Exposition of the Faith
A systematic exposition of Christian doctrine that explains the beliefs of the early Church on God, creation, Christ, the sacraments, and salvation.
Themes that emerged
From the margins
A quote from this book
For the knowledge of God's existence has been implanted by Him in all by nature. This creation, too, and its maintenance, and its government, proclaim the majesty of the Divine nature.
Date
- Cerca AD 675-749
Summary
Rather than introducing new ideas, John of Damascus gathers centuries of Christian teaching into a coherent whole. He carefully explains the doctrines of the Trinity, Christ, creation, free will, the Incarnation, and salvation, showing how Scripture and the tradition of the early Church fit together. Despite tackling profound theological mysteries, his writing remains remarkably clear and accessible, making the book one of the most influential summaries of historic Christian doctrine.
Highlights & Reflections
Book I
For the knowledge of God’s existence has been implanted by Him in all by nature. This creation, too, and its maintenance, and its government, proclaim the majesty of the Divine nature.
God is One, that is to say, one essence ; and that He is known , and has His being in three subsistences, in Father, I say, and Son and Holy Spirit; and that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one in all respects,
Only-begotten Son and Word of God and God, in His bowels of mercy, for our salvation, by the good pleasure of God and the co-operation of the Holy Spirit, being conceived without seed, was born uncorruptedly of the Holy Virgin and Mother of God, Mary, by the Holy Spirit, and became of her perfect Man;
the disciples of the Lord and His Apostles, made wise by the Holy Spirit and working wonders in His power and grace, took them captive in the net of miracles and drew them up out of the depths of ignorance to the light of the knowledge of God.
My thoughts
This made me think that not only that but to show who He is/was. Also to fulfill all the signs that the prophets gave and to both save us and to open a door for non Jews to know and follow the Father.
John emphasises that miracles were God’s way of drawing people from ignorance into the knowledge of Him. This also made me think of how Christ’s miracles revealed His identity, fulfilled the prophets’ expectations, and opened the way of salvation not only for Israel but ultimately for the Gentiles.
there is a God. But what He is in His essence and nature is absolutely incomprehensible and unknowable.
My thoughts
I have not thought about this before, mostly because of the passage in Genesis where it says let’s make man at our image and likeness, I always thought that God must look like us. But then reading Scripture and thinking on the Trinity its clear that I don’t know. Although God’s essence is beyond our understanding, He has revealed His attributes to us through Scripture and supremely through Christ. We truly know God, even if we cannot fully comprehend Him. Loving, merciful, creative, caring, just, righteous.
God then is infinite and incomprehensible and all that is comprehensible about Him is His infinity and incomprehensibility. But all that we can affirm concerning God does not show forth God’s nature, but only the qualities of His nature.
For I am the first God and I am the last, and beside Me there is no God. Before Me there was not any God, nor after Me will there be any God, and beside Me there is no God. Isaiah 43:10
God is not Wordless. And possessing the Word, He will have it not as without a subsistence, nor as having had a beginning, nor as destined to cease to be. For there never was a time when God was not Word: but He ever possesses His own Word, begotten of Himself, not, as our word is, without a subsistence and dissolving into air, but having a subsistence in Him and life and perfection, not proceeding out of Himself but ever existing within Himself. For where could it be, if it were to go outside Him?
Word of God in its independent subsistence is differentiated from Him from Whom it derives its subsistence: but inasmuch as it displays in itself the same attributes as are seen in God, it is of the same nature as God.
the Word must also possess Spirit. For in fact even our word is not destitute of spirit; but in our case the spirit is something different from our essence.
But we must contemplate it as an essential power, existing in its own proper and peculiar subsistence, proceeding from the Father and resting in the Word , and showing forth the Word, neither capable of disjunction from God in Whom it exists, and the Word Whose companion it is, nor poured forth to vanish into nothingness , but being in subsistence in the likeness of the Word, endowed with life, free volition, independent movement, energy, ever willing that which is good, and having power to keep pace with the will in all its decrees , having no beginning and no end. For never was the Father at any time lacking in the Word, nor the Word in the Spirit.
