City of God 20.30–21.4

Chapter 30. That in the books of the Old Testament, where we read that God will judge, the person of Christ is not plainly shown, but from certain testimonies in which the Lord God speaks it appears without doubt that it is Christ himself.

There are many other testimonies of the divine Scriptures about the last judgment of God, which it would take too long to collect. Let it be enough, then, that we have proved that this was foretold in both the new and the old sacred writings. But in the old writings it is not so plainly expressed as in the new that the judgment will be through Christ, that is, that Christ will come from heaven as judge, because when the Lord God says there that he will come, or the Lord God is said to be coming, it does not follow that Christ is understood. For the Lord God is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Yet we must not leave this without evidence. First, then, it must be shown how Jesus Christ speaks as the Lord God in the prophetic books and yet Jesus Christ plainly appears, so that also when he does not so appear and yet the Lord God is said to be coming to that last judgment, Jesus Christ can be understood.

There is a place in the prophet Isaiah which plainly shows what I am saying. For God says through the prophet: “Hear me, Jacob, and Israel whom I call. I am the first and I am for ever, and my hand founded the earth, and my right hand made firm the heaven. I will call them, and they will stand together, and they will all be gathered and will hear. Who has announced these things to him? Loving you, I have done your will upon Babylon, to take away the seed of the Chaldeans. I have spoken, and I have called; I have brought him and made his way prosperous. Come near to me and hear these things. From the beginning I have not spoken in secret; when they were being done, I was there. And now the Lord God has sent me, and his Spirit.” Surely it is he who was speaking as the Lord God; and yet Jesus Christ would not be understood had he not added, “And now the Lord God has sent me, and his Spirit.” For he said this according to the form of a servant, using a verb in the past tense of a thing to come, as we read in the same prophet: “He was led like a sheep to the slaughter.” For he did not say “he will be led,” but put a past-tense verb for what was to come. And prophecy constantly speaks this way.

There is another place in Zechariah which plainly shows that the Almighty sent the Almighty: who sent whom, if not God the Father God the Son? For thus it is written: “Thus says the Lord almighty: After the glory he has sent me against the nations which plundered you; for he who touches you touches as it were the pupil of his eye. Behold, I will bring my hand upon them, and they will be spoil for those who had served them; and you will know that the Lord almighty has sent me.” See, the Lord almighty says that he has been sent by the Lord almighty. Who would dare to understand here anyone but Christ speaking, namely to the lost sheep of the house of Israel? For he says in the Gospel: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” whom here he compared to the pupil of God's eye because of the most excellent affection of love; and of this kind of sheep were the apostles themselves too. But after the glory of his resurrection, certainly (before which the evangelist says, “Jesus was not yet glorified”), he was sent against the nations too in his apostles; and so was fulfilled what we read in the psalm: “You will deliver me from the contradictions of the people; you will make me head of the nations”; so that those who had plundered the Israelites, and whom the Israelites had served when they were subject to the nations, should not be plundered in turn in the same way, but should themselves become the spoil of the Israelites (for this he had promised the apostles, saying, “I will make you fishers of men,” and to one of them, “From now on,” he says, “you will be catching men”); they were to become spoil, then, but for their good, like goods snatched from that strong man, but from a strong man more strongly bound.

