|
HOME | GREEK LANGUAGE | LIBRARIES | BLOG | HELP | SEARCH | FREEWARE | BOOKSTORE |
|
|
Translated by W. Curtis.
Origen Resources OnLine & in Print
|
104 Pages
Page 15
Let anyone, moreover, with special regard to his own feelings, see whether without shame he can deny that it is himself that wills, eats, walks, gives assent to and accepts certain opinions, dissents from others as false. There are certain opinions to which a man cannot possibly assent though he puts them with innumerable refinements of argument and with plausible reasoning: and similarly it is impossible to assent to any view of human affairs in which our free will is in no sense preserved.
Who assents to the view that nothing is comprehensible, or lives as in complete suspense of judgement: Who that has received a sense perception of a domestic misdeed, forebears to reprove the servant? And who is there that does not censure a son who fails to pay the duty owed to parents, or does not blame and find fault with an adulteress as having committed a shameful act? Truth forces and compels us, in spite of innumerable refinements, to impulsive praise and blame, on the basis of our retention of free will with the responsibility in which it involves us.
If our free will is in truth preserved with innumerable inclinations towards virtue or vice, towards either duty or its opposite, its future must like other things have been known by God, before coming to pass, from the world's creation and foundation; and in all things prearranged by God in accordance with what He has seen of each act of our free wills. He has with due regard to each movement of our free wills prearranged what also is at once to occur in His providence and to take place according to the train of future events. God's foreknowledge is not the cause of all future events including those that are to have their efficient cause in our freewill guided by impulse.
Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/fathers/origen/prayer.asp?pg=15
