, Vol. 37). At present the discussion will restrict itself to the English text as it stands in Chase’s fine translation; perhaps at another time and as opportunity allows the Greek will be consulted.
Beginning with chapter 29 of Book Two, on Providence, according to St. John of Damascus, God is absolutely sovereign. By sovereign is meant God’s supreme, lawful, and infallible rulership of all creation both visible and invisible; by absolute is meant that nothing is excepted from God’s supreme will. Now, he discusses the concept under the term Providence. The English term providence has its root in provide, such that provide-ence means how something is provided for. Also a technical theological term, by providence the Damascene means “the solicitude which God has for existing things” (OF 2:29; pg 260). Honing this beyond mere caretaking: “and again, providence is that will of God by which all things receive suitable guidance through to their end” (ibid). From these two definitions the reader is given to see that Providence is the term indicating the means by which God, who is also “the Maker of existing thing” (ibid), comprehensively wills, creates, maintains, and accomplishes His purpose for His creation.
In short, providence is God’s will, and so, as Damascene continues, “if providence is God’s will, then, according to right reason, everything that has come about through providence has quite necessarily come about in the best manner and that most befitting God, so that it could not have happened in a better way” (OF 2:29; pg 260). Thus there is an absolute necessity that attends to God’s sovereign willing, to His providence, and so of providence it is shown that the entirety of creation is included, which is to say heaven, earth, time, and all creatures, for all of reality is infallibly and perfectly guided from its beginning through to its end, and necessarily such that by no other or better way could it have been accomplished (cf 2:28; 259).
“Hence,” the Damascene continues, “God is both Creator and Provider and His power of creating, sustaining, and providing is His good will. For ‘whatsoever the Lord pleased he hath done, in heaven, and in the earth’ (Psalm 134:6 LXX), and none resisted his will” (Cf. Rom. 9:19, OF 2:29; pg 260). As such, he unquestionably asserts God’s absolute sovereignty in all of its comprehensiveness, summing up by stating: “He willed all things to be made and they were made; He will the world to endure and it does endure; and all things whatsoever He will are done” (ibid). That being said, this position will not be reducible to determinism, so a next major task will be how he squares this with man’s free will. Before discussing this, however, Damascene reminds the reader that the epistemological gap between God’s perfect and infinite knowledge and what man does or even can conceivably know is key to keep in mind.
Now, “God’s providence is beyond knowledge and beyond comprehension” (OF 2:29; pg 261), and although this absolute sovereignty exceeds the grasp of human vision and understanding, “bearing these things in mind, we should admire, praise, and unconditionally accept all the works of providence” (ibid). The works of providence are the works of God’s will, and God is “simple, and uncompounded” (OF 1:4; 170), for “true reason teaches us that the Divinity is simple and has one simple operation which is good and which effects all things” (OF 1:10; pg 191). Therefore, God being simple, His will is commensurate with His knowledge such that the incomprehensibility of God’s knowledge bears intrinsic proportion to the incomprehensibility of His will. His knowledge and will are one with His being, and these being one are altogether beyond man’s ken.
This epistemological gap thus plays a pivotal role in discoursing about providence, for God has revealed that He not only sovereignly wills all things and is yet good, but also that man has free will. God’s absolute sovereignty therefore will harmonize both with His goodness and His ability to sovereignly make man free, and, although not within range of the natural human mind, God’s will need not be perceived as always expedient in temporal terms in order to be faithfully understood as good. In short, it may look like everything is chaotic and falling apart when in reality it is working perfectly and infallibly according to God’s providence.
Not content with merely asserting that all three are true, in order to get a clearer picture of how God’s providence can be understood, the Damascene provides a way of understanding God’s infallible providence such that it coordinates with His goodness and man’s free will. In his discussion of Providence, he distinguishes God’s will broadly into two assymetrical categories, that of approval and that of permission: “Some of the things that are due to providence are by approval, whereas others are by permission.” He distinguishes these by indicating that what is “undeniably good” (OF 2:29; pg 261) happens by approval, such as the creation of light, heaven and earth, and life, whereas that which happens by permission are those things which are bound up with the consequences of free will and which are themselves caught up in processes leading to or facilitating the flowering of some good.
