Greek Predestination

Greek thought concerning predestination perhaps culminates in the teaching of St. John of Damascus, who perfected the earlier doctrine especially by his insistence on the distinction between God’s antecedent and consequent salvific will. If God is infinitely good, he asks, how is it that some men are lost? He replies by pointing out that many sin and persevere in their evil ways. God punishes them only in consequence of their sin. Prior to His prevision of sin He wills the salvation of all, because He is supremely good; if He punishes subsequently to sin, it is only because He is also supremely just. Hence God’s antecedent will to save is not absolute, but conditional; His foreknowledge of the good or evil will of man. Thus predestination, is an act of God, is in accordance with the divine prevision of man’s co-operation with grace. This distinction was to prove of paramount importance in all later speculations on predestination.

This is the basic thought of the Greek fathers, who did treat the subject more so in the first four centuries, the Patristic period.  The ideas were fully based upon the co-operation of man with the grace of God. Later of course the western Father St. Augustine set the whole discussion in relation to God’s sovereign independence of divine grace against all systems of nature by itself. Of course later the Pelagians held that grace is not necessary, but the will of man. And this was later condemed at Council of Ephesus, 431. 

Thus for the Greeks, predestination, as an act of God, is in accordance with the prevision of man’s co-operation with grace. Against this is of course Augustine’s position, that the mystery of predestination does not lie in the co-operation alone between God and man, but in the unfathomable secret of the divine decree.

I respect the Greek position, but left to itself and without the doctrine that God alone, is the complete person (triune) at work, in the salvation of the sinner (1 Peter 1:2), it is not complete. Thus we must have a real balance, but God must have the top or first place.