Augustine of Hippo

In his own words on Revelation

• Revelation 1:1

  He hath a Father, being Himself the Son of God; He hath a Father, and He also hears of the Father. And what is that which He hears of the Father? Who can unfold this? When can my tongue, when can my heart be sufficient, either the heart to understand, or the tongue to utter, what that is which the Son hath heard from the Father? May it be the Son has heard the Word of the Father? Nay, the Son is the Word of the Father. You see how all human effort is here wearied out; you see how all guessing of our heart, all straining of our darkened mind, here fails. I hear the Scripture saying that the Son speaks that which He heareth from the Father; and again, I hear the Scripture saying that the Son is Himself the Word of the Father: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." The words that we speak are fleeting and transient: as soon as thy word has sounded from thy mouth, it passeth away; it makes its noise, and passes away into silence. Canst thou follow thy sound, and hold it to make it stand? Thy thought, however, remains, and of that thought that remains thou utterest many words that pass away. What say we, brethren? When God spake, did He give out a voice, or sounds, or syllables? If He did, in what tongue spake He? In Hebrew, or in Greek, or in Latin? Tongues are necessary where there is a distinction of nations. But there none can say that God spake in this tongue, or in that. Observe thy own heart. When thou conceivest a word which thou mayest utter,--for I will say, if I can, what we may note in ourselves, not whereby we may comprehend that,--well, when thou conceivest a word to utter, thou meanest to utter a thing, and the very conception of the thing is already a word in thy heart: it has not yet come forth, but it is already born in the heart, and is waiting to come forth. But thou considerest the person to whom it is to come forth, with whom thou art to speak: if he is a Latin, thou seekest a Latin expression; if a Greek, thou thinkest of Greek words; if a Punic, thou considerest whether thou knowest the Punic language: for the diversity of hearers thou hast recourse to divers tongues to utter the word conceived; but the conception itself was bound by no tongue in particular. Whilst therefore God, when speaking, required not a language, nor took up any kind of speech, how was He heard by the Son, seeing that God's speaking is the Son Himself? As, in fact, thou hast in thy heart the word that thou speakest, and as it is with thee, and is none other than the spiritual conception itself (for just as thy soul is spirit, so also the word which thou hast conceived is spirit; for it has not yet received sound to be divided by syllables, but remains in the conception of thy heart, and in the mirror of the mind); so God gave out His Word, that is, begat the Son. And thou, indeed, begettest the word even in thy heart according to time; God without time begat the Son by whom He created all times. Whilst, therefore, the Son is the Word of God, and the Son spoke to us not His own word, but the word of the Father, He willed to speak Himself to us when He was speaking the word of the Father. This it is that John said, as was fit and necessary; and we have expounded according to our ability. He whose heart has not yet attained to a proper perception of so great a matter, has whither to turn himself, has where to knock, has from whom to ask, from whom to seek, of whom to receive.

  Tractates on John, Tractate 14

• Revelation 1:4

  "For the barren," she says, "hath born seven, and she that hath many children is waxed feeble." Here all that had been prophesied hath shone forth to those who understood the number seven, which signifies the perfection of the universal Church, For which reason also the Apostle John writes to the seven churches, showing in that way that he writes to the totality of the one Church; and in the Proverbs of Solomon it is said aforetime, prefiguring this, "Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath strengthened her seven pillars." For the city of God was barren in all nations before that child arose whom we see.

  The City of God, Book 17

• Revelation 1:5

  I know that some think that at the death of Christ a resurrection such as is promised to us at the end of the world was granted to the righteous, founding this on the statement in Scripture that, in the earthquake by which at the moment of His death the rocks were rent and the graves were opened, many bodies of the saints arose and were seen with Him in the Holy City after He rose. Certainly, if these did not fall asleep again, their bodies being a second time laid in the grave, it would be necessary to see in what sense Christ can be understood to be "the first begotten from the dead," if so many preceded Him in the resurrection. And if it be said, in answer to this, that the statement is made by anticipation, so that the graves indeed are to be supposed to have been opened by that earthquake at the time when Christ was hanging on the cross, but that the bodies of the saints did not rise then, but only after Christ had risen before them,--although on this hypothesis of anticipation in the narrative, the addition of these words would not hinder us from still believing, on the one hand, that Christ was without doubt "the first begotten from the dead," and on the other, that to these saints permission was given, when He went before them, to rise to an eternal state of incorruption and immortality, there still remains a difficulty, namely, how in that case Peter could have spoken as he did, saying what was without doubt perfectly true, when he affirmed that in the prophecy quoted above the words, that "His flesh should not see corruption," referred not to David but to Christ, and added concerning David, "He is buried, and his sepulchre is with us to this day," a statement which would have had no force as an argument unless the body of David was still undisturbed in the sepulchre; for of course the sepulchre might still have been there even had the saint's body been raised up immediately after his death, and had thus not seen corruption. But it seems hard that David should not be included in this resurrection of the saints, if eternal life was given to them, since it is so frequently, so clearly, and with such honourable mention of his name, declared that Christ was to be of David's seed. Moreover, these words in the Epistle to the Hebrews concerning the ancient believers, "God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect," will be endangered, if these believers have been already established in that incorruptible resurrection-state which is promised to us when we are to be made perfect at the end of the world.

