A striking example of such an action is a great event: the suffering and death of the God-Man. On the one hand, to these sufferings and this death the incarnate God deigned to submit according to His all-holy will; on the other hand, the Jewish chief priests, led also by their own will, subjected the incarnate God to the most humiliating dishonor, cruel tortures and shameful death. Demons participated in the evil deed of men, as the leaders of the evil deed [172]. Here the action of God was united, outwardly, into one action with human and demonic action; but, in essence, action differed from action by an all-perfect difference. But you have rejected the Holy and Righteous One, said the Apostle Peter to the Jews, but you have killed the Author of life; And God, Who foretold the mouth of all His prophets to suffer Christ, do so [173]. The same idea was expressed by all the Apostles in the prayer which they pronounced at the news of the persecution of the Church in Jerusalem. They said in their prayer, "O Lord, Thou art God, Who hast made the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and all that is in them, Who by the Holy Spirit hast said through the mouth of our father David Thy servant, Thou hast staggered tongues, and men have learned in vain! the king of the land appeared, and the princes gathered together against the Lord and His Christ. For having truly gathered together in this city against Thy Holy Servant Jesus, Whom Thou didst anoint, and Herod and Pilate of Pontius, with the tongues and people of Israel, did, as Thy hand and Thy counsel were foreordained to be[174].

God's destinies and actions go their own way; human and demonic actions also follow their own path. Crimes and atrocities do not cease to be crimes and atrocities in relation to their doers, even though those who commit evil with evil intent are only instruments of the will of God. The latter is a consequence of the unlimited wisdom of God, of the unlimited power of God, by reason of which creatures, acting of their own free will, at the same time remain unnecessarily in the power of the Creator, without understanding it, and do the will of the Creator without knowing it.

The destinies of God are present and act in the midst of events performed by men and demons, as the subtlest spirit among matter, not dependent on matter, not constrained by matter, acting on matter and not being affected by matter. The destinies of God are the omnipotent action in the universe of the all-perfect God, the one, in the strict sense, Spirit, who fills the universe and everything that is beyond the universe, not embraced by the universe. God is not embraced by the material world, which is subject to our senses; does not embrace God and the world of spirits, which is not subject to our senses. His actions and His destinies correspond to God: and they are incomprehensible. Let both men and angels be reverently silent before them! In relation to God, spirits are the same substance: they differ from God both in essence and properties, differ in immeasurable difference, differ as much as gross matter differs [175]. Such is the law for the relation of the infinite to all that is limited and finite. No matter how limited objects differ from each other, no matter how much they increase or decrease, their difference from the infinite does not change and can never change: it is always equal, because it is always infinite.

Woe to the world because of temptation: for need is to come by temptation: woe to the man whose temptation comes[176]. This was said by the Savior of the world, our Lord Jesus Christ. This is said about the events that are taking place before our eyes and are yet to take place, in which the all-holy destinies of God merge into one with the criminal and disastrous consequences of sinful, lustful, and hostile to God human will.

The need to come by temptation: with these words God's predestination is declared, God's destinies are declared, incomprehensible to man and inaccessible to his comprehension. Woe to the man whose temptation comes: this declares the wrath of God to the ministers, preachers, patrons of sin, sowers and distributors of sin in human society, enemies and persecutors of the true knowledge of God and Divine services. Their mood and activity have already been condemned by God; thunderous threats have already been uttered against this mood and this activity; Eternal hell with its prisons, with its terrible tortures and executions, has already been prepared for their retribution. But the activity and mood of men, which are hostile and opposed to God, are permitted by God. Such are the destinies of God. The evil committed by creatures cannot violate in God, in the All-Perfect Good, His inviolable, inviolable abiding in His unchangeable attributes and dignity, nor can it hinder the infinite Wisdom of God from fulfilling Her all-holy, omnipotent will.

What is God's predestination? This is the image of expression used in the Holy Scriptures, by which the greatness of God is depicted, which surpasses any image. The concept of predestination has many similarities with the concept of destinies: the concept often merges with the concept. Let us explain, as far as we can, the predestination of God, the existence of which is testified to in Holy Scripture [177], the misunderstanding of which leads many into the fatal abyss of error.

