Read City of God (Penguin Classics) Online
Authors: Saint Augustine
City of God (Penguin Classics) (140 page)
47.
Were there any citizens of the heavenly City outside the race of Israel before the Christian era?
For the same reason, if it has come, or if it ever came, to our knowledge that any foreigner (I mean by that someone not born of the race of Israel, and not given a place by that people in the canon of holy
Scripture) has written any prophecy about Christ, he can be quoted by us by way of surplus. It is not that we should stand in need of his support, if such a one failed to appear; but there is nothing far-fetched in the belief that among other peoples besides the Jews there existed men to whom this mystery was revealed, and who were compelled to go on to proclaim what they knew. It may be that they shared in the same gracious gift of God; or perhaps they did not, but were taught by evil angels; for those spirits, as we know, acknowledged Christ in his presence,
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when the Jews did not recognize him. And I do not imagine that the Jews dare to maintain that no one has ever belonged to God apart from the Israelites, from the time when the line of Israel began, on the rejection of his elder brother. Now it is a fact that there was no other people to bear the distinctive title of the people of God; for all that, the Jews cannot deny that in other nations also there have been some men who belonged not by earthly but by heavenly fellowship to the company of the true Israelites, the citizens of the country that is above. In fact, if the Jews deny this, they are very easily proved wrong by the example of Job, that holy and amazing man. He was neither a native of Israel nor a proselyte (that is, a newly admitted member of the people of Israel). He traced his descent from the race of Edom; he was born in Edom; he died there. And such is the praise accorded him in inspired utterances that no man of his period is put on the same level as far as righteousness and devotion are concerned. And although we do not find his date in the
Chronicle
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we gather from the book of Job (which the Israelites received into their authoritative canon on its own merits) that he belonged to the time of the third generation after Israel.
I have no doubt that it was the design of God’s providence that from this one instance we should know that there could also be those among other nations who lived by God’s standards and were pleasing to God, as belonging to the spiritual Jerusalem. But it must not be believed that this was granted to anyone unless he had received a divine revelation of ‘the one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus’
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whose future coming in a material body was fore-announced to the saints of antiquity, just as his coming has been announced to us as something achieved, so that one and the same faith may lead to God, through him, all who are predestined for the City of God, which is God’s house and God’s temple. Nevertheless, all the prophecies which are produced from non-Jewish sources concerning
the grace of God through Jesus Christ may be supposed to be Christian fabrications. That is why there is no surer way of refuting the ‘foreigners’ of whatever breed, in an argument on this subject, nothing more effective to bring them over to our side, if they are really intelligent, than to produce the inspired predictions about Christ in the texts of the Jewish Scriptures. For the expulsion of the Jews from their own home, and their dispersal throughout the world with a view to this testimony has resulted in the increase of the Church of Christ in every quarter of the globe.
48.
Haggai’s prophecy of the future glory of God’s house finas fulfilment in the Church of Christ
This House of God is of greater glory than was that former house built of wood and precious stones and other costly materials and metals. Thus the prophecy of Haggai
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was not fulfilled in the restoration of that earlier temple, for at no time after the restoration can it be shown to have had as great a glory as the temple had in Solomon’s time. The truth is rather that the diminished glory of that house is demonstrated first in the cessation of prophecy, and then by great disasters of the nation itself down to the final destruction at the hands of the Romans, as witnessed by the record of events given above.
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In contrast, this house of ours, which belongs to the new covenant, has assuredly a greater glory in that its stones are of more worth; for they are ‘living stones’,
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and the building is constructed of these men who believe and who have themselves been created anew. And yet this new house was symbolized in the restoration of that temple, just because the very renewing of the temple symbolizes in a prophetic message the second covenant, the ‘new covenant’, as it is called. Thus, when God said, through the mouth of the prophet just mentioned, ‘And I shall grant peace in that place’,
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the word ‘place’ is symbolic, and by it we are to understand the person whom it symbolizes. And so the re-building ‘in that place’ stands for the Church which was destined to be built by Christ; and the only acceptable meaning of the saying, I shall grant peace in this place’ is, I shall grant peace in the place which this place symbolizes.’
The fact is that all things with symbolic meaning are seen as in some way acting the part of the things they symbolize; for instance, the Apostle says, ‘That rock was Christ.’
