70. The Day of Judgement
TRANSLATION
Devil] presented [Antichrist] as his sole companion, and (he says) the beast was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months.14 When that son of perdition will have been struck down either by the Lord himself or by the archangel Michael, as some teach, and damned with an eternal verdict, it is not to be believed that the Day of Judgement will arrive immediately. Otherwise, the men of that age would be able to know the time of the Judgement, if it followed immediately upon the three and a half years after the beginning of Antichrist's persecution.
Everyone is allowed to know that the Day of Judgement will not come before that persecution is completed; but it is granted to no one to know how long after the end of that persecution it will come. Therefore the prophet Daniel, who writes that the reign of Antichrist will be for 1,290 days, concludes thus: Blessed is he who waits and comes to one thousand three hundred and thirty-¢ve days.15 Jerome explains it in this way: He says, blessed is he who, after Antichrist is slain, waits until the forty-¢fth day after the 1,290 days, that is, three and a half years, when the Lord and Saviour shall return in his majesty. But why there should be 45 days of silence after the slaying of Antichrist, is known to God alone, unless perhaps we might say that the postponing of the Kingdom is a test of the patience of the saints.16
70. THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT
For the day of the Lord shall come as a thief because, as He himself declares, we know not when He will come, whether in the evening, or in the middle of the night, or /540/ at cock-crow, or in the morning.17 Then the heavens, [St Peter] says, shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.18 What these heavens are which shall pass away, the same Apostle Peter teaches a little earlier on, saying: By the word of God the heavens were of old, the Earth standing outofthewaterandinthewater, wherebytheworldthatthenwas perished.
But the heavens and Earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto ¢re in the Day of Judgement.19 Not, therefore, the 14 Apocalypse 13.5.
15 Daniel 12.12.
16 Jerome, In Dan. 4.12.12 (943.671^944.677).
17 Mark 13.35.
18 II Peter 3.10.
19 II Peter 3.5^7.
THE RECKONING OF TIME
¢rmament of heaven in which the ¢xed stars revolve,20 nor the ethereal heaven, that is, that great empty space between the starry heaven and our troubled atmosphere, full of pure and tranquil diurnal light, in which it is believed that the seven wandering stars roam, but this heaven of air [aerium],21 the one close to the Earth, from which the birds [aues] of heaven that £y therein take their name,22 which the waters of the Flood once destroyed when they over£owed the annihilated Earth23 ^ this [heaven] the ¢re of the Last Judgement will destroy, extending as far as [this heaven] and battening upon it.24 Not only does the statement of St Peter25 in which he says that those heavens which the £ood waters destroyed are to be destroyed by the ¢re of Judgement, testify that the starry heaven will not be touched by this ¢re, no matter how great it will be, but so also does the word of the Lord which says: Immediately after the tribulation of those days the Sun will be darkened, and the Moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven.26 For the Sun could not be darkened, nor the Moon deprived of light, nor could the stars fall from heaven, if the heaven itself (that is, their place) were to perish, consumed by ¢re. So at that time the airy heaven will shrivel up in ¢re,
[but the heaven] of the stars will remain undamaged.27 In fact, the heavenly bodies will be darkened, not by being drained of their light, but by the force of a greater light at the coming of the Supreme Judge, on the supposition that they [merely] appear to be concealed, which sometimes happens to the Moon and all the stars because of the greater power of the Sun. But when there will be a new heaven and a new Earth after the Judgement ^ which is not one [heaven and Earth] replacing another, but these very same ones [which] will shine forth, having been renewed by ¢re and glori¢ed by the power of the Resurrection ^ then, as Isaiah predicts: The light of the Moon will be as the light of the Sun, and the light of the Sun will be sevenfold, as the light of seven days.28 John
20 Cf. Bede, The Nature of Things 25.
21 Cf. Bede, In Gen. 1.21 (21.631^22.649).
22 The source of this etymology is unknown. It is not one of those o¡ered by Isidore, Etym. 12.7.3.
23 Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram 3.2 (63.22^64.10).
24 Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 101(II).13 (1448.6^12).
25 II Peter 3.5^7.
26 Matthew 24.29.
27 Augustine, DCD 20.24 (744.15^745.71).
28 Isaiah 30.26.
TRANSLATION
states in the Apocalypse: And I saw a new heaven and a new Earth, for the ¢rst heaven and the ¢rst Earth had passed away, and he adds, and there was no more sea.29 Whether the sea will be dried up by that mighty heat, or whether it will also be transformed into something better, is not evident. We read that there will be a new heaven and a new Earth, but nowhere do we read that there will be a new sea. /541/ For this statement,
And there was no more sea, can be understood allegorically, for then this world [saeculum], turbulent with the life of mortal men, which is often represented in Scripture by the word ''sea'', will be no more.
When this critical moment of the Last Judgement will take place is sought in many places. However, it is agreed that when the resurrection of all the dead takes place in the twinking of an eye30 at the descent of the Lord to judgement, the saints will be immediately caught up to meet
Him in the air. The Apostle is understood to indicate this when he says:
For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with the cry of command, with the archangel's call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise ¢rst; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.31 But whether the reprobate as well will be lifted above the Earth to meet the Judge when He comes, or whether the deserts of the sinners will weigh so heavily that even though they have immortal bodies they will be incapable of rising on high, it would appear more likely that, with the Lord presiding in judgement, the saints would take their place on high at his right hand, and [the reprobate] lower down on his left. But if at that time that lofty and mighty ¢re covers the whole surface of the Earth, and if the wicked who rise from the dead cannot be caught up on high, it is understood that, as one might expect, they would await the Judge's verdict standing on earth and surrounded by ¢re.
But who would dare to decide in advance whether they will be burned by [this ¢re], who are not to be punished by it, but rather are to be condemned to eternal ¢re? For St Augustine in Book 20 of The City of God understands from the statements of the prophets that some of the elect will be purged by this [¢re] from certain less serious sins.32 And in his homilies on the Gospel, the holy Pope Gregory explains this passage
29 Apocalypse 21.1.
30 I Corinthians 15.52.
31 1 Thessalonians 4.15^16.
32 Cf. Augustine, DCD 20.26 (750.61^70).