Johannine theology, Basil knows that love consists in keeping the commandments. This is why the spark of love that we possess as creatures of God means the following: “We have received in advance the capacity and the willingness to carry out all the divine commandments.… They are not something imposed from outside ourselves.” Augustine presents the simple core of this truth when he writes, “We would not be able to formulate the judgment that one thing is better than another unless a basic understanding