Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume V/On Nature and Grace/Chapter 22

Chapter 22 [XX.]—How Our Nature Could Be Vitiated by Sin, Even Though It Be Not a Substance.

Now, do you not perceive the tendency and direction of this controversy? Even to render of none effect the Scripture where it is said “Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.” For how is He to save where there is no malady? For the sins, from which this gospel says Christ&#8217;s people have to be saved, are not substances, and according to this writer are incapable of corrupting. O brother, how good a thing it is to remember that you are a Christian! To believe, might perhaps be enough; but still, since you persist in discussion, there is no harm, nay there is even benefit, if a firm faith precede it; let us not suppose, then, that human nature cannot be corrupted by sin, but rather, believing, from the inspired Scriptures, that it is corrupted by sin, let our inquiry be how this could possibly have come about. Since, then, we have already learnt that sin is not a substance, do we not consider, not to mention any other example, that not to eat is also not a substance? Because such abstinence is withdrawal from a substance, inasmuch as food is a substance. To abstain, then, from food is not a substance; and yet the substance of our body, if it does altogether abstain from food, so languishes, is so impaired by broken health, is so exhausted of strength, so weakened and broken with very weariness, that even if it be in any way able to continue alive, it is hardly capable of being restored to the use of that food, by abstaining from which it became so corrupted and injured. In the same way sin is not a substance; but God is a substance, yea the height of substance and only true sustenance of the reasonable creature. The consequence of departing from Him by disobedience, and of inability, through infirmity, to receive what one ought really to rejoice in, you hear from the Psalmist, when he says: “My heart is smitten and withered like grass, since I have forgotten to eat my bread.”