Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
5.
Statements of the Lord and Saviour about God
’
s judgement at the end of the world
Thus, in rebuking the cities which had not believed although he had performed works of power in them, the Saviour himself says, ‘But I tell you, it will be an easier time for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgement, than for you.’
13
And a little later, addressing another city: ‘Mark my words, it will be an easier time for the land of Sodom on the day of judgement, than for you.’
14
Here he is most explicitly predicting that a day of judgement is to come. And he says in another passage:
The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgement with this generation, and they will condemn it; because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and look, something more than Jonah is here. The Queen of the South will rise up in the judgement with this generation, and will condemn it; because she came from the ends of the earth to hear Solomon’s wisdom, and look, something more than Solomon is here.
15
In this passage we learn two things: that there is a judgement to come; and that it will coincide with the resurrection of the dead. For when he said this about the men of Nineveh and about the Queen of the South, he was undoubtedly speaking about the dead; and yet he said that they would ‘rise up’ at the day of judgement. And in saying ‘they
will condemn’ he did not mean that they themselves would pass judgement; he means that the comparison of others with them would lead to the merited condemnation of the others.
Again, in another context, when speaking about the present intermixture of good men and wicked, and their subsequent separation (which will, of course, happen at the day of judgement) he brought in the comparison of the wheat sown and the tares sown later. This he explains to his disciples as follows:
The sower of the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world; the good seed stands for the sons of the kingdom; but the tares are the sons of the Evil One; the enemy, who sowed them is the Devil; the harvest is the consummation of the age, and the reapers are the angels. So, just as the tares are collected and burned in the fire, that is what will happen at the consummation of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect from his kingdom all stumbling-blocks, and those whose deeds are wicked, and will consign them to a burning furnace: there will be weeping there, and grinding of teeth. Then the righteous will shine as bright as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him listen.
16
In this passage he did not, it is true, use the term ‘judgement’, or ‘day of judgement’; but he gave a much clearer account of it in describing the details, and foretold that it would happen at the end of the age.
Similarly, he said to his disciples, ‘Mark my words; in the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man has taken his seat on his throne of majesty, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, as judges of the twelve tribes of Israel.’
17
We learn from this that Jesus will judge, with his disciples. That is why he says to the Jews, in another place, ‘If I cast out devils by Beelzebub, by whom do your own people cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges.’
18
Now we are not to imagine that there will be only twelve men associated with him as judges, simply because he says that they will sit on twelve thrones. For by the number twelve is symbolized a kind of universal character in the multitude of those judging. For the numbers three and four are parts of seven; and seven is a customary symbol of universality. And the product of three and four is twelve, for three fours are twelve, as are four threes; and there may be other explanations of the number twelve which would give the same significance. Otherwise, since we are told that Matthias was appointed an apostle in the place of the traitor Judas,
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there will be no throne
of judgement for the Apostle Paul who ‘laboured more than all of them’.
20
Yet Paul undoubtedly shows that he belongs to the number of the judges, with the other saints, when he says, ‘Are you unaware that we shall sit in judgement on angels?’
21
The same consideration applies to the number twelve in reference to those who are to be judged. For the statement about being ‘judges of the twelve tribes of Israel’ does not mean that the tribe of Levi, the thirteenth tribe, is therefore not to be judged by them; or that only that people is to be judged and not the rest of the nations as well. And when Christ says, ‘in the renewal’ he means, without any doubt, the resurrection of the dead to be understood by that word ‘renewal’; for our flesh will be renewed by being made exempt from decay, just as our soul is renewed by faith.
I pass over a large number of passages which seem to refer to the last judgement, but turn out to be ambiguous on careful examination, or to have more relevance to some other subject. They may refer, for example, to the coming of the Saviour in the sense that he comes throughout this present age in the person of his Church, that is in his members, part by part and little by little, since the whole Church is his body; or the reference may be to the destruction of the earthly Jerusalem. For when he speaks of that destruction he generally uses language suitable to describing the end of the world and the last great day of judgement; so that the two events cannot possibly be distinguished except by comparing the parallel statements on this subject in the three evangelists, Matthew, Mark and Luke. For one sets out certain points more obscurely, another more plainly; and this comparison is needed to make it clear where statements referring to the same subject begin. I have been at pains to follow this procedure in a letter I wrote to Hesychius of blessed memory, bishop of Salona, a letter entitled ‘On the End of the World.’
22
I shall now go on to quote the statements in the Gospel according to Matthew about the separation of the good and the evil by the instant and ultimate judgement of Christ.
When the Son of Man comes in his majesty; and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne of majesty; and all the nations will be gathered before him. Then he will separate them from one another, like a shepherd separating the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep on his
right, and the goats on his left. Then the King will say to those on his right: ‘Come, you that have my Father’s blessing, take possession of the kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. For when I was hungry, you gave me food; when I was thirsty, you gave me drink; when I was a stranger, you took me in; when I was naked, you clothed me; when I was ill, you came to my help; when I was in prison, you came to see me.’ Then the righteous will reply: ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry, and fed you; or thirsty, and gave you drink; a stranger, and we took you in; naked, and we clothed you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and came to see you?’ And the King will answer: ‘This is what I tell you: Whenever you did this for one of my brothers, even the least important, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those on the left: ‘Out of my sight, you accursed, into the eternal fire, made ready for the Devil and his angels.’
Then he gives a list of what they have
not
done, corresponding to the list of what those on the right
have
done. And when they make the corresponding reply by asking when they saw him in need of these things, he replies that what was not done to the humblest of his brothers was not done to him. He concludes the discourse with the words: Then those will go into everlasting punishment while the just go into everlasting life.’
