No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 October 2022
In this paper, I seek to articulate a positive role for the body in our eschatological joy in God. I draw on Augustine's thought to argue that the body makes a positive contribution to our joy in God by being a pedagogy for our imaginations, training us to imagine the beautiful character of God in Christ through embodiment. While Augustine might seem like a surprising choice for this task, I argue that his concepts of ubique totus and the totus Christus provide fertile soil for the growth of an eschatological theology of the body.
1 Boersma, Hans, Seeing God: The Beatific Vision in the Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2018)Google Scholar.
2 Augustine of Hippo, City of God, trans. Henry Bettenson (New York: Penguin Classics, 2003), 22.29.
3 Ibid.
4 ‘Letter 148’, in St Augustine, Letters, vol. 3, Nos. 131–164 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1953). Augustine explicitly declares that his reason for claiming that the eyes of the body cannot see God is ‘to prevent men from believing that God himself is material and corporeal’.
5 Augustine of Hippo, Confessions 10.6, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: OUP, 2008).
6 Ibid., 3.6.
7 St Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, trans. R. P. H Green (New York: OUP, 2008), 1.4.
8 van der Dussen, Adriaan, ‘The Creator Blasphemed? A Critical Analysis of Van Ruler's Rejection of Augustine's Use of the Distinction between Uti and Frui’, Journal for Theology and the Study of Religion 73/4 (2019), pp. 265–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 Williams, Rowan, On Augustine (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016), pp. 58–74Google Scholar.
10 St Augustine, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, III/14, trans. Boniface Ramsey (Hyde Park: New City Press, 2008), pp. 145–58.
11 St Augustine, Exposition on the Book of Psalms (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, n.d.), pp. 365–6. Importantly, this differs from saying that the church is the continuation of Jesus’ incarnation. The church is summoned into existence by the incarnate Word, and her righteous action is constituted by Christ who lives in her (see Gal 2:20). The church is the effect of the incarnate Word, but not identical to him.
12 Moser, J. David, ‘Totus Christus: A Proposal for Protestant Christology and Ecclesiology’, Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology 29/1 (2020), pp. 3–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Augustine, City of God 22.29.
14 Vanhoozer, Kevin J., Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship (New York: CUP, 2010), pp. 270–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
15 ‘Letter 148’, in Augustine, Letters, vol. 3, Nos. 131–164.
16 St Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill, 2nd edn. (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2012), 6.10.12. See Peter Leithart's excellent application of this theme in Leithart, Peter, Traces of the Trinity: Signs of God in Creation and Human Experience (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2015)Google Scholar.
17 Augustine, Trinity 12.1.
18 Augustine, On Christian Doctrine 2.1.
19 De Waal, Cornelis, Peirce: A Guide for the Perplexed (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013)Google Scholar.
20 Black, Max (ed.), Philosophy in America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967)Google Scholar.
21 Ricoeur, Paul, The Rule of Metaphor (New York: Routledge Classics, 2003)Google Scholar.
22 St Augustine, ‘A Treatise on Grace and Free Will’, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1st Ser., ed. Philip Schaff, trans. Peter Holmes and Robert Ernest Wallis (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887), pp. 441–65.
23 Augustine, City of God 5.20–6.
24 See Boersma, Seeing God.
25 Moser, ‘Totus Christus’.
26 Vanhoozer, Kevin J., ‘Hocus Totus: The Elusive Wholeness of Christ', Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology 29/1 (2020), pp. 31–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 Edwards, Jonathan, A Treatise Concerning the End for Which God Created the World (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012)Google Scholar.
28 Suzanne McDonald, ‘Beholding the Glory of God in the Face of Jesus Christ’, in Kelly M. Kapic and Mark Jones (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to John Owen's Theology (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), pp. 141–58.
29 Karl Barth, The Humanity of God (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1960), pp. 50–2.
30 Matthew Levering, Engaging the Doctrine of Creation: Cosmos, Creatures, and the Wise and Good Creator (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017).
31 Kevin Vanhoozer, Pictures at a Theological Exhibition: Scenes of the Church's Worship, Witness, and Wisdom (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2016).
32 I've left unaddressed the relationship of the bodies of the non-elect to the joy of God's people so as to limit the length and scope of the paper. Addressing this question with the specificity and clarity it deserves would take another paper. Nevertheless, I will offer several considerations here. First, the resurrected bodies of the reprobate, on this view, will be icons of God's justice. Retributive justice, it seems to me, functions to create an icon in the life of a perpetrator from which the seriousness of their crime may be contemplated. Thus, the outrage against Brock Turner – the Stanford swimmer who violated Chanel Miller and received a light six-month sentence – can be understood as a recognition that the sentence embodied in the history of his life created an unfitting picture or disruption of the severity of his crime. The bodies of those in hell will, as it were, tell of the severity of their rebellion against God. This will add to the joy of God's people specifically with respect to God's justice. Thus, it is not the case that God's people will love God with a kind of giddiness or delight in the suffering of the reprobate, but rather a sombre love for a God who takes evil seriously – in an analogous way to how one might delight in a judge who sentences justly.