City of God 22.29–22.30

Chapter 29. On the kind of vision with which the saints will see God in the age to come.

Now let us see, as far as the Lord deigns to help, what the saints will do in their immortal and spiritual bodies, when their flesh lives no longer carnally but spiritually. And indeed what that activity, or rather rest and leisure, will be like, if I wish to tell the truth, I do not know. For I have never seen it through the senses of the body. And if I were to say I had seen it with the mind, that is, with the understanding, how great or what is our understanding compared with that excellence? For there is “the peace of God,” which, as the apostle says, “surpasses all understanding.” Whose, if not ours, or perhaps also that of the holy angels? For not God's too. If, then, the saints are to live in the peace of God, they will certainly live in that peace which surpasses all understanding. That it surpasses ours there is no doubt; but if it surpasses the angels' too, so that he who says “all understanding” seems not to have excepted even them, we must take the saying in this sense: that the peace of God, by which God himself is at peace, we cannot know as God knows it, nor can any angels. So it surpasses all understanding, except, no doubt, his own. But because we too, made partakers of his peace in our measure, shall obtain supreme peace in ourselves, among ourselves, and with him, as far as supreme is possible for us, in this way the holy angels know it in their measure; but men now far below, however much they excel in advance of mind. For we must consider how great a man it was who said, “We know in part and we prophesy in part, until what is perfect comes,” and, “Now we see through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face.”

So the holy angels already see, who are also called our angels, because, rescued from the power of darkness and, having received the pledge of the Spirit, transferred into the kingdom of Christ, we have already begun to belong to those angels with whom we shall share that holy and most sweet city of God itself, about which we have now written so many books. So those are our angels who are God's angels, just as God's Christ is our Christ. They are God's, because they did not abandon God; they are ours, because they have begun to have us as their fellow citizens. And the Lord Jesus said, “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.” As they see, then, so we too shall see; but we do not yet see so. That is why the apostle says what I quoted a little earlier: “Now we see through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face.” This vision is kept for us as the reward of faith, of which the apostle John also says, “When he appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” By the face of God we must understand his manifestation, not some such member as we have in the body and call by that name.

So when I am asked what the saints will do in that spiritual body, I do not say what I already see, but I say what I believe, according to what I read in the psalm: “I believed, therefore I spoke.” I say, then: they will see God in the body itself; but whether through it, as we now see sun, moon, stars, sea and earth and what is in it through the body, is no small question. For it is hard to say that the saints will then have such bodies that they cannot close and open their eyes when they wish; but it is harder to say that anyone who closes his eyes there will not see God. For if the prophet Elisha, absent in body, saw his servant Gehazi accepting the gifts that Naaman the Syrian gave him, whom the prophet had cleansed from the deformity of leprosy, which the wicked servant thought he had done in secret without his master seeing, how much more in that spiritual body will the saints see all things, not only if they close their eyes, but even from where they are absent in body! For then will be that perfection of which the apostle speaks: “We know in part,” he says, “and we prophesy in part; but when what is perfect comes, what is in part will be done away.” Then, to show by some comparison, as best he could, how far this life, not of just any men but even of those endowed here with outstanding holiness, is from that which is to come, he says, “When I was a child, I thought as a child, I spoke as a child, I reasoned as a child; but when I became a man, I did away with the things of a child. Now we see through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known.”

If, then, in this life, where the prophecy of wonderful men is to be compared with that life as a child with a young man, Elisha nevertheless saw his servant accepting gifts where he himself was not, when what is perfect has come, and the corruptible body no longer weighs down the soul but the incorruptible hinders nothing, will those saints need bodily eyes to see what is to be seen, which Elisha, though absent, did not need to see his servant? For according to the Seventy translators these are the prophet's words to Gehazi: “Did not my heart go with you when the man turned from his chariot to meet you, and you took the money?” and so on; but as the presbyter Jerome translated from the Hebrew: “Was not my heart present,” he says, “when the man turned back from his chariot to meet you?” So the prophet said he saw this with his heart, wonderfully helped, no one doubts, by God. But how much more will all abound in this gift then, when God will be all in all! Yet those bodily eyes too will have their function and will be in their place, and the spirit will use them through the spiritual body. For that prophet too, because he did not need them to see what was absent, did not therefore fail to use them to see what was present; which, however, he could see with his spirit even if he closed them, as he saw things absent, where he was not with them. Far be it from us, then, to say that those saints in that life will not see God with their eyes closed, whom they will always see with the spirit.

