Being about to speak, as He Himself shall grant, of the day of God's last judgment, and to assert it against the impious and unbelieving, we ought first, as in the foundation of a building, to lay down the divine testimonies; and those who are unwilling to believe them attempt to oppose them with human petty reasonings, false and fallacious, to this end — that they may either contend that what is adduced as testimony from the sacred writings signifies something else, or deny altogether that it was spoken by God.
For I judge that there is no mortal who, when he has understood these things as they were spoken, and has believed that they were spoken by the supreme and true God through holy souls, does not yield and assent to them — whether he also confess it with his mouth, or through some fault blush or fear to confess it, or even, with an obstinacy most like madness, strive most contentiously to defend what he knows or believes to be false against what he knows or believes to be true. What, then, the whole Church of the true God holds in confession and profession, that Christ is to come from heaven to judge the living and the dead, this we call the last day of the divine judgment, that is, the final time. For over how many days this judgment shall be extended is uncertain;
but that in the manner of the holy Scriptures a day is wont to be put for a time, no one is ignorant who has read those writings, however carelessly. Therefore, when we say the day of God's judgment, we add "last" or "final," because He both judges now and has judged from the beginning of the human race, when He dismissed from paradise and separated from the tree of life the first men, the perpetrators of the great sin; indeed even when He spared not the sinning angels, whose prince, having subverted himself, subverted men by envy, He without doubt judged; nor is it without His high and just judgment that both in this airy heaven and on earth the life of demons and of men is most wretched, most full of errors and miseries.
But even if no one had sinned, it would not be without good and right judgment that He would retain in eternal blessedness the whole rational creation most perseveringly cleaving to Him its Lord. He judges also not only universally concerning the race of demons and of men, that they should be wretched on account of the desert of the first sins, but also concerning the proper works of individuals, which they perform by the choice of the will. For the demons too pray that they be not tormented, nor indeed is it unjustly that they are either spared or, each according to his own wickedness, tormented; and men, for the most part openly, always secretly, pay divinely appointed penalties for their deeds, whether in this life or after death — although no man acts rightly unless he is aided by divine help;
and no one of demons or of men acts unjustly, unless it be permitted by the divine and same most just judgment. For as the Apostle says, there is no iniquity with God; and as he himself elsewhere says, His judgments are unsearchable and His ways past finding out. Therefore in this book I will dispute not of those first, nor of these intermediate judgments of God, but of that last judgment itself, as far as He Himself shall grant, when Christ is to come from heaven to judge the living and the dead. This indeed is now properly called the day of judgment, because there will be there no place for ignorant complaint, why that unjust man is happy and why that just man is unhappy.
For then there will appear the true and full felicity of none but the good, and the deserved and utmost infelicity of none but the wicked. But now we are learning both to bear with an even mind the evils which the good also suffer, and not to make much of the goods which the wicked also obtain; and by this means, even in those matters in which the divine justice does not appear, the divine teaching is salutary. For we know not by what judgment of God that good man is poor, that bad man is rich; that this man rejoices, whom we suppose ought rather to have been tortured with griefs for his ruined morals, while that man is saddened, whom a praiseworthy life persuades us ought to have rejoiced;
that an innocent man goes out from the court not only unavenged but even condemned, either crushed by the iniquity of the judge or overwhelmed by false testimonies, while on the contrary his wicked adversary, not only unpunished but even vindicated, insults him; that the impious man is in the best of health, the pious man wastes away in weakness; that the healthiest youths turn robbers, while infants who could not injure anyone even by a word are afflicted with divers cruelties of diseases; that one useful to human affairs is snatched away by untimely death, while one who seems as though he ought never even to have been born lives on besides for a very long time; that one full of crimes is exalted with honors, while a man without reproach is hidden by the darkness of obscurity — and other things of this kind, which who collects, who enumerates?
