This was posted previously in another thread, but it was wawy too long so I removed the direct quotations. However, I spent time compiling them and I think they are worth reading, so here they are. Warning in advance, this is long.
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Just how far is man's will fallen? Is it fallen to the point that he can no longer even will to the good? Or is man completely free to do good or evil by himself? At this point, St John Cassian cautions us to the productivity of such a discussion: "believing [either side] and asserting them more widely than is right [causes us to be] entangled in all kinds of opposite errors". Further, "If however any more subtle inference of man's argumentation and reasoning seems opposed to this interpretation, it should be avoided rather than brought forward to the destruction of the faith...for how God works all things in us and yet everything can be ascribed to free will, cannot be fully grasped by the mind and reason of man." In short, it is a mystery with an acceptable paradox, no different than the Incarnation or any number of aspects of the Christian faith.
However, here we are. The consensus of the fathers is, without qualification, man has free will. St John says that at all stages it is God, and man. God gives the divine gift, a "seed of goodness" to each man, and the choice of free will is open to either side; then grace helps us to attain to virtue, but the will is not destroyed; and finally God helps us persist to what we gain, with our working in synergy with him. But clearly the will remains free.
And this is not St John Cassian alone. St John himself makes this abundantly clear, when he says if we remove the freedom of the will, "we may seem to have broken the rule of the Church's faith" and "laid down by all the Catholic fathers" etc. What fathers? He appears to literally mean all of them. Of course Calvin himself recognized this when he wrote "Even though the Greeks above the rest and Chrysostom especially among them extol the ability of the human will, yet all the ancients, save Augustine, so differ, waver, or speak confusedly on this subject, that almost nothing certain can be derived from their writings." Can we trust his words here? Is it true that "nothing certain" can be derived? Let's find out.
St Ignatius of Antioch says "Seeing, then, all things have an end, and there is set before us life upon our observance [of God's precepts], but death as the result of disobedience, and every one, according to the choice he makes, shall go to his own place, let us flee from death, and make choice of life. For I remark, that two different characters are found among men the one true coin, the other spurious. The truly devout man is the right kind of coin, stamped by God Himself. The ungodly man, again, is false coin, unlawful, spurious, counterfeit, wrought not by God, but by the devil. I do not mean to say that there are two different human natures, but that there is one humanity, sometimes belonging to God, and sometimes to the devil. If any one is truly religious, he is a man of God; but if he is irreligious, he is a man of the devil, made such, not by nature, but by his own choice." (Letter to the Magnesians).
One of the earliest writings we have, the Letter to Diogentus, shows free will to be an ancient belief of the Church: "...as a king sending a son, he sent him as King, he sent him as God, he sent him as Man to men, he was saving and persuading when he sent him, not compelling, for compulsion is not an attribute of God." (Letter, 7.3)
St Justin writes "For the coming into being at first was not in our own power; and in order that we may follow those things which please Him, choosing them by means of the rational faculties He has Himself endowed us with, He both persuades us and leads us to faith." (First Apology 10) and "But neither do we affirm that it is by fate that men do what they do, or suffer what they suffer, but that each man by free choice acts rightly or sins." (Second Apology 7).
Athenagoras writes "Just as with men, who have freedom of choice as to both virtue and vice, for you would not either honor the good or punish the bad, unless vice and virtue were in their own power..." (Athenagoras' Plea, 24)
St Irenaeus says "For it was not merely for those who believed on Him in the time of Tiberius Caesar that Christ came, nor did the Father exercise His providence for the men only who are now alive, but for all men altogether, who from the beginning, according to their capacity, in their generation have both feared and loved God, and practiced justice and piety towards their neighbors, and have earnestly desired to see Christ and to hear his voice." (IV.22.2)
"This expression of our Lord, 'How often would I have gathered thy children together, and thou wouldest not,' , set forth the ancient law of human liberty, because God made man a free agent from the beginning, possessing his own power, even as he does his own soul, to obey the behests of God voluntarily, and not by compulsion of God. For there is no coercion with God, but a good will towards us is present with Him continually. And therefore does He give good counsel to all. In man, as well as the angels, He has placed the power of choice...so that those who had yielded obedience might rightly possess the good, given indeed by God, but preserved by themselves. On, the other hand, they who have not obeyed, shall, with justice, be not found in possession of the good, and shall receive condign punishment : for God did kindly bestow on them what was good." (Against heresies IV.37.1) and concluding "all such expressions demonstrate that man is in his own power with respect to faith." (Against Heresies IV.37.2).
