City of God 20.14–20.19

Chapter 14. On the condemnation of the devil with his followers, and, by way of recapitulation, on the bodily resurrection of all the dead and the judgment of final retribution.

After this mention of the last persecution, he briefly sums up all that the devil, and the enemy city with its prince, will suffer at the last judgment. For he says: “And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet also are; and they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.” We said above that the beast is well understood as the ungodly city itself. Its false prophet is either Antichrist or that image, that is, the pretense, of which we spoke there. After this, recapitulating, he describes the last judgment itself, which will be at the second resurrection of the dead, the resurrection of bodies, as it was revealed to him: “And I saw,” he says, “a great white throne and one seated on it, from whose face heaven and earth fled away, and no place was found for them.” He does not say, “I saw a great white throne and one seated on it, and heaven and earth fled from his face,” because it did not happen then, that is, before judgment had been given on the living and the dead; but he said that he saw him sitting on the throne from whose face heaven and earth fled, but afterwards. For when the judgment has been completed, then this heaven and this earth will cease to be, when a new heaven and a new earth begin to be. For this world will pass away by a change of things, not by utter destruction. Hence the apostle too says: “For the form of this world is passing away; I want you to be free from anxiety.” It is the form, then, that passes away, not the nature.

When, then, John had said that he saw one seated on the throne, from whose face (which is to happen afterwards) heaven and earth fled, he says: “And I saw the dead, great and small, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of the life of each one; and the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to their deeds.” He said that books were opened, and a book; but he did not leave unsaid what sort of book: “which is,” he says, “of the life of each one.” So those books which he put first are to be understood as the holy books, both old and new, so that in them it might be shown what commandments God had ordered to be done; and in that one which is of the life of each one, which of these each person had not done or had done. If this book is conceived of carnally, who could estimate its size or length? Or how long would it take to read a book in which are written all the lives of all people? Or will as great a number of angels be present as there will be of human beings, and will each hear his own life recited by an angel assigned to him? Then it will not be one book for all, but one for each. But this Scripture wishes one to be understood: “And another book,” it says, “was opened.” We must therefore understand a certain divine power, by which it will come about that each person's works, good or evil, are all recalled to memory and seen by the mind's gaze with marvelous swiftness, so that knowledge accuses or excuses conscience, and so all and each are judged at once. It is this divine power, surely, that has received the name of a book. For in it, in a way, is read whatever is recalled by its action.

Then, to show which dead are to be judged, small and great, he says by recapitulation, as though returning to what he had passed over or rather put off: “And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, and death and hell gave back the dead whom they had in them.” This undoubtedly took place before the dead were judged; and yet that was said first. This, then, is what I meant: that by recapitulation he returned to what he had left out. But now he kept to the order, and, to set out that order, he fittingly repeated in its own place what he had already said about the judging of the dead. For when he had said, “And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, and death and hell gave back the dead whom they had in them,” he at once added what he had put a little before: “And they were judged, each one according to his deeds.” For this is what he had said above: “And the dead were judged according to their deeds.”

Chapter 15. Who the dead are whom the sea gave up to judgment, or whom death and the underworld gave back.

But who are the dead whom the sea gave up, who were in it? For it is not the case that those who die at sea are not in hell, or that their bodies are kept in the sea, or, what is more absurd, that the sea held the good dead and hell the wicked. Who would think this? But some, surely, fittingly take the sea in this place to stand for this world. Since, then, he wished to signify that those whom Christ will find here still in the body will be judged together with those who are to rise again, he called them too “dead”: both the good, to whom it is said, “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God,” and the wicked, of whom it is said, “Let the dead bury their own dead.” They can also be called dead because they bear mortal bodies; hence the apostle says: “The body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness,” showing that both are in a human being who is alive and still in this body, a dead body and a living spirit. And yet he did not say “mortal” body, but “dead,” although a little later he calls the same bodies “mortal,” as they are more commonly called. These dead, then, the sea gave up, who were in it; that is, this world gave up the human beings who were in it, whoever they were, because they had not yet died. “And death and hell,” he says, “gave back the dead whom they had in them.” The sea “gave up,” because they were present just as they were found; but death and hell “gave back,” because they called them back to the life from which they had already departed. And perhaps not without reason it was not enough to say “death” or “hell,” but both were said: “death” because of the good, who could suffer only death and not hell as well; “hell” because of the wicked, who also pay penalties in the underworld. For if it seems not absurd to believe that even the ancient saints who held the faith of Christ who was to come were in the underworld, though in places far removed from the torments of the ungodly, until the blood of Christ and his descent into those places rescued them from there, then surely from that time good believers, redeemed by that price once it had been poured out, know nothing at all of the underworld, until, having received their bodies too, they receive the good things they deserve.