Now if these things had, in their very seeming absurdity, a certain constancy — such that in this life, in which man, as the sacred psalm declares, is made like to vanity and his days pass away like a shadow, none but the wicked obtained these transitory and earthly goods, and none but the good suffered such evils — this could be referred to the just, or even benign, judgment of God: that those who were not to attain the eternal goods which make men blessed should either be deceived by temporal goods for their wickedness, or be consoled by them through God's mercy; and those who were not to suffer eternal torments should either be afflicted by temporal evils for their sins, whatever and however great, or be exercised by them for the fulfilling of virtues.
But now, since not only are the good in evil and the bad in good, which seems unjust, but for the most part also evils befall the bad and goods come to the good, the judgments of God become the more unsearchable and His ways past finding out. Although, therefore, we know not by what judgment God either does these things or permits them to be done — He with whom is the highest power, the highest wisdom, the highest justice, no infirmity, no rashness, no iniquity — yet we salutarily learn not to make much of either the goods or the evils which we see to be common to the good and the bad, and to seek those goods which belong to the good, and above all to flee those evils which are proper to the wicked.
But when we shall come to that judgment of God, whose time is now properly called the day of judgment, and sometimes the day of the Lord, not only whatever things shall then be judged, but also whatever things have been judged from the beginning, and whatever things up to that time are still to be judged, will appear to be most just. There this too will be made manifest, by how just a judgment of God it comes to pass that now so many, indeed almost all, of God's just judgments lie hidden from the senses and minds of mortals, while nevertheless in this matter it does not lie hidden from the faith of the pious that what is hidden is just. Truly Solomon, the wisest king of Israel, who reigned in Jerusalem, thus began the book which is called Ecclesiastes and is held by the Jews also in the canon of the sacred writings:
Vanity of vanities, said Ecclesiastes; vanity of the vain, all is vanity. What abundance has a man in all his labor with which he labors under the sun? And when from this sentence he connected the rest, recounting the miseries and errors of this life, and the meanwhile vanishing lapses of the times, wherein nothing solid, nothing stable is retained, in that vanity of things under the sun he also in a manner laments this: that although there is an abundance of wisdom over folly, as the abundance of light over darkness, and the eyes of the wise man are in his head while the fool walks in darkness, yet one event happens to all — namely in this life which is passed under the sun — signifying, of course, those evils which we see to be common to the good and the bad.
He says also this: that both the good suffer evils, as though they were bad, and the bad obtain goods, as though they were good, thus speaking: There is, he says, a vanity which is done upon the earth, that there are just men upon whom comes as it were the deed of the impious, and there are impious upon whom comes as it were the deed of the just. I said that this too is vanity. In this vanity, to the setting forth of which, as far as seemed sufficient, that most wise man devoted this whole book — for no other reason, surely, than that we should desire that life which has no vanity under this sun, but truth under Him who made this sun — in this vanity, then, would man, made like unto the same vanity, vanish by any other than the just and right judgment of God?
Yet in the days of his vanity it makes a very great difference whether a man resists or obeys the truth, and whether he is destitute of true piety or a partaker of it — not for the sake of the goods of this life to be acquired or the evils to be avoided, things passing away by vanishing, but for the sake of the future judgment, through which both goods for the good and evils for the bad shall remain without end. Finally, that wise man so concluded this book as to say: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole man; because God will bring every work into judgment, in every despised thing, whether good or evil. What could be said more briefly, more truly, more wholesomely? Fear God, he says, and keep His commandments, for this is the whole man. For whoever exists, this he is — the keeper, that is, of God's commandments;
since he who is not this, is nothing; for he is not reformed to the image of truth, but remains in the likeness of vanity. For every work — that is, whatever is done by man in this life, whether good or evil — God will bring into judgment, in every despised thing, that is, in every man who here seems contemptible and therefore is not even noticed; since God both sees him and does not despise him, nor passes him by when He judges. This last judgment of God, then, the testimonies concerning which from the holy Scriptures I have set myself to adduce, are first to be chosen from the books of the New Testament, afterwards from those of the Old. For although the old are prior in time, the new are nevertheless to be preferred in dignity, since those old things are the heralds of the new.
