Section CI

For what we enumerated in the first place, he handed down when, expounding¹ the Savior’s words “Thy will be done,” he wrote:

According to this form we add, “Thy will be done”² “in heaven and on earth,” not because anyone opposes the doing of God’s will and we pray for the success³ of his will; but we ask that his will be done in all. For according to the figurative interpretation of flesh and spirit⁴, we are heaven and earth.—Although, even if it is to be understood simply, the sense of the petition is nevertheless the same: that God’s will be done in us on earth, so that it may also be done, namely, in heaven. But what does God will except that we walk according to his discipline? Therefore we ask that he furnish us the substance and faculty of his will, that we may be saved both in heaven and on earth, because the sum⁵ of his will is the salvation of those whom he has adopted… For there is nothing evil in God’s will, even if something is inflicted according to the merits of each.

Entirely excellent and most suitable for effecting what we will; for nothing is either more illustrious than the words “the sum of the divine will is the salvation of those whom he has adopted,” or more suitable than the statement that God’s will toward men is benevolent even when they are visited, according to their own merits, by the severity of justice.

Lest these words be judged to have been said concerning some alone, four things chiefly prevent it: 1) their agreement with that doctrine which was common to ecclesiastical writers; then 2) the things which precede in Tertullian; then 3) the things which follow in the same author; and finally 4) what he himself has concerning the amplitude and ambit of those effects which proceed from the salutary divine will. Indeed, let the things which we brought forward in explaining the doctrine of the Alexandrian Church⁶ be recalled, and likewise let those which we have just transcribed from Gregory of Nyssa and John Cassian be recalled. It will be manifest that all these things cannot be reconciled ἁρμονικῶς, harmoniously, with Tertullian’s words unless what he says—that the sum of the divine will is the salvation of those whom he has adopted—is understood of the will which is ἡ σωτηρία τῶν ἀνθρώπων, the salvation of men.

The preceding things also demand this interpretation. For, explaining⁷ the words “Hallowed be thy name,” he writes:

As far as concerns our petition, when we say, “Hallowed be thy name,” we ask that it be hallowed⁸ in us, who are in him, and at the same time also in the others whom the grace of God still awaits; so that in this also we may obey the precept by praying⁹ for all, even for our enemies. And therefore, suspending the expression and not saying “Hallowed in us,” we say “in all.”

Nor do the things which follow look to anything else. Concerning that part of the Lord’s Prayer by which we ask “Thy kingdom come,” he determines thus¹⁰:

“Thy kingdom come” also pertains to what was said, “Thy will be done,” namely, in us. For when does God¹¹ not reign, in whose hand is the heart of all kings? But whatever we desire for ourselves, we augur for him and attribute to him what we expect from him. Therefore, if the manifestation of the Lord’s kingdom¹² pertains to God’s will and to our suspense¹³, how do some ask for a certain prolongation in the age¹⁴, when the kingdom of God whose coming we pray for tends toward the consummation of the age? We desire to reign sooner and not to serve any longer. Even if it had not been prescribed in the prayer to ask for the coming of the kingdom, of our own accord we would have uttered that expression, hastening to the embrace of our hope.

Therefore, of its own accord and by its native weight, the divine will is carried to this: that it may manifest the heavenly kingdom to all, unless those same men oppose it. For if the fullest charity is required of us, and we are commanded to pray for all that the sanctification of the divine name may shine forth in them, much fuller is the merciful benignity of God, which anticipates all, takes possession of all, and leaves altogether no one destitute of its light and heat.