Clement of Rome (fl. c.90-100), I Clement, translated by J. B. Lightfoot:
[1] “Who shall say unto Him, What hast thou done? or, Who shall resist the power of His strength? When and as He pleases He will do all things, and none of the things determined by Him shall pass away” (27:5).
[2] “Let us therefore approach Him in holiness of soul, lifting up pure and undefiled hands unto Him, with love towards our gentle and compassionate Father who made us an elect portion unto Himself” (29:1).
[3] “This declaration of blessedness was pronounced upon them that have been elected by God through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen” (50:6).
[4] “For as God liveth, and the Lord Jesus Christ liveth, and the Holy Spirit, who are the faith and the hope of the elect, so surely shall he, who with lowliness of mind and instant in gentleness hath without regretfulness performed the ordinances and commandments that are given by God, be enrolled and have a name among the number of them that are saved through Jesus Christ, through whom is the glory unto Him for ever and ever. Amen” (58:2).
[5] “And we will ask, with instancy of prayer and supplication, that the Creator of the universe may guard intact unto the end the number that hath been numbered of His elect throughout the whole world, through His beloved Son Jesus Christ, through whom He called us from darkness to light, from ignorance to the full knowledge of the glory of His Name” (59:2).
Epistle of Barnabas (c.90–c.131):
[1] “We are elected to hope, committed by God unto faith, appointed to salvation.”
[2] “Learn: before we believed in God, the habitation of our heart was corrupt and weak.”
Didache (c.90-150): “The workings that befall thee receive as good, knowing that apart from God nothing cometh to pass” (3:10).
Ignatius (d.98-117):
[1] “Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, to the Church which is at Ephesus, in Asia, deservedly most happy, being blessed in the greatness and fullness of God the Father, and predestined before the beginning of time, that it should be always for an enduring and unchangeable glory, being united and elected through the true passion by the will of the Father, and Jesus Christ, our God” (Epistle to the Ephesians 1:1).
[2] “They that are carnal cannot do the things that are spiritual … Nor can the unbelievers do the things of belief.”
Second Clement (120-140): “We were deficient in understanding, worshipping stones and wood, and gold, and silver, and brass, the works of men’s hand; and our whole life was nothing else than death. Involved in blindness, and with such darkness before our eyes, we have received sight, and through His will have laid aside that cloud by which we were enveloped. For He had compassion on us, and mercifully saved us, observing the many errors in which we were entangled, as well as the destruction to which we were exposed, and that we had no hope of salvation except it came to us from Him. For He called us when we were not, and willed that out of nothing we should attain a real existence” (1:6-8).
Justin Martyr (c.100-165):
[1] “Mankind by Adam fell under death, and the deception of the serpent; we are born sinners … No good thing dwells in us … For neither by nature, nor by human understanding is it possible for me to acquire the knowledge of things so great and so divine, but by the energy of the Divine Spirit … Of ourselves it is impossible to enter the kingdom of God … He has convicted us of the impossibility of our nature to obtain life … Free will has destroyed us; we who were free are become slaves and for our sin are sold … Being pressed down by our sins, we cannot move upward toward God; we are like birds who have wings, but are unable to fly.”
[2] “In all these discourses I have brought all my proofs out of your own holy and prophetic writings, hoping that some of you may be found of the elect number which through the grace that comes from the Lord of Sabaoth, is left or reserved for everlasting salvation.”
Clement of Alexandria (c.155-c.220), Stromata:
[1] “He has dispensed His beneficence both to Greeks and Barbarians, even to those of them that were predestinated, and in due time called, the faithful and elect” (7:2).
[2] “And if sacred (το ἱερόν) has a twofold application, designating both God Himself and the structure raised to His honour, how shall we not with propriety call the Church holy, through knowledge, made for the honour of God, sacred (ἱερόν) to God, of great value, and not constructed by mechanical art, nor embellished by the hand of an impostor, but by the will of God fashioned into a temple? For it is not now the place, but the assemblage of the elect, that I call the Church” (7:5).
[3] “Wherefore also the apostle designates as the express image (χαρακτῆρα) of the glory of the Father [Heb. 1:3] the Son, who taught the truth respecting God, and expressed the fact that the Almighty is the one and only God and Father, whom no man knows but the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal Him [Matt. 11:27]. That God is one is intimated by those who seek the face of the God of Jacob; whom being the only God, our Saviour and God characterizes as the Good Father. And the generation of those that seek Him is the elect race, devoted to inquiry after knowledge” (7:10).
Irenaeus (fl. c.175-c.195), Against Heresies:
[1] “But He Himself in Himself, after a fashion which we can neither describe nor conceive, predestinating all things, formed them as He pleased, bestowing harmony on all things, and assigning them their own place, and the beginning of their creation” (2.2.4).
