City of God (Penguin Classics) (152 page)

Now some people have assumed, in view of this passage, that the
first resurrection will be a bodily resurrection. They have been particularly excited, among other reasons, by the actual number of a thousand years, taking it as appropriate that there should be a kind of Sabbath for the saints for all that time, a holy rest, that is, after the labours of the six thousand years since man’s creation, when in retribution for his great sin he was expelled from paradise into the troubles of this mortal condition. Scripture says, ‘With the Lord, one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day’,
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and, on this assumption, there follows, after the completion of six thousand years – six of these ‘days’ – a kind of seventh day of Sabbath rest for the final thousand years, with the saints rising again, obviously to celebrate this Sabbath.

This notion would be in some degree tolerable if it were believed that in that Sabbath some delights of a spiritual character were to be available for the saints because of the presence of the Lord. I also entertained this notion at one time. But in fact those people assert that those who have risen again will spend their rest in the most unrestrained material feasts, in which there will be so much to eat and drink that not only will those supplies keep within no bounds of moderation but will also exceed the limits even of incredibility. But this can only be believed by materialists; and those with spiritual interests give the name ‘Chiliasts’ to the believers in this picture, a term which we can translate by a word derived from the equivalent Latin, ‘Millenarians’. It would take too long to refute them in detail; we ought instead to show how this scriptural passage is to be taken.

Now the Lord Jesus Christ himself says, ‘No one can get into the house of a strong man and carry off his property, without first tying up the strong man.’
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By the ‘strong man’ he intends us to understand the Devil, because the Devil had the power to take the human race into captivity. The ‘property’ that Christ was to carry off represents those whom the Devil held in his possession; but they were to become Christ’s faithful followers. It was to tie up this ‘strong man’ that the angel, in the apostle’s vision in the Apocalypse, was ‘descending from heaven, holding in his hand the key of the abyss and a chain’. And ‘he seized the dragon’, he says, ‘that serpent of old, whose other names are the Devil, and Satan, and he chained him up for a thousand years.’ That means that he put a check and a bridle on his power to lead astray and to hold in possession those who were to be set free.

Now the thousand years, as it seems to me, can be interpreted in
two ways. It may indicate that this event happens in the last thousand years, that is, in the sixth millennium, the sixth day, as it were, of which the latter stretches are now passing, and a Sabbath is to follow that has no evening, the rest, that is to say, of the saints, which has no end. Thus our author used the term ‘a thousand years’ to denote the last part of this millennium – or ‘day’ – which remained before the end of the world, employing the figure of speech by which the whole stands for the part. Alternatively, he may have intended the thousand years to stand for the whole period of this world’s history, signifying the entirety of time by a perfect number. For, of course, the number 1,000 is the cube of 10, since 10 multiplied by 10 is 100, a square but plane figure; but to give height to the figure and make it solid 100 is again multiplied by 10, and we get 1,000. Moreover, it seems that 100 is sometimes used to stand for totality; for example, the Lord promised anyone who left all his possessions and followed him that he would ‘receive a hundredfold in this world’,
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and we may say that the Apostle is explaining this when he speaks of ‘seeming to have nothing, and yet possessing everything’,
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because at an earlier time it has been said that ‘the entire world is included in the wealth of a man of faith.’
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If this is so, how much more does 1,000 represent totality, being the square of 10 converted into a solid figure! Hence when we read in the psalm, ‘He has always remembered his covenant, the word which he gave to a thousand generations’,
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there is no better interpretation of those words than by taking ‘a thousand generations’ as signifying ‘all generations’.

‘And he threw him’, says John, ‘into the abyss’, meaning, clearly, that he cast the Devil into the abyss; and ‘the abyss’ symbolizes the innumerable multitude of the impious, in whose hearts there is a great depth of malignity against the Church of God. Not that the Devil was not in them before; but the reason why he is said to be thrown there is that when he is excluded from believers he starts to have a greater hold on the irreligious. For any person is more securely in the Devil’s possession when he is not only estranged from God but goes on to conceive a gratuitous hatred for God’s servants.‘And he shut it up’, it continues, ‘and sealed it over him, so that he could no more lead astray the nations until the thousand years should be ended.’ ‘Shut it up’ means that ‘the angel put a ban on the Devil, so that he could not come our’ he was forbidden to pass the barrier – to ‘transgress’. While the addition of ‘and sealed it’ seems to me to signify that God wished it
to be kept a secret who belongs to the Devil’s party, and who does not. For in this world, to be sure, this is kept a secret, since it is uncertain whether he who seems to be standing firm is destined to fall and whether he who seems to lie fallen is destined to rise again.

