The notion that God’s justice is exclusively restorative or, as it were, therapeutic, is being hailed by some as the Orthodox understanding of God’s justice. In this view, God never imposes a non-rehabilitative penalty. All penalties are necessarily rehabilitative, and so to understand justice as retributive is to misunderstand God fundamentally. God, being merciful, cannot be conceived as operating according to a mode of justice that excludes the objects of His justice from being thereby healed through the application of said restorative justice. Justice is never imposed, so the view goes, without mercy as its principle aim or telos. Of course, this notion is false, and is a travesty as regards its being touted as the teaching and preaching of the Church. Although it is true that God’s justice can and often does include a therapeutic and even merciful aspect, as when He limits the extent of Adam’s sin by imposing mortal limits to man (a mercy not available to Satan), it is not exclusively so, for God is holy, and those who refuse to repent of their sin and follow Christ in faith and holiness of life will be eternally condemned according to the principles of God’s retributive justice.
Some may try to oppose the full position of the Church by appealing to the many instances in which God’s mercy is demonstratively present in His just judgments. But one cannot prove that one thing, X, is not there by showing that some other thing, Y, is there, and so this critique assumes a false dichotomy. No amount of proving X can ever in principle disprove Y, which in the present case is to say that, short of universalism, no number of examples of God’s merciful judgements will prove that God never judges retributively. This critique can therefore be dismissed altogether.
Another attempt at opposing the full teaching of the Church may attempt to bind retributive justice to some passibility in God, say a passion of wrath, or more generally to a law which would act as a force controlling God’s freedom, and then seek to tar and feather retribution by associating it with what is necessarily condemned, i.e. that God is passible. Of course, this attempt at invalidating God’s holy and just retribution, by ascribing passion to it, would also have the necessary consequence of ascribing passion even to God’s mercy, for if God’s wrath must be understood as a passion, then nothing in principle discludes mercy from that same ascription. Since God, however, is axiomatically impassible, both in His mercy and in His wrath, and retributive justice is present in the Scriptures alongside His mercy, then the concept of retributive justice must refer to an impassible reality in God, i.e. the inexorable opposition and necessary incompatibility between God and sin. Not compelled by either some passion of wrath or even His own law, God freely upholds His lawful justice, for it accords implicitly with His holy nature.
As discussed in a previous study and as will shown more explicitly below, justice is the sword of the sinner falling on his own head, the pit he digs and into which he falls, the snare he lays and by which he finally entraps himself. God is a just Judge, and His judgment seat is a dread Judgment Seat. It is not only the throne of the Healer, and so if God only uses justice medicinally, then everyone must be healed because God does nothing without justice. Hyper-Therapeuticism, the belief that God’s justice is exclusively therapeutic in nature, would thus necessitate the heresy of universalism. Since universalism is unequivocally denied, as shown here and here, if the judgment, i.e. the justice, of God does not heal everyone, then it cannot be exclusively therapeutic. For unless one succumb to a false dichotomy, it must also be able to function retributively. God, then, being impassible, and not saving everyone, His justice is and must be both medicinal and retributive, where the nature of each case being the factor which elicits one or the other divine response.
