As we promised in the immediately preceding book, this last book of the whole work shall contain the discussion of the eternal blessedness of the City of God — which has received the name of eternity, not because of any length of ages through many centuries that must nevertheless at some time be ended, but, as it is written in the Gospel, of His kingdom there shall be no end; nor in such a way that, some passing away by dying and others succeeding by being born, an appearance of perpetuity should show itself in it, as in a tree which is clothed with perennial foliage, where the same greenness seems to remain while, as the leaves fall and drop, others which are born from time to time preserve the aspect of shadiness;
but all the citizens in it shall be immortal, men also attaining that which the holy angels never lost. This the most omnipotent God, its Founder, shall accomplish. For He has promised, and He cannot lie; and to make faith firm on this point as well, He has already done many of His works both unpromised and promised. For He it is who in the beginning founded the world, full of all good things both visible and intelligible, in which He established nothing better than the spirits to whom He gave intelligence and rendered capable and fit for His contemplation and for Himself, and bound them together in one fellowship, which we call the holy and heavenly City, in which the reality by which they are sustained and made blessed is God Himself, as it were their common life and sustenance;
who granted to that same intellectual nature a free will of such a kind that, if it willed, it might forsake God — that is, its own blessedness — with misery immediately to follow; who, though He foreknew that certain angels, through the pride by which they would wish to suffice of themselves for a blessed life, would become deserters of so great a good, did not take from them this power, judging it more mighty and better even to bring good out of evils than not to permit evils to be at all (which would be no evils whatever, unless a mutable nature — though good, and instituted by the supreme God and immutable good, who created all good things — had by sinning made these evils for itself; by which very sin of hers she is convicted, herself being the witness, to have been created a good nature;
for unless she too were a great good — though not equal to her Creator — surely the forsaking of God, as of her own light, could not be her evil; for just as blindness of the eye is a defect, and this very fact indicates that the eye was created for seeing the light, and thereby even by its own defect it is shown that this member, above the other members, is capable of light — for there would be no other cause for its being a defect to lack light — so a nature which enjoyed God teaches, even by that very defect whereby it is miserable because it does not enjoy God, that it was instituted the best);
who bound the voluntary fall of the angels by the most just penalty of everlasting unhappiness, and to the rest who remained in that supreme good, that they might be certain of their own remaining without end, He gave, as it were, the reward of that very remaining; who made man also himself upright with the same free will, an earthly animal indeed, yet worthy of heaven if he should cleave to his Author, with misery likewise to follow if he should forsake Him — a misery such as befitted a nature of this kind (whom likewise, though He foreknew that he would sin by transgression of God's law through the forsaking of God, He did not take from him the power of free will, foreseeing at the same time what good He Himself would make out of his evil);
who out of the mortal progeny justly and deservedly condemned gathers by His grace so great a people, that from it He may supply and restore the part of the angels which fell, and so that beloved and heavenly City may not be defrauded of the number of its citizens, but may perhaps even rejoice in a yet more abundant one. [II] For many things are indeed done by the wicked contrary to the will of God; but of so great is His wisdom and so great His power, that toward those outcomes or ends which He Himself has foreknown to be good and just, all things tend which seem contrary to His will. And therefore, when God is said to change His will — so that, for example, to those to whom He was gentle He is rendered angry — it is rather they than He that are changed, and they find Him in a certain manner changed in the things which they suffer;
just as the sun is changed for injured eyes, and in a certain manner becomes harsh instead of mild, and troublesome instead of delightful, while it remains in itself the same as it was. The will of God is also so called which He works in the hearts of those who obey His commandments, concerning which the Apostle says: For it is God who works in you both to will; just as the righteousness of God is spoken of not only as that by which He Himself is righteous, but also as that which He works in the man who is justified by Him. So too His law is called that which is rather men's, but given by Him; for surely they were men to whom Jesus said: In your law it is written, whereas in another place we read: The law of his God is in his heart.
