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Beatific embodiment: An Augustinian appraisal of our end-time embodiment
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 October 2022
Abstract
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.
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References
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3 Ibid.
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5 Augustine of Hippo, Confessions 10.6, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: OUP, 2008).
6 Ibid., 3.6.
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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.