13 - Book 20

Summary

“The whole Church of the true God holds, confesses and professes that Christ is going to come from heaven to judge the living and the dead” (ciu. Dei 20.1; Babcock 2.390), as Augustine shows throughout ciu. Dei 20. As simple as this affirmative statement may sound, its emphatic nature masks the complexity of thought about God’s final judgment that had already come to challenge the Christian community by the early 5th century AD, and which Book 20 was designed, in part, to address. True enough, all known early creeds encapsulated the promise of a future judgment requiring Christians to affirm their belief that Christ, with the Father, would judge the living and the dead. But this still left many questions unanswered. When would this judgment occur? How would the events of the last day unfold? How would divine justice be done, and be seen to be done? How did the ordinary experience of human death relate to the events outlined in the Book of Revelation? And what kind of community would result?