God is not subject to time [178]: time does not exist for God. The word "time" expresses the concept formed in rational creatures from the impression produced in them by changes in the phenomena of nature. Thus time is determined by science. And there was evening and there was morning, the day was one [179]. Thus the Scriptures present the origin of the concept of time, which is in full agreement with the conclusion of positive science. It is obvious that impressions from outside cannot act on God, otherwise He would not be perfect and would be subject to applications and belittlements, which are not characteristic of the infinite. In general, there is no time for God: there is no future time for him. That which is to be accomplished is before the already accomplished face of God, and the fate of each person beyond the grave, which must flow as a natural consequence of his earthly, voluntary activity, is already known to God, has already been decided by God. Thy eyes have seen my undone [181], O all-perfect God! The inspired Prophet confessed this; By logical necessity, every person should confess this.

"I am predestined! I have no opportunity to resist predestination, to change or destroy God's predestination. Why force oneself to an inexorably strict Christian virtue? Why subject oneself to innumerable deprivations and live in constant renunciation of life? I'll live as I want and like! I will hasten to what my dream beckons me to, drawing before my eyes charming pictures! I will amuse myself to my heart's content with all pleasures, even sinful ones! They are scattered luxuriously throughout the universe, and an unbearable curiosity draws you to taste and get to know them by experience! If I am predestined to be saved, then, in spite of all my wickedness, God will save me. But if I am destined to perish, then I will perish, in spite of all my efforts to obtain salvation." Such a judgment is proclaimed to be ignorance of the mysteries of Christianity! It is proclaimed to be falsely named reason and carnal wisdom. A terrible blasphemy is pronounced in it, which they do not understand! Unfortunate, completely erroneous reasoning is recognized and accepted by many as an irrefutable truth: on it is based a self-willed life, a life that is lawless and depraved. On earthly vicious life is based an eternally sorrowful life, an eternally miserable life in the land beyond the grave.

False, soul-destroying speculation about predestination and fate arose from the confusion of actions inherent in the one God with human actions. One error necessarily leads to another error; it leads to many errors, if it is made in the initial, initial thought. Man, having confused his action with the action of God, has already naturally subordinated both actions to one law, one court, the court of his reason. From this an immense field of error opened up for him. Having placed himself as the judge of God's actions, he necessarily ascribed to God the same attitude towards good and evil as man has towards them. He recognized the attributes of God as identical with human attributes; he subordinated the thinking of God to the laws of human thought; He also established a certain distinction, but the difference is not infinite, but something of its own, indefinite, alien to correctness and meaning.

From His beginningless beginning, God was and is satisfied with His one Word. The Word of God is at the same time His Thought: the Word was from time immemorial, to God, and God was the Word. Such is the property of the boundless Mind. In His infinite perfection, God has one and only Thought, despite the fact that this Thought is expressed in the realm of rational creatures by an innumerable multitude of thoughts. Let us separate from ourselves by an infinite distance the essence of God, and His attributes, and His actions: then our judgment of fate and predestination will receive due foundation. The predestination of man's fate is fully befitting God because of the unlimited perfection of God's mind, because of God's independence from time. Predestination, showing man the greatness of God and remaining a mystery known only to God, in no way restricts the free activity of man in the entire field of earthly life, has no influence on this activity, no relation to it. Having no influence on human activity, God's predestination does not and cannot have any influence on the consequences of this activity, on the salvation and destruction of man. As a guide to our behavior, on the one hand, reason and free will, on the other, the revealed teaching of God. The revealed teaching of God proclaims in the most satisfactory detail the will of God as a means of salvation, proclaims God's favor that all men may be saved, and proclaims eternal torment for the trampling of the will of God. Hence the clear consequence: the salvation and destruction of man depend solely on his arbitrariness, and not on the unknown determination of God.

