City of God 21.26–22.1

Chapter 26. What it is to have Christ as the foundation, and to whom salvation is promised as through the burning of fire.

“But catholic Christians,” they say, “have Christ as their foundation, from whose unity they have not withdrawn, even if they have built on this foundation a life however wicked, like wood, hay, straw; so right faith, through which Christ is the foundation, will be able at some time to save them from the perpetuity of that fire, though with loss, since the things built on it will be burned up.” Let the apostle James answer them briefly: “If anyone says he has faith but does not have works, can faith save him?” “And who is it, then,” they say, “of whom the apostle Paul says, ‘But he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire’?” Let us inquire together who this is; yet it is most certain that it is not this man, lest we set the sayings of two apostles at odds, if one says, “Even if someone has evil works, faith will save him through fire,” and the other, “If he does not have works, can faith save him?”

We shall find, then, who can be saved through fire if we first find what it is to have Christ as the foundation. To notice this as quickly as possible from the very comparison: nothing in a building is put before the foundation. Whoever, then, has Christ in his heart in such a way that he does not put earthly and temporal things before him, not even those that are lawful and permitted, has Christ as his foundation; but if he puts them before him, even if he seems to have faith in Christ, Christ is still not the foundation in him, since such things are put before him; how much more, if, despising the saving commandments, he commits unlawful things, is he convicted of not having put Christ first but of having put him last, since he has set him aside, whether commanding or permitting, when he chose to satisfy his lust through shameful acts against what Christ commanded or permitted! If, then, any Christian loves a prostitute and, cleaving to her, becomes one body with her, he no longer has Christ as his foundation. But if anyone loves his wife, if according to Christ, who would doubt that Christ is his foundation? But if according to this world, if carnally, if in the disease of lusts, like the gentiles who do not know God, even this the apostle, or rather Christ through the apostle, allows by way of concession. So this man too can have Christ as his foundation. For if he puts nothing of such affection and pleasure before him, even though he builds on it wood, hay, straw, Christ is the foundation; because of this he will be saved through fire. For the fire of tribulation will burn up delights of this kind and earthly loves, which are not damnable because of the marriage bond; and to this fire belong both bereavements and whatever calamities take these things away. And so this building will be a loss to the one who built it, because he will not have what he built on it and will be tormented by the loss of the things he certainly rejoiced to enjoy; but through this fire he will be saved by the merit of the foundation, because, if a persecutor put before him whether he would rather have that or Christ, he would not put it before Christ.

See in the apostle's words a man building on the foundation gold, silver, precious stones: “He who is without a wife,” he says, “thinks of the things of God, how to please God.” See another building wood, hay, straw: “But he who is joined in marriage,” he says, “thinks of the things of the world, how to please his wife.” “Each one's work will become manifest; for the day will disclose it” (the day, that is, of tribulation), “because,” he says, “it will be revealed in fire.” He calls that same tribulation fire, as we read elsewhere: “The furnace tests the potter's vessels, and the trial of tribulation tests righteous men.” “And the fire will test what sort of work each one's is. If anyone's work remains” (for it remains that one thinks of the things of God, how to please God) “which he has built on it, he will receive a reward” (that is, he will take what he thought about); “but if anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss” (since he will not have what he loved); “but he himself will be saved” (because no tribulation moved him from the firmness of that foundation), “yet so as through fire” (for what he did not have without enticing love, he does not lose without burning pain). See, as far as it seems to me, a fire has been found which condemns neither of them, but enriches the one, causes loss to the other, and tests both.

