The Instructor 1.8.62–1.8.74

Here some attack us, saying that the Lord is not good because of the rod and the threat and the fear. They have not listened, it seems, to the Scripture when it says, “And whoever fears the Lord will turn to his heart,” and they have forgotten the greatest proof of his love for humankind: that he became man for our sake. And indeed the prophet prays to him more intimately in these words: “Remember us, that we are dust,” that is, sympathize with us, since you have experienced in your own person the weakness of the flesh. In this the Lord, the Instructor, is best and blameless: out of his surpassing love for humankind, he has sympathized with the nature of each human being. “For there was nothing that the Lord hates.” For surely he does not hate something and yet will that what he hates should exist; nor does he will something not to exist and yet become the cause of its existence, though he wills it not to exist; nor does he will something not to exist, and yet it exists. If, then, the Word hates something, he wills it not to exist; but nothing exists to which God does not give the cause of its existence; so nothing is hated by God. Nor by the Word; for both are one, God, since it says, “In the beginning the Word was in God, and the Word was God.”

If he hates nothing of what he has made, it remains that he loves it. Much more than the rest, naturally, he will love the human being, the most beautiful of his creatures and a creature that loves God. God, then, loves humankind; the Word, then, loves humankind. And the one who loves something wishes to benefit it; what benefits is surely better than what does not benefit; and nothing is better than the good; so the good benefits. God is acknowledged to be good; so God benefits. And the good, insofar as it is good, does nothing else than benefit; so God benefits all things. And surely he does not benefit the human being without caring for him, nor care for him without taking care of him. For what benefits intentionally is better than what does not benefit intentionally, and nothing is better than God. And benefiting intentionally is nothing else than taking care [of the human being]; so God cares for and takes care of the human being. This he shows in deed by instructing him through the Word, who is the true fellow champion of God's love for humankind.

The good is not said to be good by having virtue, just as justice is not said to be good by having virtue (for it is itself virtue), but by being good in and of itself. In another sense, what is advantageous is also called good, not by giving pleasure but by benefiting. Justice is all these: it is good both as virtue and as desirable for its own sake, and as not giving pleasure; for it does not judge to win favor, but assigns to each what he deserves, and benefit follows what is advantageous. In all the respects, then, in which the good is examined, justice too is characterized, both sharing equally in the same qualities; and things characterized by the same qualities are equal and alike to one another; so justice is good. “How then,” they say, “if the Lord loves humankind and is good, is he angry and does he punish?” We must deal with this too, as briefly as possible. For such a plan is in some way profitable for the right upbringing of children, holding the place of a necessary aid. Many passions are healed by punishment, and by the enjoining of sterner precepts, and also by the teaching of certain principles.

Reproof is like surgery on the passions of the soul; the passions are an abscess of the truth, which must be laid open by cutting. Rebuke is like a medicine, dissolving the callouses of the passions, cleansing the filth of life, the lusts, and smoothing down the proud flesh of arrogance, restoring the human being to health and truth. Admonition, then, is like the diet of a sick soul, advising what one must take and forbidding what one must not; and all these aim at salvation and eternal health. A general too, when he imposes fines on wrongdoers, and bodily punishments with chains and the utmost disgrace, and sometimes even punishes some with death, has the good as his aim, acting as general for the correction of those under him. In the same way that great general of ours, the Word, the ruler of all things, admonishing those who throw off the reins of his law, to free them from slavery and error and captivity to the adversary, and to calm the passions of the soul, leads them to the holy concord of the commonwealth.

