Commentaria in Isaiam
They shall be folded together like a book.—He alludes to the books of the ancients, which were not divided into leaves, like ours, but were one sheet of paper or parchment sewn together from several, which they rolled round a cylinder, as we roll up maps. For when they wished to read them they unrolled and unfolded it; and when the reading was finished they rolled it up again: for this to them was what to us is closing a book. I have seen two such ancient books of the Pentateuch, written in Hebrew, in the Vatican Library, whose paper is skin, or raw and hairy parchment.
Now “the heavens shall be folded together,” first, because the heathen, say St. Thomas and Lyranus, in heavens so disturbed, and as it were folded and rolled up, will no longer be able to read, nor to predict the future events of things; as if to say: They will no longer divine from the stars and heavens, as from a book of prognostics.
Second, Denis the Carthusian, as if to say: The entrance into the kingdom of heaven will no longer lie open, but the door will be closed.
Third, and genuinely, as if to say: As the book of the ancients, folded and rolled on its cylinder, could not be read, the letters being hidden, so the heaven and its stars as it were its letters will be hidden by black clouds and obscured, so that they cannot be seen, just as if the heaven were folded and rolled up, nay as if the heaven had vanished and withdrawn into another world, as St. John says, Apocalypse 6. For as the creation of the heavens is signified by a skin or extended tent (as Psalm 103: “Stretching out the heaven like a skin”), so its obscuration, which is a kind of dissolution, is indicated by a skin and a folded volume, says Sanchez.
Again, the known use, motion and influence of the heavens will cease, as we cease to use a book when we fold or close it. For there is a metalepsis in the word “shall be folded.”
Besides, as books or parchments when rent have each part folded back and rolled on itself, so the heaven, rent as it were by lightnings, will seem to roll and fold back on itself, that is, into opposite parts, says Prado; as if to say: At the end of the world the heavens and stars will change their aspects and influences, and so all things will be disturbed. Then, by lightnings, clouds, comets, falling stars and other meteors, the air will be so mingled that the heavens will seem to be folded and rolled up, and all things disturbed and confounded. So Adam, Pererius on Apocalypse 6, and commonly the Scholastics, who, with St. Augustine, City of God, book 20, chapter 14; St. Jerome, on Isaias 51; Gregory, Morals book 17, chapter 5, and others, hold that the heavens and stars are to be changed and renewed only in light and other qualities, not in form and substance. For Psalm 148:6 says God established them for ever and ever; and because, according to Aristotle and the Philosophers, the form of the heavens is incorruptible, Aristotle therefore deduces from this that it is eternal. For he holds that the world was from eternity, nay uncreated, as some suppose, in which it is clear that he erred.
Many Fathers, however, and recent writers, who wish philosophy to be examined by sacred Scripture, not the contrary, hold that heaven and earth will perish even as to substance, and be changed into another new heaven and another new earth. For this seems said most clearly here and elsewhere, as chapter 51, verse 6; and 2 Peter 3:7 and 10. Where note that sacred Scripture speaks far more strongly of the change of the heavens and elements than of the bodies of the blessed in the resurrection, and plainly signifies that the change of the former will be far greater than of the latter; because that will be substantial, this only accidental. Add that the heavens were made from the abyss and waters, as I taught on Genesis 1:8: therefore they are not plainly incorruptible according to form, but according to first matter, according to which they are said to remain for ever. The same is confirmed by this, that in the year 1572 a new star was seen in Cassiopeia, which after two years disappeared. Modern astronomers have noted several such changes in the heavens; hence some, convinced by these phenomena, hold that the heavens are not solid and hard, but yield, change, and are cut and divided like air; yet that the air excels in subtlety and excellence; for the heavens are ethereal, not aerial; and are ether itself. But this belongs to another question and place.
Again, since light flows naturally as it were from the essence of the heavens, and in the future will be far greater and nobler, it seems likewise that it will flow from another, nobler substantial form. For light as great as it will then be is not connatural to the form of the sun which now is. So hold St. Chrysostom, homily 14 on the Epistle to the Romans, and after him Theodoret and Oecumenius; Justin, Question 98; the Hexaemeron, book 1, chapter 6; Basil, Hexaemeron homily 3; Nyssen, On the Creation of Man, chapter 24; Clement, Recognitions, books 2 and 3; the Sibyl in St. Augustine, City of God, book 18, chapter 23, when she sings:
The seasons shall grow torpid, all the seeds of the world bereft; air, earth, sea, the fervid light of fire, the hinge of heaven, days, nights, all shall subside into flames: and the form of things shall be made most manifest.
For all the shining stars shall fall from heaven.
The same is taught at length by Jerome Magius, book 2 On the Burning of the World, chapters 6 and 7; and Valesius, Sacred Philosophy, chapter 89; and our Molina, treatise On the Work of the Six Days, disputation 3. For that fire can act on the heavens and corrupt them, if not naturally, certainly by divine power and operation, all concede; nor can it be denied, since it is certain that the fire of hell acts by the same power on the demons and burns them, who have no body but are pure spirits. Moreover, what Scripture says elsewhere, that heaven and earth shall stand for ever, is not repugnant to this opinion. For the same earth will remain, the same sun, and the same heavens generically; the earth will retain the form of earth, the heavens the generic form of the heavens, though specifically they receive a higher and more excellent one. For there will then be a renewal, reformation and recreation of the whole world.
The philosophers, however, commonly, and most Scholastic theologians, among whom is Francis Suarez, and the Conimbricenses, book 1 On the Heavens, chapter 3, Question 1, hold that the heavens will be changed only accidentally, not substantially, as I said. Hence to this and like Scriptures, which seem to say the contrary, they give three answers. The first is that some speak hypothetically and comparatively, as that of Christ: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” For the sense is, as if to say: Sooner shall heaven and earth pass away than my words pass by and my promises fail. The second is that by heavens is understood the air. For so “birds of heaven” are called, that is, of the air. And so they understand that of St. Peter, in the second epistle, chapter 3, verse 7: “But the heavens that are now, etc., by the same word (by whose command the earth was overwhelmed by the waters of the flood, as went before) are stored up, reserved for fire against the day of judgment.” This is well; but this exposition does not sufficiently fit verses 10 and 12, where he sets the heavens against the elements; he therefore understands by the heavens not the aerial but the starry. For he says: “The heavens shall pass away with great violence, but the elements shall be melted with heat”; and more effectively, verse 12: “The heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with the burning heat”: where they are forced themselves to take by the heavens the highest air, and by the elements air, water and fire, which are on or about the earth. The third is, when St. Peter adds there, and Scripture elsewhere: “But we look for new heavens and a new earth according to his promises”; this renewal, they say, will be not substantial but accidental: because the sun, moon and heavens will be adorned with greater light, and shine more, that they may partake somewhat of the glory of the Blessed, whom they have served in this life. Both opinions are probable, and have weighty doctors: the former is more conformed to sacred Scripture, the latter to Aristotelian philosophy. Which is truer will be treated elsewhere.
5. For my sword is inebriated in heaven.—Drunkenness signifies the abundance of blood poured out: for as a man is made drunk with much wine, so is the sword with the much blood that it sheds.