City of God 21.10–21.21

Chapter 10. Whether the fire of Gehenna, if it is bodily, can burn evil spirits, that is, incorporeal demons, by its touch.

Here the question arises: if the fire is not incorporeal, like the pain of the mind, but bodily, harmful to the touch, so that bodies can be tormented by it, how will the punishment of evil spirits also be in it? For it will be the same fire, assigned, that is, to the punishment of human beings and of demons, since Christ says: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire, which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.” Unless it is because demons too have certain bodies of their own, as learned men have thought, made of this thick and moist air whose impact is felt when the wind blows. If this kind of element could suffer nothing from fire, it would not burn when heated in the baths. For in order to burn, it is first burned, and it acts when it is acted upon. But if anyone asserts that demons have no bodies, there is no need either to labor over the matter with painstaking inquiry or to contend over it with contentious dispute. For why should we not say that, in ways that are wonderful but true, even incorporeal spirits can be afflicted by the punishment of bodily fire, if the spirits of human beings, which are themselves certainly incorporeal, both could now be enclosed in bodily members and will then be able to be bound indissolubly by the bonds of their bodies? So the spirits of demons, or rather the demons as spirits, even if they have no bodies, though incorporeal, will cleave to the bodily fires to be tormented; not so that the fires themselves to which they will cleave are animated by their union and become living beings composed of spirit and body, but, as I said, cleaving in wonderful and ineffable ways, receiving punishment from the fires, not giving life to the fires; because that other way too, by which spirits cleave to bodies and become living beings, is altogether wonderful and cannot be comprehended by man, and this is man himself.

I would indeed say that spirits will burn without any body of their own, just as that rich man was burning in the underworld when he said, “I am tormented in this flame,” except that I see that it could fittingly be answered that that flame was of the same kind as the eyes which he lifted up and with which he saw Lazarus, the tongue on which he longed to have a little moisture poured, and the finger of Lazarus by which he asked this to be done for him; and yet there they were souls without bodies. So that flame too, in which he burned, and that little drop which he asked for, were incorporeal, like the things seen by people asleep or by those who see incorporeal things in ecstasy, which nevertheless have a likeness of bodies. For the man himself, though he is present in such visions in spirit and not in body, sees himself so like his body then that he cannot tell the difference at all. But that Gehenna, which is also called the lake of fire and sulfur, will be a bodily fire and will torment the bodies of the damned, either both of human beings and of demons, the solid bodies of human beings and the airy ones of demons, or only the bodies of human beings with their spirits, while the demons, spirits without bodies, cleave to the bodily fires, receiving punishment and not imparting life. For there will be one fire for both, as the Truth has said.

Chapter 11. Whether the principle of justice requires that the times of punishment be no longer than the times of the sins were.

Now some of those against whom we are defending the city of God think it unjust that anyone should be condemned to eternal punishment for sins, however great, committed in a short time; as if the justice of any law ever took care that each person should be punished for as long a time as he spent committing what he is punished for. Tully writes that there are eight kinds of punishment in the laws: fine, chains, beating, retaliation, disgrace, exile, death, slavery. Which of these is compressed into a short time to match the speed of each sin, so that it is avenged by as short a delay as the time in which it is found to have been committed, except perhaps retaliation? For this brings it about that each person suffers what he has done. Hence that saying of the law: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” For it can happen that someone loses an eye through the severity of the penalty in as short a time as he took it from another through the wickedness of his sin. But further, if it is reasonable to punish a kiss forced on another man's wife with a beating, does not the one who did it in a moment of time suffer a beating for an incomparably longer space of hours, and the sweetness of a slight pleasure is punished with long pain? What about chains? Is anyone to be judged to deserve to be in them only as long as he took to do what earned him being bound, when a slave in fetters most justly pays penalties lasting years because by a word or a blow, passing very quickly, he either provoked or struck his master? And now fines, disgrace, exile, and slavery, when they are commonly inflicted in such a way that they are relaxed by no pardon, do they not seem, by the measure of this life, like eternal punishments? For they cannot be eternal only because the life itself which is punished by them does not stretch into eternity; and yet the sins which are avenged with punishments of very long duration are committed in a very short time; nor has anyone ever been found who thought that the torments of the guilty should be ended as quickly as a murder or an adultery or a sacrilege was done, or any other crime, which is to be measured not by the length of time but by the greatness of the iniquity and impiety. And when someone is punished with death for some great crime, do the laws reckon his punishment by the delay in which he is killed, which is very short, and not by the fact that they remove him for ever from the society of the living? What removing human beings from this mortal city by the punishment of the first death is, removing human beings from that immortal city by the punishment of the second death is. For just as the laws of this city do not bring it about that anyone who has been killed is recalled into it, so neither do the laws of that city bring it about that one who has been condemned by the second death is recalled into eternal life.