But if we wish to take that fire in this place as the one of which the Lord will say to those on the left, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire,” so that these too who build on the foundation wood, hay, straw are believed to be among them, and the merit of the good foundation frees them from that fire after a time allotted for their evil deserts: whom shall we think those on the right are, to whom it will be said, “Come, you blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you,” if not those who have built on the foundation gold, silver, precious stones? But into that fire of which it was said, “yet so as through fire,” if it is to be understood in this way, both are to be sent, those on the right and those on the left. For both are to be tested by that fire of which it was said, “For the day will disclose it, because it will be revealed in fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one's is.” If, then, the fire will test both, so that if anyone's work remains, that is, is not consumed by the fire, he will receive a reward for what he built on it, but if anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, then surely this is not that eternal fire itself. For into that only those on the left will be sent by the last and perpetual condemnation, whereas this one tests those on the right. But it tests some of them in such a way that it does not burn up and consume the building which it finds they have built on Christ the foundation; and others otherwise, that is, so that what they have built on it burns and they suffer loss from it, but they are saved, because they held Christ, set firmly in the foundation, with a surpassing love. And if they are saved, they will certainly stand on the right and hear with the rest, “Come, you blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you,” not on the left, where those will be who will not be saved and therefore will hear, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire.” For no one will be saved from that fire, because all those will go into eternal punishment, where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched, by which they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

After the death of this body, until one comes to that day which, after the resurrection of bodies, will be the last day of condemnation and reward, if in this interval of time the spirits of the dead are said to suffer a fire of this kind, which those do not feel who in the life of this body did not have such conduct and loves that their wood, hay, straw should be consumed, but which others do feel who carried such buildings with them, whether only there, or both here and there, or here so that not there, finding a fire of passing tribulation that burns up worldly things which, though worldly, are pardonable and not condemned: I do not refute it, because perhaps it is true. Indeed, even the death of the flesh itself, which was conceived from the committing of the first sin, can belong to this tribulation, so that the time which follows it is felt by each according to his building. The persecutions too, by which martyrs were crowned and which all Christians suffer, test both buildings like fire; and some they consume together with the builders themselves, if they do not find Christ as the foundation in them; others without the builders, if they find him, because they themselves will be saved, though with loss; and others they do not consume, because they find such things as remain for ever. There will also be at the end of the world, in the time of Antichrist, a tribulation such as there has never been before. How many buildings will there then be, whether of gold or of hay, on the best foundation, which is Christ Jesus, so that that fire may test both and bring joy to some and loss to others, yet destroy neither of those in whom it finds these things, because of the firm foundation!

But whoever puts before Christ, I do not say his wife, whose carnal union he uses for carnal pleasure, but even those names of dutiful affection which are free from delights of this kind, loving them carnally in a human way, does not have him as his foundation, and therefore will not be saved through fire, but will not be saved, because he will not be able to be with the Savior, who, speaking most plainly on this matter, says: “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter above me is not worthy of me.” But one who loves these near relations carnally in such a way that he does not put them before Christ the Lord, and would rather be without them than without Christ if he were brought to this crisis of temptation, will be saved through fire, because at their loss the pain must burn as much as the love had clung. Further, one who has loved father and mother, sons and daughters, according to Christ, so as to care for them for obtaining his kingdom and cleaving to him, or loves in them this, that they are members of Christ: God forbid that this love should be found among the wood, hay, straw to be consumed; rather, it will be reckoned wholly to the building of gold, silver, and gems. And how can he love them more than Christ, whom he certainly loves for Christ's sake?

Chapter 27. Against the conviction of those who think that the sins in which they have remained while giving alms will not harm them.

It remains to answer those who say that only those will burn in eternal fire who neglect to give worthy alms for their sins, because of what the apostle James says: “For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy.” “So he who has shown mercy,” they say, “even if he has not corrected his depraved conduct but has lived wickedly and viciously amid his very almsgiving, will have judgment with mercy, so that either he is not condemned at all or is freed from the final condemnation after some time.” For no other reason, they think, will Christ make the separation between those on the right and those on the left, sending the one into the kingdom and the other into eternal punishment, solely on the ground of almsgiving chosen or neglected. And to hold that their daily sins, which they never cease to commit, whatever and however great, can be forgiven through alms, they try to bring in the prayer which the Lord himself taught as their supporter and witness. “For as there is no day,” they say, “on which this prayer is not said by Christians, so there is no daily sin of any kind which is not forgiven through it, when we say, ‘Forgive us our debts,’ provided we take care to do what follows: ‘as we also forgive our debtors.’ For the Lord did not say,” they say, “‘If you forgive men their sins, your Father will forgive you your small daily sins,’ but, ‘He will forgive you your sins.’” So, whatever and however great they are, even if they are committed daily and life does not depart from them changed for the better, they presume that they can be forgiven them through the almsgiving of not refusing pardon.