Now because he is bound and shut up by this ban the Devil is prohibited and inhibited from leading astray the nations which belonged to Christ but were in time past led astray by him or held in his grip. For God chose those nations before the foundation of the world, to ‘rescue them from the power of darkness and transfer them to the kingdom of his beloved Son’, as the Apostle says.
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For there is no one among the faithful who is not aware that the Devil even now leads nations astray and drags them off with him into eternal punishment; but not those peoples destined for everlasting life. No one should be disturbed by the fact that the Devil often leads astray even those who have already been reborn in Christ and are walking in the ways of God. For ‘the Lord knows those who belong to him’;
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and the Devil leads none of them astray into eternal condemnation. For the Lord knows them, as God knows (from whom nothing is hidden, not even any of the things yet to be) not as a man knows; for a man sees another man as he is at that time (if indeed he really sees him, when he does not see his heart), but he does not see what kind of a man even he himself is to become in the future. This, then, is the purpose for which the Devil is bound and shut up in the abyss; so that he may no longer lead astray the nations of which the Church is made up, nations whom he led astray and held in his grip before they were a Church. For what is said is not ‘that he should not lead anyone astray’ but ‘that he should not lead
the nations
astray’, by which the writer undoubtedly meant the Church to be understood; ‘until the end of the thousand years’, that is, either what remains of the sixth day (which consists of one thousand years), or all the years to come which will complete the history of the world.

As for the words, ‘so that he should no longer lead astray the nations until the thousand years should be ended’, this statement is not to be taken as implying that he will afterwards lead astray only those nations of which the predestined Church is composed, which he had formerly been prevented from seducing by the fact that he was bound and shut up in the abyss. But there are two possibilities: either the saying employs that mode of expression which is found with some frequency in Scripture, as for example in the psalm which says, ‘So
our eyes are fixed on the Lord our God until he has mercy upon us’,
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which does not mean that when God has shown mercy the eyes of his servants will cease to be fixed on him; or else the true sequence of the sentence is, ‘And he shut it up and sealed it over him until the end of the thousand years’; and the significance of the interpolated clause, ‘so that he should not lead the nations astray’, is not to be understood from its place in the sentence, but separately; in fact, as if it were added at the end. Thus the whole sentence would run, ‘And he shut it up and sealed it above him until the thousand years should be ended, so that he could no longer lead the nations astray’; that is, the reason why he shut him up until the thousand years should be ended, was to prevent him from leading the nations astray.

Now this refers to the last judgement; but I thought it should be quoted at this point for a particular reason: to prevent anyone from supposing that in the short time when the Devil will be let loose there will be no Church on this earth, either because he will find no Church here when he is unloosed or because he will have annihilated it by all
kinds of persecutions. And so the Devil is bound throughout the whole period embraced by the Apocalypse, that is, from the first coming of Christ to the end of the world, which will be Christ’s second coming, and the meaning of the binding is not that he ceases to seduce the Church during that interval called ‘the thousand years’, as is shown by the fact that when unloosed he is evidently not destined to lead it astray. For assuredly if his binding meant that he is unable, or not allowed, to lead it astray, his unloosing can only mean that he is now able, or permitted, to do so. But God forbid that this should be the case! Instead, what the binding of the Devil means is that he is not permitted to exert his whole power of temptation either by force or by guile to seduce men to his side by violent compulsion or fraudulent delusion. For if he were permitted for so long a time, a time when so many were so insecure, he would overthrow very many of the faithful or prevent very many from believing, and those would be the kind of men to whom God did not will that this should happen. It was to prevent his achieving this that he was bound.

