Chapter 27. In the Future Judgment by Christ, Some People Will Be Separated from God, Others Will Be United with Him.
Chapter 27
1. If, then, the Father does not judge, either judgment is not his right or he approves all things that happen. Now, if he does not judge, all persons will be equal and will be classed in the same state. In that case, Christ’s coming will be useless, even contradictory, since he does not judge. For he has come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and, when there will be two men in one bed, to take one and to leave the other; and, where there will be two women grinding at the mill, to take one and to leave the other; and, at the end to give orders to the harvesters to gather up the weeds first, bind them in bundles and burn them with unquenchable fire, but to gather the wheat into the barn; and, to call the lambs into the kingdom that has been made ready, but to throw the goats into the eternal fire prepared by his Father for the devil and his angels.
And why that? The Word came for the fall and the rising of many. Yes, for the fall of those who do not believe him, whom he has threatened with even greater punishment in the judgment than the Sodomites and Gomorrhites, but for the rising of those who believe and do the will of his Father who is in heaven. If, then, the Son’s coming is to all in the same manner, but if he judges and separates the believers and the unbelievers—since the ones believe by free choice and do the Father’s will, while the others are disobedient by free choice and do not accept his teaching—it is evident that his Father, too, made all of them alike, each one having self-determination and free choice. For he has regard for all things and provides for all: He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
2. Therefore, he bestows communion with himself on all who preserve their love for him. But communion with God means life and light and enjoyment of the good things that are with him. On the contrary, he will establish the separation which they have chosen of themselves, having of their own choice rebelled against him. But separation from God is death, and separation from light is darkness; and the separation from God is loss of all good things that are from him. Hence, those who by rebellion have lost the things mentioned, since they are deprived of all good things, experience every punishment. God himself did not originally punish them, but punishment followed them because they deprived themselves of all good things. On the other hand, the good things that are from God are eternal and endless; and for that reason also their loss is eternal and endless. To illustrate, those who were in the endless light but have blinded themselves or have been blinded by others are always deprived of the joy of light, not because the light brought them the punishment of blindness, but because blindness itself brings the calamity on them. For this reason the Lord said, he who believes in me, is not condemned; that is, is not separated from God, for he is united with God by faith. He who does not believe, he adds, is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the Only-begotten Son of God; that is, he separated himself from God by his own free choice. And this is the judgment that the light has come into the world, and men have loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does what is true comes to the light that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God.