“How, then,” they say, “is it true, what your Christ says: ‘With the measure you have measured, it will be measured back to you,’ if a temporal sin is punished with eternal punishment?” They do not notice that the same measure was spoken of not because of an equal space of time but because of the requital of evil, that is, that he who has done evil should suffer evil. Although this can be taken properly of the matter the Lord was speaking about when he said this, that is, of judgments and condemnations. So the one who judges and condemns unjustly, if he is judged and condemned justly, receives in the same measure, although not the same thing that he gave. For he acted by a judgment, and he suffers by a judgment; although by condemnation he did what is unjust, by condemnation he suffers what is just.

Chapter 12. On the greatness of the first transgression, because of which eternal punishment is owed to all who are outside the Savior's grace.

But eternal punishment seems harsh and unjust to human senses because in the weakness of these dying senses there is lacking that sense of the highest and purest wisdom by which one could perceive how great a wickedness was committed in that first transgression. For the more man enjoyed God, the greater the impiety with which he abandoned God, and he became worthy of eternal evil who destroyed in himself the good which could have been eternal. Hence the whole mass of the human race is condemned; since the one who first committed this was punished together with his stock, which had been rooted in him, so that no one is set free from this just and deserved punishment except by merciful and undeserved grace; and the human race is so divided that in some is shown what merciful grace can do, in the rest what just vengeance can do. For both could not be shown in all; because if all remained in the punishments of just condemnation, merciful grace would appear in none; again, if all were transferred from darkness into light, the truth of retribution would appear in none. And there are many more in that than in this, so that it may thus be shown what was owed to all. If it were rendered to all, no one could justly find fault with the justice of the avenger; but because so many are set free from it, there is cause for giving the greatest thanks to the free gift of the deliverer.

Chapter 13. Against the opinion of those who think that punishments are applied to the guilty after death for the sake of purification.

The Platonists, indeed, although they will have no sins go unpunished, think that all punishments, whether inflicted by human or divine laws, whether in this life or after death, are applied for amendment, if a person is either spared here or punished in such a way that he is not corrected here. Hence that saying of Maro, where, having said of earthly bodies and dying limbs that souls “hence fear and desire, grieve and rejoice, nor look up to the air, shut in darkness and a blind prison,” he went on to add: “Nay, even when on the last day life has left them” (that is, when this life has left them on the final day), “not all evil,” he says, “nor all the plagues of the body wholly depart from the wretched, and it must be that many things long grown in should become deeply ingrained in wondrous ways. So they are exercised with punishments and pay the penalties of old evils: some are spread out, hung empty to the winds; for others the stain of guilt is washed out under a vast whirlpool, or burned out by fire.” Those who hold this opinion will have no punishments after death except purifying ones, so that, since the elements water, air, and fire are higher than earth, what has been contracted by earthly contagion is cleansed by one of these through expiatory punishments. For air is understood in his saying, “hung to the winds”; water in his saying, “under a vast whirlpool”; and fire is expressed by its own name when he said, “or burned out by fire.”

We, however, acknowledge that even in this mortal life there are indeed some purifying punishments; not those by which people are afflicted whose life is either not made better by them or is rather made worse, but they are purifying for those who are corrected by being restrained by them. All other punishments, whether temporary or everlasting, as each person is to be dealt with by divine providence, are inflicted either for sins, whether past or those in which the one punished is still living, or to exercise and display virtues, through human beings and angels, good or evil. For even if someone suffers some evil through another's wickedness or error, the man who does evil to anyone through ignorance or injustice sins; but God, who permits it to happen by a just though hidden judgment, does not sin. But some suffer temporary punishments in this life only, others after death, others both now and then, yet before that most severe and final judgment. Not all, however, who endure temporal punishments after death come into the everlasting punishments which will be after that judgment. For we have already said above that for some what is not forgiven in this age is forgiven in the age to come, that is, so that they are not punished with the eternal punishment of the age to come.

Chapter 14. On the temporal punishments of this life, to which the human condition is subject.

