The Risen Body and the Fire

But since the discussion has brought us to the subject of a future judgment, and of what is paid back, and of the punishments of sinners — according to the threats of holy Scripture and the content of the church’s teaching, namely that when the time of judgment comes, everlasting fire, and outer darkness, and a prison, and a furnace, and other punishments of that kind have been prepared for sinners — let us see what our views on these points ought to be. [a]

But so that we may reach these matters in the right order, it seems to me that we ought first to consider the nature of the resurrection, so that we may know what that body is which will come either to punishment, or to rest, or to happiness. I have discussed this question at greater length in other treatises I have written about the resurrection, and have shown there what my views were. Still, for the sake of the logical order of this treatise as well, there will be nothing out of place in restating a few points from those works — especially since some people take offense at the church’s faith, as though our belief in the resurrection were foolish and completely senseless. These are chiefly the heretics, who, I think, are to be answered in the following way.

If they too admit that there is a resurrection of the dead, let them answer us this: what was it that died? Was it not a body? Then it is of the body that there will be a resurrection. Let them tell us next whether they think we are to make use of bodies or not. When the Apostle Paul says that “it is sown a natural body, it will rise a spiritual body,” I think they cannot deny that it is a body that rises, or that in the resurrection we are to make use of bodies. What follows from that? If it is certain that we are to make use of bodies, and if the bodies that have fallen are declared to rise again — for only what has fallen before can properly be said to rise again — then it can be a matter of doubt to no one that they rise again in order that we may be clothed with them a second time at the resurrection. The one thing is bound up with the other. For if bodies rise again, they undoubtedly rise to be coverings for us; and if it is necessary for us to be clothed with bodies, as it certainly is, we ought to be clothed with none other than our own.

But if it is true that these rise again, and that they rise as “spiritual” bodies, there can be no doubt that they are said to rise from the dead after throwing off corruption and laying aside mortality. Otherwise it will look pointless and unnecessary for anyone to rise from the dead only to die a second time. And this, finally, may be grasped more distinctly if a person considers carefully what the qualities are of a natural body which, when sown into the earth, takes on the qualities of a spiritual body. For it is out of the natural body that the very power and grace of the resurrection draw the spiritual body, when they change it from a condition of dishonor into one of glory.

Since the heretics, however, think themselves people of great learning and wisdom, we will ask them whether every body has a form of some kind — that is, is shaped according to some figure. If they say that a body is something shaped according to no figure at all, they will show themselves the most ignorant and foolish of men; no one will deny this except someone entirely without learning. But if, as a matter of course, they say that every body is certainly shaped according to some definite figure, we will ask them whether they can point out and describe to us the shape of a spiritual body — a thing they cannot possibly do. [e]

We will ask them, further, about the differences among those who rise. How will they show this statement to be true: that there is “one flesh of birds, another of fishes; there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies; the glory of the heavenly is one and the glory of the earthly another; one is the glory of the sun, another the glory of the moon, another the glory of the stars; one star differs from another star in glory; and so it is with the resurrection of the dead”? Following the gradation, then, that exists among heavenly bodies, let them show us the differences in the glory of those who rise; and if they have tried by any means to work out a principle that fits the differences among heavenly bodies, we will ask them to assign the differences in the resurrection by a comparison drawn from earthly bodies.

Our own understanding of the passage is this. The apostle, wishing to describe the great difference among those who rise in glory — that is, among the holy ones — borrowed a comparison from the heavenly bodies, saying, “One is the glory of the sun, another the glory of the moon, another the glory of the stars.” And wishing then to teach us the differences among those who will come to the resurrection without having purged themselves in this life — that is, sinners — he borrowed an illustration from earthly things, saying, “There is one flesh of birds, another of fishes.” For heavenly things are worthily compared to the holy ones, and earthly things to sinners. These statements are made in reply to those who deny the resurrection of the dead, that is, the resurrection of bodies.