  Letters, Letter 164

• Revelation 1:7

  He is "good," according to that sight, according to which God appears to the pure in heart; for "truly God is good unto Israel even to such as are of a clean heart." But when the wicked shall see the Judge, He will not seem good to them; because they will not rejoice in their heart to see Him, but all "kindreds of the earth shall then wail because of Him," namely, as being reckoned in the number of all the wicked and unbelievers.

  On The Trinity, Book 1

• Revelation 1:7

  and they that pierced him. a prophecy which implies that Christ will come in the very flesh in which He was crucified.

• Revelation 1:8

  The martyrdom of the blessed apostles has consecrated this day for us. It was by despising the world that they earned this renown throughout the whole world. Peter was the first of the apostles and Paul the last of the apostles. The first and the last were brought to one and the same day for martyrdom by the First and the Last, by Christ. In order to grasp what I've said, turn your minds to the Alpha and the Omega. The Lord himself said plainly in the Apocalypse, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first"—before whom is nobody—"the last"—after whom is nobody; he precedes all things and sets a term to all things. Do you want to gaze upon him as the first? "All things were made through him." Do you seek him as the last? "For Christ is the end of the law, that every one who has faith may be justified." In order for you to live at some time or other, you had him as your creator. In order for you to live always, you have him as your redeemer.

  SERMON 299B.1, ON THE BIRTHDAY OF THE HOLY APOSTLES PETER AND PAUL

• Revelation 3:11

  I have said all this about those who have been predestined to the kingdom of God, whose number is so fixed that not one can be added to it or taken from it. I have not been speaking of those who, although he had declared and spoken, have been called but not chosen, because they were not called according to his purpose. The fact that the number of the elect is fixed, not to be increased or diminished, is suggested even by John the Baptist, where he says, "Bring forth therefore fruit befitting repentance. And do not think to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham for our father.' For I say to you that God is able out of these stones to raise up children to Abraham." The words show that those who do not bring forth fruit are to be cut off, in such a way, however, that the number [of children] promised to Abraham will not fall short. However, it is more openly declared in the Apocalypse: "Hold fast what you have, that no one receive your crown." For if another is not to receive a crown, unless someone first lose it, the number is fixed.

  ADMONITION AND GRACE 13.39

• Revelation 4:7

  Both in the prophet Ezekiel and in the Apocalypse of the same John whose Gospel this is, there is mentioned a quadruple beast, having four characteristic faces: a man's, a calf's, a lion's, an eagle's. Very many who have commented on the mysteries of the holy Scriptures before us have understood the four Evangelists in this animal, or rather in these animals. The lion, [they say], has been put for king, because the lion seems to be, in a way, the king of beasts because of his power and terrifying bravery. This character has been attributed to Matthew because he described in proper order the royal line in the generations of the Lord, how the Lord was through royal descent from the seed of King David. But Luke, because he began from the priesthood of the priest Zechariah, making mention of the father of John the Baptist, is accounted the calf because the calf was the important victim in the sacrifice of the priests. Christ as a man has rightly been assigned to Mark, because neither did he say anything about his royal power nor did he begin from the priestly, but he simply started with Christ the man. All of these have practically not departed from the earthly things, that is, from those deeds that the Lord Jesus Christ performed on earth. They said very few things about his divinity, as if they were walking with him on earth. There remains the eagle: it is John, he who preaches the sublime and who gazes with unflinching eyes upon the internal and eternal light.

  TRACTATES ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN 36.5.2

• Revelation 5:5

  So the true victory of our Lord Jesus Christ was achieved when he rose again and ascended into heaven. Then was fulfilled what you heard when the Apocalypse was read, "The lion from the tribe of Judah has conquered." It is he that is called a lion, he that is called a lamb. He is called a lion for courage, a lamb for innocence. A lion because unconquered, a lamb because gentle. And when this lamb was slain, he conquered by his death the lion "who prowls around seeking whom he may devour." The devil, you see, is called a lion for his ferocity, not for any virtue. Thus the apostle Peter says we must be on the watch against temptations, "because your adversary the devil is prowling around seeking whom he may devour"; but he did say how he prowls around: "Like a roaring lion he is prowling around, seeking whom he may devour." Who could avoid encountering the teeth of this lion, if the lion from the tribe of Judah had not conquered? Against the lion fights a lion, against the world a lamb. The devil was exultant when Christ died, and by that very death of Christ was the devil conquered. It's as though he took the bait in a mousetrap. He was delighted at the death, as being the commander of death. What he delighted in, that's where the trap was set for him. The mousetrap for the devil was the cross of the Lord. The bait he would be caught by, the death of the Lord. And our Lord Jesus Christ rose again.

