Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 3 part 71/87

In these temptations, then, concerning all of which it is briefly said in the divine eloquence: 'Is not the life of man upon earth a temptation?'—who would presume so to live that he need not say to God: 'Forgive us our debts,' except a man puffed up? not indeed great, but inflated and swollen, whom He who bestows grace on the humble resists through justice. For this reason it is written: 'God resists the proud, but to the humble He gives grace.' Here, therefore, in each individual, righteousness consists in this:

that God should command the obedient man, the soul the body, and reason the vices even when they resist, either by subduing or by withstanding them; and that from God Himself should be sought both the grace of merits and the pardon of offences, and that thanksgiving should be rendered for the good things received. But in that final peace, to which this righteousness is to be referred and for the sake of attaining which it is to be held, since nature, healed by immortality and incorruption, will have no vices, and nothing will resist anyone of us either from another or from himself, there will be no need that reason should rule the vices, which will be none; but God will rule the man, the soul the body, and there will be there as great a sweetness and ease of obeying as is the felicity of living and reigning.

And this there, in all and in each, will be eternal, and it will be certain to be eternal; and therefore the peace of this blessedness, or the blessedness of this peace, will be the supreme good. CHAPTER XXVIII. To what end the issue of the impious shall come. But of those who do not belong to that City of God there will be, on the contrary, an everlasting misery, which is also called the second death, because neither the soul can be said to live there, since it will be estranged from the life of God, nor the body, which will be subject to eternal pains; and on this account that second death will be the harder, because it cannot be ended by death. But since, as misery seems contrary to blessedness, and death to life, so war seems contrary to peace:

it is rightly asked, just as peace has been proclaimed and praised among the ends of the good, what or what kind of war, on the contrary, can be understood among the ends of the wicked. But whoever asks this, let him consider what in war is harmful and ruinous, and he will see it to be nothing other than the mutual hostility and conflict of things. What war, then, can be conceived more grievous and bitter than where the will is so opposed to passion and passion to will that by the victory of neither of them is such enmity ended, and where the force of pain so conflicts with the very nature of the body that neither yields to the other? For here, when this conflict happens, either pain conquers and death takes away sensation, or nature conquers and health removes the pain.

But there both pain remains to afflict, and nature endures to feel; because neither fails, for this very reason: lest the punishment should fail. To these ends, then, of the good and the bad—the former to be sought, the latter to be avoided—since through the judgment the good shall pass to the former and the bad to the latter, concerning this judgment, as far as God shall grant, I will dispute in the following volume. This judgment, although God exercises it at all times, must nevertheless be dealt with properly in this book in regard to His last judgment. Concerning the day of God's last judgment, about to speak of it as far as He Himself shall grant, and to assert it against the impious and unbelieving, we ought first, as in the foundation of a building, to lay down the divine testimonies:

to which those who refuse to believe try to oppose false and fallacious little human reasonings, to this end that they may either contend that the testimony adduced from the sacred letters signifies something else, or deny altogether that it was divinely spoken. For I reckon no mortal exists who, when he has understood these things as they were spoken, and has believed them to have been spoken by the supreme and true God through holy souls, does not yield and consent to them—whether he also confesses this with his mouth, or through some vice blushes or fears to confess it, or even, with a stubbornness most like to madness, strives most contentiously to defend what he knows or believes to be false against what he knows or believes to be true.

That, therefore, which the whole Church of the true God holds in confession and profession—that Christ is to come from heaven to judge the living and the dead—this we call the last day of the divine judgment, that is, the final time. For through how many days this judgment is to be extended is uncertain; but that, in the manner of the holy Scriptures, 'day' is wont to be put for 'time,' no one who has read those writings, however carelessly, is unaware. For this reason, then, when we say the day of God's judgment, we add 'last' or 'final,' because He judges even now, and has judged from the beginning of the human race, casting out of paradise and separating from the tree of life the first human beings, the perpetrators of a great sin;

nay, even when He did not spare the sinning angels, whose prince, having been overthrown by himself, overthrew men by envying them, He without doubt judged; nor is it without His high and just judgment that, both in this airy heaven and on earth, the life both of demons and of men is most wretched, most full of errors and miseries. But even if no one had sinned, He would not, without good and right judgment, have retained the whole rational creation, most perseveringly cleaving to Him as its Lord, in eternal blessedness. He judges, too, not only universally concerning the race of demons and of men, that they should be wretched on account of the merit of the first sins, but also concerning the individual works of each, which they perform by the choice of the will.

