City of God (Penguin Classics) (167 page)

On this question it is right that we should ask what interpretation is to be given to the following saying of the Lord Jesus, ‘This is the bread which comes down from heaven, so that a man may eat it, and never die. I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever’.
⁹¹
The people whom I am answering at the moment have filched their interpretation of this passage from others whom I now have to answer. These others do not promise this liberation to all who enjoy the sacraments of baptism and of the Body of Christ; they restrict it to the Catholics,
⁹²
however unworthy their lives, because, they say, the Catholics have eaten the body of Christ not only in the outward sacrament, but in reality, since they, of course, are established in his Body, the Body of which the Apostle says, ‘We are many; but we are one loaf, and one body.’
⁹³
Thus he who is in the unity of Christ’s Body, that is, the structure composed of Christians who are members of Christ, whose body the faithful habitually take when they communicate at the altar – such a man may be said in truth to eat the body of Christ and to drink Christ’s blood. It follows that heretics and schismatics, being separated from the unity of this Body, are able to take the same sacrament; but it is not for their profit. No, indeed; it is for their harm. It will result for them in a heavier punishment rather than in their liberation, even a delayed liberation. For it is obvious that they are not in that ‘bond of peace’
⁹⁴
which is expressed in this sacrament.

And yet even those who are right on this point, that a person who is not in the Body of Christ cannot be said to eat Christ’s body, are wrong in promising eventual liberation from the fire of eternal punishment to those who have lapsed from the unity of that Body into
heresy, or even into the superstition of the pagan world. They are wrong, in the first place because they have failed to notice, as they should have done, how intolerable it would be, how utterly remote from sound doctrine, that many, and indeed almost all, of those who have left the Church to start impious heresies and have become heresiarchs, should be in a better position than those who never became Catholics because they had fallen into the snares of those heretics. But this would follow, if the heresiarchs are granted freedom from everlasting punishment by the fact that they have been baptized in the Catholic Church and that at the beginning they received the sacrament of the Body of Christ in the true Body of Christ, whereas in fact a deserter of the faith, and one who from a deserter has turned into an opponent, is surely worse than one who has not deserted the faith because he has never possessed it. And they are wrong, in the second place, because they, like those others, are opposed by the Apostle in the words already quoted, when after the list of the results of sensuality he gives the warning that ‘those who behave in this way will never inherit the Kingdom of God.’
⁹⁵

Hence those people who continue to the end of their lives in the fellowship of the Catholic Church have no reason to feel secure, if their moral behaviour is disreputable and deserving of condemnation. They should base no security on consideration of the statement in Scripture that ‘the man who perseveres right up to the end will be saved’,
⁹⁶
while by the wickedness of their lives they desert Christ, who is their righteousness of life, either by fornication or by committing other criminal indecencies of sensuality which the Apostle was unwilling even to name; or by abandoning themselves to depraved self-indulgence; or by doing any of the things about which he says, ‘Those who behave in this way will not inherit the kingdom of God.’ And for that reason, those who behave in that way will inevitably be in eternal punishment, seeing that it will be impossible for them to be in the Kingdom of God. For in persevering in such conduct to their life’s end they are not to be said to have persevered in Christ right up to the end, because to persevere in Christ means to persevere in faith in him; now this faith, in the Apostle’s definition, ‘is active in love’, and ‘love’, as he says in another place, ‘is never active in wrong’.
⁹⁷
It also follows that those people cannot be said to eat Christ’s body, since they are not to be reckoned among the members of Christ. Apart from anything else, they cannot at the same time be members of Christ and
members of a harlot.
⁹⁸
Above all, Christ himself says, ‘Anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me, and I live in him.’
⁹⁹
And thus he shows what it is to eat Christ’s body and to drink his blood not just in the outward sacrament but in the reality; it is to live in Christ so that Christ lives in the believer. For in this statement he is saying, in effect, ‘Anyone who does not live in me, anyone in whom I do not live, must not say or suppose that he eats my body or drinks my blood.’ And so those who are not members of Christ do not live in Christ; and those who make themselves members of a harlot are not members of Christ, unless by repentance they abandon that evil state and return by reconciliation to the other state of good.

