City of God 21.22–21.25

Chapter 22. On those who think that the crimes committed amid the works of almsgiving are not called to the judgment of condemnation.

I have also found that some think that only those will burn in the eternity of that punishment who neglect to give worthy alms for their sins, according to that saying of the apostle James: “For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy.” “So he who has shown mercy,” they say, “even if he has not changed his conduct for the better, but has lived wickedly and viciously amid his very almsgiving, will have judgment with mercy, so that either he is struck with no condemnation or is set free from that condemnation after some time, short or long.” For this reason they think that the judge of the living and the dead himself willed to mention nothing else that he would say, either to those on the right, to whom he will give eternal life, or to those on the left, whom he will condemn to eternal punishment, except alms, done or not done. To this, they say, the daily petition in the Lord's Prayer also belongs: “Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” For whoever forgives by pardoning the sin of one who has sinned against him undoubtedly gives alms. The Lord himself commended this so strongly as to say: “For if you forgive men their sins, your Father will also forgive you your sins; but if you do not forgive men, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive you.” So, then, what the apostle James says, that judgment will be without mercy to one who has shown no mercy, also belongs to this kind of alms. “Nor did the Lord say,” they say, “great or small, but, ‘Your Father will forgive you your sins, if you also forgive men.’” And so they think that even for those who have lived abandoned lives until they close the last day of this life, all their sins, whatever and however great, are forgiven daily through this prayer, as the prayer itself is said daily, provided only that they remember to observe this: when those who have injured them by any sin ask their pardon, they forgive from the heart. When, with God's gift, I have answered all these views, this book must be closed.

Chapter 23. Against the opinion of those who say that the punishments neither of the devil nor of wicked human beings will be everlasting.

First, it must be asked and understood why the church could not bear the argument of people who promise the devil purification or pardon even after the greatest and longest punishments. For it was not that so many saints, learned in the sacred writings old and new, begrudged cleansing and the blessedness of the kingdom of heaven, after punishments of whatever kind and extent, to angels of whatever kind and number; rather, they saw that the divine sentence cannot be made void or weakened which the Lord foretold that he would pronounce and say at the judgment: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels” (for so he showed that the devil and his angels will burn in eternal fire); and what is written in the Apocalypse: “The devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet also are; and they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.” What was called “eternal” there is here called “for ever and ever,” words by which divine Scripture is accustomed to signify nothing but what has no end in time. Therefore absolutely no other reason, nor one more just and plain, can be found why it is held fixed and unmovable by most true piety that the devil and his angels will have no return to the righteousness and life of the saints, except that Scripture, which deceives no one, says that God did not spare them, and that they have meanwhile been condemned beforehand by him in such a way as to be thrust into the prisons of the darkness of the lower world and handed over to be kept and punished at the last judgment, when the eternal fire will receive them, where they will be tormented for ever and ever.

If this is so, how will either all or some human beings be withdrawn from the eternity of this punishment after any length of time, and the faith by which the punishment of demons is believed to be everlasting not be weakened at once? For if, of those to whom it will be said, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels,” either all or some will not be there for ever, what reason is there why the devil and his angels should be believed to be going to be there for ever? Or will God's sentence, which will be pronounced on evil angels and human beings alike, be true of the angels and false of the human beings? That is plainly what will happen, if not what God has said but what human beings suspect is to prevail. Since this cannot happen, those who wish to be free of everlasting punishment ought not to argue against God, but rather, while there is time, to obey the divine command.

Then, what sort of thing is it to reckon eternal punishment as a fire of long duration and to believe eternal life to be without end, when Christ, in the very same place, in one and the same sentence, said, including both: “So these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life”? If both are eternal, then surely both must be understood either as long-lasting with an end or as perpetual without end. For like is set against like: on the one hand eternal punishment, on the other eternal life. And to say in one and the same sense, “Eternal life will be without end, eternal punishment will have an end,” is utterly absurd. Hence, since the eternal life of the saints will be without end, eternal punishment too will undoubtedly have no end for those who suffer it.

Chapter 24. Against the view of those who think that in God's judgment all the guilty will be spared because of the prayers of the saints.

