Commentary on the Apostles' Creed 31–44

"He ascended to heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father; from there he will come to judge the living and the dead." These are contained, with consistent brevity, at the end of this part of the discourse; in them, what is said is plain, but we must ask in what sense the things said are to be understood. For "ascended", "sits", and "will come", unless you understand them according to the dignity of the Godhead, will seem to indicate something of human frailty. For when the things done on earth were completed, and the souls had been called back from the captivity of hell, he is recorded to have ascended to heaven, as the prophet had foretold: "Ascending on high, he led captivity captive; he gave gifts to men": those gifts, namely, which Peter in the Acts of the Apostles spoke of concerning the Holy Spirit: "Being exalted, then, by the right hand of God, he has poured out this gift which you see and hear." He gave to men, then, the gift of the Holy Spirit, because the captivity which the devil had formerly led down into hell through sin, Christ called back to heaven through the resurrection of his death. He ascended, then, to heaven, not where God the Word had not been before (for he was always in heaven and remained in the Father), but where the Word made flesh had not sat before. Finally, because this new entrance through the gates of heaven seemed strange to its keepers and princes, seeing the nature of flesh entering the secret places of heaven, they say to one another, as David, full of the Holy Spirit, declares: "Lift up your gates, you princes, and be lifted up, you everlasting doors, and the King of glory will come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle." This voice was raised not because of the power of the Godhead but because of the newness of the flesh ascending to God's right hand. The same David says elsewhere: "God has gone up with a shout, and the Lord with the sound of a trumpet." For it is the custom for a victor to return from battle with the sound of a trumpet. Of him too it is said: "Who builds his ascent in heaven." And again elsewhere: "Who rides upon the cherubim; he flew upon the wings of the winds."

To sit at the right hand of the Father, too, is a mystery of the flesh he took. For these things are not fittingly applied to that incorporeal nature apart from the taking of flesh; nor is the perfection of a heavenly seat sought for the divine nature, but for the human. Hence it is also said of him: "Your throne is prepared, O God, from then on; you are from everlasting." The seat, then, on which the Lord Jesus was to sit was prepared from everlasting: at whose name every knee should bow, of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess to him that Jesus is Lord in the glory of God the Father. Of whom David too says thus: "The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet." Discussing these words in the Gospel, the Lord said to the Pharisees: "If, then, David in the Spirit calls him Lord, how is he his son?" By this he showed that according to the Spirit he was Lord, according to the flesh the son of David. Hence the Lord himself says again: "But I say to you, from now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the power of God." And the apostle Peter says of Christ: "Who is at the right hand of God, sitting in heaven." And Paul too, writing to the Ephesians: "According to the working of the might of his power, which he worked in Christ, raising him from the dead and making him sit at his right hand."

That he will come to judge the living and the dead we are taught by many testimonies of the divine Scriptures. But before we show that these things were foretold by the prophetic oracles, I think it necessary to point out that this tradition of the faith wishes us to be anxious every day about the coming of the Judge, so that we may so order our actions as people about to render account to a Judge who is at hand. For this was what the prophet said of the blessed man: "For he orders his words in judgment." And when it is said that he judges the living and the dead, this is not said because some will come to judgment living and others dead, but because he will judge souls and bodies together; in which he has called souls the living and bodies the dead. As the Lord himself says in the Gospel: "Do not fear those who can kill the body but can do nothing to the soul; but fear rather him who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna."