23
Now the evangelist John gives an account of a very explicit prediction by Jesus that the judgement would happen at the resurrection of the dead. For he said first, ‘For the Father does not judge anyone, but has given all judgement to the Son, so that all men may honour the Son, just as they honour the Father. Anyone who denies honour to the Son denies it also to the Father who sent him.’ Then he immediately added: ‘Mark my words carefully: I am telling you that he who listens to my words and puts his faith in him who sent me possesses eternal life, and does not come up for judgement, but has passed over from death to life.’
24
Observe that he said here that the faithful will not come up for judgement. Then how will they be separated from the evil by judgement and stand on his right hand, unless in this passage he used ‘judgement’ for ‘condemnation’? For that is the kind of judgement into which those people will not come who hear his words and put their faith in the one who sent him.
6.
The first resurrection, and the second
Jesus then goes on to say, ‘Mark my words carefully: I am telling you that a time is coming, in fact it has already come, when the dead will
hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear shall live. For as the Father has life in himself, so has the Son, by the Father’s gift.’
25
He is not yet speaking of the second resurrection, that is, the resurrection of the body, which is to come at the end of the world, but about the first, which is here and now. It is, in fact, to distinguish the two that he says, ‘The time is coming, in fact it is already come.’ This resurrection, however, is not the resurrection of the body, but of the soul. For souls also have their own death, in the shape of irreligion and sin, the death died by those referred to by the Lord when he says, ‘Let the dead bury their own dead’,
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that is, ‘Let those who are dead in soul bury those who are dead in body.’ Thus he is speaking of those who are dead in soul, because of irreligion and wickedness, when he says, ‘The time is coming, in fact it has already come, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear shall live.’ By ‘those who hear’ he means ‘those who obey and believe, and who persevere to the end’. And he does not here make any distinction between the good and the evil. For it is good for all to hear his voice, and to come to life by passing over from the death of irreligion to the life of devotion.
It is of this death that the apostle Paul is speaking when he says, ‘Therefore all mankind had died; and he died for all, so that men, when they are alive, should not live for themselves henceforth, but should live for him who for their sake died and rose again.’
27
So all men are dead in sin, without any exception at all, whether that sin is original sin or voluntary sin – in addition to that – commited either in ignorance of what is right, or by failing to do what is known to be right. And for all these dead, there died the one man truly alive, that is, the one who had no sin at all. And his purpose was that those who are alive through the forgiveness of sins should henceforth live not for themselves but for him who died for all mankind, on account of our sins, and rose again for our justification
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so that we may put our faith in him who justifies the irreligious,
29
and being brought from irreligion to righteousness – brought as if from death to life – might thus be able to take part in the first resurrection which is here and now. For in this first resurrection only those take part who will be blessed for eternity, whereas in the second, about which Jesus is soon to speak, he will teach us that the blessed and the wretched alike take part. The one is the resurrection of mercy, the other the resurrection
of judgement. That is the meaning of the verse in the psalm, ‘I will sing to you, Lord, of mercy and of judgement.’
30
Jesus goes on to speak of this judgement, in saying, ‘And he has given him authority to pass judgement, because he is the Son of Man.’ Here he is showing that he will come to judge in the body in which he came to be judged; that is the point of saying ‘because he is the Son of Man’. Then he adds the words relevant to our present topic: ‘Do not be surprised at this, that the time is coming when all who are in the grave will hear his voice and will come out; those who have done right will rise to life, those who have done wrong will rise for judgement.’
31
This is ‘judgement’ in the sense in which he used the word a little before, meaning ‘condemnation’, when he said, ‘He who listens to my words, and puts his faith in him who sent me, has everlasting life, and will not come up for judgement, but has passed over from death to life.’ This means that by taking part in the first resurrection, which effects the passage from death to life, he will not come up for condemnation, which is what he means by the term ‘judgement’, as he does also in this other place, where he says, ‘Those who have done wrong will rise for judgement.’ And so anyone who does not wish to be condemned in the second resurrection must rise up in the first. For ‘the time is coming, in fact it has already come, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live’, that is, they will not come into condemnation, the ‘second death’, as it is called. Into this death, after the second resurrection, the resurrection of bodies which is to come, they will be hurled who do not rise up in the first resurrection, the resurrection of souls. ‘For the time is coming’ (and here he does not say ‘and in fact it has come already’ because it is to be at the end of the world, that is, at the last and greatest judgement of God) ‘when all who are in the grave will hear his voice and will come out.’ He does not say, as in the first resurrection, ‘and those who hear it will live’. For not all will live, that is, not all will have that life which, because it is a life of bliss, is the only life truly worthy of the name. For obviously they could not, without life of some sort, hear and come forth from the grave in the resurrection of the body.
Now he tells us in the next verse why they will not all live.‘Those who have done right’, he says, ‘will rise to life’ – they are those who are to live – ‘but those who have done wrong will rise for judgement’ – they are those who are not to live, because they are to die the second death. They have, in fact, done wrong because their life has been wicked. And their life has been wicked because in the first resurrection,
the resurrection of souls which is here and now, they have not risen to a new life, or they did once so rise, but have not continued in that new life to the end. There are thus two rebirths, of which I have already spoken above: one according to faith, which comes here and now through baptism, and the other in the body, a rebirth which will come in its freedom from decay and death, as a result of the great and last judgement. Similarly, there are two resurrections: the first, the resurrection of the soul, which is here and now, and prevents us from coming to the second death; and the second, which is not now, but is to come at the end of the world. This is not the resurrection of the soul but of the body, and by means of the last judgement it will consign many to the second death, and bring others to the life that knows no death.