4 Last Things: Judgement

This is the second instalment of a four-part series on the four last things, which builds upon an episode of The Episcopal Podcast on the topic of eschatology, which was mentioned in a previous post.

Last week, we focused on the topic of death. This week we move onto the second of the Four Last Things, namely judgement.

In the book of Revelation, letters of judgement are issued to seven churches at the beginning of the book (Rev 1:4 - 3:22). The letters are a track record of the church’s dedication to God, and range from a rejoicing at a Church’s faithfulness, to calling out a Church as “a place where Satan lives” (Rev 2:13) on account of its many forms of idolatry.

At the end of the Book of Revelation (Rev 20:11-13), there is another reading of texts, this time of books rather than letters. In this reading, the dead are judged on the basis of what was written in these books. This act of judgement in the book of Revelation came under the study of Thomas Aquinas via his “Treatise on the Last Things”, a supplement to the third part of his Summa Theologiae.

In looking at the topic of judgement, Aquinas provided a couple of very important insights.

First, he said that the judgement by the reading of the books was not simply a judgement coming from God based on a list of what a person has done or not done. In question 87 of the treatise, Aquinas says that each book was really a person’s conscience, which collected all the works that he or she has done or omitted. In the final judgement, the accuser of the person would not be God. Rather, it would be the person’s own conscience that would stand as a witness either for or against him or her. Romano Guardini frames it in this way in his The Living God:

God judges man, and the man who stands before God together with God judges himself (116).

What this means ultimately is that God’s judgement is not dependent on some arbitrary will, but on a very open criteria, namely the criteria of the heart.

Drawing on the first book of Kings, Aquinas said that “Man reads things that appear, but the Lord reads the heart” (Kg 16:7). What matters is not simply the deeds, but the heart that gave rise to those deeds in the first place. What the heart desires will ultimately become subject to judgement. This is why, writing several hundred years later, St John of the Cross, a famous Spanish mystic, would write that “at the evening of our life, we will be judged according to how we love”.

At the last judgement, to quote Guardini again:

God’s holiness is revealed so powerfully and with such ineffable beauty that man measures himself by the standard of God’s love (116)

The law of love then becomes the criteria for judgement, and how we love can either accuse us or defend us at the Lord’s tribunal. 

This then gives us insight into Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats, which is recorded in Matthew’s Gospel (Mt 25:31). There, the sheep and the goats are subject to the final judgement “when the son of man comes in glory”. The sheep are given their reward for having helped the least of Jesus’ brethren, and thus helping Him; the goats on the other hand, are cast out for failing to help the least, and thus rejecting Jesus.

It is not simply the help that is criteria God uses to judge humanity, but the love that these actions have manifested. Those that love God and neighbour are the ones that receive favourable judgement, while those that have not do not.

There is a little detail in the parable that I wanted to bring out. When the goats are condemned, they protest that, contrary to the judgement, they have done what was expected of them (this is in contrast to the sheep who did not expect that they were doing something special). In other words, the goats protested that they have seen Him hungry and gave him food, naked and clothed Him, and so on. In other words, the goats thought they merited paradise because they have done what was expected of them.

The response from God is a subtle one, for He says that insofar as the goats have not done this to the least of His brethren, they have not done it to Him. It does seem that the judgement turned, not on what was done, but who was recognised, and recognition is but a turning of the heart towards an object of desire. In other words, as John of the Cross says, where we end up on the last day turns on the degree to which we have love as the motor to our actions.

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