St Cyprian of Carthage (a Latin father) wrote "The liberty of believing or not believing is placed in free choice" (Treatise 52).
St Athanasius says that human virtue depends on our free will: "Wherefore virtue has needs at our hands of willingness alone, since it is in us and formed in us" (Life of Anthony).
Origen wrote "This is also clearly defined in the teaching of the Church, that every rational soul is possessed of free-will and volition." (De Principiis Preface 5).
St Gregory the Theologian wrote "For that which He [Christ] has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved. If only half Adam fell, then that which Christ assumes and saves may be half also; but if the whole of his nature fell, it must be united to the whole nature of Him that was begotten, and so be saved as a whole." He says that our being in the image of God is the rationality in our creation, that "He endowed [us] with breath from Himself, which is the intelligent soul" and gave Adam "law as material upon which to exercise his free will." To save us, "He came to His own image, put on flesh for the sake of flesh, mingled Himself with a rational soul on account of my soul, purifying like with like, and in all things except sin He became man." He continues "He who Is becomes, the Uncreated is created, and the Unlimited is limited by means of a rational soul which mediates between the divinity and the grossness of the flesh." (Oration 45, On Pascha). Even the unregenerated man has a rational soul, else he is no longer in the image of God. To say otherwise is a troublesome claim, to say the least.
St Vincent of Lerins says the lack of a free will - a "necessity constrained will" is an erroneous teaching because it means that sin is irresistible: "...a human nature of such a description, that of its own motion, and by the impulse of its necessity-constrained will, it can do nothing else, can will nothing else, but sin..." (Commonitory, 24). Further, this is a heresy opposed to that of Pelagius' because it attributes man's sin to God.
St Methodius confirms: "Now those who decide that man is not possessed of free-will and affirm that he is governed by the unavoidable necessities of fate, and her unwritten commands, are guilty of impiety towards God Himself, making Him out to be the cause and author of human evils." (The Banquet of the Ten Virgins, 16).
St Cyril of Jerusalem in his Catechitical Lectures speaks a lot about free will. Lecture 2 chapters 1 and 2 are devoted to it, and he says later in 2 for example, "Our nature admits of salvation, but the will also is required." Lecture 4 says "Know also that you have a soul self-governed, the noblest work of God, made after the image of its Creator: immortal because of God that gives it immortality; a living being, rational, imperishable, because of Him that bestowed these gifts: having free power to do what it wills. For it is not according to your nativity that you sin" and "we now sin of our free-will" and clearly "The soul is self-governed: and though the devil can suggest, he has not the power to compel against the will. He pictures to you the thought of fornication: if you will, you accept it; if you will not, you reject. For if you were a fornicator by necessity, then for what cause did God prepare hell? If you were a doer of righteousness by nature and not by will, wherefore did God prepare crowns of ineffable glory?"
St Gregory of Nyssa in his Great Catechism teaches "or He who holds sovereignty over the universe permitted something to be subject to our own control, over which each of us alone is master. Now this is the will: a thing that cannot be enslaved, being the power of self-determination." (Great Catechism 47, 77A).