The notion of permission indicates God’s sovereign will mediated through acts of a created free will, and said act’s consequences, and to some good end. An example of permissive will he gives is that of a virtuous man who is sovereignly permitted to fall into misfortune in order that his hidden virtue can be made manifest. Another example he gives is that of the iniquity permitted against Christ in order that mankind’s salvation be brought about. Another is when God permits an evil to befall a devout man in order that he “may not depart from his right conscience or so that he may not fall into presumption” (OF 2:29; 261). He provides other examples, even that of being permitted to fall into an immoral act so as to correct some still worse affliction. It seems that the notion of God’s permitted will is an indirect motion, an act mediated through time, and allowed for the sake of manifesting goodness as part of a greater process. It is not a direct willing of evil, but the allowing of a situational evil to produce God’s good purpose. Another way of saying this could perhaps be that providence operates according to God’s sovereign will either immediately or mediately.
According to God’s sovereignty He places some things under the jurisdiction of human free will such that God in His sovereignty “permits them to the free will” (OF 2:29; pg 263). Even in cases of free will, however, the Damascene includes the notion of what might be called necessary grace, such that “while the choice of things that may be done rests with us, the accomplishment of the good ones is due to the cooperation of God” (OF 2:29; 262). As he says elsewhere, without God’s “co-operation and assistance we are powerless either to will good or to do” (OF 2:30; 264). In other words, free will is not carte blanche, but requires in its good acts coordination with God for their ground and their accomplishment. In short, God’s action is a necessary condition for all good human acts. Contrariwise, “the accomplishment of the bad things, however, is due to abandonment by God” (OF 2:29; 262).
St. John Damascene further distinguishes between two types of abandonment, one dispensational and for instruction, and the other for absolute rejection, “when God has done everything for a man’s salvation, yet the man of his own accord remains obdurate and uncured, or rather, incorrigible” (ibid). Even in the cases of instructive abandonment, one can yet see that the good which comes from this is still dependent on coordination with God, a turning towards Him the good consequence of which is accomplished through coordination, whereas absolute abandonment is God’s withdrawing of Himself as a permitted consequence of man’s total refusal to cooperate with the good. In other words, the choice is given to the person, the chosen good being accomplished through coordination with God, the chosen bad being accomplished and permitted through God’s withdrawing of Himself.
The foregoing raises the thorny issue of how God’s sovereign will and man’s will can be authentically coordinated in such a way as to violate neither. Stating it is important to bear in mind again that “the ways of God’s providence are many, and that they can neither be explained in words nor grasped by the mind,” the Damascene then states that “God antecedently wills all to be saved and to attain His kingdom” (OF 2:29; 262) and yet, “because He is just, He does wish to punish sinners” (Ibid; 263). Thus he makes the turn to state that God sovereignly appoints man to be a free cause of the consequences of his own actions such that God’s permissive will can be understood as the divine sovereignty mediated through man’s choice. God is absolutely sovereign in all things that are not made by Him to be dependent on us, and man as God’s image is, in a manner of speaking, mediately sovereign in that he has responsibility for the consequences of his free choice: “Indeed, nothing remains but the fact that man himself as acting and doing is the principle of his own works and free” (OF 2:25; pg 256, cf. 2:30; pg 264). As such, man is free, and although he is the principle of his own works, for our mind choosing being the “beginning of action” (OF 2:26; 257), the accomplishment of good yet requires God’s cooperation. Man may be given to be the principle of his own choice, and the receiver of his choice’s consequences, but he is not the principle of his own being, nor the deliverer of his consequences, for “the choice of things to be done always rests with us, but their doing is oftentimes prevented by some disposition of Divine Providence” (2:26; 257).
