Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
What the knowledge of good and evil is; and how, after man had heard the command and disobeyed it, God ordained that man should become better through obedience.
Now man came into possession of the knowledge of good and evil. To obey God, to trust him, and to hold fast his commandment — this is good, and this constitutes man's life. Conversely, disobedience toward God is an evil, and this brings about his death. Because God, then, granted him this greatness of soul, man came to know both the good of obedience and the evil of disobedience, so that the eye of his mind, having received experience of both, might make the choice of the better with judgment, and might never become slothful or negligent of God's precept — learning by experience that what takes life away from him, namely not obeying God, is evil, and never attempting it at all; and that what preserves his life, namely obeying God, is good, and diligently keeping it with his whole intent, knowing that it is good. For this reason also he had two senses, possessing knowledge of both, so that he might make the choice of the better with discipline. But how could he have had the discipline of the good, without knowing what is contrary to it? For the grasp of things directly present is firmer and beyond doubt, compared to that which comes by conjecture and supposition. For just as the tongue receives, through taste, the experience of sweet and bitter, and the eye, through sight, discerns black from white, and the ear, through hearing, knows the differences of sounds, so too the mind, receiving the discipline of the good through the experience of both, is made firmer for its own preservation, obedient to God — first rejecting disobedience through repentance, because it is bitter and evil; and then, by understanding what it is that is contrary to the good and to sweetness, never even attempting to taste the disobedience of God. But if anyone flees from the knowledge of both of these, and from the twofold sense of that knowledge, he unknowingly destroys the man within himself.
How, then, will he be God, who has not yet even become man? How will he be perfect, who has only just been made? How will he be immortal, seeing that in his mortal state he did not obey his Maker? For you must first keep the order proper to man, and only then share in the glory of God. For you do not make God; rather, God makes you. If, then, you are the work of God, wait for the hand of your artificer, who makes all things in due season — in due season, that is, as far as concerns you who are being made. Present to him a heart that is soft and pliable, and keep the form in which the artificer has shaped you, having within yourself the moisture he gave you, lest, hardened, you lose the imprint of his fingers. By preserving this framework you will ascend to perfection, for the clay that is in you is hidden by the artistry of God. His hand fashioned your substance; he will overlay you, inside and out, with gold and silver refined and pure, and will adorn you so greatly that the King himself will desire your beauty. But if you immediately harden yourself and reject his art, and become ungrateful toward him — since, having been made man, you become ungrateful to God — you have at once lost both his art and life. For to make is proper to the kindness of God; to be made is proper to the nature of man. If, then, you hand over to him what is yours, that is, faith in him and submission, you will receive his art, and will be the perfect work of God. But if you do not believe him, and flee his hands, the cause of your imperfection will lie in you, who did not obey, not in him who called you. For he sent word inviting people to the wedding feast; but those who refused to heed him thereby forfeited that royal banquet for themselves.
