Not a Figure of Speech

To knock down every notion of this kind, let me first clear away the assumption they rest on: their claim that the prophets deliver everything they announce in figures of speech. If that were so, the figures themselves could never have been picked out, since the real things would never have been stated — the things the figurative language is stretched over. And in fact, if everything is a figure, where is the thing the figures are figures of? How can you hold up a mirror to your face if the face does not exist anywhere? The truth is that not everything is a figure; there are plain statements too. Not everything is a shadow; there are bodies as well. So we have prophecies about the Lord himself that are clearer than daylight. [a]

It was not in a figure that the virgin conceived in her womb, and not by a turn of speech that she bore Emmanuel — that is, Jesus, God with us. Even granting that it was in a figure that he was to take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria, it was in plain fact that he was to “enter into judgment with the elders and the rulers of the people.” For in Pilate “the nations raged,” and in Israel “the peoples plotted in vain”; “the kings of the earth” in Herod, and the rulers in Annas and Caiaphas, “were gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed.” Again, he was “led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a sheep is silent before its shearer” — that is, before Herod — “so he did not open his mouth.” “He gave his back to the whips and his cheeks to blows, and did not turn his face away even from the shame of being spat on.” “He was counted among the lawbreakers.” “They pierced his hands and his feet.” “They cast lots for his clothes.” “They gave him gall, and made him drink vinegar.” “They shook their heads and jeered at him.” “He was priced by the traitor at thirty pieces of silver.” Where are Isaiah’s figures of speech here? Where are David’s turns of phrase? Where are Jeremiah’s allegories? Not even about his mighty works did they speak in parables. Or were the eyes of the blind not opened? Did the tongue of the mute not get its speech back? Did slack hands and buckling knees not grow strong, and did the lame man not leap like a deer?

We do, of course, regularly give these prophecies a spiritual sense as well, on the pattern of the bodily illnesses the Lord healed. But they were all fulfilled in plain fact just the same, which shows that the prophets foretold both senses at once — except that a great many of their words can only be taken in a pure, straightforward sense, with no allegorical fog about them at all. So it is when we hear of the fall of nations and cities, of Tyre and Egypt, of Babylon and Edom, and of the fleet of Carthage; and so it is when they foretell Israel’s own punishments and pardons, its captivities, its returns, and at last its final scattering. Who would rather pin a metaphorical meaning on all these events than take them as literally true? The realities are wrapped up in the words, just as the words are read off from the realities. So the allegorical manner is not used throughout the prophetic record, though it does turn up here and there in parts of it.

“Well then — if it turns up here and there in parts of it, why not in that phrase, where the resurrection could be taken in a spiritual sense?” There are several reasons why not. First: what are we to make of so many weighty passages of Holy Scripture that testify to the resurrection of the body so openly that they leave no room even for the look of a figurative meaning? And since some passages are more obscure than others, it must surely be right — as I showed earlier — that uncertain statements be settled by certain ones, and obscure ones by those that are clear and plain. Otherwise there is a danger that, in the clash of the certain with the uncertain and of the explicit with the obscure, faith will be smashed, truth put at risk, and God himself charged with inconsistency. [g]

Then there is how unlikely it is that the very mystery our whole trust rests on, and our whole teaching depends on, should look as if it had been announced ambiguously and laid out obscurely. For the hope of resurrection, unless it is set out clearly on both sides — punishment as well as reward — would never persuade anyone to take up a religion like ours, hated in public as it is and charged with hostility to everyone else. Nobody works with certainty when the pay is uncertain. Nobody is truly afraid when the danger is only a maybe. And both the paying out of the reward and the danger of losing it hang on how the resurrection turns out. Now if even God’s designs against cities and nations and kings — which are merely matters of one time, one place, one person — were proclaimed so clearly in prophecy, how are we to suppose that his arrangements which are eternal, and which concern the whole human race, should have no real light in them at all? The grander they are, the plainer the announcement ought to be, so that their greater greatness may be believed. And I take it that God can have no envy laid to his charge, no trickery, no inconsistency, no cunning — the vices that make any scheme of unusual grandeur get published in a form open to dispute.