This argument also holds against those who, pleading their own causes, try to go against God's words as if with greater mercy, so that these words are true, namely, in the sense that human beings deserve to suffer what he said they would suffer, not that they will suffer it. “For he will grant them,” they say, “to the prayers of his saints, who will then pray for their enemies all the more, the holier they certainly are, and whose prayer is the more effective and more worthy of being heard by God, since they will then have no sin at all.” Why, then, with that same most perfect holiness and with their most pure and most merciful prayers, able to obtain everything, will they not pray also for the angels for whom the eternal fire has been prepared, that God may soften his sentence and turn it to something better and keep them out of that fire? Or will there perhaps be someone who presumes that this too will happen, asserting that even the holy angels, together with holy human beings, who will then be equal to the angels of God, will pray for both angels and human beings who are to be condemned, so that by mercy they may not suffer what by truth they deserve to suffer? No one of sound faith has said this, and no one will say it. Otherwise there is no reason why the church should not pray even now for the devil and his angels, since God her master commanded her to pray for her enemies. The reason, then, why the church does not now pray for the evil angels, whom she knows to be her enemies, is the very same reason why at that judgment she will not pray, however perfect her holiness, even for the human beings who are to be tormented in eternal fire. For she prays now for those in the human race whom she has as enemies because it is the time of fruitful repentance. For what does she pray for them above all, if not that God may grant them, as the apostle says, repentance, and that they may come to their senses out of the snares of the devil, by whom they are held captive at his will? Finally, if she were so certain about some that she even knew who they are who, although still living in this life, are nevertheless predestined to go into the eternal fire with the devil, she would no more pray for them than for him. But since she is certain about no one, she prays for all her enemies, at least for human beings set in this body; and yet she is not heard for all. For she is heard only for those who, although they oppose the church, are nevertheless predestined in such a way that the church is heard for them and they become sons of the church. But if any will have an impenitent heart until death and will not be converted from enemies into sons, does the church then still pray for them, that is, for the spirits of such dead? Why is this, unless because one who, while he was in the body, was not transferred to Christ is now counted as belonging to the devil's side?

The reason, then, why prayer will not be made then for human beings who are to be punished with eternal fire is the same reason why prayer is made neither now nor then for the evil angels; and it is likewise the same reason why, though prayer is made for human beings, it is not made even now for unbelieving and ungodly dead. For the prayer either of the church itself or of certain godly people is heard for certain of the dead; but for those who, having been regenerated in Christ, did not live so evilly in the body as to be judged unworthy of such mercy, nor so well as to be found not to need such mercy. So too, after the resurrection of the dead has taken place, there will not be lacking those to whom, after the punishments which the spirits of the dead suffer, mercy is granted, so that they are not sent into the eternal fire. For it would not be truly said of some that it is not forgiven them either in this age or in the age to come, unless there were some to whom, though not in this age, it is forgiven in the age to come. But when the judge of the living and the dead has said, “Come, you blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,” and to the others, on the contrary, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels,” and these have gone away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life, it is excessive presumption to say that there will not be eternal punishment for any of those of whom God has said that they will go away into eternal punishment, and by persuading people of this presumption to cause eternal life itself too to be either despaired of or doubted.

Let no one, then, understand the psalm that sings, “Will God forget to be merciful, or will he shut up his compassions in his anger?” so as to think that God's sentence is true of good human beings and false of the wicked, or true of good human beings and evil angels but false of wicked human beings. For what the psalm says belongs to the vessels of mercy and to the children of the promise, of whom the prophet himself was one; who, when he had said, “Will God forget to be merciful, or will he shut up his compassions in his anger?”, at once added: “And I said: Now I have begun; this is the change of the right hand of the Most High.” He surely explained what he meant by “Will he shut up his compassions in his anger?” For this mortal life too is God's anger, in which man has become like vanity, his days pass away like a shadow. Yet in this anger God does not forget to be merciful, making his sun rise on the good and the evil and sending rain on the just and the unjust; and so he does not shut up his compassions in his anger; and especially in what this psalm expressed when it said, “Now I have begun; this is the change of the right hand of the Most High,” since in this very most troubled life, which is God's anger, he changes the vessels of mercy for the better, although his anger still remains in the misery of this corruption, because even in his anger he does not shut up his compassions. Since, then, the truth of that divine song is fulfilled in this way, it need not be understood to apply also there, where those who do not belong to the city of God will be punished with everlasting punishment. But those who like to extend this saying to those torments of the ungodly, let them at least understand it in this way: that while the anger of God remains on them, which has been foretold in eternal punishment, God does not shut up his compassions in this anger of his, and causes them to be tormented not with such severity of punishment as they deserve; not so that they either never undergo those punishments or at some time end them, but so that they suffer them milder and lighter than their deserts. For so both God's anger will remain, and in his anger he will not shut up his compassions. I do not affirm this, however, just because I do not resist it.