Before turning to Scripture, it is necessary to recall that retribution is a word that derives from the Latin retributio, which refers to recompense or repayment. It is composed of the prefix re- plus tributum, and so means to pay again or pay back. Tributum is also found in such words as tribute, tributary, contribute, distribute, etc. Retribution therefore simply refers to repayment of something owed, whether for good or ill. Moving onto the Bible’s own testimony, retribution is also a biblical concept, and means simply repayment or recompense, even to restore. The Hebrew terms, such as שׁוּב, shûwb; שָׁלַם, shâlam, נָתַן, nâthan, and, to a lesser extent, גְּמוּלָה, gᵉmûwlâh and גְּמוּל, gᵉmûwl, and still others in the Hebrew and Greek, are so common and flexible in the original languages that rather than their general meaning it will be more necessary to see them in their context. Not only the words, then, but the context in which they appear will show the retributive nature of God’s justice. The Scriptures’ holistic testimony states:
From the Pentateuch
-And He repays (shâlam) those who hate Him to their face, to destroy them. He will not be slack with him who hates Him; He will repay (shâlam) him to his face. (Deuteronomy 7:10)
-If I whet My glittering sword, And My hand takes hold on judgment, I will render (shûwb) vengeance to My enemies, And repay (shâlam) those who hate Me. (Deuteronomy 32:41)
-Vengeance (naqam) is Mine, and recompense (shillêm); Their foot shall slip in due time; For the day of their calamity is at hand, And the things to come hasten upon them. (Deuteronomy 32:35)
From the Histories
-If anyone sins against his neighbor, and is forced to take an oath, and comes and takes an oath before Your altar in this temple, 23 then hear from heaven, and act, and judge Your servants, bringing retribution (shûwb) on the wicked by bringing his way on his own head, and justifying the righteous by giving him according to his righteousness. (2 Chronicles 6:22-23)
From the Prophets
-According to their deeds (gᵉmûwlâh), accordingly He will repay (shâlam), Fury to His adversaries, Recompense (gᵉmûwl) to His enemies; The coastlands He will fully repay (shâlam; LXX ὑπεναντίος, hypenantíos). (Isaiah 59:18; cf. Colossians 2:14; Hebrews 10:27)
-Because the plunderer comes against her, against Babylon, And her mighty men are taken. Every one of their bows is broken; For the LORD is the God of recompense (גְּמוּלָה, gᵉmûwlâh), He will surely repay (shâlam). (Jeremiah 51:56)
-And as for Me also, My eye will neither spare, nor will I have pity, but I will recompense (נָתַן, nâthan) their deeds on their own head. (Ezekiel 9:10)
-"But as for those whose hearts follow the desire for their detestable things and their abominations, I will recompense (nâthan) their deeds on their own heads," says the Lord GOD. (Ezekiel 11:21)
-"Because you did not remember the days of your youth, but agitated Me with all these things, surely I will also recompense (nâthan) your deeds on your own head," says the Lord GOD. "And you shall not commit lewdness in addition to all your abominations. (Ezekiel 16:43)
-Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: "As I live, surely My oath which he despised, and My covenant which he broke, I will recompense (nâthan) on his own head. (Ezekiel 17:19)
From The Gospels
-Then He will answer them, saying, 'Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.' 46 And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. (Matthew 25:45-46)
-Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice 29 and come forth--those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. (John 5:28-29)
From the Epistles
-Since it is a righteous thing with God to repay (ἀνταποδίδωμι, antapodídōmi) with tribulation those who trouble you, (2 Thessalonians 1:6)
-Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm. May the Lord repay (ἀποδίδωμι, apodídōmi) him according to his works. (2 Timothy 4:14)
-Having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary (hypenantíos) to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. (Colossians 2:14)
-But a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries (hypenantíos). (Hebrews 10:27)
-Anyone who has rejected Moses' law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace? (Hebrews 10:28-29)
-For we know Him who said, "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay (antapodídōmi)," says the Lord. And again, "The LORD will judge His people." (Hebrews 10:30; cf. Deuteronomy 32:35-36)
From Revelation
And I heard another voice from heaven saying, "Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues. 5 "For her sins have reached to heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. 6 "Render (ἀποδίδωμι, apodídōmi) to her just as she rendered (ἀποδίδωμι, apodídōmi) to you, and repay (διπλόω, diplóō) her double (διπλοῦς, diploûs) according to her works; in the cup which she has mixed, mix double for her. 7 "In the measure that she glorified herself and lived luxuriously, in the same measure give her torment and sorrow; for she says in her heart, 'I sit as queen, and am no widow, and will not see sorrow.' 8 "Therefore her plagues will come in one day--death and mourning and famine. And she will be utterly burned with fire, for strong is the Lord God who judges her. ... 20 "Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you holy apostles and prophets, for God has avenged you on her!" 21 Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, "Thus with violence the great city Babylon shall be thrown down, and shall not be found anymore. (Rev 18:4-8, 20-21)
As has been made abundantly clear, to deny that God acts retributively not only denies that God keeps His own Covenant word, but also denies a pervasive theme and logic of the whole of God’s word. In short, if justice is not retributive, then it is quite simply not justice. Justice is thus retributive, and also restorative, for the Biblical notion of restoration does not disclude retributive, non-therapeutic repayment. This is to say that the concept of restoration also includes that, unless an evil man repents, God will justly restore to him his evil as a just retribution. Therefore, although some assert a distinction between restoration and retribution, it ends up being a distinction without a difference, for to assert that there are two types of justice, retributive and restorative, amounts to the same thing and points to the same principle.
