But this agreement of formulas and expressions is followed by a harmony of things and opinions no less clear and no less adapted to producing faith. For what, according to Chrysostom1, is the origin, what the fountain, of the antecedent will? Namely, the divine φιλανθρωπία καὶ ἀγαθότης, benevolence and goodness toward men. But Damascene2, in turn, derives the principle of the first will from the fact that God is good. “For just as,” he says3, τὸ φῶς ἐκ τοῦ ἡλίου ὁρίζεται, οὕτω καὶ τὸ ἀγαθὸν ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ, “light arises from the sun, so good arises from God.” And4 ὁ Θεὸς οὐ δύναται μὴ παρέχειν τὰ ἀγαθά, ἀγαθὸς ὤν, “God, since he is good, cannot fail to bestow good things.”
Furthermore, if we hear Chrysostom, just as the amplitude of the divine benignity toward men is universal, so the good pleasure of the antecedent will rejects no one and embraces all. Nor does Damascene speak otherwise, for he inculcates and repeats this very thing, whether when he denies that men are created by God in order that he may visit punishments upon them, or when he affirms that the antecedent will of God pertains to this: that absolutely all men be saved. But if all are not saved, this does not happen, according to Chrysostom, either because the benignity of God, which is abundantly available to all, is lacking to some, or because God, as far as lies in himself, does not solicitously impart all those things which are necessary for attaining salvation, for he pours forth his riches abundantly upon all; but because he has established this law and pre-appointed this order: that all and only those be saved who have complied with the divine benignity going before and preparing.
Damascene does not recede from these things by even a nail’s breadth, for this is his certain and established opinion5: that God, ὅπερ αὐτοῦ ἐστι, as far as lies in him, enriches all with his benefits, and therefore, ὅπερ μόνου Θεοῦ ἐστι, so far as it depends upon him alone, καὶ θελόντων καὶ μὴ θελόντων ἡμῶν αὐτὸς δίδωσιν, ὡς ἀγαθός, ἵνα κἂν ποσῶς ᾖ ἐν ἡμῖν τὸ ἀγαθόν, whether we will or do not will, he himself, inasmuch as he is good, bestows his gifts upon us, so that the good may be in us in some measure at least; and that not all arrive at salvation for this one reason: because God does not will men to be saved κατὰ βίαν, by necessity, but on the contrary wills6 τὸ ἀγαθὸν εἶναι ἐκ Θεοῦ καὶ ἐξ ἡμῶν, that it ought to be both his and ours that we are good; or, as he explains elsewhere7, because he wills it to be οὐ τοῦ Θεοῦ μόνου, ἀλλὰ καὶ αὐτοῦ, not God’s alone, but also man’s own, that he attain τὸ καλόν, that which is good and excellent: τὸ γὰρ βίᾳ γινόμενον, οὐ καλόν, οὐδὲ ἀρετή, “for that which is produced by force merits neither the name nor the dignity of goodness or virtue.”