  SERMON 263.2

• Revelation 5:5

  "Like a sheep he was led to be slaughtered, and like a lamb in the presence of his shearer he was without voice, thus he did not open his mouth Who is this?." Obviously the one about whom he goes on to say, "In humility his judgment was taken away. His generation, who shall relate?" I can see this model of such humility in a king of such power and authority. Because this one, who is like a lamb not opening its mouth in the presence of the shearer, is himself "the lion from the tribe of Judah." Who is this, both lamb and lion? He endured death as a lamb; he devoured it as a lion. Who is this, both lamb and lion? Gentle and strong, lovable and terrifying, innocent and mighty, silent when he was being judged, roaring when he comes to judge. Or perhaps both in his passion lamb and lion, and also in his resurrection lamb and lion. Let us see him as a lamb in his passion. It was stated a moment ago: "Like a lamb in the presence of his shearer he was without voice, thus he did not open his mouth." Let us see him as a lion in his passion; Jacob said, "You have gone up, lying down you have slept like a lion." Let us see him as a lamb in his resurrection. The book of Revelation, when it was talking about the eternal glory of virgins, "They follow the lamb, it is said, wherever he goes." The same book of Revelation says, what I mentioned just now, "The lion from the tribe of Judah has conquered, to open the book." Why a lamb in his passion? Because he underwent death without being guilty of any iniquity. Why a lion in his passion? Because in being slain he slew death. Why a lamb in his resurrection? Because his innocence is everlasting. Why a lion in his resurrection? Because everlasting also is his might.

  SERMON 375A.1

• Revelation 10:9-10

  "Our belly stuck to the ground." They mean that "our belly" consented to the impious persuasion of that dust [i.e., godless persecutors]; for that is what the expression "stuck to" implies.… To cling to God is to do his will. It makes sense, then, to say of the belly that it clung to the earth, when we mean those people who could not hold out under persecution but yielded to the will of the wicked; for this is how they "stuck to the earth." But why are they called "the belly"? Because they are carnal. It suggests that the church's mouth is to be found in the saints, in spiritual people, and the church's belly in the carnal. This is why the church's mouth is plainly visible, but its belly is covered up, as befits something weaker and more vulnerable. Scripture supports this interpretation in the passage where someone says he was given a book to eat, "and the book was sweet in my mouth but bitter in my stomach." What can that mean? Surely that the highest precepts, which spiritual persons accept, are unacceptable to the carnal, and that commands that delight the spiritual only give the carnal indigestion. What is in that book, brothers and sisters? "Go and sell all you possess, and give the money to the poor." How sweet is that command in the church's mouth! All the spiritual have obeyed it. But if you tell any sensual person to do that, he or she is more likely to walk sadly away, as the rich man in the Gospel walked away from the Lord, than to fulfill the injunction. Why does a carnal person walk away? Because that book, so sweet to the mouth, is bitter in the belly.

  EXPLANATION OF PSALM 43.25

• Revelation 18:6

  Now, brothers, you see the saints armed. Observe the slaughter, observe their glorious battles.… What have these done who had in their hands swords sharpened on both sides? "To do vengeance on the nations." See whether vengeance has not been done on the nations. Daily is it done; we do it ourselves by speaking. Observe how the nations of Babylon are slain. She is repaid twofold.… How is she repaid double? The saints wage war, they draw their "swords twice sharpened." From there come defeats, slaughters, severances. How is she repaid double? When she had the power to persecute the Christians, she slew the flesh indeed, but she crushed not God. Now she is repaid double, for the pagans are extinguished and the idols are broken.… And lest you should think that people are really smitten with the sword, blood really shed, wounds made in the flesh, he goes on and explains "chastisements on the peoples." What is "chastisements"? Reproof. Let the two-edged sword go forth from you. Do not delay. Say to your friend, if you have yet a friend [among the pagans] left to whom to say it, "What kind of man are you, who have abandoned him by whom you were made, and worship what he made? Better is the workman than that which he makes." When he begins to blush, when he begins to feel compunction, you have made a wound with your sword, it has reached his heart, he is about to die that he may live.

  EXPLANATION OF PSALM 149.9

• Revelation 19:10

  The lowest person must worship the same God as is worshiped by the highest angel. In fact it is by refusing to worship him that human nature has been brought low. The source of wisdom and of truth is the same for angel and humankind, namely, the one unchangeable Wisdom and Truth. The very Virtue and changeless Wisdom of God who is consubstantial and coeternal with the Father, for our salvation deigned, in the temporal dispensation, to take upon himself our nature in order to teach us that humanity must worship what every rational intellectual creature must also worship. Let us believe that the highest angels and most excellent ministers of God want us to join them in the worship of the one God, in contemplation of whom they find their happiness. Even we are not made happy by seeing an angel but by seeing the Truth, by which we love the angels too and rejoice with them. We do not grudge that they should have readier access to the Truth and enjoy him without obstacle. Rather, we love them because we are bidden by our common Lord to hope for the same condition hereafter. So we honor them with love but not with divine worship. We do not build temples for them. They do not wish to be honored by us in that way, because they know that when we are good people we are ourselves the temples of the most high God.

  OF TRUE RELIGION 110

• Revelation 20:2

  Our Lord Jesus Christ himself said, "No one can enter the strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man." By "strong man" he means the devil, who was able to hold the human race in bondage. By his "goods" that Christ was to "plunder," he means God's future faithful ones whom the devil was keeping for himself because of their ungodliness and various sins. It was for the purpose of binding this strong man that John, in the Apocalypse, saw "an angel coming down from heaven … who bound [the ancient serpent] for a thousand years." The angel, that is, checked and repressed his power to seduce and possess those destined to be set free.Now, the "thousand years" can, so far as I can see, be interpreted in one of two ways. One interpretation is that this event is to take place in the sixth and last millennium (the sixth "day"), the latter span of which is now passing, and that when John spoke of the last part of this millennium as a "thousand years" he was using, figuratively, the whole to indicate a part. (After this "sixth day" will come the "sabbath" that has no evening, namely, the endless repose of the blessed.) The other interpretation makes the "thousand years" stand for all the years of the Christian era, a perfect number being used to indicate the "fullness of time." For the number one thousand is the cube of ten. Ten times ten equals one hundred, which is already a square, but still a plane figure. To give it depth and make it a cube, one hundred is further multiplied by ten to make a thousand. Now it is true that the number one hundred is sometimes made to stand for "all." Thus, the Lord promised to anyone leaving all things to follow him, "he shall receive a hundredfold." … How much more properly, then, does the number one thousand stand for the whole, since it is the cube, whereas one hundred is only the square of ten? In the same way there is no better interpretation of the text, "he has remembered his covenant forever: the word that he commanded to a thousand generations," than to take "a thousand" as meaning "all" generations.