But whether they will see him also through the eyes of the body when they have them open, that is the question. For if the spiritual eyes themselves, in the spiritual body, can do only as much as those we now have can do, beyond doubt God will not be able to be seen through them. They will be of a very different power, then, if through them that incorporeal nature is to be seen which is not contained in place but is everywhere whole. For because we say that God is both in heaven and on earth (for he himself says through the prophet, “I fill heaven and earth”), we are not going to say that he has one part in heaven and another on earth; but he is whole in heaven, whole on earth, not at alternate times but both at once, which no bodily nature can be. The power of those eyes, then, will be far stronger, not so as to see more sharply than certain serpents or eagles are said to see (for however great their keenness of sight, these animals too can see nothing but bodies), but so as to see even incorporeal things. And perhaps this great power of seeing was given for a moment even in this mortal body to the eyes of the holy man Job, when he says to God, “I heard you before by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despised myself and wasted away and counted myself earth and ashes”; though nothing here prevents our understanding the eye of the heart, of which eyes the apostle says, “that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened.” That God is seen by these eyes when he is seen, no Christian doubts who faithfully accepts what that God and Teacher says: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” But whether he is also seen there with bodily eyes, this is what we are turning over in this question.

For what is written, “And all flesh shall see the salvation of God,” can be understood without any knot of difficulty as if it had been said, “And every man shall see the Christ of God,” who was certainly seen in the body and will be seen in the body when he judges the living and the dead. That he is himself the salvation of God there are many other testimonies of the Scriptures; but the words of that venerable old man Simeon declare it most plainly, who, when he had taken the infant Christ into his hands, said, “Now, Lord, you let your servant depart according to your word in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation.” Also, what the Job mentioned above says, as it is found in the copies translated from the Hebrew, “And in my flesh I shall see God,” certainly prophesied the resurrection of the flesh; yet he did not say, “Through my flesh.” If he had said that, God could be understood as Christ, who will be seen through the flesh in the flesh; but as it is, “In my flesh I shall see God” can also be taken as if he had said, “I shall be in my flesh when I see God.” And what the apostle says, “face to face,” does not compel us to believe that we shall see God through this bodily face, where the bodily eyes are, when we shall see him with the spirit without ceasing. For unless there were a face of the inner man too, the same apostle would not say, “But we, with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord”; nor do we understand otherwise what is sung in the psalm, “Come to him and be enlightened, and your faces shall not be ashamed.” For it is by faith that we come to God, and faith is evidently of the heart, not of the body.

But because we do not know how great the powers of the spiritual body will be (for we are speaking of something not experienced), where some authority of the divine Scriptures, which cannot be understood otherwise, does not meet and aid us, what we read in the book of Wisdom must happen in us: “The thoughts of mortals are timid, and our foresight uncertain.” For if that reasoning of the philosophers, by which they argue that intelligible things are seen by the sight of the mind and sensible, that is, bodily, things by the sense of the body, so that the mind can see neither intelligible things through the body nor bodily things by itself, could be most certain for us, it would surely be certain that God can in no way be seen through the eyes even of a spiritual body. But both true reason and prophetic authority laugh at this reasoning. For who is so turned away from the truth as to dare to say that God does not know these bodily things? Has he, then, a body, through whose eyes he could learn them? Further, what we said a little before about the prophet Elisha, does it not show clearly enough that bodily things can be perceived even by the spirit, not through the body? For when that servant accepted the gifts, it was surely a bodily event; yet the prophet saw it not through the body but through the spirit. As, then, it is agreed that bodies are seen by the spirit, what if the power of the spiritual body will be so great that spirit too is seen by the body? For God is spirit.

Further, each person knows his own life, by which he now lives in the body and quickens these earthly members and makes them living, by an inner sense, not through bodily eyes; but the lives of others, though they are invisible, he sees through the body. For how do we distinguish living bodies from those not living, unless we see bodies and lives together, which we cannot see except through the body? But lives without bodies we do not see with bodily eyes. Therefore it may be, and it is very credible, that we shall then see the bodies of the world of the new heaven and the new earth in such a way that we see God, everywhere present and governing all things, bodily things included, through the bodies we shall bear and those we shall behold, wherever we turn our eyes, with the clearest transparency; not as now “the invisible things of God are seen, being understood through the things that are made,” “through a mirror in an enigma” and “in part,” where faith, by which we believe, has more power in us than the appearance of bodily things, which we perceive through bodily eyes. But as with the men among whom we live, who are alive and display vital movements, as soon as we look at them we do not believe that they live but see it, though we cannot see their life without bodies, and yet we perceive it in them through bodies beyond all doubt: so, wherever we turn those spiritual lights of our bodies, we shall behold the incorporeal God ruling all things, even through bodies.