Just as the hortatory and consoling kind of speech belongs to deliberative speech, so the reproaching and rebuking kind belongs to the speech of praise [and praising]. This kind is an art of censure; and censure is a sign of goodwill, not of hatred. Both friend and enemy reproach, but the enemy mocks, while the friend means well. So the Lord does not revile human beings out of hatred; though he could have destroyed them for their own faults, he even suffered for us. For as a good Instructor, very skillfully, he takes on censure through rebuke, rousing the sluggishness of the mind with reproach as with a whip, and then in turn tries to encourage the same people. Those whom praise did not encourage, blame has spurred on; and those whom blame did not call out to salvation, as if they were dead, reproach raises up to the truth. “For whips and discipline are at every time wisdom. He who teaches a fool glues together a potsherd,” it says, bringing the earth to feeling and sharpening the despairing to understanding. So it clearly added, “rousing a sleeper from deep sleep,” which of all things is most like death. And the Lord himself shows this most clearly of himself, speaking figuratively of his many-sided and most beneficial care, when he said, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser,” and then added, “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that bears fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” For an unpruned vine runs wild with wood, and so does a human being; the Word, the knife, prunes his wanton shoots, compelling his desires to bear fruit, not to lust.

Reprimand of sinners aims at salvation, the Word adjusting himself musically to each person's character, now tightening, now loosening the strings. It is said most clearly through Moses: “Take heart; God has come to test you, so that his fear may be in you and you may not sin.” Plato, who learned from this, says well: “All who pay a penalty truly suffer what is good; for they are benefited, since their soul becomes better when they are justly punished.” If those who are corrected suffer good at the hands of the just one, even according to Plato, the just one is admitted to be good. Fear itself benefits and has been found out for the good of human beings, since “the spirit of those who fear the Lord will live; for their hope is in him who saves them.”

This same Word who imposes punishment is judge; of him Isaiah says, “The Lord gave him up for our sins,” evidently as the corrector and director of sins. That is why he alone can forgive offenses, appointed by the Father of all as our Instructor, he alone who is able to distinguish disobedience from obedience. One who threatens clearly does not wish to do any evil or to carry out his threats; but by putting us in fear he checks the rush toward sins and shows his love for humankind, delaying still and making plain what they will suffer if they remain sinners, and not, like a snake, fastening on at once and biting. God, then, is good. And the Lord uses words for many things before the deed: “My arrows,” he says, “will finish them off: wasting with hunger and the devouring of birds, and incurable spasm; I will send the teeth of beasts against them, with the fury of things crawling on the earth. Outside the sword will make them childless, and fear within the chambers.” So the Divine is not angry, as some have thought; but most things are threatened, while in all things he has admonished humanity and shown what must be done. This is a good art, to frighten us so that we may not sin: “For the fear of the Lord drives away sins, and the one without fear cannot be justified,” says the Scripture.

God does not inflict punishment out of anger, but looks to justice, since it is not good that justice be neglected for our sake. Each of us chooses his punishments himself, sinning willingly: “The blame is the chooser's; God is blameless.” “But if our unrighteousness shows the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unjust, who inflicts wrath? By no means.” Threatening, he says: “I will sharpen my sword, and my hand will take hold of judgment, and I myself will render justice to my enemies and repay those who hate me; I will make my arrows drunk with blood, and my sword will eat flesh with the blood of the wounded.” For it is clear here that those who are not at enmity with the truth and do not hate the Word would not hate their own salvation, and would escape the penalties of enmity. “The crown of wisdom, then,” as Wisdom says, “is the fear of the Lord.” Most clearly the Word has declared his own plan through the prophet Amos, saying: “I overthrew you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you became like a brand plucked from the fire; and even so

you did not turn back to me, says the Lord.” You see how God, out of love for the good, seeks repentance, and quietly shows his love for humankind alongside the plan of threatening. “I will turn my face away from them,” he says, “and show what will become of them.” For where the face of the Lord looks, there is peace and rejoicing; but where it has turned away, wickedness creeps in. He does not wish to look on evils, for he is good; but when he willingly overlooks them, wickedness comes to be through human unbelief. “See, then,” says Paul, “the kindness and severity of God: severity toward those who fell, but kindness toward you, if you continue in his kindness,” that is, in faith in Christ. Hatred of wickedness goes with the good, since he is good by nature. So I would admit that he punishes the unbelieving (for punishment is for the good and benefit of the one punished, being correction of one who resists), but not that he wills to take vengeance. Vengeance is a repaying of evil directed to the advantage of the one taking vengeance. He who teaches us to pray for those who mistreat us would not desire to take vengeance.

