Question 61. "For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God. And if it begins first with us, what will be the end of those who do not obey the Gospel of God? And if the righteous man is scarcely saved, where will the ungodly and the sinner appear?" (1 Pet 4:17-18). What do the words mean: "the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God," and "if the righteous man is scarcely saved"?
Answer. When God created the nature of human beings, He did not create sensory pleasure or sensory pain together with it. Rather, He established in the mind of this nature a certain power for spiritual delight. Through this power man could ineffably taste His sweetness continually.
This power is the movement of the mind toward God, in accordance with nature. The first man, as soon as he was created, handed it over to sense. Then he used this power to make the first movement toward sensible things. Through sense he acquired pleasure, activated contrary to nature.
Therefore the One who cares for and provides for our salvation implanted another power in human nature, like a chastiser, namely pain. In accordance with this pain, He wisely rooted in the body's nature the law of death. Thus He set limits to the mind's irrational impulse, which moves contrary to nature toward sensible things.
Because pleasure entered human nature in contradiction to its inner principle, pain in accordance with that principle was set against it. Through this pain, by means of sufferings, in which and from which death arises, pleasure contrary to nature is destroyed.
Yet pleasure itself is not destroyed altogether. For when pleasure contrary to nature is destroyed, the grace of divine delight is revealed in the mind.
Since every hardship has as the cause of its origin pleasure actualized in deed, this hardship is, for that reason, a natural debt. All who share in human nature are obliged to pay it. For hardship necessarily and naturally follows pleasure contrary to nature in all those for whom the law of pleasure preceded birth without a cause.
By "without a cause" I mean pleasure that arose through transgression of the commandment and did not follow a previous hardship. Therefore, after the transgression of the commandment, pleasure precedes the natural birth of all men. There has been no man who by nature was free from this passionate birth.
As is necessary, all naturally pay for this pleasure by hardships, and after them undergo death. There was absolutely no available way of deliverance for those under the tyrannical dominion of unrighteous pleasure. They were also naturally under the power of the just hardships that arose from this pleasure, and of the still more just death following them.
This death was necessary for the destruction of the most unrighteous pleasure and of the most just hardships that arose from it. Suffering man was torn apart by these hardships. He began his birth, in accordance with pleasure, in corruption, and ended his life also in corruption through death.
For the correction of suffering nature, it seems that hardship and death had to be devised which were at once unjust and without cause. They were without cause because they had no preceding pleasure at their origin. They were unjust because they did not follow any passionate life.
Thus, placed between unrighteous pleasure and the most just hardship and death, the most unjust hardship and death would destroy both extremes. They would destroy the most unrighteous beginning of nature that arose from pleasure. They would also destroy the most just end of nature, which occurs through death arising from pleasure.
Thus the human race would again become free from pleasure and pain. It would receive back the original blessed lot of its nature, undefiled by any of the marks implanted in it by blameworthy origin and corruption.
For this reason God the Word, being by nature perfect God, became by nature perfect man. He consisted of a rational soul and a body subject to suffering. In other words, He became a man like us in all things, except sin.
Yet He in no way had any pleasure arising from the transgression of the commandment, which would have preceded His birth in time from a Woman. At the same time, voluntarily and in His love for mankind, He accepted the pain that is the consequence of pleasure and the end of nature.
He did this so that, by suffering unjustly, He might destroy the beginning of birth that came from unrighteous pleasure and tyrannically ruled human nature. The death of the Lord was not a debt paid to this beginning for pleasure, as in the case of other men. On the contrary, it became a weapon directed against it.
Through His death the Lord destroyed the just end of human nature. He did not possess that pleasure through which death entered the world. Thus, through Him, lawless pleasure is justly punished as the cause of the existence of mankind's fallen state.
For it was fitting, and truly fitting, that the Lord, being by nature Wise, Just, and Strong, should not be ignorant, as Wise, of the manner of man's healing. As Just, He should not tyrannically compel man to salvation, since man had been captured by sin through his own free will. As Almighty, He should not grow weak in accomplishing man's healing.
Therefore He revealed the principle of His Wisdom in the manner of healing, by becoming man without alteration or any change. He revealed the impartiality of His justice in the greatness of His condescension. He voluntarily clothed Himself in our nature condemned to suffering, and made this very condemnation a weapon for destroying sin.
After sin, He destroyed death also, that is, pleasure and the pain arising from it. In these lay the power of sin and death: the tyranny of sin corresponding to pleasure, and the dominion of death corresponding to pain.
It is clear that the power of pleasure and pain is contained in the passibility of nature. Wishing to avoid the grievous sensation of pain, we take refuge in pleasure, trying to console nature oppressed by the violence of pain.