St John Chrysostom clearly teaches free will. In Homily 16 on Romans he says that election "[adds] to the noble born free-will grace from Himself." Later he says in regard to Romans 9:20-21 "Here it is not to do away with free-will that he says this, but to show, up to what point we ought to obey God...do not suppose that this is said by Paul as an account of the creation, nor as implying a necessity over the will, but to illustrate the sovereignty and difference of dispensations; for if we do not take it in this way, various incongruities will follow, for if here he were speaking about the will, and those who are good and those not so, He will be Himself the Maker of these, and man will be free from all responsibility. And at this rate, Paul will also be shown to be at variance with himself, as he always bestows chief honor upon free choice."
Again he emphasizes "Because when he says, it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, he does not deprive us of free-will, but shows that all is not one's own, for that it requires grace from above. For it is binding on us to will, and also to run: but to confide not in our own labors, but in the love of God toward man."
And again "Whence then are some vessels of wrath, and some of mercy? Of their own free choice. God, however, being very good, shows the same kindness to both. For it was not those in a state of salvation only to whom He showed mercy, but also Pharaoh, as far as His part went. For of the same long-suffering, both they and he had the advantage. And if he was not saved, it was quite owing to his own will: since, as for what concerns God, he had as much done for him as they who were saved."
In Homily 3 on Timothy he calls believing in the absence of free will an error - "Having thus enlarged upon the love of God which, not content with showing mercy to a blasphemer and persecutor, conferred upon him other blessings in abundance, he has guarded against that error of the unbelievers which takes away free will, by adding, 'with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.' "
St Leo the Great, another contemporary of St Augustine, says "For accusing ourselves in our confessions and refusing the spirit's consent to our fleshly lusts, we stir up against us the enmity of him who is the author of sin, but secure a peace with God that nothing can destroy, by accepting His gracious service, in order that we may not only surrender ourselves in obedience to our King but also be united to Him by our free-will." (Sermon 26)
And later, after St Augustine but before Calvin, the Church can call upon St Faustus of Riez, who says "We, however, maintain that whosoever is lost is lost by his own fault; yet, he could have obtained salvation through grace had he cooperated with it; and, on the other hand, whoever through grace attains to perfection by means of cooperation, might nevertheless, through his own fault, his own negligence, fall and be lost. We exclude, of course, all personal pride, since we insist that all we possess has been freely received from the Hand of God." (Concerning Grace, 1)
St John Climacus (6th century) says "Of the rational beings created by Him and honored with the dignity of free-will, some are His friends, others are His true servants, some are worthless, some are completely estranged from God, and others, though feeble creatures, are His opponents" in the Ladder of Divine Ascent (1.1).
St John of Damascus says in the Exposition of the Catholic Faith that God made man a rational being endowed with free will, and as a result of the fall free will was corrupted (Book chapter 14). Further, he says "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 pre-determination 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."
St Isaac the Syrian asserts free will clearly when he teaches "It is not the case of the created beings' inheriting the glory to come by compulsion or against the person's will, without any repentance being involved; rather, it so pleased His wisdom that they should choose the good out of the volition of their own free will, and thus have a way of coming to Him" and "The aim of His design is the correction of men; and if it were not that,we should be stripped of the honor of our free will, perhaps He would not even heal us by reproof."
Of course St Maximos the Confessor deals with the will in a systematic way, introducing the gnomic will and so forth. And man has free will, as he notes "If man is the image of the divine nature and if the divine nature is free, so is the image." He also explains "all innovation is manifested in relation to the mode (tropos) of the thing innovated, not its natural principle (logos). The principle, if it undergoes innovation, corrupts the nature, as the nature in that case does not maintain inviolate the principle according to which it exists." In short, our nature as free can exist in a marred mode of existence but our natural reason for being and therefore our end (telos) can never change. By grace and our free will we move from being to well-being to eternal-being.
Building on these, St Gregory Palamas states "God does not decide what men's will shall be. It is not that He foreordains and thus foreknows, but that He foreknows and thus foreordains, and not by His will but by His knowledge of what we shall freely will or choose. Regarding the free choices of men, when we say God foreordains, it is only to signify that His foreknowledge is infallible. To our finite minds it is incomprehensible how God has foreknowledge of our choices and actions without willing or causing them. We make our choices in freedom which God does not violate."