Closing up the 29th chapter of Book Two, the Damascene clarifies the distinction between the two modes of God’s willing, “the first is called antecedent will and approval, and it has Him as its cause; the second is called consequent will and permission, and it has ourselves as its cause” (OF 2:29; 263). The consequent will, as he stated, is either for instruction and salvation or for abandonment and absolute chastisement, these last “belong to those which do not depend upon us” (ibid). In short, the principle of choice lies with man, but the consequent action which man receives does not depend on him, as “some of those things which do not depend upon us have their origin, or cause, in things which do depend upon us” (OF 2:28; 259), for God being just initiates the punishment consequent to our choices. Thus consequent will is God’s sovereign will mediated through human choice, permitted by Him. Since God is only good, antecedently willing and approving all the good which befalls man and according to man’s cooperation, He therefore is not the author of any evil when allowing man to reap the consequences of his free evil choices, “the recompense for our deeds” (Ibid).
Moving into chapter 30, the mechanism of the human will is key in understanding predestination. The Damascene stresses again a distinction between that which depends upon us and that which does not depend on us. Only voluntary choice is dependent on us, and everything other than our voluntary choice is dependent not on us but the divine will: “all those things depend upon us which pertain to the soul and about which we deliberate. And it is about contigents that deliberation is exercised” (2:26; pg 257), a contingent being something which following deliberation can either be done or not, depending on the choice. Thus God foreknows all that is dependent on free man’s choice, but in His sovereign preservation of free will He does not cancel man’s free choice in or through said foreknowledge, for “neither does He will evil to be done nor does He force virtue” (OF 2:30; 263).
A note ought to be made in the use of the term “foreknowledge,” for God’s foreknowledge does not permit of temporality. It is not an issue of seeing through time to some future choice, but an absolute and simultaneous knowledge of all things, including all choices. Since God is outside of time and omniscient, nothing of God’s action or knowledge is dependent on or informed by time, and so “foreknowledge” cannot not be understood as temporal foreknowledge, but knowledge from a position both beyond and more fundamental than time, i.e. from eternity. God immediately and fully knows from eternity all the choices that a person makes, and so, in His creation of that which is termed in humans “free will,” there is the coterminous creation of what is called choice and moral responsibility which are made to filter through and emerge from the deliberation of the human soul. The relevant motions of deliberation are free and unencumbered, if yet with consequence, but the motions considered as motions of deliberation are in themselves operating according to their own dynamic of free choosing. For example, one may hike through a forest and encounter many trees, but to walk in any one way is not forced; one could walk, run, or sit, go this way or that, etc. The walking is free and uncompelled, even if there are local conditions which inform the act. Likewise, the act of deliberation itself may encounter many conditions, but in itself the soul is free to deliberate to go on or not, think yes or no.
Choice is not “forced” or coerced by God as if He were some extrinsic force, as if He were superadded to the real conditions or brooding over man’s possible movements like a chess player. Even if the options of deliberation be stark and unpleasant, choice is still present. God’s transcendental presence is thus not one of pushing the motions of deliberation around, and His foreknowledge does not act like a power or an energy which compels choice. The deliberation of choice is not violated, a deliberation which is part and parcel of the free will act of a rational created being. One may ask whether one ever “really” had a choice, but this is to go outside of the bounds of the question at hand, for the question of determinism is one of mechanistic operations enforced transcendentally and invisibly, but this is about as relevant a question as whether people are all living in a simulated hologram, whether we immediately were caused to exist and supplied with false memories, or whether we are brains in vats just imagining the world around us but are really alone, etc. The presuppositions of Christianity do not really support such an inquiry.
Returning to the Damascene’s idea of Predestination, it is “the result of the divine command made with foreknowledge” (OF 2:30; 263). Again, this is not temporal foreknowledge, but an eternal and simultaneous knowledge of all temporal things. God makes a unified command relative to all of creation past, present, and future, and this command predestines “those things which do not depend upon us” (ibid). Those things which do depend upon us, however, he does not predestine: “Thus, He foreknows the things that depend upon us, but He does not predestine them” (ibid). He does not predestine them “because neither does He will evil to be done nor does He force virtue” (ibid). In this light, God’s immediate and infinite knowledge of our future free choices does not force our free will, but through the medium of our free will the consequences of those choices have already been accounted for, and not as though it were an adjustment to some other plan, for God’s plan is from eternity.