Very rare are those who pay no penalties in this life, but only after it. Yet that there have been some who, even to decrepit old age, did not feel even the slightest little fever and led a quiet life, we ourselves both know and have heard; although the whole life of mortals is itself a punishment, because it is all temptation, as the sacred writings proclaim, where it is written: “Is not human life on earth a temptation?” For ignorance itself or lack of skill is no small punishment; it is so rightly judged a thing to be fled that children are forced by punishments full of pain to learn some craft or letters; and learning itself, to which they are driven by punishments, is so painful to them that they sometimes prefer to bear the very punishments by which they are compelled to learn rather than to learn. And who would not shudder and choose to die, if he were offered either to suffer death or to be an infant again? Infancy, indeed, since it begins this light not with laughter but with weeping, in a way prophesies, without knowing it, what evils it has entered. Zoroaster alone, they say, laughed when he was born, and that monstrous laughter portended nothing good for him. For he is said to have been the inventor of the magic arts; and these could not help him even to the vain happiness of the present life against his enemies; for he was defeated in war by Ninus, king of the Assyrians, when he himself was king of the Bactrians. In short, what is written, “A heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam from the day they come forth from their mother's womb until the day of their burial in the mother of all,” must be fulfilled to such an extent that even little ones, already set free through the washing of regeneration from the bond of original sin, by which alone they were held, suffer many evils, and some sometimes even suffer the assaults of evil spirits. Far be it that this suffering should harm them, if they end this life at that age, even when that very suffering grows worse and drives the soul out of the body.

Chapter 15. That the whole work of God's grace, which rescues us from the depth of the old evil, belongs to the newness of the world to come.

Yet in the heavy yoke that is laid on the sons of Adam from the day they come forth from their mother's womb until the day of their burial in the mother of all, even this wonderful thing is found, that it makes us sober and brings us to understand that this life has become penal for us because of that exceedingly wicked sin committed in paradise, and that all that is done with us through the New Testament pertains only to the new inheritance of the new world; so that, having received the pledge here, we may in its own time obtain that of which this is the pledge; and now let us walk in hope, and, advancing from day to day, put to death the deeds of the flesh by the Spirit. For the Lord knows those who are his; and as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God, but by grace, not by nature. For the only Son of God by nature became, out of mercy, the son of man for our sake, so that we, sons of man by nature, might become sons of God by grace through him. For remaining himself unchangeable, he took from us our nature, in which to take us up, and, holding fast to his divinity, became a partaker of our weakness; so that we, changed for the better, might lose what we are, sinful and mortal, by sharing in his immortality and righteousness, and might keep what he made good in our nature, filled with the highest good in the goodness of his nature. For just as through one sinning man we came into this so grievous evil, so through one justifying man, who is also God, we shall come to that so sublime good. Nor should anyone be confident that he has passed from the one to the other until he is where there will be no temptation; until he holds the peace which he seeks through the many and various struggles of this war, in which the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. This war would never have existed if human nature had stood fast by free choice in the uprightness in which it was made. But now, having been unwilling to have peace with God when it was happy, it fights with itself in its unhappiness; and though this is a pitiable evil, it is nevertheless better than the earlier stages of this life. For it is better to struggle with vices than that they should rule without any struggle. Better, I say, is war with the hope of eternal peace than captivity without any thought of deliverance. We long, indeed, to be without even this war, and we are kindled by the fire of divine love to lay hold of that most ordered peace, where the lower is subjected to the higher with the firmest stability. But if (God forbid) there were no hope of so great a good, we ought to have preferred to remain in the trouble of this conflict rather than, by not resisting them, to allow vices dominion over us.

Chapter 16. By what laws of grace all the ages of the regenerate are governed.

Yet so great is God's mercy toward the vessels of mercy which he has prepared for glory that even the first age of man, that is, infancy, which is subject to the flesh without any resistance, and the second, which is called childhood, in which reason has not yet taken up this fight and lies subject to almost all sinful delights, because, although it is already able to speak and so seems to have passed infancy, the weakness of the mind in it is not yet capable of a commandment: if it has received the sacraments of the Mediator, even if it ends this life in those years, then, having been transferred from the power of darkness into the kingdom of Christ, not only is it not prepared for eternal punishments, but it does not even suffer any purifying torments after death. For spiritual regeneration alone suffices, so that what carnal generation contracted with death may not harm it after death. But when one has come to the age which is already capable of a commandment and can be subjected to the rule of the law, war must be undertaken against vices and waged fiercely, lest it lead to damnable sins. And if the vices have not yet been strengthened by the habit of victory, they are more easily overcome and give way; but if they have become accustomed to conquer and rule, they are overcome with laborious difficulty. Nor is this done truly and sincerely except by delight in true righteousness; and this is in the faith of Christ. For if the law is present commanding and the Spirit is absent helping, then, as desire for sin grows and conquers through the very prohibition, the guilt of transgression is added as well. Sometimes, indeed, the most open vices are overcome by other hidden vices which are thought to be virtues, in which pride reigns and a certain ruinous loftiness of self-satisfaction. Vices are to be counted overcome, then, when they are overcome by the love of God, which God himself alone gives, and not otherwise than through the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who became a partaker of our mortality to make us partakers of his divinity.

