Augustine in His Own Words
On the City of God 363
(6) You who are a philosopher here, that is, on this earth (for the sake of a name, I mention Pythagoras, Plato, Porphyry, or some other of the philosophers), why do you philosophize? He answers: "Because of the happy life." And when will you possess that happy life? He replies: "When I shall have abandoned this body on earth.". . .
(7) Porphyry, a later but important member of that group of philosophers, one who lived in the Christian era, was a bitter enemy of the Christian faith.70 Although through shame he abjured his mad ravings to a certain extent, yet, when censured by the Christians, he said and wrote: "Every kind of body must be avoided." He said "every kind of body" as if every body were a wretched prison of the soul. And certainly, if we must escape from every kind of body, there is no opportunity for one to praise that body to him and to say that, according to the teaching of God, our faith praises the body, because, although we draw punishment from sin from the body which we now possess, and although "the corruptible body is a load upon the soul" (Wis 9:15), nevertheless, the body has its own beauty, its own arrangement of members, its differentiation of senses, its erect posture, and other qualities which evoke admiration from those considering it. Furthermore, it is destined to be completely incorruptible, completely immortal, completely agile and quick in movement. Porphyry, however, says: "You praise the body to me without good reason. No matter what kind of body it is, you must escape from it if you wish to be happy." Philosophers say this, but they are wrong; they are raving.71
Pagan Objections to the Resurrection
of the Body
Augustine, both in this sermon series and again in On the City of God, lists pagan arguments against the core Christian doctrine of the resurrection. Many were stock objections cited and replied to by the earlier apologists Athenagoras and Origen.72 Like them, Augustine cites objections (the issues raised by miscarriages, deformities, and cannibalism) posed by Platonists who held that eternal life meant only a disembodied soul. From On the City of God, Book 22:
70. On Porphyry, see note 45 above. Here Augustine quotes Porphyry's lost On the Return of the Soul, a work he also discusses in civ. Dei 10.29 and 22.26.
71. S. 241.1–7 (PL 38:1136–37); trans. Muldowney, FOTC 38:255–62 (modified). See Pierre Courcelle, "Propos antichrétiens rapportés par S. Augustin," Recherches augustiniennes 1 (1958): 149–86.
72. See, for example, Athenagoras, De resurrectione 8.4, and Origen, De principiis 1.6.4 and Contra Celsum 5.18. For a selection of texts, see Joanne E. McWilliam Dewart, Death and Resurrection, Message of the Fathers of the Church 22 (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1986). For an analysis, see Brian Daley, Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); on Augustine, pp. 131–50.