  City of God 20.7

• Revelation 20:3

  When he is let loose at last, there will be little time left, since, as we read, he and his [followers] will rage with the fullness of strength only for three years and six months. Moreover, the people upon whom he will make war are to be such people as will be beyond overpowering by his open attacks or hidden ambush. If he were never set free, the full measure of his malevolent power would never be known, nor would the full measure of the holy city's staunchness under fire be put to the test. Likewise, we would not have a full view of the good use to which almighty God puts the devil's great wickedness. For example, [we would not see] how God allows him, even though driven from the saints' inmost hearts which cling to God in faith, to tempt the saints somewhat so that they may profit by these external assaults. We would not see how God, further, has bound him in those who belong to his camp, to make it impossible for him to spill out and set to work such quantities of his evil power as would topple down countless weak souls destined to increase and fill the church. These include already believing people whose constancy the devil would smash, and people destined to believe whom he would frighten from the faith. At last, God will loose him to the end that all people may see how mighty a foe God's city had overcome—all to the immense glory of its Liberator, Helper, Redeemer.… However, it may be asked whether, during the last three years and a half in which the unleashed devil will stage his all-out offensive, any one of these haters [of Christians] is to turn at last to the faith he formerly spurned? Think of the text: "How can anyone enter the strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man?" How can these words remain true if the devil can be dispossessed just as well when he is loosed? The text seems to compel us to believe that the brief interval in question will witness no new conversions to Christianity, but that the devil will do battle only with those who are already Christians at the time of his unleashing—and, of course, any whom he may win over to his side will not have been numbered among the predestined sons of God.

  City of God 20.8

• Revelation 20:3

  The devil was cast into the "abyss," taken in the sense of the countless number of godless people whose bitter hatred of God's church comes from the abysmal depths of their hearts. The devil was cast into those hearts, not in the sense that he was not there before, but because in proportion as he has been more and more shut out from believing hearts, he has taken still deeper hold upon unbelievers. It is bad enough to be a stranger to God, but gratuitously to hate God's servants is to have the devil's hold take even deeper root.… The words "closed it over him" mean that the angel rendered him powerless to escape, that is, forbade him to go beyond bounds. The further verb, "sealed," means, I think, that the angel wants no one to know the secret of who is on the devil's side and who is not. For to be sure, this secret division is absolutely unknowable in this world of time, inasmuch as we have no certainty whether the one who is now upright is going to fall, and the one who is now lying flat is going to rise to righteousness. The nations or people freed from the devil's seductions, in virtue of this restraining and disabling chaining and imprisonment, are those whom he used to lead astray and hold captive but who now belong to Christ. For God chose, before the world was made, to rescue these from the power of darkness and to transfer them into the kingdom of his beloved Son, as Paul says. With respect to others not predestined to eternal life, the devil continues to this very day to lead these people astray and to drag them down into eternal damnation, as every believer knows. And these assertions are not shaken by the fact that the devil often seduces those people, too, who have been reborn in Christ and walk in the ways of God. For "the Lord knows who are his." Of these chosen ones the devil seduces no one to the point of eternal damnation. For the Lord's knowledge of his elect is a divine knowledge and perfect knowledge, wholly unlike the knowledge a person has of his fellow man. Even at the moment of looking, a man can hardly see another man, since he does not see his heart, and he has no foresight at all of how anyone, including himself, is going to turn out in the future.

  City of God 20.7

• Revelation 20:4

  During the "thousand years" when the devil is bound, the saints also reign for a "thousand years" and, doubtless, the two periods are identical and mean the span between Christ's first and second coming. For not only in that future kingdom to which Christ referred in the words, "Come, blessed of my Father, take possession of the kingdom prepared for you," but even now those saints reign with him in some authentic though vastly inferior fashion. To them he said, "Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world." … This, to be sure, is the period in which the scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven brings forth from his storeroom things new and old, as I mentioned above. So, too, the reapers are to gather up out of the church the weeds, which he allows to grow intermixed with the wheat up to the time of harvest.… This certainly cannot be the kingdom that is to be utterly without scandals. The kingdom from which scandals are gathered out, then, must be the church on earth.… The mixed kingdom must be the church, such as she exists in her temporal stage, while the unmixed kingdom is the church such as she will be when she is to contain no evildoer. Consequently the church, even in this world, here and now, is the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of heaven. Here and now Christ's saints reign with him, although not in the way they are destined to reign hereafter; but the "weeds" do not reign with him, even now, though they grow along with the "wheat" in the church.… Those alone reign with Christ whose presence in his kingdom is such that they themselves are his kingdom.… Now it is of this militant stage of the kingdom, during which there is still war with our enemy, alternating victory over, and defeat before, our evil inclinations, that the Apocalypse speaks. The "thousand years" are to last until we come to that kingdom, free of the foe, where the saints reign in fullest peace.… After mentioning the devil's chaining for a thousand years and his brief interval of freedom to follow, John sums up the activity of and in the church during the "thousand years": "And I saw thrones, and men sat upon them and judgment was given to them." Now there is no question of the last judgment in this verse. The thrones and the enthroned people are the prelates who govern the church here and now. And the judgment is best interpreted as the one contained in the words, "Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven."

