Providence in the early church

God's care for and government of the world and of individual lives; fate and chance as opposed to providence. Part of God.

1 Clement 19.3Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Contemplate God's patience toward all creation.
1 Clement 20.1Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · The heavens obey God in peace.
1 Clement 20.2Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Day and night keep their order.
1 Clement 20.3Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · Sun, moon, and stars move in concord.
1 Clement 20.4Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · The earth yields food in its seasons.
1 Clement 20.6Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · The sea keeps within its bounds.
1 Clement 20.11Clement of Rome · ca. 95–97 (range ca. 70–100) · God ordained all things in peace and blesses us through Christ.
2 Clement 20.1Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Do not be troubled that the wicked prosper and God's servants suffer.
Sentences of Sextus 312Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · An evil man does not want there to be providence.
Sentences of Sextus 380Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · He who thinks that God exists and that nothing is cared for by him differs in nothing from one who does not believe that God exists.
Sentences of Sextus 436Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Fate does not make the wise man; for the grace of God is not subject to fate; otherwise God too …
Sentence 312 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · A bad man does not want there to be a providence of God.
Sentence 436 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Fate does not make a person faithful. Fate does not rule God's grace; otherwise it would rule God too.
Dialogue with Trypho 1.4Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Justin replies that most philosophers do not care whether God cares for individuals.
Dialogue with Trypho 118.3Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · God's providence made the Gentiles more understanding than Israel.
Oration to the Greeks 8Tatian · ca. 165–172 · The demons invented astrology and fate; the myths show the gods to be as passionate and contradictory as mortals.
Oration to the Greeks 9Tatian · ca. 165–172 · The zodiac and fate are the demons' invention; Christians are above fate, and the constellations are absurd honors given to myths.
Diatessaron, section 10Tatian · ca. 160-180
To Autolycus 1.6Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · God is known through the order and beauty of creation, the seasons, the stars, and the storm, as the Scriptures describe them.
To Autolycus 2.8Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · The poets and philosophers contradict one another about providence; they spoke under the inspiration of demons, though at times they said things that agree with the prophets.
To Autolycus 2.37Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · The Greek poets themselves bear witness that wrongdoers will be punished and that God sees all things.
To Autolycus 2.38Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · The prophets foretell the fiery judgment, and even the poets confess providence, judgment, and life after death; Theophilus invites Autolycus to further conversation.
To Autolycus 3.7Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · The philosophers contradict themselves about the gods and providence; some comic poets affirm providence and reward; readers must judge critically.
To Autolycus 3.9Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Christians confess one God, who governs all things by providence and gave the holy law of the Ten Commandments through Moses to Israel and, through them, to the world.
A Plea for the Christians 8Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · A philosophical proof that there can be only one uncreated God: a second god would have no place to be and nothing to do.
A Plea for the Christians 25Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · The fallen angels and the souls of the giants are the demons; the injustice in human affairs comes from the ruler of matter and the demons, not from a lack of providence.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 19Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · If there were no judgment, the virtuous would be worse off than beasts; but just judgment does not happen in this life, where the wicked prosper and one death cannot repay great crimes.
The Instructor 2.1.14Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The fish Peter caught stands for simple, God-given food and for putting away greed; not everything permitted is profitable, and God, who feeds the birds, provides our needs.
Against Heresies 2.5.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · To make God permit what he does not will is to make him a slave of necessity, like Homer's Zeus.
Against Heresies 3.20.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · As God let Jonah be swallowed in order to save him, so he let man be swallowed by the serpent, so that man, rescued beyond hope, would glorify God and not think his incorruption his own by nature.
Against Heresies 3.25.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · God exercises providence over all, and even some pagans, moved by it, called the maker of the universe the provident Father.
Excerpts from Theodotus 74.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The new star at Christ's birth abolished the old order of the stars; Christ moves believers from Fate to his providence.
Miscellanies 1.17.86Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God's providence steers even the apostates' evil to a good end; divine wisdom is shown above all in bringing good out of evil, as in martyrdom that arises from persecution.
Miscellanies 4.12.84Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · If martyrdom were punishment decreed by providence, denial would thwart providence, martyrs would deserve no reward, and providence would be unjust both to the righteous sufferer and to the sinner spared.
Miscellanies 4.12.88Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · If martyrs suffer for sins in a former life by providence, then either the persecutors act justly or persecution is God's will; the Basilidian theory destroys itself.
Miscellanies 5.1.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · It is godless to demand proofs from God; some questions need sense, some rebuke, and some, like whether providence exists, deserve punishment; providence is plain from creation; the Word is not a spoken word but God's wisdom, goodness, and power.
Miscellanies 5.14.128Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Philemon denies that Fortune is a god, and Sophocles says that all things depend on the supreme God, who holds the beginning and the end.
Miscellanies 6.16.148Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The stars and elements do not rule the world but obey God's word; the tenth commandment forbids desiring falsehood, such as the idea that created things act on their own, for they work only as instruments of God's providence, like tools in a craftsman's hand.
Miscellanies 6.17.153Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Philosophy was given by providence as a preparation for Christ, provided it learns from Scripture; if God counts hairs, he cares for philosophy too, as Samson's strength in his hair and the ointment running to the hem of Aaron's robe show.
Miscellanies 6.17.158Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God, like a shepherd, cares for each person, and especially for gifted leaders and teachers through whom his providence benefits many; every virtuous thing comes from virtue and leads to it.
Miscellanies 6.17.159Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · It is absurd to credit the devil with philosophy, since it makes people virtuous and vice cannot produce virtue; philosophy came from God, as the law did for the Jews, until Christ's coming brought the universal call to one people.
Octavius 5.7Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · If the world arose from natural or chance causes, there is no need for a creator god or religious fear.
Octavius 5.10Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Disasters kill good and bad without distinction.
Octavius 5.12Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · If providence ruled, tyrants would not reign nor good men suffer.
Octavius 11.6Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Christians attribute everything to God's choice, as others do to fate.
Octavius 17.4Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Looking at the world shows plainly that a supreme mind governs it.
Octavius 17.5Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · The heavens, the year, and the month show a divine order.
Octavius 18.4Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · As an orderly house implies a master, the ordered world implies a Lord.
Octavius 25.12Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Other empires flourished without Rome's religious institutions, by God's providence.
Octavius 36.2Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · Fate is simply what God, foreknowing each person's character, has declared.
Apology 26Tertullian · ca. 197 · It is the one God who gives and takes away kingdoms, as the empires older than Rome's gods and the history of Judea show.
Apology 41Tertullian · ca. 197 · The pagans, not the Christians, bring disasters on the world; God sends good and ill on all alike until the final judgment, as admonition to Christians and punishment to others.
To the Nations 2.5Tertullian · 197 · People thank the physician, not the medicine, and blame the robber, not the sword; so the orderly service of the elements should lead them to the Maker who rules the elements, not to worship the elements themselves.
To the Nations 2.17Tertullian · 197 · Rome's empire was not a reward for its religion, which it plundered in conquering others; the one God who orders the times gives and takes away kingdoms.
To His Wife 1.4Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · The desires of the flesh and of the world that urge remarriage should be overcome, following widows who have chosen to be “married to God” and trusting God's provision.
Commentary on Daniel 2.35Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-204 · Why God rescued some martyrs and not others: he rescues or takes his servants as he wills, so that some may be examples of endurance, as with the Maccabean martyrs, Peter, Paul, Stephen, and Christ himself.
Against Marcion 4.29Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Christ's teaching on anxiety, watchfulness, the faithful steward, the fire he came to cast, and just judgment all point to the Creator who provides, judges, and repays.
On Flight in Persecution 1Tertullian · ca. 208–213 · Answering Fabius, who asked whether Christians may flee in persecution, Tertullian first argues that persecution comes by God's will, as the winnowing and testing of his servants, since it makes them better.
On Flight in Persecution 3Tertullian · ca. 208–213 · God, who makes peace and creates war, is the author of persecution; those who fear that crowded church gatherings will provoke the heathen should trust that nothing happens without God's will.
On Flight in Persecution 5Tertullian · ca. 208–213 · Whoever flees for fear of denying has already half denied; it is better to stay and trust God to protect, as the martyr Rutilius, who fled repeatedly, was caught and burned all the same.
To Scapula 3Tertullian · 212 · Tertullian points to disasters and to the miserable deaths of persecuting governors as signs of God's wrath and warns Scapula that judgment is coming.
On First Principles 1.6.2Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The end will be like the beginning: from one beginning rational beings were ranked by their own merits, the human race arising from those who fell but not beyond remedy, and all will be restored to the unity Christ prayed for.
On First Principles 2.9.5Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Followers of Marcion, Valentinus and Basilides object that the unequal ranks of heavenly beings and the unequal births of humans can only be explained by different natures of souls or by chance.
On First Principles 3.1.10Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · As one rain makes tilled land fruitful and neglected land thorny, so God's signs and patience soften some hearts and harden others according to their own cultivation.
On First Principles 3.1.13Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · God's patience with sinners serves their healing, as a physician lets a wound drain before closing it, for God cares for immortal souls over all ages, not only this short life.
On First Principles 3.1.14Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · As a farmer sows rocky ground late so the crop may root, God delays the healing of some souls; his providence toward Pharaoh did not end even at his drowning.
On First Principles 3.1.17Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Christ veiled his teaching from those not yet ready, lest a hasty healing make them worse; God orders the hearing of the word with mercy and justice for immortal souls over all ages.
On First Principles 3.2.7Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Misfortunes happen not by God's doing yet not without him, since he permits the hostile powers within limits; next Origen turns to false knowledge.
On First Principles 3.3.5Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Why some are moved by good spirits and others possessed from birth: Origen suggests causes earlier than bodily birth, since the soul always has free choice and is never without motion.
On First Principles 3.5.5Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · God foresaw from the beginning the causes of each being's state; those who do not see that the world's variety arises from free choice blame chance or fate and cannot clear God's providence.
On First Principles 4.1.7Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · That the divine sense of Scripture is not obvious to all no more disproves its inspiration than providence is disproved by being hidden; the treasure lies in earthen vessels, so that faith rests on God's power.
Fragments on Genesis, column 49Origen · ca. 220-254 · If matter were unbegotten and fit for God's work by itself, Providence would add nothing to chance; human craftsmen are no parallel, since Providence supplies their material.
Fragments on Genesis, column 139Origen · ca. 220-254 · God used the brothers' sin to save many; the goods of Egypt belong to Israel; the promise “I will bring you up” points to life after death; the names Jacob and Israel distinguished.
Fragments on Job, column 97Origen · ca. 220-254 · God's invitation to Job to answer him is the prize of his endurance, and nothing we suffer happens without God's judgment.
Fragments on Luke, column 357Origen · ca. 220-254 · God forgets no sparrow, though the soul that sinks to earthly things falls like one; the leaven hidden in three measures is the Holy Spirit given through Wisdom to body, soul and spirit.
PG 12:1081 (Ps 1 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · The Holy Spirit has placed wisdom in every letter of Scripture, as the Creator has in the smallest creatures; difficulties in Scripture, like those in creation, do not justify the heretics’ rejection of the Creator.
PG 12:1197 (Ps 9–10 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · The beginning of LXX Psalm 10 (Ps 11), whose heading is lost: the sinners’ bow and arrows are the impure mind and passionate thoughts, shot in the darkness of ignorance; God watches the poor with his eyes but examines sinners only with his eyelids, sparing them.