Very few, however, are of such great happiness that from the very beginning of youth they commit no damnable sins, either in shameful acts or in crimes or in the error of some wicked impiety, but by a great bounty of the Spirit suppress whatever could have dominion over them by carnal delight. Most people, having received the commandment of the law, after first being overcome by prevailing vices and becoming transgressors of it, then flee to the helping grace, by which, repenting more bitterly and fighting more vigorously, they become victors, with the mind first made subject to God and so set over the flesh. Whoever, then, wishes to escape everlasting punishments, let him not only be baptized but also be justified in Christ, and so truly pass from the devil to Christ. And let him think that there will be no purifying punishments except before that last and dreadful judgment. Yet it is by no means to be denied that the eternal fire itself will be lighter for some and heavier for others, according to the difference of their deserts, evil though they are; whether its force and heat are varied according to the punishment each deserves, or it burns equally but is not felt with equal pain.

Chapter 17. On those who think that the punishments of no human beings will last for ever.

I see that I must now deal with our tender-hearted friends, and argue peaceably with those who refuse to believe that everlasting punishment will come either to all those human beings whom the most just judge will judge worthy of the punishment of Gehenna, or to some of them, but think that they will be set free from there after the limits of a fixed time, longer or shorter according to the magnitude of each one's sin. In this matter Origen was certainly more merciful, who believed that even the devil himself and his angels, after more severe and longer punishments according to their deserts, would be rescued from those torments and joined to the holy angels. But the church has not without reason rejected him, both for this and for some other things, and especially for his alternating, without cease, of blessedness and misery, and endless goings and returnings from the one to the other and from the other to the one at fixed intervals of ages; because he lost even this appearance of mercy by making for the saints true miseries in which to pay penalties, and false blessednesses in which they would not have the true and secure joy of everlasting good, that is, joy certain and without fear.

Far otherwise, however, does the mercy of these people err with a human feeling, who think that the miseries of human beings condemned in that judgment are temporal, while the happiness of all who are set free, sooner or later, is eternal. If this opinion is good and true because it is merciful, it will be the better and truer the more merciful it is. Let the fountain of this mercy, then, be extended and poured out even to the damned angels, to be set free at least after many and prolonged ages, however many. Why does it flow as far as the whole of human nature, and then, when it comes to the angelic, at once dry up? Yet they do not dare to stretch themselves further in pity and come to the liberation of the devil himself as well. But if anyone dares, he surely outdoes them. And yet he is found to err all the more unbecomingly and all the more perversely against the right words of God, the more mercifully he seems to himself to think.

Chapter 18. On those who think that no human being will be condemned in the last judgment because of the intercession of the saints.

There are also some, as I have found in my own conversations, who, while they seem to revere the holy Scriptures, are to be disapproved of in their conduct, and who, pleading their own case, attribute to God a much greater mercy toward the human race than these do. For they say that what was divinely foretold about wicked and unbelieving human beings is true, namely that they deserve it; but that when it comes to the judgment, mercy will prevail. “For the merciful God,” they say, “will grant them to the prayers and intercessions of his saints. For if the saints prayed for them when they suffered them as enemies, how much more when they see them humbled and prostrate as suppliants! For it is not to be believed,” they say, “that the saints will then lose their bowels of mercy, when they will be of the fullest and most perfect holiness; so that those who prayed for their enemies then, when they themselves too were not without sin, will not pray for their suppliants then, when they will have begun to have no sin at all. Or will God not hear then so many and such children of his, when in their great holiness he will find no hindrance to their prayer?”