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because the rock in
question undoubtedly symbolized Christ. And so the glory of this house, the new covenant, is greater than the glory of the former house, the old covenant, and it will be seen to be even greater when it is dedicated. For then ‘will come the one who is longed for by all nations’,
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as the Hebrew reads. Now his first coming was not yet longed for by all nations, for they did not know of him whom they were destined to long for, in whom they had not yet believed. Then too, in the version of the seventy translators (and their rendering is also prophetic), ‘will come the chosen of the Lord from all nations.’ For then, in truth, none but the elect will come, and it is of them that the Apostle says, ‘Just as he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world.’
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Then, we may be sure, the master builder himself, who said, ‘Many are called, but few are chosen’,
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is going to show us a house, built not of those who were called but came in such a way that they were thrown out of the feast,
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but of those who have been chosen. And that house will thereafter dread no downfall, whereas at the present time when churches are made up of those, among the rest, who will be separated out as by a winnowing from on the threshing floor; and so the glory of this house is not shown in the splendour which will be seen, when all who make up the house are those who will be there for ever.
49.
The mixture of elect and reprobate in the Church
In this wicked world, and in these evil times, the Church through her present humiliation is preparing for future exaltation. She is being trained by the stings of fear, the tortures of sorrow, the distresses of hardship, and the dangers of temptation; and she rejoices only in expectation, when her joy is wholesome. In this situation, many reprobates are mingled in the Church with the good, and both sorts are collected as it were in the dragnet of the gospel;
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and in this world, as in a sea, both kinds swim without separation, enclosed in nets until the shore is reached. There the evil are to be divided from the good; and among the good, as it were in his temple, ‘God will be all in all.’
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In fact, we men recognize the fulfilment of the words of the speaker in the psalm, who said, I have made an announcement and said: “They are multiplied beyond counting.” ’
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This has now been happening, ever since Christ spoke first through the mouth of John,
his forerunner, and then by his own mouth, and said, ‘Repent; for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near.’
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Christ chose disciples, whom he also called ‘apostles.’ They were men of humble birth, without position, without education, so that if there was any greatness in them or in their doings that greatness would be Christ himself present in them and acting in them. He had one among their number whom, though evil, he used for good, both to fulfil his destiny of suffering and to present to his Church a pattern of forbearance with wicked men. After sowing the seed of the holy gospel, as far as it belonged to him to sow it through his bodily presence, he suffered, he died, he rose again, showing by his suffering what we ought to undergo for the cause of truth, by his resurrection what we ought to hope for in eternity, to say nothing of the deep mystery by which his blood was shed for the remission of sins. Then he spent forty days on earth in the company of his disciples, and in their sight ascended into heaven. Ten days after that he sent the Holy Spirit he had promised; and the greatest and most unmistakable sign of the Spirit’s coming to those who believed was that every one of them spoke in the languages of all nations; thus signifying that the unity of the Catholic Church would exist among all nations and would thus speak in all languages.
50.
The preaching of the Gospel made powerful through the sufferings of the preachers
Then was fulfilled the prophecy: ‘Out of Sion the law will go forth, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem’,
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and the prediction of the Lord himself, when after his resurrection his disciples were dumbfounded and ‘he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures; and he said to them: “You see that the Scriptures say that Christ was bound to suffer, and to rise again on the third day; and that in his name repentance and forgiveness of sins would be preached among all nations, starting from Jerusalem.” ’
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Again, when they asked him about his last coming, he answered by saying, ‘It is not for you to know the times; the Father has reserved them for his own authority. But you will receive the power of the Holy Spirit when it comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and throughout the whole of Judaea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’
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The Church first spread from Jerusalem, and when a great number of people in Judaea and Samaria had believed, other nations were
reached, the gospel being announced by those whom Christ himself had prepared like lamps, for he had trimmed them with his word and set them alight with the Holy Spirit. Now Christ had said to his disciples, ‘Do not be afraid of those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.’
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And to prevent their being frozen with fear they burned with the fire of love. Finally, the gospel was proclaimed throughout the whole world, not only by the disciples who had seen and heard him both before his passion and after his resurrection, but also after their death by their successors, amid terrible persecutions and the manifold tortures and deaths of martyrs. And God bore witness by signs and manifestations and varied acts of power and by the gifts of the Holy Spirit, so that the peoples of the Gentiles – believing in him who was crucified for their redemption – might reverence with Christian love the blood of the martyrs which they had shed in their diabolical fury, and so that the very kings, by whose laws the Church was being devastated, might for their salvation become subject to the name which they had ruthlessly tried to remove from the earth and might begin to persecute the false gods, in whose interests the worshippers of the true God had hitherto been persecuted.