PG 12:1315 (Ps 35 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Ps 35 LXX (36):4–12: lawlessness devised on the bed, Aristotle’s denial of providence below the moon, the good drunkenness of God’s house, and Christ the spring of life.
PG 12:1523 (Ps 72 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Psalm 73:9–28 (LXX 72): the doubt about Providence answered in God's sanctuary, the parts of the soul, and God as the portion of the righteous.
Refutation of All Heresies 1.21.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Stoics made God, the purest body, the principle of all, with providence pervading everything.
Refutation of All Heresies 1.22.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Epicurus denied providence, placing an untroubled God outside the world.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.19.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · For Aristotle the region below the moon runs by nature without providence, while the region above the moon is governed by providence.
Refutation of All Heresies 9.28.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Pharisees hold both fate and free will under God's will, and believe in bodily resurrection, judgment, and eternal punishment.
Commentary on John 20.197Origen · ca. 230–248 · Providence may hinder the carrying out of bad wishes for a greater good.
On Prayer 5.2Origen · ca. 233–234 · The first objection: God already knows what we need and cares for us like a father, so prayer seems unnecessary.
On Prayer 6.4Origen · ca. 233–234 · God foresees how each person will pray and orders in advance whether and how to answer, even which angel to send to help each one.
On Prayer 6.5Origen · ca. 233–234 · God foresaw Josiah's goodness, Judas's fall, and Paul's persecution and conversion, and arranged his help accordingly without taking away their freedom.
On Prayer 29.14Origen · ca. 233–234 · God gave Israel meat until they were sick of it, so that they would be cured of their craving; so he may let sinners be sated with sin until they hate it and return to heavenly food.
Homily on Luke 32Origen · ca. 233–250 · Christ returns “in the power of the Spirit” after defeating the tempter; in the Nazareth synagogue he reads Isaiah’s prophecy of himself, whose poor and captives are the nations, and the hearers are urged to fix the eyes of their souls on him.
Exhortation to Martyrdom 34Origen · 235 · Jesus' warnings of persecution and his command not to fear those who kill the body were given to the apostles and apply to martyrs, whom Christ will confess before the Father.
Address of Thanksgiving 4Gregory Thaumaturgus · ca. 238–245 · Only the Word can thank the Father worthily; Gregory thanks Origen, and his guardian angel who led him to Origen.
Address of Thanksgiving 5Gregory Thaumaturgus · ca. 238–245 · Orphaned at fourteen, Gregory began to receive the Word; providence diverted his journey to study law at Berytus and brought him to Origen at Caesarea.
Homilies on Ezekiel 1.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Jerome's translation in the 380s) · Origen opens by arguing that God mingles mercy with punishment, as the righteous shared the exile to help the sinners and as Joseph’s story shows.
Homilies on Joshua 3.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Rahab, “breadth,” is the church gathered from sinners and the Gentiles, made a prophetess; Canaan’s servitude to his brothers shows God’s hidden kindness to sinners.
Homilies on Joshua 23.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · In Scripture lots do not fall by chance: Origen surveys the lots for the scapegoat and for the division of the land, which followed what God had predestined.
Homilies on Joshua 23.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · From the lots cast for Jonah, Solomon’s proverb, the choice of Matthias, and Paul’s language of being called “by lot,” Origen concludes that a lot cast in faith and with prayer reveals God’s hidden will.
Homilies on Joshua 23.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Lots are cast among the heavenly powers too: by God’s hidden judgment the angels received the nations, guardian angels their souls, and other powers the governance of nature, according to merit.
Homilies on Judges 3.1Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Israel's subjection to Cushan-rishathaim, "their humiliation," shows how God hands the proud, even now in the church, to a hostile power to humble and heal them.
Homilies on Numbers 23.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The Christian keeps the Sabbath by ceasing from worldly works and giving himself to spiritual ones, carrying no burden of sin and remaining in Christ; the true Sabbath, when God rests from his works, is the age to come.
Homilies on Psalms 36-38 2.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The prosperity of the wicked tempts weak souls to doubt Providence, but the present age belongs to those without hope, while the righteous wait for the lasting goods of the age to come.
Homilies on Psalms 36-38 8.9Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The Latin “old” renders the Greek palaistas, “handbreadths”: God measures each life, as Isaiah says he measures water, heaven, and earth, for nothing is without measure with God.
Homilies on Jeremiah 7.1Origen · ca. 240 · God punishes little by little so that sinners may turn back; Israel's punishments are shadows of the true punishments to come, and the final end came on Jerusalem only after it rejected Christ.
Homilies on Jeremiah 12.4Origen · ca. 240 · God scatters the wicked also so that they cannot strengthen one another in evil, which is a kind of providence even for them.
Homilies on Jeremiah 12.11Origen · ca. 240 · We glorify God by virtuous deeds, not words; sinners dishonor him, and it is their wickedness that makes others doubt his providence.
Metaphrase of Ecclesiastes 8Gregory Thaumaturgus · 3rd century · Paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 8: wisdom, obedience to the King, and the certainty of God's delayed but just judgment.
On the Trinity 8Novatian · ca. 240–250 · The church worships the God whom all creation praises, who guided sacred history from paradise to Christ and the apostles, and whose providence reaches every smallest thing, as Ezekiel's vision of his chariot shows.
Against Celsus 1.66Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus mocks the flight to Egypt; Origen answers that Christ, being truly man as well as God, was protected by ordinary human means, which suited his purpose better than a spectacular rescue.
Against Celsus 2.78Origen · ca. 248 · Origen replies that Jesus did not come to cause the Jews' unbelief but foresaw it, and that God's providence used it to call the Gentiles, as the prophets and Paul foretold.
Against Celsus 3.38Origen · ca. 248 · Origen reflects that what people believe often depends on the “fortune” of their teachers and upbringing, whose causes lie hidden in providence, and that faith in Jesus is well-founded, whether lucky for the many or tested by a few.
Against Celsus 3.75Origen · ca. 248 · The only “physicians” Christians turn people from are philosophers with harmful doctrines, such as Epicureans, Peripatetics, Stoics, and believers in transmigration; Christians never despise knowledge and point pupils to God and Jesus, not to themselves.
Against Celsus 4.4Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus's objection applies equally to his own belief in providence; God always sends correctors like Moses and the prophets, and above all Jesus, Savior of all people everywhere.
Against Celsus 4.7Origen · ca. 248 · God did not neglect humanity before Christ: in every generation his wisdom entered holy souls and made them friends of God and prophets.
Against Celsus 4.28Origen · ca. 248 · Christians do not claim God cares for them alone: Scripture teaches that God loves all he made, shows mercy to all flesh, sends sun and rain on all, and that Christ died for the sins of the whole world.
Against Celsus 4.69Origen · ca. 248 · God does not repair the world like a clumsy craftsman, but like a farmer through the seasons he heals vice in each age as it requires.
Against Celsus 4.74Origen · ca. 248 · Against Celsus's claim that the world was made no more for humans than for animals, Origen sides with the Stoics: providence cares chiefly for rational beings, and animals benefit incidentally, like dogs in a market.
Against Celsus 4.75Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus speaks like an Epicurean who denies providence; Christians thank the Creator for preparing the earth for humans and their animals, as the Psalm and Sirach say.
Against Celsus 4.76Origen · ca. 248 · God made humans needier than animals on purpose, so that want would drive them to invent the arts of farming, building, weaving, and navigation.
Against Celsus 4.77Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus attacks Euripides' line that sun and night serve mortals; Origen defends it: day and night exist for rational beings, and ants and flies only share in them.
Against Celsus 4.79Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus says early humans were prey to beasts before cities and arts existed; Origen notes this contradicts Celsus's own eternal world and argues that providence protected the first humans, who even associated with the divine.
Against Celsus 4.81Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus says bees and ants have cities and governments like humans; Origen replies that they act by instinct, not reason, and that God gave them this likeness of order to teach and shame rational beings.
Against Celsus 4.99Origen · ca. 248 · Against Celsus, Origen holds that the world was made chiefly for rational beings, whom God cares for, warns, and corrects so that he may turn the whole creation back to himself; Book 4 ends with a prayer.
Against Celsus 5.12Origen · ca. 248 · God is present everywhere by providence, and Christ is always with his disciples, so it is absurd to pray to the stars; even if they announce the weather, their Lord, not his heralds, deserves worship.
Against Celsus 5.26Origen · ca. 248 · Origen asks Celsus who allotted the nations to their overseers: if Zeus, did he approve Jewish law or not? And if no one did, providence is denied.
Against Celsus 6.57Origen · ca. 248 · God does admonish and persuade through Scripture and teachers, but being persuaded requires the hearer's own free consent, as Paul, Isaiah, and Deuteronomy show.
Against Celsus 7.68Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus argues that demons, as appointed administrators under the greatest God, should be served; Origen replies that not everything, including sin, is God's will or providence, and wicked demons transgress God's law.
Against Celsus 8.68Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus quotes Homer that kings are given by Zeus and warns that if all behaved like Christians the empire would fall to barbarians; Origen replies that kings are set up by God, Christians honour the king, and if all believed, even barbarians would become peaceable.
Commentary on Romans 3.1Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen explains that Paul's seemingly disordered argument serves to set Jews and Gentiles in their places; God is not unjust in punishing, because justice is known from its contrary and wrath falls on those who have made room for injustice; and God's truth 'abounds' when it refutes the false doctrines of philosophers.
On the Lapsed 5Cyprian of Carthage · 251 · The persecution was God's testing and correction of a church whose discipline had been corrupted by long peace, and it was milder than its sins deserved.
To Demetrian 5Cyprian of Carthage · 252–253 · Wars, famines, and plagues were foretold for the last times and come not because Christians neglect the gods but because pagans neglect God.
To Demetrian 7Cyprian of Carthage · 252–253 · Drought, hail, and disease come because of sin, to discipline the stubborn or punish the wicked, yet people do not fear God even under his blows.
Res. 2.9Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The Greek excerpts of Book 2, chapters 9-10: trees do not consume the earth they grow from, God alone gives growth through his wisdom, and man was made from the four elements as a small world, as Ezekiel's four-faced cherubim signify.
Vit. 5Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Man should accept the changes God appoints, including loss and travel, as discipline, and seek God's purpose instead of lamenting.
Against the Nations 7.10Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The philosophers of fate argue that, if all is fixed, sacrifices cannot win help from the gods, and even prayer to them is pointless.
Against the Nations 7.11Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Worshipers who sacrifice constantly still suffer every misfortune, which the fatalists take as proof that sacrifices change nothing.
Church History 6.2.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Only his mother, by God's providence, kept him from martyrdom.
Church History 6.3.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · God protected Origen from repeated plots; soldiers were even posted around his house.
Church History 6.40.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Dionysius of Alexandria: his flight in the persecution was by God's direction.
Church History 6.40.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · On the fourth day God led Dionysius and his companions out safely.
Church History 8.16.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Not the rulers' mercy but divine providence ended the persecution, reconciled to God's people and angry at its chief author.
Homilies 2.36Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter comforts Clement over the delay, saying that God's providence turns events to good.
Homilies 4.13Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Denial of providence leads to fearless wrongdoing, whereas the Jewish teaching of one good and just Creator is most pious.
Homilies 6.19Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Clement argues that the poets are inconsistent, and that the order of the world proves it was made by wisdom, not chance.
Homilies 11.34Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter continues daily in Tripolis, refuting the gods and fate and teaching that providence governs the world.
Homilies 14.3Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · The old man argues that there is neither God nor providence, but that everything is governed by genesis, since his own piety did not save him from misfortune.
