Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
15.
The meaning of the dead given up by the sea, and by Death and Hades
Now who are meant by the dead who were in the sea, and whom the sea gave up? It cannot be meant that those who the in the sea are not in Hades; or that their bodies are preserved in the sea; or – a still more absurd suggestion – that the sea had in its keeping the good dead, while Hades had the wicked. Who could entertain such a notion? Some people, however, make the very reasonable assumption that in this context the sea stands for this age. On this assumption, when the author wanted to express symbolically the fact that judgement is to be passed on those whom Christ will find on earth still in the bodily frame, at the same time as on those who are to rise again, he called them ‘the dead’, including in that category the good, of whom it is said, ‘You are dead, and your lives are hidden with Christ in God’, as well as the wicked, of whom it is said: ‘Let the dead bury their dead.’
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There is also another reason for calling them dead, the fact that they wear mortal bodies; which is why the Apostle says, ‘The
body, to be sure, is dead because of sin: but the spirit is life because we have been justified’;
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thus pointing out that in a man who is alive and still in the bodily frame there is a body which is dead and a spirit which is life. He did not say, we notice, that the body is ‘mortal’, but that it is ‘dead’, although a little later he describes the same bodies as ‘mortal’, which is the more usual description. We conclude, then, that ‘the sea gave up the dead who were in it’ means that this age gave up all who belonged to it, because they had not yet died.
‘And Death and Hades gave back the dead whom they had in their keeping.’ The sea ‘
gave them up
’, because these people presented themselves in the condition in which they were found, whereas Death and Hades ‘gave them
back
’, because they recalled them to the life from which they had departed. And it may be that there was good reason for finding it insufficient to say ‘Death’
or
‘Hades’, and for using both terms: ‘Death’, perhaps, with reference to the good, who could suffer only death, and not hell as well; ‘Hades’ with reference to the wicked, who suffer punishment also in hell. For if there seems no absurdity in the belief that the holy men of old, who held a faith in the Christ who was still to come, dwelt in regions far removed from the torments of the ungodly, but still in the nether world, until Christ’s blood and his descent to those regions should rescue them from that place, then surely from that time onwards the good believers, now redeemed by the shedding of his blood as their ransom, have no experience at all of Hades, as they wait to receive back their bodies and to receive the good things they deserve.
The statement that ‘they were judged, each of them on the record of their actions’, is followed by a brief description of the manner of the judgement: ‘Then Death and Hades were flung into the lake of fire’, these terms signifying the Devil (as responsible for death and the pains of hell) and, together with him, the whole society of the demons. This has, in fact, already been said more explicitly, in the anticipatory statement that ‘the Devil, their seducer, was flung into the lake of fire and sulphur.’ And the somewhat obscure additional clause, ‘into which the beast and the false prophet had been cast’, is here replaced by the more explicit statement: ‘Then those whose names were not found in the book of life were flung into the lake of fire.’ This ‘book’ is not an aid to God’s memory, to prevent him from making a mistake through forgetfulness! What is symbolized is the predestination of those to whom eternal life will be given. For God is not unaware of their existence, so that he has to refer to the book to know about
them. The fact is that his foreknowledge of them, which is infallible, is itself the book of life in which they are written, that is, they are known beforehand.
16.
The new heaven and the new earth
Having ended his prophecy of the future judgement of the wicked, the author has now to treat also of the good. And so, after his brief development of the Lord’s statement that ‘these will go into everlasting punishment’ he proceeds to the development of the connected statement that ‘the righteous will go into eternal life.’
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John goes on to say, ‘Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth have vanished, and there is no longer any sea.’
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This will come to pass in the order already described by anticipation, where he has said that he saw One sitting on a throne, and heaven and earth vanished from his presence.
