City of God 20.24–20.29

Chapter 24. What is prophesied in the Psalms of David about the end of this world and the last judgment of God.

Many things are said about the last judgment in the Psalms, but most of them in passing and briefly. Yet what is said there most plainly about the end of this world I will by no means pass over in silence: “In the beginning you founded the earth, O Lord, and the heavens are the works of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; and they will all grow old like a garment, and like a covering you will change them, and they will be changed; but you are the same, and your years will not fail.” Why is it that Porphyry, while he praises the piety of the Hebrews, by which the God who is great and true and terrible even to their own deities is worshiped by them, accuses the Christians of the greatest folly, even on the basis of the oracles of his gods, because they say that this world will perish? See, in the writings of the Hebrews' piety it is said to God, before whom, as so great a philosopher admits, even their deities tremble: “The heavens are the works of your hands; they will perish.” When the heavens perish, will not the world perish, of which those same heavens are the higher and safer part? If this opinion displeases Jupiter, by whose oracle, as of weightier authority, this is blamed in the credulity of the Christians, as this philosopher writes, why does he not likewise blame as folly the wisdom of the Hebrews, in whose most pious books it is found? Further, if in that wisdom which pleases Porphyry so much that he proclaims it even through the voices of his gods, we read that the heavens will perish, why is this deceit so empty that in the faith of the Christians they detest this, among other things or above other things, that in it the world is believed to be going to perish, when certainly the heavens cannot perish unless it perishes?

In the sacred writings which are properly ours, not common to the Hebrews and us, that is, in the books of the Gospels and the apostles, we read: “The form of this world is passing away”; we read: “The world passes away”; we read: “Heaven and earth will pass away.” But I think that “is passing away,” “passes away,” “will pass away” are said somewhat more mildly than “will perish.” In the letter of the apostle Peter too, where the world that then existed is said to have perished when flooded with water, it is clear enough both what part of the world is signified by the whole and to what extent it is said to have perished, and what heavens have been stored up, kept for fire until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. And in what he says a little later, “The day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a great rush, and the elements will be dissolved with burning, and the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up,” and then added, “Since all these things are perishing, what sort of people ought you to be?”, those heavens can be understood to be about to perish which he said were stored up and kept for fire, and the elements taken to be about to burn which exist in this lowest, stormy, and turbulent part of the world, in which he said those same heavens were stored up, while those higher heavens, in whose firmament the stars are set, remain safe and in their integrity. For the saying that the stars will fall from heaven, besides the fact that it can be understood much more probably in another way too, rather shows that those heavens will remain, if indeed the stars are to fall from there; since either it is a figurative expression, which is more credible, or it will happen in this lowest heaven, certainly more wonderfully than it happens now. Hence also that star of Virgil, “trailing a torch, ran with much light, and hid itself in the forest of Ida.” But the passage I have cited from the psalm seems to leave none of the heavens which it did not say will perish. For where it is said, “The heavens are the works of your hands; they will perish,” just as none of them is excluded from being the work of God, so none of them is excluded from destruction. For they will not deign to defend the piety of the Hebrews, approved by the oracles of their gods, by the manner of speaking of the apostle Peter, whom they vehemently hate, so that at least, lest the whole world be believed to be going to perish, the part may be taken for the whole in the words “they will perish,” since only the lowest heavens will perish, just as in that apostolic letter the part is taken for the whole when the world is said to have perished in the flood, although only its lowest part with its heavens perished. But since, as I said, they will not deign to do this, lest they either approve the meaning of the apostle Peter or grant as much to the final conflagration as we say the flood accomplished, they who contend that the whole human race cannot perish by any waters or any flames, it remains for them to say that their gods praised the Hebrew wisdom because they had not read this psalm.

