THEOSISJohn Chrysostom
“Who delivered us from the power of darkness.” This is the same as: “in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins,” ἐν ᾧ ἔχομεν τὴν ἀπολύτρωσιν, τὴν ἄφεσιν τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν.
For if our sins had not been forgiven, we would not have been transferred. Here again is “in whom.” He did not say λύτρωσιν, “release,” but ἀπολύτρωσιν, “redemption,” so that we should no longer fall and become dead.
But before we speak of this, we must finish the discourse. What, then, is this? Since we enjoy such a benefit, we must always remember it.
We must continually set before ourselves the gift of God and consider from what we have been delivered and what we have received. In this way we become thankful and increase love for God.
What are you saying, man? You are called to a kingdom, to the Kingdom of the Son of God, and you give yourself wholly to yawning, scratching, and sleeping?
Even if you had to undergo a thousand deaths every day, should you not endure everything? To obtain an influential position, you do everything.
But when you are to share in the Kingdom of the Only-begotten, will you not rush upon a thousand swords? Will you not cast yourself into fire?
Even this is not what is terrible. What is terrible is that, though you must depart, you weep. Being bound to the body, you lovingly move among the things here.
What is this? Do you count death itself a fearful thing? The cause is luxury and idleness. Whoever leads a life of sorrow would gladly put on wings and fly from here.
We are now in the condition of young birds weakened because they always wish to remain in the nest. The longer we stay here, the weaker we become.
Indeed, the present life is a nest made of straw and mud. Even if you point me to great buildings, even to royal palaces gleaming richly with gold and stones, I shall think them no different from a swallow’s nest.
When winter comes, all will fall of themselves. By winter I mean that day which will not be winter for all.
God calls that time both night and day: night for sinners, and day for the righteous. In this same sense I call that day winter.
If during summer we are not well nourished, so that when winter comes we can fly, our mothers will not take us. They will leave us to die of hunger, or to perish when the nest falls.
Then God, renewing all things and setting them in a new order, will destroy all things like a nest, only with greater ease than nests are destroyed.
Then those who are without feathers and cannot meet the Lord in the air will suffer what naturally befalls those in such a state. They were so poorly nourished that they did not receive light wings.
When a swallow’s nest falls, its young perish at once. But we shall not perish. We shall be under punishment forever.
That time will be winter, only harsher than winter. Then not streams of water, but rivers of fire will pour forth.
There will be no darkness from clouds, but darkness undispersed and impenetrable by light. One will not be able to see heaven or air.
One will feel greater confinement than those buried in the earth would feel. We often speak of this, but we do not persuade some.
It is no wonder that we, weak men, meet such unbelief when we speak of this. The prophets experienced the same when they spoke, not only of such things, but of war and captivity.
Zedekiah was reproved by Jeremiah, yet he was not ashamed. Therefore the prophets said: “Woe to those who say, ‘Let Him make haste, let Him speed His work, that we may see it. Let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw near and come, that we may know it!’” Is 5:18-19.
Let us not be amazed at this. Those who lived in the days of the ark did not believe. They believed when faith was no longer useful.
The people of Sodom did not expect it. They too believed when it no longer helped them.
But why do I speak of the future? Who expected what has now happened in various places? Who expected these earthquakes and the destruction of cities?
Yet this was more credible than the ark. How is that clear? Those people had no other example before their eyes and had not heard the Scriptures.
But among us there have been many such examples, both in your own times and before. From where, then, does unbelief in such things come?
From the slackness of the soul. They ate and drank, and therefore did not believe. What a man wants is what he thinks about and expects.
Those who say the contrary are counted as babblers. May the same not happen to us.
Now there will be neither a flood nor a punishment ending in death. Now the beginning of punishments is the death of those who do not believe that there will be judgment.
“But who has come from there and announced this?” you say. If you say such words in jest, even that is not good.
One must not jest about such things. We jest, not about playful matters, but about dangerous ones.
But if you truly are such a man and do not think there will be anything after this life, why do you call yourself a Christian? I am not speaking to non-Christians.
Why do you receive the font? Why do you enter the church? Do we promise you government offices? Our whole hope is in the future.
Why do you come forward if you do not believe the Scriptures, if you do not believe Christ? Being such, I will not merely say that you are not a Christian.
You are worse than the pagans. Why? Because, while acknowledging Christ as God, you do not believe God.
That impiety at least is consistent. Whoever does not think Christ is God necessarily does not believe Him.
But this impiety is not even consistent. It acknowledges Him as God and does not hold as trustworthy what He has said.
These are the words of drunkenness, luxury, and softness: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die,” 1 Cor 15:32. Not tomorrow; even when you say this, you are already dead.
Tell me, are we no different from pigs and asses? If there is no judgment, no recompense, no tribunal, then why have we been honored with such a gift as reason?
Why do we have all things subject to us? Why do we rule, and why are others subject to us?
See how the devil presses us from every side, in order to make us refuse to acknowledge God’s gift. He mixes slaves with masters.