From God’s perspective reality is a complete whole, for He eternally is both the Alpha and the Omega; He does not become the Omega: “For the object of knowledge is existing things; and that of foreknowledge, absolute futures” (OF 4:21; 387). Thus He looks backwards to our future choices just as much as He looks forward, for the flow of time has no bearing on His knowledge whatsoever. Knowing all things, He therefore does not “react” to our “future” choices, but according to our eternally known natures He weaves free will into the dynamic of time’s unfolding. Our choice presents no surprise to God, and it is couched perfectly in God’s foreknowledge, but it is free and not compelled.
To conclude this brief investigation with the Damascene’s treatment of a famous Scriptural text relevant to Predestination, Romans 9:21, he states, “it is customary for sacred Scripture to call God’s permission His action… [as when Paul writes] ‘hath not the potter power of the clay, of the same lump, to make one vessel unto honour and another unto dishonour?” (OF 4:19; 383) The question then becomes, in light of this verse, how can God be both the author of only good and yet make a vessel unto dishonour? Is God predestining man to evil and damnation? How is that fair? How can man be held responsible for some evil purpose he was designed or necessitated by God to do? Since we have already seen that God’s sovereignty preserves free will, and that He is only good, the Damascene states that “it is the own deliberate choice of each and not He that makes them honourable or dishonourable” (OF 4:19; 384).
To demonstrate this, and using Scripture to shed light on Scripture, he next cites 2nd Timothy 2:20-21: “In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some indeed unto honour, but some unto dishonour. If any man therefore shall cleanse himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified and profitable to the Lord, prepared unto every work.” Therefore, “it is clear that this cleansing is done freely, for he says ‘if a man shall cleanse himself,’ the converse of which rejoins that, if he does not cleanse himself, he will be a vessel unto dishonour, of no use to the Lord, and only fit to be broken” (OF 4:19; 384). According to this reading “are none of them to be taken in the sense of God acting, but in that of God permitting because of free will and because virtue is not forced” (ibid). Sacred Scripture may speak in such a way as to give the appearance of God creating evil, but in these cases it is to be understood as God’s permissive will consequent to man’s free choice. Moreover, the Damascene points out in this section that the term evil is itself ambiguous and can be understood in two senses, one being where evil refers to that which is by nature evil, and the other being that evil which is simply that which causes us tribulation and distress, an evil which is not inherently evil but in some cases is even used instructively by God for one’s sanctification; these last are those caused by God.
Finally, it is God’s permissive will which shapes according to the evil choice of the person choosing. God thus does not invent or author any evil, nor predestine people to damnation, but while maintaining authentic human choice He also provides the just consequence for that choice, thus producing vessels of dishonour and wrath by means of His permissive will, “because it is not unjust of Him to inflict His wrath, when we sin” (OF 4:19; 385).
-Fr. Joshua Schooping
“Hence,” the Damascene continues, “God is both Creator and Provider and His power of creating, sustaining, and providing is His good will. For ‘whatsoever the Lord pleased he hath done, in heaven, and in the earth’ (Psalm 134:6 LXX), and none resisted his will” (Cf. Rom. 9:19, OF 2:29; pg 260). As such, he unquestionably asserts God’s absolute sovereignty in all of its comprehensiveness, summing up by stating: “He willed all things to be made and they were made; He will the world to endure and it does endure; and all things whatsoever He will are done” (ibid). That being said, this position will not be reducible to determinism, so a next major task will be how he squares this with man’s free will. Before discussing this, however, Damascene reminds the reader that the epistemological gap between God’s perfect and infinite knowledge and what man does or even can conceivably know is key to keep in mind.
Now, “God’s providence is beyond knowledge and beyond comprehension” (OF 2:29; pg 261), and although this absolute sovereignty exceeds the grasp of human vision and understanding, “bearing these things in mind, we should admire, praise, and unconditionally accept all the works of providence” (ibid). The works of providence are the works of God’s will, and God is “simple, and uncompounded” (OF 1:4; 170), for “true reason teaches us that the Divinity is simple and has one simple operation which is good and which effects all things” (OF 1:10; pg 191). Therefore, God being simple, His will is commensurate with His knowledge such that the incomprehensibility of God’s knowledge bears intrinsic proportion to the incomprehensibility of His will. His knowledge and will are one with His being, and these being one are altogether beyond man’s ken.