The testimony of the psalm, which those who allow that unbelieving and ungodly people will be tormented for a long time and afterwards rescued from all evils also claim, but these claim much more for themselves, is where we read: “Will God forget to be merciful, or will he shut up his compassions in his anger?” “His anger,” they say, “is that all who are unworthy of everlasting blessedness are punished, by his own judgment, with everlasting punishment. But if he allows any punishment at all, whether long or short, then, for this to be able to happen, he will certainly shut up his compassions in his anger, which the psalm says he will not do. For it does not say, ‘Will he shut up his compassions in his anger for a long time?’ but shows that he will not shut them up at all.”

So these people will have it that God's threat of judgment is not a lie, even though he will condemn no one, just as we cannot call his threat by which he said that he would overthrow the city of Nineveh a lie; “and yet,” they say, “what he foretold without any condition did not happen. For he did not say, ‘Nineveh will be overthrown if they do not repent and correct themselves’; but without adding this he foretold the future overthrow of that city.” They think this threat was truthful because God foretold what they truly deserved to suffer, although he himself was not going to do it. “For even though he spared them when they repented,” they say, “he certainly was not ignorant that they would repent, and yet he foretold absolutely and definitely that their overthrow would come. So it was,” they say, “in the truth of severity, because they deserved it; but it was not in the reckoning of compassion, which he did not shut up in his anger, so as to spare the suppliants the punishment he had threatened against the defiant. If, then, he spared them then,” they say, “when by sparing he was going to grieve his holy prophet, how much more will he spare those who then supplicate more pitiably, when all his saints will pray that he may spare!” But what they suspect in their own hearts they think the divine Scriptures kept silent about so that many may correct themselves out of fear of either prolonged or eternal punishments, and so that there may be people who can pray for those who have not corrected themselves; and yet they do not think that the divine words have kept silent about it altogether. “For what is the point,” they say, “of what is written: ‘How great is the multitude of your sweetness, O Lord, which you have hidden for those who fear you,’ unless we are to understand that so great and secret a sweetness of divine mercy has been hidden because of fear?” They add that the apostle said, “For God has shut up all in unbelief, that he may have mercy on all,” to signify that no one will be condemned by him.

Yet those who hold this opinion do not extend it as far as the liberation, or the non-condemnation, of the devil and his angels; for they are moved by human mercy only toward human beings, and they plead their own case above all, promising a false impunity to their own depraved conduct through a supposed general compassion of God toward the human race; and so they will be outdone in proclaiming God's mercy by those who promise this impunity even to the prince of demons and his attendants.

Chapter 19. On those who promise impunity for all sins even to heretics, because of their sharing in the body of Christ.

Again, there are others who promise deliverance from eternal punishment not even to all human beings, but only to those washed by the baptism of Christ, who become partakers of his body, however they have lived and in whatever heresy or impiety they have been, because of what Jesus says: “This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that if anyone eats of it he may not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live for ever.” “It is necessary, then,” they say, “that these be rescued from eternal death and at some time brought to eternal life.”

Chapter 20. On those who promise pardon not to all, but only to those who have been reborn among the catholics, even if they have afterwards broken out into many crimes and errors.

Again, there are those who promise this not even to all who have the sacrament of the baptism of Christ and of his body, but only to catholics, even if they live wickedly; because they have eaten the body of Christ not only in the sacrament but in reality, being set in his very body, of which the apostle says, “We who are many are one bread, one body”; so that, even if they afterwards fall into some heresy or even into the idolatry of the gentiles, simply because they received the baptism of Christ and ate the body of Christ in the body of Christ, that is, in the catholic church, they will not die for ever, but will at some time attain eternal life; and all that impiety, however great it has been, will avail not to make their punishments eternal, but to make them longer and greater.

Chapter 21. On those who hold that those who remain in the catholic faith, even if they have lived very wickedly and so have deserved to be burned, will nevertheless be saved because of the foundation of faith.

There are some, however, who, because of what is written, “He who perseveres to the end will be saved,” promise this only to those who persevere in the catholic church, even if they live wickedly in it: that they are to be saved through fire, namely by the merit of the foundation of which the apostle says: “For no one can lay another foundation than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus. Now if anyone builds on the foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become manifest; for the day will disclose it, because it will be revealed in fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one's is. If anyone's work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.” They say, then, that a catholic Christian, of whatever life, has Christ in the foundation, a foundation which no heresy cut off from the unity of his body has; and therefore, because of this foundation, even if the catholic Christian has been of wicked life, like one who has built wood, hay, straw on it, they think he is saved through fire, that is, set free after the punishments of that fire by which the wicked will be punished at the last judgment.