Woe to the world because of temptation: for need is to come by temptation. Woe unto that man, for to him stumbling block cometh (Matt. 18:7). 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.

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 that man, for by him the temptation comes: by this the wrath of God is declared to the ministers, preachers, protectors of sin, sowers and distributors of sin in human society, enemies and persecutors of the true knowledge of God and worship. 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, the indestructible, inviolable abiding in His unchangeable attributes and dignity, cannot hinder the boundless wisdom of God from the fulfillment of Her all-holy, omnipotent will.

What is God's predestination? This is the image of expression used by Holy Scripture, by which the majesty of God is depicted, which surpasses all 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 the Holy Scriptures (Rom. ch. 9), by the incorrect understanding of which many are drawn into the fatal abyss of error.

God is not subject to time [18]: time does not exist for God. The word time expresses the concept formed in rational creatures from the impression produced in them by the changes in the phenomena of nature. Thus time is determined by science. And there was evening and there was morning, the day was one (Gen. 1:5). 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 is 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 perfected 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 what I have not done (Psalm 138:16), O all-perfect God! An inspired prophet confessed this: every person should confess this, according to logical necessity.

"I am predestined! I have no opportunity to resist predestination, to change or destroy God's predestination. Why force oneself to the 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. 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, incomprehensible blasphemy is pronounced in it! 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 was not infinite, but some kind of his 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 (John 1:1,2). 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 to God alone, does not in the least restrict 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 declares 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.

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" (Patericon of Skete).

"Take heed to yourself, O man! Enter into the work and research that are essential for you, necessary for you. Determine with precision yourself, your relationship 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 man's faculty of thought and understanding: they are perfect to the extent that 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 do? 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 complete 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 even my soul itself does not have in itself the condition of an indestructible life: the sacred 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 [19]. The body, in order to sustain its life, 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" [20]. God, the only One (Deuteronomy 6; 4) is reflected in a person's life. 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 the soul and the 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 feelings, it is subject to the action of all these senses: knowledge of the body should be the most satisfactory, as it is acquired by both reason and 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 [21]; together it is a knowledge that is extremely inadequate in relation to the conditions under which knowledge can be recognized as complete and perfect.

In order to find out the meaning of any substance, science is obliged to decompose it into its component, indecomposable parts, and then to recreate the decomposed substance from the component parts. Science accepts the knowledge of matter obtained in this way as correct: assumptions, until they are positively proved, are not admitted into the composition of knowledge, into the treasury of science, although human arbitrariness proclaims them both orally and in print, as if about truths, mocking the ignorance and credulity of mankind. In order to decompose the human body satisfactorily, it is necessary to do so while the body is still alive. There is no way to determine the meaning of this life except by grasping it and considering it in itself. The correctness of decomposition must be proved by the formation of a living body from its component parts. This is impossible. We decompose only corpses,[22] not knowing what it leaves life in the body it has left behind, and what it carries away with it. In uncovering the corpses, we become acquainted with the structure of a machine hidden in the interior of the body, but a machine no longer capable of movement and action, a machine already deprived of its essential significance. What do we know about our body? Something far removed from the knowledge of the complete and perfect.

Let us make a request to our mind, this main instrument for the acquisition of knowledge, that it should give an essential definition of itself, what is it? Soul strength? But this expresses only the concept that has appeared in us from the impressions produced by the actions of the mind—it does not determine the essence of the mind. We must say exactly the same about the human spirit, that is, about those sublime feelings of the heart which animals lack, about the feelings by which the heart of man differs from the heart of animals, and which constitute an elegant excess of feelings in the human heart before the hearts of animals. Spirit is the power of the soul. In what way are the powers of the soul united with the soul itself? The image of union is incomprehensible, since the image of the union of the body with its senses, sight, hearing, and other diverse sense of touch is incomprehensible. The feelings of the body leave the body at the time when it leaves its life, are carried away from it by the departing soul. This means that the bodily senses belong to the soul proper, and when it is in the body, they become, as it were, the senses of the body. From this follows the necessary natural consequence: the ability of the soul to feel the same as the body feels; The affinity of the soul with the body is not the perfect opposite which some have rashly ascribed to the soul and created spirits, and which is hitherto ascribed to them by ignorance. There is gradualness between creatures and a difference arising from gradualness, as well as between numbers. The difference can be very significant; but it does not destroy either affinity or gradualness. In this gradualness, the one is coarser towards us, the other more subtle; but everything created, limited, existing in space and time, cannot be alien to matter, this inseparable belonging to all that is limited. God alone is immaterial: He is distinguished by a decisive distinction from all creatures; It is opposite to them in essence and properties, just as the infinite is opposite to numbers, all without exception. This is what we know about our soul, about our mind, about our heart! What do we know? Something, the most limited something.

Who knows all this with all satisfaction? There is only one God! He, by virtue of the nature of the infinite, has a perfect concept of everything, devoid of any defect, and He proved this concept by a perfect proof: the creation out of nothing of innumerable worlds, visible to us and invisible, known and unknown. It is characteristic of the infinite to animate the non-existent into existence, which no number, no matter how great they may be, can create. The proof of the infinity of the Mind which governs the universe continues to be magnificently expressed by the existence of all that exists. The smallest number of laws of creativity and existence, and even then to some extent, is comprehended by people. They also comprehended the fact that the whole of nature is embraced by legislation that surpasses human comprehension. If the mind is needed to comprehend a particle of laws, so much the more necessary is He to compose them.

Person! "Pay attention to yourself", examine yourself! From a clear understanding of yourself, as far as possible, you will look more clearly and correctly at everything that is subject to your gaze outside of you. In what way, on what occasion did I come into existence and appear in the field of earthly life? I appeared in this field involuntarily and unconsciously; I do not know the reason for the entry into existence from non-existence. I ponder, search for the cause, and cannot but confess that I must of necessity recognize it in the definition of the unlimited, unknown, incomprehensible Will, to which I am unconditionally subject. I came with the faculties of soul and body, as with appurtenances: they were given to me, not chosen by me. I appeared with various infirmities, as if already sealed by execution; He was a sufferer and doomed to suffering. I found myself in circumstances and surroundings, which I found or which were prepared for me, I do not know. On the path of earthly pilgrimage I can very seldom act according to my will, fulfill my desire: almost always I am forcibly drawn by some invisible, omnipotent Hand, some stream to which I cannot offer any resistance. Almost constantly I encounter one unexpected and unforeseen thing. I depart from earthly life most suddenly, without any consent of mine to this, without any attention to my earthly needs, to the needs of those around me, for whom, in my judgment and theirs, I am necessary. I'm leaving the land forever, not knowing where I'm going! I'm leaving in terrible loneliness! In an unknown land, into which I am entering by death, one new will meet me, one that has never been seen before. In order to enter an unknown land, I must leave all earthly things on earth, I must throw off my very body. From there, from an unknown country, I cannot send any news of myself to the earth: because it is impossible for anyone clothed in a shell of earthly, coarse matter to hear the news from there. My life in this visible world is an uninterrupted struggle with death; Such is it from my cradle to my grave. I can die daily and hourly, but I do not know the day and hour of death. I know that I will die; There is not and cannot be the slightest doubt about this, but I live as if I were immortal: because I feel myself immortal. The presentiment of death has been taken away from me, and I would not have believed that it was possible for a man to die, if I had not seen in all men that death is the inevitable fate of every man. The Gospel correctly depicts the weakness of our power over us. "No matter how much effort you make," says the Gospel to man, "you cannot add one cubit to your age (Matthew 6:27), and make your white hair black" (Matthew 5:36).