But it is well that they remind us that worthy alms must be given for sins; for if they said that any alms whatever could obtain divine mercy for sins, both daily and great, and for any habit of crimes however great, so that daily forgiveness would follow them, they would see that they were saying something absurd and ridiculous. For then they would be forced to admit that it could happen that a very rich man, by spending ten little coins a day on alms, could redeem murders and adulteries and all sorts of wicked deeds. But if it is most absurd and most insane to say this, then surely, if it is asked what alms are worthy for sins, of which the forerunner of Christ also said, “Bear fruits worthy of repentance,” those will without doubt not be found to give them who pierce their life through, until death, with the committing of daily crimes. First, because in taking away others' goods they plunder far more, of which they give a very small part to the poor and think that they thereby feed Christ, so that, believing they have bought from him, or rather buy daily, a license for misdeeds, they commit such great damnable things securely. If for a single crime they distributed all they have to the needy members of Christ, it could not profit them anything unless they ceased from such deeds by having the love which does not act wrongly. He, then, who gives worthy alms for his sins first begins to give them from himself. For it is unfitting that one who gives to his neighbor should not give to himself, when he hears God saying, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” and hears likewise, “Have mercy on your own soul by pleasing God.” How can he who does not give this alms to his own soul, namely to please God, be said to give worthy alms for his sins? For this is also why it is written: “He who is evil to himself, to whom will he be good?” For alms help prayers; and certainly we must attend to what we read: “Son, you have sinned; do not do so again, and pray about your past sins, that they may be forgiven you.” Alms, then, are to be given for this purpose, that when we pray about past sins we may be heard; not that, persevering in them, we may believe that we are buying a license to do evil through alms.

The Lord foretold that he would reckon to those on the right the alms they gave and to those on the left the alms they did not give precisely to show how much alms avail for blotting out former sins, not for committing perpetual sins with impunity. And those who refuse to change their life for the better from the habit of crimes are not to be said to give such alms. For by what he says, “When you did not do it to one of the least of mine, you did not do it to me,” he shows that they do not do it even when they think they are doing it. For if they gave bread to a hungry Christian as to a Christian, they would certainly not deny themselves the bread of righteousness, which is Christ himself; since God looks not at the one to whom it is given but at the spirit in which it is given. He, then, who loves Christ in a Christian gives him alms in the spirit in which he draws near to Christ, not in that in which he wishes to depart from Christ unpunished. For the more anyone loves what Christ disapproves, the more he deserts Christ. For what does it profit anyone to be baptized if he is not justified? Did not he who said, “Unless one is reborn of water and the Spirit, he will not enter the kingdom of God,” also say, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven”? Why do many run to be baptized for fear of the one, and not many take care to be justified, not fearing the other? Just as one who says to his brother “Fool” is not saying it to his brother, when in saying it he is hostile not to his brotherhood but to his sin (otherwise he will be liable to the Gehenna of fire), so, on the contrary, one who gives alms to a Christian does not give to a Christian if he does not love Christ in him; and he does not love Christ who refuses to be justified in Christ. And just as, if someone has been caught in this fault of saying to his brother “Fool,” that is, of insulting him unjustly without wishing to remove his sin, it is not enough for him to give alms to redeem this unless he also adds the remedy of reconciliation which follows there (for there follows: “So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there at the altar and go first to be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift”), so it is not enough to give alms, however great, for any crime whatever and to remain in the habit of crimes.