In the forty-ninth psalm too it is understood to be said of God's last judgment: “God will come openly, our God, and will not keep silence. Fire will burn before him, and round about him a mighty storm. He will call the heaven above, and the earth, to separate his people. Gather to him his righteous ones, who set his covenant above sacrifices.” We understand this of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom we hope will come from heaven to judge the living and the dead. For he will come openly among the righteous and the unrighteous to judge justly, who first came hidden to be judged unjustly by the unrighteous. He, I say, will come openly and will not keep silence; that is, he will appear plainly in the voice of a judge, who before, when he had come hidden, kept silence before the judge, when he was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer was without voice, as we read was prophesied of him through Isaiah and see fulfilled in the Gospel. As for the fire and the storm, we have already said how these are to be understood when we were treating something similar in the prophecy of Isaiah. And as to what was said, “He will call the heaven above”: since the saints and the righteous are rightly called heaven, this is, of course, what the apostle says: “We shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet Christ in the air.” For according to the surface of the letter, how is heaven called “above,” as if it could be anywhere but above? And as to what was added, “and the earth, to separate his people”: if only “he will call” is supplied, that is, “he will call the earth too,” and “above” is not supplied, it seems to have this sense in accordance with right faith, that heaven is understood in those who are to judge with him and earth in those who are to be judged; so that we do not here understand “he will call the heaven above” as “he will catch it up into the air,” but as “he will raise it to the seats of judgment.” It can also be understood that “he will call the heaven above” means he will call the angels in the high and lofty places, with whom he may descend to execute judgment; “he will call the earth too,” that is, human beings on earth who are certainly to be judged. But if both are to be supplied when it is said “and the earth,” that is, both “he will call” and “above,” so that this is the sense: “He will call the heaven above, and he will call the earth above,” I think nothing is better understood than all those who will be caught up to meet Christ in the air, but called heaven because of their souls and earth because of their bodies. Further, what is “to separate his people” but to separate the good from the wicked by judgment, like sheep from goats? Then the discourse turns to the angels: “Gather to him his righteous ones”; for surely so great a matter is to be carried out by the ministry of angels. If we ask which righteous ones the angels are to gather to him, he says: “Who set his covenant above sacrifices.” This is the whole life of the righteous: to set God's covenant above sacrifices. For either the works of mercy are above sacrifices, that is, to be preferred to sacrifices, according to the saying of God, “I desire mercy rather than sacrifice”; or, if “above sacrifices” is understood as “in sacrifices,” as a thing is said to be done “upon the earth” which is certainly done on the earth, then surely the works of mercy themselves are the sacrifices by which God is pleased, as I remember discussing in the tenth book of this work; and in these works the righteous set God's covenant, because they do them for the sake of the promises contained in his new covenant. Hence, when his righteous ones have been gathered to him and set at his right hand, Christ will say in the last judgment: “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,” and the rest that is set out there about the good works of the good and their everlasting rewards through the final sentence of the judge.

Chapter 25. On the prophecy of Malachi, in which God's last judgment is declared and a cleansing of some through purifying punishments is said to be carried out.

The prophet Malachi, or Malachias, who was also called “angel,” and is believed by some to be also Ezra the priest, other writings of whom have been received into the canon (for Jerome says that this is the opinion of the Hebrews about him), prophesies the last judgment, saying: “Behold, he comes, says the Lord almighty; and who will endure the day of his coming, or who will be able to bear to look on him? For he comes in like a refiner's fire and like fullers' herb; and he will sit refining and purifying as silver and as gold, and he will purify the sons of Levi and pour them out like gold and silver; and they will offer sacrifices to the Lord in righteousness, and the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem will please the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years. And I will draw near to you in judgment, and I will be a swift witness against evildoers and against adulterers and against those who swear falsely in my name, and those who defraud the hired man of his wages and oppress widows by their power and strike orphans and pervert the judgment of the stranger, and who do not fear me, says the Lord almighty; for I am the Lord your God, and I do not change.” From what has been said it seems to appear more evidently that in that judgment there will be certain purifying punishments for some. For when it is said, “Who will endure the day of his coming, or who will be able to bear to look on him? For he comes in like a refiner's fire and like fullers' herb; and he will sit refining and purifying as silver and as gold, and he will purify the sons of Levi and pour them out like gold and silver,” what else is to be understood? Isaiah too says something of the kind: “The Lord will wash away the filth of the sons and daughters of Zion, and cleanse the blood from their midst by a spirit of judgment and a spirit of burning.” Unless perhaps it should be said that they are cleansed from filth and in a way refined in this sense, that the wicked are separated from them by the penal judgment, so that the segregation and condemnation of the one is the purification of the other, because they will live henceforth without any mixture of such people. But when he says, “And he will purify the sons of Levi and pour them out like gold and silver; and they will offer sacrifices to the Lord in righteousness, and the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem will please the Lord,” he certainly shows that the very ones who will be purified will thereafter please the Lord in sacrifices of righteousness, and so they themselves will be cleansed from their own unrighteousness, in which they displeased the Lord. Moreover, when they have been cleansed, they themselves will be the sacrifices in full and perfect righteousness. For what more acceptable thing do such people offer to God than themselves? But this question of purifying punishments must be put off to another time to be treated more carefully.

By the sons of Levi and Judah and Jerusalem we must understand the church of God itself, gathered not from the Hebrews only but from other nations as well; and not such as it is now, when “if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us,” but such as it will be then, purged by the last judgment as a threshing floor by winnowing, those too being cleansed by fire for whom such cleansing is necessary, so that there is no one at all who offers sacrifice for his sins. For all who offer in this way are surely in sins, for the forgiveness of which they offer, so that, when they have offered and it has been accepted by God, they may then be forgiven.