According to this will, which God works in men, He is even said to will that which He Himself does not will, but makes His own people to will it; just as He is said to have known that which He brought about that it should be known by those to whom it was unknown. For when the Apostle says: But now, knowing God, or rather being known of God, it is not lawful for us to believe that God then knew them, whom He had foreknown before the foundation of the world; but He is said to have then known that which He then brought about that it should be known. Of these modes of expression I recall having already disputed in the preceding books also. According to this will, then, by which we say that God wills that which He causes others to will, from whom things to come are hidden, He wills many things and does them not.
For His saints will many things to be done, being inspired by Him with a holy will, and they are not done; as they pray for certain persons piously and holily, and He does not do what they pray for, though He Himself has wrought this will of praying in them by His Holy Spirit. And therefore, when the saints will and pray according to God that anyone should be saved, we can in that mode of expression say: "God wills and does not do it"; so that we say that He wills, who makes these to will. But according to that will of His, which is coeternal with His foreknowledge, assuredly in heaven and on earth whatsoever He has willed — not only things past or present, but even things future — He has already done.
But before the time comes at which He willed that it should come to pass — which before all ages He foreknew and disposed — we say: "It will be when God wills"; but if we are ignorant not only of the time at which it is to be, but even whether it is to be, we say: "It will be, if God wills" — not because God will then have a new will which He did not have, but because that which from eternity has been prepared in His immutable will shall then be. [III] Wherefore, to pass over so many other things, just as we now see fulfilled in Christ what He promised to Abraham, saying: In your seed shall all nations be blessed, so what He promised to that same seed of his shall be fulfilled, where He says through the prophet: They that were in the tombs shall rise again; and what He says:
There shall be a new heaven and a new earth, and they shall not be mindful of the former things, nor shall it come up into their heart, but they shall find joy and exultation in it. Behold, I will make Jerusalem an exultation, and My people a joy; and I will exult in Jerusalem and rejoice in My people, and the voice of weeping shall no more be heard in her. And what through another prophet He foretold, saying to that same prophet: In that time your people shall all be saved, every one that shall be found written in the book; and many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth (or, as some have interpreted it, in the mound) shall rise up, these to eternal life and these to reproach and to eternal confusion. And in another place through the same prophet:
The saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom, and shall possess it unto the age and unto the age of ages; and a little after: His kingdom, He says, is an everlasting kingdom. And the other things pertaining to this which I set down in the twentieth book — or which I did not set down, and yet are written in those same Scriptures — these too shall come to pass, just as those did which the unbelievers did not think would come. For the same God promised both, and foretold that both would come to pass — the God whom the deities of the pagans dread, even by the testimony of Porphyry, the most noble of the pagan philosophers.
[IV] But, forsooth, men learned and wise, against the force of so great an authority — which, as it foretold so long beforehand, has turned every kind of men to this belief and hope — seem to themselves to argue acutely against the resurrection of bodies, and to say what is recorded by Cicero in the third book On the Republic. For when he was asserting that Hercules and Romulus had been made gods out of men, he says: "Whose bodies were not raised up into heaven; for nature would not suffer that which is of earth to abide anywhere but in earth." This is the great reasoning of the wise, whose thoughts the Lord knows, that they are vain.
For if we were souls only — that is, spirits without any body — and, dwelling in heaven, knew nothing of earthly animals, and it were told us that it should come to pass that we should be bound by some wondrous bond to be joined to earthly bodies for animating them: would we not argue much more forcefully, refusing to believe it, and say that nature does not suffer that an incorporeal thing should be bound by a bodily tie? And yet the earth is full of living souls quickened by these earthly members, connected and entwined with them in a marvelous manner. Why then, at the will of the same God who made this animal, shall an earthly body not be able to be raised into a heavenly body, if a soul, more excellent than every body — and therefore than a heavenly body also — could be bound to an earthly body?
Or could so tiny a particle of earth hold within itself something better than a heavenly body, so that it should have sense and life, and yet heaven will disdain to receive it when it feels and lives, or, having received it, will not be able to sustain it — though it perceives and lives by that better reality which is superior to every heavenly body? But it does not now come to pass, because it is not yet the time at which He willed that it should come to pass, who has done this thing which, by our seeing it, has already become cheap, far more marvelously than that which is not believed by these men.