  City of God 20.9

• Revelation 20:4

  We are to understand as implied by the words that come further on that these souls of the martyrs "reigned with Christ a thousand years"—of course, not yet reunited with their bodies. For the souls of the faithful departed are not divorced from Christ's kingdom, which is the temporal church. If they were, we should not be mindful of them at God's altar in the communion of the body of Christ; nor would there be any point in hastening one's baptism in time of danger, lest one die unbaptized; nor in seeking reconciliation, when one has been cut off from Christ's body by a sinful conscience or by the church's penitential discipline. Why do we go to all this trouble if the faithful departed are not still Christ's members? We may be sure, then, that their souls reign with him, just as their bodies will in time to come, even while the thousand years are rolling on.… We conclude, therefore, that even now, in time, the church reigns with Christ both in its living and departed members. "For to this end Christ died," says Paul, "and rose again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living." If John mentions only the souls of the martyrs, that is because they who have battled for the truth unto death reign in death with a special splendor. But as the part is here used for the whole, we know that the words apply to the remaining faithful who belong to the same church, which is Christ's kingdom.

  City of God 20.9

• Revelation 20:4

  This verse should be applied to both the living and the dead.… As to the identity of the beast in question, there is need of very careful study. Nevertheless, consistently with sound faith, one may take it to be the godless city as opposed to the city of God, men and women without faith as opposed to those who believe. The beast's "image," I think, is his deception as found, for example, in such people as profess the faith yet live like pagans. For they pretend to be what, in fact, they are not, and are called Christians, not because of full faith but of false face. The beast possesses, in addition to the openly avowed enemies of Christ's name and of his glorious city, the "weeds" that are marked for uprooting from his kingdom, the church, at the end of the world. Those who do not follow the beast or his image are surely those who follow Paul's admonition: "Do not bear the yoke with unbelievers." Their not worshiping means their not agreeing with, their not becoming subjects to, unbelievers. Their not accepting his "mark" upon their "foreheads" and "hands" means that they refuse the stigma of false faith and bad morals. Such people, alive or dead, keep themselves aloof from such evils and so reign with Christ, even now, in a fashion befitting the passage of time, throughout this whole era indicated by the "thousand years."

  City of God 20.9

• Revelation 20:5-6

  Anyone who thus participates [in the first resurrection] is one who not only rises from the death of sin but also perseveres in his newfound life. "Over these," says John, "the second death has no power." Therefore, it has power over all the others of whom he said above: "The rest of the dead did not come to life till the thousand years were finished." They may have lived long enough in their bodies, in the period John calls the "thousand years," but they did not rise from the binding death of their ungodliness. If they had, they would have shared in the first resurrection and thus escaped the power of the second death.

  City of God 20.9

• Revelation 20:5

  Now this resurrection regards not the body, but the soul. For souls, too, have a death of their own in wickedness and sins, whereby they are the dead of whom the same lips say, "Suffer the dead to bury their dead," -that is, let those who are dead in soul bury them that are dead in body. It is of these dead, then-the dead in ungodliness and wickedness-that He says, "The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live." "They that hear," that is, they who obey, believe, and persevere to the end. Here no difference is made between the good and the bad. For it is good for all men to hear His voice and live, by passing to the life of godliness from the death of ungodliness. Of this death the Apostle Paul says, "Therefore all are dead, and He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and rose again." Thus all, without one exception, were dead in sins, whether original or voluntary sins, sins of ignorance, or sins committed against knowledge; and for all the dead there died the one only person who lived, that is, who had no sin whatever, in order that they who live by the remission of their sins should live, not to themselves, but to Him who died for all, for our sins, and rose again for our justification, that we, believing in Him who justifies the ungodly, and being justified from ungodliness or quickened from death, may be able to attain to the first resurrection which now is. For in this first resurrection none have a part save those who shall be eternally blessed; but in the second, of which He goes on to speak, all, as we shall learn, have a part, both the blessed and the wretched. The one is the resurrection of mercy, the other of judgment. And therefore it is written in the psalm, "I will sing of mercy and of judgment: unto Thee, O Lord, will I sing."

  The City of God, Book 20

• Revelation 20:5-6

  Compare [John's] other words: "The hour is coming, and now is here, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear shall live"—implying that the rest of the dead (who do not hear) will "not come to life." The added clause, "until the thousand years were finished," means that during that time "the rest of the dead" did "not come to life" as they should by passing over from death to life. Therefore, in the day of the body's resurrection, they will go forth from their tombs, not to life but to "judgment," meaning that condemnation that is called the second death. Anyone at all who will have failed to "come to life" during this millennium, this whole era of the first resurrection, by not hearing "the voice of the Son of God" and by not passing from death to life will certainly, when the second and bodily resurrection comes, pass to the second death, body and soul together.