That God is good, all admit, even against their will. That the same God is also just, I need no more words to show, once I have set down the Lord's saying in the Gospel. He calls him one: “that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be one in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me. And the glory which you have given me I have given them, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me, that they may be made perfect in one.” God is one, and beyond the one, and above the Monad itself. So also the word “you,” having demonstrative force, points out God, the only one who truly is, “who was and is and will be,” for whom, in the three tenses, the one name “He who is” is set. That the same God who alone is is also just, the Lord will bear witness in the same Gospel, saying: “Father, I want those whom you have given me to be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which you have given me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you, and these have known that you sent me; and I have made your name known to them, and will make it known.” This is he “who visits the sins of the fathers on the children of those who hate him, and shows mercy to those who love him.” For he who sets some on the right hand and others on the left, insofar as he is understood as Father, being good, is called by that alone which he is, good; but insofar as, being Son, his Word is in the Father, he is called just, † a name of power measured by equality, from their relation of love to each other.

“He will judge a man according to his works,” it says, God having made Jesus known to us as the face of a good balance [of justice], through whom we have known God as by an evenly balanced scale. Of him Wisdom also says expressly, “For mercy and wrath are with him”; for he alone is Lord of both: “mighty in forgiveness, pouring out wrath; as great as his mercy, so great also is his reproof.” For the aim of both mercy and reproof is the salvation of those reproved. And that “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus” is himself good, the same Word will again confess, “for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked,” and further, when he says, “Be merciful, as your Father is merciful”; and also when he says expressly, “No one is good but my Father who is in heaven.” Besides these he says again, “My Father makes his sun shine on all.” It should be noted here that he confesses his own Father to be the good one and the Creator; and that the Creator is just is not disputed. And again, “My Father sends rain on the just and the unjust.”

Insofar as he sends rain, he is the Creator of waters and clouds; insofar as it is on all, he holds the balance justly and † of virtue; and as good, on the just and the unjust alike. Most clearly, then, we conclude that God is one and the same, as follows. The Holy Spirit sang, “I will see the heavens, the works of your fingers,” and “He who created the heavens dwells in the heavens,” and “Heaven is your throne”; and the Lord says in the prayer, “Our Father who are in the heavens.” But the heavens belong to him who created the world. It is beyond dispute, then, that the Lord is the Son of the Creator. And if the Creator is admitted by all to be just, and the Lord is the Son of the Creator, then the Lord is the Son of the Just. That is why Paul says, “But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been manifested,” and again, so that you may better understand God, “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, for all who believe; for there is no distinction”; and, bearing further witness to the truth, he adds a little later: “in the forbearance of God, to show that he is just and justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.”

And he clearly knows that the just is good when he says, “So the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good,” setting both names under the same power. And “no one knows the Son but the Father”; the same, then, is his Father, who is one, indicated by many powers. And this was the meaning of “no one knew the Father,” who is all these, before the Son came. So it is truly evident that the God of all things is one only: good, just, Creator, the Son in the Father; to whom be glory forever [and ever], amen. Nor is it foreign to the saving Word to rebuke out of care. For this too is a medicine of divine love for humankind, from which the blush of modesty blooms and shame at sinning creeps in. For if one must censure, one must also rebuke, when it is time to wound the callous soul, not mortally but savingly, escaping eternal death at the cost of a little pain. Great is the wisdom of his instruction, and varied the manner of his plan for salvation. For the Instructor bears witness to the good, calls out the called to better things, turns those eager to do wrong from their impulse, and urges them to change to a better life. Neither is without witness when the other is attested, and the grace from witness is very great; but even the passion of wrath, if we must call his admonition wrath, is loving, since God descends to passions for the sake of the human being, for whose sake the Word of God also became man.