We now turn our attention to some among our own believers who, either from feebleness of intellect or from a lack of proper instruction, take a very low and mean view of the resurrection of the body. We ask these people in what way they understand that a natural body is to be changed by the grace of the resurrection and become a spiritual one; how what is sown in weakness will rise in power; how what is planted in dishonor will rise in glory; and how what was sown in corruption will be changed into a state of incorruption. For if they believe the apostle, that a body which rises in glory and power and incorruptibility has already become spiritual, then it seems absurd and contrary to his meaning to say that it can be entangled again in the passions of flesh and blood, seeing that the apostle plainly declares that “flesh and blood will not inherit the kingdom of God, nor will corruption inherit incorruption.” [f]

But how do they understand the apostle’s declaration, “We will all be changed”? This transformation is certainly to be looked for, according to the order we have taught above; and in it we may undoubtedly hope for something worthy of divine grace. We believe it will take place in the order in which the apostle describes the sowing in the ground of “a bare grain of wheat, or of some other crop,” to which “God gives a body as it pleases him,” as soon as the grain is dead. For our bodies too are to be thought of as falling into the earth like a grain. A seed is planted in them which holds the substance of the body; and although the bodies die and decay and are scattered abroad, still, by the word of God, that very seed, which is always safe in the substance of the body, raises them from the earth and restores and repairs them — as the power that is in a grain of wheat, after the grain’s decay and death, repairs and restores it into a body with a stalk and an ear.

And so also, for those who will deserve to obtain an inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, that seed of the body’s restoration which we mentioned earlier, at God’s command, brings out of the earthly and natural body a spiritual one, fit to live in the heavens. Meanwhile to each of those who may be of lesser merit, or of a meaner condition, or even lowest of all and altogether thrust aside, there is still given a glory and dignity of body in proportion to the worth of his life and soul — yet in such a way that even the body which rises again of those who are destined for everlasting fire or for severe punishments is made so incorruptible by the very change of the resurrection that it cannot be corrupted and dissolved even by severe punishments. If, then, these are the qualities of the body that will rise from the dead, let us now see what the threat of eternal fire means.

We find in the prophet Isaiah that the fire by which each person is punished is described as his own. He says, “Walk in the light of your own fire, and in the flame you have kindled.” By these words it seems to be indicated that every sinner kindles for himself the flame of his own fire, and is not plunged into some fire already kindled by another, or in existence before him. The fuel and food of this fire are our sins, which the Apostle Paul calls “wood and hay and straw.” [h]

And I think that it works like this. Too much food, and food of a contrary kind and quantity, breeds fevers in the body — fevers of different sorts and different lengths, according to the degree to which the accumulated imbalance supplies matter and fuel for the disease, the quality of that matter, gathered together out of different poisons, being what makes the illness sharper or slower. In the same way, when the soul has gathered together a multitude of evil works and an abundance of sins against itself, at the proper time that whole assembly of evils boils up to punishment and catches fire for chastisement. Then the mind itself, or the conscience, receiving by divine power into its memory all those things of which it had stamped certain marks and shapes upon itself at the moment of sinning, will see a kind of history, as it were, of all the foul and shameful and unholy deeds it has done, laid out before its eyes. Then the conscience itself is harassed, and, pierced by its own goads, becomes an accuser and a witness against itself.

And this, I think, was the opinion of the Apostle Paul himself when he said, “Their thoughts accusing or else excusing one another, in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my good news.” From this it is understood that around the substance of the soul certain torments are produced by the harmful passions of the sins themselves.

And so that the understanding of this matter may not seem very difficult, we may draw some considerations from the evil effects of those passions which commonly befall certain souls: as when a soul is consumed by the fire of love, or wasted away by jealousy or envy, or when the passion of anger is kindled, or a person is eaten up by the greatness of his madness or his grief. On such occasions some, finding the excess of these evils unbearable, have judged it more tolerable to submit to death than to endure torture of that kind forever. [l]

You will ask, of course, about those who have been entangled in the evils that arise from the vices listed above, and who, while they were in this life, were unable to procure any relief for themselves, and departed from the world in that condition. Is it punishment enough that they should be tortured by these harmful passions remaining in them — the anger, that is, or the fury, or the madness, or the grief, whose deadly poison was lessened in this life by no healing medicine? Or will these passions be changed, and they be subjected to the pains of a general punishment?

Now I am of the opinion that another kind of punishment may be understood to exist. Just as we feel that when the limbs of the body are loosened and torn away from the supports they give one another, a pain of the most excruciating kind is produced, so, when the soul is found to be outside the order and connection and harmony in which it was created by God for good and useful action and observation, and not to be in harmony with itself in the connection of its rational movements, it must be considered to bear the chastisement and torture of its own division, and to feel the punishments of its own disordered condition. And when this dissolution and tearing apart of the soul has been tested by the application of fire, it will undoubtedly be made solid again into a firmer structure, and a restoration will be brought about.