After all this we must turn our attention to the passages of Scripture that forbid us to believe in the kind of resurrection your soul-men hold to — I will not call them spirit-men — namely, that it either has to be taken as happening now, as soon as a person comes to the knowledge of the truth, or else that it is finished the moment he leaves this life. Since the seasons of our whole hope have been fixed in Holy Scripture, and since we are not allowed, as I understand it, to put its completion any earlier than Christ’s coming, our prayers sigh after the end of this world — after its passing away at the great day of the Lord, the day of his wrath and his vengeance, the last day, which is hidden from everyone and known to no one but the Father, though it is announced in advance by signs and wonders, by the breaking up of the elements, and by the clashing of nations. [i]

I would bring out the words of the prophets if the Lord himself had said nothing — except that the prophecies were the Lord’s own word anyway. But it serves my purpose better that he confirms what they said with his own mouth. When his disciples asked him when the things would happen that he had just been saying about the destruction of the temple, he ran through for them first the order of Jewish events down to the overthrow of Jerusalem, and then the events that concerned all nations, right up to the end of the world. For after declaring that “Jerusalem was to be trampled by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles should be fulfilled” — meaning, of course, the Gentiles who were to be chosen by God and gathered in with the remnant of Israel — he goes on to proclaim against this world and this order of things (just as Joel did, and Daniel, and all the prophets with one voice) that “there will be signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars, distress of nations at their wits’ end, the sea and the waves roaring, people’s hearts failing them for fear and for expecting what is coming on the earth.” “For,” he says, “the powers of heaven will be shaken; and then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with power and great glory. And when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

He spoke of it “drawing near,” not of its being here already, and of those things “beginning to happen,” not of their having happened. For when they have happened, then our redemption will be at hand — the redemption that is said to be on its way up until that moment, lifting our minds and stirring them toward what is by then the near harvest of our hope. He immediately attaches a parable of this: the trees that are tenderly budding into a flower-stalk, and then bringing on the flower, which comes before the fruit. “So you also,” he adds, “when you see all these things happening, know that the kingdom of heaven is near.” “Keep watch, then, and pray always, so that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things and to stand before the Son of Man” — at the resurrection, plainly, after all these things have been gone through first. So although there is a budding when we acknowledge this whole mystery, the flower is only brought on and the fruit only borne when the Lord himself is actually present.

Who, then, has roused the Lord — who is now at God’s right hand — so out of season and so harshly, to “shake terribly,” as Isaiah puts it, “that earth” which, so far as I can see, is still unshattered? Who has put “Christ’s enemies under his feet” this early, to use David’s words, making him more hurried than the Father, while every crowd at our public gatherings is still shouting “the Christians to the lions”? Who has yet seen Jesus coming down from heaven in the same way the apostles saw him go up, as the two angels declared he would? Right up to this moment they have not, tribe by tribe, beaten their breasts as they look on the one they pierced. Nobody has yet run into Elijah. Nobody has yet escaped Antichrist. Nobody has yet had to mourn the fall of Babylon. And is there anyone who has risen already, apart from the heretic? He, of course, has already walked out of the grave of his own corpse — though he still catches fevers and ulcers. He has already trampled his enemies — though he still has to struggle with the powers of the world. And naturally he is a king already — though he still owes Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.

The apostle does teach, in his letter to the Colossians, that we were once dead, estranged, and enemies of the Lord in our minds while we were living in wicked works; and that we were then buried with Christ in baptism, and also raised again with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. “And you,” he adds, “when you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made alive together with him, having forgiven you all your offenses.” And again: “If you have died with Christ to the elements of the world, why, as though you were living in the world, do you go on handing down rulings?” Now since he makes us dead in a spiritual sense — yet in such a way as to grant that one day we shall have to undergo a bodily death — so also, holding that we have been raised in a like spiritual sense, he equally grants that we shall have to undergo a bodily resurrection besides. [m]

In short, he says: “Since you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at God’s right hand. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things on the earth.” So it is in the mind that he shows we rise with Christ, since as things stand that is the only part of us able to reach heavenly things. We would not “seek” them, or “set our minds” on them, if we already had them in hand. He adds as well: “For you are dead” — to your sins, he means, not to yourselves — “and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” And a life that is hidden has not yet been laid hold of. In the same way John says: “And it has not yet appeared what we shall be; but we know that when he is made known, we shall be like him.” We are a long way from being already what we do not even know about; we would certainly know it if we were already like him. So what he speaks of is the looking at our blessed hope, even in this life, by faith — not its being present, not its being owned, only its being expected.