This epistemological gap thus plays a pivotal role in discoursing about providence, for God has revealed that He not only sovereignly wills all things and is yet good, but also that man has free will. God’s absolute sovereignty therefore will harmonize both with His goodness and His ability to sovereignly make man free, and, although not within range of the natural human mind, God’s will need not be perceived as always expedient in temporal terms in order to be faithfully understood as good. In short, it may look like everything is chaotic and falling apart when in reality it is working perfectly and infallibly according to God’s providence.
Not content with merely asserting that all three are true, in order to get a clearer picture of how God’s providence can be understood, the Damascene provides a way of understanding God’s infallible providence such that it coordinates with His goodness and man’s free will. In his discussion of Providence, he distinguishes God’s will broadly into two assymetrical categories, that of approval and that of permission: “Some of the things that are due to providence are by approval, whereas others are by permission.” He distinguishes these by indicating that what is “undeniably good” (OF 2:29; pg 261) happens by approval, such as the creation of light, heaven and earth, and life, whereas that which happens by permission are those things which are bound up with the consequences of free will and which are themselves caught up in processes leading to or facilitating the flowering of some good.
The notion of permission indicates God’s sovereign will mediated through acts of a created free will, and said act’s consequences, and to some good end. An example of permissive will he gives is that of a virtuous man who is sovereignly permitted to fall into misfortune in order that his hidden virtue can be made manifest. Another example he gives is that of the iniquity permitted against Christ in order that mankind’s salvation be brought about. Another is when God permits an evil to befall a devout man in order that he “may not depart from his right conscience or so that he may not fall into presumption” (OF 2:29; 261). He provides other examples, even that of being permitted to fall into an immoral act so as to correct some still worse affliction. It seems that the notion of God’s permitted will is an indirect motion, an act mediated through time, and allowed for the sake of manifesting goodness as part of a greater process. It is not a direct willing of evil, but the allowing of a situational evil to produce God’s good purpose. Another way of saying this could perhaps be that providence operates according to God’s sovereign will either immediately or mediately.
According to God’s sovereignty He places some things under the jurisdiction of human free will such that God in His sovereignty “permits them to the free will” (OF 2:29; pg 263). Even in cases of free will, however, the Damascene includes the notion of what might be called necessary grace, such that “while the choice of things that may be done rests with us, the accomplishment of the good ones is due to the cooperation of God” (OF 2:29; 262). As he says elsewhere, without God’s “co-operation and assistance we are powerless either to will good or to do” (OF 2:30; 264). In other words, free will is not carte blanche, but requires in its good acts coordination with God for their ground and their accomplishment. In short, God’s action is a necessary condition for all good human acts. Contrariwise, “the accomplishment of the bad things, however, is due to abandonment by God” (OF 2:29; 262).
St. John Damascene further distinguishes between two types of abandonment, one dispensational and for instruction, and the other for absolute rejection, “when God has done everything for a man’s salvation, yet the man of his own accord remains obdurate and uncured, or rather, incorrigible” (ibid). Even in the cases of instructive abandonment, one can yet see that the good which comes from this is still dependent on coordination with God, a turning towards Him the good consequence of which is accomplished through coordination, whereas absolute abandonment is God’s withdrawing of Himself as a permitted consequence of man’s total refusal to cooperate with the good. In other words, the choice is given to the person, the chosen good being accomplished through coordination with God, the chosen bad being accomplished and permitted through God’s withdrawing of Himself.