Homilies 14.5Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter offers to prove providence by healing incurable infirmities through prayer, and argues that fatalism blasphemes God by making him the author of all sin.
Homilies 15.4Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter points to the family's separation and reunion as proof that God's providence governs all things.
Recognitions 1.21Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter tells Clement that the delay is providential, giving time to teach him the faith according to the tradition of the true Prophet.
Recognitions 4.8Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter opens by announcing that he will show God's Providence to be blameless and demon possession to be just, ignorance being the mother of evils.
Recognitions 8.2Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · The old man declares that there is no God or providence but only chance and birth-fate, which he knows from astrology, and Clement feels strangely drawn to him.
Recognitions 8.4Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter compares heralds of truth to sunlight, quoting Christ, and the old man proposes that each side state its thesis, asserting that birth-fate, not providence, rules the world.
Recognitions 8.6Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · The crowd recognizes Peter, and Niceta states his thesis that the one just God governs the world by providence and will judge each by his deeds.
Recognitions 8.10Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Niceta poses the question whether the world was made, and by itself or another, noting that without Providence virtue, justice, and immortality lose their meaning.
Recognitions 8.11Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Niceta distinguishes general, special, and combined forms of providence, the last meaning that God made all things and cares for each to the end.
Recognitions 8.23Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Mountains that produce winds, sparse rain in hot southern lands, and the Nile's flood watering Egypt all show providence.
Recognitions 8.26Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · In the growth of seeds a vital spirit given to the waters from the beginning forms each plant after its kind, as the womb forms the child, showing divine wisdom.
Recognitions 8.27Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Providence hides how things grow from the unworthy, but a thought experiment shows that plants grow from water, not earth, since the soil's weight remains unchanged.
Recognitions 8.39Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · The old man accurately summarizes Niceta's argument: an ordered world implies a wise maker and providence, and a just God who will judge.
Recognitions 8.53Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Every good has its counterfeit—false prophets, false philosophers, imitated circumcision, rival baptisms, magic healing and necromancy—so the old man should choose the side of order that proves providence.
Recognitions 8.54Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Aquila argues that only a craftsman can produce both form and formlessness, as a sculptor's rough stone becomes a statue, so the world's apparent disorder also belongs to providence.
Divine Institutes 1.2.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Lactantius does not think he must begin with the question of whether providence exists.
Divine Institutes 1.2.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Democritus and Epicurus denied providence, but the Stoics refuted them.
Divine Institutes 1.2.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero, though an Academic, argued for providence, especially in On the Nature of the Gods.
Divine Institutes 1.2.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The consent of all peoples easily refutes the few who deny providence.
Divine Institutes 1.2.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Anyone who looks at the order of the heavens recognizes a governing providence.
Divine Institutes 1.2.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Providence will be treated throughout the work rather than separately here.
Divine Institutes 2.5.19Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The order in the stars is God's reason, not theirs.
Divine Institutes 2.8.10Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero argued that matter was not made by providence.
Divine Institutes 2.8.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero compared providence to a builder who uses existing material.
Divine Institutes 2.8.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero here contradicts his usual defence of providence.
Divine Institutes 2.8.48Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Hermes, the Sibyls, the prophets, and most philosophers agree that providence made the world.
Divine Institutes 2.8.54Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Cicero rightly abolished the gods but failed when he attacked providence.
Divine Institutes 2.10.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Some philosophers who deny providence say animals sprang from the earth without a maker.
Divine Institutes 2.10.24Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The survival of one man in the flood shows God controls humanity's life and end.
Divine Institutes 2.11.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Their theory actually requires providence.
Divine Institutes 2.11.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The milk and mild climate could not be chance.
Divine Institutes 2.11.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Denying providence overturns reason itself.
Divine Institutes 3.17.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Epicurus concluded from apparent injustice that there is no providence.
Divine Institutes 3.17.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Epicurus denied order in the world and criticized its design.
Divine Institutes 3.17.18Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The design of animal bodies shows providence.
Divine Institutes 3.17.19Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Epicurus said organs were not made for their uses; use arose from them.
Divine Institutes 3.17.20Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Epicurus says nature works spontaneously, not for living things.
Divine Institutes 3.17.21Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Epicurus says all things arise from atoms colliding at random in the void.
Divine Institutes 3.20.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The world's design shows it is governed by providence.
Divine Institutes 3.20.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · As houses, ships and bodies need a governor, so does the world.
Divine Institutes 3.28.4Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Nature without God's providence is nothing.
Divine Institutes 3.28.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Either nature needs a divine mind behind it or it is God's work.
Divine Institutes 3.29.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Fortune is nothing but the unexpected outcome of events.
Divine Institutes 3.29.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Ignorant of causes, they are ignorant of the Cause.
Divine Institutes 5.10.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Unexplained misfortunes lend support to Epicurus' view of indifferent gods.
Divine Institutes 5.10.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · They blame fortune for their sufferings.
Divine Institutes 5.22.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Seneca's On Providence explains why the good suffer.
Divine Institutes 5.22.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Seneca: God chastises the good whom he loves.
Divine Institutes 7.3.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God rules the world as a master rules a house.
Divine Institutes 7.3.25Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The world's order shows providential design.
Divine Institutes 7.3.26Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Denying providence is madness.
Divine Institutes 7.4.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Providence created man and animals.
Divine Institutes 7.4.17Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Asclepiades: providence placed man nearest itself.
Divine Institutes 7.6.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Without providence and afterlife, all is vain.
On the Workmanship of God 1.16Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · Studying the design of our own body is legitimate, for its parts plainly reveal God's providence.
On the Workmanship of God 2.10Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · The Epicureans foolishly criticize nature to deny providence and ascribe everything to chance collisions of atoms.
On the Workmanship of God 4.1Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · Epicureans argue from disease and early death that humans were not made by providence.
On the Workmanship of God 4.13Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · Having denied providence, the Epicureans had to explain everything by chance collisions of atoms.
On the Workmanship of God 4.15Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · They criticized the very features that best show providence, without thinking through the consequences.
On the Workmanship of God 4.23Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · It is plain that nothing exists without providence, whose works are too many to discuss.
On the Workmanship of God 4.24Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · Lactantius will limit himself to the visible human body, the vessel of the soul, to show God's providence.
On the Workmanship of God 6.2Lactantius · ca. 303–305 · To make room for atoms Epicurus denied providence, yet absurdly invented animals lacking design.
On the Anger of God 4.4Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · God's worthiest work is to govern the world and care for mankind.
On the Anger of God 4.6Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Denying God's care and providence amounts to denying that he exists.
On the Anger of God 4.12Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · If God has no emotion, he has no care or providence either.
On the Anger of God 8.5Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · If God does not care, nothing stops us from secret crime whenever we can escape the law.
On the Anger of God 9.1Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · The early philosophers agreed on providence until Protagoras said he did not know whether there were gods.
On the Anger of God 9.3Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Socrates, Plato, the Stoics, and the Peripatetics all affirmed providence.
On the Anger of God 9.4Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Epicurus admitted a god but denied providence, making the world a chance clumping of atoms, which is self-contradictory.
On the Anger of God 9.5Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · A God must know past, present, and future; that is providence.
On the Anger of God 9.6Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · God and providence stand or fall together.
On the Anger of God 10.25Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Rational order cannot come from irrational collision; the world's wonderful reason must be due to divine providence.
On the Anger of God 10.32Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · No one who sees such wonders can think them made from mere crumbs without providence.
On the Anger of God 10.50Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · There is a divine providence that made and governs all things.
On the Anger of God 11.1Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Next: is providence the work of many gods or of one?
Preparation for the Gospel 1.4.15Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Christ's teaching instructs all nations in God's providence and judgment and in a careful life.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.2.14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Eusebius introduces a philosopher's refutation of Chrysippus's argument for fate from oracles.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.3.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Diogenianus attacks Chrysippus's claim that true prophecy proves fate, noting that most prophecies fail.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.3.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Even if divination foretold everything, it would prove fate but not usefulness.
Preparation for the Gospel 4.3.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · If our guarding is also fated, divination is useless.
Preparation for the Gospel, Book 6, preface 1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Eusebius opens Book 6 by turning from the oracles to the pagan doctrine of fate, to show the demons behind the oracles are powerless.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.1.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Porphyry quotes an oracle ascribing a disease to the Fates and the course of Saturn.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.1.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · A further oracle links a death to the planets Mars and Saturn.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.2.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Eusebius mocks gods who cannot even protect their own temples from fate.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.3.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Porphyry cites Apollo's oracle that his own temple was fated to be destroyed by lightning.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.3.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · If even temples cannot escape fate, Eusebius asks what hope humans have from such gods.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.3.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · If all is fated, only Necessity should be worshiped, not the gods.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.3.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · If the supreme God rules the Fates, he alone should be confessed as God, and his worshiper is free from fate.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.22Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Things beyond our control are explained by providence, not irrational fate; Eusebius turns to examine this.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.23Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · True religion teaches that all things exist and are governed by God's providence.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.27Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Fate cannot be identified with nature, since nature is often impeded and crossed by accidents.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.28Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Since things happen against nature, fate and nature are not the same.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.45Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · One almighty providence of God governs free acts, natural processes, and accidents.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.53Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Whether the fatalist denies providence or identifies it with fate, he falls into impiety.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.57Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Fate and God's providence exclude each other; they cannot be the same.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.58Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · If fate comes from the stars, it is a mere consequence of bodily elements.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.59Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · God, life and wisdom beyond bodies, cannot be the same as fate.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.60Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · If God is stronger than fate and lets it do evil, he is to blame.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.61Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Denying providence is atheism, refuted by the order of the world and the freedom of the soul.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.8.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Diogenianus reports that Chrysippus cited Homer to prove all things are fated.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.8.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Diogenianus notes that Homer also says people suffer through their own recklessness, which Chrysippus himself used.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.8.21Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Popular opinion ascribes events to gods, to us, to nature, or to chance, not all to fate.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.8.23Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · People, though confused, believe in several kinds of causes, not fate alone.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.13.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philo: Moses taught an active divine Mind and passive matter; an eternal world would abolish providence.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.13.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · A maker cares for what he has made, as a father for his children.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.14.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philo states the objection: the wicked prosper while the virtuous are poor.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.14.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · God is king and father of the world, uniting rule with care.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.14.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · God likewise provides for sinners, giving them time to amend.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.14.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Seeing God's providence, one laughs at worldly goods.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.14.34Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Their simultaneous, lawful punishments show God's judgment, not chance.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.14.42Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philo invites further objections to be examined together.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.14.45Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Some weather events are by-products, not direct works of providence.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.14.52Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · All heavenly bodies exist by providence, though we cannot explain each.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.14.54Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Providence cares for the whole, and the apparently good may not be truly so.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.14.59Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Venomous creatures arise as by-products, not by providence directly.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.14.72Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Philo concludes that God cares for human affairs.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.7.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The many were taught only that the universe is guided by God’s Word.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.29.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato: the cosmos is a living being made by God’s providence.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.32.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato’s Statesman: God alternately guides the universe and lets it go.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.32.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · God guides the cosmos at times; at others it moves backward by itself.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.50.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato’s Laws: some ascribe all things to nature, art, and chance.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.50.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The atheists derive the cosmos from soulless elements by chance.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.51.36Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Is the universe governed by chance or by mind?