This is why when confronted with Calvisinism in the 1600s the Church flatly rejected it. Dosetheus' Confession says: "We believe man in falling by the [original] transgression to have become comparable and like unto the beasts, that is, to have been utterly undone, and to have fallen from his perfection and impassibility, yet not to have lost the nature and power which he had received from the supremely good God. For otherwise he would not be rational, and consequently not man; but to have the same nature, in which he was created and the same power of his nature, that is free will, living and operating." And therefore the Church pronounced Calvinism a heresy: "But to say, as the most wicked heretics and as is contained in the Chapter answering hereto [i.e., Canons of Dort] - that God, in predestinating, or condemning, had in no wise regard to the works of those predestinated, or condemned, we know to be profane and impious."
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So what's the consensus here? The Apostolic fathers, the early apologists, the Cappadocian fathers, the Latin fathers, the Syrian fathers, the Desert Fathers, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, several of Constantinople, bishops in Alexandria, Antioch, all taught this. Yet Calvin relied almost exclusively on St Augustine (using polemic works against Pelagius) and later medieval scholastics. In other words, Calvin operated independently outside of the patristic consensus - and he freely admits this in his own words.
Read what St Paul says to the Aeropagus: "God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us." He also says that God accepts men "who fear him and do what is right." Man clearly has the capacity to long for God. St Paul tells St Timothy that God our Savior wants "all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth". St Peter writes that God does not will any to perish. If we don't have free will to reject or accept, does He will in vain?
Christ says "May they all be one: as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, so may they also be one in us." Love does not compel, and the inherent freedom of the love of communion with the Trinity is a critical aspect of Christ's Incarnation into two wills. St Isaac the Syrian says "When we have reached love, we have reached God". Love and free will go hand in hand. To deny man's free will is to deny the interpersonal love of the Trinity.
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Just how far is man's will fallen? Is it fallen to the point that he can no longer even will to the good? Or is man completely free to do good or evil by himself? At this point, St John Cassian cautions us to the productivity of such a discussion: "believing [either side] and asserting them more widely than is right [causes us to be] entangled in all kinds of opposite errors". Further, "If however any more subtle inference of man's argumentation and reasoning seems opposed to this interpretation, it should be avoided rather than brought forward to the destruction of the faith...for how God works all things in us and yet everything can be ascribed to free will, cannot be fully grasped by the mind and reason of man." In short, it is a mystery with an acceptable paradox, no different than the Incarnation or any number of aspects of the Christian faith.
However, here we are. The consensus of the fathers is, without qualification, man has free will. St John says that at all stages it is God, and man. God gives the divine gift, a "seed of goodness" to each man, and the choice of free will is open to either side; then grace helps us to attain to virtue, but the will is not destroyed; and finally God helps us persist to what we gain, with our working in synergy with him. But clearly the will remains free.
And this is not St John Cassian alone. St John himself makes this abundantly clear, when he says if we remove the freedom of the will, "we may seem to have broken the rule of the Church's faith" and "laid down by all the Catholic fathers" etc. What fathers? He appears to literally mean all of them. Of course Calvin himself recognized this when he wrote "Even though the Greeks above the rest and Chrysostom especially among them extol the ability of the human will, yet all the ancients, save Augustine, so differ, waver, or speak confusedly on this subject, that almost nothing certain can be derived from their writings." Can we trust his words here? Is it true that "nothing certain" can be derived? Let's find out.
