Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
25.
The prophecy of Malachi about the last judgement and the purifying punishments
The prophet Malachiel or Malachi (who is also called ‘Angel’) is thought by some to be Ezra the priest (Jerome says that this was an opinion held by the Hebrews
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), who was the author of some other works
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received in the canon. He gives a prophecy of the last judgement in the following passage:
See, he comes, says the Lord Almighty! And who will withstand the day of his coming, and who will be able to endure to look him in the face? For he comes like a refiner’s fire and like a fuller’s herb; and he will sit, refining and purifying as it were gold and silver. And he will purify the sons of Levi, and will pour them out like gold and silver. Then they will offer to the Lord sacrifices in righteousness, and the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord, as in the days of old and in years gone by. And I shall come to you in judgement, and I shall be a swift witness against sorcerers, and against adulterers, and against those who swear in my name falsely, and those who defraud the worker of his wages, and use their power to oppress the widows and maltreat the orphans and pervert judgement against the stranger, and have no fear of me, says the Lord Almighty. For I am the Lord your God; and I do not change.
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From these words it seems quite evident that in the judgement the punishments of some are to be purificatory. For how else are we to understand this passage: ‘Who will withstand the day of his coining, and who will be able to look him in the face? For he comes like a refiner’s fire and like a fuller’s herb; and he will sit, refining and purifying as it were silver and gold. And he will purify the sons of Levi, and will pour them out like gold and silver’? Isaiah also says something in the same strain, ‘The Lord will wash the stains of the sons and daughters of Sion, and will cleanse the blood from the midst of them by the breath of judgement and the breath of burning.’
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Now perhaps we might say that they are cleansed from their stains and purified in a certain sense when the wicked are separated from
them by the penal judgement, and when the segregation and condemnation of the wicked effects the purgation of the rest, because thereafter they are going to live free from any contamination by such people. But Malachi says, ‘And he will purify the sons of Levi, and will pour them out like gold and silver; and then they will offer to the Lord sacrifices in righteousness, and the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord’; and in these words he is obviously pointing out that those who have been cleansed will then be pleasing to the Lord in respect of their sacrifices of righteousness; and that implies that they themselves will be cleansed from their own unrighteousness which rendered them displeasing to God. Moreover, they themselves, after their cleansing, will be sacrificial offerings in their complete and perfect righteousness; for what offerings do such people make which is more acceptable to God than the offering of themselves? However, the more searching examination of the question of purificatory punishment must be postponed to another time.
As for ‘the sons of Levi’, and ‘Judah’, and ‘Jerusalem’, we ought to take those as standing for the Church of God itself, assembled not only from the Hebrews but from other nations also. And we should understand not the Church in its present state, when ‘if we say that we have no sin we are fooling ourselves and we are strangers to the truth’,
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but the Church as it will be then, purified by the last judgement as a threshing-floor by the winnowing wind, and when those who need such purification have been so cleansed by fire that there will be no one at all who has to offer sacrifice for his sins. For all who offer such sacrifice are assuredly in a state of sin, and it is for their sins that they make their offering, so that when God has accepted their offering their sins may then be forgiven.
26.
The sacrifices ‘pleasing to the Lord’ to be offered by the holy people
Now it was because God wished to make it plain that his City will not at that time continue to observe the custom of sacrifice that he said that the sons of Levi would offer sacrifices ‘in righteousness’; for that implies that they will not offer in sin, and consequently not for sin. Thus we can understand what is meant by the statement that follows: ‘Then the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and in the years gone by.’ We realize that it is in vain that the Jews promise themselves a return of the past times of
their sacrifices according to the Law of the old covenant. For it was not in righteousness but in sin that they then offered sacrifices; for at that time it was chiefly and primarily for sins that they offered them, so much so that the priest himself (whom we are certainly bound to suppose to have been more righteous than the rest of the people) used to make offering, in accordance with God’s commandment, for his own sins first, and then for the sins of the people. That is why we are now obliged to explain the meaning of ‘as in the days of old and in the years gone by’. This may perhaps recall the time when the first human beings were in paradise. For at that time, when they were pure and untouched by any taint or stain of sin, they offered themselves to God as the most unpolluted sacrifices. But after they had been expelled from paradise because of their transgression and when human nature had been condemned in their persons, thenceforth ‘no one is free from stain’, as the Scripture says, ‘not even an infant who has lived but one day on the earth’;
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no one, that is, except the one Mediator, and any who have received the baptism of rebirth and who are still in early infancy.