The daily prayer, however, which Jesus himself taught, and from which it is also called the Lord's Prayer, does blot out daily sins, when “Forgive us our debts” is said daily, and what follows, “as we also forgive our debtors,” is not only said but also done; but it is said because sins are committed, not so that they may be committed because it is said. For by it the Savior wished to show us that, however righteously we live in the darkness and weakness of this life, we are not without sins, for the forgiveness of which we ought to pray, and to forgive those who sin against us so that we too may be pardoned. The Lord certainly did not say, “If you forgive men their sins, your Father will also forgive you your sins,” so that, trusting in this prayer, we might securely commit daily crimes, either by a power through which we would not fear human laws or by a cunning through which we would deceive human beings themselves; but so that through it we might learn not to think ourselves without sins, even if we were free from crimes; just as God reminded the priests of the old law of this very thing concerning the sacrifices, which he commanded them to offer first for their own sins and then for those of the people. For the very words of so great a Master and our Lord are to be carefully looked at. He did not say, “If you forgive men their sins, your Father too will forgive you any sins whatever,” but he said, “your sins.” For he was teaching a daily prayer and was certainly speaking to disciples already justified. What, then, is “your sins,” but the sins without which not even you will be, who are justified and sanctified? Where, then, those who seek in this prayer an occasion for committing crimes daily say that the Lord meant great sins too, since he did not say “He will forgive you your small sins,” but “your sins,” there we, considering to what sort of people he was speaking and hearing the words “your sins,” ought to think of nothing but small ones, since the sins of such people were no longer great. And yet not even the great ones themselves, from which one must withdraw altogether with conduct changed for the better, are forgiven to those who pray unless what is said there is done: “as we also forgive our debtors.” For if the least sins, without which even the life of the righteous is not, are not forgiven otherwise, how much more will those involved in many and great crimes, even if they now cease to commit them, obtain no pardon if they are inexorable in forgiving others what each has sinned against them, since the Lord says: “But if you do not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive you.” For this is the force of what the apostle James too says, that judgment will be without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. For that servant too ought to come to mind, whose master remitted his debt of ten thousand talents, which he afterwards ordered him to repay because he himself had no mercy on his fellow servant who owed him a hundred denarii.

In those, then, who are children of the promise and vessels of mercy, what the same apostle adds next holds good: “But mercy triumphs over judgment”; since even those righteous ones who have lived with such holiness that they also receive others into the eternal dwellings, by whom they were made friends by means of the mammon of iniquity, were set free by mercy to become such, by him who justifies the ungodly, reckoning the reward according to grace, not according to debt. For among their number is the apostle who says: “I obtained mercy to be faithful.” But those who are received by such into the eternal dwellings, it must be admitted, are not endowed with such conduct that their own life could suffice to set them free without the support of the saints; and so in them mercy triumphs over judgment much more. Yet no one who is most wicked, not changed at all to a good or a more tolerable life, is therefore to be thought to be received into the eternal dwellings because he has served the saints by means of the mammon of iniquity, that is, of money or riches which were wrongly acquired, or, even if rightly, yet are not true riches but what iniquity thinks riches, since it does not know what true riches are, with which they abound who also receive others into the eternal dwellings. There is, then, a certain manner of life neither so bad that the generosity of alms, by which even the poverty of the righteous is supported and friends are made who may receive them into the eternal dwellings, is of no use to those who live it for gaining the kingdom of heaven, nor so good that it suffices by itself for them to attain such great blessedness, unless they obtain mercy through the merits of those whom they have made their friends. (I am accustomed to wonder that this saying of the Lord is found even in Virgil, the saying where he says, “Make friends for yourselves by means of the mammon of iniquity, so that they too may receive you into the eternal dwellings”; and that other saying is very like it: “He who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man will receive a righteous man's reward.” For when that poet was describing the Elysian fields, where they think the souls of the blessed dwell, he placed there not only those who were able to reach those abodes by their own merits, but added and said: “and those who by deserving made others mindful of them,” that is, who deserved well of others and by deserving made them mindful of them; exactly as if they were saying to them what is often in Christian mouths, when each humble person commends himself to one of the saints and says, “Remember me,” and brings it about by deserving that he may be remembered.)

But what that manner of life is, and what those sins are which so hinder arrival at the kingdom of God that they nevertheless obtain pardon through the merits of holy friends, is most difficult to discover and most dangerous to define. I, certainly, though I have been busy about it up to this time, have not been able to arrive at tracking them down. And perhaps they are hidden for this reason, so that zeal for advancing to guard against all sins may not grow slack. For if it were known what or what kind of offenses those are for which, even though they remain and are not removed by progress to a better life, the intercession of the righteous is to be sought and hoped for, human sloth would wrap itself securely in them, and would not take care to be unwrapped from such entanglements by the readiness of any virtue, but would seek only to be freed by the merits of others whom it had made its friends by means of the mammon of iniquity through generous almsgiving. But as it is, since the measure of pardonable iniquity, even if it persists, is unknown, surely both zeal for advancing to better things by praying and striving is applied more watchfully, and care to make holy friends by means of the mammon of iniquity is not despised.