Chapter 26. On the sacrifices which the saints will offer to God, which will please him as they pleased him in the days of old and in former years.

Wishing to show that his city will not then be in this present condition, God said that the sons of Levi would offer sacrifices in righteousness; not, therefore, in sin, and so not for sin. Hence it can be understood from what he went on to add, “And the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem will please the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years,” that the Jews promise themselves in vain the past times of their sacrifices according to the law of the old covenant. For they did not then offer sacrifices in righteousness but in sins, since they offered chiefly and first of all for sins, so much so that the priest himself, whom we must certainly believe to have been more righteous than the rest, was accustomed by God's command to offer first for his own sins and then for the people's. We must therefore explain how what was said, “As in the days of old and as in former years,” is to be taken. Perhaps it recalls the time when the first human beings were in paradise. For then, pure and untouched by any filth or stain of sin, they offered themselves to God as the purest sacrifices; but since they were sent out from there because of the transgression they committed and human nature was condemned in them, apart from the one Mediator, and, after the washing of regeneration, any who are still little children, no one is clean from filth, as it is written, “not even an infant whose life on earth is one day.” But if it is answered that those too can rightly be said to offer sacrifices in righteousness who offer in faith (for “the righteous lives by faith,” although he deceives himself if he says that he has no sin, and therefore, because he lives by faith, he does not say it), will anyone say that this time of faith is to be made equal to that end, when those who offer sacrifices in righteousness will be cleansed by the fire of the last judgment? And so, since it is to be believed that after such cleansing the righteous will have no sin, surely that time, as far as having no sin is concerned, is to be compared with no other time except when the first human beings lived in paradise in most innocent happiness before the transgression. So it is rightly understood that this is what was signified when it was said, “As in the days of old and as in former years.” For through Isaiah too, after a new heaven and a new earth had been promised, among other things which he sets out there about the blessedness of the saints through allegories and enigmas, to which concern for avoiding length has prevented us from giving a fitting explanation, he says: “As the days of the tree of life, so will be the days of my people.” Who has touched the sacred writings and does not know where God planted the tree of life, from whose food those human beings were cut off when their iniquity cast them out of paradise, and a fiery and terrible guard was set around that tree?

But if anyone contends that those days of the tree of life which the prophet Isaiah mentioned are these days of the church of Christ which are now passing, and that Christ himself is prophetically called the tree of life because he is the wisdom of God, of whom Solomon says, “She is a tree of life to all who embrace her”; and that those first human beings did not spend any years in paradise, from which they were cast out so quickly that they begot no son there, and that therefore that time cannot be understood in what was said, “As in the days of old and as in former years”: I pass over this question, so as not to be forced, which would be lengthy, to discuss everything in order that the manifest truth may confirm one of these views. For I see another sense, so that we should not believe that the days of old and former years of carnal sacrifices were promised to us through the prophet as a great gift. For those victims of the old law were commanded to be offered, in all kinds of animals, unblemished and wholly without any defect, and they signified holy human beings, such as Christ alone has been found to be, entirely without any sin. Accordingly, since after the judgment, when those who are worthy of such cleansing have also been cleansed by fire, no sin at all will be found in any of the saints, and so they will offer themselves in righteousness, such victims will be altogether unblemished and without any defect; they will surely be as in the days of old and as in former years, when the purest victims were offered in the shadow of this thing to come. For this purity will then be in the immortal flesh and mind of the saints, which was figured in the bodies of those victims.

Then, because of those who are worthy not of cleansing but of condemnation, he says: “And I will draw near to you in judgment, and I will be a swift witness against evildoers and against adulterers,” and the rest; and when these damnable crimes have been listed, he added: “For I am the Lord your God, and I do not change”; as if he said: “Though your guilt has changed you for the worse and my grace for the better, I do not change.” He says he will be a witness because in his judgment he does not need witnesses; and a swift one, either because he will come suddenly and the judgment, which seemed very slow, will be very quick by his unexpected coming, or because he will convict consciences themselves without any length of speech. For, as it is written, “In the thoughts of the ungodly there will be an examination”; and the apostle says: “Their thoughts accusing or even excusing them, on the day when God will judge the secrets of men according to my gospel through Jesus Christ.” In this way too, then, the Lord is to be understood as a swift witness, since he will recall to memory without delay that by which he may convict and punish the conscience.

Chapter 27. On the separation of the good and the wicked, by which the discrimination of the last judgment is declared.

