On First Principles 2.10.1–2.10.8

On the resurrection and the judgment, on the fire of hell and punishments. But since our discussion has reminded us of the judgment to come and of the retribution and punishments of sinners, according to what the holy Scriptures threaten and the church's preaching contains, namely that at the time of judgment eternal fire and outer darkness and a prison and a furnace and other things like these are prepared for sinners, let us see what we ought to think about these too. But so that we may come to these in proper order, it seems to me that we must first speak about the resurrection, so that we may know what it is that will come either to punishment or to rest or to blessedness. On this we have discussed more fully in other books which we wrote on the resurrection, and have shown what we thought about it. But now too, because of the sequence of the treatise, it does not seem absurd to repeat a few things from there, especially because some are offended at the church's faith, as though we believed foolishly and altogether senselessly about the resurrection; especially the heretics, to whom I think we should reply in this way. If they too confess that there is a resurrection of the dead, let them answer us: what is it that died? Was it not the body? It is of the body, then, that the resurrection will take place. Then let them say whether they think we shall use bodies or not. I think that, since the apostle Paul says that a soulish body is sown and a spiritual body will rise, they cannot deny that a body rises, or that we use bodies in the resurrection. What then? If it is certain that we shall use bodies, and the bodies that fell are preached as rising (for nothing is properly said to rise except what fell before), no one doubts that they rise for this reason, that we may be clothed with them again after the resurrection. The one thing, then, hangs on the other. For if bodies rise, undoubtedly they rise to clothe us; and if it is necessary for us to be in bodies, as it certainly is necessary, we must be in no other bodies than our own. And if it is true that they rise, and rise spiritual, there is no doubt that they are said to rise from the dead with corruption cast off and mortality laid aside; otherwise it will seem vain and superfluous for anyone to rise from the dead only to die again. This can be understood more evidently at last if one considers carefully what is the quality of the soulish body which, sown in the earth, restores the quality of a spiritual body. For out of the soulish body the very power and grace of the resurrection brings forth a spiritual body, when it changes it from dishonour to glory.

Since, then, the heretics seem to themselves most learned and most wise, we shall ask them whether every body has some schema, that is, is shaped by some form. And if they say there is a body which is not shaped by some form, they will appear the most ignorant and foolish of all; for no one will deny this unless he is wholly a stranger to all learning. But if, as is consistent, they say that every body is shaped by some definite form, we shall demand of them whether they can show and describe to us the form of a spiritual body; which they will certainly be in no way able to do. We shall also inquire of them about the differences among those who rise. How will they show that this saying is true, that “one is the flesh of birds, another of fish; and there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one and that of the earthly another; one is the glory of the sun, another of the moon, another of the stars; star differs from star in glory; so also is the resurrection of the dead”? According to this sequence, then, let them show us the differences of glory among those who rise, corresponding to the heavenly bodies; and if they attempt in any way to devise some account according to the differences of the heavenly bodies, we shall ask them to assign differences of the resurrection also according to the comparison with earthly bodies. We, however, understand it thus: that the Apostle, wishing to describe how great the difference would be among those who will rise in glory, that is, the saints, took the comparison of the heavenly bodies, saying, “One is the glory of the sun, another the glory of the moon, another the glory of the stars.” And again, wishing to teach the differences among those who come to the resurrection not purified in this life, that is, sinners, he takes an example from earthly things, saying, “One is the body of birds, another of fish.” For fittingly are heavenly things compared to the saints, earthly to sinners. Let these things be said against those who deny the resurrection of the dead, that is, the resurrection of bodies.