[2] “And therefore, when the number is completed, which He had predetermined in His own counsel, all those who have been enrolled for life shall rise again, having their own bodies, and having also their own souls” (2.33.5).
[3] “God thus determining all things beforehand for the bringing of man to perfection, for his edification, and for the revelation of His dispensations, that goodness may both be made apparent, and righteousness perfected, and that the Church may be fashioned after the image of His Son, and that man may finally be brought to maturity at some future time, becoming ripe through such privileges to see and comprehend God” (4.37.7).
Origen (c.185-c.254): “Our free will … or human nature is not sufficient to seek God in any manner.”
Cyprian (d.258):
[1] “This is therefore the predestination which we faithfully and humbly preach.”
[2] “But again, if even to the greatest sinners, and to those who had sinned much against God, when they subsequently believed, remission of sins is granted—and nobody is hindered from baptism and from grace—how much rather ought we to shrink from hindering an infant, who, being lately born, has not sinned, except in that, being born after the flesh according to Adam, he has contracted the contagion of the ancient death at its earliest birth, who approaches the more easily on this very account to the reception of the forgiveness of sins—that to him are remitted, not his own sins, but the sins of another.“
Eusebius (c.265-c.339): “The liberty of our will in choosing things that are good is destroyed.”
Athanasius (c.296/298-373), Four Discourses Against the Arians:
[1] “How then has He chosen us, before we came into existence, but that, as he says himself, in Him we were represented beforehand? And how at all, before men were created, did He predestinate us unto adoption, but that the Son Himself was ‘founded before the world,’ taking on Him that economy which was for our sake? Or how, as the Apostle goes on to say, have we ‘an inheritance being predestinated,’ but that the Lord Himself was founded ‘before the world,’ inasmuch as He had a purpose, for our sakes, to take on Him through the flesh all that inheritance of judgment which lay against us, and we henceforth were made sons in Him?” (2.22.76).
[2] “Paul was called to be an Apostle ‘by the will of God,’ and our calling has come about ‘by His good pleasure and will,’ and all things have come into being through the Word” (3.30.64).
Hilary the Deacon (fl. mid-4th century): “The law being abbreviated, the remnant of the Jews are saved; but the rest cannot be saved because, by the appointment of God they are rejected, by which he hath decreed to save mankind.”
Marius Victorinus (fl. c.355): “It was therefore within his purpose that he gave to us the gift of trusting in him. This was an incomparable gift. It is only by faith in him that we are blessed with so great a reward. We are to believe in such a way as to be ready to suffer for him [Phil. 1:29].”
Basil of Caesarea (330-379):
[1] “Nothing happens without cause; nothing by chance; all things involve a certain ineffable wisdom” (Homily 5, in The Fathers of the Church, volume 46, Exegetic Homilies, p. 79).
[2] “Do not say: ‘This happened by chance’ and ‘that occurred accidentally.’ Nothing is casual, nothing indeterminate, nothing happens at random, nothing among things that exist is caused by chance. And do not say it is a bad mishap or it is an evil hour. These are the words of the untaught. ‘Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And yet not one of them will fall’ without the divine will” (Homily on Psalm 32, in The Fathers of the Church, volume 46, Exegetic Homilies, p. 232).
Ambrose (c.339-397):
[1] “In predestination the Church of God has always existed.”
[2] “As, then, a crown is given to many after they have lapsed, so, too, if they believe, their faith is restored, which faith is the gift of God, as you read: ‘Because unto you it has been granted by God not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer in His behalf.’ Philippians 1:29.”
Jerome (c.342/347-420):
[1] “But it could be said too, that those things, which will be done have already been done, decided out of foreknowledge and the predestination of God. For those who have been chosen in Christ before the constitution of the world existed already in previous times” (Commentary on Ecclesiastes 1:10).
[2] “Eph. 2:8-9, ‘For you have been saved by grace by means of faith, and this is not from yourselves, for it is the gift of God, not from works, that no one may glory.’ He says, therefore, that he will show the abundant riches of his grace in kindness in the ages to come because you have been saved by grace by means of faith, not by means of works. And this faith itself is not from yourselves but is from him who has called you. Now so that the secret thought, ‘If we have not been saved by means of our works, perhaps we have been saved by means of faith, and it is in another manner that we are saved of ourselves,’ not sneak into our thinking by chance in reference to this, he thus goes on and says that faith itself is also not of our will but is the gift of God. It is not that human free will is removed. In accordance with what the apostle says to the Romans, ‘It is not of him who runs, or of him who wills, but of God who shows mercy’ (Rom. 9:16), the very freedom of the will has God as its author, and all things are referred to his benefaction, since it is he himself who permits us even to will the good. But all of this has been said so that no one might glory as if he has been saved by himself and not by God.”
