Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
8.
A change of some property in a substance is not contrary to nature
However, our opponents may retort, their refusal to believe in our assertion that human bodies are destined to bum for ever and that these bodies will never the is based on this consideration: that we know that the nature of human bodies has been very differently constituted; and hence it is impossible here to advance the explanation offered in respect of those natural marvels we have mentioned. It cannot in this case be said that ‘this is a natural power’ or ‘this is a natural property of this substance’; for in fact we are aware that this is not a natural property of human bodies.
Now we have an answer to this, based on our sacred books, namely, that this human flesh of ours was differently constituted before man’s sin; I mean that it was possible for this flesh never to suffer death. That condition changed after man’s sin, and man’s flesh became what it has always been known to be in this distressful situation of mortality, so that it cannot hold on to life for ever; by the same token, at the resurrection of the dead it will be differently constituted from the flesh as it is known to us. But our opponents do not believe in those books of ours, in which we read the description of man’s condition when he lived in paradise and learn how remote he was from
the inevitability of death. For if they believed them, then of course we should not be engaged with them in a laborious debate about the punishment of the damned. As it is, then, we shall have to produce some evidence from the writings of the most learned of their own authors, to show that it is possible for a particular substance to acquire a character different from that which has become familiar in experience as belonging to the definition of its nature.
There is a passage in Marcus Varro’s book entitled
On the Race of the Roman People
which I will quote in the author’s own words:
A wonderful portent appeared in the sky. Castor
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writes that in the well-known star Venus, called Vesperugo by Plautus, and Hesperus by Homer
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(who speaks of it as ‘most beautiful’), a remarkable portent appeared. The star actually changed its colour, its size, its shape, and its course; a thing which had never happened before, and has never happened again. This occurred in the reign of King Ogygus,
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according to the famous mathematicians Adrastus of Cyzicus and Dion of Neapolis.
Now Varro would certainly not have called this phenomenon a portent if it had not seemed contrary to nature; in fact we say, as a matter of course, that all portents are contrary to nature. But they are not. For how can an event be contrary to nature when it happens by the will of God, since the will of the great Creator assuredly is the nature of every created thing? A portent, therefore, does not occur contrary to nature, but contrary to what is known of nature.
Now who can count the enormous number of portents which are included in pagan histories? But at the moment we must confine our attention to what is relevant to the matter in hand. Is there anything so firmly regulated by the author of the nature of the sky and the earth as the orderly course of the stars? Is there anything so securely established by unvarying laws? And yet, when it so pleased him who rules his own creation with supreme dominion and power, the star renowned beyond all other stars for size and splendour altered its size, its shape and, still more wonderful, the decreed order of its course. On that occasion this star certainly upset the rules of the astrologers, if any of those rules were by then in existence. For astrologers have their written rules according to which they compute, by calculations thought to be infallible, the past and future movements of the stars: and in reliance on those rules they have been bold enough
to assert that what happened then to Lucifer never happened before and has never happened afterwards.
We, on the other hand, have read in our sacred books that even the sun itself stood still, when that holy man Joshua asked this boon from the Lord God, until the battle on which he was engaged came to a victorious end;
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and that it turned back in its course, to signify by this prodigy, as an adjunct to God’s promise, the addition of fifteen years to the life of King Hezekiah.
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But when the pagans believe in the reality of such miracles as those, which were granted to the merits of the saints, they ascribe them to magic arts. Hence the line which I quoted earlier from Virgil:
To stop the flow of rivers, turn the stars
Back on their course.
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For in fact we read in our sacred books that a river stood still and its waters flowed upstream and downstream when, under the leadership of the above-mentioned Joshua, the People of God made their way across, and that the same thing happened when Elijah the prophet crossed over, followed by his disciple Elisha.
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And I have just mentioned that the greatest of stars turned back on its course in the reign of Hezekiah. But the behaviour of Lucifer as recorded by Varro is not there said to have occurred in response to a petition from any human being.