Now we turn our discussion to some of our own people who, whether from smallness of understanding or poverty of explanation, introduce a very low and abject idea of the resurrection of the body. We ask them how they understand that the soulish body is to be changed by the grace of the resurrection and will be spiritual; how they think that what is sown in weakness will rise in power; how what is sown in dishonour rises in glory; and how what is sown in corruption is changed into incorruption. If they believe the Apostle that the body, rising in glory and in power and in incorruption, has now become spiritual, it seems absurd and contrary to the Apostle's meaning to say that it is again entangled in the passions of flesh and blood, since the Apostle clearly says: “Flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God, nor will corruption possess incorruption.” And how do they take what the Apostle says, “But we shall all be changed”? This change is certainly to be expected according to the order which we have described above, in which we must undoubtedly hope for something worthy of divine grace. We believe that this will come about in the order in which the Apostle describes a bare grain of wheat or of some other kind sown in the earth, to which “God gives a body as he willed,” when the grain of wheat itself has first died. So our bodies too must be thought to fall into the earth like a grain; and the principle implanted in them, which contains the bodily substance, although the bodies have died and been corrupted and scattered, yet by the word of God that very principle, which is always preserved in the substance of the body, raises them from the earth and restores and repairs them, just as the power that is in the grain of wheat, after its corruption and death, repairs and restores the grain into the body of a stalk and ear. And so, for those who will merit to obtain the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven, that principle of repairing the body which we mentioned above, by God's command, repairs out of the earthly and soulish body a spiritual body which can dwell in the heavens; while to those who are of lower merit, or more abject, or even the lowest and most thrust down, glory and dignity of body is given according to the dignity of each one's life and soul; in such a way, however, that even for those who are to be destined for eternal fire or punishments, through the very change of the resurrection, the body which rises is so incorruptible that it cannot be corrupted and dissolved even by punishments.

If, then, such is the quality of the body that will rise from the dead, let us now see what the threat of eternal fire means. For we find in the prophet Isaiah that the fire by which each is punished is indicated to be his own; for he says: “Walk in the light of your fire and in the flame which you have kindled.” By these words it seems to be indicated that each sinner kindles for himself the flame of his own fire, and is not plunged into some fire which had already been kindled by another or existed before him. The material and food of this fire are our sins, which the apostle Paul calls wood and hay and stubble. And I think that, just as in the body an abundance of food and a contrary quality and quantity of nourishment generate fevers, and fevers of different kinds or durations according to the measure in which the accumulated intemperance has supplied the material and fuel of the fevers (and this quality of material, gathered from different intemperance, becomes the cause of a sharper or a more prolonged disease), so the soul, when it has gathered within itself a multitude of evil works and an abundance of sins, at the proper time all that gathering of evils boils up to punishment and is set aflame to penalties; when the mind itself, or conscience, receiving by divine power all things into memory, of which it had impressed certain signs and forms on itself when it sinned, will see set out before its eyes a kind of history of its crimes, of each of the things it had done foully and shamefully or even committed impiously; then the conscience itself is driven and pricked by its own goads, and becomes its own accuser and witness. This I think the apostle Paul also felt when he says: “Their thoughts among themselves accusing or even excusing them, on the day when God will judge the secrets of men, according to my Gospel, through Jesus Christ.” From this it is understood that around the very substance of the soul certain torments are generated from the harmful affections of the sins themselves.

And lest the understanding of this matter seem too difficult to you, it can be considered from those faults of the passions which commonly befall souls: that is, when the soul is burned by the flames of love, or wasted by the fires of jealousy or envy, or when it is driven by anger, or consumed by the immensity of madness or sorrow; how some, finding the excesses of these evils intolerable, have held it more tolerable to undergo death than to endure such torments. You will ask, indeed, whether for those who have been entangled in these evils of vice which we mentioned above, and could procure no amendment for themselves while still placed in this life, and so departed from this world, it suffices for punishment that they are tormented by those very harmful affections remaining in them, of anger, of fury, of madness or of grief, whose deadly poison has been softened by no medicine of amendment in this life; or whether, these affections being changed, they will be vexed by the goads of a general punishment. I think, indeed, that another kind of punishment can also be understood: just as we feel that when the members of the body are loosened and torn from their joints they produce the torment of immense pain, so when the soul is found outside the order and structure, or that harmony in which it was created by God for acting well and feeling usefully, and does not accord with itself in the structure of rational movements, it must be thought to bear the punishment and torment of its own dissension, and to feel the penalty of its own inconstancy and disorder. And when this dissolution and tearing apart of the soul has been tested by the application of fire, it is undoubtedly made firm into a more solid structure and restoration of itself.

