Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Concerning the future judgment through Christ, the divine communion and separation, and the eternal punishments of the unbelieving.
For he came to "set a son apart from his father, a daughter against her mother, and a bride against her husband's mother"; and "of two sharing one bed, one shall be taken and the other left behind; and of two women turning the millstone together, one shall be taken and the other left"; and at the last he will order the reapers to first collect the weeds and "tie them into sheaves for burning in unquenchable fire," while bringing the grain itself into the storehouse; and he will summon the sheep into the realm made ready for them, while dispatching the goats to the everlasting fire "made ready for the devil and his messengers." For what does he say? "The Word arrived so that many might fall and many might rise" — the falling belonging to those who refuse to trust him, against whom he warned of a harsher sentence at the judgment than fell upon Sodom and Gomorrah; the rising belonging to those who trust him and carry out the will of the Father in the heavens. If, then, the Son's coming reaches everyone equally, yet is a coming that judges, separating the believing from the unbelieving — since believers embrace the Son's will freely, and unbelievers by their own free choice keep their distance from his teaching — then plainly the Father likewise treats everyone equally, each person retaining free choice and free judgment; yet he oversees and supplies for all, "causing his sun to shine on the wicked as well as the good, and pouring rain on the righteous together with the unrighteous."
And upon all who persevere in loving him, he confers fellowship with himself. Now fellowship with God amounts to living and shining, together with delight in every blessing found in him. But upon all who, of their own accord, withdraw from him, he lets fall the very separation from himself that they have chosen. For estrangement from God is dying, estrangement from radiance is gloom, and estrangement from God means forfeiting every blessing found in him. Those, then, who through falling away have squandered these things, stripped of every blessing, undergo punishment of every sort — not that God is the direct agent striking them, but rather punishment overtakes them precisely because every blessing has been stripped away. And since the blessings issuing from God are unending and eternal, their forfeiture is likewise unending and eternal; much as, with an overwhelming brightness, persons who have made themselves sightless, or been made sightless by others, are permanently shut out from delighting in that brightness — not because the brightness itself dealt them the misfortune of sightlessness, but because sightlessness itself dealt them the misfortune. For this reason the Lord declared: "Whoever trusts in me faces no condemnation" — meaning, is not cut off from God, since through faith he is joined to God. "But whoever refuses to trust," he continues, "stands condemned already," since he has withheld trust from the title of God's only-begotten Son — meaning, he has cut himself off from God by his own free decision. "And this is the condemnation: that radiance entered into this world, yet people preferred gloom to radiance. For everyone practicing wickedness detests the radiance and avoids approaching it, so his actions will not be laid bare. But whoever practices truth approaches the radiance, so that his actions may be shown plainly to have been accomplished in God." Concerning the divide between the devout and the wicked, the apostasy still to come under Antichrist, and the world's final consummation.