But those who think that “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire,” and “These will go away into eternal punishment,” and “They will be tormented for ever and ever,” and “Their worm will not die and their fire will not be quenched,” and other things of this kind, were said threateningly rather than truthfully, are refuted and rebutted most plainly and fully not so much by me as by divine Scripture itself. For the Ninevites repented in this life, and so fruitfully, sowing as it were in this field in which God willed that there should be sowing with tears, to be reaped afterwards with joy; and yet who will deny that what the Lord foretold was fulfilled in them, unless he fails to notice how God overthrows sinners not only in anger but also in mercy? For sinners are overthrown in two ways: either like the Sodomites, so that the human beings themselves are punished for their sins, or like the Ninevites, so that the sins of the human beings themselves are destroyed by repentance. What God foretold, then, came to pass: the Nineveh that was evil was overthrown, and a good one was built that had not existed. For while the walls and houses stood, the city was overthrown in its depraved conduct. And so, although the prophet was grieved because what those people feared would come by his prophesying did not happen, yet what had been foretold by God's foreknowledge did happen, since he who foretold it knew how it was to be fulfilled for the better.

And so that these perversely merciful people may know what is meant by what is written, “How great is the multitude of your sweetness, O Lord, which you have hidden for those who fear you!”, let them read what follows: “But you have perfected it for those who hope in you.” What is “you have hidden it for those who fear, you have perfected it for those who hope,” unless that to those who, through fear of punishments, wish to establish their own righteousness which is in the law, the righteousness of God is not sweet, because they do not know it? For they have not tasted it. For they hope in themselves, not in him, and therefore the multitude of God's sweetness is hidden from them; for they do fear God, but with that servile fear which is not in love, because perfect love casts out fear. So for those who hope in him he perfects his sweetness by breathing his love into them, so that with a chaste fear, not the fear which love casts out, but that which endures for ever and ever, when they glory, they may glory in the Lord. For the righteousness of God is Christ, who has become for us, as the apostle says, wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, he who glories may glory in the Lord. This righteousness of God, which grace gives without merits, is unknown to those who wish to establish their own righteousness, and therefore they have not submitted to the righteousness of God, which is Christ. In this righteousness is the great multitude of God's sweetness, because of which it is said in the psalm: “Taste and see how sweet the Lord is.” And tasting it in this pilgrimage, not taking it to the full, we rather hunger and thirst for it, so that we may be filled with it afterwards, when we see him as he is, and what is written will be fulfilled: “I shall be satisfied when your glory is revealed.” So Christ perfects the great multitude of his sweetness for those who hope in him. But further, if God has hidden from those who fear him that sweetness of his which they suppose, by which he will not condemn the ungodly, so that, not knowing this and fearing to be condemned, they may live rightly and so there may be people who can pray for those who do not live rightly, how does he perfect it for those who hope in him, since, as they dream, by this sweetness he will not condemn those who do not hope in him? Let that sweetness of his be sought, then, which he perfects for those who hope in him, not that which he is thought to perfect for those who despise and blaspheme him. In vain, then, does a man look after this body for what he neglected to obtain for himself in this body.

That apostolic saying too, “For God has shut up all in unbelief, that he may have mercy on all,” was not said because he will condemn no one; what it was said about appears from what goes before. For when the apostle was speaking about the Jews who would later believe, to the gentiles, to whom, already believing, he was writing his letter, he said: “For just as you once did not believe God, but now have obtained mercy through their unbelief, so they too have now not believed in your mercy, that they too may obtain mercy.” Then he added the words with which these people flatter themselves in their error, and said: “For God has shut up all in unbelief, that he may have mercy on all.” Which “all,” if not those of whom he was speaking, as if to say, “both you and them”? So God has shut up in unbelief all, both gentiles and Jews, whom he foreknew and predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that, confounded by repenting of the bitterness of their unbelief and turned by believing to the sweetness of God's mercy, they might cry out that saying in the psalm: “How great is the multitude of your sweetness, O Lord, which you have hidden for those who fear you, but have perfected for those who hope,” not in themselves, but “in you!” He has mercy, then, on all the vessels of mercy. What does “all” mean? All those, of course, both from the gentiles and from the Jews, whom he predestined, called, justified, glorified; not all human beings, but all of these, of whom he will condemn none.