There are also many other things hidden from us, known to him alone who is the physician of our souls. For if, for the health of the body, because of the faults we have gathered through food and drink, we sometimes need the treatment of a harsher and more biting medicine, and sometimes, if the quality of the fault demands it, we need the rigour of iron and the harshness of cutting; and if the measure of the disease has gone beyond even these, at last fire burns out the fault that has taken hold; how much more must it be understood that this physician of ours, God, wishing to wash away the faults of our souls which they had gathered from the diversity of sins and crimes, uses penal remedies of this kind, and even applies the punishment of fire to those who have lost the health of the soul? Images of this are also given in the holy Scriptures. Indeed in Deuteronomy the divine word threatens sinners that they will be punished with fevers and chills and jaundice, and are to be tormented with failing of the eyes and alienation of mind and paralysis and blindness and weakness of the kidneys. If anyone, then, at leisure gathers from all Scripture all the mentions of diseases that are recorded in threats to sinners under the names of bodily illnesses, he will find that either the faults or the punishments of souls are indicated by them figuratively. And that we may understand that God acts toward those who have lapsed and fallen into sins in the same way as physicians apply aids to the sick in order to restore health by their treatment, this too is an indication: that through the prophet Jeremiah the cup of God's fury is commanded to be given to all nations to drink, that they may drink and be mad and vomit; in which he threatens, saying that if anyone will not drink, he will not be cleansed. From this it is certainly understood that the fury of God's vengeance serves for the purification of souls. And that even the punishment which is said to be inflicted through fire is understood to be applied as a help, Isaiah teaches, who says of Israel: “The Lord will wash away the filth of the sons or daughters of Zion, and purge the blood from their midst by the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning.” And of the Chaldeans he says: “You have coals of fire; sit upon them; they will be a help to you.” And in other places he says: “The Lord will sanctify in burning fire.” And in the prophet Malachi he says: “The Lord, sitting, will smelt his people like gold and silver; he will smelt and purify and pour out the purified sons of Judah.”

And that too which is said in the Gospel about the stewards who are not good, who are said to be cut in two and their portion placed with the unbelievers, as though that part which is not their own were to be sent elsewhere, undoubtedly indicates some kind of punishment of those in whom, as it seems to me, the spirit is indicated as to be separated from the soul. If this spirit is to be understood as of divine nature, that is, the Holy Spirit, we shall take this as said of the gift of the Holy Spirit: that when, whether through baptism or through the grace of the Spirit, the word of wisdom or the word of knowledge or any other gift has been given to someone, and it has not been rightly administered (that is, has either been buried “in the earth” or tied up “in a napkin”), the gift of the Spirit will surely be taken away from the soul, and the remaining “part,” that is, the substance of the soul, “will be placed with the unbelievers,” divided and separated from that Spirit with whom, “by joining itself to the Lord,” it ought to have been “one spirit.” But if this is to be understood not of the Spirit of God but of the nature of the soul itself, its better part will be said to be that which was made “in the image and likeness” of God, and the other “part” that which was afterwards, through the fall of free choice, taken on against the nature of its first condition of purity; and this part, as being friendly and dear to bodily matter, is condemned with the lot of the unbelievers. This division can also be understood in a third sense: since an angel is said to be present to each of the faithful, even the least in the Church, who is also declared by the Saviour always to behold the face of God the Father, and this angel was certainly one with him over whom he was set, if that person becomes unworthy through disobedience, the angel of God may be said to be taken away from him, and then his portion, that is, the portion of human nature torn away from God's portion, is reckoned with the unbelievers, since he did not faithfully keep the admonitions of the angel appointed to him by God.

And the outer darkness, as I think, is to be understood not so much as some dark air without any light, but of those who, plunged in the darkness of deep ignorance, have been placed outside all light of reason and understanding. We must also see whether perhaps this expression signifies this too: that just as the saints will receive from the resurrection, bright and glorious, the bodies in which they lived holily and purely in the dwellings of this life, so too all the impious, who in this life loved the darkness of errors and the night of ignorance, will be clothed after the resurrection with dark and black bodies, so that the very darkness of ignorance which in this world had besieged their inner minds may in the future appear through the outer clothing of the body. The prison too is to be understood likewise. But let these things suffice for the present place, which have been said meanwhile, in as few words as possible, so that the order of discussion might be kept.