51.
The Catholic faith actually strengthened by the heretics
The Devil, however, seeing that the temples of demons were being abandoned, and that the human race was hastening to take the name of the Mediator who sets men free, stirred up heretics to oppose Christian doctrine – though they bore the Christian name – as if they could be retained indiscriminately in the City of God without reproof, just as the city of confusion
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retained indifferently the philosophers who held diverse and contradictory opinions. Just so there are those in the Church of Christ who have a taste for some unhealthy and perverse notion, and who if reproved – in the hope that they may acquire a taste for what is wholesome and right – obstinately resist and refuse to correct their pestilent and deadly dogmas, and persist in defending them. These become heretics and, when they part company with the Church, they are classed among the enemies who provide discipline for her. Even so they undoubtedly benefit by their wickedness the genuine, catholic members of Christ, since God makes good use even of the wicked, and ‘makes all things co-operate for good for those who love him’,
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In fact, all the enemies of the Church, however blinded
by error or depraved by wickedness, train the Church in patient endurance if they are given the power of inflicting bodily harm, while if they oppose her only by their perverse notions they train her in wisdom. Moreover they train her in benevolence, or even beneficence, so that love may be shown even to enemies, whether this takes the form of persuasive teaching or of stern discipline.
Thus even the Devil, the prince of that irreligious city, when he brings his instruments to bear upon the City of God on pilgrimage in this world, is permitted to do her no harm. Without any doubt, the providence of God provides her with the consolation of prosperity so that she is not shattered by adversity, and wih the discipline of adversity so that she is not corrupted by prosperity. And he so tempers the one with the other that we recognize here the source of that saying in the psalm, ‘According to the multitude of the sorrows in my heart, your consolations have gladdened my soul.’
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Hence also the words of the Apostle, ‘Rejoicing in hope, steadfast in tribulation.’
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For we must not imagine that there can be any time when this saying of the same teacher fails to be true, ‘All who want to live a devout life in Christ suffer persecution.’
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Because even when those who are outside do not rage and there seems to be, and really is, tranquillity, which brings great consolation, especially to the weak, even so there are always some, inside indeed there are many, who by their unprincipled behaviour torment the feelings of those who live devout lives. For such people cause the name of ‘Christian’ and ‘Catholic’ to be defamed. And the dearer this name is to those who want to live a devout life in Christ, the more they grieve that evildoers within the Church make that name less beloved than the hearts of the devout long for it to be. Besides this, when the heretics themselves are thought to have the Christian name and the sacraments, the Scriptures, and the creed, they cause great grief in the hearts of the devout. This is because many who wish to be Christians are forced to hesitate by then-dissensions, and many slanderers find also among the heretics material for the defamation of the name of Christian, because these heretics too are called, in a manner of speaking, Christians. Owing to this kind of discreditable behaviour and this sort of human error, those who want to lead a devout life in Christ suffer persecution, even though they endure no physical violence or bodily torment. For they suffer this persecution not in their bodies but in their hearts. Hence the psalmist says, ‘according to the multitude of sorrows in my heart’ – not ‘in my body.’
Again, the divine promises are thought of as unchangeable, and the Apostle says, ‘The Lord knows his own; for those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be fashioned in the likeness of his Son.’
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It follows that none of these can perish. That is why the psalm continues, ‘Your consolations have gladdened my soul.’ For the actual grief that arises in the hearts of the devout who are persecuted by the behaviour of bad Christians or false Christians is of profit to those who grieve, since it issues from a love which makes them hate the thought that these persecutors should perish or should hinder the salvation of others. Above all, great consolations appear also when they are brought out of error; and those consolations overflow the souls of the devout with a joy as great as were the pains that tormented them at the thought of their perdition.
In this manner the Church proceeds on its pilgrim way in this world, in these evil days. Its troubled course began not merely in the time of the bodily presence of Christ and the time of his apostles; it started with Abel himself, the first righteous man slain by an ungodly brother; and the pilgrimage goes on from that time right up to the end of history, with the persecutions of the world on one side, and on the other the consolations of God.