For even the demons pray that they may not be tormented, and certainly it is not unjustly that either they are spared or each is tormented according to his own wickedness; and men for the most part openly, always secretly, pay divinely-appointed penalties for their deeds, whether in this life or after death—although no man acts rightly unless he is helped by divine aid; no demon or man acts wickedly unless he is permitted by the divine and most just judgment. For as the Apostle says, 'There is no iniquity with God'; and as he himself says elsewhere, 'Inscrutable are His judgments, and untraceable His ways.'

Not, therefore, in this book shall I dispute concerning those first nor concerning these intermediate judgments of God, but concerning that very last one, as far as He Himself shall grant—when Christ is to come from heaven to judge the living and the dead. For this day is now properly called the day of judgment, for the reason that there will be no place there for the ignorant complaint, why that unjust man is happy and why that just man is unhappy. For then the true and full felicity of none but the good, and the deserved and supreme infelicity of none but the bad, shall appear. CHAPTER II. Of the variety of human affairs, in which the judgment of God cannot be said to be lacking, although it cannot be traced out.

But now we learn both to bear with equanimity the evils which even the good suffer, and not to set great store by the goods which even the bad obtain; and thereby, even in those matters in which divine justice does not appear, divine teaching is salutary. For we do not know by what judgment of God that good man is poor, that bad man is rich; this one rejoices, whom we judge ought to have been tormented with sorrows for his ruined morals, that one is grieved, whom a praiseworthy life persuades us ought to have rejoiced; the innocent goes out of court not only unavenged but even condemned, oppressed either by the iniquity of the judge or overwhelmed by false testimonies, while, on the contrary, his wicked adversary, not only unpunished but even vindicated, exults;

the impious man enjoys excellent health, the pious wastes away with sickness; the healthiest young men commit robberies, while infants who could not harm anyone even with a word are afflicted with the diverse cruelty of diseases; one useful to human affairs is snatched away by untimely death, while one who seems not even to have deserved to be born lives on, moreover, for a very long time; one full of crimes is exalted with honours, while obscurity's darkness hides a man without reproach—and other things of this kind, which who can collect, who can enumerate?

If these things had, even in their seeming absurdity, a consistency—so that in this life, in which man, as the sacred psalm says, 'has become like vanity, and his days pass away like a shadow,' none but the bad should obtain these transitory and earthly goods, and none but the good should suffer such evils—this could be referred to the just judgment of God, or even to His benign judgment: namely, that those who were not going to attain the eternal goods which make men blessed might either be deceived by temporal goods on account of their malice, or be consoled with goods by God's mercy; and that those who were not going to suffer eternal torments might either be afflicted with temporal evils for whatever and however small sins of theirs, or be exercised by evils for the sake of fulfilling the virtues.

But now, since not only are the good in evil and the bad in good—which seems unjust—but moreover, for the most part, evils befall the bad and goods come to the good: the judgments of God become more inscrutable and His ways untraceable. Therefore, although we do not know by what judgment God either does these things or allows them to be done—with whom is the highest power and highest wisdom, the highest justice, no infirmity, no rashness, no iniquity—nevertheless we wholesomely learn not to set great store by either goods or evils which we see to be common to good and bad alike, and to seek those goods which belong to the good, and most of all to flee those evils which are proper to the bad.