About this expectation and hope Paul writes to the Galatians: “For through the Spirit we wait for the hope of righteousness by faith.” He says “we wait for it,” not that we have it. And by the righteousness of God he means the judgment we shall have to undergo as the repayment for what we have done. It is in expectation of this for himself that the apostle writes to the Philippians: “If by any means,” he says, “I might reach the resurrection of the dead. Not that I have already reached it, or am already perfect.” And yet he had believed, and had known all mysteries, as a chosen vessel and the great teacher of the Gentiles; for all that, he goes on to say: “But I press on, to see whether I may lay hold of that for which I was also laid hold of by Christ.” More than that: “Brothers,” he adds, “I do not count myself to have laid hold of it. But this one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and reaching out toward what is ahead, I press toward the mark, for the prize of blamelessness, by which I may reach it” — meaning the resurrection from the dead at its proper time. It is as he says to the Galatians: “Let us not grow tired of doing good, for at the proper season we shall reap.” In the same way he writes to Timothy about Onesiphorus: “May the Lord grant him to find mercy on that day.” And it is up to that day and time that he charges Timothy himself “to keep what was entrusted to him, without spot and beyond reproach, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ — which he will show at his own times, who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords,” meaning God. It is to these same times that Peter refers in Acts, when he says: “Repent, then, and turn back, so that your sins may be wiped out, when the times of refreshing come from the presence of the Lord, and he sends Jesus Christ, who was preached to you beforehand — whom heaven must receive until the times of the restoring of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of his holy prophets.”

What sort of times these are, learn along with the Thessalonians. For we read: “how you turned from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead — Jesus.” And again: “For what is our hope, or joy, or crown to boast in? Is it not you yourselves, in the presence of our Lord God Jesus Christ at his coming?” And likewise: “before God our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with the whole company of his holy ones.” He teaches them that they must “not grieve over those who have fallen asleep,” and at the same time explains to them the times of the resurrection: “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. This we tell you by the word of the Lord: that we who are alive and are left until the coming of our Lord will not go ahead of those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord.” [r]

What archangel’s voice, I wonder, what trumpet of God is being heard now — unless it is at the heretics’ parties? For grant that the word of the good news may be called “the trumpet of God,” since it was still calling people. Even so, at that moment they must either be dead so far as the body goes, so that they can rise again — and then how are they alive? — or else caught up into the clouds — and then how are they still here? “Most pitiable of all,” as the apostle declared, are those who are found to have hope “in this life only.” They will have to be shut out, since they are grabbing too early at what is promised after this life, going wrong about the truth no less than Phygelus and Hermogenes did.

That is why the Holy Spirit, in his greatness, seeing all interpretations of this kind clearly in advance, prompts the apostle in this very letter to the Thessalonians as follows: “But about the times and the seasons, brothers, there is no need for me to write to you. For you yourselves know perfectly well that the day of the Lord comes like a thief in the night. For when they say ‘Peace’ and ‘Everything is safe,’ then sudden destruction will come upon them.”

Again, in the second letter he speaks to them still more earnestly: “Now I beg you, brothers, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and by our being gathered together to him, that you not be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or by a word” — that is, the word of false prophets — “or by a letter” — that is, the letter of false apostles — “as though from us, saying that the day of the Lord is here. Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come unless the falling away comes first” — he means the falling away of the present empire — “and that man of sin is revealed” — Antichrist, that is — “the son of destruction, who sets himself against and exalts himself above everything called God or religion, so that he sits in God’s temple, declaring that he is God. Do you not remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things? And now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains must restrain until he is taken out of the way.” And what is that obstacle but the Roman state, whose falling away — its being scattered into ten kingdoms — will bring Antichrist in upon its own ruins? “And then the wicked one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of his mouth and destroy with the brightness of his coming — the one whose coming is according to the working of Satan, with every kind of power and signs and lying wonders, and with every deceit of unrighteousness among those who are perishing.”