St Ignatius of Antioch says "Seeing, then, all things have an end, and there is set before us life upon our observance [of God's precepts], but death as the result of disobedience, and every one, according to the choice he makes, shall go to his own place, let us flee from death, and make choice of life. For I remark, that two different characters are found among men the one true coin, the other spurious. The truly devout man is the right kind of coin, stamped by God Himself. The ungodly man, again, is false coin, unlawful, spurious, counterfeit, wrought not by God, but by the devil. I do not mean to say that there are two different human natures, but that there is one humanity, sometimes belonging to God, and sometimes to the devil. If any one is truly religious, he is a man of God; but if he is irreligious, he is a man of the devil, made such, not by nature, but by his own choice." (Letter to the Magnesians).
One of the earliest writings we have, the Letter to Diogentus, shows free will to be an ancient belief of the Church: "...as a king sending a son, he sent him as King, he sent him as God, he sent him as Man to men, he was saving and persuading when he sent him, not compelling, for compulsion is not an attribute of God." (Letter, 7.3)
St Justin writes "For the coming into being at first was not in our own power; and in order that we may follow those things which please Him, choosing them by means of the rational faculties He has Himself endowed us with, He both persuades us and leads us to faith." (First Apology 10) and "But neither do we affirm that it is by fate that men do what they do, or suffer what they suffer, but that each man by free choice acts rightly or sins." (Second Apology 7).
Athenagoras writes "Just as with men, who have freedom of choice as to both virtue and vice, for you would not either honor the good or punish the bad, unless vice and virtue were in their own power..." (Athenagoras' Plea, 24)
St Irenaeus says "For it was not merely for those who believed on Him in the time of Tiberius Caesar that Christ came, nor did the Father exercise His providence for the men only who are now alive, but for all men altogether, who from the beginning, according to their capacity, in their generation have both feared and loved God, and practiced justice and piety towards their neighbors, and have earnestly desired to see Christ and to hear his voice." (IV.22.2)
"This expression of our Lord, 'How often would I have gathered thy children together, and thou wouldest not,' , set forth the ancient law of human liberty, because God made man a free agent from the beginning, possessing his own power, even as he does his own soul, to obey the behests of God voluntarily, and not by compulsion of God. For there is no coercion with God, but a good will towards us is present with Him continually. And therefore does He give good counsel to all. In man, as well as the angels, He has placed the power of choice...so that those who had yielded obedience might rightly possess the good, given indeed by God, but preserved by themselves. On, the other hand, they who have not obeyed, shall, with justice, be not found in possession of the good, and shall receive condign punishment : for God did kindly bestow on them what was good." (Against heresies IV.37.1) and concluding "all such expressions demonstrate that man is in his own power with respect to faith." (Against Heresies IV.37.2).
St Cyprian of Carthage (a Latin father) wrote "The liberty of believing or not believing is placed in free choice" (Treatise 52).
St Athanasius says that human virtue depends on our free will: "Wherefore virtue has needs at our hands of willingness alone, since it is in us and formed in us" (Life of Anthony).
Origen wrote "This is also clearly defined in the teaching of the Church, that every rational soul is possessed of free-will and volition." (De Principiis Preface 5).
St Gregory the Theologian wrote "For that which He [Christ] has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved. If only half Adam fell, then that which Christ assumes and saves may be half also; but if the whole of his nature fell, it must be united to the whole nature of Him that was begotten, and so be saved as a whole." He says that our being in the image of God is the rationality in our creation, that "He endowed [us] with breath from Himself, which is the intelligent soul" and gave Adam "law as material upon which to exercise his free will." To save us, "He came to His own image, put on flesh for the sake of flesh, mingled Himself with a rational soul on account of my soul, purifying like with like, and in all things except sin He became man." He continues "He who Is becomes, the Uncreated is created, and the Unlimited is limited by means of a rational soul which mediates between the divinity and the grossness of the flesh." (Oration 45, On Pascha). Even the unregenerated man has a rational soul, else he is no longer in the image of God. To say otherwise is a troublesome claim, to say the least.