Likewise, the Lord speaking through the same prophet says: “And it will be on that day that I will seek to take away all the nations that come against Jerusalem, and I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and mercy; and they will look on me because they mocked, and they will mourn over him with a mourning as over one most dear, and they will grieve with grief as over an only son.” Does it belong to anyone but God to take away all the nations hostile to the holy city Jerusalem, which come against it, that is, are opposed to it, or, as others have translated, come upon it, that is, to subject it to themselves; or to pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of that same city the spirit of grace and mercy? This certainly belongs to God and is said in the person of God through the prophet; and yet Christ shows that he is this God who does such great and divine things, by adding and saying: “And they will look on me because they mocked, and they will mourn over him with a mourning as over one most dear (or beloved), and they will grieve with grief as over an only son.” For on that day the Jews will repent, even those who are to receive the spirit of grace and mercy, that they mocked Christ in his passion, when they look on him coming in his majesty and recognize that he is the one whom they formerly mocked in his humility, in the persons of their forebears; although their forebears too, the authors of that great impiety, will see him when they rise again, but now to be punished, no longer to be corrected. So it is not they who are to be understood in this place where it is said, “And I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and mercy; and they will look on me because they mocked”; but rather those coming from their stock who will believe through Elijah at that time. But just as we say to Jews, “You killed Christ,” although it was their forebears who did it, so these too will grieve that they did in a way what those did from whose stock they descend. Although, then, having received the spirit of grace and mercy, now believers, they will not be condemned with their ungodly forebears, they will nevertheless grieve as if they had themselves done what was done by those. So they will grieve not from the guilt of the crime but from the affection of godliness. Indeed, where the Seventy translators said, “And they will look on me because they mocked,” it has been translated from the Hebrew thus: “And they will look on me whom they pierced”; by which word Christ crucified appears more plainly. But the mockery which the Seventy preferred to set down was not lacking in his whole passion. For they mocked him when he was seized, and bound, and condemned, and dressed in the shameful robe of reproach, and crowned with thorns, and struck on the head with a reed, and worshiped in derision on bent knees, and when he was carrying his cross, and when he was already hanging on the tree. Therefore, following not one translation but joining both, when we read both “they mocked” and “they pierced,” we recognize the truth of the Lord's passion more fully.

When, then, we read in the prophetic writings that God will come to hold the last judgment, even if no other distinction is set down, Christ must be understood, simply because of the judgment itself; for even if the Father will judge, he will judge through the coming of the Son of Man. For he himself, by the manifestation of his own presence, judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, who will be manifested as a man to judge, as he was judged as a man. For who else is it of whom God likewise speaks through Isaiah under the name of Jacob and Israel, of whose seed he took a body? For it is written thus: “Jacob my servant, I will uphold him; Israel my chosen, my soul has taken him up. I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth judgment to the nations. He will not cry out nor cease, nor will his voice be heard outside. A crushed reed he will not break, and smoking flax he will not quench; but he will bring forth judgment in truth. He will shine and not be broken, until he sets judgment on the earth; and in his name the nations will hope.” In the Hebrew we do not read “Jacob” and “Israel,” but what is read there is “my servant.” The Seventy translators, of course, wishing to indicate how far this is to be taken, namely that it was said because of the form of a servant, in which the Most High showed himself most lowly, put the name of that very man to signify him, from whose race that same form of a servant was taken. The Holy Spirit was given upon him, which was shown also in the appearance of a dove, as the Gospel testifies; he brought forth judgment to the nations, because he foretold what was to come, which was hidden from the nations; in his gentleness he did not cry out, and yet he did not cease from preaching the truth; but his voice was not heard outside, nor is it heard, since he is not obeyed by those who have been cut off outside his body; and the Jews themselves, his persecutors, who are compared to a crushed reed because they have lost their integrity and to smoking flax because they have lost their light, he did not break, did not quench, because he spared them, since he had not yet come to judge them but to be judged by them. Indeed, he brought forth judgment in truth by foretelling to them when they would be punished if they persisted in their malice. His face shone on the mountain, his fame in the world; nor was he broken or crushed, because neither in himself nor in his church did he yield to his persecutors so as to cease to exist; and therefore what his enemies said or say has not happened and will not happen: “When will he die and his name perish?” “until he sets judgment on the earth.” See, what we were looking for as hidden has been made plain; for this is the last judgment, which he will set on the earth when he himself comes from heaven; of which we already see fulfilled what is put last here: “And in his name the nations will hope.” By this, certainly, which cannot be denied, let that also be believed which is shamelessly denied. For who would have hoped for what even those who still refuse to believe in Christ now see with us, and, since they cannot deny it, gnash their teeth and waste away? Who, I say, would have hoped that the nations would hope in the name of Christ when he was being seized, bound, beaten, mocked, crucified, when even the disciples themselves had lost the hope which they had begun to have in him? What then scarcely one thief hoped for on the cross, the nations spread far and wide now hope for, and so that they may not die for ever they are signed with the very cross on which he died.

No one, therefore, denies or doubts that there will be a last judgment through Christ Jesus such as is foretold in these sacred writings, except one who, by I know not what incredible animosity or blindness, does not believe those same writings, which have already shown their truth to the whole world. In that judgment, then, or in connection with that judgment, we have learned that these things will come: Elijah the Tishbite; the faith of the Jews; Antichrist, who will persecute; Christ, who will judge; the resurrection of the dead; the separation of the good and the wicked; the burning of the world and its renewal. All these things must be believed to be coming; but in what ways and in what order they will come, the experience of the events will then teach better than human understanding can now attain perfectly. Yet I think that they will come in the order in which I have mentioned them.