That passage too which I set down from this prophet in the eighteenth book, while dealing with something else, belongs to the last judgment, where he says: “They will be mine, says the Lord almighty, on the day when I make them my possession, and I will choose them as a man chooses his son who serves him; and I will turn, and you will see what the difference is between the righteous and the unrighteous, and between one who serves God and one who does not serve him. For behold, the day comes, burning like an oven, and it will burn them up, and all foreigners and all who do iniquity will be stubble, and the coming day will set them on fire, says the Lord almighty, and neither root nor branch will be left in them. And for you who fear my name the sun of righteousness will rise, and healing in its wings, and you will go out and leap like calves loosed from their bonds; and you will trample the unrighteous, and they will be ashes under your feet, says the Lord almighty.” This difference of rewards and punishments separating the righteous from the unrighteous, which is not discerned under this sun in the vanity of this life, when it shines out under that sun of righteousness in the manifestation of that life, then indeed there will be a judgment such as there has never been.

Chapter 28. That the law of Moses is to be understood spiritually, so as not to fall into the damnable murmurings of carnal understanding.

What the same prophet adds, “Remember the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel, statutes and judgments,” he fittingly recalls after declaring that there will be so great a difference between those who keep the law and those who despise it; and at the same time so that they may learn to understand the law spiritually and find Christ in it, through whom as judge that very separation between the good and the wicked is to be made. For not in vain does the same Lord say to the Jews: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me also; for he wrote of me.” For by taking the law carnally, and not knowing that its earthly promises are figures of heavenly things, they fell into those murmurings, so that they dared to say: “He who serves God is a fool; and what more have we gained because we have kept his commandments and walked as suppliants before the face of the Lord almighty? And now we call strangers blessed, and all who do iniquity are built up.” By these words of theirs the prophet was in a way compelled to foretell the last judgment, where the wicked will not be happy even falsely, but will appear most plainly wretched, and the good will not suffer even temporal misery, but will enjoy clear and everlasting blessedness. For he had quoted above certain such words of theirs as well, when they said: “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and such people please him.” To these murmurings against God, I say, they came by taking the law of Moses carnally. Hence the man in the seventy-second psalm too says that his feet were almost moved and his steps poured out, that is, to a fall, because he was envious of sinners, seeing the peace of sinners; so that among other things he said: “How does God know, and is there knowledge in the Most High?” and said also: “Have I justified my heart in vain and washed my hands among the innocent?” But to solve this most difficult question, which arises when the good seem to be wretched and the wicked happy, he says: “This is a labor before me, until I enter into the sanctuary of God and understand the last things.” For in the last judgment it will not be so; but in the open misery of the unrighteous and the open happiness of the righteous something far different from what is now will appear.

Chapter 29. On the coming of Elijah before the judgment, by whose preaching, which will open the secrets of the Scriptures, the Jews will be converted to Christ.

When he had admonished them to remember the law of Moses (since he foresaw that for a long time yet they would not take it spiritually, as they ought), he at once added: “And behold, I will send you Elijah the Tishbite before the great and glorious day of the Lord comes, who will turn the heart of the father to the son and the heart of a man to his neighbor, lest when I come I strike the earth utterly.” That through this Elijah, the great and wonderful prophet, when the law has been expounded to them in the last time before the judgment, the Jews will believe in the true Christ, that is, in our Christ, is a very common theme in the talk and hearts of the faithful. For he is not without reason hoped to come before the coming of the Savior as judge, since he is not without reason believed to be living even now. For he was taken up from human affairs in a fiery chariot, as holy Scripture most plainly testifies. When he comes, then, by expounding spiritually the law which the Jews now understand carnally, he will turn the heart of the father to the son, that is, the heart of the fathers to the sons; for the Seventy translators put the singular for the plural. And the sense is that the sons also, that is, the Jews, will understand the law as the fathers, that is, the prophets, among whom was Moses himself, understood it. For so the heart of the fathers will be turned to the sons, when the understanding of the fathers is brought to the understanding of the sons; and the heart of the sons to their fathers, when the latter agree with what the former thought; where the Seventy said, “and the heart of a man to his neighbor.” For fathers and sons are very near neighbors to one another. Yet in the words of the Seventy translators, who translated prophetically, another sense, and a more choice one, can be found: that Elijah is to be understood as turning the heart of God the Father to the Son; not, of course, by causing the Father to love the Son, but by teaching that the Father loves the Son, so that the Jews too may love the same Christ, who is ours, whom they had hated before. For to the Jews God now has his heart turned away from our Christ, since that is what they think. To them, then, his heart will be turned to the Son when they themselves, with their hearts turned, have learned the Father's love for the Son. And as to what follows, “and the heart of a man to his neighbor,” that is, Elijah will also turn the heart of a man to his neighbor, what is better understood than the heart of a man to the man Christ? For though in the form of God he is our God, taking the form of a servant he deigned to become our neighbor too. This, then, Elijah will do. “Lest,” he says, “I come and strike the earth utterly.” For they are earth who set their minds on earthly things, as the carnal Jews do until now; from this fault came those murmurings against God: “The wicked please him,” and, “He who serves God is a fool.”