Now we shall discover who can be saved ‘through fire’, if we start by discovering what it means to have Christ as one’s foundation. To get at the meaning as quickly as possible from the metaphor itself: the foundation precedes any of the building; and so if anyone has Christ in his heart in the sense that he puts no earthly and temporal thing before Christ – not even those which are lawful and permitted – that man has Christ as his foundation. If he does put such things before
Christ, then even if he appears to hold the Christian faith, Christ is not the foundation in him, since for him Christ takes second place. And if he thinks nothing of the saving commandments and acts unlawfully, he is all the more convicted of putting Christ last instead of first, when he has relegated him to secondary importance as a source of command or permission, and has slighted his commands or his permission in choosing to gratify his sensuality by immoral acts. And so, if a Christian loves a harlot and ‘becomes one body with her by linking himself to her’,
¹⁰²
he no longer has Christ for his foundation, whereas if a man loves his wife, assuming that he loves her according to Christ’s standards,
¹⁰³
then who can doubt that he has Christ as his foundation? But if he loves her in the way of the world, with a sensual love, with an unhealthy lust, in the manner of ‘the pagans who are ignorant of God’, even this the Apostle allows by way of indulgence, or rather Christ does so through his apostle.
¹⁰⁴
It is possible, then, for such a man to have Christ as his foundation. For provided that he does not put any such sensual pleasure before the claims of Christ, then although he builds in ‘wood, hay, and straw’, Christ is the foundation, and for that reason he will be saved ‘through fire’. For pleasures of this kind and the earthly sort of love, which because of the bond of marriage do not incur damnation, will nevertheless be burnt up by the fire of tribulation; and bereavement and any other calamities which put an end to such pleasures are all connected with this ‘fire’. And in this way the building will bring loss to the builder in that he will not keep what he has built on the foundation and he will be tormented by the loss of the enjoyment that certainly gave him delight. Yet he will be saved ‘through fire’ in virtue of that foundation, because if a persecutor had given him the choice between having that enjoyment and having Christ, he would have chosen Christ in preference to those delights.

Now listen to the Apostle describing a man who builds gold, silver, precious stones, on this foundation. ‘The unmarried man’, he says, ‘gives his thoughts to the Lord’s affairs; his aim is to please the Lord’; and then describing the builder in wood, hay and straw, ‘The married man, in contrast, concentrates on worldly matters; his concern is how to please his wife’, and so ‘The work of each builder will be revealed; for the day’ (the day of tribulation, of course) ‘will show it up, since it will be revealed in fire.’
¹⁰⁵
(‘Fire’ is his name for this tribulation, as in another place, where we read, ‘The furnace tests the vessels of the
potter, and the trial of tribulation tests righteous men.’
¹⁰⁶
) ‘And the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If a man’s work on the foundation stands’ (and it is a man’s thoughts on the Lord’s affairs, his aim to please God, that give this permanence) ‘he will get his wages’ (that is, he will receive his reward from the object of his concern); ‘if anyone’s work is burnt down, he will suffer loss’ (since he will no longer have what he was so fond of), ‘but the man himself will be saved’ (because tribulation could never remove him from the firm base of that foundation) ‘but it will be as a man is saved from a fire’ (for he must feel burning pain at the loss of what entranced him when he possessed it). There, then, you have this ‘fire’, as it seems to me, which enriches the one and impoverishes the other; it tests both, while it condemns neither.

On the other hand, we may be inclined to take this fire as being that referred to by the Lord when he says to those on the left, ‘Out of my sight, you accursed, into the eternal fire’,
¹⁰⁷
so that among the accursed, it is believed, are the builders in wood, hay, and straw on that foundation, and they will be released from that fire, after a period imposed on them in retribution for their ill deserts, through the merits of that good foundation. But what view shall we take, on this assumption, about those on the right, to whom it will be said, ‘Come, you that have my Father’s blessing; inherit the kingdom prepared for you’? Must they not be the builders in gold, silver and precious stones on that foundation? But, on this interpretation, both groups, on the right and on the left, are to be consigned to that fire; for, as we see, both groups are to be tested by that fire, of which it is said, ‘The day will show it up, since it will be revealed in the fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work.’
¹⁰⁸
So the fire will test in both cases, and in consequence a man’s work will not be destroyed if his structure stands up under the fire, and he will get his wages, whereas the man whose work is burnt down will suffer loss.