Now, if you please, let us show briefly that these things too were foretold through the prophets. When you wish for more testimonies, you will gather them yourself from the breadth of the Scriptures. The prophet Malachi says, then: "Behold, the Lord Almighty will come; and who will endure the day of his coming, or who will endure his appearance? For he comes like a refiner's fire and like fullers' herb; and he will sit refining and purifying, as silver and as gold." So that you may know more plainly who this Lord is of whom these things are said, hear what the prophet Daniel foretells of him: "I saw," he says, "in the vision of the night, and behold, with the clouds of heaven one like a son of man coming; and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him; and to him was given dominion and honour and kingdom; and all peoples, tribes, and tongues will serve him; and his power is an everlasting power which will not pass away, and his kingdom will not be destroyed." From these words we are taught not only about his coming and judgment but also about his power and kingdom: that his power is everlasting and his kingdom without the end of corruption; as is said in the Creed too: "And of his kingdom there will be no end." Hence he is very far from the faith who says that the kingdom of Christ will one day end. We ought to know, however, that the enemy tries, with cunning fraud, to imitate this saving coming of Christ in order to deceive the faithful, and instead of the Son of Man, who is awaited to come in the majesty of his Father, to prepare the son of perdition with prodigies and lying signs, so as to bring in Antichrist to this world instead of Christ. Of him the Lord foretold to the Jews in the Gospels: "For I have come in my Father's name, and you have not received me; another will come in his own name, and him you will receive." And again he says: "When you see the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place, as Daniel the prophet says, let the reader understand." Daniel, then, teaches more fully and broadly about the coming of this deceit in his visions; it would be very laborious to set out examples from them now, since it is spread over very long narratives; so we send anyone who wishes to know more about these things to the visions themselves to go over. And the Apostle too says of him: "Let no one deceive you in any way: for unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above everything that is called God or is worshipped, so that he sits in the temple of God, showing himself as if he were God." And a little later: "And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the brightness of his coming; whose coming is according to the working of Satan with all power and lying signs and wonders." And again a little later: "And therefore God will send them a working of error, that they may believe the lie, that all may be judged who did not believe the truth." This error is foretold to us, then, by the voices of prophets, evangelists, and apostles, so that none may believe the coming of Antichrist to be the coming of Christ. But as the Lord himself says: "When they say to you, Behold, here is the Christ, or there, do not believe it. For many false christs and false prophets will come and will deceive many." But let us see how he has shown the judgment of the true Christ: "As the lightning shines from the east to the west," he says, "so will be the coming of the Son of Man." When, then, the true Lord Jesus Christ has come, he will sit and set up judgment, as he says in the Gospels too: "And he will separate the sheep from the unrighteous", that is, he will separate the righteous from the unrighteous. As the Apostle writes: "For we must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, that each may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or evil." And he will be judged not only for deeds but also for thoughts, according to what the same Apostle says: "Their thoughts accusing or else excusing one another, on the day when God will judge the secrets of men." But let this suffice on these matters. After this is placed in the order of faith:

"And in the Holy Spirit." What has been handed down above a little more fully about Christ belongs to the mystery of his incarnation and passion. Coming in between, as fitted to his person, these things have put off the mention of the Holy Spirit somewhat longer. Otherwise, if account is taken of the Godhead alone, in the same way as is said at the beginning, "I believe in God the Father almighty", and after that, "In Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord", so it is joined: "And in the Holy Spirit." But all those things that are recorded about Christ concern, as we have said, the dispensation of the flesh. So in the mention of the Holy Spirit the mystery of the Trinity is completed. For as one is called Father, and there is no other Father, and one is called the only-begotten Son, and there is no other only-begotten Son, so too the Holy Spirit is one, and there can be no other Holy Spirit. So that the persons may be distinguished, then, the terms of relation are distinguished, by which the one is understood as the Father, from whom are all things, and who himself has no father; the other as the Son, as born of the Father; and this one as the Holy Spirit, as proceeding from both and sanctifying all things. And so that one and the same Godhead may be taught in the Trinity, just as it is said that we believe in God the Father, with the preposition "in" added, so it is said in Christ his Son, and so in the Holy Spirit. But to make what we have said plainer, it will be proved from what follows. For after this clause there follows:

"The holy church, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of this flesh." It did not say "in the holy church", nor "in the forgiveness of sins", nor "in the resurrection of the flesh"; for if it had added the preposition "in", it would have had one and the same force with the clauses above. But now, in those words in which the faith concerning the Godhead is set out, it says "in God the Father" and "in Jesus Christ his Son" and "in the Holy Spirit"; but in the rest, where the discourse is not of the Godhead but of creatures and mysteries, the preposition "in" is not added, so as to say "in the holy church"; but the holy church is to be believed, not as God, but as the church gathered to God. And let them believe that there is forgiveness of sins, not believe in the forgiveness of sins; and let them believe the resurrection of the flesh, not in the resurrection of the flesh. By this syllable of a preposition, then, the Creator is distinguished from creatures, and things divine are separated from things human. This, then, is the Holy Spirit who inspired the Law and the Prophets in the Old Testament, the Gospels and the Apostles in the New. Hence the Apostle too says: "All Scripture, divinely inspired, is profitable for teaching." And therefore it seems fitting at this point to list by clear number, as we have received them from the records of the fathers, the volumes of the New and Old Testaments which, according to the tradition of the forebears, are believed to have been inspired by the Holy Spirit himself and handed down to the churches of Christ.