In treating, then, of the generation of the Son, it is an act of impiety to say that time comes into play and that the existence of the Son is of later origin than the Father.
And unless we grant that the Son co-existed from the beginning with the Father, by Whom He was begotten,we introduce change into the Father’s subsistence, because, not being the Father, He subsequently became the Father.
And just as light is ever the product of fire, and ever is in it and at no time is separate from it, so in like manner also the Son is begotten of the Father and is never in any way separate from Him, but ever is in Him.
the names Fatherhood, Sonship and Procession, were not applied to the Holy Godhead by us: on the contrary, they were communicated to us by the Godhead, as the divine apostle says, Wherefore I bow the knee to the Father, from Whom is every family in heaven and on earth.
the Son is begotten of the Father and not the Father of the Son, and that the Father naturally is the cause of the Son: just as we say in the same way not that fire proceeds from light, but rather light from fire.
My thoughts
For context this passage is to illustrate the relationship in terms of causation. In fact to support this the author later says: “Just as we do not say that fire is of one essence and light of another, so we cannot say that the Father is of one essence and the Son of another: but both are of one and the same essence.”
And just as we say that fire has brightness through the light proceeding from it, and do not consider the light of the fire as an instrument ministering to the fire, but rather as its natural force: so we say that the Father creates all that He creates through His Only-begotten Son, not as though the Son were a mere instrument serving the Father’s ends, but as His natural and subsistential force.
But the Son is derived from the Father after the manner of generation, and the Holy Spirit likewise is derived from the Father, yet not after the manner of generation, but after that of procession.
All then that the Son and the Spirit have is from the Father, even their very being : and unless the Father is, neither the Son nor the Spirit is.
My thoughts
The next sentence also mentions that They have the same attributes of the Father “unless the Father posesses a certain attribute, neither the Son nor the Spirit possesses it”. The Father is the eternal source within the Trinity. The Son and the Spirit receive everything they are from the Father - not as creatures receiving existence in time, but eternally. This does not make Them lesser, because whatever belongs to the Father by nature belongs equally to the Son and the Spirit, except the personal properties that distinguish Them.
Trinity
For there is one essence, one goodness, one power, one will, one energy, one authority, one and the same, I repeat, not three resembling each other.
anything else whatsoever which may produce actual and absolute separation in our case. Wherefore we do not speak of three Gods, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but rather of one God, the holy Trinity, the Son and Spirit being referred to one cause
My thoughts
John used Jesus words to support these words “I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me” - John 14:11. These words sound differently when read through the eyes of the Trinity. Another interesting thing that John says is that the Trinity has one cause (God) and is not compounded or coalesced. In another words, it’s not the group together thaty make the Trinity, but that the Trinity is God.
nor does the Spirit change either into the Father or into the Son because He has proceeded and is God. For a property is quite constant. For how could a property persist if it were variable, moveable, and could change into something else? For if the Father is the Son, He is not strictly the Father: for there is strictly one Father. And if the Son is the Father, He is not strictly the Son: for there is strictly one Son and one Holy Spirit.
all the statements made about God that imply body have some hidden meaning and teach us what is above us by means of something familiar to ourselves, with the exception of any statement concerning the bodily sojourn of the God-Word. For He for our safety took upon Himself the whole nature of man , the thinking spirit, the body, and all the properties of human nature, even the natural and blameless passions.
The Father is the source and cause of the Son and the Holy Spirit: Father of the Son alone and producer of the Holy Spirit. The Son is Son, Word, Wisdom, Power, Image, Effulgence, Impress of the Father and derived from the Father. But the Holy Spirit is not the Son of the Father but the Spirit of the Father as proceeding from the Father. For there is no impulse without Spirit.
For He is His own place, filling all things and being above all things, and Himself maintaining all things. Yet we speak of God having place and the place of God where His energy becomes manifest. For He penetrates everything without mixing with it, and imparts to all His energy in proportion to the fitness and receptive power of each
Book II
And it is by thought that He creates, and thought is the basis of the work, the Word filling it and the Spirit perfecting it.