Preparation for the Gospel 12.51.37Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · It is impious to deny that mind orders the cosmos.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.52.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato’s Laws: answer to those who think the gods do not care for men.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.52.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The prosperity of the wicked makes some think the gods do not care.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.52.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The good gods care for small things as well as great.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.52.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · God cannot have the vice of neglect.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.52.12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The gods are all-powerful and good, and cannot be lazy.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.52.16Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Whether men are small or great, the gods would not neglect them.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.52.19Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · God is not worse than a human craftsman who perfects small and great alike.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.52.21Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · All things are arranged for the good of the whole.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.52.25Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · God arranged all so that virtue would prevail in the universe.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.52.30Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The prosperity of the wicked does not prove the gods’ neglect.
Preparation for the Gospel 14.16.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plutarch’s source (Epicurean) objects that a blessed God would not care for human affairs.
Preparation for the Gospel 14.24.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Dionysius: the world’s beautiful works are not chance; God saw they were very good.
Preparation for the Gospel 14.24.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Useful works are made by design, and fall apart when design is gone.
Preparation for the Gospel 14.26.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Providence cares for beauty as well as use in the body.
Preparation for the Gospel 14.27.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Democritus made chance queen of the universe while denying it in human life.
Preparation for the Gospel 14.27.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Democritus: men invented chance as an excuse for their folly.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.5.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Aristotle limits providence to the region above the moon; Atticus refutes him.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.5.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Atticus: Plato attaches all things to God, who is good and cares for men.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.5.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Aristotle, denying providence and the soul’s hope, has nothing in common with Plato.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.5.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Denial of providence encourages wrongdoing.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.5.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Without providence only men need be evaded, and the powerful need not even hide.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.5.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Epicurus, offering pleasure and freedom from divine fear, cannot restrain wrongdoing.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.5.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Atticus puts Aristotle with Epicurus on providence.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.5.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Neither Epicurus nor Aristotle can be counted as teaching providence.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.5.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Providence that concerns us requires surviving souls and higher beings.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.12.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Atticus: Plato makes soul govern all things by providence; Aristotle denies it.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.12.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Aristotle divides causes among fate, nature, and providence.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.12.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Without one soul pervading the whole, the universe could not be well governed.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.34.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Heading: whether the world is ensouled and governed by providence.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.34.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Democritus and Epicurus: the world is soulless and governed by irrational nature.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.34.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Aristotle: providence governs the heavens, not the sublunary world.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.35.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Pythagoras, Plato, and the Stoics: the world was made by God and is preserved by his providence.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 1.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Almost all philosophers except the Epicureans agree that the world was made and is ruled by providence.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 1.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The ordered beauty and usefulness of the world prove providence.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 31.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Without providence Epicurus in effect abolished God; whence then the world?
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 31.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Epicurus says the world arose from the chance meeting of atoms.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 62.5Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Denying providence, they denied God.
Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 3.4Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · Gods with divided powers could show no providence, and their rivalry would lead to universal confusion.
Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 6.1Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · Those who ascribe the world to nature, fate or chance contradict themselves; a law of fate implies a lawgiver, God.
Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 6.3Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · Laws, rewards and punishments, and the calamities and blessings that follow human conduct show God's just providence, not chance.
Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 6.7Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · The order of day and night and the phases of the moon reveal God's providential reason.
Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 6.9Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · Mountains, valleys, plains, and the flow of water from hills to sea show God's measured providence.
Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 7.2Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · Such rare wonders make providence visible, joining heat and cold from one source.
Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 8.1Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · God supplied useful metals abundantly and precious ones sparingly.
Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 8.3Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · Providence everywhere urges virtue, but its full reason lies beyond human understanding.
Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 15.4Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · Heavenly wisdom is to suffer wrong rather than do it; trusting God, who rescued his people at sea and conquered through the passion, the believer is unconquerable.
Against the Heathen 36Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The harmony of opposite elements, seasons, waters, earth, and sexes shows one power above them that joins and governs them.
Against the Heathen 37Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Opposite elements could not combine into an ordered world unless a superior Lord bound them together; left to strife they would produce only chaos.
Against the Heathen 40Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The one Maker is the Father of Christ, who orders all things through his own Word and Wisdom, not a seminal principle or a spoken word but the living God the Word.
Against the Heathen 41Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The Word, the unchanging image of the Father and not composite like a human word, holds creation in being, which by its own nature would dissolve into nothing.
Against the Heathen 42Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The Word pervades and holds all things together, blending opposite elements into one harmony, like a musician playing the universe as a lyre (John 1:1–3).
Against the Heathen 43Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Three images, a choir under its leader, the soul moving the senses, and a city under its king, illustrate how the Word moves all creation at once.
Against the Heathen 44Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · By the Word’s single nod the heavens, the elements, the seasons, all living things, and the invisible powers are moved and held together, to make the Father known.
Against the Heathen 46Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Scripture teaches the one God and his providence through the Word, to whom the Father spoke at creation (“Let us make man”); the Son is the Father’s own Wisdom, Word, and Power, not by participation.
On the Incarnation 2.1Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Athanasius begins with rival accounts of creation, first the Epicurean view that all things arose by chance without providence.
On the Incarnation 2.2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The variety and order of the world show that it did not arise by chance but has a cause, God.
On the Incarnation 12.3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The order of creation reveals the Word, who governs all so that through him all may know God.
Theophany 1.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 2.19Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 2.20Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 2.74Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 2.83Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 2.86Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 2.87Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 2.93Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 11.13Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · The order of the elements, the water cycle, fire, the reconciling of opposites, and human generation show a governing power beyond matter.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 12.5Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · The Word assigns every creature its place and lot, judges each life, and provides for rational and irrational creatures alike.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 12.7Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · The Word is the bond, providence and guardian of the universe, the only-begotten God through whom all things were made.
Tricennial Oration (In Praise of Constantine) 13.12Eusebius of Caesarea · 335–336 · They denied providence and attributed the world to chance or fate.
Demonstration 2.8Aphrahat · 337-345 · The thirty extra years in Egypt were a punishment for rejecting Moses and a forbearance toward the Amorites; God freely lengthens and shortens the times he announces.
Demonstration 13.9Aphrahat · 337-345 · The sabbath was decreed for the rest of servants, strangers, and animals, out of God's care for all his creatures, as many Scriptures show.
Demonstration 14.14Aphrahat · 337-345 · A hymn to love, the great commandment, which covers sins and overcomes all evils; then a prayer to God, who patiently spares the wicked for the sake of the righteous who stand in the breach.
Demonstration 14.36Aphrahat · 337-345 · All creation obeys God's command, as the sea, the flood, the plagues, the sun at Gibeon, the stars, beasts, birds, and fish show; only humans disobey.
On Ecclesiastical Theology 1.13.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · The Father entrusted the governing of all things to the Son alone.
On Ecclesiastical Theology 1.13.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · The Son, like a pilot and physician, governs and cares for all things.
Life of Constantine 1.38.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · At the Milvian Bridge Maxentius drowned in the Tiber in his own trap, like Pharaoh in the Red Sea, and the victors could sing Moses' song.
Life of Constantine 2.58.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Without God's will the warring forces of the world would destroy mankind.
Oration II Against the Arians 25Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · God neither tires nor disdains to make lesser things, since his providence reaches even sparrows and grass; so he did not need a created Son as a helper.
Catechetical Lecture 8.4Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · God rules all things, even the devil, but bears with evil and turns it, as with Joseph's brothers, into an occasion for the salvation and crowning of the faithful.
Catechetical Lecture 8.5Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · All creation serves God, who patiently bears with sinners until judgment; wealth is not the devil's but God's gift, which used well can even open the kingdom of heaven.
On Apostate Kings 1Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Answering the emperor's claim that his long reign proves God's approval, Lucifer points to Gideon, who fell into idolatry yet ruled forty years.
On Apostate Kings 2Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · From Saul, rejected for sparing Amalek yet left to reign and persecute David, Lucifer argues that a long reign does not prove that the emperor pleases God.
On Apostate Kings 3Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer adds Solomon, Rehoboam and Jeroboam as kings who kept their thrones for years after turning to idols, so the emperor's survival proves nothing.
On Apostate Kings 4Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer charges that Jeroboam, raised by God's promise through Ahijah, repaid him with idolatry, and warns the emperor that the same ingratitude will be punished.
On Apostate Kings 7Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer argues that Ahab, though an idolater and killer of prophets, was given victory over Ben-hadad to call him to repentance, and that the emperor's victories likewise prove God's patience, not his approval.
On Apostate Kings 8Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · From Ahab's hatred of Micaiah, and the long reigns of Jeroboam II, the leprous Uzziah, and the idolater Manasseh, Lucifer argues that God's patience is no sign of approval and calls Arianism a leprosy of the soul.
On Apostate Kings 10Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · Lucifer says God bears with Constantius as with Manasseh only to test and crown the faithful, quotes the psalm on the sinner praised by flatterers, and cites Wisdom on God's slow judgment of the Canaanites.
On Apostate Kings 11Lucifer of Cagliari · ca. 356–361 · From Wisdom and from Job's complaint that the wicked prosper, Lucifer argues that God's long patience with the persecuting emperor reserves him for judgment unless he repents.
Defence of His Flight 9Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357 · Athanasius argues that his accusers, having attacked so many bishops who defended him, plainly intend his death, against Providence which has preserved him.
Letter 1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil tells Eustathius how every attempt to meet him was thwarted and resolves to accept God's ordering of events.
Letter 6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil consoles Nectarius's wife on her son's death, pointing to providence, the mother of the Maccabees, the mortality of all things, and prayer.
Letter 236Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil answers several questions of Amphilochius: how Christ's not knowing the day and hour (Mark 13:32) is to be understood without making the Son unlike the Father, the prophecy against Jeconiah, Encratite food rules, triple immersion in baptism, the difference between essence and hypostasis, and providence over health, wealth, and sickness.
Homilies on the Psalms 32.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · Basil expounds Ps 33:1–5: the righteous rejoice in God himself; praise befits only the upright; the cithara and ten-stringed psaltery are bodily deeds and the mind keeping the ten commandments; the new song is the spiritual sense; all creation leads to faith; and God joins mercy to judgment.
Homilies on the Psalms 32.5Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · Basil explains Ps 33:7: God gathers the sea like a wineskin, as at the Red Sea; the “deeps in storehouses” are the unsearchable principles of his judgments, to be seen face to face; and the faithful are new wineskins for the new wine of the Spirit.
Homilies on the Psalms 48.10Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · On Ps 49:16–20 Basil answers those who doubt providence because the unjust prosper: the rich man takes nothing with him but a shroud and a little earth; the poor are comforted hereafter, as with the rich man and Lazarus. The worldly man praises God only in prosperity, as the devil charged against Job; the sinner knows God only by ancestral custom, and both he and the authors of false teaching will not see the light; the homily closes by lamenting man, honored but become like the beasts.
Tractates on the Psalms 1.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The ungodly deny a creator and judgment and ascribe everything to chance and necessity; their counsel never comes to rest, so one walks in it.
Tractates on the Psalms 146.7Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The psalm praises the God of Israel as Creator who provides for all creatures, refuting any division between the God of the law and of creation; the images also carry a figurative sense.
Tractates on the Psalms 148.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · All earthly things, even lifeless or irrational ones, praise their Creator simply by fulfilling the order he gave them.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.18Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Both the punishment and the escape of evildoers serve providence, and all apparent opposites in life work together to keep the mind alert for virtue.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.21Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · God’s providence gives all people the same access to virtue, birth, necessities and death; the world shows variety, not inequality.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.24Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Natural disasters are God’s admonitions, like a father’s discipline or a physician’s surgery, rousing people whom prosperity makes forgetful of God.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.42Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · God’s care uses fears, sickness, loss and even the deaths of children to turn people from sin, governing all by foreknowledge.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.43Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · God shows some reasons for what he permits but hides most, so that people may trust him as friends trust one another, rather than demand proofs.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.48Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · God’s wisdom is not fully accessible to men, who should trust it as they trust a skilled craftsman or a king’s hidden counsels.