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For after judgement has been passed on those who are not recorded in the book of life and they have been flung into the lake of fire (a fire whose nature and whose situation in the world or the universe is, I conceive, known to no one, unless perhaps the Spirit of God has revealed it to someone) then the form of this world will pass away in a blazing up of the fires of the world, just as the Deluge was caused by the overflowing of the waters of the world. Thus in that blazing up, as I call it, of the fires of the world, the qualities of the corruptible elements which were appropriate for our corruptible bodies will utterly perish in the burning, and our substance itself will acquire the qualities which will be suited, by a miraculous transformation, to our immortal bodies, with the obvious purpose of furnishing the world, now renewed for the better, with a fitting population of human beings, renewed for the better even in their flesh.
As for the statement that ‘there is no longer any sea’, I should find it hard to say whether it is dried up by the intense heat, or whether the sea also is to be changed for the better. We are indeed told that there is to be a new heaven and a new earth; but I do not recall having anywhere read anything about a new sea, unless it is what is found in the same book, the description of ‘what seemed a sea of glass, like crystal’.
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But the author was not speaking in that place about the end of the world, nor does he appear to have meant the sea in the literal sense, but ‘what seemed a sea’. In fact, just as the prophetic style of
speech is apt to mingle metaphorical with literal expressions and so, as it were, to veil the meaning, similarly it may be that the words, ‘there is no longer any sea’, referred to the ‘sea’ about which he had just said that ‘the sea gave up the dead that were in its keeping’. For from that time the rough weather and the storms of this age will cease to exist; and ‘the sea’ is used as an allegory of this stormy age.
17.
The unending glory of the Church after the end
Then I saw the great City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready like a new bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice from the throne, saying: ‘See, the dwelling of God with men; and he will dwell among them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them. And he will wipe away every tear from their eyes; death shall be no more, and there will be no mourning or crying, nor any pain; for the old order of things has passed away.’ And the One who sat on the throne said: ‘See, I am making all things new.’
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This City is said to come down from heaven because the grace by which God created it is heavenly. That is why he says to it, through the mouth of Isaiah, ‘I, your creator, am the Lord.’
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This City has been coming down from heaven since its beginning, from the time when its citizens began to increase in number as they have continued to increase throughout the period of this present age, by the grace of God which comes from above by means of the ‘washing of rebirth’
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in the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven. But through the judgement of God, which will be the last judgement, administered by his Son Jesus Christ, the splendour of that City will be made apparent, by God’s gift. So great will be that splendour, and so new, that no traces of age will remain, since even our bodies will pass from their old corruption and mortality into incorruption and immortality.
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Now it would show excessive effrontery, as it seems to me, to take this as referring to the period in which the City reigns with its King for a thousand years. For our author says quite explicitly, ‘God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death will be no more, and there will be no mourning or crying, nor any more pain.’ And who could be so absurd, so crazed with a love for perverse argument, as to have the hardihood to maintain that in the midst of the troubles of this mortal state not only the holy people but every individual saint who lives this life, or will live it, or has lived it, has no tears and no
sorrows in this life? The truth is rather that the more holy a man is, and the deeper his longing for holiness, the more abundant is his weeping when he prays. Do we not hear the voice of a citizen of the Jerusalem above in such utterances as these: ‘My tears have been my only food, day and night’, and: ‘Every night I shall soak my bed and drench my couch with my tears’, and: ‘My groaning is not hidden from you’, and: ‘My sorrow was renewed’?
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Are we really to suppose that those people are not God’s children who ‘groan, in oppression because they do not wish to be stripped, but rather to have the new clothing put on, so that this mortal element may be absorbed by life’?
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Or those who, though ‘having the first-fruits of the Spirit, are groaning inwardly while they await their adoption, the setting free of their body’?
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And was not the apostle Paul a citizen of Jerusalem above, and was he not all the more a citizen when he felt deep sadness and continual grief in his heart for the Israelites, his brothers in the physical sense?
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Moreover, when will ‘death be no more’ in that city? Surely only when it will be said, ‘Death, where is your strife? Death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin.’
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Without doubt there will be no more sin when it will be asked: ‘Where is it?’ But in our present state it is not some weak citizen of that City, but our author, John himself, who cries out in his epistle, ‘If we say that we are without sin, we are fooling ourselves and we are remote from the truth.’