Those unbelievers therefore must not throw dust in their own eyes in this matter of the knowledge of nature, and assume that it is not possible for something to occur in any substance through the exercise of divine power, which conflicts with the property of that substance as known to them in their own human experience. And yet the natural phenomena known to all men are no less wonderful, and would be a source of astonishment to all who observe them, if it were not man’s habit to restrict his wonder at miracles to the rarities. For example, could anyone fail to see, on rational consideration, how marvellous it is that, despite the countless numbers of mankind, and despite the great similarity among men through their possession of a common nature, each individual has his unique individual appearance? The truth is that if there were not this underlying similarity man could not be distinguished as a separate species from the other animals, while at the same time, without those individual differences, one man could not be distinguished from another. Thus we acknowledge that
men are alike, and equally we discover that they are different. Now it is the observation of the differences between men that should arouse our wonder; for the likeness would seem to be normal, as something demanded by our common nature. And yet because it is rarities that arouse wonder, we are much more astonished when we find two people so alike that we are always, or very frequently, making mistakes when we try to distinguish them.
But it may be that our friends do not believe the story reported, as I said, by Varro, although he is one of their authorities, and the most learned authority at that; or else they are less impressed by the alleged incident because the star did not continue for long out of its accustomed course, but soon returned to its orbit. Here then is another instance for them, something which can be demonstrated at the present day, and something which, I imagine, should suffice to warn them that when they have observed some characteristics in the constitution of any substance in nature, and have made themselves familiar with it, they ought not to put limitations on God as a result of this, and assume that he cannot alter it and change it into something very different from what they have known of it. The land of Sodom was once, as we know, not as it is today. It once presented an appearance like that of other countries, and was as rich and fertile as any, if not more so; in fact in the inspired narrative it is compared to God’s paradise.
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But after it was smitten from heaven – a fact confirmed by pagan records also,
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and the evidence can today be seen by visitors to those parts – it became and still remains a place of horror, a portent of soot and ashes, and its apples present a delusive appearance of ripeness on their surface, but inside they hold nothing but dust. Note that the land was not always like this, and yet it is like this today. See how its nature was changed, by the Creator of all natures, into this disgusting condition, so different from what it was. What a miracle of transformation! It was a long time before this fate came to it; and it has long continued in that sorry state.
So, just as it was not impossible for God to set in being natures according to his will, so it is afterwards not impossible for him to change those natures which he has set in being, in whatever way he chooses. Hence the enormous crop of marvels, which we call ‘monsters’, ‘signs’, ‘portents’, or ‘prodigies’; if I chose to recall them and mention them all, would there ever be an end to this work? The name ‘monster’, we are told, evidently comes from
monstrare
, ‘to show’, because they show by signifying something; ‘sign’ (
ostentum
) comes
from
ostendere
, ‘to point out’, ‘portent’ from
portendere
, ‘to portend’, that is, ‘to show beforehand’ (
praeostendere
), and ‘prodigy’ from
porro dicere
, ‘to foretell the future’. Those who divine by such signs are often at fault in the predictions they base on them; or they may give true forecasts, under the influence of evil spirits, whose aim it is to entangle in the toils of baneful superstition the minds of such human beings who deserve that kind of punishment; or else in the course of their many predictions they may from time to time hit upon some truth. How all this comes about, it is up to these interpreters to decide!
Now these signs are, apparently, contrary to nature and they are called ‘unnatural’; and the Apostle uses the same human way of speaking when he talks of the wild olive being ‘unnaturally’ grafted on to the cultivated tree, and sharing in the richness of the garden olive. For us, however, they have a message. These ‘monsters’, ‘signs’, ‘portents’, and ‘prodigies’, as they are called, ought to ‘show’ us, to ‘point out’ to us, to ‘portend’ and ‘foretell’, that God is to do what he prophesied that he would do with the bodies of the dead, with no difficulty to hinder him, no law of nature to debar him from so doing. And how he has foretold this, I have, I think, sufficiently shown in my previous book, by extracting from the Old and the New Testament not indeed all the passages relevant to the topic, but what I judged to be enough for the purpose of this work.
9.
