Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
11.
Gog and Magog, the agents of the Devil’s persecution towards the end of the world
‘And when the thousand years are over’ the narrative continues, ‘Satan will be unloosed from his prison, and will go out to lead astray the nations in the four corners of the earth, and he will draw them into war; these are Gog and Magog, and their number is like the sands of the sea.’
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He leads them astray, we see, so that he can draw them into war. For he has been leading them astray before this, by all means at his command, using multifarious kinds of evil. But ‘he will go out’ means Tie will burst out of his lair of hatred into open persecution’. This, in fact, will be the last persecution, when the last judgement is
imminent, and this persecution will be suffered throughout the whole world by the holy Church, the universal City of Christ being persecuted by the universal city of the Devil, each at the height of its power on earth. For the nations called Gog and Magog are not to be taken as standing for some barbarian peoples, whose home is in some particular part of the earth, whether the Getae and the Massagetae (as some have guessed on account of the initials of their names), or some other peoples of foreign race, outside Roman sway. It is indicated, in fact, that they exist all over the world, when the first statement about ‘nations in the four corners of the earth’ is followed by the remark that those nations are Gog and Magog. I find that the names mean: Gog, ‘a roof; Magog, ‘from the roof,
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or, as we might say, the house and the one who proceeds from the house.
These, then, are the nations in which, according to our interpretation given above,
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the Devil is shut up, as it were, in an abyss; and the Devil himself is, in a way, one who rushes out and proceeds from them; as they are ‘the roof, he is the one who proceeds ‘from the roof. If, on the other hand, we refer both names to the nations, instead of applying one to them and the other to the Devil, then they will be ‘the roof because the ancient enemy is shut up in them and, in a sense, covered by them; and they will also be ‘from the roof when they burst out from covert into overt hatred. As for the words, ‘and they went up over the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city’,
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this clearly does not mean that they have come, or will come, to one place, as if the camp of the saints and the beloved City are to be in some one place. For these are simply the Church of Christ spread all over the world. It follows that wherever the Church is at that time, and it will be among all the nations –which is the meaning of ‘over the breadth of the earth’ – there the camp of the saints will be, and there God’s beloved City. There it will be surrounded by all its enemies – for they also will be present along with that City, among all nations – in the savagery of that persecution. That is, the City will be hemmed in, hard pressed, shut up, in the straits of tribulation, yet it will not abandon its warfare, which is here called ‘the camp’.
12.
The fire that consumed Gog and Magog: and the fire of the last punishment
‘And fire came down from heaven and devoured them.’ This must not be supposed to describe the last punishment, which is to come with
the sentence, ‘Out of my sight, accursed ones, into the eternal fire.’
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For then, to be sure, they themselves are to be flung into the fire, instead of having fire coming down from heaven upon them. This fire from heaven, in fact, is rightly taken to mean the firmness of the saints, which will keep them from giving way to those who rage against them and from carrying out the wishes of these opponents. For the heaven is the ‘firmament’ through whose ‘firmness’ these attackers will be tormented with blazing zeal, since they will be unable to draw the saints of Christ to the part of Antichrist. This zeal will be the fire that devours them, and it will be ‘from God’, since it is by the gift of God that the saints are made invincible, and that is what torments their enemies. For while ‘zeal’ has a good sense in ‘the zeal of your house has consumed me’,
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it has an opposite sense in ‘Zeal has taken hold of the uninstructed people, and now fire will consume those opponents.’
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Notice the phrase ‘and now’, which clearly rules out a reference to the last judgement. Alternatively, the fire that comes down from heaven and devours them may mean the blow that is to be dealt to persecutors of the Church when Christ comes and finds them alive in the earth and when he kills the Antichrist with the breath of his mouth.
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But even so this will not be the final punishment of the impious; that last punishment is the punishment they are to undergo after the resurrection of the body.
13.
The relation of the persecution of Antichrist to the thousand years
This last persecution, which is to be inflicted by Antichrist, will last for three years and six months; I have already stated this, and it is also laid down earlier in the Apocalypse, and in the book of the prophet Daniel.
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Brief though this time is, it is a proper matter for debate whether it is included in the thousand years during which the Devil is said to be bound, while the saints reign with Christ, or whether this short space is to be added, as an extra period. For if we say that it is within the thousand years, then it will be seen that the reign of the saints with Christ is not coextensive with the binding of the Devil, but lasts a longer time. For the saints will surely reign with their King even in that persecution, in fact, especially at that time, when they will overcome all its great evils, at a time when the Devil is no longer bound, and so can persecute them with all his might. How is it, then,
that Scripture limits both the Devil’s binding and the reign of the saints to the same period of the thousand years, if the Devil’s binding is to come to an end three years and six months before the end of the thousand-year reign of the saints with Christ?
On the other hand, if we say that this brief space of persecution is not to be reckoned in with the thousand years, but added to them instead, then the statements of the narrative can be understood in their literal sense. First comes the statement, ‘The priests of God and of Christ will reign with him for a thousand years.’ This is followed by, ‘And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be unloosed from his prison.’
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Taken in this way, the meaning is that the reign of the saints and the imprisonment of the Devil are to end at the same time. Then the time of the persecution belongs, we believe, neither to the reign of the saints nor to the imprisonment of Satan – both lasting a thousand years – but is to be reckoned as an additional period. But on this supposition we shall be forced to admit that the saints will not reign with Christ in that time of persecution. Yet who would dare to say that his members will not reign with him at that time when they will cleave to him most closely and strongly and at a time when the fiercer the assault of war the greater the glory of refusal to yield, and the richer the martyr’s crown?