Oration 5.22Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory ridicules Julian's sacrificial antics, and recalls how at Athens he read Julian's unstable character and foresaw the evil he would do.
Oration 7.7Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Caesarius's studies at Alexandria, his providential reunion with Gregory at Byzantium, his career as court physician, and his steadfast confession before Julian.
Oration 14.30Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · It is not clear that the sufferings of the poor come from God; prosperity and affliction here may test or expose, God’s wisdom is unsearchable, and the true reward and punishment belong to the age to come.
Oration 14.32Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Like dizzy men who think the world is spinning, those who blame the poor deny God’s wisdom and fall into theories of chance, astral fate, or a Providence that does not reach human affairs.
Oration 14.33Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Against such theories Gregory affirms that God is the maker of all things and that his Providence holds the universe together and governs human life, even through apparent contradictions.
Oration 16.5Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory asks his father to explain whether disasters such as the hailstorm come from chance or from Providence, and describes the ruined harvest as a mild warning compared with the wrath still in store for the unrepentant.
Oration 17.4Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Human affairs change constantly under God’s hidden governance; the wise are trained by misfortune and keep hope, and Christians should be subject to God, one another, and the civil authorities.
Hexaemeron 1.9Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Every theory of what supports the earth leads to an infinite regress; the earth is held by the power of God.
Hexaemeron 3.5Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The vast quantity of water was created to be consumed little by little by fire, which the world needs, until the appointed end of the world.
Hexaemeron 5.9Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The same water becomes bitter, sweet, and colored in different plants; God foresaw every use of plants; the tamarisk, at home in water and desert, is Jeremiah's image of a double character.
Hexaemeron 7.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Unlike greedy men who move boundaries, the sea creatures keep their regions, and migrating fish obey the law of nature by going to the Black Sea to breed.
Hexaemeron 7.5Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · God's providence, shown even in the sea urchin's weather sense, extends to us; the viper and lamprey teach spouses to bear with each other and keep their union.
Hexaemeron 9.3Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Each animal has its own nature and an untaught instinct for self-preservation and foresight, as the ant shows; humans too have a natural law of good and evil.
Hexaemeron 9.5Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Prey animals are prolific and predators few; every limb, from the camel's neck to the elephant's trunk, is fitted to its use; even venomous creatures serve to discipline us.
Homilies 8.2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Drought and famine are God's fatherly chastisement for the hard-heartedness of the rich toward the poor; Basil rebukes the half-hearted prayer of the city and holds up the repentance of Nineveh.
Homilies 8.6Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · As God fed Israel in the desert, the poor should give from their little like the widow of Sidon; hunger is the cruellest of deaths, and those who let others starve are like murderers, while the generous stand first at the judgment.
Homilies 21.11Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Struck in body and seated on the dunghill, Job resists even his wife's plea to curse God, answering that good and evil alike are to be received from the Lord.
Commentary on 1 Corinthians 1:20Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Jews and gentiles alike scorn the idea that God has a Son, and astrologers and those who deny providence are made foolish by God's coming judgment.
Commentary on Romans 2:3Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Ambrosiaster argues that a judge who does the same evils will not escape God’s judgment, since the good Creator cares for his work and will reward and condemn.
Commentary on Romans 11:33Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul praises God’s unsearchable wisdom in leading humanity through natural law, the law of Moses and then mercy, so as to win both gentiles and Jews.
On the Destruction of Jerusalem 3.1Anonymous · ca. 370 · Nero, performing on the stage in Achaia, appoints Vespasian to the Jewish war, which God arranged both to punish the Jews and to leave Nero defenseless; Nero then turns on the Christians.
Question 106, section 18Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · God created in six days, not all at once, so that creatures would recognize that they had a beginning and none would think itself eternal.
Letter 36.15Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome answers that even holy men know only what God reveals, and that Isaac's blindness was providential, preventing him from blessing Esau.
Letter 39.2Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome confesses his own grief and wrestles, like the psalmist, with the death of the young, concluding that God's judgments are just and must be accepted.
Letter 131.13Jerome · ca. 370–419 · To the objection about infants who die soon, Augustine answers that God orders every life's length like the measures of a song.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 5.3.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · If fate governs all, laws and punishment are pointless.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 5.3.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · If fate made people learned, teaching would be useless.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 8.1.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Epicurus denies providence and teaches that all is made of atoms by chance.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 16.3.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Belief in fate contradicts belief in judgment.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 16.3.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · If fate exists, judgment is impossible.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 16.3.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · If judgment exists, fate has no standing.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 43.2.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · God, the creator, provides for all, good and wicked alike.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 44.1.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Apelles teaches one good God who does not care for this world.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 56.1.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · He wrote against fate and for the faith.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.29.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Angels exercise particular providence under God.
Apostolic Constitutions 4.5.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · God feeds every creature.
Apostolic Constitutions 4.5.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · Christ teaches trust in the Father who feeds the birds.
Apostolic Constitutions 8.40.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · God provides food for every creature and for man.
On Noah 100Ambrose · ca. 378-384 · God's promise of vengeance refutes those who deny his care for men, deters violence, and frees the innocent from excessive fear of death.
On Noah 102Ambrose · ca. 378-384 · God's providence keeps the flood of passions from destroying every soul, so that even sinners should not despair but turn back, as Zacchaeus did.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 117Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Linking souls’ falls to matings, plantings, and births is absurd, leaves souls homeless if people stay unmarried, and makes life begin by chance and evil, which denies providence.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 119Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · If life began from vice, there would be no providence, no judgment, and no desire for virtue; in fact God’s wisdom begins life, and the soul, created good and free, can choose to close its eye to the good, like a man who shuts his eyes.
Psalm 77Apollinaris of Laodicea · uncertain (fourth to sixth century) · A paraphrase of Psalm 77 of the Septuagint (Psalm 78): the history of Israel’s rebellions in the desert and in the land, and God’s mercy from the exodus to the choice of Zion and David.
To a Young Widow, section 1John Chrysostom · ca. 380-386 · Chrysostom begins his consolation of a young widow by explaining why he waited until her first grief had passed, and by telling her that God has taken her husband's place as her protector.
To a Young Widow, section 6John Chrysostom · ca. 380-386 · Chrysostom tells the widow that God has freed her from the slavery of vainglory, and that she should cast her care on the Lord, who will protect her affairs and her soul.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 16Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Reason, starting from creation’s order and preservation, leads us to God as its maker and sustainer.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 26Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Plants, springs, hot baths, and the shape of the earth show God’s bounty and power, and the earth rests on nothing but his will.
Against Fate, part 1Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Writing to a friend after the conversion of an old unbeliever, Eusebius, Gregory begins his account of a debate in Constantinople with a philosopher who held that every human life, choice, virtue, and vice is fixed by fate, which he defined astrologically as the necessary sequence produced by the interweaving of the stars.
Against Fate, part 2Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Gregory asks whether fate is a God ruling all or the servant of a higher cause; since fate follows the movement of the stars and would not exist if they stood still, it cannot be master of all; the philosopher replies that fate is not a being but the result of the universe's sympathy, the stars' powers mixing like drugs.
Against Fate, part 5Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · The inequality of human lots shows fate to be weak more often than strong; if it chooses happiness for one and misery for another born moments later, it is unjust; if it cares for neither, it is lifeless and without subsistence and cannot rule the living; at most it is the passing instant of time, which accompanies every motion alike.
Against Fate, part 6Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · If the motion of rivers, ships, or travellers makes no fates, neither does that of the stars; Gregory mocks the astrologers' signs (the servile Bull, the beneficent Ram) and argues that if the stars' properties are themselves fated, an infinite regress of fates follows.
Against Fate, part 7Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · The philosopher appeals to the success of horoscopes; Gregory replies that predictions of lifespan from bodily constitution are the physicians' conjectures, not fate, and that medicine can reverse them, as with Herodicus in Plato, and that a prediction of what may go either way is no proof of necessity.
Against Fate, part 8Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Mass disasters, biblical (the flood, Sodom, the Red Sea, the Assyrians) and recent (the destruction of Nicomedia and of Thrace), kill people of every age and rank together, which refutes fate by birth; and fate cannot be assigned to a ship, whose building happens in many stages at different times.
Against Fate, part 9Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Neither cities nor nations have a moment of birth to which fate could be tied, and conquerors like Hannibal, Caesar, and Alexander brought one fate on all; earthquakes strike uninhabited places as well, and since Moses says the earth was made with, indeed before, the stars, its local disasters have other causes than the stars.
Against Fate, part 10Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Customs prove the power of free choice: the incestuous marriages of the Persians occur only where their laws are followed, and Jews everywhere, under every configuration of stars, are circumcised on the appointed day; Gregory then begins to explain predictions as the work of a power hostile to humanity, the opposite of God's goodness.
On the Lord's Prayer 1133Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · The prophets’ curses are aimed at sin, not at people, for God did not make death; if God sometimes grants worldly requests, it is to strengthen weak faith and lead us, like children growing up, to ask for higher things.
On the Lord's Prayer 1175Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · “Today” teaches that life lasts a day and forbids anxiety about tomorrow: God who gives the day gives what it needs, as he feeds ravens and eagles, while the rich fool lost all in one night; we should ask today for bread and seek above all the kingdom.
Book of Heresies 102.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Some deny that earthquakes come from God.
Book of Heresies 102.3Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · God moves creation to bring sinners to repentance.
On the Complaints of Job and David 2.1Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · Book 2 takes up why the wicked prosper and the just suffer, a question with which Job and David both wrestled.
On the Complaints of Job and David 2.11Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · Job asks why the wicked prosper, but what seem goods are not truly good.
On the Complaints of Job and David 2.21Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · God, who sees all and rules creation with power, cannot be ignorant of the crimes of the wicked.
On the Complaints of Job and David 3.1Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · Book 3 turns to David’s remonstrance in Psalm 73, where the psalmist nearly fell on seeing sinners prosper.
On the Complaints of Job and David 3.14Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · The wicked deny God’s knowledge because sinners prosper; but his patience does not prejudge the truth.
On the Complaints of Job and David 3.16Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · After God’s chastening, the light of truth showed the psalmist his error in doubting God’s providence.
On the Complaints of Job and David 3.17Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · God reminds the psalmist that riches and poverty come by chance, not as rewards or punishments.
On the Complaints of Job and David 3.18Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · The psalmist recognizes that this accords with providence.
On the Complaints of Job and David 3.25Ambrose · ca. 383-390 · Understanding God’s providence, the psalmist’s heart rejoiced and his troubled “reins” found rest.
On the Duties of the Clergy 1.12Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Answering those who doubt God’s justice because the wicked prosper, Ambrose shows from Job that the wicked are wretched within and the just blessed in conscience.
On the Duties of the Clergy 1.13Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Ambrose refutes the Epicurean and Aristotelian denial that God cares for the world he made.
On the Duties of the Clergy 1.14Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · From Psalm 94 and the Gospels, and by the likeness of the sun’s light and heat, Ambrose shows that nothing is hidden from God.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.28.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · On verse 75: all things, health and sickness, wealth and poverty, happen by God’s just judgment.
