What Scripture Calls a World

Now that we have discussed these points about the nature of the world as well as we were able, it does not seem out of place to ask what the word “world” itself means, since holy Scripture is shown again and again to use it in more than one sense. What we call in Latin mundus is called in Greek kosmos, and kosmos means not only a world but also an ornament. In Isaiah, for instance, where the reproof is aimed at the leading women of Zion, and where he says, “Instead of the golden ornament on your head you will have baldness, because of what you have done,” the word he uses for ornament is the same word he uses for the world: kosmos. [a]

The plan of the world is also said to be contained in the clothing of the high priest, as we find in the Wisdom of Solomon, where it says, “For the whole world was in the long robe.” Our own earth, with the people on it, is called the world too, as when Scripture says, “The whole world lies in wickedness.” Clement, in fact, a disciple of the apostles, mentions those whom the Greeks called Antichthones, and other parts of the earth that none of our people can reach and from which no one there can cross over to us; and he called those worlds as well, saying, “The ocean cannot be crossed by men, and the worlds beyond it are steered by these same orders of the Master.” The universe that is bounded by heaven and earth is also called a world, as Paul says: “For the fashion of this world is passing away.”

Our Lord and Savior also points to another world besides this visible one, a world that would in fact be hard to describe or make known. He says, “I am not of this world” — as if he belonged to some other world, he says, “I am not of this world.” Now I said just now that explaining this world is difficult, and for this reason: I do not want to give anyone occasion to suppose that we hold to the existence of certain images which the Greeks call ideas. It is quite foreign to our writers to speak of a bodiless world existing only in the imagination, or in the passing world of our thoughts; and I do not see how they can claim either that the Savior comes from there or that the holy ones will go there. There is no doubt, however, that the Savior is pointing to something more splendid and more excellent than this present world, and is stirring believers up and urging them to aim at it. But whether the world he means is far off and cut off from this one by place, or by nature, or by glory; or whether it is superior in glory and in quality and yet held within the limits of this world, which seems to me the likelier — that remains uncertain, and in my judgment it is not a fit subject for human thought.

But from what Clement seems to hint when he says, “The ocean cannot be crossed by men, and the worlds beyond it” — speaking in the plural of the worlds behind it, and indicating that they are administered and governed by the same providence of the Most High God — he seems to throw out to us some seeds of the view in which the whole universe of existing things, heavenly and above the heavens, earthly and below the earth, is called in general one perfect world, within which, or by which, any other worlds there may be must be supposed to be contained. That is why he wanted the globe of the sun, or of the moon, and of the other bodies called planets, each to be called a world. Even that outstanding globe itself which they call non-wandering they still want properly called a world. And they finally summon the book of Baruch the prophet to witness for the claim, because in it the seven worlds, or heavens, are more clearly pointed out.

Above the sphere they call non-wandering, however, they hold that another sphere exists, one which — exactly as our own heaven contains everything under it — takes in the spaces of all the spheres together within its more magnificent circuit, by its immense size and indescribable extent, so that all things are inside it as this earth of ours is under heaven. This too is believed to be what the holy Scriptures call the good land and the land of the living, with its own heaven, which is higher, and in which the names of the holy ones are said to be written, or to have been written, by the Savior. That earth is shut in and enclosed by that heaven — the earth which the Savior promises in the Gospel to the meek and the merciful. For they hold that our own earth, which was formerly named “Dry,” took its name from the name of that earth, just as our heaven was named “firmament” from the title of that heaven. But we have dealt at greater length with opinions of this kind in the place where we had to ask what is meant by the statement that in the beginning “God made the heavens and the earth.” For another heaven and another earth are shown to exist besides that “firmament” which is said to have been made after the second day, and besides that “dry land” which was afterwards called “earth.”

Certainly, what some say of this world — that it is corruptible because it was made, and yet is not corrupted, because the will of God, who made it and holds it together so that corruption may not master it, is stronger and more powerful than corruption — may be said more correctly of that world we called above a non-wandering sphere. By the will of God it is not subject to corruption at all, for the reason that it has admitted no causes of corruption, since it is the world of the holy ones and of those wholly cleansed, and not of the wicked, as ours is.

We must also consider whether it is not this that the apostle has in view when he says: “While we do not look at the things that are seen, but at the things that are not seen; for the things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are not seen are eternal. For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is taken down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” And when he says elsewhere, “For I will see the heavens, the works of your fingers,” and when God said of everything visible, through the mouth of his prophet, “My hand has made all these things,” he is declaring that the eternal house in the heavens which he promises to his holy ones was not made with hands — pointing out, no doubt, the difference between the creating of things that are seen and of things that are not seen. For “the things that are not seen” and “the things that are invisible” do not mean the same thing. Things that are invisible are not merely unseen; they do not even have the property of being visible, being what the Greeks call asomata, that is, bodiless. But the things Paul says “are not seen” do have the property of being seen; they are simply, as he explains, not yet beheld by those to whom they are promised.

Having sketched these three opinions about the end of all things and about the highest blessedness, so far as we could understand them, let each of our readers decide for himself, with care and diligence, whether any one of them can be approved and adopted. [q]

For it has been said that we must suppose one of three things. Either that an existence without a body is possible, once all things have been made subject to Christ and through Christ to God the Father, when God will be all and in all. Or that, when all things have been made subject to Christ and through Christ to God — with whom they have also come to form one spirit, spirits being rational natures — then bodily substance itself, united to the purest and most excellent spirits and changed into an ethereal condition in proportion to the quality or the merits of those who take it on (as the apostle says, “We also shall be changed”), will shine out in splendor. Or at the least that, when the fashion of the things that are seen has passed away, and all corruption has been shaken off and cleansed away, and when the whole stretch of this world in which the spheres of the planets are said to lie has been left behind and beneath, then the fixed dwelling place of the devout and the good is reached, above that sphere which is called non-wandering, as in a good land, in a land of the living, which the meek and gentle will inherit. To that land belongs the heaven which surrounds and contains the land itself with its more magnificent extent, and which is called heaven truly and above all; and in that heaven and that earth the end and perfection of all things may be safely and most confidently placed.

There, once they have been taken in hand and disciplined, by way of cleansing, for the offenses they committed, and have fulfilled and discharged every obligation, they may deserve a dwelling in that land; while those who have obeyed the word of God, and have shown by that obedience that they are capable of wisdom, are said to deserve the kingdom of that heaven, or of those heavens. And so the prediction is more worthily fulfilled: “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth,” and, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they will inherit the kingdom of heaven,” and the statement in the Psalm, “He will lift you up, and you will inherit the land.” For coming to this earth is called a descent, but coming to the one on high an exaltation. In this way, then, a kind of road seems to be opened up by the departure of the holy ones from that earth to those heavens, so that they do not so much seem to stay in that land as to live in it with a purpose — to pass on to the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven, once they have reached that degree of perfection too.