Alternatively, if they are not to be accounted as destined to reign, because of the tribulations they are to endure, it will follow that in earlier times also, during those thousand years, all the saints who suffered tribulation must not be accounted as having been reigning with Christ during the actual time of their tribulation. Accordingly, those whose souls the author of the Apocalypse writes that he beheld, those who were ‘killed because of their witness to Jesus and because of the word of God’,
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did not reign with Christ when they were suffering persecutions, and they themselves were not the kingdom of Christ, although Christ possessed them in a pre-eminent sense. Now this, to be sure, is utterly absurd, a conclusion to be repudiated at all costs. In fact, it is certain that the victorious souls of the glorious martyrs, at least, after overcoming all their sufferings and after the end of all their hardships, reigned with Christ, when they had laid down their mortal members; and they are still reigning, until the thousand years are ended, so that they may go on reigning when they have received their bodies, which will then be immortal.
Thus, during those three and a half years, the souls of those slain for their witness to Christ, both those which had already left their
bodies and those which are destined to leave them in the last persecution, will reign with him until this mortal age is ended and we pass over to that kingdom where there will be no death. Hence the reign of the saints with Christ will last for more years than the Devil’s imprisonment in chains, because they will reign with their King, God’s Son, during the three and a half years also when the Devil is no longer bound. The conclusion is, then, that when we hear these words: ‘The priests of God and of Christ will reign with him for a thousand years; and when the thousand years are ended Satan will be unloosed from his prison’, we should take it in one of two ways: either the thousand years of the reign of the saints is not ended, but the imprisonment of the Devil in chains is at an end, so that both sides have their thousand years, that is, their particular totality of years, though the length of the periods differs, the reign of the saints being longer, while the imprisonment of the Devil is shorter in duration; or else, since three years and six months is a very short space of time, it may be assumed that it does not require taking into account, whether it appears to diminish the Devil’s bondage or to increase the length of the reign of the saints. This is like the question of the four hundred years which I discussed in the sixteenth book of this work;
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for there were rather more than four hundred, and yet they were given in round numbers as four hundred. There are many similar forms of expression to be found in the sacred writings, if one looks out for them.
14.
The condemnation of the Devil and his followers; and a summary account of the resurrection of the body and the final judgement
This mention of the last persecution is followed by a brief epitome of all that is still to be suffered by the opposing city, together with its leader, at the last judgement.’Then the Devil, their seducer, was flung into the lake of fire and sulphur, into which the beast and the false prophet had been cast. And they will be tormented day and night for ever.’
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The correct interpretation of ‘the beast’, is, as I said earlier,
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the ungodly city itself; while its ‘false prophet’ stands either for Antichrist, or for that ‘image’, that is that pretence, about which I spoke in that passage. After this, the author gives a summary account of the last judgement itself, which will take place at the resurrection
of the dead, that is, of the body, describing how it was revealed to him. Then I saw a great white throne, and the One who sat on it: from his presence heaven and earth fled, and no place was left for them.’
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He does not say, ‘I saw a great white throne, and the One who sat on it,
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from his presence heaven and earth fled’, because this had not yet happened, that is, it did not happen before judgement had been passed on the living and the dead. What he says is that he saw sitting on the throne the One from whose presence heaven and earth fled – but that happens afterwards. For after the judgement has been accomplished this heaven and this earth will, of course, cease to be, when a new heaven and a new earth will come into being. For it is by a transformation of the physical universe, not by its annihilation, that this world will pass away. Hence the Apostle’s statement, ‘The form of this world is passing away, and I want you to be spared anxiety.’
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It is, then, the outward form, not the substance, that passes.
Now when John has described his vision of One sitting on a throne, from whose presence heaven and earth fled – a vision to be fulfilled hereafter – he continues, ‘Then I saw the dead, great and small; and the books were opened. Then another book was opened, the book of the life of every man; and the dead were judged according to their deeds, on the record in those books.’
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He speaks of ‘books opened’ and ‘a book’, and he did not omit to describe what kind of a book this was: it was ‘the book of every man’s life’. The ‘books’ mentioned first must therefore be taken as the sacred books, old and new, which were opened to show what commandments God had given in them, with orders that they should be fulfilled, while the other book, the book of every man’s life, was to show which of these commandments each man had fulfilled or failed to fulfil. If this book is imagined as a material volume, who could estimate its size or length? How long would it take to read a book containing the whole life of every person? Or are we to suppose that there will be the same number of angels present as men, and that each man will listen to the account of his life being read by the angel assigned to him? If so, there will not be one book for all, but one for each person. However, the scriptural passage intends us to take it as one book, since it says, ‘Another book was opened.’ Consequently, we must understand this to mean a kind of divine power which will ensure that all the actions, good or bad, of every individual will be recalled to mind and presented to the mind’s view with miraculous speed, so that each man’s knowledge will accuse or excuse his
conscience,
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and thus each and all will be judged simultaneously. This divine power is no doubt called a ‘book’ because it ensures the recollection of the facts, and those facts are, as we may say, ‘read’ in this process.
Then, to make it clear who the dead are, the small and the great, who are to be judged, the author recapitulates
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, as if going back to make a point which he had omitted, or rather postponed. ‘The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and Death and Hades gave back the dead which they had in their keeping.’
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This, beyond any doubt, took place before the judgement of the dead; and yet the judgement is described first. This is what I meant by saying that the author went back, by way of recapitulation, to make a point which he had left out. But after that he keeps to the order of events; and to make that order clear, he repeats in its own place, and here more appropriately, what he has already said about the dead who were judged. For after saying, ‘The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave back the dead that they had in their keeping’, he straightway adds what he has stated a little before: ‘And they were judged, each of them on the record of his actions.’ This is the same as he has said above: ‘The dead were judged on the record of their actions.’