The Biblical position regarding the certain presence of retributive justice having been conclusively demonstrated, in order to know that this Biblical teaching is also preserved in its plain retributive sense in the Fathers, although an exhaustive study of their teaching on the issue is not possible here, it will be sufficient to look at St. Gregory Palamas’ unambiguous teaching on the subject. In many ways he sums up both the theoretical and the practical wisdom of the Fathers, and so his letter written to the nun Xenia will positively exemplify the Patristic consensus and so prove decisive for the matter at hand. He writes:
True life - the life that confers immortality and true life on both body and soul - will have its origin here [i.e. earth], in this place of death. If you do not strive here to gain this life in your soul, do not deceive yourself with vain hopes about receiving it hereafter, or about God then being compassionate towards you. For then is the time of requital and retribution, not of sympathy and compassion: the time for the revealing of God's wrath and anger and just judgement, for the manifestation of the mighty and sublime power that brings chastisement upon unbelievers. Woe to him who falls into the hands of the living God! (cf. Hebrews 10:31) Woe to him who hereafter experiences the Lord's wrath, who has not acquired in this life the fear of God and so come to know the might of His anger, who has not through his actions gained a foretaste of God's compassion. For the time to do all this is the present life. (St. Gregory Palamas, To the Most Reverend Nun Xenia, The Philokalia, Vol. 4, paragraph 16, pgs 298-99)
The clarity of the foregoing affirmation of retributive justice is so vivid that it would require an incredibly dishonest form of sophistry in order to obfuscate and avoid its import. We are even instructed by the Fathers to meditate on the Last Things, which is to say not only heaven, but also death, the final judgment, and hell. Since hell is a reality, which is to say an eternal punishment and an endless chastisement, God’s justice necessarily includes a retributive dimension. For “the violation of the commandment of God’s commandment is the cause of all types of death, whether in this present life or in that endless chastisement” (ibid, 296). Describing the retributive horror of hell, the “unbearable and immeasurable chastisement, which is the second and final death” (ibid, 298), St. Gregory writes:
These torments of hell are inexpressible, and… even worse than they have been painted... they are unending. Heat, cold, darkness, fire, movement and immobility, binds, terrors, and the biting of undying beasts are all brought together into this single condemnation; but all of these things fail properly to convey the true horror of hell which - to use St. Paul’s words - “man’s mind has not yet grasped” (1 Corinthians 2:9). What, then, is this profitless, unconsoling and endless grief experienced in hell? It is the grief stirred up in those who have sinned against God when they become aware of their offences. There, in hell, convicted of their sins, stripped of all hope of salvation or of any improvement in their condition, they feel yet greater anguish and grief because of the unsought reproof of their conscience. And this itself, and the everlasting nature of their grief, gives rise to yet another form of grief, and to another dreadful darkness, to unbearable heat and a helpless abyss of despondency. (ibid, 314)
To conclude, since "the Lord is the God of recompense, He will surely repay" (Jeremiah 51:56), it is inescapable that God’s retributive and restorative justice is not exclusively therapeutic. God’s justice functions to heal, in some circumstances, but in others it is expressly but justly retributive, an "immeasurable chastisement." The grief produced by the knowledge of the reality of hell is in this life most salutary and beneficial (cf. ibid, 314), which is why we are instructed to meditate on it, and those who would seek to evade the retributive nature of God’s holy justice are deprived of this, and gravely misled, having a low view of sin and a low view of God’s holiness. They, moreover, cheapen the hope of heaven and the glory of God in saving man from that “dreadful darkness.” Hyper-Therapeuticism thus does not make the true God more palatable, it preaches a different God, sells fallen man an attractive but damning counterfeit, and thus departs from the saving teaching of the Church, undermining Her clear teaching about the eternal consequences of man’s life here on earth. It is thus that Christ exhorts, “Repent, and believe in the Gospel!” (Mark 1:15)
-Fr. Joshua Schooping