For why do we not more vehemently marvel that incorporeal souls, superior to a heavenly body, are bound to earthly bodies, than that bodies, though earthly, are exalted to seats which, though heavenly, are nevertheless corporeal — unless it be that we have grown accustomed to seeing the former and are this ourselves, whereas we are not yet the latter, nor have we ever yet seen it? For assuredly, when consulted with sober reason, it is found to be a work of more marvelous divinity in a certain manner to weave corporeal things onto incorporeal, than to couple bodies with bodies, though diverse — because the one are heavenly, the other earthly — yet bodies and bodies. [V] But this may once have been incredible: behold, now the world too has believed that a turbid, smoky, corruptible, and corrupting mass...
Yet it does not corrupt the mountains in which it ceaselessly boils, nor the caverns of the earth. But be it so: let that fire be unlike this one, so as to suit earthly habitations — why then are they unwilling that we should believe that the nature of earthly bodies shall at some time be made incorruptible and fit for heaven, just as now corruptible fire is fitting for these earthly regions? They bring forward, therefore, nothing from the weights and order of the elements whereby they might prescribe to the omnipotent God that He should not make our bodies such that they can dwell even in heaven. [XII] But most scrupulously they inquire and are wont thus, by inquiring, to mock the faith by which we believe that the flesh shall rise again: whether aborted fetuses shall rise; and since the Lord says:
Amen, I say to you, a hair of your head shall not perish — whether the stature and strength shall be equal for all, or the sizes of bodies shall be diverse. For if there shall be equality of bodies, whence shall those aborted ones have that which they did not have here in bodily mass, if they too shall rise? Or if they shall not rise, because they were not even born but poured out, they raise the same question about little children: whence shall accrue to them the measure of body which we now see to have been lacking, since they die at this age? For we shall not say that those shall not rise who are capable not only of generation but also of regeneration. Then they ask, of what manner that very equality shall be.
For if all shall be as large and as tall as were any who were here the largest and tallest, then not only about little children but about very many they ask whence shall accrue to them that which was here lacking, if each receives that which he had here; but if — as the Apostle says — we shall all meet in the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ, and that other saying: Whom He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, is so to be understood that the stature and measure of the body of all who shall be in His kingdom is to be that of the body of Christ, they say: "From many there will have to be subtracted much of the greatness and length of body; and where then shall be:
A hair of your head shall not perish — where shall that stand, if of the very quantity of the body so much shall perish?" Although about the hairs themselves it might also be inquired whether whatever fell off to those cutting them shall return. But if it is to return, who would not shudder at that deformity? For this seems necessarily to follow about the nails also, that there return as much as the tending of the body cut away. And where then shall be the comeliness, which certainly ought to be greater in that immortality than it could be amid this corruption? But if it shall not return, then it will perish. How then, they say, shall a hair of the head not perish? About leanness too, or fatness, they dispute in like manner. For if all shall be equal, surely some shall not be lean, others fat.
Something, therefore, will be added to some, and diminished from others; and thereby not what was is to be received, but somewhere there is to be added what was not, and somewhere lost what was. Concerning also the very corruptions and dissolutions of dead bodies — since one part is turned into dust, another is exhaled into the air, some are consumed by beasts, some by fire, and some perish by shipwreck or by waters of whatever kind, in such a way that rottenness dissolves their flesh into moisture — they are not a little disturbed, and they do not believe that all these things can be gathered again into flesh and restored to integrity.
They pursue also every kind of foulness and defects, whether these befall or are inborn, where with horror and mockery they recall even monstrous births, and they demand what the resurrection of each deformity shall be. For if we shall say that nothing of the sort returns into the body of man, they presume that they will confute our answer concerning the marks of the wounds with which we proclaim that the Lord Christ rose again. But amid all these, that most difficult question is proposed: into whose flesh shall the flesh return, wherewith the body of another man, feeding on human entrails, is nourished when hunger compels him. For it has been turned into the flesh of him who lived on such nourishment, and it supplied the losses which leanness had shown.