But the Devil will be unloosed when the ‘short time’ comes; for we are told that he is going to rage with all his strength, and with the strength of his supporters for three years and six months.
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And yet those against whom he has to wage war will be the kind of people who cannot be conquered by his great attack and all his stratagems. But if he had never been unloosed his malign power would not have been so clearly seen, and the endurance of the Holy City would never have been so clearly proved in its utter faithfulness; above all it would not have been so manifest what good use the Omnipotent was to make of the Devil’s great wickedness. The Omnipotent did not debar him altogether from putting the saints to the test; but he threw out the Devil from their inner man, the seat of belief in God, so that they might profit from his outward assault. And he tied him up among those who belong to his party, lest by pouring out his malice and exercising it to the utmost of his power he should hinder or break down the faith of countless weak persons, by whom the Church was to be filled up and multiplied, destroying the faith of some who already believed, hindering the faith of others who were on the point of believing. In the end the Omnipotent will unloose him, so that the City of God may behold how powerful a foe it has overcome, to the immense glory of its Redeemer, its Helper, its Deliverer. What are we, to be sure, in comparison with the saints and believers of the future, seeing that so mighty an adversary will be let loose against them,
whereas we have the greatest peril in our struggle with him although he is bound? And yet there is no doubt that even during this period of time there have been, and there are today, some soldiers of Christ so wise and brave that even if they were living in this mortal condition at the time when the Devil is to be unloosed, they would take the most prudent precautions against his stratagems, and withstand his assaults with the utmost steadfastness.

Now this binding of the Devil was not only effected at the time when the Church began to spread beyond the land of Judaea into other nations, at various times; it is happening even now, and will continue to happen until the end of the age, when he is to be unloosed. For even now men are being converted to the faith from the unbelief in which the Devil held them in his power, and without doubt they will go on being converted to the end of the age; and this ‘strong man’ is obviously being bound in the case of every man who is snatched away from him, as part of his property. And the abyss in which he is confined is not done away with when those are dead who were alive at the time when he was first shut up; others have taken their place, as new generations are born, and they go on being replaced until this age comes to an end. These are men who hate the Christians, and in the dark depths of their hearts the Devil is shut up every day, as in an abyss. On the other hand, it is a matter of some question whether during those last three years and six months, when the Devil is unloosed and will be raging with all his strength, anyone will join the faith who has not previously been of the faith. For if the ‘property of the strong man’ is snatched away even when the strong man is unloosed, that would be inconsistent with the statement that no one ‘enters the house of a strong man to take off his property, without first tying up the strong man’.
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It seems, therefore, that this statement forces us to suppose that in that period, brief though it is, no one will join the people of Christ, but the Devil will do battle with those who are found to be already Christians; and although some of them will be defeated and will follow the Devil, they will not be people belonging to the predestined number of the sons of God. For it is not for nothing that the same apostle John who wrote this Apocalypse says of some people, in his epistle, that ‘they went out from our company, but they did not really belong to us; if they had belonged to us, they would have stayed with us.’
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But what happens to the little ones? For it would be too incredible to suppose that at that time there will be no infant children of Christians,
already born, who will be caught unbaptized, or that none will be born during that very period; or that if there are such, they will not somehow or other be brought by their parents to the ‘washing of rebirth’.
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And yet if this happens, how are those pieces of ‘property’ to be snatched away from the Devil when he is unloosed, seeing that ‘no one enters his house, to take off his property, without first binding him’? But in fact we must in preference believe that there will be instances both of people falling away from the Church and of new members being added, even in that period. We may be sure that there will be sufficient courage shown by parents in seeking baptism for their little ones and by those who come to believe for the first time in that period to give them victory over that ‘strong man’, even though he is not bound – that is, even though he plots with all his tricks and attacks with all his strength, those people will have the vigilance to be aware of him and the endurance to withstand him, and so his’ property’ will be snatched from him even though he is not bound.

That will not mean that the statement in the Gospel will be proved false, that no one ‘enters the house of a strong man, to take off his property, without first binding the strong man’. For the truth of the statement is seen in the observance of this order: first comes the binding of the strong man, then the seizure of his property; and this is followed by such a multiplication of the Church among all nations far and wide, by the accession of both strong and weak, that as a result of a robust confidence in things divinely predicted and fulfilled, the Church is strong enough to carry off the Devil’s property even though he has been unloosed. It is indeed true that we have to admit that ‘since wickedness abounds, the love of many people grows cold’,
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and that those who are not entered in the book of life will give way in large numbers before the unexampled magnitude of the persecutions and deceptions of the Devil, now unloosed; it is equally true that we must suppose that the good whom that time shall find faithful will prevail over the Devil. And besides those there are some who up to that time have been outside the Church, who will then, with the help of God’s grace, and by the study of the Scriptures (in which is foretold, besides other things, the very end which they now perceive approaching) become more resolute to believe what they did not believe before, and strong enough to overcome the Devil, even when unloosed. If this is what will happen, then the binding of the Devil must be said to come first, so that there may follow the seizure of his goods, both when he is bound and when he is unloosed; for this is the
meaning of the words, ‘Who will enter the house of a strong man, to take away his property, without first binding the strong man?’