But when we come to that judgment of God, whose time is now properly called the day of judgment and sometimes the day of the Lord, then not only whatsoever things shall then be judged, but also whatsoever have been judged from the beginning, and whatsoever are still to be judged up to that time, shall appear to be most just. There this too shall be made manifest: by how just a judgment of God it comes about that now so many—nay, almost all—just judgments of God lie hidden from the senses and minds of mortals, while nevertheless, in this matter, it does not lie hidden from the faith of the pious that what is hidden is just. CHAPTER III. What Solomon disputed in the book of Ecclesiastes concerning those things which in this life are common both to the good and the bad.

Indeed Solomon, the wisest king of Israel, who reigned in Jerusalem, the book which is called Ecclesiastes and is held also by the Jews in the canon of the sacred letters, thus began: 'Vanity of vanities, said the Preacher; vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What abundance has a man in all his labour, by which he labours under the sun?' And when from this sentence he connected the rest, calling to mind the troubles and errors of this life, and the meanwhile-vanishing lapses of times, where nothing solid, nothing stable is held: in that vanity of things under the sun he also bewails, in a certain way,

He says only that, although the abundance of wisdom over folly is like the abundance of light over darkness, and though the eyes of the wise man are in his head while the fool walks in darkness, yet one and the same chance befalls them all—namely in this life which is lived under the sun—signifying thereby those evils which we see to be common to the good and the bad alike. He says also this: that the good suffer evils as though they were wicked, and the wicked obtain good things as though they were good, speaking thus: 'There is,' he says, 'a vanity which is done upon the earth, that there are righteous men upon whom there comes what befalls the impious, and there are impious men upon whom there comes what befalls the righteous. I said that this also is vanity.'

To this vanity, which that most wise man judged it sufficient to make known, he devoted that whole book—and surely for no other reason than that we might long for that life which has no vanity under this sun, but truth under Him who made this sun. In this vanity, then, would not man, made like to this same vanity, vanish away by the just and righteous judgment of God? Yet in the days of his vanity it makes a very great difference whether he resists or yields to the truth, and whether he is without true piety or partaker of it—not for the sake of acquiring the goods of this life or avoiding its evils, which pass away in vanishing, but for the sake of the judgment to come, through which both good things shall remain forever for the good and evil things for the evil, without end.

Finally this wise man so concluded this book as to say: 'Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole man; because God will bring every work into judgment, in every despised thing, whether it be good or evil.' What could be said more briefly, more truly, more wholesomely? 'Fear God,' he says, 'and keep His commandments, for this is the whole man.' For whoever exists is this—namely, a keeper of God's commandments; since he who is not this is nothing, for he is not refashioned to the image of the truth, but remains in the likeness of vanity. 'Because every work'—that is, whatever is done by man in this life, whether good or evil—'God will bring into judgment, in every despised thing'; that is, in everyone who here seems contemptible and therefore is not even regarded;

since God both sees him and neither despises him nor passes him over when He judges. CHAPTER IV. That to treat of the last judgment of God he will bring forward first the testimonies of the New Testament and then of the Old. Therefore of this last judgment of God the testimonies from the Holy Scriptures, which I have undertaken to set down, must first be chosen from the books of the New Covenant, afterward from those of the Old. For although the old things are prior in time, yet the new are to be set before them in dignity, since those old things are heralds of the new. The new, therefore, shall be set down first, and that we may prove them more firmly, the old also shall be taken up. In the old are contained the Law and the Prophets; in the new, the Gospel and the apostolic writings. Now the Apostle says: 'For by the Law is the knowledge of sin.'

'But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, witnessed by the Law and the Prophets; even the righteousness of God which is through faith in Jesus Christ unto all who believe.' This righteousness of God pertains to the New Covenant and has its testimony from the old books, that is, from the Law and the Prophets. First, therefore, the case itself must be set forth, and afterward the witnesses brought in. Showing that this very order is to be kept, Christ Jesus Himself says: 'A scribe instructed in the kingdom of God is like a man, the head of a household, bringing forth out of his treasure things new and old.' He did not say 'old and new,' which He surely would have said, had He not preferred to keep the order of merits rather than of times. CHAPTER V.