Exposition of Psalm 118 10.28.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Job’s losses came by God’s permission to test him.
Exposition of Psalm 118 18.8.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Nothing befalls us without God’s judgment, which is the consolation of the righteous.
Against the Academics 1.1Augustine of Hippo · 386 (autumn) · Augustine tells his patron Romanianus that the misfortunes which rescued him from the dangers of wealth may be the work of a hidden providence, and invites him to philosophy.
Against the Academics 2.4Augustine of Hippo · 386 (autumn) · Augustine credits Romanianus, as the minister of a higher providence, with his present philosophical leisure, recalling his offer to share his patrimony.
Against the Academics 3.2Augustine of Hippo · 386 (autumn) · Augustine says that the wise man needs nothing but that fortune is needed to become wise, and Alypius questions how much power is given to fortune.
Letter 102.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Christ, the unchangeable Word through whom all things were made, has governed all ages by suitable means, before and after his incarnation.
Letter 102.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Christians do not fault paganism for changing its rites over time, but for worshipping false gods; what suits each time is set by providence.
Letter 118.31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that chance collisions of atoms could not produce ordered forms and that the atomists' own theory of images undermines the existence of atoms.
Letter 130.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · God sometimes grants impatient requests in anger and refuses others in mercy; we should accept his will, as Christ did in Gethsemane.
Letter 140.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Christ was not commended by earthly prosperity but by suffering, so that the faithful would seek eternal rewards; Psalm 73 shows the man troubled by the prosperity of the wicked.
Letter 140.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Under the Old Testament God delivered the fathers from earthly dangers, as with Isaac, Job, Daniel, and the three youths; the Jews expected the same for Christ and did not see that eternal goods were now revealed.
Letter 140.28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · God delivered many fathers from earthly dangers but not Christ, so that his body, the church, might learn to be Christian not for this life but for eternal life.
Letter 153.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · God himself sends sun and rain on the wicked and waits patiently for their repentance, so intercession comes from religion.
Letter 166.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · God may create souls for infants who die soon either to expose or chastise their parents' sins, or as part of the ordered "song" of time whose measures he determines.
Letter 184.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Against those who deny God or his providence, the City of God will show that God exists and cares for human affairs.
Letter 194.32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · God's providence brings some infants of the ungodly to baptism while infants of believers die unbaptized, which no human merit can explain.
Letter 205.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine affirms that God still forms each body individually, since he continues to work in governing creation, as Scripture shows.
Letter 210.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine writes to the nuns Felicitas and Rusticus that God's goodness even to the wicked shows what he prepares for the faithful, and urges them to bear with one another in love.
Letter 246.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine promises Lampadius a fuller reply on fate and fortune, warning that the doctrine of fate leads people to defend their sins.
Letter 264.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine tells Maxima that heresies troubling her province were foretold and that God uses the evil of the wicked to prove and train the good.
Letter 264.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine says God permits the wicked to train his people, commends Maxima's grief and vigilance, and urges her to keep those around her in the right faith.
On Order 1.1Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Augustine introduces to Zenobius the problem of order: how God can govern the world when so much perversity fills human affairs, a problem that tempts men to deny either providence or God's goodness.
On Order 1.2Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Augustine argues that the ordered structure of even the smallest creatures shows divine governance, and that those who see disorder in the world are like a man who sees only one tile of a mosaic.
On Order 1.11Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Licentius argues that the fall of the leaves, like everything else, had causes, many hidden from the senses, and that nothing happens without a cause.
On Order 1.14Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Licentius exclaims that God orders all things, since even the leaves, the mouse, and their own waking were necessary links in the chain that produced their conversation and the book that records it.
On Order 2.11Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Asked whether a fool's actions are ordered, Trygetius answers that the life of fools, though disordered in itself, is placed by providence within the order of the whole.
On Order 2.12Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Augustine illustrates how evils find a place in the order of the whole with the executioner in a well-ordered city, prostitutes in society, the unseemly members of the body, and the defeated cock.
On Order 2.23Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Augustine shows that if evil arose before order or by order, either something happens outside order or God is the author of evil; Monica answers that evil did not arise by God's order but that his justice brought it into the order it deserved.
On Order 2.51Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Augustine describes the soul's vision of God, the source and Father of truth and the beauty by which all else is beautiful, which frees it from trouble over the apparent disorders of life, seen as parts of a harmonious whole.
Homilies on Matthew 9.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Homily 9 opens with Matt 2:16: Herod's rage against the innocents; Chrysostom answers those who charge God with injustice by comparing the guards killed after Peter's escape: the cause was the tyrant's cruelty, not Christ.
Homilies on Matthew 9.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · No one is truly wronged: injustice suffered is reckoned for remission of sins or for reward, as with David and Lazarus; the innocents lost nothing and God would not have taken them had they been destined for greatness; Herod's dreadful death; Jer 31:15 shows God foreknew; God permits without causing, and works through opposites.
Homilies on Matthew 12.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The opened heavens, the descending Spirit, and the voice showed that Christ, not John, was the beloved Son; unbelief despite such signs is no charge against God, as Isaiah's vineyard song shows; the visible signs at the beginning teach that at every baptism heaven opens and the Spirit comes.
Homilies on Matthew 21.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · No one can serve God and mammon, which enslaves its lovers as Job, its master, was not enslaved; then Christ shows that freedom from anxiety is possible, from God’s gift of life and body and from the birds, who are fed without care.
Homilies on Matthew 22.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The lilies, mere grass thrown into the oven, are clothed more gloriously than Solomon, so God will much more clothe those he values above all creation; the Father who made human nature needy knows its needs and will provide, and anxiety for these things is the mark of the Gentiles.
Homilies on Matthew 22.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Anxiety gains nothing, since God provides; we must seek the kingdom first and the rest is added; tomorrow’s trouble is not to be added to today’s; delay of judgment should be used for repentance, as Manasseh’s case shows.
Homilies on Matthew 28.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The souls of the dead do not wander on earth but are led away to await the judgment; Christ let the demons enter the swine to show their malice, the limits God sets on them, and his own power.
Homilies on Matthew 34.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ consoles the apostles against slander by his own sharing in it and by the promise that time will reveal the truth; he bids them preach boldly, fear only him who can destroy soul and body, trust his providence, and confess him; the corruption of bodies after death is shown to be a benefit.
Homilies on Matthew 68.1John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · In the parable of the wicked tenants Chrysostom sees God’s long care for Israel, their killing of the prophets and of the Son, the unity of the God of both Testaments, and the coming call of the Gentiles; “perhaps they will respect my son” shows what they ought to have done, not ignorance in God.
Homilies on Matthew 75.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Rehearsing the many kinds of war foretold, all overcome by the preaching, Chrysostom refutes astrological fate, urges honest ignorance over false theories, and explains that God gives wealth to some and only permits it to others until the judgment.
Hexameron (Exameron) 2.12Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · God set water above and within the world to balance the heat of fire; the great rivers show this balance, which will one day end.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.34Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The growth of wheat from a dying seed to the protected ear shows the wonderful providence of God.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.65Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · At God's word, more abundant than any water, all plants sprang up for food, shade, and medicine, foreseen from the beginning.
Hexameron (Exameron) 4.30Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Rain comes from God's providence, not the new moon, as an answered prayer in Milan showed; but the moon does affect straits and tides.
Hexameron (Exameron) 5.25Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The urchin's foresight is God's gift, as are the skills of spider, horse, and lily; God cares still more for men.
Hexameron (Exameron) 5.29Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Migrating fish go to the Black Sea to spawn as if under an emperor's orders; they obey God's law better than men.
Hexameron (Exameron) 6.21Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Animals know by nature how to protect and heal themselves; the tigress, deceived by mirrors, loses her cubs through devotion.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 45.21.3Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · God spread the Roman peace so that the apostles could preach everywhere and all might confess the one God.
On Free Choice of the Will 2.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Since nothing can form itself, all changeable things, body and life alike, are formed by an unchangeable form that is their providence; so every good, great or small, is from God.
On Free Choice of the Will 3.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Evodius asks how God's foreknowledge of the first man's sin can leave the will free; Augustine says most people are troubled by this because they excuse rather than confess their sins.
On Free Choice of the Will 3.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · The highest spirits abstain from sin freely; yet even if all angels had sinned, God could rule the universe by himself or create others, so he is to be praised in every case.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Reason cannot gaze on God unaided, so God in his providence provides the authority of Scripture and the history of salvation, to which Augustine now submits his own reasoning.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · God's goodness orders all failing things, including souls that fall by free choice, so that nothing reaches non-being; Isaiah's “I create evil” means God orders, not makes, what is failing.
On the Greatness of the Soul 36Augustine of Hippo · 387–388 · God rules all things by an unbreakable law in which the soul's free choice, punishments, and rewards all serve the beauty of the whole; true religion binds the soul back to God through the higher acts, and the remaining questions are briefly answered.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 2.28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine answers the Manichaean objections: why God made man and woman knowing they would sin, who made the devil, and whether the devil is good because God uses him.
On True Religion 22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine compares the passing of temporal things to the syllables of a verse, which are beautiful in sequence though the art that makes them is unchanging, and says that only the impious are displeased with the order of the universe.
On True Religion 40Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine describes the bodily processes of nourishment and generation as the lowest beauty, mixed by providence with pains so that we seek what is unchangeable, and argues that all things, including evil angels and the punished, are ordered into the beauty of the whole.
Life of Malchus 9Jerome · ca. 390–392 · Pursued to a cave by their master and his slave, the fugitives are saved when a lioness kills both men and then leaves.
Sermon 8.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The seventh commandment against theft is opposed by the plague of hail: the thief gains outwardly but his heart is laid waste by God's providence.
Sermon 10.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The two women also signify love and pretence within the one Church; both were harlots, since all come to grace from sin, but the child is God's gift, as God brings good out of human sin.
Sermon 11.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God, who could feed Elijah by ravens, made him need the widow of Zarephath so she might be tested and blessed; God "commanded" her not by a word but by inspiring her heart, and her two sticks prefigure the cross.
Sermon 15.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · As the wicked misuse good things, so God uses even the wicked well; the pagan soul is a fornicator, the bad Christian's soul an adulteress, yet God, whose ways are unsearchable, has a place for both in his house.
Sermon 17.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God sees the adulterer and the would-be thief, though he keeps silent; those who say God does not care, because the wicked prosper, suspect that God is like themselves.
Sermon 18.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ came hidden to be judged and silent, and will come manifest to judge; meanwhile, because good and bad share the same fortunes, carnal people deny providence and mock God's commands.
Sermon 21.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Rejoice in the inner goods God commands; if God does not grant earthly happiness when we pray, it is like a father refusing to put his little son on a horse out of love, while he keeps the whole estate for him.
Sermon 26.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · In the plain sense, “the Lord who made us” means that God creates every human being, and so will hear those he made when they weep before him.
Sermon 48.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The psalmist of Psalm 73 almost fell when he saw the wicked prosper and the righteous afflicted, and began to think God did not care about human affairs.
Sermon 48.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The psalmist was held back from teaching that God does not govern human affairs by the witness of the patriarchs and prophets, and set himself to understand how God’s justice allows the wicked to prosper.
Sermon 62.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God, who numbers our hairs, lets enemies harm the faithful only for their testing; the powerful can only take what a thief, a fever, or a poisonous mushroom could take, so we must not cling to life at the cost of our souls.