St Vincent of Lerins says the lack of a free will - a "necessity constrained will" is an erroneous teaching because it means that sin is irresistible: "...a human nature of such a description, that of its own motion, and by the impulse of its necessity-constrained will, it can do nothing else, can will nothing else, but sin..." (Commonitory, 24). Further, this is a heresy opposed to that of Pelagius' because it attributes man's sin to God.
St Methodius confirms: "Now those who decide that man is not possessed of free-will and affirm that he is governed by the unavoidable necessities of fate, and her unwritten commands, are guilty of impiety towards God Himself, making Him out to be the cause and author of human evils." (The Banquet of the Ten Virgins, 16).
St Cyril of Jerusalem in his Catechitical Lectures speaks a lot about free will. Lecture 2 chapters 1 and 2 are devoted to it, and he says later in 2 for example, "Our nature admits of salvation, but the will also is required." Lecture 4 says "Know also that you have a soul self-governed, the noblest work of God, made after the image of its Creator: immortal because of God that gives it immortality; a living being, rational, imperishable, because of Him that bestowed these gifts: having free power to do what it wills. For it is not according to your nativity that you sin" and "we now sin of our free-will" and clearly "The soul is self-governed: and though the devil can suggest, he has not the power to compel against the will. He pictures to you the thought of fornication: if you will, you accept it; if you will not, you reject. For if you were a fornicator by necessity, then for what cause did God prepare hell? If you were a doer of righteousness by nature and not by will, wherefore did God prepare crowns of ineffable glory?"
St Gregory of Nyssa in his Great Catechism teaches "or He who holds sovereignty over the universe permitted something to be subject to our own control, over which each of us alone is master. Now this is the will: a thing that cannot be enslaved, being the power of self-determination." (Great Catechism 47, 77A).
St John Chrysostom clearly teaches free will. In Homily 16 on Romans he says that election "[adds] to the noble born free-will grace from Himself." Later he says in regard to Romans 9:20-21 "Here it is not to do away with free-will that he says this, but to show, up to what point we ought to obey God...do not suppose that this is said by Paul as an account of the creation, nor as implying a necessity over the will, but to illustrate the sovereignty and difference of dispensations; for if we do not take it in this way, various incongruities will follow, for if here he were speaking about the will, and those who are good and those not so, He will be Himself the Maker of these, and man will be free from all responsibility. And at this rate, Paul will also be shown to be at variance with himself, as he always bestows chief honor upon free choice."
Again he emphasizes "Because when he says, it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, he does not deprive us of free-will, but shows that all is not one's own, for that it requires grace from above. For it is binding on us to will, and also to run: but to confide not in our own labors, but in the love of God toward man."
And again "Whence then are some vessels of wrath, and some of mercy? Of their own free choice. God, however, being very good, shows the same kindness to both. For it was not those in a state of salvation only to whom He showed mercy, but also Pharaoh, as far as His part went. For of the same long-suffering, both they and he had the advantage. And if he was not saved, it was quite owing to his own will: since, as for what concerns God, he had as much done for him as they who were saved."
In Homily 3 on Timothy he calls believing in the absence of free will an error - "Having thus enlarged upon the love of God which, not content with showing mercy to a blasphemer and persecutor, conferred upon him other blessings in abundance, he has guarded against that error of the unbelievers which takes away free will, by adding, 'with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.' "
St Leo the Great, another contemporary of St Augustine, says "For accusing ourselves in our confessions and refusing the spirit's consent to our fleshly lusts, we stir up against us the enmity of him who is the author of sin, but secure a peace with God that nothing can destroy, by accepting His gracious service, in order that we may not only surrender ourselves in obedience to our King but also be united to Him by our free-will." (Sermon 26)
And later, after St Augustine but before Calvin, the Church can call upon St Faustus of Riez, who says "We, however, maintain that whosoever is lost is lost by his own fault; yet, he could have obtained salvation through grace had he cooperated with it; and, on the other hand, whoever through grace attains to perfection by means of cooperation, might nevertheless, through his own fault, his own negligence, fall and be lost. We exclude, of course, all personal pride, since we insist that all we possess has been freely received from the Hand of God." (Concerning Grace, 1)
St John Climacus (6th century) says "Of the rational beings created by Him and honored with the dignity of free-will, some are His friends, others are His true servants, some are worthless, some are completely estranged from God, and others, though feeble creatures, are His opponents" in the Ladder of Divine Ascent (1.1).