Like a slave-dealer and an ungrateful servant, he tries to bring a noble man down to the same baseness as himself, the offender.
In appearance, he denies judgment. But by this the existence of God is denied. The devil is always like this.
He offers everything with craft, not openly, so that we may not be on guard. If there is no judgment, then, judging in human terms, God is unjust.
If God is unjust, then He is not God. And if He is not God, everything at once collapses. There is neither virtue nor vice.
Yet he says none of this plainly. Do you see the thought of a satanic spirit? He wants to turn men into irrational beings, or rather into beasts, and still better into demons.
Therefore let us not believe him. There is a judgment, pitiable and wretched man!
I know where you come from when you speak like this. You have many sins, and you have committed many wrongs.
You do not dare speak openly. You think that the nature of things will follow your words.
“For the time being,” you say, “I will not grieve my soul by expecting Gehenna. Even if there is a Gehenna, I will try to persuade myself that there is not. Meanwhile, I will enjoy myself here.”
Why do you add sins to sins? If, after sinning, you believe there is a Gehenna, you will depart cleansed from sins only by punishment.
But when you add this impiety also, you will undergo the utmost torment, both for the impiety itself and for this thought.
In that case, the cold consolation that flattered you briefly will become for you the cause of unending torment.
Suppose you yourself have sinned in this way. Why do you dispose others to sin by saying there is no Gehenna?
Why do you deceive the simple? Why do you weaken the hands of the people? According to you, everything is turned upside down.
The zealous will not become more zealous, and the careless and the evil will not desist from evil. If we corrupt others, our sins will not be forgiven us.
Do you not see how the devil intended to overthrow Adam? Was he forgiven for this? It became the occasion of greater punishment.
For this reason he arranges his snares so that we may bear punishment, not only for our own sins, but also for the sins of others.
Let us not think that by bringing others into the same destruction as ourselves we shall make the tribunal milder toward us. On the contrary, it will become harsher.
Why should we push ourselves and destroy ourselves? All this is satanic work.
Have you sinned, man? You have a man-loving Master. Entreat Him, ask, weep, groan, frighten others, and persuade them not to fall into the same sins.
If some rough servant in a house says to his son, “Child, I have offended the master. Try to please him, so that the same thing may not happen to you,” tell me, will he not prepare some forgiveness for himself?
Will he not break the master’s anger and incline him? But suppose he leaves these words aside and says something like this: “My master does not repay each according to his due.
Everything with him is simply mixed together, good and evil. In this house there is no gratitude to be found.” What, in your opinion, will the master think of him?
Will he not subject him to still greater punishment for his faults? And justly so. In the first case, the disturbance of soul will serve as an excuse, though a weak one.
In the second, there is nothing. Therefore imitate, if no one else, at least the rich man in Gehenna, who says: “Father, send Lazarus to my relatives, so that they too may not come to this place,” Lk 16:27-28.
He himself could not go. Let us refrain from those satanic words.
“But what if pagans ask us?” you say. “Will you not want to help them?” Under the guise of concern for a pagan, you throw a Christian into perplexity and wish to confirm satanic teaching.
Though you yourself have not been persuaded by it, you want, through conversation with one soul, to bring in others as witnesses.
If one must speak with a pagan, the conversation should not begin from this, but from this point: whether Christ is God and the Son of God, and whether the demons they confess are gods.
As soon as this is examined, everything else follows of itself. Before the beginning has been set forth, we would speak about the end in vain.
Before the elements are known, it is needless and foolish to approach the conclusion. The pagan does not believe in judgment, and he is in the same condition as you.
For he too knows many who philosophized about this. Although they spoke of a man who had separated his body from his soul, they nevertheless admitted a tribunal.
The clarity of this matter seemed so strong that almost no one was unaware of it. Even the poets knew it, and all agreed about both the tribunal and the judgment.
Thus the pagan does not disbelieve his own teachers, nor does the Jew doubt this, nor, in general, does any man. Why, then, do we deceive ourselves?
You speak to me. What will you say to God, who has fashioned the heart of each of us separately, who knows everything in the mind, who lives and acts, and pierces more deeply than any two-edged sword?
Tell me honestly: do you not acknowledge within yourself that you sin? Is there any man in the world who does not blame himself for laziness?
How, then, did such great wisdom arise by itself, that the sinner accuses himself? This is a work of great wisdom.
You accuse yourself. But has the One who gave you such a mind left everything to chance?
Let this, then, be a universal rule and definition: no man who lives virtuously, whether he be pagan or heretic, disbelieves this word about judgment.
No man who moves in the greatest evil, except a few, accepts the word about resurrection. The Psalmist says this too: “Thy judgments are far from him.”
Why? Because “his ways are always corrupt,” Ps 9:26. “Let us eat,” he says, “and drink, for tomorrow we die,” 1 Cor 15:32.
Do you see that such speech belongs to low men? These words that deny the resurrection arise from food and drink.