Augustine of Hippo

The apostle’s words show with the utmost clarity that there will be a resurrection of the dead when Christ comes; and assuredly the purpose of his coming will be to judge the living and the dead. But it is continually being asked whether those whom Christ is to find living in this world (represented in the apostle’s picture by himself and his contemporaries) are never to die at all, or whether in that precise moment of time when they are caught up in the clouds, along with those rising again, to meet Christ in the air, they will pass with marvelous speed through death to immortality. For it must not be said that it is impossible for them to die and come to life again in that space of time when they are being carried on high through the air.… The apostle himself seems to demand that we should take his words in this sense; that is, we should take it that those whom the Lord will find alive here will undergo death and receive immortality in that brief space of time. He confirms this interpretation when he says, “In Christ all men will be brought to life,” and by his statement in another passage, dealing directly with the resurrection of the body: “The seed you sow does not come to life unless it first dies.”

Of course, even good men can be sick, suffering from that disobedience which is the penalty of a primal disobedience which, therefore, is a wound or weakness in a nature that is good in itself. It is because of this wound that the good who are growing in grace and living by faith during their pilgrimage on earth are given the counsels, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so you will fulfill the law of Christ,” and elsewhere, “We exhort you, brothers, reprove the irregular, comfort the fainthearted, support the weak, be patient toward all men. See that no one renders evil for evil to any man.” … It is in this way that citizens of the City of God are given medicine during their pilgrimage on earth while praying for the peace of their heavenly fatherland. And, of course, the Holy Spirit is operative internally to give healing power to the medicine which is applied externally, for, otherwise, no preaching of the truth is of any avail. Even though God makes use of one of his obedient creatures, as when he speaks in human guise to our ears—whether to the ears of the body or to the kind of ears we have in sleep—it is only by his interior grace that he moves and rules our mind.

When the promised vision, “face to face,” has come, we shall behold the Trinity—that Trinity which is not only incorporeal but perfectly inseparable and truly changeless—far more clearly and surely than we now behold its image in ourselves. This present vision, through a mirror and in an enigma, as offered to us in this life, belongs not to any one who can perceive in their own mind all that we have here set out by our analysis but to those who see the mind as a reflective image. In this way they are able to relate what they see to the One whose image it is. They reach through their actual vision of the image to a presumptive vision of the original, which cannot yet be seen face to face. The apostle does not say, “We see now a mirror” but “we see now through a mirror.” Those who see the mind as it may be seen, and in it that Trinity of which I have attempted to give a variety of descriptions, yet without believing or understanding it to be the image of God: they are seeing as if in a mirror. But so far from seeing through the mirror him who is now to be seen only in that way, they are unaware that the mirror seen is a mirror—which is to say, an image. If they knew it, they might be conscious of the need to seek and in some measure even now to see, through this mirror, him whose mirror it is—their hearts being purified by faith unfeigned, so that he who is seen now through a mirror may at last be seen face to face. But if they despise the faith that purifies hearts, no understanding of the most subtle analysis of our mind’s nature can serve but to condemn them, on the testimony of their own understanding itself.

Therefore, let us not love ourselves but him, and in feeding his sheep let us seek those things that are his, not those things that are ours. For in some inexplicable way whoever loves himself, not God, does not love himself; and whoever loves God, not himself, does himself love himself. For he who cannot live of himself dies, of course, by loving himself. Then he who loves himself so that he may not live does not love himself. But when he from whom comes life is loved, by not loving himself, he who does not love himself—precisely that he may love him from whom he has life—loves himself all the more. Therefore, let those who feed Christ’s sheep not be “lovers of themselves,” that they may not feed them as their own but as his. Let them not wish to acquire their own gains from them, as “lovers of money,” or to be their lords, as “haughty,” or to glory over honors which they take from them, as “proud,” or to go so far as even to create heresies, as “blasphemous,” or to not yield to the holy fathers, as “disobedient to parents.” Let them return evils for goods to those who wish them to perish because they do not wish them to perish, as “ungrateful.” Let them not kill their own souls and those of others, as “wicked.” Let them not sunder the motherly bowels of the church, as “irreligious,” not feel no compassion for the weak, as “without affection,” not attempt to taint the reputation of the saints, as “detractors,” or not fail to rein in their worst desires, as “incontinent.” Let them not engage in lawsuits, as “unmerciful,” or fail to know how to give help, as “without kindness.” Let them not point out to the enemies of the godly the things that they have learned ought to be kept secret, as “traitors.” Let them not disturb the human sense of shame by shameless pursuits, as “licentious,” or fail to understand what they say or assert, as if they were “blinded.” Let them not prefer carnal enjoyments to spiritual joys, as “lovers of pleasures more than of God.”