  City of God 20.9

• Revelation 20:5-6

  Whoever are not liberated from that mass of perdition (brought to pass through the first man) by the one Mediator between God and humankind, they will also rise again, each in his own flesh, but only that they may be punished together with the devil and his angels. Whether these people will rise again with all their faults and deformities, with their diseased and deformed members—is there any reason for us to labor such a question? For obviously the uncertainty about their bodily form and beauty need not weary us, since their damnation is certain and eternal. And let us not be moved to inquire how their body can be incorruptible if it can suffer—or corruptible if it cannot die. For there is no true life unless it be lived in happiness; no true incorruptibility save where health is unscathed by pain. But where an unhappy being is not allowed to die, then death itself, so to say, dies not; and where pain perpetually afflicts but never destroys, corruption goes on endlessly. This state is called, in the Scripture, "the second death."

  Enchiridion 92

• Revelation 20:6

  Here he is speaking not just of bishops and of presbyters (who are now priests in the church) but of all Christians. For just as we call all of them Christs by reason of their mystical chrism, we call them all priests insomuch as they are members of the one Priest. Peter speaks of them as a "chosen race, a royal priesthood." Surely, too, this text implies, however briefly and incidentally, that Christ is God. The words "priests of God and Christ" mean priests of the Father and Son, even though it was in his servant form that Christ was both made Son of man and also ordained a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

  City of God 20.10

• Revelation 20:7

  And therefore during these three years and a half the souls of those who were slain for His testimony, both those which formerly passed from the body and those which shall pass in that last persecution, shall reign with Him till the mortal world come to an end, and pass into that kingdom in which there shall be no death. And thus the reign of the saints with Christ shall last longer than the bonds and imprisonment of the devil, because they shall reign with their King the Son of God for these three years and a half during which the devil is no longer bound. It remains, therefore, that when we read that "the priests of God and of Christ shall reign with Him a thousand years; and when the thousand years are finished, the devil shall be loosed from his imprisonment," that we understand either that the thousand years of the reign of the saints does not terminate, though the imprisonment of the devil does,—so that both parties have their thousand years, that is, their complete time, yet each with a different actual duration approriate to itself, the kingdom of the saints being longer, the imprisonment of the devil shorter,—or at least that, as three years and six months is a very short time, it is not reckoned as either deducted from the whole time of Satan's imprisonment, or as added to the whole duration of the reign of the saints, as we have shown above in the sixteenth book regarding the round number of four hundred years, which were specified as four hundred, though actually somewhat more; and similar expressions are often found in the sacred writings, if one will mark them.

  The City of God, Book 20

• Revelation 20:8

  At that time the devil will have a single objective in his deception, namely, to bring on this battle, rather than deceive by the multifarious means of his previous malice. The expression "will go forth" means that his secret hatred will blaze out into open persecution. For this is to be the very last of all persecutions immediately preceding the very last of all judgments—a persecution that Holy church, the worldwide city of Christ, is to suffer at the hands of the worldwide city of the devil, in every place where the two cities will then extend. The peoples John calls Gog and Magog are not to be thought of as some definite barbarians dwelling in a certain part of the earth, such as the Getae and Massagetae (as some have imagined on account of the initial letters), or any other foreign tribes beyond the pale of the Roman Empire. John clearly indicates that they are to be everywhere in the world, "nations that are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog." Of these names I am told that, literally, Gog means "a roof" and Magog "from the roof." Thus we may take the words to mean an "abode" and a "person issuing from this abode" and, therefore, "the peoples in whom the devil abides as in an abyss" and "the devil himself, lifting himself up and coming out of them." They are the "roof," and he is "from the roof." If … we apply both names to the peoples (rather than the first to them, the second to the devil), then they are the "roof" because the ancient foe is now shut up and roofed over in them, and they will issue "from the roof" when their concealed hatred bursts forth and is revealed in the open.

  City of God 20.11

• Revelation 20:9

  [That they encompassed the beloved city] obviously does not mean that they gathered or will gather in some one place where, we must suppose, the camp of the saints and the beloved city is to be. For, of course, this city is Christ's church, which is spread over the whole world. Wherever his church will be (and it will be among all nations, "over the breadth of the earth"), there is to be the camp of the saints and the beloved city of God. There will she be, surrounded by all her enemies, intermingled with her as they are and will be in every people, girded with the appalling magnitude of that besetting, hemmed in, straitened and encompassed by the pressures of that mighty affliction; but never will [the church] give up her fighting spirit, her "camp," as John says. [The fire from heaven] must not be taken to indicate that supreme punishment of the ungodly, which is to begin only with the words "Depart from me, accursed ones, into the everlasting fire." For it is then that the wicked are to be cast into fire rather than to have fire fall on them. John's words, "fire from heaven," can well be interpreted as symbolizing the staunchness of the saints, their refusal to give in and do the bidding of their raging enemies. For the heavens are called a "firmament," and by its firmness the ungodly will be tormented by blazing zeal, because [they are] powerless to win over Christ's holy ones to the camp of antichrist. This is the devouring fire, and it is said to come from God because it is by God's grace that the saints are to be unconquerable, to the great torment of their foes.