Of the Old Testament, then, first of all five books of Moses have been handed down: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. After these, Jesus Nave, and Judges together with Ruth. After these four books of Kingdoms, which the Hebrews count as two; Paralipomenon, which is called the book of Days; and two of Ezra, which among them are counted as one; and Esther. Of the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel; besides these, one book of the twelve prophets. Job also and the Psalms of David are single books. Solomon handed down three to the churches: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs. In these they have closed the number of the books of the Old Testament. Of the New, four Gospels, of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; the Acts of the Apostles, which Luke wrote; fourteen letters of the apostle Paul; two of the apostle Peter; one of James, the brother of the Lord and apostle; one of Jude; three of John; the Apocalypse of John. These are the books which the fathers enclosed within the canon, and from which they wished the statements of our faith to be established.

It should be known, however, that there are also other books, which were called by the forebears not canonical but ecclesiastical: that is, the Wisdom which is called Solomon's, and another Wisdom, which is called that of the son of Sirach, which book among the Latins is called by this very general term Ecclesiasticus, a name which designates not the author of the little book but the character of the writing. Of the same order is the little book of Tobit, and Judith, and the books of the Maccabees. In the New Testament, the little book which is called the Shepherd, or Hermas; that which is called the Two Ways, or the Judgment of Peter. All of these they wished to be read in the churches, but not to be brought forward for confirming the authority of faith from them. The other writings they named apocryphal, which they did not wish to be read in the churches. These things have been handed down to us by the fathers; as I said, it seemed opportune to set them out at this point, for the instruction of those who are receiving the first elements of the church and of the faith, so that they may know from what springs of the word of God they are to draw their drink.

Next the rule of faith holds "the holy church". We have said above why they did not say here too "in the holy church". Those, then, who have been taught above to believe in one God under the mystery of the Trinity ought also to believe this: that there is one holy church, in which there is one faith and one baptism, in which one God the Father is believed, and one Lord Jesus Christ his Son, and one Holy Spirit. This, then, is the holy church, without spot or wrinkle. For many others also have gathered churches, like Marcion, Valentinus, Ebion, Manichaeus, Arius, and all the other heretics. But those churches are not without the spot or wrinkle of faithlessness; and so the prophet said of them: "I have hated the church of evildoers, and I will not sit with the impious." But of this church, which keeps the faith of Christ whole, hear what the Holy Spirit says in the Song of Songs: "My dove is one; she is the perfect one of her mother." Whoever, then, receives this faith in the church, let him not turn aside into the council of vanity, nor go in with those who do wicked things. For it is a council of vanity which Marcion holds, who denies that the Father of Christ is God the Creator, who made the world through his Son. It is a council of vanity which Ebion teaches: that one should believe in Christ in such a way that circumcision of the flesh, observance of the sabbath, the solemn rite of sacrifices, and all the other observances are kept according to the letter of the law. It is a council of vanity which Manichaeus teaches: first, that he called himself the Paraclete; then, that he says the world was made by an evil being, denies God the Creator, rejects the Old Testament, asserts two natures, one good and the other evil, opposed to each other; holds, following the Pythagoreans, that the souls of men are coeternal with God and return through different cycles of birth into cattle, animals, and beasts; denies the resurrection of our flesh; and declares that the Lord's passion and birth were not in the reality of flesh but in appearance. It is a council of vanity which Paul of Samosata, and after him his successor Photinus, asserted: that Christ was not born of the Father before the ages but began from Mary, and he thinks that he was not God born as man but a man made God. It is a council of vanity which Arius and Eunomius taught, who hold that the Son of God was not born from the very substance of the Father but created from nothing, that the Son of God has a beginning and is less than the Father; and they assert that the Holy Spirit is not only less than the Son but is a servant sent. It is a council of vanity too which those affirm who confess that the Son of God is of the substance of the Father, but separate and set apart the Holy Spirit; whereas the Saviour shows in the Gospel one and the same power and Godhead of the Trinity when he says: "Baptize all nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." And it is plainly impious for man to separate what is joined by God. It is a council of vanity too which a stubborn and perverse contentiousness once gathered, asserting that Christ took human flesh but not also a rational soul; whereas one and the same salvation was given by Christ to flesh and soul, to human sense and mind alike. And that too is a council of vanity which Donatus gathered throughout Africa by accusing the church of betrayal; and which Novatus stirred up by denying repentance to the lapsed and condemning second marriages, even when necessity perhaps required them to be entered into. Flee, then, all these as assemblies of evildoers. And those too, if there are any who are said to assert that the Son of God does not see or know the Father as he himself is known and seen by the Father; or that the kingdom of Christ is to end; or that the resurrection of the flesh is not to be restored to the whole substance of its nature; who deny God's coming just judgment on all; who absolve the devil from the punishment of his due condemnation: from all these, I say, let the faithful hearing turn away. But hold the holy church which confesses God the Father almighty, his only Son Jesus Christ our Lord, and the Holy Spirit in a harmonious and concordant understanding of substance; and believes that the Son of God was born of the Virgin, suffered for the salvation of mankind, and rose from the dead in the same flesh in which he died; and finally hopes that he will come as Judge of all; in which church both the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of the flesh are preached.