Why should one be born in wealth and nobility, the other in poverty, among people despised and oppressed, doomed to lifelong bodily labor in the sweat of their brow, deprived of the means of intellectual development? Why does one die a decrepit old man, another in the flower of youth or manhood, another a child, and even a short-lived infant? Why does one constantly enjoy health and well-being, while another is sick, transmitted by sorrows to sorrows, calamities to calamities, as if from hand to hand? These and similar questions once occupied the great Egyptian hermit-dweller Anthony, and in vain did the hermit seek a solution to them in his own mind, overshadowed by Divine grace, capable of delving into the contemplation of the mysteries of God. When the holy elder was tired of fruitless contemplation, a voice came to him from heaven: "Anthony! These are the destinies of God. Their study is harmful to the soul. Pay attention to yourself" [183].

"Take heed to yourself, O man! Enter into the work and research that are essential for you, necessary. Determine with accuracy yourself, your attitude to God and to all parts of the vast universe known to you. Determine what is given to you to understand, what is left to your contemplation alone, and what is hidden from you. Determine the degree and limits of your ability to think and understand. This faculty, as the faculty of a limited being, naturally has both its degree and its limits. Human concepts, in their known forms, are called complete and perfect by science, but they always remain relative to the human faculty of thinking and understanding: they are perfect in so far as man is perfect. Attain the important knowledge that a perfect understanding of anything is not proper and impossible for a limited mind. Perfect understanding belongs to the perfect Mind alone. Without this knowledge, knowledge of the faithful and holy, the correctness of the situation and the correctness of activity will always be alien to the genius himself. The position and activity here are understood to be spiritual, in which each of us is obliged to develop by the development appointed and prescribed for the rational creature by its Creator. There is no mention here of the urgent situation and of the urgent activity into which we are placed for the shortest possible time during our earthly pilgrimage as members of human society.

It seems: what is closer to me? What do I know more than I? I am constantly with myself; by natural necessity I must constantly pay attention to myself; I pay attention to other subjects, as much as it is necessary for me. Love for myself is set for me by the law of God to the measure of love for my neighbor. And I, who undertake to recognize the distant in the depths of the earth and the sea, in the depths of the heavens and beyond the vaults of the sky, come to a difficulty, to utter bewilderment, I do not know what to answer me when I hear the question: Who am I, and what am I? Who am I? Is it a being? But I am subject to extraordinary changes from the day of my conception to the day of my death. A being in the full sense should not be subject to change; it must constantly manifest the same, always equal to itself force of life. There is no testimony of life in me that is wholly within myself; I am subjected to a complete exhaustion of the vital force in my body: I am dying. Not only is my mortal body subject to death, but my very soul does not have in itself the condition of life indestructible: the Holy Tradition of the Orthodox Church teaches me this. The soul, as well as the Angels, has been granted immortality by God: it is not their property, not their natural belonging. In order to sustain its life, the body needs to be nourished by the air and the products of the earth; the soul, in order to maintain and preserve its immortality, needs the mysterious action of the Divine right hand upon itself. Who am I? phenomenon? but I feel my existence. For many years someone pondered over a satisfactory answer to the proposed question, pondered, delving into self-contemplation by the light of the lamp – the Spirit of God. After many years of reflection, he was led to the following relative definition of man: "Man is a reflection of a being, and borrows from this Being the character of a being" [185]. God, the only One [186], is reflected in the life of man. This is how the sun depicts itself in a pure raindrop. In a raindrop we see the sun; but what we see in it is not the sun. The sun is there, at an unattainable height.

What is my soul? What is my body? What is my mind? What are the feelings of the heart? What are the feelings of the body? What are the powers of soul and body? What is life? Unsolved questions, unsolvable questions! For thousands of years, the human race has begun to discuss these questions, tried to solve them and departed from them, becoming convinced of their insolubility. What can be more familiar to us than our body? Having the senses, it is subject to the action of all these senses: the knowledge of the body must be the most satisfactory, as it is acquired both by reason and by the senses. It is exactly the same in relation to knowledge of the soul, of its properties and powers, of objects not subject to the senses of the body [187]; together it is a knowledge that is extremely inadequate in relation to the conditions under which knowledge can be recognized as complete and perfect.