Whether, therefore, it shall return to that man whose flesh it first was, or rather to him whose it afterward became, they inquire to this end: that they may mock the faith of the resurrection, and thus assert that human souls either — alternating, as Plato held — are promised true miseries and false blessednesses, or, after many revolutions likewise through diverse bodies, do at last, as Porphyry held, put an end to their miseries and never return to them; yet not by having an immortal body, but by fleeing every body. [XIII] To these things, then, which by the party opposed to them seem to me, as I set them forth, to be objected, let me reply, the mercy of God bringing aid to my efforts.
As to aborted fetuses, which, having already lived in the womb, there died, I dare neither to affirm nor to deny that they shall rise again; although I do not see how the resurrection of the dead should not pertain to them, if they are not excluded from the number of the dead. For either not all the dead shall rise, and there shall be certain human souls forever without the bodies which — though within the maternal viscera — they bore; or, if all human souls shall receive their rising bodies which they had, wherever they left them living and dying, I do not find how I may say that the resurrection of the dead does not pertain to any dead whatsoever, even those who died within their mothers' wombs.
But whichever of these each may hold concerning them, what we shall have said about infants already born must be understood of these also, if they shall rise. [XIV] What, then, shall we say about infants, except that they shall not rise in that smallness of body in which they died, but shall receive by the marvelous and most swift work of God that which would have accrued to them more slowly in time? For in that saying of the Lord, where He says: A hair of your head shall not perish, it is said that what was shall not be lacking; it is not, however, denied that what was lacking shall be present. But there was lacking to the dead infant the perfect quantity of his body;
for to a perfect infant there is certainly lacking the perfection of bodily magnitude, which, when it shall have accrued, the stature can no longer be taller. This measure of perfection all have in such a way that they are conceived and born with it; but they have it in principle, not in mass; just as all the members themselves are already latent in the seed, though in those already born some are still lacking, such as teeth and the like. In which principle, implanted in the corporeal matter of each one, that which is not yet — nay rather, which lies hidden — seems in a certain manner, so to speak, to be already threaded in, and by the passage of time will be, or rather will appear. In this principle, therefore, the infant is already short or tall, who is destined to be short or tall.
According to this principle, assuredly, in the resurrection of the body we do not fear any losses of the body; for even if there were to be an equality of all, so that all should attain to gigantic magnitudes, lest those who were the greatest should have something less in stature which would, against the sentence of Christ — who said that not even a hair of the head would perish — perish for them, how could there be lacking to the Creator (who created all things out of nothing) that from which He might add what the wondrous Artificer knew must be added?
[XV] But Christ, assuredly, rose again in that measure of body in which He died; nor is it lawful to say that, when the time of the resurrection of all shall have come, there shall accrue to His body that magnitude which He did not have when He appeared in it to the disciples, in that form in which He was known to them, so that He might be made equal to the very tallest. But if we should say that even everyone's larger bodies are to be reduced to the measure of the Lord's body, then from the bodies of many the greater part shall perish, whereas He Himself promised that not even a hair should perish.
It remains, therefore, that each should receive his own measure — either that which he had in youth, even if he died an old man, or that which he would have had, if he died before his time; and that saying which the Apostle mentioned about the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ we should understand either to have been said with reference to something else — that is, that to that Head, by the accession of the perfection of all the members among Christian peoples, the measure of His age may be completed — or, if this was said of the resurrection of bodies, we should take it as said in such a way that the bodies of the dead shall rise neither below nor beyond the youthful form, but in that age and vigor to which we know Christ to have here attained (for even the most learned men of this world have defined youth to be about thirty years;
which, when it has been bounded by its own span, thereafter the man begins to decline into the losses of a graver and senile age); and therefore it was not said in the measure of the body or in the measure of stature, but in the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ. [XVI] That saying also, that the predestined are made conformed to the image of the Son of God, can be understood according to the inner man as well (whence He says to us in another place: Be not conformed to this world, but be reformed in the newness of your mind; where, therefore, we are reformed, that we be not conformed to this world, there we are conformed to the Son of God); it can also be taken thus, that just as He became conformed to us in mortality, so we may be made conformed to Him in immortality;