The foregoing raises the thorny issue of how God’s sovereign will and man’s will can be authentically coordinated in such a way as to violate neither. Stating it is important to bear in mind again that “the ways of God’s providence are many, and that they can neither be explained in words nor grasped by the mind,” the Damascene then states that “God antecedently wills all to be saved and to attain His kingdom” (OF 2:29; 262) and yet, “because He is just, He does wish to punish sinners” (Ibid; 263). Thus he makes the turn to state that God sovereignly appoints man to be a free cause of the consequences of his own actions such that God’s permissive will can be understood as the divine sovereignty mediated through man’s choice. God is absolutely sovereign in all things that are not made by Him to be dependent on us, and man as God’s image is, in a manner of speaking, mediately sovereign in that he has responsibility for the consequences of his free choice: “Indeed, nothing remains but the fact that man himself as acting and doing is the principle of his own works and free” (OF 2:25; pg 256, cf. 2:30; pg 264). As such, man is free, and although he is the principle of his own works, for our mind choosing being the “beginning of action” (OF 2:26; 257), the accomplishment of good yet requires God’s cooperation. Man may be given to be the principle of his own choice, and the receiver of his choice’s consequences, but he is not the principle of his own being, nor the deliverer of his consequences, for “the choice of things to be done always rests with us, but their doing is oftentimes prevented by some disposition of Divine Providence” (2:26; 257).
Closing up the 29th chapter of Book Two, the Damascene clarifies the distinction between the two modes of God’s willing, “the first is called antecedent will and approval, and it has Him as its cause; the second is called consequent will and permission, and it has ourselves as its cause” (OF 2:29; 263). The consequent will, as he stated, is either for instruction and salvation or for abandonment and absolute chastisement, these last “belong to those which do not depend upon us” (ibid). In short, the principle of choice lies with man, but the consequent action which man receives does not depend on him, as “some of those things which do not depend upon us have their origin, or cause, in things which do depend upon us” (OF 2:28; 259), for God being just initiates the punishment consequent to our choices. Thus consequent will is God’s sovereign will mediated through human choice, permitted by Him. Since God is only good, antecedently willing and approving all the good which befalls man and according to man’s cooperation, He therefore is not the author of any evil when allowing man to reap the consequences of his free evil choices, “the recompense for our deeds” (Ibid).
Moving into chapter 30, the mechanism of the human will is key in understanding predestination. The Damascene stresses again a distinction between that which depends upon us and that which does not depend on us. Only voluntary choice is dependent on us, and everything other than our voluntary choice is dependent not on us but the divine will: “all those things depend upon us which pertain to the soul and about which we deliberate. And it is about contigents that deliberation is exercised” (2:26; pg 257), a contingent being something which following deliberation can either be done or not, depending on the choice. Thus God foreknows all that is dependent on free man’s choice, but in His sovereign preservation of free will He does not cancel man’s free choice in or through said foreknowledge, for “neither does He will evil to be done nor does He force virtue” (OF 2:30; 263).
A note ought to be made in the use of the term “foreknowledge,” for God’s foreknowledge does not permit of temporality. It is not an issue of seeing through time to some future choice, but an absolute and simultaneous knowledge of all things, including all choices. Since God is outside of time and omniscient, nothing of God’s action or knowledge is dependent on or informed by time, and so “foreknowledge” cannot not be understood as temporal foreknowledge, but knowledge from a position both beyond and more fundamental than time, i.e. from eternity. God immediately and fully knows from eternity all the choices that a person makes, and so, in His creation of that which is termed in humans “free will,” there is the coterminous creation of what is called choice and moral responsibility which are made to filter through and emerge from the deliberation of the human soul. The relevant motions of deliberation are free and unencumbered, if yet with consequence, but the motions considered as motions of deliberation are in themselves operating according to their own dynamic of free choosing. For example, one may hike through a forest and encounter many trees, but to walk in any one way is not forced; one could walk, run, or sit, go this way or that, etc. The walking is free and uncompelled, even if there are local conditions which inform the act. Likewise, the act of deliberation itself may encounter many conditions, but in itself the soul is free to deliberate to go on or not, think yes or no.