The art of God, then, does not fail; for he is able to raise up children of Abraham from stones. But whoever does not attain that art is himself the cause of his own imperfection. Nor does the light fail on account of those who have blinded themselves; rather, the light remaining what it is, those who have been blinded through their own fault are set in darkness. Neither will the light, by any great necessity, subject anyone to itself — God will not force one who is unwilling to hold fast to his art. Those, then, who have withdrawn from the Father's light and transgressed the law of freedom have done so through their own fault, having been made by their own free will and their own power. But God, foreknowing all things, prepared fitting dwellings for both: for those who seek the light of incorruptibility and turn to it, kindly granting them the light they desire; but for others, who despise it and turn away from it and flee it, and who thereby blind themselves as it were — for these he has prepared a darkness fitted to those who set themselves against the light, and has subjected those who flee from being subject to him to a fitting punishment. Now subjection to God is eternal rest; so that those who flee the light have a place fitting to their flight, and those who flee eternal rest have a dwelling fitting to their flight. Since all things with God are good, those who by their own choice flee God rob themselves of all good things; and once stripped of all the good things that come from God, they consequently fall under God's just judgment. For those who flee rest will justly dwell in punishment, and those who flee the light will justly dwell in darkness. And just as with this light of the present age, those who shun it consign themselves to darkness, so that they themselves become the cause of being deprived of light and dwelling in darkness, and it is not the light itself that causes such a condition for them, as we have already said — so too, in the case of God's eternal light, which contains in itself all good things, those who flee it are themselves the cause of dwelling in eternal darkness, deprived of all good things, having made themselves the cause of such a dwelling. What, then, is meant by what was said through the prophet: 'I am God, a zealous God, making peace and creating evils'? There is, then, one selfsame God, the Father, who prepares good things for those who desire fellowship with him and persevere in subjection to him; but who prepares eternal fire for the prince of apostasy, the devil, and for the angels who apostatized with him — into which fire, the Lord says, those who are set apart on the left hand will be sent. And this is what was said through the prophet: 'I am God, a zealous God, making peace and creating evils' — making peace and friendship and forming unity for those who repent and turn to him, but preparing eternal fire and outer darkness for those who do not repent but flee his light — things which are indeed evils for those who bring them upon themselves. [Chapter title:] A demonstration that it is not one being, the Father, who grants rest, and a different being, God, who has prepared the fire, but one and the same.
But if the one who grants rest were the Father, and a separate being, God, the one who prepared the fire, then the offspring of each would likewise differ from one another — one sending people into the Father's kingdom, the other into eternal fire. But since it is one and the same Lord who declared he would separate the whole human race in judgment, just as a shepherd separates the goats from the sheep, and will say to some, 'Come, you blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you,' and to others, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which my Father prepared for the devil and his angels' — it is most clearly shown that it is one and the same Father who makes peace and creates evils, preparing for both what is fitting for each; just as it is one and the same judge who sends both parties to their fitting place. The Lord likewise made this plain through his parable about the tares sown among the wheat, when he said: 'Just as the tares are collected and consumed by fire, so too will it happen when this age reaches its close. The Son of Man will dispatch his angels, and out of his kingdom they will gather everything that causes offense, along with those who practice lawlessness, and will throw them into the blazing furnace; there will be weeping and the grinding of teeth. Then the righteous will blaze forth like the sun within their Father's kingdom.' That very one, then, who as Father made ready the kingdom belonging to the righteous — the kingdom into which the Son led those found worthy — is the same one who likewise made ready the fiery furnace, the place into which those angels sent by the Son of Man, acting on God's command, will throw those who deserve it. For it is he who sowed the good seed within his field; and that field, as he says, represents the world. Yet during the hours when people lay sleeping, the enemy arrived and scattered tares among the wheat, then departed. For from that time this angel became an apostate and an enemy, ever since he grew jealous of God's creature and set about making him God's enemy. Therefore God separated from his own fellowship the one who secretly sowed the tares — that is, the transgression which he himself brought about; but on the man who accepted disobedience carelessly, though wrongly, God had mercy, and turned back upon the very author of the enmity the hostility which that one had wished to create between man and God — removing his own enmity, which was against man, and turning it back and directing it instead against the serpent. As Scripture records God's word to the serpent: 'Enmity I will establish between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will lie in wait for his heel.' And the Lord took up this enmity into himself, having been made man of a woman, and bruising its head, as we showed in the book before this one. Since he identifies some of the devil's angels as those for whom eternal fire has been prepared, and again, within his parable of the tares, states that 'the tares are the sons of the evil one,' it must be concluded that he attributes all who belong to the apostasy to him who is the prince behind this transgression. But that one did not, by nature, make either angels or men. For the devil is found to have made nothing at all, since he himself is a creature of God, just as the rest of the angels are. For God made all things, as David likewise affirms concerning all such things: 'He spoke, and it came to be; he gave the command, and it stood created.'