Sermon 69.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The summit of the building is the vision of God, who sees everything; those who do evil thinking God does not see them labor in vain.
Sermon 80.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Eternal goods are to be sought with constant desire, which is itself prayer; temporal goods should be asked for with moderation, trusting the Father’s judgment.
Sermon 125.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Though human affairs seem disordered, God governs them, placing even sinners in his order as a painter uses black or a law sends a burglar to the mines; Judas did what he willed and suffered what he did not will.
Sermon 171.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Impunity is the worst punishment, for God in great anger leaves the sinner unpunished, while he chastises his sons in mercy; Christ, the only Son, made many sons by his blood, so rejoice in the Lord.
Sermon 214.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God's almightiness is not defeated by the wicked, for he uses their evil deeds well, as he used the betrayal and crucifixion for our redemption.
Sermon 296.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · To the pagan complaint that Rome fell in Christian times after the old sacrifices were forbidden, Augustine answers that Christians are called to heaven, and that Rome had burned twice before under pagan worship, by the Gauls and under Nero.
Sermon 301.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God was present both to the three young men, whom he delivered visibly, and to the Maccabees, whom he crowned invisibly by ending their life of temptation; those who think happiness is in this world have not ‘passed by’ in heart, and so the impious seem great to them.
Sermon 301.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The wicked, like Antiochus, have a place in this world, since God, as a painter uses black, uses evil people well: through Antiochus he tested his people and crowned the martyrs, and through the devil and Judas he brought about our redemption.
Sermon 301.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Those who live by faith should grieve at the false happiness of the wicked; as in Psalm 73, the puzzle of the wicked prospering and the good suffering is solved only by entering God’s sanctuary and understanding the last things.
Sermon 311.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Gold, like the tongue, is good or bad according to its user; some goods belong only to the good, such as faith and love, others like money and health are shared by good and evil; to the objection that God should give earthly goods only to the good, Augustine replies that it is meant to teach us.
The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 2.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393–396 · Augustine explains the warning against anxiety for food and clothing, takes “soul” as this present life, and reads the birds and lilies as arguments from lesser to greater, not allegories.
On the Christian Struggle 7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · All creatures serve God's providence, the good freely by doing what the law commands and the evil by necessity in suffering its penalties.
On the Christian Struggle 8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · The sufferings of the righteous do them no real harm, while the wicked, like a fish that swallows the hook, are destroyed by the goods they love; even evil men and angels serve providence unknowingly.
On the Christian Struggle 9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Providence governs everything, even sparrows, but God cares for rational souls directly and governs the rest through them.
Confessions 5.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine decided to move to Rome, chiefly to escape the unruly students of Carthage, and sees God's hidden providence at work in his motives.
Confessions 7.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · The case of twins such as Esau and Jacob confirmed that astrology cannot predict lives, and Augustine attributes whatever the astrologers say truly to God's hidden and just providence.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine says he would answer a pagan critic from pagan authors themselves, who speak of a creator God rejoicing in his work, giving laws, and asking questions he knows the answers to.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that God's judgments that killed thousands presuppose divine providence, and that the offences punished, like refusing the wedding garment or Christ's reign, were not slight.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.72Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that only the true God knows what to command or permit, as Christ allowed the demons to destroy the swine, so the spoiling of the Egyptians was just.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.78Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that God's providence orders all things, that only iniquity, the disordering of love and use, is truly evil, and that the outcomes of peace and war profit or harm by God's hidden judgment and mercy.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 26.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine holds that whatever happens is what God wills, and that what God foreknows as future will certainly happen.
On the Nature of the Good 37Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · If all natures kept their measure, form, and order there would be no evil; those who misuse goods do not defeat God, who uses their evils well by ordering them justly in punishment.
On the Trinity 3.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine distinguishes the ordinary natural order, which God's will governs though custom hides it, from rarer events that philosophers attribute only to proximate causes, and begins an illustration from the rational soul, which can partake of God's unchangeable wisdom.
On the Trinity 3.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine illustrates how the will of God is the first cause of all effects with the example of a wise man who, at God's command, undertakes a work of mercy using helpers, animals and lifeless things, all of which are moved ultimately by God's will through the righteous soul.
On the Trinity 3.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine describes how God's will, presiding over the angels in heaven, governs the whole ordered creation, and argues that if Paul could signify Christ by speech, letter and the sacrament of his body and blood, God can much more signify himself through visible creatures without his substance appearing.
The Harmony of the Gospels 1.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · The gods of the conquered nations did not give Rome its empire; the one true God distributes earthly kingdoms by his hidden judgment.
The Harmony of the Gospels 3.48Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · The order of the evangelists' recollections was governed by God, whose hidden justice lets apparent contradictions blind some and exercise others.
On the Work of Monks 35Augustine of Hippo · ca. 400–401 · The birds and lilies teach trust in God's providence, not refusal to work; just as the apostles fled persecution rather than tempt God, those who can work should not expect to be fed like birds.
Commentary on Daniel 2, scholion 9Polychronius of Apamea · ca. 400-430 · Arioch, by God's providence, answered Daniel respectfully.
Commentary on Daniel 2, scholion 20Polychronius of Apamea · ca. 400-430 · Babylon's victory over the Jews was God's will, not its own strength.
Commentary on Daniel 2, scholion 25Polychronius of Apamea · ca. 400-430 · Daniel names the God of his fathers to point to God's long providence and Israel's unworthiness.
Commentary on Daniel 7, scholion 14Polychronius of Apamea · ca. 400-430 · Cyrus's authority was a gift from God, given because he would restore the Jews.
Commentary on Daniel 13, scholion 4Polychronius of Apamea · ca. 400-430 · Daniel's honor at court displays God's care for him.
Verses to the Grace of the Lord 31–60Pomponius · 5th century(?) · Tityrus sings that souls are of heavenly origin and are called back by God at the resurrection, and Meliboeus, persuaded, asks to be taught the way to heaven.
Refutation of Certain Aristotelian Doctrines 53Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The author quotes Aristotle on why the heaven's circular motion requires a body at rest in the middle. The author completes Aristotle's argument that a resting earth implies fire, the intermediate elements, generation, and further circular bodies, and objects that the heaven, said to move by its element, actually moves by its spherical shape, and that a weightless body should rest rather than move. The author argues that the heaven's spherical motion is not natural to its element, that a world whose parts depend on one another is the work of providence and so generated, and that Aristotle's chain of necessities (eternal motion, a fifth body, a resting earth, the elements, generation) proves the dependence of all these things.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 33–36Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Four questions: a person's lifespan is not fixed by fate (Deut 22:25–27 compares rape to murder, and Hezekiah's years were added to an unfixed life); the flood covered the whole earth; animals are clean by nature but some were called unclean by the law, partly against Egyptian animal worship; and God's “repenting” shows his unchanging justice and mercy.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 118–124Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Seven questions run together: why Christians pray facing east (as the more honored direction, received from the apostles); why Cain's offering was rejected (he kept the better for himself); why sinners who rise do not inherit God's kingdom (the kingdom belongs to the just only); anathema and katathema (fragmentary); Christ's “hour” (God's providence, not fate); why man, who can become evil, is still the best of creatures; and why the pious receive no earthly reward (their reward is future, though God has shown his providence in history).
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 126Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Prosperity is given by God to pious and impious alike and proves nothing about religion; cities were laid waste under paganism too, while Christianity ended human sacrifice and brought less war.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 145–146Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Blood is forbidden so that men may not be like beasts that lap up blood; and the Theban story of Menoeceus' self-sacrifice does not prove that pagan oracles have power, since the one God decides the outcome of wars, as with the Assyrian, the rod and saw of his anger, and the pagan tales of Tiresias and the Fates refute themselves.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 3.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine suggests that harmful creatures were created harmless and harm human beings only to punish vice or to test and perfect virtue, citing Paul and Daniel.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 3.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine explains that animals preying on one another belongs to the ordered beauty of creation and teaches human beings to strive for eternal salvation.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 3.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine suggests that man is not called good separately because God foreknew his sin, though with all creation he is “very good,” since God orders even sinners within a beautiful whole.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · God rested in that he established no new kinds of creature, but he never ceases to govern and sustain what he made; otherwise it would collapse at once.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 5.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · God still works in creation, not by making new kinds, which were all established at the first, but by moving and governing all things so that they unfold the ages folded into them.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 5.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Against those who limit providence to the upper heavens, Augustine cites Psalm 148 and Christ's words on sparrows and grass to show that even the lowest things are ruled by God.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 5.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The wonderful order in the bodies of living creatures shows that providence governs even the lowest things and human affairs, though its order there is often hidden from us.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 6.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · What God wills and foreknows necessarily comes about, though lower causes may point otherwise, as when Hezekiah, granted fifteen more years, died when God had foreknown.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 8.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Providence works in the world naturally through God's hidden governance and voluntarily through angels and men; Adam's farming in paradise was an innocent and thoughtful pleasure.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 8.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The unchangeable Trinity orders all natures and wills: natures without will are subject to those with will, in an order of subordination, and evil wills are punished by their own wickedness.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 8.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The holy angels, contemplating God's unchanging truth, carry out his commands in time among lower things; God's providence governs natures and wills.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 9.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · God brought the animals to Adam not as hunters drive game or by a voice, but through angels who move animals by sights and appetites, as he commanded the whale and the worm in Jonah.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · To demand that all creatures be of the higher kind is to abolish the lower kind; God creates even the foreknown wicked to display both wrath and mercy.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · God foreknew but did not cause the evil will of the wicked; he made them knowing what good he would bring out of their evil.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The punishment of some corrects many, as everyone sees in his own household; God, not the author of evil, creates the wicked for the benefit of the good.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Job's “beginning of the Lord's fashioning” refers not to an evil nature but to God's providence, which makes the devil's malice serve the saints.
Apology against Rufinus 3.24Jerome · ca. 401–402 · Jerome denies sending agents to Rome to harm Rufinus, explaining why each of the presbyters Rufinus suspected went there, and sees God's providence in it.
Apology against Jerome 2.9Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 401 · Rufinus argues that the views Jerome condemns as pagan, the pre-existence of souls and a final end of punishment, are not impious if held to defend God's justice.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 2.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The Word is in the world not as one creature among others, nor as a craftsman outside his work, but as the Maker present everywhere, governing what he made.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 8.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Against astrologers who claim 'my hour' shows Christ was subject to fate, Augustine cites Christ's power to lay down his life and take it up again; the maker of the stars cannot be under the stars, and no human being is subject to fate either.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 24.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The feeding of the five thousand is less than God's daily governing of the world, but its rarity makes us marvel and raises the mind from visible works to the invisible God.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 27.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · God, supremely good, uses evil well, as he used Judas's betrayal for our redemption and Satan's persecution for the martyrs' crowns; the twelve remained twelve when Matthias replaced Judas.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 31.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ's “hour” was not fate but his own will; he came in the fullness of time to free us from time into eternity.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 34.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ is the light that made the sun; as Psalm 36 says, God in his manifold mercy gives health to men and beasts alike.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 37.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ was not under fate: he is the Word in whom all things existed before they were made, and the maker of the stars to which fate is ascribed.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 104.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ prayed aloud to teach us; the hour of his passion came not by fate or the stars but by the ordering of God, who with the Father fixed all times.
Homilies on the First Epistle of John 8.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · Whoever acknowledges God above him is acknowledged by lower creatures, as the lions acknowledged Daniel; God visibly delivers some and not others, but spiritually delivers all, and at the end creation will be subject to his children.