Chapter 25. Whether those who have been baptized among heretics and have afterwards become worse by living evilly, or those who, reborn among catholics, have gone over to heresies or schisms, or those who, not leaving the catholics among whom they were reborn, have persisted in living criminally, can hope for remission of eternal punishment by the privilege of the sacraments.

But now let us answer also those who promise deliverance from the eternal fire not only not to the devil and his angels (nor do the others), but not even to all human beings, but only to those who have been washed by the baptism of Christ and made partakers of his body and blood, however they have lived and in whatever heresy or impiety they have been. The apostle contradicts them, saying: “Now the works of the flesh are plain: sexual immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, dissensions, heresies, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, as I told you before, that those who do such things will not possess the kingdom of God.” This apostolic sentence is surely false if such people, set free after however long a time, will possess the kingdom of God. But since it is not false, they will surely not possess the kingdom of God. And if they will never be in possession of the kingdom of God, they will be held in eternal punishment; for there is no middle place where one who has not been set in that kingdom is not in punishment.

For this reason it is rightly asked how what the Lord Jesus says is to be taken: “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.” This understanding, indeed, is taken away from those whom we are now answering by those whom we must answer next; and these are those who promise this deliverance not to all who have the sacrament of baptism and of the body of Christ, but only to catholics, even if they live evilly, because, they say, they have eaten the body of Christ not only in the sacrament but in reality, being set, that is, in his very body; of which body the apostle says, “We who are many are one bread, one body.” He, then, who is in the unity of his body, that is, in the joined fabric of Christian members, the sacrament of which body the faithful are accustomed to receive from the altar when they communicate, is truly to be said to eat the body of Christ and to drink the blood of Christ. And so heretics and schismatics, separated from the unity of this body, can receive the same sacrament, but not to their benefit, indeed even to their harm, so that they are judged more severely rather than set free even at a later time. For they are not in that bond of peace which is expressed by that sacrament.

But again, even these, who rightly understand that one who is not in the body of Christ is not to be said to eat the body of Christ, wrongly promise deliverance at some time from the fire of eternal punishment to those who fall away from the unity of that body either into heresy or even into the superstition of the gentiles. First, because they ought to consider how intolerable and how far astray from sound doctrine it is that many, indeed almost all, who have founded ungodly heresies, going out from the catholic church and becoming heresiarchs, should have a better case than those who were never catholics but fell into their snares, if what brings it about that those heresiarchs are set free from everlasting punishment is that they were baptized in the catholic church and first received the sacrament of the body of Christ in the true body of Christ; since a deserter of the faith who from a deserter has become its assailant is certainly worse than one who has not deserted what he never held. Then, because the apostle meets these too, bringing forward the same words and, having listed those works of the flesh, foretelling with the same truth: “Those who do such things will not possess the kingdom of God.”

Hence those too ought not to feel secure in depraved and damnable conduct who persevere to the end indeed, as it were, in the communion of the catholic church, looking at what was said, “He who perseveres to the end will be saved,” and who through the iniquity of their life desert the very righteousness of life which Christ is to them, whether by committing sexual immorality, or by perpetrating in their own body other impurities of shameful acts which the apostle did not even wish to name, or by dissolving in the foulness of licentiousness, or by doing any other of those things of which he says, “Those who do such things will not possess the kingdom of God”; and so whoever do such things will be nowhere but in everlasting punishment, because they will not be able to be in the kingdom of God. For by persevering in these things to the end of this life they are certainly not to be said to have persevered in Christ to the end, since to persevere in Christ is to persevere in faith in him; and this faith, as the same apostle defines it, works through love; and love, as he says elsewhere, does no evil. Nor, then, are these to be said to eat the body of Christ, since they are not even to be counted among the members of Christ. For, to say nothing else, they cannot be at once members of Christ and members of a prostitute. Finally, he himself says: “He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” He shows what it is to eat the body of Christ and to drink his blood not merely as far as the sacrament goes but in reality; for this is to abide in Christ, that Christ also abides in him. For he said this as if he were saying: “Let him who does not abide in me, and in whom I do not abide, not say or think that he eats my body or drinks my blood.” So those who are not his members do not abide in Christ. And those are not members of Christ who make themselves members of a prostitute, unless they have ceased from that evil by repenting and have returned to this good by reconciliation.