# John of Damascus (Creation)



## RamistThomist (May 12, 2015)

Concerning this Aeon or Age

John notes that "age" has many meanings (II.1).

(11) An age is used to denote the temporal motion and interval that is co-extensive with eternity.

Creation

John has a really interesting section on angels. It's too long to replicate here, except to note several points:

(12) Angels are immaterial, mental presences. He notes some are set over nations, and ceterus paribus, this would apply to demons as well (though John fails to cite the most obvious texts to prove his point, Daniel and Revelation).

Days of Creation

John's discussion of the days of creation is more on the nature of air, winds, constellations et al than concerning timing. Interestingly, John says the four rivers are Tigris, Euphrates, the Nile, and the Ganges (I didn't see that last one coming, though I suppose it could work).

Man in Creation

John's view is markedly different from later views and apparently from the text. He writes, "He meant for us to be free from care and have on work to perform, to sing as do the angels" (II.11). This is no doubt true, and I suppose we wouldn't have anxiety, but God very much intended us to subdue the earth and fill it.

God dwells in the soul, not in the body, and the soul is far more glorious than the body. To be fair, this isn't gnosticism or even chain of being, but a hard push can make it so. However, he does speak of the Tree of life as "a divine thought in the world of sense and we ascend through that to the cause. Here is the heart and definition of later monastic anchoretism. The Christian life is one of participation and ascent from sense to hyper-ousia.

John correctly affirms substance-dualism (II.12). Unfortunately, he holds to the flawed image/likeness dichotomy which can't stand up to scrutiny.

Free will: John affirms it, but what does he mean by it? He says "there is no virtue in mere force," which seems to be a rejection of materialistic determinism, which no Christian tradition holds today.

On the Soul

While John takes the body-soul dualism in an unhealthy direction, he does have some perceptive remarks on the soul:

Mind is the purest part of the soul.
The soul is free. (Remember, R.L. Dabney argued that the soul, not the faculty of will was where true freedom lay).
It is mutable because it is created (II.12).

Sensation is the faculty of soul whereby material objects are discriminated (II.18). This is a remarkably modern observation. Sensation is not reducible to the matter. We do not feel the faculty of sensation. Rather, by sensation we feel pain, pleasure, etc. John reduces sensations into numerous sub-faculties, which need not detain us.

The soul also has the faculty of thought, and it is this faculty which prophecies to us.
1. Faculty of memory.
2. Faculty of conception.
3. Energy: energy is that which is moved of itself (II.22) and in harmony with nature. . Our energy is the force within our nature that makes present our essence (II.23). However, John will call our natural faculties “energies,” as well. Most importantly, an energy is moved of itself (and here is where the Reformed will ultimately differ with John). 

Our soul also possesses the faculties of life: 

The Movement of the Will

Given that Maximus the Confessor was tortured less than a century earlier for his dyotheletism, it is understandable John will devote a lot of space on the will. Here we go:
a. Will as thelesis: faculty of desiring in harmony with nature.
b. Will as boulesis: a wish for some definite object. We can only wish for something within our power.
c. Will as gnome: inclination. Jesus’s soul did not have a gnomic will
d. The faculties of will are called energies (II.23).

Jesus has two wills, natural and divine, and his volitional faculties aren’t the same. However, since the subsistence is one, the object of his will, the gnomic will, is one.

The Act of Choosing

(13) A voluntary act is one which originates from within the actor (II.24). 
John does make distinctions between providential necessity (seasons, laws of nature)

(13*) John says all mental and deliberative acts are in our hands.

This is no different from Reformed Scholasticism, which affirms that we have freedom of contradiction and freedom of contraiety (Muller 1995, 2007).. 

Side note: Elsewhere, John says that Christ, strictly speaking, did not have judgment and preference (gnome; III.14). Judgment and preference imply indecision and unknowing, which Christ, as fully God, could not have had. 

(14) Free-will is tied with man’s rationality (II.27)

If we are going to say, with John, that will is the faculty of willing, we must make a further distinction between that faculty and “choice” (arbitrium), arbitrium being the capacity of will to make that choice. 

Providence

John divides the works of providence into things that come from God’s will and God’s permission. John justifies the misfortunes men experience under providence with the assumption that it works for a greater good (teaching, lead to repentance, etc). 

Predestination

God knows all things but does not determine all things (II.30).

Evaluation;

Much of what John says on the soul and the will is quite good. This allows the Reformed an opportunity to robustly affirm what we believe about the will, given the confusion of the day. I do think his sub-categories of the will simply become unwieldy and his discussion is too minute. 

John is simply following Maximus, but I wonder how coherent Maximus’s discussion of dyotheletism is. I affirm dyotheletism, but how many people can understand the difference between will, act of willing, and a mode of the act of willing?


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