Fate, Free Choice and Divine Providence
With the kind permission of Dr Ken Parry (Senior Research Fellow, Macquarie University), below is an extract from his chapter “ Fate, Free Choice, and Divine Providence from the Neoplatonists to John Of Damascus” in The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium , edited by Anthony Kaldellis , Niketas Siniossoglou (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 341–60. The history of the concepts of fate (εἱμαρμένη / heimarmene ), free choice (προαίρεσις / prohairesis ), and divine providence (θεία πρόνοια / theia pronoia ) between the fifth and the eighth centuries exemplifies the transition from late antiquity to the Middle Ages in intellectual terms. It was in this period that philosophy and theology developed durable models for the agency of divine providence and its concomitants, the problem of evil, free choice, predestination, justice, necessity, and divine foreknowledge. Both Platonists and Christians devised theodicies to safeguard the sovereign...