st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

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THE FONS SCIENTI.E."
75
in the same way that we say the Son is either of the
Father or from the Father 1 (c. viii.).
The section on the Creation, beginning with bk. ii.,
opens with a discussion on the various meanings of
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the word age (ceon, seculuni).
The motive for
Creation was the exceeding goodness of the
Almighty, which could not rest satified with selfcontemplation,
but sought for something external,
to feel and be made partaker of that goodness
(c. xvi.). Angels are incorporeal and immortal not by
nature but by the gift of God. The Devil and his
angels were created, at the first, good like the others,
but fell
by their own free-will and inclination to evil.
They have no power to harm any one, except in so
far as it is
by God s permission (cc. xvii., xviii.).
In
his description of the physical universe which follows,
we have a summary of the opinions popularly held,
without any decision being given by Damascenus
himself as to which he preferred. As some held,
to Aristotle and Ptolemy) the heavens
(referring
encompassing the earth were spherical; as others
held (for example, Chrysostom), they were hemi
spherical. This latter notion, familiar to us only
as a poetical image, when we talk of the "vault of
1
This refers of course to what has always been a tenet of the \
Greek Church, the single procession of the Holy Ghost. It did f
not preclude the expression Spirit of the or
Son," Spirit of f
Christ (as in Rom. viii. 9). For a minute analysis of the
Eastern doctrine on this subject, see Dissertation x., in
Palmer s Orthodox Communion," before quoted. The com
ments of Aquinas and other Latin doctors, on this and similar
expressions of Damascenus, are quoted at length by Lequien
in his note on this passage.