Either, then, God will be seen through those eyes in such a way that in their great excellence they have something like the mind, by which even an incorporeal nature may be perceived, which is difficult or impossible to show by any examples or testimonies of the divine Scriptures; or, what is easier to understand, God will be so known and visible to us that he will be seen by the spirit by each of us in each of us, seen by one in another, seen in himself, seen in the new heaven and the new earth and in every creature that will then exist, seen also through bodies in every body, wherever the eyes of the spiritual body are directed with their penetrating sight. Our thoughts too will be open to one another. For then will be fulfilled what the apostle, after saying, “Do not judge anything before the time,” at once added: “until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and make manifest the thoughts of the heart; and then each one will have praise from God.”

Chapter 30. On the eternal happiness of the city of God and the everlasting Sabbath.

How great will that happiness be, where there will be no evil, no good will be hidden, and there will be leisure for the praises of God, who will be all in all! For what else would be done there, where there will be no ceasing through any idleness and no toiling through any need, I do not know. I am reminded, too, by the holy song, where I read or hear, “Blessed are those who dwell in your house; for ever and ever they will praise you.” All the members and inward parts of the incorruptible body, which we now see distributed among the various uses of necessity, will serve the praises of God, since then there will be no necessity itself, but full, certain, secure, everlasting happiness. For all those numbers of the body's harmony, of which I have already spoken, which are now hidden, will not be hidden, arranged within and without through all the parts of the body; and together with the other things that will be seen there, great and wonderful, they will kindle rational minds to the praise of so great a craftsman with the delight of a rational beauty. What the movements of such bodies there will be I do not dare rashly to define, since I cannot think it out; yet both movement and rest, like the appearance itself, will be seemly, wherever it is, since whatever will not be seemly will not be there. Certainly wherever the spirit wills, there at once the body will be; and the spirit will not will anything that could not befit either the spirit or the body.

There will be true glory there, where no one will be praised through the error or the flattery of the one who praises; true honour, which will be denied to no one worthy and granted to no one unworthy; nor will anyone unworthy canvass for it, where no one will be allowed to be except the worthy; true peace, where no one will suffer anything adverse either from himself or from anyone else. The reward of virtue will be he himself who gave virtue, and who promised himself to it, than whom nothing better or greater can exist. For what else is it that he said through the prophet, “I will be their God, and they will be my people,” but, “I will be that by which they are satisfied; I will be whatever is honourably desired by men, life and health and food and plenty and glory and honour and peace and all good things”? For so too is rightly understood what the apostle says, “that God may be all in all.” He himself will be the end of our desires, who will be seen without end, loved without weariness, praised without tiring. This gift, this affection, this activity will certainly be common to all, as eternal life itself will be.

But as for the degrees of honour and glory that there will be according to the merits of the rewards, who is fit to imagine them, much less to speak of them? Yet that there will be such degrees is not to be doubted. And that blessed city will see in itself this great good too, that no inferior will envy any superior, just as the other angels do not now envy the archangels; and each will no more wish to be what he has not received, though bound by the most peaceful bond of concord to him who has received it, than in the body the eye wishes to be what the finger is, since the peaceful framework of the whole flesh contains both members. So one will have a lesser gift than another in such a way that he also has this gift, not to wish for more.

Nor will they lack free choice because sins will be unable to delight them. For it will be more free, freed from the delight of sinning to an unswerving delight in not sinning. For the first free choice, which was given to man when he was first created upright, could not sin, but could also sin; but this last will be all the more powerful in that it will not be able to sin; yet this too by God's gift, not by the capacity of its own nature. For it is one thing to be God, another to be a partaker of God. God by nature cannot sin; but a partaker of God receives from him that he cannot sin. And the degrees of the divine gift had to be kept, so that first a free choice was given by which man could not sin, and last one by which he cannot sin; and the former belonged to acquiring merit, the latter to receiving the reward. But because this nature sinned when it was able to sin, it is freed by a more abundant grace, so as to be brought to that freedom in which it cannot sin. For as the first immortality, which Adam lost by sinning, was the ability not to die, and the last will be the inability to die, so the first free choice was the ability not to sin, and the last will be the inability to sin. For so the will to godliness and justice will be as impossible to lose as the will to happiness. For certainly by sinning we kept neither godliness nor happiness; but the will to happiness we did not lose even when happiness was lost. Surely God himself, because he cannot sin, is not therefore to be denied free choice?