  City of God 20.11-12

• Revelation 20:10

  John goes on to state succinctly the full punishment that is to be meted out in the last judgment to the hostile city and its prince, the devil.… Why has the church been so intolerant with those who defend the view that, however greatly and however long the devil is to be punished, he can be promised ultimately that all will be purged or pardoned? Certainly it is not because so many of the church's saints and biblical scholars have begrudged the devil and his angels a final cleansing and the beatitude of the kingdom of heaven. Nor is it because of any lack of feeling for so many and such high angels that must suffer such great and enduring pain. This is not a matter of feeling but of fact. The fact is that there is no way of waiving or weakening the words that the Lord has told us that he will pronounce in the last judgment: "Depart from me, accursed ones, into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels." In this way he showed plainly that it is an eternal fire in which the devil and his angels are to burn. Then we have the words of the Apocalypse: "and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever." In the one text we have "everlasting," in the other, "forever and ever." These are words that have a single meaning in the divine Scripture, namely, of unending duration.

  City of God 20.14; 21.23

• Revelation 20:11

  John picks up again the theme of the last judgment (which is to accompany the second and bodily resurrection of the dead) and describes the manner of its revelation to him.… Note that he does not say, "One who sat upon it, and from his face earth and heaven fled away," because this "flight" had not yet taken place, that is, not before the judgment of the living and the dead. What he says is that he beheld One sitting on the throne "from whose face earth and heaven fled away"—not then but subsequently. The fact is that it will be after the judgment is completed that heaven and earth will end with the beginning of the new heaven and earth. For it will be by a transformation rather than by a wholesale destruction that this world of ours will pass away. This explains Paul's words: "This world as we see it is passing away. I would have you free from care." It is, to be sure, the visible appearance of the world that is destined to pass away, not its nature.

  City of God 20.14

• Revelation 20:12

  He says he saw scrolls opened, and another scroll, but he makes clear the character of the latter, "which is the book of each person's life." The first scrolls he mentions, then, must represent the holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. These will be opened to show the commandments of God, and the other scroll [will] show how these commandments were kept or disobeyed by each and every person. As for this latter scroll, if one considers it materially, it surpasses all powers of thought for size and length. And if it contains the entire life record of all people, how much time would it take to read it? Are we to suppose that there will be an equal number of angels and people present in the judgment and that each person will hear his life record read out by an angel accredited to him for this task? In this supposition, there would not be one book for all but a book for each. Yet, the Apocalypse wants us to think of one book.… No, the book in question must symbolize some divine action in virtue of which each person will recall his deeds, good or bad, and review them mentally so that, without a moment's delay, each one's conscience will be either burdened or unburdened and thus, collectively and individually, all will be judged at the same moment. And because, in virtue of this divine illumination, each person will, so to speak, read the record of his deeds, God's action is called a "book."

  City of God 20.14

• Revelation 20:13

  Who, now, are these dead people who were in the sea and whom the sea will give up? Surely we are not to think that because a person drowns, his soul does not go to hell, or that his body is preserved in the sea, or—what is still more absurd—that the sea keeps the good dead people and hell the bad ones. No one could entertain such a notion. Surely those are right who take the sea in this text to stand for this world of ours. To indicate, accordingly, that the living who Christ is to find on earth are to be judged along with the arisen dead, John termed the former dead, too. Such are the good "dead" to whom the words were addressed: "For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God." The bad "dead" … are addressed in the verse: "Leave the dead to bury their own dead." There is another reason why living people can be called dead, namely, because they carry around bodies destined for death. This was Paul's thought when he wrote, "The body, it is true, is dead by reason of sin, but the spirit is life by reason of justification"35—a text in which he shows that both life and death exist in a person living in his body, death in his body, life in the spirit.… The sea is said to "deliver up" its dead, because they are presented for judgment living, just as they are; whereas death and hell are said to "give back their dead," because they are actually restored to life. And do not imagine that it would perhaps have been sufficient for John to say death or hell. He said both—death alone for the good people who, although they suffered death, did not go to hell; and hell for the evil people who, after death, suffer the pains of hell.

  City of God 20.15

• Revelation 20:14

  In this verse, "hell and death" stand for the devil (together with the entirety of his followers) inasmuch as he is the author of death and of the torments of hell.

  City of God 20.15

• Revelation 20:14

  There is also a total death for a person, a death of body and soul, namely, when a soul, abandoned by God, abandons the body. In this case, the soul has no life from God and the body no life from the soul. The consequence of such total death is the second death, so called on the authority of divine Revelation. This is the death that our Savior meant when he said, "Be afraid of him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."Since this second death does not occur until soul and body are reunited, never to be separated again, you might wonder how the body is said to die by a death in which it is not deserted by the soul but rather is given a life by the soul to feel the torment it endures. For in a person's last and everlasting punishment the soul is rightly said to be dead when its life from God is gone, but, since the body's life depends on the soul, how can the body be said to be dead? If the body were dead, it could not feel the bodily torments that are to be felt after the resurrection. It is because life of every kind is good, and pain is evil, that we decline to say that that body lives, in which the soul is the cause, not of life, but of pain? The soul, then, lives by God when it lives well, for it cannot live well unless God is the cause of its good works. The body, however, takes its life from the soul when the soul is alive in the body, whether the soul is receiving any life from God or not.… It is true that when a person is finally damned, he does not lose sensation; nevertheless, because his feelings are not gentle enough to give pleasure nor soothing enough to be restful but are purifying to the point of pain, they can more properly be called death rather than life. The reason why this death of damnation is called a second death is that it comes after that first death, which is a divorce of two natures meant to be in union, whether God and the soul or the soul and the body. It can be said of the first death, the death of the body, that it is good for saints and bad for sinners, but of the second that is certainly good for no one and nonexistent for the saints.