[3] “God the Father chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we might be holy and without spot before Him. We walked in the lusts of the flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the thoughts, and were children of wrath, even as the rest. But now He has raised us up with Him, and made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Against Jovinian 1.38).
John Chrysostom (c.347-407): “Even faith, [Paul] says, is not from us. For if the Lord had not come, if he had not called us, how should we have been able to believe? ‘For how,’ [Paul] says, ‘shall they believe if they have not heard?’ So even the act of faith is not self-initiated. It is, he says, ‘the gift of God’” (Homilies on Ephesians, on Ephesians 2:8 [PG 62.33]).
Augustine (354-430):
[1] “Here certainly, there is no place for the vain argument of those who defend the foreknowledge of God against the grace of God, and accordingly maintain that we were elected before the foundation of the world because God foreknew that we would be good, not that He Himself would make us good. This is not the language of Him who said, ‘You did not choose Me, but I chose you’ (John 15:16).”
[2] “‘Ye have not chosen me,’ He says, ‘but I have chosen you.’ Grace such as that is ineffable. For what were we so long as Christ had not yet chosen us, and we were therefore still destitute of love? For he who hath chosen Him, how can he love Him? Were we, think you, in that condition which is sung of in the psalm: ‘I had rather be an abject in the house of the Lord, than dwell in the tents of wickedness’? Certainly not. What were we then, but sinful and lost? . . . Here surely is at fault the vain reasoning of those who defend the foreknowledge of God in opposition to His grace, and with this view declare that we were chosen before the foundation of the world, because God foreknew that we should be good, but not that He Himself would make us good” (Tractates on the Gospel of John, Tractate 86 on John 15:15-16).
[3] “If, therefore, they are servants of sin (II Cor. 3:17), why do they boast of free will? … O, man! Learn from the precept what you ought to do; learn from correction, that it is your own fault you have not the power … Let human effort, which perished by Adam, here be silent, and let the grace of God reign by Jesus Christ … What God promises, we ourselves do not through free will of human nature, but He Himself does by grace within us … Men labour to find in our own will something that is our own, and not God’s; how can they find it, I know not.”
[4] “Although the apostle says that it was not because He foreknew that we should be such, but in order that we might be such by the same election of His grace, by which He showed us favour in His beloved Son. When, therefore, He predestinated us, He foreknew His own work by which He makes us holy and immaculate. Whence the Pelagian error is rightly refuted by this testimony. ‘But we say,’ say they, ‘that God did not foreknow anything as ours except that faith by which we begin to believe, and that He chose and predestinated us before the foundation of the world, in order that we might be holy and immaculate by His grace and by His work.’ But let them also hear in this testimony the words where he says, ‘We have obtained a lot, being predestinated according to His purpose who worketh all things.’ He, therefore, worketh the beginning of our belief who worketh all things; because faith itself does not precede that calling of which it is said: ‘For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance;’ and of which it is said: ‘Not of works, but of Him that calleth’ (although He might have said, ‘of Him that believeth’); and the election which the Lord signified when He said: ‘Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.’ For He chose us, not because we believed, but that we might believe, lest we should be said first to have chosen Him, and so His word be false (which be it far from us to think possible), ‘Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.’ Neither are we called because we believed, but that we may believe; and by that calling which is without repentance it is effected and carried through that we should believe” (On the Predestination of the Saints 1.38, trans. Peter Holmes and Robert Earnest Wallis, in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series, ed. Philip Schaff, vol. 5 [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, repr. 1983]).
[5] “Faith, then, both in its beginning and in its completion, is a gift of God, and let it not be doubted by anyone who does not wish to contradict the most evident sacred writings that this gift is given to some, but to others it is not given. Why this gift is not given to all should not disturb the believer, who believes that from one man, all have gone into condemnation, a condemnation undoubtedly most just, so much so that even if no one were freed there from, there would be no just complaint against God. It is evident from this that it is a great grace that many are delivered and recognize, in those who are not delivered, that which they themselves deserved, so that ‘he who glories may glory’ not in his own merits, which he observes as equalled in those who are condemned, but ‘in the Lord.’ As to why God delivers this person rather than that one, ‘How incomprehensible are his judgments, and how unsearchable his ways.’ For it is better for us here to listen or to say, ‘O man, who are you that replies against God?’ than to dare to explain, as if we knew, what God has chosen to keep a secret” (The Predestination of the Saints, Chapter 16, in Four Anti-Pelagian Writings, trans., John A. Mourant and William J. Collinge, in The Fathers of the Church, Volume 86, pp. 237-238).
[6] “[God] used the very will of the creature which was working in opposition to the Creator’s will as an instrument for carrying out His will, the supremely Good thus turning to good account even what is evil, to the condemnation of those whom in His justice he has predestined to punishment” (Enchiridion, trans. J. F. Shaw, in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series, ed. Philip Schaff, vol. 3 [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, repr. 1988], c, p. 269).