which indeed pertains also to the very resurrection of bodies. But if in these words too we are admonished as to what form the bodies shall rise in, then, just as that measure, so also this conformation is to be understood not of quantity but of age. All shall therefore rise as great in body as they were, or would have been, in the age of youth; although it will do no harm even if there be the form of an infantile or senile body, where there shall remain no infirmity either of mind or of the body itself. Whence also, if anyone contends that each shall rise in that measure of body in which he died, we need not contend with him in laborious contradiction. [XVII] Some, on account of what is said:
Until we all meet into the unity of the faith, into a perfect man, into the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ, and: Conformed to the image of the Son of God, believe that women shall not rise in the female sex, but say that all shall rise in the male sex, since God made man alone from the mud, and woman from man. But those seem to me to be wiser who do not doubt that both sexes shall rise. For there will be no lust there, which is the cause of shame. For before they sinned, they were naked, and the man and the woman were not ashamed. From those bodies, therefore, the defects shall be taken away, but the nature shall be preserved. Now the female sex is not a defect, but a nature — which then indeed shall be immune both from intercourse and from childbearing;
There will nevertheless be female members, not adapted to their old use, but to a new comeliness, by which the lust of the beholder will not be enticed—for there will be none—but the wisdom and clemency of God will be praised, who both made what did not exist and freed from corruption what He had made. For just as at the beginning of the human race a rib was drawn from the side of the sleeping man that woman might be formed, so already then it was fitting that by such a deed Christ and the Church should be prophesied. Indeed, that sleep of the man was the death of Christ, whose side, as He hung lifeless upon the cross, was pierced by a lance, and thence flowed blood and water; and these we know to be the sacraments by which the Church is built up. For Scripture used this very word, where it is not read that God 'formed' or 'fashioned' her, but:
'He built her into a woman'; whence also the Apostle speaks of the building up of the body of Christ, which is the Church. Woman, therefore, is God's creature just as man is; but that she should be made from man, unity was commended; and that she should be made in that manner, Christ, as has been said, and the Church were prefigured. He, then, who instituted both sexes will also restore both. Finally, Jesus Himself, when questioned by the Sadducees—who denied the resurrection—as to whose wife she would be, the woman whom the seven brothers had each in turn possessed, when each of them wished, as the Law had commanded, to raise up seed for the deceased, said: 'You err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God'; and although there was occasion for Him to say:
'For she about whom you question me will herself also be a man, not a woman'—He did not say this, but said: 'For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven,' being indeed equal to the angels in immortality and felicity, not in flesh; just as not in resurrection either, which the angels did not need, since they could not even die. The Lord therefore denied that there would be marriages in the resurrection, not that there would be women; and He denied it there, where such a question was being raised, so that He might have dissolved it more swiftly and easily by denying the female sex, had He foreknown that it would not exist there; indeed He rather affirmed that it would exist by saying: 'They shall not marry'—which pertains to women—'nor take wives'—which pertains to men.
There will be, therefore, those who here are wont either to be given in marriage or to take wives; but there they will not do so. [XVIII] Accordingly, as to what the Apostle says, that we shall all meet 'unto a perfect man,' we ought to consider the whole context of that very passage, which runs thus: 'He who descended,' he says, 'is the same also who ascended above all the heavens, that He might fill all things. And He Himself gave some indeed as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of the ministry, unto the building up of the body of Christ, until we all meet in the unity of faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ.'
'that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, in cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive; but, doing the truth in charity, may grow up in Him in all things, who is the head, Christ; from whom the whole body, joined together and compacted by every joint of supply, according to the working in the measure of each single part, makes increase of the body unto the building up of itself in charity.' Behold who is the perfect man: the head and the body, which consists of all its members, which shall be completed in their own time, yet daily are added to that same body while the Church is being built up, to which it is said: 'You are the body of Christ and members'; and elsewhere:
'For His body's sake,' he says, 'which is the Church'; and again elsewhere: 'We being many are one bread, one body.' Concerning the building up of this body it was said here too: 'For the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of the ministry, unto the building up of the body of Christ,' and then follows that with which we are now concerned: 'Until we all meet in the unity of faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ,' and so on; until he might show in what body that same measure was to be understood, saying: 'Let us grow up in Him in all things, who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body, joined together and compacted by every joint of supply, according to the working in the measure of each single part.'