The Saviour Himself, while reproving the cities in which He had done great works but which had not believed and while setting them in unfavourable comparison with foreign cities, says, "But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment than for you" - Matt. 11:22 - And a little after He says, "Verily, I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee" - Matt. 11:24 -
Here He most plainly predicts that a day of judgment is to come. And in another place He says, "The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, a greater than Jonah is here. The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the words of Solomon; and behold, a greater than Solomon is here" - Matt. 12:41-42 -
Two things we learn from this passage that a judgment is to take place and that it is to take place at the resurrection of the dead. For when He spoke of the Ninevites and the queen of the south, He certainly spoke of dead persons, and yet He said that they should rise up in the day of judgment. He did not say, "They shall condemn" as if they themselves were to be judges but because, in comparison with them, the others shall be justly condemned. Again, in another passage, in which He was speaking of the present intermingling and future separation of the good and bad - the separation which shall be made in the day of judgment - He adduced a comparison drawn from the sown wheat and the tares sown among them, and gave this explanation of it to His disciples: "He that soweth the good seed is the Son of Man" - Matt. 13:37-43 - Here, indeed, He did not name the judgment or the day of judgment but indicated it much more clearly by describing the circumstances and foretold that it should take place in the end of the world.
In like manner He says to His disciples, "Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the generation, when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel" - Matt. 19:28 - Here we learn that Jesus shall judge with His disciples. And therefore, He said elsewhere to the Jews, "If I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore, they shall be your judges" - Matt.12:27 - Neither ought we to suppose that only twelve men shall judge along with Him, though He says that they shall sit upon twelve thrones; for by the number twelve is signified the completeness of the multitude of those who shall judge. For the two parts of the number seven (which commonly symbolizes totality) that is to say, four and three, multiplied into one another, give twelve. For four times three or three times four, are twelve.
There are other meanings, too, in this number twelve. Were not this the right interpretation of the twelve thrones, then since we read that Matthias was ordained an apostle in the room of Judas the traitor, the Apostle Paul, though he laboured more than them all - 1Cor. 15:10 - should have no throne of judgment; but he unmistakably considers himself to be included in the numbers of the judges when he says, "Know ye not that we shall judge angels? - 1Cor. 6:3 - The same rule is to be observed in applying the number twelve to those who are to be judges. For though it was said, "judging the twelve tribes of Israel and not on the other nations. And by the words "in the regeneration" He certainly meant the resurrection of the dead to be understood; for our flesh shall be regenerated by incorruption, as our soul is regenerated by faith.
many passages I omit because though they seem to refer to the last judgment, yet on a closer examination they are found to be ambiguous or to allude rather to some other event - whether to that coming of the Saviour which continually occurs in His Church, that is, in His members, in which He comes little by little and piece by piece, since the whole Church is His body or to the destruction of the earthly Jerusalem. For when He speaks even of this, He often uses languages which is applicable to the end of the world and that last and great day of judgment, so that these two events cannot be distinguished unless all the corresponding passages bearing on the subject in the three evangelists, Matthew, Mark and Luke, are compared with one another - for some things are put more obscurely by one evangelist and more plainly by another - so that it becomes apparent what things are meant to be referred to one event. It is this which I have been pains to do in a letter which I wrote to Hesychius of the blessed memory, bishop of Salon, and entitled. "Of the End of the World" - Ep. 199 -
I shall now cite from the Gospel according to Matthew the passage which speaks of the separation of the good from the wicked by the most efficacious and final judgment of Christ: "When the Son of Man" he says, "shall come in His glory,... then shall He say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels" - Matt. 25:34-41 -
Then He in like manner recounts to the wicked the things that they had not done but which He had said those on the right hand had done. And when they ask when they had seen Him in need of these things, He replies that, inasmuch as they had not done it to the least of His brethren, they had not done it unto Him and concludes His address in the words, "And these shall go away into everlasting punishment but the righteous into life eternal". Moreover, the evangelist John most distinctly states that He had predicted that the judgment should be at the resurrection of the dead.