When he had said, “And they were judged, each one according to his deeds,” he briefly added how they were judged: “And death and hell,” he says, “were thrown into the lake of fire,” signifying by these names the devil, since he is the author of death and of the punishments of hell, and together with him the whole society of demons. For this is what he had said more plainly above, anticipating: “And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur.” And what he had added there more obscurely, saying, “where the beast and the false prophet also are,” he says here more openly: “And those who were not found written in the book of life were thrown into the lake of fire.” This book is not a reminder to God, lest he be misled by forgetfulness; it signifies the predestination of those to whom eternal life will be given. For it is not that God does not know them and reads in this book in order to know; rather, his very foreknowledge of them, which cannot be deceived, is the book of life in which they are written, that is, known beforehand.

Chapter 16. On the new heaven and the new earth.

Now that the judgment is finished in which he foretold that the wicked would be judged, it remains for him to speak of the good as well. For he has already explained what was said briefly by the Lord: “So these will go away into eternal punishment”; it follows that he should explain what is joined to it there: “But the righteous into eternal life.” “And I saw,” he says, “a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and earth have passed away, and the sea is no more.” This will take place in the order he had already stated above by anticipation, when he said he saw one seated on the throne, from whose face heaven and earth fled. For when those who are not written in the book of life have been judged and sent into the eternal fire (what kind of fire this is, and in what part of the world or of things it will be, I think no one knows, unless perhaps one to whom the divine Spirit has shown it), then the form of this world will pass away by a conflagration of worldly fires, just as the flood took place by an inundation of worldly waters. By that worldly conflagration, then, as I said, the qualities of the corruptible elements, which were suited to our corruptible bodies, will utterly perish by burning, and the substance itself will have those qualities that fit immortal bodies by a wonderful change; so that, of course, the world, renewed for the better, may be fitly adapted to human beings who have also been renewed for the better in the flesh. As for his saying, “And the sea is no more,” whether it will be dried up by that great heat or be itself changed for the better, I could not easily say. For we read that there will be a new heaven and a new earth, but I do not recall having read anywhere of a new sea; except that in this same book there is found, “as it were a sea of glass like crystal.” But there he was not speaking of this end of the world, and he does not seem to have said “a sea” in the proper sense, but “as it were a sea.” Yet here too, as prophetic speech loves to mix figurative words with literal ones and so in a way to veil what is said, he may have spoken of that sea, “And the sea is no more,” of which he had said above, “And the sea gave up the dead who were in it.” For then this world, turbulent and stormy with the life of mortals, which he figured by the name of the sea, will no longer be.

Chapter 17. On the glorification of the church without end after the end.

“And I saw,” he says, “the great city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from heaven from God, made ready like a newly married bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying: ‘Behold, the dwelling of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them. And he will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death will be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor any pain, because the former things have passed away.’ And he who sat on the throne said: ‘Behold, I make all things new.’” This city is said to come down from heaven because the grace by which God made it is heavenly. That is why he says to it also through Isaiah: “I am the Lord who makes you.” It has indeed been coming down from heaven since its beginning, since its citizens continually increase through the time of this world by the grace of God that comes from above through the washing of regeneration in the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. But through God's judgment, which will be the last, through his Son Jesus Christ, so great and so new a splendor of it will appear by God's gift that no traces of the old will remain; since even bodies will pass from their old corruption and mortality to a new incorruption and immortality. For to take this of the present time, in which it reigns with its King for a thousand years, seems to me excessively shameless, when he says most plainly: “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death will be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor any pain.” Who would be so absurd and so crazed with most obstinate contentiousness as to dare to assert that, amid the troubles of this mortality, not to say the holy people, but any single one of the saints, is leading, or will lead, or has led this life without tears and pains; when rather the holier each one is and the fuller of holy longing, the more abundant is his weeping in prayer? Is it not the voice of the citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem: “My tears have been my bread day and night,” and: “Every night I will wash my bed; I will drench my couch with my tears,” and: “My groaning is not hidden from you,” and: “My sorrow was renewed”? Or are they not its children who groan, being burdened, because they do not wish to be unclothed but further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life? Are they not the very ones who, having the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan within themselves, waiting for adoption, the redemption of their body? Was not the apostle Paul himself a citizen of the Jerusalem above, and was he not so all the more when he had great sorrow and unceasing pain in his heart for the Israelites, his brothers according to the flesh? But when will there be no death in that city, except when it will be said: “Where, O death, is your contention? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin”? This certainly will not exist then, when it will be said, “Where is it?” But now it is not some lowly citizen of that city, but this same John who cries out in his letter: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” In this book, indeed, whose name is the Apocalypse, many things are said obscurely to exercise the mind of the reader, and there are few things in it from whose clarity the rest may be tracked down with labor; especially because it repeats the same things in many ways, so that it seems to be saying one thing after another, when it is found to be saying these same things in one way after another. But in these words, where he says, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor any pain,” things are said with such light about the world to come and the immortality and eternity of the saints (for only then and only there will these things not exist) that we ought not to look for or read anything plain in the sacred writings if we think these words obscure.