Also all that is rational is endowed with free-will. As it is, then, rational and intelligent, it is endowed with free-will: and as it is created, it is changeable, having power either to abide or progress in goodness, or to turn towards evil.
For evil is nothing else than absence of goodness, just as darkness also is absence of light. For goodness is the light of the mind, and, similarly, evil is the darkness of the mind.
The tree of knowledge was for trial, and proof, and exercise of man’s obedience and disobedience: and hence it was named the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or else it was because to those who partook of it was given power to know their own nature. Now this is a good thing for those who are mature, but an evil thing for the immature and those whose appetites are too strong , being like solid food to tender babes still in need of milk.
He creates with His own hands man of a visible nature and an invisible, after His own image and likeness: on the one hand man’s body He formed of earth, and on the other his reasoning and thinking soul He bestowed upon him by His own inbreathing, and this is what we mean by after His image. For the phrase after His image clearly refers to the side of his nature which consists of mind and free will, whereas after His likeness means likeness in virtue so far as that is possible.
Virtue
God then made man without evil, upright, virtuous, free from pain and care, glorified with every virtue, adorned with all that is good, like a sort of second microcosm within the great world, another angel capable of worship, compound, surveying the visible creation and initiated into the mysteries of the realm of thought
My thoughts
This passage made me think back to the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve. Back then, before sin entered the world, before we misused our freedom after being tempted to be like God, we had all that is good. Even now and thinking how Jesus said that we should be like little children, I see something of that goodness and purity reflected in them too.
It made me wonder whether growing out of childhood innocence can sometimes resemble the Fall - not because each person repeats original sin, but because as our freedom and self-awareness develop, we begin consciously choosing between the good placed before us and the desires that pull us away from it.
But God made him by nature sinless, and endowed him with free will. By sinless, I mean not that sin could find no place in him (for that is the case with Deity alone), but that sin is the result of the free volition he enjoys rather than an integral part of his nature; that is to say, he has the power to continue and go forward in the path of goodness, by co-operating with the divine grace, and likewise to turn from good and take to wickedness, for God has conceded this by conferring freedom of will upon him. For there is no virtue in what is the result of mere force.
My thoughts
To pick up from the previous note, although our nature is now wounded by sin, it remains fundamentally God’s good creation, and our freedom has not been destroyed. God gives us reason and conscience through which we can recognise the good. He gives us freedom so that we can genuinely choose it. And He gives us grace so that our wounded freedom can be healed, strengthened and drawn back to Him.
I also love the answer to the question: “Why didn’t God simply made us obedient and remove free will?” Because, as John says, “there is no virtue in what is the result of mere force.”
But man, being rational, leads nature rather than nature him, and so when he desires anything he has the power to curb his appetite or indulge it as he pleases. Hence also creatures devoid of reason are the subject neither of praise nor blame, while man is the subject of both praise and blame.
My thoughts
Our rational nature enables us to recognise good and evil and to govern our desires rather than simply follow them. Because we can freely choose how to act, we are responsible for those choices. Unlike creatures that act only according to instinct, human beings are rightly subject to both praise and blame.
that virtue is a gift from God implanted in our nature, and that He Himself is the source and cause of all good, and without His co-operation and help we cannot will or do any good thing. But we have it in our power either to abide in virtue and follow God, Who calls us into ways of virtue, or to stray from paths of virtue, which is to dwell in wickedness,
This man He placed in Paradise, a home that was alike spiritual and sensible. For he lived in the body on the earth in the realm of sense, while he dwelt in the spirit among the angels, cultivating divine thoughts, and being supported by them: living in naked simplicity a life free from artificiality, and being led up through His creations to the one and only Creator, in Whose contemplation he found joy and gladness.
Book III
Key Ideas
- God’s existence is evident through creation.
- God’s essence is incomprehensible, though His attributes are revealed.
- The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one essence in three Persons.
- The Son is eternally begotten, not created.
- The Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father.
- The Incarnation was necessary for humanity’s salvation.
- Every doctrine should be grounded in Scripture and the apostolic faith.
Source
Note: Quotations on this page are taken from this edition unless otherwise stated.