Two books pertaining to this work remain for us, so that with the Lord's help we may complete what we promised: one of them will be about the punishment of the wicked, the other about the happiness of the righteous. In them above all, as God grants, human arguments will be refuted which the wretched seem to themselves to gnaw on wisely against the divine predictions and promises, and by which they despise the nourishment of saving faith as false and laughable. But those who are wise according to God hold as the greatest argument for all the things which seem incredible to human beings, and yet are contained in the holy Scriptures, whose truth has already been asserted in many ways, the truthful omnipotence of God, who they hold for certain could in no way lie in them, and can do what is impossible to the unbeliever.

Chapter 1. On the order of the discussion, by which the everlasting punishment of the damned with the devil must be discussed before the eternal happiness of the saints.

Since, through Christ our Lord, the judge of the living and the dead, both cities, one of which is God's and the other the devil's, will have reached their due ends, we must discuss more carefully in this book, as far as we are able with divine help, what kind of punishment there will be for the devil and all who belong to him. I have preferred to keep this order, and to discuss the happiness of the saints afterwards, because both will be with bodies, and it seems more incredible that bodies should endure in eternal torments than that they should remain without any pain in eternal blessedness; and so, when I have shown that that punishment ought not to be incredible, it will help me very much in making it far easier to believe that the saints will have an immortality of bodies free from all distress. Nor is this order foreign to the divine words, where sometimes the blessedness of the good is put first, as in this: “Those who have done good to the resurrection of life, but those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment”; but sometimes it is put after, as in this: “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and throw them into the burning furnace of fire; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth; then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father,” and this: “So these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life”; and in the prophets, which it would take long to recount, now the one order and now the other is found, if one looks. But I have said why I chose this one.

Chapter 2. Whether bodies can last for ever in the burning of fire.

What, then, shall I show, by which unbelievers may be convinced that human bodies, animated and living, can not only never be dissolved by death, but can also endure in the torments of eternal fires? For they will not have us refer this to the power of the Almighty, but demand to be persuaded by some example. If we answer them that there are animals, certainly corruptible because mortal, which nevertheless live in the midst of fires; and that a certain kind of worm is also found in the bubbling of hot springs, whose heat no one touches with impunity, and that these not only live there without any harm to themselves but cannot live outside: either they will not believe it, if we cannot show it, or, if we are able to demonstrate the things themselves either to their eyes or to inform them through suitable witnesses, they will contend with the same unbelief that this is not enough as an example of the thing in question, because these animals do not live for ever and live in those heats without pain; for they are nourished by those elements as suited to their nature, not tormented by them; as if it were not more incredible to be nourished by such things than to be tormented by them. For it is wonderful to feel pain in fires and yet to live, but more wonderful to live in fires and not to feel pain. If this is believed, why not the other?

Chapter 3. Whether the destruction of the flesh necessarily follows bodily pain.

“But there is no body,” they say, “that can feel pain and cannot die.” And how do we know this? For who is certain about the bodies of demons, whether they feel pain in them when they confess that they are afflicted with great torments? But if it is answered that there is no earthly body, that is, solid and visible, or, to put it rather in one word, no flesh, which can feel pain and cannot die, what else is being said but what people have gathered from bodily sense and experience? For they know no flesh except mortal flesh; and this is their whole reasoning, that what they have not experienced they think cannot possibly be. For what reasoning is it to make pain an argument for death, when it is rather an indication of life? For even if we ask whether it can live for ever, it is certain that everything that feels pain is alive, and that no pain can exist except in a living thing. It is necessary, then, that one who feels pain is alive; it is not necessary that pain kills, since not every pain kills even these mortal bodies that are certainly going to die; and the reason why some pain can kill is that the soul is so joined to this body that it gives way and departs under the greatest pains, since the very framework of the limbs and vital parts is so weak that it cannot endure the force that causes great or extreme pain. But then the soul will be joined to such a body, and in such a way, that this bond, just as it will be loosed by no length of time, so will be broken by no pain. Accordingly, even if there is now no flesh of such a kind that it can suffer the sensation of pain and cannot suffer death, yet there will then be such flesh as there is not now, just as there will also be such a death as there is not now. For death will not be none, but everlasting, when the soul will neither be able to live, not having God, nor to be free of the pains of the body by dying. The first death drives the unwilling soul out of the body; the second death holds the unwilling soul in the body; common to both deaths is this, that the soul suffers from its own body what it does not will.