But it may be replied that one may rightly claim that ‘sacrifices in righteousness’ are offered by those who offer in faith, ‘since the righteous man lives on the basis of faith’
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And yet a righteous man ‘deceives himself if he says that he has no sin’, and therefore he does not say so, simply because he lives on the basis of faith. And in any case, is anyone really going to assert that this time of faith is to be put on the same level as that final state when those who offer sacrifices in righteousness will be cleansed by the fire of the last judgement? For this reason, since we must believe that after such a cleansing the righteous will have no sin, then assuredly that time, as far as the freedom from sin is concerned, is comparable only with that time when the first human beings lived in paradise, before their transgression, in the felicity of utter innocence. This then, is the correct interpretation of ‘as in the days of old, and as in the years gone by’.
Isaiah also, after giving the promise of a new heaven and a new earth, proceeds to give some allegorical and enigmatic descriptions of the bliss of the saints; but my concern to avoid prolixity forbids me to attempt an adequate explanation of all of them. However, they in clude this statement: ‘As the days of the tree of life will be the days of my people’;
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and anyone who has the slightest knowledge of the holy Scriptures cannot fail to know where God planted the tree of life, from the fruit of which the first human beings were debarred when
their own wickedness expelled them from paradise and a fiery guard of terror was set round that tree.
Now it may be contended that the ‘days of the tree of life’, mentioned by the prophet Isaiah, stand for the present days of the Church of Christ, and that Christ himself is prophetically called ‘the tree of life’, because he is himself the Wisdom of God, of which Solomon says, ‘Wisdom is a tree of life to those who embrace her.’
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It may further be maintained that those first human beings did not spend ‘years’ in that paradise, in fact they were expelled from it so quickly that they did not produce a child there; and therefore, it may be said, that time cannot be meant by the words ‘as in the days of old and in the years gone by’. If this argument is advanced, I pass over the question, to avoid the necessity of a discussion of every detail, which would be a lengthy business, in order to establish one point with the support of incontestable truth.
In fact I notice another meaning to prevent our supposing that it was the return of the ‘days of old and years gone by’ of carnal sacrifices that was promised us, as a great privilege, by the prophet For the sacrificial victims, demanded by old Law, were unblemished specimens of each class of animal, without any defect whatsoever; and they symbolized holy men, without any sin at all, and only one such man has ever been found, and that man was Christ. Now at the judgement those who are worthy of such purification are to be purified even by fire; and after that there will be found in all the saints no sin at all; and in this condition they will offer themselves in righteousness, so that such victims will be unblemished and without any defect. And thus they will certainly be ‘as in the days of old and in the years gone by’ when the purest sacrificial victims were offered as a foreshadowing of this reality. For then there will be in the immortal flesh and mind of the saints this purity which was prefigured in the bodies of those sacrificial animals.
Then, turning to those who deserve not cleansing but condemnation, the prophecy continues: ‘And I shall come to you in judgement, and I shall be a swift witness against sorcerers, and against adulterers’ and so on; and, after a list of crimes deserving condemnation, it proceeds: ‘For I am the Lord your God; and I do not change.’ He says that he himself will be a ‘witness’ because in his judgement he has no need of other witnesses; and he will be ‘swift’ either because he is to come suddenly, and his judgement, which seemed so slow in coming, will be exceedingly swift in its unexpected
coming; or else because he will convict men’s consciences without any lengthy speech. ‘For in the thoughts of the wicked man’, as the Scripture says, ‘inquiry will be made’; and the Apostle says, ‘Their thoughts will present the case against them and the case for them, on the day when God will judge the secrets of human hearts, according to my Gospel, through Jesus Christ.’
