7 - The Contents of the Spiritual Resurrection

Summary

Chapter 7 searches into Augustine’s theological elaboration and scriptural defense of the spiritual resurrection of the soul from its death in sin to its life in Christ. For Augustine, the incarnational character of the spiritual resurrection consists in its intrinsic connections with the fleshly resurrection at the end of time and with the embodiment of a resurrected lifestyle in Christ even now. While the soul has the power to sin and fall into spiritual death, nothing and no one other than the God of the resurrection has the power to graciously resurrect the dead soul through its Christological incorporation and configuration. Augustine provides theological analyses of our two resurrections and pastoral descriptions of concrete occurrences of the spiritual resurrection. His scriptural paradigm of the spiritual resurrection includes how Jesus’s three miraculous resurrections in the Gospel figuratively signify three gravities of spiritual death and resurrection.