Chapter 18. What the apostle Peter proclaimed about God's last judgment.

Let us now see what the apostle Peter also wrote about this judgment. “In the last days,” he says, “scoffers will come with scoffing, following their own desires and saying: ‘Where is the promise of his presence? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.’ For they willingly overlook this, that there were heavens of old, and an earth formed out of water and through water by the word of God, through which the world that then existed was flooded with water and perished. But the heavens and earth that now exist have been stored up by the same word, kept for fire until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But do not let this one thing escape you, beloved, that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some count slowness, but is patient for your sake, not wishing any to perish but all to turn to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a great rush, and the elements will be dissolved with burning, and the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. Since all these things are thus to perish, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct, waiting for and hastening to the presence of the day of the Lord, through which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the elements will melt with the heat of fire? But according to his promises we wait for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.” He said nothing here about the resurrection of the dead, but certainly enough about the destruction of this world. And by recalling there what happened before the flood he seems in a way to have warned us to what extent we should believe that this world will perish at the end of this age. For he said that the world which then existed perished at that time too; and not only the globe of the earth but also the heavens, by which we understand, of course, these airy heavens, whose place and space the water then overtopped as it rose. So the whole, or almost the whole, of this windy air (which he calls heaven, or rather heavens, but certainly these lowest ones, not those highest ones where the sun and moon and stars are set) had been turned into a moist quality and in this way had perished with the earth, whose former face had certainly been destroyed by the flood. “But the heavens and earth that now exist,” he says, “have been stored up by the same word, kept for fire until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.” Therefore the heavens and the earth, that is, the world which was restored out of the same water in place of the world that perished in the flood, is itself kept for the last fire until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. For he does not hesitate to speak of a future destruction of men too, because of a certain great change, although their nature will remain, even though in eternal punishments.

Someone may perhaps ask: if this world will burn after the judgment has taken place, before a new heaven and a new earth are put in its place, where will the saints be at the very time of its conflagration, since, having bodies, they must be in some bodily place? We can answer that they will be in the upper regions, to which the flame of that fire will not rise, just as the wave of the flood did not. For they will have such bodies that they can be wherever they wish. But having become immortal and incorruptible, they will not fear the fire of that conflagration either, if the corruptible and mortal bodies of the three men were able to live unharmed in the burning furnace.

Chapter 19. What the apostle Paul wrote to the Thessalonians about the revealing of Antichrist, whose time the day of the Lord will follow.

I see that I must pass over many sayings of the Gospels and the apostles about this last divine judgment, so that this volume does not run on to excessive length; but in no way must I pass over the apostle Paul, who, writing to the Thessalonians, says: “We ask you, brothers, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering to him, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or by a word or by a letter as if from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is at hand. Let no one deceive you in any way; for unless the deserter comes first and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sits in the temple of God, displaying himself as if he were God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you these things were told you? And now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of iniquity is already at work. Only let him who now holds hold on, until he is out of the way; and then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will slay with the breath of his mouth and will destroy by the brightness of his presence; the one whose presence is by the working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all the deception of iniquity for those who are perishing, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. And therefore God will send them a working of error, so that they believe a lie, and that all may be judged who did not believe the truth but consented to iniquity.”

No one doubts that he said these things of Antichrist, and that the day of judgment (for he calls this the day of the Lord) will not come unless he comes first whom he calls a deserter, a deserter, that is, from the Lord God. If this can rightly be said of all the ungodly, how much more of him! But in what temple of God he will sit is uncertain: whether in the ruin of the temple which was built by King Solomon, or in the church. For the apostle would not call the temple of some idol or demon the temple of God. Hence some would have Antichrist in this place understood to be not the prince himself alone, but in a way his whole body, that is, the multitude of people belonging to him, together with their prince; and they think it would be more correct to say in Latin too, as it is in the Greek, not “in the temple of God” but “he sits as the temple of God,” as if he himself were the temple of God, which is the church; as we say “he sits as a friend,” that is, like a friend, or anything else that is usually said with this kind of expression.