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Now in this book called the Apocalypse there are, to be sure, many obscure statements, designed to exercise the mind of the reader; and there are few statements there whose clarity enables us to track down the meaning of the rest, at the price of some effort. This is principally because our author repeats the same things in many ways, so that he appears to be speaking of different matters, though in fact he is found on examination to be treating of the same subjects in different terms. But there is nothing like this in the statement that ‘God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, and there will be no more sorrow or crying, nor will there be any more pain.’ The reference here to the world to come, to immortality and the eternity of the saints, is as clear as day; for then, and only then, will those painful things cease to be. So clear is it that if we suppose the statements
to be obscure we must not expect to find any clarity in our reading of the holy Scriptures.
18. The statements of Peter about the last judgement
Now let us see what the apostle Peter also has written about this judgement I n the last days.’ he says,
there will come those who scoff and who live for the indulgence of their own desires; and they will say: ‘Where is the promise of his coming? Our fathers have gone to their rest, but from then onwards everything has gone on just as it has been from the beginning of creation.’ For they choose to ignore the fact that there were heaven and earth in days of old, created (by God’s word) of water and with water: by means of which the world of that time was flooded by water and perished. But the heavens and earth that now exist have been kept in store (again by God’s word) to be reserved for the fire until the day of judgement, the day of the destruction of the ungodly. But there is one thing, dear brothers, that you must not fail to notice: that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow in fulfilling his promise, as some people imagine; but he is patient for your sake, because it is not his will that anyone should be lost, but that all should be turned to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come, unexpectedly, as a thief comes; and on that day the heavens will pass away in a mighty rush, and the elements will blaze up into disintegration, and the earth and all things on the earth will be burnt up. And since all things are to perish, consider what kind of people you ought to be. You must live lives of holiness, looking for the day of the lord and hastening towards its coming; that day which will set the heavens on fire, for their disintegration, and melt the elements with the heat of the flames. Nevertheless, we remember his promise, and we look forward to new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness makes her abode.
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He has said nothing here about the resurrection of the dead, but he certainly has enough to say about the destruction of this world. Moreover, in mentioning the Deluge that happened in time gone by, he seems to be warning us, in a way, of the extent of the destruction which, as we are to believe, will come upon the world at the end of this age. For he says that the world which then existed was destroyed, and not only the cirle of the earth but the heavens also, which we are undoubtedly to take as standing for the heavens of this lower air, for that part, that tract of the sky. which the waters overwhelmed in their rising. Thus it was the whole, or almost the whole, of the windy air –
Peter calls it ‘heaven’, or rather ‘the heavens’, but he surely means the lower parts, not the highest parts where the sun, moon, and stars are stationed – it was this air that was converted into a liquid state and in this way perished along with the earth, whose former aspect was certainly wiped out by the deluge. ‘But the heavens and earth that now exist have been kept in store, again by God’s word, to be reserved for the fire until the day of judgement, the day of the destruction of the ungodly.’ Accordingly, the heavens and the earth, that is, the world which replaced the world destroyed by the Deluge, was stored away from that water, and is itself reserved for the last fire, until the day of judgement, the day of the destruction of the ungodly. For he does not hesitate to say that there will be a destruction of men also through this mighty transformation; and yet their substance will remain, although in eternal pains.
Now perhaps someone will ask this question: If the world is to blaze up, after the judgement, until it is replaced by a new heaven and a new earth, where will the saints be in the actual time of the conflagration, since they will have bodies and therefore must be in some material place? We can reply that they will be in the higher regions to which the flames of that fire will not rise, in the same way as the waters of the Flood did not rise to that level. For they will have bodies of such a nature that they may be in whatever place they choose. But in any case they will have become immortal and exempt from decay and so they will not have much fear of the fire of that conflagration, seeing that the corruptible and mortal bodies of the three men could remain alive and unharmed in the burning furnace.
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