Saint Cyril of Alexandria on Divine Justice: Light for Souls Longing for the True Gospel

“The Lord is longsuffering and of great mercy and true, forgiving transgressions and sins.” (Exodus 34:6–7)

At Rome Public Adjusting, we are daily engaged in the work of restoration—helping families and businesses recover what has been lost through disaster. This labor is rooted in our Orthodox conviction that God Himself is the Author of justice, mercy, and harmonious restoration. In that same spirit, we reflect on the profound teaching of Saint Cyril of Alexandria (†444), one of the Church’s greatest defenders of Christ, concerning the very nature of divine justice.

In his Commentary on the Gospel of John (Book 6), Saint Cyril addresses a challenging phrase from the Law: “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation.” He rejects any interpretation that would make God unjust:

“I think that they only indulge their own ignorance in this matter, to suppose the sins of fathers to be really brought upon children, and the Divine anger to be stretched so far that it may even reach to the third and fourth generation, exacting unjustly from innocent persons the penalties of others’ crimes… Would it not at all events be more becoming to them, if they were wise, to hold the opinion that the Source of righteousness and of our moral laws would do nothing so shameful?”

Saint Cyril insists that even decent human laws do not punish the innocent for the guilty. How much less could the God Who is righteousness do so? Nowhere in the Mosaic Law does God command the punishment of innocent children for their fathers’ sins. Penalty belongs only to those who commit the crime.

He ties this directly to God’s self-revelation to Moses: the Lord who is “longsuffering and of great mercy and true, forgiving transgressions and sins” would never be “so mindful of evil that He extends His anger even to the fourth generation.”

This patristic clarity stands in contrast to a later Western theological development known as Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA), which teaches that the Father poured out retributive wrath upon His innocent Son on the Cross in order to satisfy justice. Saint Cyril’s teaching reveals the ancient consensus of the Church: God does not lay the penalties of the guilty upon the innocent. Divine justice is never separated from His mercy and longsuffering; they are one in the Triune God.

The Orthodox understanding of the Cross is far richer than any single legal transaction. It is victory over sin, death, and the devil; the healing and deification of our fallen nature; the restoration of communion with the Father in the Holy Spirit. The Son offers Himself in perfect love and obedience—not as the object of the Father’s wrath.

Many sincere Christians today, formed in environments where PSA is assumed to be the Gospel itself, eventually sense the weight of its implications: a portrayal of the Father that seems to treat the beloved Son in a manner even upright humans would condemn. Saint Cyril throws out a life preserver. He calls us back to the mind of the Church (phronema), to the Gospel once delivered to the saints—unchanged from the time of the Apostles through the great Fathers.

At Rome Public Adjusting, our daily work of “adjusting” (making right and restoring what is due) is a small reflection of this divine economy of justice and mercy. We stand with policyholders not as adversaries, but as advocates seeking truthful, equitable restoration—never compromising integrity, always honoring the dignity of each person as an image of God.

If the traditional picture of the Cross has ever troubled your heart, take courage. The ancient Church never taught Penal Substitution. Saint Cyril and the Fathers offer something far more beautiful and true to the God Who is “longsuffering and of great mercy.”

Let us cling together to the Tradition that has never failed. In the Orthodox Church we encounter the same God Saint Cyril knew—the God Who in Christ has destroyed death by death and granted life to those in the tombs.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Saint Cyril of Alexandria, pray to God for us.