In our intense concern to dull the movements of pain with pleasure, we merely sign our own weakness. We draw pleasure against these movements, since we cannot separate pleasure from pain and hardships.
The Lord, however, manifested the might of His superabundant Power. He effected for human nature a birth into eternal life, unchangeable and inaccessible to the opposites from which He Himself suffered. He restored human nature again, granting it dispassion through His sufferings, rest through His hardships, and eternal life through His death.
By His privations according to the flesh, He renewed the original possessions of our nature. By His Incarnation He bestowed on this nature the supernatural grace of deification.
Therefore God truly became Man and bestowed on human nature the beginning of a second birth. This birth leads through hardship to the delight of the life to come.
Our forefather Adam transgressed the divine commandment and formed another birth, one originating from pleasure. Instead of the first birth, he introduced into nature one that, through hardship, ends in death.
On the serpent's counsel, he devised a pleasure that did not follow a preceding hardship, but rather ended in hardship. Therefore all born from him according to the flesh are justly brought with him to the common end. Because of this unrighteous beginning, which arose from pleasure, they are brought to death through hardship.
So also the Lord, having become Man, created for human nature another beginning of a second birth from the Holy Spirit. He accepted the most just death of Adam through hardship. In Him it became, of course, most unjust, since the beginning of His own birth was not the most unrighteous pleasure arising from the disobedience of our forefather.
The Lord destroyed both extremes. I mean the beginning and the end of human birth, which originally did not exist from God. He made all who are spiritually reborn by Him free from the guilt lying upon them.
Though they come from Adam, they no longer possess the pleasure of birth that comes from him. They possess only the pain that arose because of Adam. This pain operates in them not as a debt for sin, but by divine economy and because of the natural condition that befell them. It operates against sin; that is, they possess death alone.
This death does not have as its mother the pleasure that begot it. Rather, it became the chastiser of that pleasure. This death most certainly becomes the father of eternal life. For as Adam's life, in accordance with pleasure, became the mother of death and corruption, so the Lord's death for Adam, being free from pleasure, became the begetter of eternal life.
Therefore, as I understand it, the Word of God rightly distinguishes two things. First, the birth through pleasure from Adam tyrannically ruling human nature nourishes the death that arose from it. Second, the Lord's birth according to the flesh, which came about through God's love for mankind, destroys both pleasure from Adam and death for Adam. Together with Adam's sin, it annihilates his punishment.
For it was impossible that a birth untouched by the cause whose final consequence was death should be condemned to corruption through death at the end. Since, as I have said, the Word of God distinguishes these things, one may understand that as long as only Adam's marks at the beginning and end tyrannically ruled human nature, the time for the perfect condemnation of sin could not come. These marks were birth and corruption.
But He who appeared to us through flesh became perfect man, except for sin alone. He is the Word of God. In Adam's flesh, by His own will alone, He had by nature only the punishment. The Righteous One, who suffered innocently for the unrighteous, condemned sin in the flesh.
He overthrew the custom of death by accomplishing this condemnation of sin, but not a condemnation of nature. After death had been turned back, the time came for judgment to begin, so that sin might be finally condemned.
What, then, are we speaking about? We speak of sin, which from the beginning deceived Adam and persuaded him to transgress the divine commandment. Through this transgression sin established pleasure. Through pleasure it drove itself into the very foundation of Adam's nature. In this way it condemned all nature to death, driving, through man, the nature of those brought into being toward disappearance in death.
This was contrived by the seed of sin and father of evil, the wicked devil. Through pride he deprived himself of abiding in the divine glory. Through envy toward us and toward God, he drove Adam out of paradise, so as to destroy the works of God and tear apart what had been formed for being.
For the most defiled one envies not only us, because of the ascetic virtue we acquire, which grants us glory in God. He also envies God Himself, because of His Power, praised by all, which acts for our salvation.
Death, reigning because of the transgression of the commandment, ruled over all human nature. It had as the foundation of its power the pleasure arising from transgression, which began all natural birth. Because of this pleasure, death itself was appointed as punishment for human nature.
The Lord, having become Man, did not assume the unrighteous pleasure that preceded His birth according to the flesh. Because of this pleasure, the just sentence of death had been pronounced against human nature. Rather, He voluntarily accepted natural death itself into the passible beginning of His human nature.
He did suffer death, but He turned back the custom of death. In Him, as is entirely clear, this custom was not a condemnation of nature, but a condemnation of sin. For in Him who was not born of pleasure, death could not be a condemnation of nature. It could only be the destruction of the forefather's sin, through which the fear of death ruled human nature.
THEOSIS