 However the soul’s detention in the present world is accounted for, its freedom to choose its own goods, and its own god, is an indefeasible premiss of Origen’s philosophy. Astrologers who pretend to read our fates from the stars can be answered with a quip from Epicurus: if all that comes to pass is predestined, so is the belief in predestination, and we therefore have no reason to think it true (Philokalia 25.4). Even if the stars vouchsafe some premonitions of the future to the saints, we are not to suppose that they are the causes of what they signify, or that God, who inscribes his own knowledge in the heavens, is the cause of everything that he foresees. Because he is exempt from time, our future lies open to him as the past and present lie open; he knows, in the words of Paul, whether each of his creatures is to be a vessel of honour or a vessel of dishonour. It is we, however, who make his knowledge true by our own choice of good or evil; the Gnostics misconstrue the apostle’s statement that God “makes” us vessels of honour or dishonour when they argue that the damned and the elect are of different natures. None of us is born virtuous but each of us (as Aristotle says and common experience goes on telling us) has the power to advance in virtue by performing virtuous acts (Princ. 3.1).