  City of God 13.2

• Revelation 20:15

  The "Book of Life" is not for jogging God's memory lest he forget. It is a figure of the predestination of those who are to receive eternal life. We are not to imagine that God does not know them and has to read in his books to find out who they are. On the contrary, the Book of Life is precisely his infallible prescience of those inscribed therein, whose very registration there means only that they are foreknown by him.

  City of God 20.15

• Revelation 21:1

  It is hard to know whether [the sea] will be dried up by the terrible heat of those flames or will itself be transformed into something better. For though we read that there will be a new heaven and earth, I cannot recall having ever seen mentioned a new sea, save perhaps in that verse of the Apocalypse, "a sea of glass similar to crystal." Yet in that passage, John was not talking about the end of the world; moreover, he did not claim to have seen a sea proper, but something like a sea. Still, as prophecy is prone to intermingle the literal and metaphorical and so veil its meaning, it may be that in our present text, "and the sea is no more," John was speaking of the identical sea he spoke of earlier: "And the sea gave up the dead that were in it." For then, this world of ours, made restless and stormy by the lives of men (and, hence, figuratively, called the sea), will have passed away.

  City of God 20.16

• Revelation 21:1

  Having concluded his prophecy of the judgment awaiting bad people, John has to speak of what is to befall the good.… [The new heaven and earth] will happen in the order which he indicated, by anticipation, in the earlier verse where he said he saw sitting on a throne one from whose face heaven and earth fled away. First, to be sure, will come the judgment of those uninscribed in the Book of Life and their consignment to eternal fire.… Afterwards, this world as we see it will pass away, burned away by terrestrial fires, just as the flood was caused by the overflowing of terrestrial waters. This conflagration will utterly burn away the corruptible characteristics proper to corruptible bodies, as such; whereupon our substance will possess only those qualities that are consistent with bodies immortalized in this marvelous transformation—to this end, that the world, remade into something better, will become fit for people now remade, even in their bodies, into something better.

  City of God 20.16

• Revelation 21:1

  Every rational soul is made unhappy by its sins or happy by its well doing. Every irrational soul yields to one that is more powerful, or obeys one that is better, or is on terms of equality with its equals, exercising rivals or harming any it has overcome. Every body is obedient to its soul so far as permitted by the merits of the latter or the orderly arrangement of things. There is no evil in the universe, but in individuals there is evil due to their own fault. When the soul has been regenerated by the grace of God and restored to its integrity and made subject to him alone by whom it was created, its body too will be restored to its original strength, and it will receive power to possess the world, not to be possessed by the world. Then it will have no evil. For the lowly beauty of temporal changes will not involve it, for it will have been raised above change. There will be, as it is written, a new heaven and a new earth, and there souls will not have to do their part in toiling but will reign over the universe. "All things are yours," says the apostle, "and you are Christ's and Christ is God's." And again: "The head of the woman is the man, the head of the man is Christ, and the head of Christ is God." Accordingly, since the vice of the soul is not its nature but contrary to its nature and is nothing else than sin and sin's penalty, we understand that no nature, or, if you prefer it, no substance or essence, is evil.

  OF TRUE RELIGION 23.44

• Revelation 21:2

  This city is said to come down out of heaven in the sense that God created it by means of heavenly grace, as he told it through Isaiah: "I am the Lord creating thee." Indeed, its descent from heaven began with the beginning of time, since it is by God's grace coming down from above through the "laver of regeneration" in the Holy Spirit sent from heaven that its citizenship has continuously grown up on earth. Yet only after God's last judgment, the one he has deputed to Jesus Christ his Son, will his tremendous gift of grace be revealed so brightly in [Jerusalem] that in this new brightness there will remain no traces of its earthly blemishes. For then its members' bodies will pass over from mortal corruptibility to the new immortality of incorruption.

  City of God 20.17

• Revelation 22:11

  "Let the wickedness of sinners be consummated." In this context, "consummated" means "brought to completion," in tune with what is said in the Apocalypse, "Let the righteous become more righteous yet, and the filthy still wallow in their filth." The wickedness of those who crucified the Son of God seems to be complete, but greater still is the wickedness of those who do not wish to live uprightly and hate the commandments of truth for which the Son of God was crucified. The psalmist said, therefore, "Let the wickedness of sinners be consummated," that is, let it come to the pinnacle of wickedness, so that the righteous judgment can come immediately.

  EXPLANATION OF PSALM 7.9

• Revelation 22:13

  As you know, all of you who know the holy Scriptures, among the disciples whom the Lord chose while present in the flesh, Peter was the first to be chosen. Paul … was not chosen among them nor with them, but a long time afterward, though not for all that unequal to them. So Peter is the first of the apostles, Paul the last; while God, whose servants these two are, whose heralds, whose preachers these two are, is "the first and the last." Peter first among the apostles, Paul last among the apostles; God both first and last, before whom nothing and after whom nothing. So God who has presented himself as eternally the first and the last, himself joined together the first and the last apostles in martyrdom.

  SERMON 299.2