But concerning the forgiveness of sins, belief alone ought to suffice. For who would ask for causes or reasons where it is the pardon of the Prince? Since the generosity of an earthly king is not open to discussion, is the divine bounty to be discussed by human rashness? For the pagans are accustomed to say against us with mockery that we deceive ourselves in thinking that crimes committed in deed can be purged by words. And they say: Can one who has committed murder not be a murderer, and one who has committed adultery not be seen as an adulterer? How, then, will one guilty of such crimes suddenly be made holy in your eyes? But to this, as I said, I answer better by faith than by reason. For he who promised this is King of all; he who pledges it is Lord of earth and heaven. Do you not wish me to believe that he who made me a man out of earth can make me innocent out of guilty? And that he who made me see when I was blind, or hear when I was deaf, who gave walking back to me when I was lame, cannot recover for me the innocence I had lost? And to come to the testimony of nature itself: to kill a man is not always criminal; but to kill out of malice and not by the laws is criminal. It is not, then, the deed in such things that condemns me, since sometimes it is even done rightly, but the mind that plans evil. If, then, the mind in me which became guilty, and in which the origin of the vice was, is corrected, why should it seem to you that I cannot be made innocent who was guilty before? For if, as I showed above, it is clear that the crime is not in the deed but in the will, then, as an evil will, with the evil demon as its author, made me liable to sin and death, so the will changed to good, with the good God as its author, has restored me to innocence and life. The case is similar with the other crimes. In this way our faith is not found to oppose natural reason, since the forgiveness of sins is applied not to deeds, which cannot be changed, but to the mind, which, it is certain, can be converted from evil to good.

And this last clause, which proclaims the resurrection of the flesh, concludes the sum of all perfection with compact brevity; although on this point too the faith of the church is attacked not only by pagans but also by heretics. For Valentinus denies the resurrection of the flesh altogether, and so do the Manichees, as we showed above. But they would not listen to the prophet Isaiah, who says, "The dead will rise, and those who are in the tombs will be raised", nor to the most wise Daniel, who declares: "For then those who are in the dust of the earth will rise, some to eternal life, others to reproach and eternal confusion." Yet even in the Gospels, which they seem to accept, they ought to have learned what was said by our Lord and Saviour when he taught the Sadducees: "But that the dead rise, have you not read how he says to Moses in the bush, The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob? But he is not the God of the dead but of the living." In which he had also stated earlier what and how great the glory of the resurrection is, when he said: "But in the resurrection of the dead they will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but will be like the angels of God." The power of the resurrection, then, confers an angelic state on men, so that those who have risen from the earth may live not again on earth with the beasts but in heaven with the angels: those, however, whom the character of a purer life has admitted to this; those, namely, who even now, keeping the flesh of their soul in chaste acts of purity, have brought it under obedience to the Holy Spirit, and, with every stain of vice removed from it and changed into spiritual glory by the power of sanctification, have deserved to bring it into the fellowship of the angels.

