Pillar III · Fathers, Saints & Teachers
St. Augustine on the Last Judgment
In the twentieth book of The City of God, St. Augustine gathers what Scripture says about the end. His reading of the thousand years of Revelation 20 as the present age of the Church became the common reading of the Church in the West. And on the hardest verse in 2 Thessalonians, the greatest of the Latin Fathers simply says: “I frankly confess I do not know what he means.”
Home › Fathers, Saints & Teachers › Augustine on the Last Judgment
At a glance
| Who | St. Augustine (354–430), bishop of Hippo in North Africa, convert, preacher and the most influential theologian of the Latin Church |
|---|
| Standing | Father of the Church Doctor of the Church one of the four great Latin Doctors, so named by Pope Boniface VIII in 1298 |
|---|
| The work | The City of God, twenty-two books written over many years after the sack of Rome in 410, contrasting the city of God and the earthly city. Book XX treats the last judgment; Books XXI and XXII treat hell and heaven. |
|---|
| Translation | Marcus Dods, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 2, at New Advent and, chapter by chapter, at CCEL |
|---|
| Weight | Very great. His reading of Revelation 20 shaped the Church's teaching against millenarianism. Yet Augustine himself marks many points as uncertain, and on those his opinions remain opinions. |
|---|
Why Augustine matters here
Augustine had once expected a thousand-year reign of the saints on earth, and he changed his mind. Book XX shows why. Reading Revelation alongside the Gospels and Paul, he concluded that the reign of Christ with his saints is not a future political kingdom but the life of the Church now, already sharing in the risen life of Christ, and waiting for the judgment at the end. The Church has followed him in rejecting millenarianism (CCC 676).
He is just as valuable for his honesty. He separates what Scripture plainly teaches from what is obscure, and he says so when he does not know. That is the spirit in which this site tries to read the prophecies.
Book XX, chapter by chapter
“Intending to speak, in dependence on God's grace, of the day of His final judgment, and to affirm it against the ungodly and incredulous, we must first of all lay, as it were, in the foundation of the edifice the divine declarations.”
- Teaching
- God judges all through history, Augustine grants, but this book is about the last judgment, when Christ will come from heaven to judge the living and the dead. He builds his case from Scripture: first the New Testament, the words of Christ and the apostles and the Apocalypse, then the prophets of the Old Testament.
- The Church's teaching
- Christ will come in glory to judge the living and the dead (CCC 678–682).
“Now this resurrection regards not the body, but the soul.”
- Teaching
- Revelation says of those who reign with Christ, “This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection” (Revelation 20:5–6). Augustine reads this first resurrection as the soul's rising from the death of sin to new life in Christ, “the first and spiritual resurrection, which has place in this life, and preserves us from coming into the second death.” The second is the resurrection of the body at the end of the world, in which all have a part, “both the blessed and the wretched.” He sums it up: “The one is the resurrection of mercy, the other of judgment.”
- Why two labels
- The first resurrection is unfolding now in everyone who comes to faith; the resurrection of the body is still to come. The Catechism teaches the same pattern: united with Christ by Baptism, believers already share in the risen life of Christ, though that life remains hidden until the last day (CCC 1002–1003).
“…for I myself, too, once held this opinion.”
- Teaching
- Some Christians took the thousand years of Revelation 20 as a sabbath on earth after the resurrection, when the risen saints would “enjoy the leisure of immoderate carnal banquets.” Those who hold this are called Chiliasts, “which we may literally reproduce by the name Millenarians.” Augustine admits that the idea “would not be objectionable, if it were believed that the joys of the saints in that Sabbath shall be spiritual,” and that he himself once believed a version of it. But he no longer reads the text that way.
- He offers two ways to take the number. Either John speaks of the last part of history as a thousand years, or, more likely, “he used the thousand years as an equivalent for the whole duration of this world,” a perfect number standing for fullness of time.
- Why mystery
- The Church has rejected millenarianism, the expectation of an earthly messianic kingdom before the end, “even modified forms” of it (CCC 676). But she has not defined how the thousand years must be counted; Augustine's two options are both his own interpretation.
“Therefore the Church even now is the kingdom of Christ, and the kingdom of heaven.”
- Teaching
- The binding of Satan (Revelation 20:2–3) does not mean he does nothing. It means “his being prevented from the exercise of his whole power to seduce men”; he is shut up in the hearts of the wicked “as in an abyss,” and the Church chosen by God “shall never be seduced by him.” At the end he will be loosed for a short time, so “that the city of God may see how mighty an adversary it has conquered” (20.8).
- And so the reign of the saints is now: “even now His saints reign with Him, though otherwise than as they shall reign hereafter.” The souls of the martyrs reign with him too, “while these thousand years run on” (20.9).