The new, therefore, shall be set down first, which, that we may prove them the more firmly, the old too shall be brought in to support. In the old are contained the law and the prophets, in the new the Gospel and the apostolic writings. Now the Apostle says: For by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now, without the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, being testified by the law and the prophets; but the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ upon all who believe. This righteousness of God pertains to the New Testament and has its testimony from the old books, that is, the law and the prophets. First, therefore, the cause itself is to be set forth, and afterwards the witnesses are to be introduced. And Christ Jesus Himself, showing that this order was to be observed:
A scribe, He says, instructed in the kingdom of God is like a man that is a householder, bringing forth out of his treasure things new and old. He did not say "old and new," which He surely would have said, had He not preferred to keep the order of merits rather than of times. Therefore the Saviour Himself, when He was upbraiding the cities in which He had done great mighty works and which had not believed, and was preferring foreigners to them: Nevertheless, He says, I say to you, it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you; and a little after, to another city: Verily, He says, I say to you, that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee (here He most evidently proclaims that a day of judgment is to come); and in another place:
The men of Nineveh, He says, shall rise up in the judgment with this generation and shall condemn it; because they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, a greater than Jonah is here. The queen of the South shall rise up in the judgment with this generation and shall condemn it; because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, a greater than Solomon is here. In this place we learn two things: both that a judgment is to come, and that it is to come with the resurrection of the dead. For of the Ninevites and of the queen of the South, when He said these things, He was without doubt speaking of the dead, whom nevertheless He foretold would rise in the day of judgment. Nor did He say "they will condemn" because they themselves will judge, but because by comparison with them these will deservedly be damned.
Again in another place, when He was speaking of the now intermingling and afterward separation of good and bad men, which will assuredly take place on the day of judgment, He employed a similitude of wheat sown and tares over-sown, and expounding it to His disciples: He that soweth, He says, the good seed is the Son of man; and the field is the world; but the good seed, these are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; and the enemy that sowed them is the devil; but the harvest is the consummation of the age, and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned with fire, so shall it be in the consummation of the age.
The Son of man shall send forth His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all offenses and them that do iniquity, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He that hath ears, let him hear. Here indeed He did not name the judgment or the day of judgment, but expressed it much more clearly by the very things, and foretold that it would be at the end of the age. Likewise to His disciples: Verily, He says, I say to you, that you who have followed Me, in the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of His majesty, you also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Here we learn that Jesus will judge with His disciples. Whence also elsewhere He said to the Jews:
If I by Beelzebub cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they shall be your judges. Nor, because He said that they would sit upon twelve thrones, ought we to suppose that only twelve men will judge with Him. For by the number twelve a certain universal multitude of those who judge is signified, on account of the two parts of the number seven, by which universality is for the most part signified; which two parts, that is, three and four, multiplied the one by the other make twelve, for four times three and three times four are twelve — and if any other reason of this number twelve is found which avails to this end.
Otherwise, since we read that in the place of Judas the traitor the apostle Matthias was ordained, the apostle Paul, who labored more than all those, would have nowhere to sit for judging; yet he assuredly shows that he belongs, with the other saints, to the number of the judges, when he says: Know ye not that we shall judge angels? Concerning those also who are to be judged, there is a like reason in this number twelve. For not because it was said, Judging the twelve tribes of Israel, will the tribe of Levi, which is the thirteenth, therefore not be judged by them, nor will they judge that people alone and not also the other nations. And when He said, In the regeneration, He without doubt willed the resurrection of the dead to be understood by the name of regeneration.