But this deliverance, which comes about either by each one's own prayers or by the intercession of the saints, brings it about that one is not sent into the eternal fire, not that, once he has been sent, he is bought out from there after any length of time. For even those who think that what is written, that the good ground brings forth abundant fruit, some thirtyfold, some sixtyfold, some a hundredfold, is to be understood so that the saints, according to the difference of their merits, set free some thirty people, some sixty, some a hundred, usually suppose that this will happen on the day of judgment, not after the judgment. When someone saw people most perversely promising themselves impunity by this opinion, because it seemed that all might be able to come to deliverance in this way, he is said to have answered most elegantly that one should rather live well, so that each may be found among those who will intercede for the deliverance of others; lest they be so few that, each of them quickly reaching his number of thirty or sixty or a hundred, many remain who can no longer be rescued from punishment by their intercession, and among them is found whoever promises himself, with most empty rashness, the hope of another's fruit.

Let it suffice that I have given this answer to those who do not despise the authority of the sacred writings, which we hold in common, but, by misunderstanding them, think that what will come to be is not what they say, but rather what they themselves wish. With this answer given, then, we end the book, as we promised.

As we promised in the preceding book, this last book of the whole work will contain the discussion of the eternal blessedness of the city of God. It is called eternal not because of a length of age stretching over many centuries yet destined at some point to end, but, as it is written in the Gospel, “of his kingdom there will be no end”; nor is it eternal in the sense that an appearance of permanence is kept up in it while some depart by dying and others succeed them by being born, as in a tree clothed with perennial foliage the same greenness seems to remain, while, as the leaves fall away and drop, others that grow in their place preserve the look of shade. No: all its citizens will be immortal, men too attaining what the holy angels never lost. God, its most almighty founder, will do this. For he has promised, and he cannot lie; and to give men confidence on this account too, he has already done many things of his own, both unpromised and promised.

For it is he who in the beginning founded the world, full of all good things visible and intelligible, in which he made nothing better than the spirits to whom he gave understanding, made them fit for contemplating him and capable of receiving him, and bound them together in one fellowship, which we call the holy and heavenly city. In it the thing by which they are sustained and made blessed is God himself, as their common life and food. He gave to this intellectual nature a free choice of such a kind that, if it chose to abandon God, that is, its own blessedness, misery would follow at once. And when he foreknew that certain angels, through the pride in which they wished to be sufficient to themselves for the blessed life, would desert so great a good, he did not take this power from them, judging it more powerful and better to bring good even out of evils than not to allow evils to exist. These evils would not exist at all had not a changeable nature, though good and established by the supreme God, the unchangeable good who created all good things, made them for itself by sinning. By its very sin it is convicted, on its own testimony, of having been created a good nature. For unless it were itself a great good, though not equal to its Creator, desertion of God as its light could not be an evil for it. For just as blindness is a defect of the eye, and that very fact shows that the eye was created to see light, so that by its very defect the member capable of light is shown to be more excellent than the other members (for there would be no other reason why lacking light should be its defect), so the nature that enjoyed God teaches, even by the very defect through which it is miserable because it does not enjoy God, that it was established as supremely good. God bound the voluntary fall of the angels with the most just penalty of everlasting unhappiness; and to the others, who remained in that supreme good, he gave as the reward, so to speak, of their remaining, the certainty that they would remain in it without end.

He also made man himself upright, with the same free choice: an earthly animal, indeed, but worthy of heaven if he held fast to his maker, while misery of a kind fitting such a nature would likewise follow if he deserted him. And when he foreknew that man too would sin by transgressing God's law through deserting God, he did not take from him the power of free choice either, foreseeing at the same time what good he himself would make of man's evil. From this mortal race, deservedly and justly condemned, he gathers by his grace so great a people that from it he may supply and restore the part of the angels that fell, and so that beloved and heavenly city may not be cheated of the number of its citizens, but may perhaps even rejoice in a more abundant number.