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In this way also we must understand that the Lord will be a ‘swift witness’, since he is going to recall to man’s memory, without delay, the evidence which will serve to convict and punish man’s conscience.
27.
The separation of good and bad, making evident the distinction established at the last judgement
There is another passage from this prophet on the subject of the last judgement; and I have already quoted it in the eighteenth book,
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when dealing with another topic.
They will be mine, says the Lord Almighty, on the day when I take them into my possession; and I shall choose them as a man chooses his son who serves him. And I shall turn, and you will see the difference between a righteous and a wicked man, between a man who serves God and a man who does not serve him. For see, the day is coming, blazing like a furnace; and it will burn them up; and all the foreigners and the evil-doers will be stubble. The day that is to come will set them on fire, says the Lord Almighty, and there will be left in them neither branch nor twig. And there will arise for you who fear my name the sun of righteousness, and healing will be in his wings. You will go out, leaping for joy like calves released from their pens; and you will trample on the wicked, and they will be like ashes under your feet, says the Lord Almighty.
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This wide gulf between rewards and punishments, the rift that sunders the righteous from the unrighteous, is something we do not discern beneath the light of this sun in the futility of this life; but when it is revealed in the clear light beneath that sun of righteousness at the manifestation of that other life, then beyond doubt there will be a judgement such as there has never been.
28.
The Law of Moses is to be spiritually interpreted
Malachi’s next verse, ‘Remember the Law of Moses my servant, which I delivered to him in Horeb for all Israel’,
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is opportune in recalling
precepts and judgements, following as it does The declaration of the great distinction that is to be made between those who keep the Law and those who treat it with contempt. At the same time, the prophet’s intention is that men should learn to understand the Law in a spiritual manner, and find Christ in that Law; for Christ by his judgement is to effect the separation of the good from the wicked. It is, in fact, not for nothing that the same Lord says to the Jews, ‘If you believed Moses you would also believe me; for it was about me that Moses wrote.’
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Now it was surely by taking the Law in a material construction and by failure to realize that its earthly promises are symbols of heavenly realities that the people rushed to make complaints, even daring to say, ‘A man who serves God is a fool. What good does it do us that we have kept his commandments, and have walked as suppliants in the sight of the Lord Almighty? Now we call blessed those who are estranged from God; and all those whose actions are wicked are prospering.’
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By these words of theirs the prophet was in a sense driven to give warning of the last judgement, when the wicked will not enjoy even illusory bliss, but will be shown in their unmistakable wretchedness, whereas the good will not suffer any misery, not even temporal un-happiness, but will enjoy a manifest and everlasting felicity. The prophet has indeed quoted earlier some similar complaints of those people: ‘Everyone who behaves wickedly is good in the eyes of the Lord; such people have his approval.’
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They were brought, I say, to such complaints against God by taking the Law of Moses in a material sense. For this reason also the writer of the seventy-second psalm says that his feet were almost shaken and his steps unsteady – in fact, so unsteady that he stumbled – because he was jealous of the sinners, observing them at peace; so that he said, among other things, ‘How can God know about this? Is the Most High aware of it?’ And he said also, ‘Is it really to no purpose that I have kept my heart righteous and washed my hands among the innocent?’ But in the end he finds the solution to this difficult problem, which arises when the good appear to be wretched and the wicked seem happy; and he says, ”This difficulty is beyond me, until I enter the sanctuary of God and understand the last things.’
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For in the last judgement, we may be sure, things will not be like this; indeed, in the obvious wretchedness of the wicked and the obvious felicity of the righteous a state of things very different from the present situation will be revealed.