By which sayings of the Lord and Saviour the divine judgment to come at the end of the age is declared. Therefore the Saviour Himself, when He upbraided the cities in which He had wrought great works of power and which had not believed, and when He set foreigners before them, says: 'Nevertheless I say to you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you.' And a little after, to another city: 'Amen, I say to you, that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you' (here He most plainly proclaims that the day of judgment is to come); and in another place: 'The men of Nineveh shall rise in the judgment with this generation and shall condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, a greater than Jonah is here.'

'The queen of the South shall rise in the judgment with this generation and shall condemn it; because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold, a greater than Solomon is here.' In this passage we learn two things: both that the judgment is to come, and that it shall come together with the resurrection of the dead. For when He spoke these things concerning the men of Nineveh and the queen of the South, He was without doubt speaking of the dead, whom nevertheless He foretold would rise again in the day of judgment. Nor did He say 'they shall condemn' because they themselves shall judge, but because in comparison with them these men shall deservedly be condemned.

Again in another place, when He was speaking of the mingling of good and bad men now, and their separation hereafter—which surely shall come to pass in the day of judgment—He employed a similitude of wheat that was sown and tares that were sown over it, and expounding it to His disciples He says: 'He that sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world; the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom; but the tares are the sons of the wicked one; the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the consummation of the age; the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned with fire, so shall it be in the consummation of the age.'

'The Son of Man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all offences and them that work iniquity, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He that has ears, let him hear.' Here indeed He did not name the judgment or the day of judgment, but He expressed it much more clearly by the things themselves, and foretold that it shall come to pass at the end of the age. Likewise to His disciples: 'Amen, I say to you, that you who have followed Me, in the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of His majesty, you also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.' Here we learn that Jesus shall judge together with His disciples.

Whence also elsewhere He said to the Jews: 'If I by Beelzebub cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they themselves shall be your judges.' Nor, because He says they shall sit upon twelve thrones, ought we to think that only twelve men shall judge with Him. For by the number twelve a certain universal multitude of those who judge is signified, because of the two parts of the number seven, by which for the most part universality is signified; which two parts—that is, three and four—multiplied one by the other make twelve, for four times three and three times four are twelve, and if any other reason of this number twelve is found which avails for this.

Otherwise, since we read that the apostle Matthias was ordained in the place of Judas the betrayer, the apostle Paul, who labored more than all of them, would have no place where he might sit to judge; yet he surely shows that he belongs to the number of the judges together with the other saints, when he says: 'Know you not that we shall judge angels?' Concerning those also who are to be judged, there is a like reason in this number twelve. For not because it is said 'judging the twelve tribes of Israel' shall the tribe of Levi, which is the thirteenth, not be judged by them, or shall they judge only that people and not also the other nations. But where He says 'in the regeneration,' without doubt He wished the resurrection of the dead to be understood by the name of regeneration.

For thus shall our flesh be regenerated through incorruption, even as our soul has been regenerated through faith. I pass over many things which seem to be said of the last judgment in such a way that, when carefully considered, they are found to be ambiguous or rather pertaining to something else—whether namely to that coming of the Saviour by which through this whole time He comes in His Church, that is, in His members, part by part and little by little, since the whole is His body; or to the destruction of the earthly Jerusalem, because even when He speaks of that, He for the most part speaks as though He were speaking of the end of the age and of that last and great day of judgment;

so that it can in no way be discerned, unless those things which are similarly spoken on this matter in the three evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke be all compared among themselves. For certain things one sets forth more obscurely, another more plainly, so that the things which are said as pertaining to one matter may appear from what they are said. This I have endeavored to do in some fashion in a certain letter which I wrote in reply to the man of blessed memory Hesychius, bishop of the city of Salona, whose letter bears the title 'On the End of the Age.' Accordingly I shall now here say that which is read in the Gospel according to Matthew concerning the separation of the good and the bad by the most present and last judgment of Christ.

