Augustine

Approximately fifteen hundred years after Augustine’s death, his understanding of human bodies continues to interest historians, philosophers, scholars of Christianity, and popular journalists. From college classrooms to international scholarly forums, contemporary students of Augustine’s thought discuss the proposal that Augustine considered concupiscentia (sexual lust) and its deployment central to the formation and organization of the self. This proposal ignores Augustine’s commitment to the doctrine of the bodily resurrection; I argue that it was not his sexual experience and its resolution that was decisive in his understanding of the body’s participation in his commitment to “becoming Christ.” It was, rather, the practice of belief, “walking,” together with fellow members of the body of Christ, that affirms present human bodies. Augustine taught that the Christian walk will be completed when resurrected bodies will be relieved of their vulnerability and morbidity and united to “Life itself.” “I want the whole to be healed,” the old Augustine said in a sermon, “because I am the whole.”

Criticism · Doctrine · Flesh · Software deployment · Vulnerability (computing) · Augustinian Studies and Theology · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · Kierkegaardian Philosophy and Influence