In that city, then, there will be a free will, one in all and inseparable in each, freed from all evil and filled with all good, enjoying unfailingly the delight of eternal joys, forgetting its faults, forgetting its punishments; yet not so forgetting its deliverance as to be ungrateful to its deliverer. So, as far as rational knowledge is concerned, it will remember even its past evils; but as far as the feeling of one who experiences them is concerned, it will not remember them at all. For a most skilled physician too knows almost all the diseases of the body as they are known by art; but as they are felt in the body he does not know most of them, those he has not suffered himself. As, then, there are two kinds of knowledge of evils, one by which they are not hidden from the power of the mind, the other by which they cling to the senses of one who experiences them (for all vices are known in one way through the teaching of wisdom, in another through the very bad life of a fool), so too there are two kinds of forgetting of evils. For the learned and educated man forgets them in one way, the one who has experienced and suffered them in another: the former if he neglects his expertise, the latter if he is free of misery. According to this forgetting, which I put second, the saints will not remember past evils; for they will be free of them all, so that they will be wholly blotted out of their feelings. Yet by the power of knowledge, which will be great in them, not only their own past but also the everlasting misery of the damned will not be hidden from them. Otherwise, if they are not going to know that they were miserable, how, as the psalm says, will they “sing the mercies of the Lord for ever”? Nothing will surely be more delightful to that city than this song to the glory of the grace of Christ, by whose blood we have been freed.

There will be fulfilled, “Be still and see that I am God.” That will truly be the greatest Sabbath, having no evening, which the Lord commended in the first works of the world, where we read, “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works which he had made; and God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on it he rested from all his works which God had begun to make.” For we ourselves shall be the seventh day, when we have been filled and remade by his blessing and sanctification. There, being still, we shall see that he is God; which we wished to be ourselves when we fell away from him, hearing from the seducer, “You shall be as gods,” and departing from the true God, by whose making we would have been gods by participation in him, not by desertion. For what have we done without him except fail in his anger? Remade by him and perfected by greater grace, we shall be still for ever, seeing that he is God, with whom we shall be filled when he will be all in all. For even our good works themselves, when they are understood to be his rather than ours, are then credited to us for attaining this Sabbath; because if we attribute them to ourselves, they will be servile, whereas it is said of the Sabbath, “You shall do no servile work”; for which reason it is also said through the prophet Ezekiel, “And I gave them my Sabbaths as a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them.” This we shall know perfectly then, when we are perfectly still and perfectly see that he is God.

The very number of the ages, too, as of days, if it is reckoned according to the periods of time that seem to be marked out in the Scriptures, will show this sabbath rest more clearly, since it is found to be the seventh. The first age, as the first day, is from Adam to the flood; the second from there to Abraham, not by equality of times but by the number of generations; for each is found to have ten. From there, as the evangelist Matthew marks out, three ages follow up to the coming of Christ, each of which is unfolded in fourteen generations: one from Abraham to David, another from there to the deportation to Babylon, a third from there to Christ's birth in the flesh. So there are five in all. The sixth is now going on, not to be measured by any number of generations, because of what is said: “It is not for you to know the times which the Father has set in his own power.” After this, as on the seventh day, God will rest, when he makes that same seventh day, which we shall be, rest in himself, God. It would take long now to discuss each of these ages carefully; yet this seventh will be our Sabbath, whose end will not be an evening, but the Lord's day, an eternal eighth day, as it were, which has been made holy by the resurrection of Christ, prefiguring the eternal rest not only of the spirit but also of the body. There we shall be still and see, see and love, love and praise. Behold what will be in the end without end! For what other end do we have than to reach the kingdom of which there is no end?

I think that, with the Lord's help, I have paid the debt of this huge work. Let those for whom it is too little, or too much, forgive me; but let those for whom it is enough give thanks, rejoicing with me, not to me, but to God. Amen.