'But when the Son of Man shall come,' He says, 'in His majesty, and all the angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His majesty, and before Him shall be gathered all the nations, and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say to those who shall be on His right hand: Come, you blessed of My Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave Me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me to drink; I was a stranger, and you took Me in; naked, and you covered Me; sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me. Then shall the righteous answer Him, saying:'

'Lord, when did we see You hungry, and fed You; thirsty, and gave You drink? When did we see You a stranger, and took You in; or naked, and covered You? Or when did we see You sick or in prison, and came to You? And the King answering shall say to them: Amen, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of these the least of My brethren, you did it to Me. Then,' He says, 'shall He say also to those who shall be on His left hand: Depart from Me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels.' Then likewise He enumerates to these also that they did not do those things which He had recorded the men on His right hand to have done. And likewise to those asking when they had seen Him set in want of these things:

He answers that what was not done to His least ones was not done to Him; and concluding the discourse He says: 'And these shall go into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.' John the evangelist, however, most openly relates that He foretold the judgment to come in the resurrection of the dead. For when He had said: 'For neither does the Father judge any man, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father; he that honors not the Son honors not the Father who sent Him': He straightway added: 'Amen, amen, I say to you, that he who hears My word and believes Him that sent Me has eternal life, and comes not into judgment, but has passed from death to life.'

Behold, here He said that His faithful ones come not into judgment. How then shall they be separated from the wicked by the judgment and stand at His right hand, unless because in this passage He put 'judgment' for 'condemnation'? For into such a judgment they shall not come who hear His word and believe Him that sent Him. CHAPTER VI. What is the first resurrection, what the second. Then He goes on and says: 'Amen, amen, I say to you, that the hour comes, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. For as the Father has life in Himself, so has He given to the Son also to have life in Himself.' He does not yet speak of the second resurrection, that is, of bodies, which shall be at the end, but of the first, which now is.

To distinguish this very thing, He said: 'The hour comes, and now is.' But this is not the resurrection of bodies, but of souls. For souls also have their death in impiety and sins, according to which death those are dead of whom the same Lord says: 'Let the dead bury their dead'—namely that those dead in soul might bury those dead in body. Therefore concerning those dead in soul through impiety and iniquity He says: 'The hour comes, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live.' By 'they that hear' He means 'they that obey, that believe, and persevere unto the end.' Nor did He here make any difference between good and bad.

For it is good for all to hear His voice and to live, by passing over from the death of impiety to the life of piety. Of which death the apostle Paul says: 'Therefore all were dead, and He died for all, that those who live may now no longer live to themselves, but to Him who died for them and rose again.' All therefore are dead in sins—absolutely none excepted, whether original or even those added by will, whether by not knowing or by knowing and not doing what is righteous; and for all the dead one living man died, that is, one having no sin at all;

so that those who live through the remission of sins may now no longer live to themselves, but to Him who died for all on account of our sins and rose again on account of our justification; that we, believing in Him who justifies the impious, justified out of impiety, as it were quickened out of death, may be able to belong to the first resurrection, which now is. For to this first resurrection none belong but those who shall be blessed for eternity; but to the second, of which He is soon to speak, He will teach that both the blessed and the wretched belong. This is the resurrection of mercy, that of judgment. Wherefore it is written in the psalm: 'Mercy and judgment will I sing to You, O Lord.' Concerning which judgment He consequently added and said:

'And He has given Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man.' Here He shows that He shall come to judge in that flesh in which He had come to be judged. For to this end He says: 'Because He is the Son of Man.' And then subjoining that of which we treat: 'Marvel not at this,' He says, 'for the hour comes in which all who are in the tombs shall hear His voice and shall come forth; they that have done good things, into the resurrection of life; but they that have done evil, into the resurrection of judgment.' This is that judgment which a little before, just as now, He had put for 'condemnation,' saying:

'He that hears My word and believes Him that sent Me has eternal life and comes not into judgment, but has passed from death to life'—that is, by belonging to the first resurrection, by which there is now a passing from death to life, he shall not come into condemnation, which He signified by the appellation of 'judgment,' just as also in this passage where He says: 'But they that have done evil, into the resurrection of judgment'—that is, of condemnation. Let him therefore rise in the first, who would not be condemned in the second resurrection. For 'the hour comes, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live'—that is, they shall not come into condemnation, which is called the second death;