Commentary on the Apocalypse

Section Twenty-Two

216 SECTION T W ENT Y-T WO Chapter 64 About the One Sitting on the Throne and the Common Resurrection and Judgment 20.11. And I saw a large white throne and him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and sky fled away. And no place was found for them. y the white throne is meant the resting-place of God, which he will make in the saints shining by their virtues , being enthroned among them. The flight of heaven and earth is their passing away and renewal into better, in which a place of mutability will not be found. For “if creation is subject to corruption”1 on account of us according to the Apostle, “it will be made anew with us in the glorious freedom of the children of God,”2 being renewed to a more radiant and remaining, not to a complete disappearance, [228] just as the blessed Irenaeus and Antipater3 and other saints supposed. For the blessed Irenaeus says, “neither the hypostasis nor the substance of creation utterly disappears—for he who composed it is true and certain—but the ‘form of this world passes away,’4 that is to say, in which the 1. Rom 8.20. 2. Rom 8.21. 3. Antipater was a mid-fifth century Bishop of Bostra, known for a lengthy composition known as the Refutation, which was a response to the Apology for Origen composed by Pamphilus and Eusebius of Caesarea. Refutation was extremely important and influential during the Origenistic controversies, which were at their height not long before Andrew’s time; however, only a few fragments of it remain, preserved in the writings of John of Damascus. 4. 1 Cor 7.31. SECTION TWENT Y-TWO 217 transgression occurred and humanity became old in them, and because of this, this form became temporary, all things having been foreseen by God.”5 Methodios in the treatise On the Resurrection reported thusly: “It is not acceptable to say that everything is to be utterly destroyed and that there will not be any earth and air and sky. For the whole world will be consumed in a cataclysm of fire coming down for purification and renewal. It will not come for absolute destruction and ruination.”6 And going forward he says, “And Paul testifies clearly saying, ‘For the earnest expectation of creation awaits the revealing of the sons of God.’7 For creation is subject to futility, not willingly, but by the one who subjected it in hope, that even the creation itself will be freed from the bondage of corruption.”8 And things following . Before these blessed men, Saint [229] David, singing a Psalm to the Lord, was saying , “You send forth your Spirit, and they will be created, and you renew the face of the earth.”9 And Isaiah says, “Heaven will be new and the earth new, and they will not remember the former and it will not come into their mind, but they will find joy and exaltation in it.”10 Naturally. For by the excessiveness of the unceasing joy and magnitude of the prizes of the rewards in the struggles, they will also forget the pains and labors. And elsewhere the same says, “The manner in which the new heaven and new earth, which I make, remains before me, thus will be your offspring and your name.”11 Therefore, the creation which came into being for us is to receive with us the way of life changed for the better, not proceeding to nonexistence , just as neither will we after death. 20.12. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the 5. Heres. 5.36.1. 6. Methodios, On the Resurrection 1.8. 7. Rom 8.19. 8. On the Resurrection 1.8, citing Rom 8.19. 9. Ps 104(103).30. 10. Is 65.17–18. 11. Is 66.22. 218 ANDREW OF CAESAREA Book of Life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to their deeds. He says dead, either all people as enduring the death of the body, or those, great and small, who became “dead by means of transgressions,”12 either those being such by age or those who did more or fewer deeds of deadness and accordingly will be punished for the deeds, or great...