For thus our flesh will be regenerated through incorruption, in the manner in which our soul has been regenerated through faith. Many things I pass over which seem to be so spoken concerning the last judgment that, when diligently considered, they are found ambiguous or rather to pertain to something else — namely, either to that coming of the Saviour by which He comes throughout all this time in His Church, that is, in His members, part by part and little by little, since the whole is His body; or to the destruction of earthly Jerusalem, for when He speaks of that too, He for the most part speaks in such a way as though He were speaking of the end of the age and of that last and great day of judgment;
so that it cannot be discerned at all, unless all the things which are similarly said concerning this matter in the three evangelists — Matthew, Mark, and Luke — are compared together among themselves. For some things one relates more obscurely, another explains more plainly, so that the things which are said as pertaining to one matter may appear whence they are said. This I have taken care to do, in whatever measure, in a certain letter which I wrote back to a man of blessed memory, Hesychius, bishop of the city of Salona, the title of which letter is: On the End of the Age. Accordingly I will now here say that which is read in the Gospel according to Matthew concerning the separation of good and bad men, through the most present and last judgment of Christ.
But when the Son of man, He says, shall come in His majesty, and all the angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His majesty, and before Him shall be gathered all the nations, and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats, and He shall set the sheep indeed on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say to those who shall be on His right hand: Come, ye blessed of My Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and ye gave Me to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me to drink; I was a stranger, and ye took Me in; naked, and ye covered Me; sick, and ye visited Me; I was in prison, and ye came to Me. Then shall the righteous answer Him, saying:
Lord, when did we see Thee hungry, and fed Thee; thirsty, and gave Thee drink? And when did we see Thee a stranger, and took Thee in; or naked, and clothed Thee? Or when did we see Thee sick or in prison, and came to Thee? And the King, answering, shall say to them: Verily I say to you, inasmuch as ye did it to one of these My least brethren, ye did it to Me. Then shall He say, He says, also to those who shall be on the left hand: Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels. Then likewise He enumerates to these also that they did not do those things which He recorded the ones on the right hand to have done. And to them likewise asking, when they had seen Him set in the need of these things:
He answers that what was not done to the least of His own was not done to Himself; and concluding the discourse He says: 'And these shall go into everlasting punishment, but the just into life everlasting.' John the Evangelist, moreover, most plainly relates that He foretold a judgment to come at the resurrection of the dead. For when He had said: 'For neither doth the Father judge any man, but hath given all judgment to the Son, that all may honour the Son as they honour the Father; he who honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father who sent Him,' He straightway added: 'Amen, amen I say unto you, that he who heareth my word and believeth Him that sent me hath life everlasting, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed from death unto life.'
Behold, here He said that His faithful ones come not into judgment. How then shall they be separated from the wicked by judgment and stand at His right hand, unless because in this place He put 'judgment' for 'condemnation'? For into such judgment they shall not come who hear His word and believe Him that sent Him. Then He adds and says: 'Amen, amen I say unto you, that the hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son also to have life in Himself.' He is not yet speaking of the second resurrection, that is, of bodies, which shall be at the end, but of the first, which now is. For to mark this off He said: 'The hour cometh, and now is.'
But this is not the resurrection of bodies, but of souls. For souls too have their own death in impiety and sins, according to which death those men are dead of whom the same Lord says: 'Let the dead bury their dead'; that is, that those dead in soul should bury the dead in body. Therefore concerning those dead in soul through impiety and iniquity He says: 'The hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live.' By 'they that hear' He meant 'they that obey, that believe, and persevere unto the end.' Nor did He here make any distinction between the good and the wicked. For it is good for all to hear His voice and to live, by passing over from the death of impiety unto the life of piety.
