CONTRA FATUM

"But if His essence is prior to His works, and we understand His works by our senses, and express them in words as we are best able, why should we be afraid of calling things by words of later origin than themselves? For if we stay to interpret any of the attributes of God till we understand them, and we understand them only by what His works teach us, and if His power precedes its exercise, and depends on the will of God, while His will resides in the spontaneity of the Divine nature, are we not clearly taught that the words which represent things are of later origin than the things themselves, and that the words which are framed to express the operations of things are reflections of the things themselves?" (CE 2, GNO 150)

"[...]one cannot observe a good purpose in the abstract; a purpose cannot possibly be revealed unless it has the light of some events upon it." (The Great Catechism, NPNF, p. 491)

”‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.’ Who are these? Those who imitate the Divine love of others, who show forth in their own life the characteristic of the Divine energy. The Lord and Giver of good things completely annihilates anything that is without affinity and foreign to goodness. This work He ordains also for you, namely to cast out hatred and abolish war, to exterminate envy and banish strife, to take away hypocrisy and extinguish from within resentment of injuries smoldering in the heart. Instead, you ought to introduce whatever is contrary to the things that have been removed.” (The Lord’s Prayer and the Beatitudes, Ancient Christian Writers series, Newman Press)

"Therefore, if we see that the activities (ἐνεργείας) performed by the ( ἐνεργουμένας παρα) Father, by the Son and by the Holy Spirit differ one from another, based in the diversity of activities, we conjecture that also the natures that perform them are diverse. In fact, it is impossible that those realities that are separated from each other by natural principle ( κατά τον τῆς φύσεως λογον) coincide with one another in the form of activities (fire does not produce cold, nor ice heat), but according to the differences of natures the activities [performed] by them are also separated one from another. Instead, if we conceive as unique the activity of the Father, the Son and of the Holy Spirit, [an activity] which is not distinguished nor changed in any of them, then it is necessary to infer the unity of nature from the identity of activity." (Ad Eustathium, GNO III/1, 11, 3-15, tr. Maspero, 2007, p. 57)

"We say that one works metal or wood, or carries out another of such activities (ἐνεργεῖν). Therefore, language presents at once both the art and he who exercises the art, so that if one separates one thing, the other cannot subsist. If then, the two realities are thought one together with the other, that is activity itself and he who acts through it, how is it that in this case one says that on the first substance ( τῃ οὐσίᾳ τῃ πρωτῃ) follows activity that produces the second substance, as if mediating in itself between the one and the other, without being confused with the first according to nature, nor being tied to the second? For [the activity] is separated from the first by the fact of not being a nature, but a movement of nature ( φύσεως κινησις), and is not united to that which results because it does not have as proper result a simple activity, but an active substance." (CE I, GNO I, 88, 4-17, tr. Maspero 2007, p. 40)