But unbelievers cry out and say: How can flesh which rots and dissolves, or is turned into dust, sometimes even swallowed by the depth of the sea and scattered by the waves, be gathered again and made whole into one, and a man's body be restored from it? To them let us make a first answer meanwhile with the words of Paul, who says to them: "Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it first dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare grain of wheat, or of some other seed; but God gives it a body as he wills." What you see happen every year in the seeds you throw into the ground, do you not believe will happen in your flesh, which is sown in the earth by the law of God? Why, I ask, are you so narrow and weak a judge of the divine power that you do not believe that the scattered dust of each one's flesh can be gathered and restored into its own pattern? Do you not consider, when you see that even mortal wit searches out veins of metals sunk in the depths of the earth? And the eye of the craftsman sees gold where the unskilled man thinks there is earth. Why do we not grant these things to him who made man, when he who was made by him can attain so much? And when mortal wit can detect that a vein of gold is one thing, of silver another, of bronze very different, of iron and lead different again, lying hidden within the appearance of earth, will the divine power not be thought able to find and distinguish the proper portion of each one's flesh, even if it seems scattered?

But let us try to help souls that are failing in faith with natural reasons too. If someone mixes different seeds together and sows them unsorted, or scatters them here and there on the ground, will not the grain of each seed, wherever it has been thrown, produce a shoot at the proper time according to the kind of its nature, so as to restore the state of its own form and body? So, then, the substance of each one's flesh, however variously and diversely scattered, yet the principle itself which is in each flesh is immortal: for it is the flesh of an immortal soul. And at the time when it pleases the will of the true God, after the bodies have been sown in the earth, it gives back its own portion, gathered and drawn from the substance of the earth, and restores it into that form which death had once dissolved. And so it comes about that to each soul is restored not a confused or foreign body but its own which it had, so that consequently, for the contests of the present life, the flesh may be crowned with its soul if chaste, or punished if unchaste. And therefore our church teaches the faith of the Creed very carefully: where the others hand down "the resurrection of the flesh", it has handed down, with one pronoun added, "the resurrection of this flesh". Of this flesh, no doubt, which he has who professes it, with the sign of the cross placed on his forehead; so that each of the faithful may know that his flesh, if he keeps it clean from sin, will be a vessel of honour, useful to the Lord, prepared for every good work; but if defiled with sins, will be a vessel of wrath for destruction. Now if anyone wishes to know more fully about the glory of the resurrection itself and the greatness of the promise, he will find it indicated in almost all the divine books. Recalling a few of them in this place only by way of reminder, we will bring to an end the little work you laid on us. The apostle Paul, then, asserts that mortal flesh rises with such arguments as these, saying: "But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then neither has Christ risen. And if Christ has not risen, our preaching is empty, and your faith is empty too." And a little later: "But now Christ has risen from the dead, the first fruits of those who sleep; for since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive; but each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then those who are Christ's at his coming; then the end." And in what follows he adds this too: "Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall all rise, but we shall not all be changed" (or, as we find in other copies, "We shall all sleep, but we shall not all be changed"), "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will rise incorruptible, and we shall be changed." And writing to the Thessalonians too he says: "But I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, about those who sleep, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so too God will bring with him through Jesus those who have fallen asleep. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left at the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep; for the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead who are in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet Christ in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord."

But so that you may not think these things are marked out by Paul alone, as if by a new preaching, hear also what the prophet Ezekiel once foretold through the Holy Spirit: "Behold," he says, "I will open your graves, and I will bring you out of your graves." Hear also how plainly Job, overflowing with mystic words, preaches the resurrection of the dead: "There is hope for a tree," he says; "for if it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its shoot will never fail. But if its root grows old in the earth, and its stump dies in the dust, at the scent of water it will flower again and put forth shoots like a young plant. But a man, if he dies, is he gone? And a mortal, if he falls, will he be no more?" Does he not seem to you in these words to rebuke men with a kind of shame and to say: Is the human race so foolish that, when they see the stump of a felled tree sprout again from the earth and dead wood receive life again, they do not suppose anything like it of themselves, as they do of wood and trees? And so that you may know that what he said, "But a mortal, when he falls, will he not rise?", is to be read as a question, take the proof from what follows. For he adds at once: "For if a man has died, he will live." And a little later he says: "I will wait until I come to be again." And again he says: "Who will raise up upon the earth my skin, which now drains this cup."