For after saying, "The Father judgeth no man but hath committed all judgment unto the Son; that all men should honour the Son even as they honour the Father: he that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father which hath sent Him" He immediately adds, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word and believeth on Him that sent me, Hath everlasting life and shall not come into judgment; but is passed from death to life" - John 5:22-24 - Here He said that believers on Him should not come into judgment. How, then, shall they be separated from the wicked by judgment, and be set at His right hand, unless judgment be in this passage used for condemnation? For into judgment, in this sense, they shall not come who hear His word and believe on Him that sent Him.
6. What is the first resurrection and what the second.
After that He adds the words, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in Himself; so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself' - John 5:25-26 - As yet He does not speak of the second resurrection, that is, the resurrection of the body which shall be in the end but of the first, which now is. It is for the sake of making this distinction that He says, "the hour is coming and now is." Now this resurrection regards not the body but the soul. For souls, too, have a death of their own in wickedness and sins, whereby they are dead of whom the same lips say, "Suffer the dead to bury their dead" - Matt. 8:22 - that is, let those who are dead in soul bury them that are dead in body.
It is of these dead, then-the dead in ungodliness and wickedness- that He says, "The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live" "They that hear" that is, they who obey, believe and persevere to the end. Here no difference is made between the good and the bad. For it is good for all men to hear His voice and live, by passing to the life of godliness from the death of ungodliness. Of this death the Apostle Paul say, "Therefore all are dead and He died for all, that they which live should henceforth live unto themselves but unto Him which died for them and rose again" - 2Cor. 5:14-15 -
Thus all, without one exception, were dead in sins whether original or voluntary sins, sins of ignorance or sins committed against knowledge; and for all the dead there died the one the one only person who lived, that is, who had no sin whatever, in order that they who live by the remission of their sins should live, not to themselves but to Him who died for all, for our sins and rose again for our justification, that we, believing in Him who justifies the ungodly, and being justified from ungodliness or quickened from death, may be able to attain to the first resurrection which now is. For in the first resurrection none have a part save those who shall be eternally blessed; but in the second, of which He goes on to speak, all, as we shall learn, have a part, both the blessed and the wretched. The one is the resurrection of mercy, the other of judgment. And therefore it is written in the psalm, "I will sing of mercy and of judgment: unto Thee, O Lord, will I sing"
And of this judgment He went on to say, "And hath given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man." Here He shows that He will come to judge in that flesh in which He had come to be judged. For it is to show this He says, "because He is the Son of Man." And then follow the words for our purpose: "marvel not at this: for the hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment" - John 5:28-29 -
This judgment He uses here in the same sense as a little before when He says, "He that heareth mu word and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment but is passed from death to life; "i.e. by having a part in the first resurrection by which a transition from death to life is made in this present time, he shall not come into damnation which He mentions by the name of judgment, as also in the place where He says, "but they that have done evil unto the resurrection of judgment" i.e. of damnation. He, therefore, who would not be damned in the second resurrection, let him rise in the first. For "the hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live" i.e. shall not come into damnation which is called the second death; into which death, after the second or bodily resurrection, they shall be hurled who do not rise in the first or spiritual resurrection.
For "the hour is coming" (but here He does not say, "and now is" because it shall come in the end of the world in the last and greatest judgment of God) "when all that are in the graves shall hear His voice and shall come forth." He does not say, as in the first resurrection, "And they that hear shall live." For all shal not live, at least with such life as ought alone to be called life because it alone is blessed. For some kind of life they must have in order to hear, and come forth from the graves in their rising bodies. And all shall not live He teaches in the words that follow: "They that have done good to the resurrection of life" - these are they who shall live; "but they that have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment" - these are they who shall not live, for they shall die in the second death.
They have done evil because their life has been evil' and their life has been evil because it has not been renewed in the first or spiritual resurrection which now is or because they have not persevered to the end in their renewed life. As, then, there are two regenerations, of which I have already made mention - the one according to faith and which takes place in the present life by means of baptism; the other according to the flesh and which shall be accomplished in its incorruption and immortality bu means of the great and final judgment - so are there also two resurrections - the one the first and spiritual resurrection which has place in this life, and preserves us from coming into the second death; the other the second which does not occur now but in the end of the world, and which is of the body, not of the soul, and which by the last judgment shall dismiss some into the second death, others into that life which has no death.
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Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
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