Cyril of Alexandria : Human beings choose their own way of life and are entrusted with the reins of their own intelligence, so as to follow whatever course they wish, either toward the good or toward the contrary. But our [original, created] nature has implanted in it a zealous desire for whatever is good and the will to concern itself with goodness and righteousness. For this is what we mean by saying that humanity is "in the image and likeness of God," that the creature is naturally disposed to what is good and right. — DOCTRINAL QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 2 Gaius Marius Victorinus : Does Paul mean "good works" in the future tense or those which we now perform? Taken either way they are good for us to walk in. They are witnesses to Christ's working in us. — EPISTLE TO THE Ephesians 1.2.10 Jerome : We are his creation. This means that it is from him that we live, breathe, understand and are able to believe, because he is the One who made us. And note carefully that he did not say "we are his fashioning and molding" but "we are his creation." Molding starts with the mud of the earth, but creation from the outset is "according to the image and likeness of God." — Commentary on Ephesians 2:10 John Chrysostom : "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them." Observe the words he uses. He here alludes to the regeneration, which is in reality a second creation. We have been brought from non-existence into being. As to what we were before, that is, the old man, we are dead. What we are now become, before, we were not. Truly then is this work a creation, yea, and more noble than the first; for from that one, we have our being; but from this last, we have, over and above, our well being. — Homily on Ephesians 4 John Chrysostom : "For good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them." Not merely that we should begin, but that we should walk in them, for we need a virtue which shall last throughout, and be extended on to our dying day. If we had to travel a road leading to a royal city, and then when we had passed over the greater part of it, were to flag and sit down near the very close, it were of no use to us. This is the hope of our calling; for "for good works" he says. Otherwise it would profit us nothing. — Homily on Ephesians 4 Tertullian : It is manifest that sins, and lusts of the flesh, and unbelief, and anger, are ascribed to the common nature of all mankind, the devil [however leading that nature astray, which he has already infected with the implanted germ of sin. "We," says he, "are His workmanship, created in Christ." It is one thing to make (as a workman), another thing to create. But he assigns both to One. Man is the workmanship of the Creator. He therefore who made man (at first), created him also in Christ. As touching the substance of nature, He "made" him; as touching the work of grace, He "created" him. — Against Marcion Book V Tertullian : "For to create in Himself of twain," for He who had made is also the same who creates (just as we have found it stated above: "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus"), "one new man, making peace" (really new, and really man-no phantom-but new, and newly born of a virgin by the Spirit of God), "that He might reconcile both unto God" (even the God whom both races had offended-both Jew and Gentile), "in one body," says he, "having in it slain the enmity by the cross." — Against Marcion Book V Tertullian : Shall it be granted possible for human ingenuity to summon a spirit into water, and, by the application of hands from above, to animate their union into one body with another spirit of so clear sound; and shall it not be possible for God, in the case of His own organ, to produce, by means of "holy hands," a sublime spiritual modulation? But this, as well as the former, is derived from the old sacramental rite in which Jacob blessed his grandsons, born of Joseph, Ephrem and Manasses; with his hands laid on them and interchanged, and indeed so transversely slanted one over the other, that, by delineating Christ, they even portended the future benediction into Christ. — On Baptism Theodore of Mopsuestia : Here he is speaking not of the first but of the second creation, wherein we are re-created by the resurrection. Completely unable as we are to mend our ways by our own decision on account of the natural weakness that opposes us, we are made able to come newly alive without pain and with great ease by the grace of the One who re-creates us for this purpose. — EPISTLE TO THE Ephesians 2.10