As to his saying, “And now you know what is holding him back,” that is, what the delay is, what the cause of his postponement is, “so that he may be revealed in his own time”: since he said they knew, he did not wish to say it openly. And so we, who do not know what they knew, desire to reach with labor what the apostle meant, and cannot; especially because what he added makes this sense more obscure. For what does this mean: “For the mystery of iniquity is already at work. Only let him who now holds hold on, until he is out of the way; and then the lawless one will be revealed”? I confess that I do not know at all what he meant. Yet I will not keep silent about the conjectures of people which I have been able to hear or read. Some think this was said of the Roman empire, and that the apostle Paul did not wish to write it openly so as not to incur the charge of wishing ill to the Roman empire, which was hoped to be eternal; so that by his saying, “For the mystery of iniquity is already at work,” he meant Nero to be understood, whose deeds already seemed like those of Antichrist. Hence some suspect that Nero himself will rise again and be Antichrist; others, however, think that he was not even killed, but rather withdrawn so that he might be thought killed, and that he is hidden alive in the vigor of the very age he was when he was believed dead, until he is revealed in his own time and restored to his kingdom. But the great presumption of those who hold this opinion is very strange to me. Yet what the apostle says, “Only let him who now holds hold on, until he is out of the way,” is not absurdly believed to have been said of the Roman empire itself, as if it were said: “Only let him who now rules rule on, until he is out of the way,” that is, removed. “And then the lawless one will be revealed,” by whom no one doubts that Antichrist is signified.

Others, however, think that both “you know what is holding him back” and “the mystery of iniquity is at work” were said only of the wicked and the pretenders who are in the church, until they reach so great a number as to make a great people for Antichrist; and that this is the mystery of iniquity because it seems hidden; and that the apostle exhorts the faithful to persevere tenaciously in the faith they hold by saying, “Only let him who now holds hold on, until he is out of the way,” that is, until the mystery of iniquity, which is now hidden, goes out from the midst of the church. For they think that what John the evangelist says in his letter belongs to this same mystery: “Children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have arisen; by this we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us. If they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us.” “As, then, before the end, in this hour which John calls the last,” they say, “many heretics went out from the midst of the church, whom he calls many antichrists, so then all will go out from there who belong not to Christ but to that last Antichrist, and then he will be revealed.”

So one conjectures the apostle's obscure words in one way, another in another; yet what he undoubtedly said is this: Christ will not come to judge the living and the dead unless his adversary Antichrist first comes to deceive those who are dead in soul; although that they will be deceived by him already belongs to the hidden judgment of God. For his presence will be, as was said, “by the working of Satan, with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all the deception of iniquity for those who are perishing.” For then Satan will be loosed, and through that Antichrist he will work in all his power, marvelously indeed, but deceitfully. It is commonly questioned whether these are called signs and lying wonders because he will deceive mortal senses by phantasms, so that he seems to do what he does not do, or because these very things, even if they are true wonders, will draw to a lie those who will believe that they could only have been done by God, not knowing the power of the devil, especially when he has received such power as he never had before. For when fire fell from heaven and in one assault consumed the great household of holy Job with his great flocks and herds, and a whirlwind rushed in and threw down the house and killed his children, these were not phantasms; yet they were works of Satan, to whom God had given this power. For which of these reasons, then, they are called lying wonders and signs will rather appear at that time. But for whichever of these reasons it is said, those will be deceived by these signs and wonders who will deserve to be deceived, “because,” he says, “they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved.” Nor did the apostle hesitate to go on and say: “Therefore God will send them a working of error, so that they believe a lie.” God will send it, because God will permit the devil to do these things, he himself by a just judgment, although the devil does them with an unjust and malicious purpose; “so that,” he says, “all may be judged who did not believe the truth but consented to iniquity.” Therefore, having been judged, they will be deceived, and having been deceived, they will be judged. But having been judged, they will be deceived by those judgments of God which are hiddenly just and justly hidden, by which he has never ceased to judge since the first sin of the rational creation; and having been deceived, they will be judged by the last and open judgment through Christ Jesus, who will judge most justly, who was judged most unjustly.