On Systematic Theology:
Such reasoning is rare in the Fathers. They did not think of theological knowledge as having sufficient scope and generality that it can enable us to reason confidently about what God must do and why He must do it. On the contrary, they inclined to think that we know very little of God apart from what is revealed in Scripture and the life of the Church. They therefore tended not to raise certain questions that to us may seem inevitable.
This is not to say that our questions are illegitimate. The mere fact that they are important to us means they deserve an answer. Nonetheless, we must remember that the Fathers offer no “systematic theology.” I suspect that they would have viewed our own predilection for it as a strange passion, even if one that our society makes almost inescapable.