If this is true, that fire is obviously not the eternal fire; for into the eternal fire only those on the left will be sent by the last, the irrevocable, condemnation, while the fire in the present passage tests those on the right as well. But for some the result of that test will be that the structure erected by them on Christ, the foundation, will prove to be such as will not be burnt up and destroyed by the fire. For others there will be a different result; the fire will set on fire their superstructure, and this will mean loss for them; but they will be saved, because they have retained Christ as their firmly laid foundation, with a love exceeding
ceeding their other loves. Moreover, if they are saved, then of course they will take their stand on the right, and will hear, along with the others, this command: ‘Come, you who have my Father’s blessing, inherit the kingdom prepared for you.’ They will not stand on the left, where those will be standing who will not be saved, and who will therefore hear the words, ‘Out of my sight, you accursed, into the eternal fire.’ And from that fire no one will be saved, because all those on the left will go into eternal punishment, ‘where their worm never dies, and the fire is never put out’;
¹⁰⁹
and in that fire they will be tortured day and night for ever and ever.

As for the interval between the death of this present body and the coming of that Day, the day of condemnation and reward which is to be after the general resurrection of the body, it may be alleged that during this interval the spirits of the departed suffer this sort of fire, though it is not felt by those whose ways of living and loving have not been such, in their life in the body, as to have produced ‘wood, hay, and straw’ to be burnt down by the fire. Others, on this theory, feel that fire, because they carry about with them ‘buildings’ of this sort; and such people experience the ‘fire’ of transitory tribulation which reduces these ‘buildings’ to ashes. For these structures belong to this world, although they receive pardon, and do not entail damnation; and the fire may be experienced perhaps only after this life, or both in this life and hereafter, or in this life only and not hereafter.

Now I am not concerned to refute this suggestion, because it may well be true. It is indeed possible that the actual death of the body may form part of this tribulation. This death came into being through the perpetration of the first sin; and it may be that the period which follows death brings to each one an experience suited to the ‘building’ he has erected. The same is true of the persecutions in which the martyrs won their crowns, and which brought suffering to all Christian people; these attacks ‘test’ both kinds of ‘structure’, like a fire. Some ‘buildings’ are destroyed, along with the builders, if Christ is not discovered to be their foundation; others are destroyed, but without the builders, if Christ is so discovered, for ‘the builders themselves will be saved’ although ‘with loss’. But other ‘buildings’ are not destroyed, because they prove to be of such quality as to last for ever.

There will also be tribulation at the end of this world’s history, in the time of Antichrist; and it will be such a tribulation as has never been before. How many buildings will there be then to be tested by
that fire! Some will be of gold, some of straw, built upon the best of foundations, which is Christ Jesus, and so the fire will test both kinds of building, and to the one sort of people it will bring joy, to the others it will bring loss; but it will destroy neither sort in whom it finds those buildings, because of this stable foundation. But anyone who puts any loved objects before Christ does not have Christ for his foundation. I am not speaking only of a man’s wife, when he treats her as a means of sensual pleasure in carnal copulation; I am referring also to those relationships of natural affection where there is no question of such sensual indulgence. If a man loves any member of his family, with a human being’s instinctive affection, in such a way as to put Christ second, then Christ is not his foundation, and for that reason such a man will not be ‘saved by fire’, because it will be impossible for him to be with the Saviour. Indeed Christ made a most explicit statement on this point when he said, ‘Anyone who loves his father or his mother more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who loves a son or a daughter more than me is not worthy of me.’
¹¹⁰
On the other hand, anyone who loves those close relations in this instinctive way, without putting them in front of the Lord Christ, anyone who would prefer to be deprived of them rather than to lose Christ, if he were brought to the test of this dilemma, such a man will be ‘saved through fire’, because the loss of those loved ones will cause him burning pain in proportion to the closeness of his attachment to them. But we may add that anyone who loves father or mother, sons or daughters according to the standards of Christ, so that he is concerned that they may inherit Christ’s kingdom and be united to Christ, or anyone who loves them for the fact that they are members of Christ; it is impossible that such affection should prove to be something that has to be destroyed along with the ‘wood, hay and straw’. This will, beyond dispute, be reckoned as part of the structure of ‘gold, silver, and precious stone’. For if a man loves others entirely for Christ’s sake, how can he love them more than Christ?