.—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 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.