Chapter 40. The One and Same God Rewards and Punishes.
Chapter 40
1. There is, then, one and the same God the Father who prepares the good things that are with himself for those who desire communion with him and persevere in submission to him. But he prepares eternal fire for the author of the apostasy, the Devil, and for the angels who apostatized with him. Into this fire, the Lord said, those who are separated on his left will be cast. The Prophet said the same thing, I am a jealous God. I make weal and create woe. He makes peace and friendship with, and brings into unity, those who repent and turn back to him. For those, however, who do not repent and who flee from his light, he prepares eternal fire and outer darkness—which are indeed evils for those who fall into them.
2. Now, if the Father who grants rest were really different from the God who prepares the fire, their sons, too, would be different. The one would send people into his Father’s kingdom; the other would send people into the eternal fire. But they are one and the same because the one and same Lord revealed that in the judgment the entire human race would be separated, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and since he will say to some, Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you; but he will say to the others, Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire, which my Father prepared for the devil and his angels. Thus, one and the same Father is most clearly manifested who makes weal and creates woe, preparing for both classes what is suitable, as one judge who sends both to their suitable places. This the Lord revealed in the parable of the cockle and the wheat, when he said: Therefore, just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and evildoers and throw them into the furnace of fire; there men will weep and gnash their teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. So the same Father who prepared the kingdom for the righteous into which his Son takes those who are worthy also prepared the furnace of fire into which the angels who were sent by the Son of Man at God’s command will send those who deserve it.
3. The Lord, in fact, sowed good seed in his field—for the field, he said, is the world; but when the men were asleep, the enemy came and sowed weeds among the grain and went away. Really, this angel and enemy has been a rebel since the day on which he envied God’s handiwork and attempted to make him God’s enemy. Wherefore, God in turn separated from fellowship with himself him who of his own accord secretly sowed weeds, that is, who introduced the transgression. He had pity, however, on man who negligently and wickedly took upon himself disobedience and turned back upon the author of the enmity that enmity by which he wished to make man God’s enemy. He did so by removing his own enmity against man and turning it back and putting it again against the Serpent. That is according to what the Scripture tells us God said to the Serpent: I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. He shall observe your head and you shall observe his heel. This enmity the Lord recapitulated in himself by being made man from woman, and by trampling on his [Serpent’s] head, as we have shown in the preceding Book.