The City of God by Augustine - 20 - On the Day of Judgment
Book Twenty
Quote
📝 For that day is properly called the day of judgment, because in it there shall be no room left for the ignorant questioning why this wicked person is happy and that righteous man unhappy. In that day true and full happiness shall be the lot of none but the good, while deserved and supreme misery shall be the portion of the wicked, and of them only.
Notes
🔥 Augustine turns to speak about the final day of judgment. Today good people suffer and bad people enjoy blessings. We do not understand why this is so, but on the day of judgment we will. And suffering for good people will end.
🔥 He refers to passages in the New Testament where Jesus discusses the day of judgment. Augustine infers from this that we will be judged according to how we lived, as Jesus says the way we treat "the least of these" is the equivalent of how we treat him.
🔥 Jesus will defeat the devil, who now has free reign over the earth.
🔥 There is a lot of symbolic language in the Bible about judgment day, but Augustine does his best to interpret it, including dates and certain lengths of time. There will be a period of 1000 years where Jesus will reign with the saints. And then after that the devil will be loosed upon the world. Or something like that...?
🔥 The earth will not be destroyed on judgment day, according to Augustine: "For when the judgment is finished, this heaven and earth shall cease to be, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth. For this world shall pass away by transmutation, not by absolute destruction."
🔥 He quotes a passage from Revelation: "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, but neither shall be any more pain: because the former things have passed away. And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new."
🔥 Jesus won't come back though until Satan has come first to seduce those dead of the soul. The Bible also says our bodies will be resurrected from the dead. There is also some evidence, says Augustine, that purgatory is a thing. And the Jews shall come to believe in Jesus.
Reflection
💬 Augustine's interpretation of the Bible continues to feel arbitrary, and working back from his conclusion. Even the strange symbols in Revelation, he believes he can uncover the meaning using reason. And there's this confusing passage:
"For He (Jesus) said this with reference to the form of a servant, speaking of a future event as if it were past ... but the past tense is used to express the future. And prophecy constantly speaks in this way."
Not sure what to do with that, but there have been places earlier where Augustine has commented on the relationship between the past and the future, and that the best history is the kind that can tell us about the future. Not sure what to do with that, but there it is.