Of this death the apostle Paul says: 'Therefore all are dead, and He died for all, that they who live may now not live to themselves, but to Him who died for them and rose again.' All therefore are dead in sins, with absolutely none excepted, whether the original sins, or those added also by their own will, either by not knowing or by knowing yet not doing what is just; and for all the dead, one who was living died, that is, one having no sin whatsoever;
so that they who live through the remission of sins should now not live to themselves, but to Him who died for all on account of our sins and rose again on account of our justification; in order that, believing in Him who justifieth the impious, being justified from impiety and, as it were, quickened from death, we might be able to belong to the first resurrection, which now is. For to this first resurrection none belong save those who shall be blessed for ever; but to the second, of which He is soon to speak, He will teach that both the blessed and the wretched belong. The one is of mercy, the other of judgment. Wherefore it is written in the Psalm: 'Mercy and judgment will I sing unto Thee, O Lord.' Of which judgment He consequently added, saying:
'And He hath given Him power to execute judgment, because He is the Son of man.' Here He shows that He shall come to judge in that flesh in which He had come to be judged. For to this end He says: 'Because He is the Son of man.' And then, subjoining that of which we are treating, He says: 'Marvel not at this, for the hour cometh in which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; but they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment.' This is that judgment which a little before, as also now, He had put for condemnation, saying:
'He who heareth my word and believeth Him that sent me hath life everlasting and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed from death unto life' — that is, by belonging to the first resurrection, by which one now passes from death to life, he shall not come into condemnation, which He signified by the term 'judgment,' as also in this place where He says: 'They that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment,' that is, of condemnation. Let him therefore rise in the first, who does not wish to be condemned in the second resurrection. For 'the hour cometh, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live,' that is, they shall not come into condemnation, which is called the second death;
into which death, after the second resurrection, that is, of bodies, which is to come, those shall be cast headlong who do not rise in the first, which is of souls. For 'the hour cometh' (where He does not say: 'and now is,' because it shall be at the end of the world, that is, in the last and greatest judgment of God) 'when all who are in the graves shall hear His voice and shall come forth.' He did not say, as in the first: 'and they that hear shall live.' For not all shall live, namely with that life which, since it is blessed, alone ought to be called life. For assuredly they could not, without some sort of life, hear and come forth from the graves with the flesh rising again. And why not all shall live, He teaches in what follows: 'They that have done good,' He says, 'unto the resurrection of life' — these are they who shall live;
'but they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment' — these are they who shall not live, because they shall die by the second death. For they did evil, because they lived evilly; and they lived evilly, because in the first resurrection of souls, which now is, they did not live again, or, having lived again, they did not remain unto the end in that in which they had lived again. As therefore there are two regenerations, of which I have already spoken above — one according to faith, which now takes place through baptism; the other according to the flesh, which shall take place in its incorruption and immortality through the great and final judgment — so there are also two resurrections: one the first, which both now is and is of souls, which does not permit one to come into the second death;
the other the second, which is not now, but shall be at the end of the world, and is not of souls, but of bodies, which through the last judgment sends some into the second death, others into that life which has no death. [VII] Concerning these two resurrections the same John the Evangelist, in the book which is called the Apocalypse, has spoken in such a way that the first of them, not being understood by some of our own people, was moreover even turned into certain ridiculous fables. For in the aforesaid book the apostle John says: 'And I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key of the abyss and a chain in his hand. And he laid hold on that dragon, the old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and cast him into the abyss;'
'and shut it and sealed it over him, that he should no more seduce the nations, till the thousand years be finished; and after this he must be loosed for a little season. And I saw seats, and them that sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them. And the souls of those slain for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and whosoever had not worshipped the beast nor his image, neither had received his inscription on their forehead or on their hand; and they reigned with Jesus a thousand years. The rest of them lived not, until the thousand years be finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in this first resurrection. Over these the second death hath no power; but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years.'
Those who, on account of these words of this book, have supposed that the first resurrection to come is a bodily one, have been moved among other things chiefly by the number of a thousand years, as though it were fitting that there should be in the saints, as it were, a Sabbath-keeping of so long a time — a holy leisure, that is, after the labours of the six thousand years since man was created and, by the desert of that great sin, was dismissed from the felicity of paradise into the miseries of this mortality — so that, since it is written: 'One day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day,' the six thousand years being fulfilled as it were six days, there should follow, as it were, the seventh, of the Sabbath, in the last thousand years, the saints rising again, namely, to celebrate this Sabbath.