The Fall of Man and the Judgment of Nations

He will show no partiality in judgment; you will judge both the great and the small (Ps 81:5); one will not show partiality, for such is the judgment of God. For it is necessary for the judge to know what he serves in the judgment of God. Therefore it is also well said, that God stands in the assembly of these gods and judges them in their midst (Ps 81:5), as those knowing Him in them and in their midst, according to His own purpose.

If indeed they are gods who change their divinity, since they prove to be turnable, how can one judge injustice? For having an intermediate law by which it is possible to know the good to be chosen and the evil to be avoided, if they come to things in a way that turns away from the good and embraces the evil, you judge injustice; therefore you also take the faces of sinners, hiding your own faces which are according to the image of God. Judge the orphan, who has been left desolate by the father entrusted to guardianship, but also the poor man who does not wish to contend with his own righteous ones; but also bring out the laborer and the poor, being oppressed, rescuing them from the grasping sinners.

But it is also said to those who have been made divine according to virtue, how they judge worthily the one who has cast off the worthless father and the wealth of wickedness, in protection through discipline toward them. And let them also justify the one made lowly and poor through blindness, because he has come to toil for the sake of piety, excluding those who are not truly poor and needy, on account of making them do the work of a sinner by a hand outside of them.

The divine knowledge, being wisdom of God, shines and enlightens the one having it; for the wisdom of man enlightens his face (Prov 1:5), and those called toward divine knowledge have the command to enlighten for themselves the light of knowledge. If then the wise according to God happen to be enlightened, those who are contrary, being filled with ignorance and unreasonableness, wander in darkness, always progressing in evils.

But since, having become accustomed to evils and having embedded the first things of wickedness, they have not only become earthly due to their material existence, but they also wished the foundations of the earth to be, remaining firmly and immovably in the worthless opinion. But if they themselves are of such a kind...

They did not love, but rather the human-loving word causes them to be shaken and moved from the very bad position they hold, and to fall from the position they built with a clumsy hand (Ps 81:6-7). The good God is not all envious of his own, giving to men what he is, just as he accepted the word of the gods. But the God who makes them gods is God, and he will make them sons of the Most High, participating with them, the only-begotten Son of the Most High. But although God granted to them the being to be gods and sons of the Most High, they ran toward the opposite, to become humans and to die the death that follows humans.

For they did not become humans by falling from divinity (for this is how both gods and sons of the Most High happened), but according to how they loved, mortal and human. And they die not as humans do, not the common death, but the death that follows sin, falling similarly to the one who fell among the rulers. For such is the devil; for he himself was a ruler and fell in the heavens. For it is said concerning him, 'How did the Morning Star, rising in the morning, fall from heaven?' (Luke 10:18). In this way also Adam, sinning, did not as a god but as one of God's fell, clearly showing that he became human; for God did not say concerning him, 'Behold, Adam has become like us,' but 'As one of us' or 'As one of ours'—as many things are contained in the copies (Ps 81:8).

He said another scripture has, 'Rise, O God, judge the earth; you shall destroy all the nations' (Ps 81:8). God will judge all those on the earth, for the earth was made because of those who think of earthly things. And God will judge the earth, destroying all the nations, but not all the mortals. For the superstitious and the other curiosity, along with those who have worked them, the mortals were destroyed by God, so that the mortals might become pure for the acceptance of the word of salvation. And that disposition in the nations, through which the mortals were diverse, God, by destroying them, will show that they, having cast away what had happened to them, will prove to be in the image of himself, just as mortals have become.