Chapter 39. Man Is Endowed with Free Will to Observe God’s Commandments and Prepare for His Own Reward.
Chapter 39
1. It is good to obey God, to believe him, and to keep his commandment; and that is life for man; just as not to obey God is evil, and that is death for man. So, since God showed himself magnanimous, man knew both the good of obedience and the evil of disobedience in order that the eyes might experience both, and might choose with discernment what is better, with the result that he might never become indolent and neglectful of God’s command, and that he might learn by experience that to disobey God takes life away from him, and this is evil, and that he would never attempt this. On the contrary, that he might know that what preserves life, namely, to obey God, is good, and that he might guard it diligently with all care. For that reason he has a twofold perception and has knowledge of both, so that he might, with discernment, make choice of the better things. But how could he have the discernment of the good if he was ignorant of its contrary? For the understanding of things at hand is more secure and indubitable than conjecture that arises from guesswork. For example, as the tongue, through taste, experiences what sweet and bitter are; and the eye, through sight, discerns black from white; and the ear, through hearing, knows the difference in sounds; so too the mind, through experience of both kinds of knowledge, might receive discernment of the good and so be made more secure for its continuance, being obedient to God. By repentance, it would first cast away disobedience as something bitter and evil, then it would learn by grasping what it really means to be contrary to good and sweet, so that it would never attempt to taste disobedience to God. Now, if anyone should try to escape from this knowledge of both kinds, and also from the twofold perception of the knowledge, he, unawares, kills himself as a man.
2. How, then, can he be a God who has not yet been made a man? How can he be perfect who has but recently been created? How can he be immortal who in his mortal nature did not obey his Maker? It is a fact that you must first preserve the order of man and afterward partake of the glory of God. For you do not make God, but God makes you. So if you are the work of God, wait for the hand [God’s Word] of your Artificer, which will make all things in due time, as far as you are concerned who are created. Offer to him your heart pliable and docile, and guard the image according to which the Artificer patterned you since you have in yourself the Dew [the Spirit], that you may not become hardened and lose the traces of his fingers [the Word and the Spirit]. By guarding what has been fashioned, you will ascend to the Perfect One; for by God’s art the clay that is in you becomes hidden. His hand framed the substance in you. He will line you from within and from without with refined gold and silver and will adorn you so much that the King himself will be enamored of your beauty. If, on the contrary, you have become hardened immediately and reject his art and are ungrateful to him for having made you, since you have become ungrateful toward God, you have lost at the same time his art and his life. For it is proper to God’s kindness to make; but it is proper to man’s nature to be made. So if you give to him what is your own, namely, faith in him and subjection, you will receive his art and will be God’s perfect work.
3. If, on the contrary, you do not believe in him and flee from his hand, you will be the cause of imperfection in yourself—but not in him who called you—because you have not obeyed. For example, he sent those who should extend the invitation to the wedding; but those who did not obey him deprived themselves of the royal supper. God’s art, then, is not defective; for he has power to raise up children to Abraham from stones, but he who does not accept that art is the cause of his own imperfection. For light does not cease because of those who have blinded themselves, but it continues such as it is by nature, while those who have blinded themselves are placed in darkness through their own fault. Light will not subject anyone to itself necessarily; neither does God force anyone who does not wish to keep his art. So those who have apostatized from the Father’s light and have transgressed the law of freedom have apostatized through their own fault, since they had been created with free will and power of self-determination.
4. God, who has foreknowledge of all things, prepared fit dwellings for both classes. To those who search after the light of imperishability and return to it, he kindly grants the light they long for. But to the others who despised this light and turned themselves from it and flee from it and, so to say, blind themselves, he prepared darkness that is suitable to such as oppose the light; and those who flee from subjection to him he subjects to a suitable punishment. Now subjection to God is eternal rest so those who flee from the light will have a place deserving of their flight, and those who flee from the eternal rest will have a dwelling suitable to their flight. Now, since all good things are with God, those who of their own free will flee from God deprive themselves of all good things. And if they have been deprived of all good things in respect to God, consequently, they will fall into God’s just judgment. For these who flee from rest will justly spend their time in punishment; and those who flee from the light will justly dwell in darkness. Just as those who flee from material light enslave themselves in darkness, so that they themselves are the cause of their being deprived of light and of dwelling in darkness, and the light is not the cause of such a mode of living, as we have said, so those who flee from God’s eternal light, which contains in itself all good things, are themselves the cause of their dwelling in darkness. Having been deprived of all good things, they have become their own cause of such a dwelling.