There are also many other things which escape our notice, and are known to him alone who is the physician of our souls. For consider what we do about the bad effects we bring on ourselves by eating and drinking. For the health of the body we think it necessary to use some unpleasant and painful drug; sometimes even, if the nature of the disease demands it, the severe treatment of the cutting knife is required; and if the virulence of the disease goes beyond even these remedies, the evil has at last to be burned out by fire. How much more, then, is it to be understood that God our Physician, wanting to remove the defects of our souls which they had contracted from their various sins and crimes, should employ penalties of this sort, and should even apply, in addition, the punishment of fire to those who have lost their soundness of mind! [m]

Pictures of this way of proceeding are found in the holy Scriptures as well. In the book of Deuteronomy the divine word threatens sinners with the punishments of fevers, and chills, and jaundice, and with the pains of failing eyesight, and derangement of mind, and paralysis, and blindness, and weakness of the kidneys. If anyone, then, will gather at his leisure, out of the whole of Scripture, all the lists of diseases which are named in the threats addressed to sinners under the names of bodily illnesses, he will find that either the vices of souls or their punishments are figuratively indicated by them.

That God deals with those who have lapsed and fallen into sin in the same way that physicians apply remedies to the sick, so that by careful treatment they may recover their health, is proved by this: that the cup of God’s fury is ordered, through the agency of the prophet Jeremiah, to be offered to all nations, that they may drink it, and be in a state of madness, and vomit it up. And in doing this he threatens them, saying that if anyone refuses to drink, he will not be cleansed. By which it is certainly understood that the fury of God’s vengeance is useful for the purging of souls.

That the punishment said to be applied by fire is likewise understood to be applied with the aim of healing is taught by Isaiah, who speaks this way of Israel: “The Lord will wash away the filth of the sons and daughters of Zion, and will purge away the blood from among them by the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning.” Of the Chaldeans he speaks this way: “You have coals of fire; sit upon them: they will be a help to you.” And in another passage he says, “The Lord will sanctify in a burning fire.” And in the prophecies of Malachi he says, “The Lord, sitting, will blow, and purify, and will pour out the cleansed sons of Judah.”

But there is also that fate which is mentioned in the Gospels as overtaking unfaithful stewards, who, it is said, are to be divided, and a portion of them placed along with the unbelievers — as though the portion which is not their own were to be sent elsewhere. This undoubtedly indicates some kind of punishment upon those whose spirit, as it seems to me, is shown to be separated from the soul. [p]

For if this Spirit is of divine nature — that is, if it is understood to be a Holy Spirit — we will understand this to be said of the gift of the Holy Spirit. When, whether by baptism or by the grace of the Spirit, the word of wisdom, or the word of knowledge, or any other gift has been bestowed upon a man and has not been rightly administered — buried in the earth, that is, or tied up in a cloth — the gift of the Spirit will certainly be withdrawn from his soul, and the other portion which remains, that is, the substance of the soul, will be assigned its place with the unbelievers, being divided and separated from that Spirit with whom, by joining itself to the Lord, it ought to have been one spirit.

Now if this is not to be understood of the Spirit of God but of the nature of the soul itself, then the better part will be that which was made in the image and likeness of God, while the other part is the one which was afterwards taken on, through the soul’s fall by the exercise of free will, contrary to the nature of its original condition of purity. That part, as the friend and favorite of matter, is punished with the fate of unbelievers.

There is also a third sense in which that separation may be understood. Each believer, even the humblest in the church, is said to be attended by an angel, who is declared by the Savior always to see the face of God the Father; and this angel was certainly one with the person in his keeping. So if that person is rendered unworthy by his want of obedience, the angel of God is said to be taken from him; and then that part of him which belongs to his human nature, being torn away from the divine part, is assigned a place along with the unbelievers, because it has not faithfully kept the warnings of the angel allotted to it by God.

But the outer darkness, in my judgment, is to be understood not so much of some dark air without any light, as of those persons who, being plunged in the darkness of deep ignorance, have been placed beyond the reach of any light of the understanding. We must also consider whether this may perhaps be the meaning of the expression: that as the holy ones will receive, bright and glorious after the resurrection, the bodies in which they lived in holiness and purity in the dwellings of this life, so the wicked too, who in this life have loved the darkness of error and the night of ignorance, may be clothed with dark and black bodies after the resurrection, so that the very mist of ignorance which had taken possession of their minds within them in this life may appear in the future as the outer covering of the body. A similar view is to be taken of the prison. Let these remarks, which have been made as brief as possible so that the order of our discourse might meanwhile be preserved, be enough for the present occasion. [r]