St John of Damascus says in the Exposition of the Catholic Faith that God made man a rational being endowed with free will, and as a result of the fall free will was corrupted (Book chapter 14). Further, he says "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 pre-determination 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."
St Isaac the Syrian asserts free will clearly when he teaches "It is not the case of the created beings' inheriting the glory to come by compulsion or against the person's will, without any repentance being involved; rather, it so pleased His wisdom that they should choose the good out of the volition of their own free will, and thus have a way of coming to Him" and "The aim of His design is the correction of men; and if it were not that,we should be stripped of the honor of our free will, perhaps He would not even heal us by reproof."
Of course St Maximos the Confessor deals with the will in a systematic way, introducing the gnomic will and so forth. And man has free will, as he notes "If man is the image of the divine nature and if the divine nature is free, so is the image." He also explains "all innovation is manifested in relation to the mode (tropos) of the thing innovated, not its natural principle (logos). The principle, if it undergoes innovation, corrupts the nature, as the nature in that case does not maintain inviolate the principle according to which it exists." In short, our nature as free can exist in a marred mode of existence but our natural reason for being and therefore our end (telos) can never change. By grace and our free will we move from being to well-being to eternal-being.
Building on these, St Gregory Palamas states "God does not decide what men's will shall be. It is not that He foreordains and thus foreknows, but that He foreknows and thus foreordains, and not by His will but by His knowledge of what we shall freely will or choose. Regarding the free choices of men, when we say God foreordains, it is only to signify that His foreknowledge is infallible. To our finite minds it is incomprehensible how God has foreknowledge of our choices and actions without willing or causing them. We make our choices in freedom which God does not violate."
This is why when confronted with Calvisinism in the 1600s the Church flatly rejected it. Dosetheus' Confession says: "We believe man in falling by the [original] transgression to have become comparable and like unto the beasts, that is, to have been utterly undone, and to have fallen from his perfection and impassibility, yet not to have lost the nature and power which he had received from the supremely good God. For otherwise he would not be rational, and consequently not man; but to have the same nature, in which he was created and the same power of his nature, that is free will, living and operating." And therefore the Church pronounced Calvinism a heresy: "But to say, as the most wicked heretics and as is contained in the Chapter answering hereto [i.e., Canons of Dort] - that God, in predestinating, or condemning, had in no wise regard to the works of those predestinated, or condemned, we know to be profane and impious."
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So what's the consensus here? The Apostolic fathers, the early apologists, the Cappadocian fathers, the Latin fathers, the Syrian fathers, the Desert Fathers, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, several of Constantinople, bishops in Alexandria, Antioch, all taught this. Yet Calvin relied almost exclusively on St Augustine (using polemic works against Pelagius) and later medieval scholastics. In other words, Calvin operated independently outside of the patristic consensus - and he freely admits this in his own words.
Read what St Paul says to the Aeropagus: "God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us." He also says that God accepts men "who fear him and do what is right." Man clearly has the capacity to long for God. St Paul tells St Timothy that God our Savior wants "all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth". St Peter writes that God does not will any to perish. If we don't have free will to reject or accept, does He will in vain?
Christ says "May they all be one: as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, so may they also be one in us." Love does not compel, and the inherent freedom of the love of communion with the Trinity is a critical aspect of Christ's Incarnation into two wills. St Isaac the Syrian says "When we have reached love, we have reached God". Love and free will go hand in hand. To deny man's free will is to deny the interpersonal love of the Trinity.