On the Christian Life 2Fastidius · ca. 411-430 · God's patience with sinners is not indifference but mercy that waits for their conversion, as the prophets show.
City of God 1.1Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine introduces the pagan enemies of the city of God, many of whom survived the sack of Rome only by taking refuge in Christian churches, yet now blame Christ for the disaster.
City of God 1.8Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine explains that temporal goods and evils fall on good and bad alike, but the same suffering purifies the good and destroys the wicked.
City of God 1.28Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine consoles Christian women who were raped, suggesting that God permitted it to humble hidden pride or to correct the error that chastity belongs to the body rather than the will.
City of God 1.29Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine gives the Christian answer to the taunt “Where is your God?”: God is everywhere, and uses adversity to test or correct his people.
City of God 2.23Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues from the careers of Marius, Regulus, Metellus, and Catiline that temporal good fortune does not depend on the gods but on the hidden providence of the true God.
City of God 3.9Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that Numa's long peace was a gift of the true God, not of the gods whose rites he founded, since after those rites were established Rome was almost never at peace.
City of God 4.7Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that if the gods moved from Assyria to the Medes and Persians, they were faithless or weak, and that Rome's present affliction, like earlier ones, need not be permanent.
City of God 4.15Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that good men prefer peaceful neighbors to conquest, that Rome's just wars were made possible by others' iniquity, and that victory is the gift of the true King of kings, not of Jupiter.
City of God 4.18Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine exposes the confusion between the goddesses Felicity and Fortune, arguing that a blind Fortune is not worth worshipping and a discerning one is not fortune.
City of God 4.28Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that the false gods could not have given Rome its empire, which depended on the will of the one true God.
City of God 4.33Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine teaches that God gives earthly kingdoms to good and bad alike according to his hidden order, but gives true happiness only to the good.
City of God 5.1Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine rejects fate and astrology as the cause of Rome's greatness, attributes kingdoms to divine providence, and raises the problem of twins.
City of God 5.8Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine accepts that fate may mean the order of causes dependent on God's will, citing Seneca's verses and the Stoics' use of Homer.
City of God 5.9Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine answers Cicero's claim that divine foreknowledge destroys free will, affirming both God's foreknowledge and human choice, since our wills are themselves among the causes God foreknows.
City of God 5.10Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that the necessity implied by God's foreknowledge does not take away the freedom of the human will, so laws, prayers, rewards, and punishments are not in vain.
City of God 5.11Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine affirms that the triune God, whose providence orders even the smallest creatures, also governs human kingdoms.
City of God 5.19Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine distinguishes love of glory from lust for domination, teaches that even tyrants rule by God's permission, and holds that true virtue requires true piety.
City of God 5.21Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine attributes all earthly kingdoms, given to good and bad rulers alike, to the one true God's just though hidden providence.
City of God 5.22Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine shows from Roman history that wars were long and disastrous before Christian times, so the length of present wars cannot be blamed on Christianity.
City of God 5.23Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine recounts the sudden defeat of the pagan Goth Radagaisus near Rome (406) and the sparing of refugees in churches at Alaric's sack (410) as signs of God's merciful providence.
City of God 10.14Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine teaches that God educated his people from temporal to eternal goods, and that even temporal benefits should be sought only from the one God, whose providence reaches the lilies of the field.
City of God 11.18Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · God orders even evil beings into the beauty of history as a poem is adorned by antitheses, as Paul's rhetoric and Sirach show.
City of God 12.4Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The decay of irrational things is part of the order of the universe; natures that harm us are good in themselves, as fire is both useful and destructive.
City of God 14.27Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · God, foreknowing the fall, allowed the devil to tempt man, compelling no one, to show the power of pride and of grace; two loves, of self and of God, have made the two cities.
City of God 18.22Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine presents Rome as a second Babylon through which God subdued and pacified the world, and dates its founding against the history of Israel and Judah.
City of God 18.42Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine recounts how Ptolemy Philadelphus obtained the Hebrew Scriptures and had them translated by seventy-two elders whose separate translations miraculously agreed, a gift of God for the future faith of the nations.
City of God 18.51Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues that heretics and bad Christians, like outward persecutors, serve to exercise the church's patience, wisdom, and love, which runs its course between the world's persecutions and God's consolations from Abel to the end.
City of God 20.2Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Although in this life good and evil fall on good and bad people without visible order, God's judgment is present and will be shown to be just on the last day.
City of God 22.2Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · God's will is eternal and unchangeable; when he is said to change or to will what does not happen, the change lies in creatures or refers to the will he produces in his saints.
Commentary on Jeremiah 1.97Jerome · ca. 414-419 · God allows the enemy to break Judah's defences but not to make a full end; the people who mock the prophets as wind will be burned by God's word as fire.
Commentary on Jeremiah 2.82Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Jerusalem's dead will lie unburied; true glory is only in knowing the Lord, whose providence governs all; circumcision of the flesh profits nothing without circumcision of the heart.
Commentary on Jeremiah 3.4Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Drought and the death of animals come not by chance but by God's judgment on human wickedness and the denial of his providence.
Commentary on Jeremiah 5.44Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Uriah, who prophesied like Jeremiah, fled to Egypt and was brought back and killed, while Jeremiah was protected by Ahikam; God's judgments in such cases are hidden, and flight from danger is prudence, not unbelief (Jer 26:20–24).
Commentary on Jeremiah 6.40Jerome · ca. 414-419 · God, the God of all flesh, whose providence extends even to brute creatures, will hand Jerusalem to the besieging Chaldeans, who will 'enter' and burn the houses where Baal was worshiped (Jer 32:26–29).
Apologetic Book 19.5Orosius · ca. 415–416 · God gives rain when and where he wills.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 1.1.9Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Providence must both help and correct man, who is weak and stubborn.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 2.1.2Orosius · ca. 417–418 · As our Maker, God rightly governs us.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 2.1.4Orosius · ca. 417–418 · God also ordains the great empires: Babylonian, Macedonian, African, Roman.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 2.3.5Orosius · ca. 417–418 · One God ordered both Babylon and Rome; our misery comes from our own excess.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 3.3.3Orosius · ca. 417–418 · God preserves the humble and punishes the wicked.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 4.5.8Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Even demonic powers act only by God's permission.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 4.6.39Orosius · ca. 417–418 · They think God's correction worse than the devil's cruelty.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 4.17.7Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Hannibal saw divine opposition.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 4.17.8Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Was Rome saved by its courage or by God's mercy?
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 4.17.9Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Rain comes only through Christ.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 4.17.11Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Christ preserved Rome then and chastises it now.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 5.4.10Orosius · ca. 417–418 · The plague ended by God's hidden judgment, not by sacrifice.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 6.1.5Orosius · ca. 417–418 · The one God founded the Roman empire through a humble shepherd.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 6.1.6Orosius · ca. 417–418 · God united the empire under Augustus.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 6.1.16Orosius · ca. 417–418 · The gods raised the empire just when Christ came.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 6.1.26Orosius · ca. 417–418 · God chastises ungrateful servants.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.1.1Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Orosius sums up his proof of the one God's providence.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.1.4Orosius · ca. 417–418 · God's patience is just both ways.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.1.11Orosius · ca. 417–418 · The Roman peace was predestined for Christ.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.2.8Orosius · ca. 417–418 · One God judges all ages.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.5.11Orosius · ca. 417–418 · God's mercy shown by the poisoned fish.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.15.7Orosius · ca. 417–418 · God's providence in the Marcomannic war.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.22.2Orosius · ca. 417–418 · The pagans called the plague natural.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.22.6Orosius · ca. 417–418 · God unleashes the barbarians.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.26.2Orosius · ca. 417–418 · The pagans' taunt about the tenth persecution.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.26.9Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Nine persecutions were followed by disasters.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.26.10Orosius · ca. 417–418 · The tenth persecution's punishment is the pagans' present pain.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.35.8Orosius · ca. 417–418 · It was not chance.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.35.12Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Arbogast's two wars prove God's power.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.37.14Orosius · ca. 417–418 · The enemy perishes without battle.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.41.3Orosius · ca. 417–418 · All suffer justly.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.41.10Orosius · ca. 417–418 · God's judgments are ineffable but just.
On the Grace of Christ and On Original Sin 1.25Augustine of Hippo · 418 · God turned the angry heart of the Persian king in Esther to gentleness without any prior merit, showing that he works good wills inwardly.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 95Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · In the life to come it will be clear why God chose one and not another; nothing happens unless the Almighty wills it, by permitting or by doing it.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 96Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · God does well even in permitting evil, since he permits it only by just judgment; otherwise he would not be almighty.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 100Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · God's will is fulfilled even through creatures' sins, which he uses for the condemnation of those predestined to punishment and the salvation of those predestined to grace.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 101Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · A good will may differ from God's and an evil will coincide with it; God fulfills good purposes even through evil wills, as in Christ's death and Paul's sufferings.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 102Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · The Almighty's will is never defeated and never evil, whether he shows mercy or hardens.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 104Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Foreseeing Adam's sin, God so ordered his will as to bring good from it, so that his good will would still be fulfilled.
On Grace and Free Will 20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 426 · God has the wills of men in his power, turning even evil wills by a hidden but just judgment to punish sin or to help the good, as with Ai, Shimei, Judas, and Absalom.
On Grace and Free Will 21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 426 · Scripture shows that God works in men's hearts to incline their wills where he wills, to good by mercy or to evil by just judgment on prior merits; how much more does he work good in the hearts of his elect.
Retractations 1.1Augustine of Hippo · 426-427 · Reviewing Against the Academics, Augustine regrets his frequent talk of fortune, some loose expressions about the senses, the mind, and the soul's return to heaven, and his excessive praise of the Platonists.
Retractations 1.3Augustine of Hippo · 426-427 · Reviewing On Order, Augustine regrets his talk of fortune, his overvaluing of the liberal arts, his own endorsement of Plato's two worlds, and his praise of Pythagoras.
The Conferences 1.15John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · God is contemplated in many ways, in his creation, justice, providence, mercy, and incarnation, but no one in whom fleshly affections still live can hold such contemplation permanently.
The Conferences 3.20John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Nothing happens without God: good things by his will, evil things by his permission when he withdraws his protection from the hardened.
The Conferences 4.6John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · David prayed not to be forsaken “utterly,” knowing that brief desertion by God is useful for humility and training, as God left the Canaanite nations to train Israel.
The Conferences 6.2John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The question troubles those who expect the saints' reward in this life; to avoid blaming God, we must learn Scripture's definition of good and evil.
The Conferences 13.8John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Like a lover spurned by an unfaithful woman, God persists in seeking our salvation; his providence goes before us, and he strengthens every beginning of good will, whether he planted it or it sprang from our own effort.
Objection and reply 13Prosper of Aquitaine · ca. 431-432 · All are created by God, though not all are saved; God brings good even from the wicked, as from the cross, persecution and heresy, so that the faithful give thanks for grace.
Letter to Valerian, paragraph 19Eucherius of Lyon · ca. 432 · God united the nations under Rome so that the faith could spread through one people like medicine through one body, and came into the world under Augustus when Rome was at its height.
Commonitory 10Vincent of Lérins · 434 · God permits eminent teachers to introduce novelties in order to test whether his people love him, as Deut 13 teaches.
Commonitory 19Vincent of Lérins · 434 · The examples show that God allows teachers to stray in order to test whether his people love him.