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The City of God

Chapter 16.--Of the New Heaven and the New Earth.

Having finished the prophecy of judgment, so far as the wicked are concerned, it remains that he speak also of the good. Having briefly explained the Lord's words, "These will go away into everlasting punishment," it remains that he explain the connected words, "but the righteous into life eternal." ¹ "And I saw," he says, "a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth have passed away; and there is no more sea." ² This will take place in the order which he has by anticipation declared in the words, "I saw One sitting on the throne, from whose face heaven and earth fled." For as soon as those who are not written in the book of life have been judged and cast into eternal fire,--the nature of which fire, or its position in the world or universe, I suppose is known to no man, unless perhaps the divine Spirit reveal it to some one,--then shall the figure of this world pass away in a conflagration of universal fire, as once before the world was flooded with a deluge of universal water. And by this universal conflagration the qualities of the corruptible elements which suited our corruptible bodies shall utterly perish, and our substance shall receive such qualities as shall, by a wonderful transmutation, harmonize with our immortal bodies, so that, as the world itself is renewed to some better thing, it is fitly accommodated to men, themselves renewed in their flesh to some better thing. As for the statement, "And there shall be no more sea," I would not lightly say whether it is dried up with that excessive heat, or is itself also turned into some better thing. For we read that there shall be a new heaven and a new earth, but I do not remember to have anywhere read anything of a new sea, unless what I find in this same book, "As it were a sea of glass like crystal." ³ But he was not then speaking of this end of the world, neither does he seem to speak of a literal sea, but "as it were a sea." It is possible that, as prophetic diction delights in mingling figurative and real language, and thus in some sort veiling the sense, so the words "And there is no more sea" may be taken in the same sense as the previous phrase, "And the sea presented the dead which were in it." For then there shall be no more of this world, no more of the surgings and restlessness of human life, and it is this which is symbolized by the sea.

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De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput XVI: De caelo nouo et terra noua.

Finito autem iudicio, quo praenuntiauit iudicandos malos, restat ut etiam de bonis dicat. iam enim explicauit quod breuiter a domino dictum est: sic ibunt isti in supplicium aeternum; sequitur ut explicet, quod etiam ibi conectitur: iusti autem in uitam aeternam. et uidi, inquit, caelum nouum et terram nouam. nam primum caelum et terra recesserunt, et mare iam non est. isto fiet ordine, quod superius praeoccupando iam dixit, uidisse se super thronum sedentem, cuius a facie fugit caelum et terra. iudicatis quippe his, qui scripti non sunt in libro uitae, et in aeternum ignem missis - qui ignis cuiusmodi et in qua mundi uel rerum parte futurus sit, hominem scire arbitror neminem, nisi forte cui spiritus diuinus ostendit - , tunc figura huius mundi mundanorum ignium conflagratione praeteribit, sicut factum est mundanarum aquarum inundatione diluuium. illa itaque, ut dixi, conflagratione mundana elementorum corruptibilium qualitates, quae corporibus nostris corruptibilibus congruebant, ardendo penitus interibunt, atque ipsa substantia eas qualitates habebit, quae corporibus inmortalibus mirabili mutatione conueniant; ut scilicet mundus in melius innouatus apte adcommodetur hominibus etiam carne in melius innouatis. quod autem ait: et mare iam non est, utrum maximo illo ardore siccetur an et ipsum uertatur in melius, non facile dixerim. caelum quippe nouum et terram nouam futuram legimus, de mari autem nouo aliquid me uspiam legisse non recolo; nisi quod in hoc eodem libro reperitur: tamquam mare uitreum simile crystallo. sed tunc non de isto fine saeculi loquebatur, nec proprie dixisse uidetur mare, sed tamquam mare. quamuis et nunc, sicut amat prophetica locutio propriis uerbis translata miscere ac sic quodammodo uelare quod dicitur, potuit de illo mari dicere: et mare iam non est, de quo supra dixerat: et exhibuit mortuos mare, qui in eo erant. iam enim tunc non erit hoc saeculum uita mortalium turbulentum et procellosum, quod maris nomine figurauit.