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| Who the Dead are Who are Given Up to Judgment by the Sea, and by Death and Hell.
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Chapter 15.—Who the Dead are Who
are Given Up to Judgment by the Sea, and by Death and
Hell.
But who are the dead which were
in the
sea, and which the sea presented? For we cannot
suppose that those who die in the sea are not in hell, nor that
their bodies are preserved in the sea; nor yet, which is still more
absurd, that the sea retained the good, while hell received the
bad. Who could believe this? But some very sensibly suppose
that in this place the sea is put for this world. When John then
wished to signify that those whom Christ should find still alive in
the body were to be judged along with those who should rise again,
he called them dead, both the good to whom it is said, “For ye
are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God,”1384
and the
wicked of whom it is said, “Let the dead bury their dead.”1385
They may
also be called dead, because they wear mortal bodies, as the
apostle says, “The body indeed is dead because of sin; but the
spirit is life because of righteousness;”1386
proving that in a living man in
the body there is both a body which is dead, and a spirit which is
life. Yet he did not say that the body was mortal, but dead,
although immediately after he speaks in the more usual way of
mortal bodies. These, then, are the dead which were in the sea,
and which the sea presented, to wit, the men who were in this
world, because they had not yet died, and whom the world presented
for judgment. “And death and hell,” he says, “gave up the
dead which were in them.” The sea presented them because
they had merely to be found in the place where they were; but death
and hell gave them up or restored them, because they
called them back to life, which they had already quitted. And
perhaps it was not without reason that neither death nor hell were
judged sufficient alone, and both were mentioned,—death to
indicate the good, who have suffered only death and not hell; hell
to indicate the wicked, who suffer also the punishment of hell.
For if it does not seem absurd to believe that the ancient saints
who believed in Christ and His then future coming, were kept in
places far removed indeed from the torments of the wicked, but yet
in hell,1387
| 1387 “Apud inferos,” i.e.
in hell, in the sense in which the word is used in the Psalms and
in the Creed. | until
Christ’s blood and His descent into these places delivered them,
certainly good Christians, redeemed by that precious price already
paid, are quite unacquainted with hell while they wait for their
restoration to the body, and the reception of their reward. After
saying, “They were judged every man according to their works,”
he briefly added what the judgment was: “Death and hell were
cast into the lake of fire;” by these names designating the devil
and the whole company of his angels, for he is the author of death
and the pains of hell. For this is what he had already, by
anticipation, said in clearer language: “The devil who seduced
them was cast into a lake of fire and brimstone.” The obscure
addition he had made in the words, “in which were also the beast
and the false prophet,” he here explains, “They who were not
found written in the book of life were cast into the lake of
fire.” This book is not for reminding God, as if things might
escape Him by forgetfulness, but it symbolizes His predestination
of those to whom eternal life shall be given. For it is not that
God is ignorant, and reads in the book to inform Himself, but
rather His infallible prescience is the book of life in which they
are written, that is to say, known beforehand.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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