These objectors notice that there is now no flesh which can suffer pain and cannot suffer death, and they do not notice that there is nevertheless something of this kind that is greater than the body. For the mind itself, by whose presence the body lives and is ruled, can both suffer pain and cannot die. See, a thing has been found which, though it has the sensation of pain, is immortal. This, then, will be true then in the bodies of the damned too, which we know to be true now in the souls of all. And if we consider more carefully, the pain that is called bodily belongs rather to the soul. For it is the soul that feels pain, not the body, even when the cause of its pain arises from the body, when it feels pain in the place where the body is injured. Just as we speak of sentient bodies and living bodies, though sensation and life come to the body from the soul, so we also speak of bodies in pain, though pain can come to the body only from the soul. The soul, then, feels pain with the body in that place of it where something happens to cause pain; it feels pain alone too, though it is in the body, when it is itself sad from some cause, even an invisible one, while the body is unharmed; it feels pain even when it is not in the body; for certainly that rich man in the underworld was in pain when he said, “I am tormented in this flame.” But the body neither feels pain when lifeless nor, when animated, feels pain without the soul. If, then, an argument from pain to death were rightly drawn, so that death could befall because pain could also befall, dying would belong rather to the soul, to which feeling pain also belongs rather. But since the soul, which can feel pain more, cannot die, what weight does it carry, that we should believe that those bodies, because they will be in pains, will therefore also die?

The Platonists indeed said that it is from earthly bodies and dying limbs that the soul has its fearing and desiring, its grieving and rejoicing; hence Virgil says: “Hence,” that is, from the dying limbs of the earthly body, “they fear and desire, grieve and rejoice.” But we proved against them in the twelfth book of this work that, according to them, souls purified from every stain of the body have a dire desire by which they begin again to wish to return into bodies. And where there can be desire, there can surely be pain as well. For frustrated desire, whether by not reaching what it was striving for or by losing what it had reached, turns into pain. Therefore, if the soul, which feels pain alone or chiefly, has nevertheless in its own way a certain immortality of its own, those bodies will not be able to die because they will feel pain. Finally, if bodies cause souls to feel pain, why can they inflict pain on them but not death, unless because it does not follow that what causes pain causes death? Why, then, is it incredible that fires can inflict pain on those bodies but not death, just as bodies themselves cause souls to feel pain, yet do not therefore force them to die? Pain, then, is not a necessary argument for death to come.

Chapter 4. On examples from nature, the consideration of which teaches that living bodies can endure amid torments.

Therefore, if, as those have written who have investigated the natures of animals with special care, the salamander lives in fires, and if certain very well-known mountains of Sicily, which have been seething with flames for so long a time and age until now and henceforth, and yet remain intact, are sufficiently fit witnesses that not everything which burns is consumed; and if the soul shows that not everything which can feel pain can also die: why are examples of things still demanded of us, by which to teach that it is not incredible that the bodies of human beings punished with everlasting punishment should both not lose their soul in the fire, and burn without loss, and feel pain without perishing? For the substance of the flesh will then have this quality implanted by him who implanted such wonderful and various qualities in so many things we see, that we do not wonder at them because they are many. For who but God, the creator of all things, gave to the flesh of the dead peacock the property of not decaying? When this, on hearing it, seemed incredible, it happened that at Carthage this bird was served to us cooked, and I had as much of the flesh of its breast as seemed good taken and kept. When it was brought out and set before us after as long a space of days as any other cooked flesh would decay in, it did not offend our sense of smell at all. And put away again, after more than thirty days it was found to be the same as it was, and the same after a year, except that it was somewhat drier and more shrunken in bulk. Who gave straw either so cold a power that it keeps snow buried in it, or so warm a power that it ripens unripe fruit?