[7] “[The human] race we have distributed into two parts, the one consisting of those who live according to man, the other of those who live according to God. And these we also mystically call the two cities, or the two communities of men, of which the one is predestined to reign eternally with God, and the other to suffer eternal punishment with the devil” (The City of God xv:1, trans. Marcus Dods, in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series, ed. Philip Schaff, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, repr. 1983), p. 284).
[8] “In this redemption, the blood of Christ was given, as it were as a price for us, by accepting which the devil was not enriched, but bound: that we might be loosened from his bonds, and that he might not with himself involve [us] in the meshes of sins, and so deliver to the destruction of the second and eternal death, any one of those whom Christ, free from all debt, had redeemed by pouring out his own blood unindebtedly; but that they who belong to the grace of Christ, foreknown, and predestinated, and elected before the foundation of the world, should only so far die as Christ Himself died for them, i.e. only by the death of the flesh, not of the spirit” (On the Trinity XIII:xv:19, trans. Arthur West Haddan, in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series, ed. Philip Schaff, vol. 3 [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, repr. 1988], p. 178).
[9] “And what is written, that ‘He wills all men to be saved’ [I Tim. 2:4], while yet all men are not saved, may be understood in many ways, some of which I have mentioned in other writings of mine; but here I will say one thing: ‘He wills all men to be saved,’ is so said that all the predestinated may be understood by it, because every kind of men is among them. Just as it was said to the Pharisees, ‘Ye tithe every herb’ [Luke 11:42]; where the expression is only to be understood of every herb they had, for they did not tithe every herb which was found throughout the whole earth. According to the same manner of speaking, it was said, ‘Even as I also please all men in all things’ [I Cor. 10:33]. For did he who said this please also the multitude of his persecutors? But he pleased every kind of men that assembled in the Church of Christ, whether they were already established therein, or to be introduced into it” (Treatise on Rebuke and Grace, chap. 44, in Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 5, p. 489).
Fulgentius of Ruspe (462/467-527/533):
[1] “‘The one who commits sin is a slave of sin’ [John 8:34] and ‘by whatever someone has been overcome, by that also he has been made a slave’ [II Pet. 2:19]. As sin reigns a man does indeed have free choice, but this is freedom without God, not freedom under God. That is, he is free of righteousness [Rom. 6:20], not free under grace, and therefore he is free in the worst and most servile way … ‘If the Son sets you free, you will be truly free’ [John 8:36]” (First Letter to the Scythian Monks 19.38).
[2] “All those who have been predestined are thus called so that they may be justified and they are thus justified so that they may be glorified by God [Rom. 8:30]. And, as a consequence, he predestined whom he pleased both to good works and to eternal rewards. He predestined them to a good life and predestined them to eternal life. He predestined them to faith and predestined them to splendor. He predestined them to be adopted in this age and predestined them to be glorified in the kingdom. He predestined them by grace to be made brothers of the Firstborn and predestined them by grace to be made perfect as co-heirs of the same Only-begotten” (The Truth About Predestination and Grace 3.2.3).
[3] “This predestination remains eternally steadfast and steadfastly eternal, not only in its arrangement of the works, but also in the number of persons [it has chosen]. Thus, no one from the plenitude of that number will lose the grace of eternal salvation, and no one who is not of that number will attain the gift of eternal salvation. Since God knows all things before they come about, just as he is certain about the number of the predestined, so also there is no doubt about the outcome of works he has planned” (The Truth About Predestination and Grace 3.4.6).
[4] “[Paul] wanted the truth he wrote in his letters to be preached to all men. Therefore, there is no doubt that whoever strives to refute or fight against the apostolic words denies the apostolic commands. For the blessed Apostle preached predestination faithfully and truthfully, and in the same way he commanded that it be preached faithfully and truthfully to us” (The Truth About Predestination and Grace 3.8.12).
[5] “The blessed Paul argues that we are saved by faith, which he declares to be not from us but a gift from God. Thus there cannot possibly be true salvation where there is no true faith, and, since this faith is divinely enabled, it is without doubt bestowed by his free generosity” (On the Incarnation [PL 65.573]).
[6] “… our Savior reproves the malevolence of the unbelieving city … [Matt. 23:37]. Christ said this to show its evil will by which it tried in vain to resist the invincible divine will, when God’s good will neither could be conquered by those whom it deserts nor could not be able to accomplish anything which it wanted. That Jerusalem, insofar as it attained to its will, did not wish its children to be gathered to the Savior, but still he gathered all whom he willed. In this it wanted to resist the omnipotent but was unable to because God who, as it is written, “Whatever the Lord pleases, he does” [Ps. 135:6], converts to himself whomever he wills …” (On the Forgiveness of Sins 2.2.3).