Choice is not “forced” or coerced by God as if He were some extrinsic force, as if He were superadded to the real conditions or brooding over man’s possible movements like a chess player. Even if the options of deliberation be stark and unpleasant, choice is still present. God’s transcendental presence is thus not one of pushing the motions of deliberation around, and His foreknowledge does not act like a power or an energy which compels choice. The deliberation of choice is not violated, a deliberation which is part and parcel of the free will act of a rational created being. One may ask whether one ever “really” had a choice, but this is to go outside of the bounds of the question at hand, for the question of determinism is one of mechanistic operations enforced transcendentally and invisibly, but this is about as relevant a question as whether people are all living in a simulated hologram, whether we immediately were caused to exist and supplied with false memories, or whether we are brains in vats just imagining the world around us but are really alone, etc. The presuppositions of Christianity do not really support such an inquiry.
Returning to the Damascene’s idea of Predestination, it is “the result of the divine command made with foreknowledge” (OF 2:30; 263). Again, this is not temporal foreknowledge, but an eternal and simultaneous knowledge of all temporal things. God makes a unified command relative to all of creation past, present, and future, and this command predestines “those things which do not depend upon us” (ibid). Those things which do depend upon us, however, he does not predestine: “Thus, He foreknows the things that depend upon us, but He does not predestine them” (ibid). He does not predestine them “because neither does He will evil to be done nor does He force virtue” (ibid). In this light, God’s immediate and infinite knowledge of our future free choices does not force our free will, but through the medium of our free will the consequences of those choices have already been accounted for, and not as though it were an adjustment to some other plan, for God’s plan is from eternity.
From God’s perspective reality is a complete whole, for He eternally is both the Alpha and the Omega; He does not become the Omega: “For the object of knowledge is existing things; and that of foreknowledge, absolute futures” (OF 4:21; 387). Thus He looks backwards to our future choices just as much as He looks forward, for the flow of time has no bearing on His knowledge whatsoever. Knowing all things, He therefore does not “react” to our “future” choices, but according to our eternally known natures He weaves free will into the dynamic of time’s unfolding. Our choice presents no surprise to God, and it is couched perfectly in God’s foreknowledge, but it is free and not compelled.
To conclude this brief investigation with the Damascene’s treatment of a famous Scriptural text relevant to Predestination, Romans 9:21, he states, “it is customary for sacred Scripture to call God’s permission His action… [as when Paul writes] ‘hath not the potter power of the clay, of the same lump, to make one vessel unto honour and another unto dishonour?” (OF 4:19; 383) The question then becomes, in light of this verse, how can God be both the author of only good and yet make a vessel unto dishonour? Is God predestining man to evil and damnation? How is that fair? How can man be held responsible for some evil purpose he was designed or necessitated by God to do? Since we have already seen that God’s sovereignty preserves free will, and that He is only good, the Damascene states that “it is the own deliberate choice of each and not He that makes them honourable or dishonourable” (OF 4:19; 384).
To demonstrate this, and using Scripture to shed light on Scripture, he next cites 2nd Timothy 2:20-21: “In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some indeed unto honour, but some unto dishonour. If any man therefore shall cleanse himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified and profitable to the Lord, prepared unto every work.” Therefore, “it is clear that this cleansing is done freely, for he says ‘if a man shall cleanse himself,’ the converse of which rejoins that, if he does not cleanse himself, he will be a vessel unto dishonour, of no use to the Lord, and only fit to be broken” (OF 4:19; 384). According to this reading “are none of them to be taken in the sense of God acting, but in that of God permitting because of free will and because virtue is not forced” (ibid). Sacred Scripture may speak in such a way as to give the appearance of God creating evil, but in these cases it is to be understood as God’s permissive will consequent to man’s free choice. Moreover, the Damascene points out in this section that the term evil is itself ambiguous and can be understood in two senses, one being where evil refers to that which is by nature evil, and the other being that evil which is simply that which causes us tribulation and distress, an evil which is not inherently evil but in some cases is even used instructively by God for one’s sanctification; these last are those caused by God.
Finally, it is God’s permissive will which shapes according to the evil choice of the person choosing. God thus does not invent or author any evil, nor predestine people to damnation, but while maintaining authentic human choice He also provides the just consequence for that choice, thus producing vessels of dishonour and wrath by means of His permissive will, “because it is not unjust of Him to inflict His wrath, when we sin” (OF 4:19; 385).
-Fr. Joshua Schooping