Who could explain the wonders of fire itself, by which everything that is scorched turns black, though fire itself is bright, and though most beautiful in color it discolors almost everything it surrounds and licks, and turns a glowing ember into a most ugly coal? Nor is this laid down as a rule, as it were; for on the contrary stones baked in glowing fire themselves become white, and although fire is rather red and they whitish, yet what is white agrees with light, as black with darkness. So when fire burns in wood to bake stones, it has contrary effects on things that are not contraries. For although stones and wood are different, they are not contraries, as white and black are, of which it makes one in stones and the other in wood, brightening the former and darkening the latter, though it would fail in the stones unless it lived in the wood. What of coals? Is not both so great a weakness wonderful in them, that they are broken by the lightest blow and crushed by the easiest pressure, and so great a strength, that they are corrupted by no moisture and overcome by no age, so much so that those who set up boundary stones usually put them underneath, to convict any litigant who may appear after however long a time and contend that the fixed stone is not a boundary? Who caused them, buried in damp earth where wood would rot, to be able to last so long without corruption, but that corrupter of things, fire?

Let us look also at the wonder of lime. Apart from what we have already said enough about, that it grows white in the fire by which other things are made black, it also conceives fire from fire in a most hidden way and keeps it, when the lump is already cold to the touch, so secretly that it does not appear to any of our senses at all, but, discovered by experiment, it is known to be in it, asleep, even while it does not appear. That is why we call it quicklime, as if the hidden fire itself were the invisible soul of a visible body. And now how wonderful it is that it is kindled when it is quenched! For to rid it of its hidden fire, it is soaked in water or water is poured over it, and whereas before it was cold, it boils up from that by which all hot things grow cold. So, as if the lump were expiring, the fire that lay hidden appears as it departs, and then, as if by death, it is so cold that if water is added it will not burn, and what we used to call quicklime we may call slaked lime. What is there that could seem able to be added to this wonder? And yet something is added. For if you apply not water but oil, which is rather the fuel of fire, it does not boil up however much it is soaked or drenched with it. If we read or heard of this wonder about some Indian stone and it could not come to our own experience, we would surely think it either a lie or at least marvel at it greatly. But things whose proofs pass daily before our eyes grow cheap, not because they are less wonderful in kind, but by their very constancy; so that we have ceased to marvel even at some things from India itself, a distant part of the world from us, which could be brought to us to be marveled at.

Many among us have the diamond, and especially goldsmiths and gem-engravers; this stone, it is said, is overcome neither by iron nor by fire nor by any other force except the blood of a goat. But do those who have it and know it wonder at it as those do to whom its power is shown for the first time? Those to whom it is not shown perhaps do not even believe it; or, if they believe, they wonder at what they have not experienced; and if they happen to experience it, they still wonder at the unaccustomed, but constant experience gradually removes the stimulus of wonder. We know that the magnet is a wonderful snatcher of iron; when I first saw it I was greatly astonished. For I saw an iron ring snatched and held suspended by the stone; then, as if it had given its own power to the iron it had snatched and made it shared, the same ring was brought near another and held it suspended, and just as the first clung to the stone, so the second ring clung to the first; a third was added in the same way, and a fourth too; and now, as if a chain of rings, linked not by being interlaced within but by adhering to one another without, hung suspended. Who would not be amazed at this power of the stone, which was not only in it but passed through so many suspended things and bound them with invisible bonds?

But much more wonderful is what I learned about this stone from my brother and fellow bishop Severus of Milevis. He told me that he himself had seen how Bathanarius, once count of Africa, when the bishop was dining with him, brought out this same stone and held it under a silver plate and put iron on top of the silver; then, as he moved the hand in which he held the stone underneath, so the iron was moved above, and with the silver in between and quite unaffected, the stone below was moved by the man and the iron above was snatched along by the stone, back and forth, with the greatest speed. I have told what I saw myself; I have told what I heard from him, whom I believed as if I had seen it myself. Let me say also what I have read about this magnet. When a diamond is placed near it, it does not snatch iron, and if it had already snatched it, as soon as the diamond comes near, it lets it go at once. India sends these stones; but if we, having come to know them, now cease to marvel at them, how much more those from whom they come, if they have them very readily; perhaps they regard them as we regard lime, which, since it is at hand for us, we do not marvel at, though in a wonderful way it boils with water, by which fire is usually put out, and does not boil with oil, by which fire is usually kindled.