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14 - Books 21 & 22

The End of the Body: Heaven and Hell in The City of God

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2021

By
David G. Hunter
Edited by
Fr. David Vincent Meconi, S.J.
Fr. David Vincent Meconi, S.J.
Affiliation:
Saint Louis University, Missouri
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Summary

As we arrive at ciu. Dei 21 and 22, we reach the final destination of the two cities after their long pilgrimage on earth. Book 21 deals with the final repudiation of the ciuitas terrena, the eternal punishment of the damned in Hell. Book 22 examines the ultimate fate of the ciuitas Dei, the eternal reward of the blessed in heaven. But, as I will argue in this chapter, one can also read the final books of the City of God as the endpoint of a specific intellectual journey on which Augustine had embarked decades earlier, one that led him to abandon much of the mental furniture of a late antique philosopher and to embrace – even to pioneer – a cosmology and a theological anthropology with specifically Christian contours.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Augustine's City of God , pp. 276 - 296
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Further Reading

Burrus, V. (2009). Carnal Excess: Flesh at the Limits of Imagination. Journal of Early Christian Studies, 17, 247–265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burrus, V. and MacKendrick, K. (2010). Bodies without Wholes: Apophatic Excess and Fragmentation in Augustine’s City of God. In Boesel, C. and Keller, C., eds., Apophatic Bodies: Negative Theology, Incarnation, and Relationality. New York: Fordham University Press, pp. 79–93.Google Scholar
Hunter, D. G. (2002). Augustine, Sermon 354A: Its Place in His Thought on Marriage and Sexuality. Augustinian Studies, 33(1), 39–60.Google Scholar
Hunter, D. G. (2012). Augustine on the Body. In Vessey, M., ed., The Blackwell Companion to Augustine. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 353–364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miles, M. (1979). Augustine on the Body. AAR Dissertation Series, vol. 31. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press.Google Scholar
Rombs, R. J. (2006). Saint Augustine and the Fall of the Soul. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press.Google Scholar
van Bavel, T. J. (1995). “No One Ever Hated His Own Flesh”: Eph. 5:29 in Augustine. Augustinianum, 45, 45–93.Google Scholar

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