The nature of eternal punishment
Therefore what God said through the mouth of his prophet, about the eternal punishment of the damned, will come true; it will most certainly come true that ‘their worm will never the and their fire will not go out.’
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Our Lord Jesus himself took care to emphasize this with even greater vehemence when he spoke of the bodily parts which cause a man to go wrong, making them stand for the people whom a man loves as he loves his own right hand. He bids him cut them off: ‘It is better for you to go into life maimed’ he says, ‘than to keep both hands and go to hell, into the inextinguishable fire, where their worm never dies and their fire does not go out.’ Similarly, he says of the foot: ‘It is better for you to go lame into eternal life than to keep both feet and be consigned to hell, to the inextinguishable fire, where their worm never dies, and their fire does not go out.’ He says the same about the eye: ‘It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with
one eye, than to keep both eyes and be consigned to the hell of fire, where their worm never dies and their fire does not go out.’
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He did not find it irksome to repeat the same form of words three times in the same passage. Who could fail to be appalled at this repetition, this vehement emphasis on that punishment, uttered from his divine lips?
Now as for this fire and this worm, there are some who want to make both of them refer to the pains of the soul, not of the body. They say that those whose penitence is too late, and therefore ineffectual, those who have thus been separated from God, are burnt in the fire of the soul’s sorrow and pain; and therefore, they maintain, ‘fire’ is quite appropriately used as a symbol for that burning pain. That is why the Apostle says, ‘If anyone is led astray, do I not
burn
with indignation?’
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They suppose that the ‘worm’ is to be taken in the same way; for, they say, the Scripture says, ‘like the moth in a garment, or the worm in timber, so does sorrow torment the heart of a man.’
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Those, on the other hand, who feel sure that in that punishment there will be pain of both soul and body declare that the body is burnt by the fire while the soul is, in a sense, gnawed by the ‘worm’ of sorrow. This is a more plausible suggestion, inasmuch as it is obviously absurd to suppose that in that state either soul or body will be exempt from pain. And yet for my
part I
should be more ready to ascribe both of them to the body than neither of them, and to assume that the scriptural statement is silent about the pain of the soul for this reason, that, although it is not stated, it is taken as implied that when the body is thus in pain, the soul also will be tortured with unavailing remorse. For in the Old Testament we have this saying, ‘The punishment of the flesh of the wicked is the fire and the worm’;
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which could be put more briefly as ‘the punishment of the wicked’. The reason for the addition of ‘the flesh’ can surely only be that both the fire and the worm will be punishments of the body. Or it may be that the writer chose to say ‘the punishment of the flesh’ because what will be punished in a man is his wickedness in having lived a life of fleshly sensuality; for that is the reason why he will come to the second death, which is what the Apostle means when he says, ‘If you live on the level of fleshly sensuality, you will die.’
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Well then, each one of us must choose as he thinks fit between those interpretations. He may ascribe the fire to the body, and the worm to the mind, the former literally and the latter metaphorically; or he may attribute both, in the literal sense, to the body. For in any
case I have sufficiently argued that it is possible for living creatures to remain alive in the fire, being burnt without being consumed, feeling pain without incurring death; and this by means of a miracle of the omnipotent Creator. Anyone who says that this is impossible for the Creator does not realize who is responsible for whatever marvels he finds in the whole of the world of nature. It is, in fact, God himself who has created all that is wonderful in this world, the great miracles and the minor marvels which I have mentioned; and he has included them all in that unique wonder, that miracle of miracles, the world itself.
Then let each one choose the alternative he prefers; he may think either that the worm, along with the fire, refers, in the literal sense, to the bodily punishment, or that it refers to the punishment of the soul, the word being used by a transference of sense from the material to the immaterial. Which of these is the true explanation will be all too swiftly revealed by the actual event, when the knowledge of the saints will be such as to need no experience to teach them the truth about those pains; that wisdom, which will then be full and perfect, will then suffice by itself for them to know this also – for ‘now our knowledge is partial’, until perfection comes.
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The important thing is that we should never believe that those bodies are to be such as to feel no anguish in the fire.