- Afterward
- This became the Church's common reading. The Catechism teaches that the Kingdom of Christ is already present in mystery in the Church, its seed and beginning on earth, though not yet fulfilled in glory (CCC 669–671).
“For these nations which he names Gog and Magog are not to be understood of some barbarous nations in some part of the world…”
- Teaching
- When the thousand years are over, Satan “will go out to deceive the nations at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle” (Revelation 20:8). People in Augustine's day guessed which barbarian tribes these were. He refused: John “marks that they are spread over the whole earth.” Gog and Magog are the enemies of the Church wherever they are, and the camp they surround (Revelation 20:9) “is nothing else than the Church of Christ extending over the whole world” (20.11).
- He identifies this final assault with the persecution of the Antichrist, and holds, with the other Fathers, that it is short: “This last persecution by Antichrist shall last for three years and six months” (20.13).
- Note
- Augustine's refusal to map Gog and Magog onto particular peoples is a lesson for every age. This site does not identify them with any nation. See Ezekiel 38–39.
“I frankly confess I do not know what he means.”
- Teaching
- Augustine is certain of the main line of 2 Thessalonians 2: Christ will not come to judge until the Antichrist has come, and the Lord will destroy him. But Paul writes, “And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his time” (2 Thessalonians 2:6), and the Thessalonians knew because Paul had told them in person. Augustine did not, and says so. He reports the views he has heard: “Some think that the Apostle Paul referred to the Roman empire,” and wrote obscurely so as not to be accused of wishing it ill; others take “the mystery of lawlessness” (2 Thessalonians 2:7) to mean the wicked and the hypocrites who are in the Church, until they go out from it.
- His other cautions
- Where will the Antichrist sit? “But it is uncertain in what temple he shall sit, whether in that ruin of the temple which was built by Solomon,” or in the Church. And to those who said that Nero would rise again as the Antichrist, or had never died, he answers: “I wonder that men can be so audacious in their conjectures.”
- Why mystery
- The Church has never defined what or who the restrainer is. If St. Augustine could say “I do not know,” so can we. See 2 Thessalonians 2:6–7.
“But he who reads this passage, even half asleep, cannot fail to see that the kingdom of Antichrist shall fiercely, though for a short time, assail the Church before the last judgment of God shall introduce the eternal reign of the saints.”
- Teaching
- Daniel saw “four beasts, signifying four kingdoms,” and the fourth overcome by a king “who is recognized as Antichrist.” Daniel's “a time, two times, and half a time” (Daniel 7:25) Augustine takes to mean “a year, and two years, and half a year, that is to say, three years and a half.” Then the Ancient of Days sits in judgment and the kingdom is given to the holy ones (Daniel 7:9–27).
- His restraint
- On which empires the four beasts stand for, Augustine does not argue. He notes that “Some have interpreted these four kingdoms as signifying those of the Assyrians, Persians, Macedonians, and Romans,” and sends readers who want the details to St. Jerome's commentary on Daniel. What matters to him is plain even to a sleepy reader: a short, fierce trial, then the eternal kingdom.
- See also
- Daniel 7: the four beasts and the little horn.
“Elias the Tishbite shall come; the Jews shall believe; Antichrist shall persecute; Christ shall judge; the dead shall rise; the good and the wicked shall be separated; the world shall be burned and renewed.”
- Teaching
- At the close of Book XX Augustine sums up what Scripture leads the Church to expect at or around the judgment. Then he adds the sentence that governs the whole list: “All these things, we believe, shall come to pass; but how, or in what order, human understanding cannot perfectly teach us, but only the experience of the events themselves.”
- Why two labels
- The events are future, and several belong to the Church's faith: Christ's judgment, the resurrection of the dead, the new heavens and new earth (CCC 1038–1042). Their order and manner are a mystery that, Augustine says, only the events themselves will make clear. That is the opposite of a timetable.
Where Augustine is sure, and where he is notAugustine is certain that Christ will come to judge, that the dead will rise, that a last persecution under the Antichrist will be short, and that the saints will reign forever. He is also certain that the thousand years are not an earthly kingdom of carnal delights. But he marks as uncertain the restrainer, the temple, the identity of Daniel's kingdoms and the order of the last events, and he scorns guesses about Nero. He names no ruler of his own day as the Antichrist and sets no date.
For reflection
Reigning with Christ now
Augustine says the saints already reign with Christ, and that the first resurrection happens in this life. What would it mean for me to live today as someone already raised with Christ, not waiting for the end to begin belonging to his kingdom?
Sources
- St. Augustine, The City of God, Book XX, trans. Marcus Dods, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 2, ed. Philip Schaff (1887), New Advent; chapters 1, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 19, 23 and 30 at CCEL
- Catechism of the Catholic Church 669–682, 1002–1003, 1038–1042
Continue