Augustine in His Own Words (continued)
On the City of God
woman. This is proved by Christ's own words. He was asked by the Sadducees, who denied the resurrection: "At the resurrection, of which of the seven will she be the wife?" . . . Jesus answered: "You err because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. For at the resurrection they will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven" (Mt 22:23–30). Notice that He did not say: The wife you ask about will no longer be a woman but a man. . . . What our Lord said was that in the resurrection there would be no marriage. He did not say that there would be no women.76
The Spiritual Body and Repairing
the Divided Self
Augustine often took his cues from St. Paul's letters, and in meditating on the resurrection, he routinely turned to 1 Cor 15. There Paul speaks of a "spiritual body." Augustine came to believe that this phrase did not mean that the resurrection was simply a matter of eternal souls. He came to use the phrase as a code word to describe God's repairing the divided self. We saw earlier how Augustine interpreted the punishment of original sin, that the punishment for disobedience of God was that our bodies and wills disobey us. At the final resurrection that split is repaired. From Sermon 242:
(8) Not without reason have those [risen] bodies been termed "spiritual." They have not been called "spiritual" because they will be spirits and not bodies. As a matter of fact, those bodies which we now possess are called "soul-infused" bodies, yet they are not souls, but bodies. Just as our bodies are now called "soul-infused," yet are not souls, so those [resurrected] bodies are called "spiritual" without being spirits, because they will be bodies. Why, then, is it called a "spiritual body," my dearly beloved, except because it will obey the direction of the spirit? Nothing in yourself will be at variance with yourself; nothing in yourself will rebel against yourself. No longer will there be that which the Apostle laments in the passage: "The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh" (Gal 5:17). No longer will the words of the same Apostle be true: "I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind" (Rom 7:23). Those conflicts will not exist there; but peace, perfect peace, will be there. Wherever you wish to be, there you will be; but wherever you go, you will possess your God. You will always be with Him in whom your happiness consists.77
76. Civ. Dei 22.17 (CCL 48:835–36); trans. Walsh and Honan, FOTC 24:463–65. 77. S. 242.8 (PL 38:1142–43); trans. Muldowney, FOTC 38:270–71. On this, see Henri I. Marrou, The Resurrection and Saint Augustine's Theology of Human Values, Saint Augustine Lecture 1965 (Villanova: Villanova University Press, 1966).
Imagining Heaven
To help people imagine the grandeur of the new creation, Augustine traced out the magnificence of earthly creation. He begins by recounting the beauties and gifts of the human person, both physical and psychological, then the beauties and gifts of human civilization, and finally the beauties and gifts of the natural world. He mentions especially the beauty of the ocean, something he could easily and routinely enjoy in Hippo. At the end, he notes how these great beauties are savored by a humanity that lives here and now under a death sentence. These are, in a sense, the joys of death row. His argument here relies on a how-much-more logic: that is, if all this is beautiful, how much more beautiful is life with God. All these beauties are at best the faintest glimmerings of the beauties of heaven. From On the City of God, Book 22:
(24) We have looked at the human race's misery, a punishment whose justice deserves praise, but we must now consider how God has filled the creation that He administers with so many and such great goods. First, think of the blessing He spoke before the Fall into sin: "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth" (Gn 1:28). That blessing did not cease because we sinned, for God wished that the fruitfulness remain even after humanity's gifted rootstalk was condemned. . . . My purpose now is to speak of the gifts of human nature which, by God's generosity, have been lavished on us and continue to be lavished on us, even though we have been wounded by sin and condemned to pay its penalties. . . . God infused into human life a capacity for reasoning and understanding. In infancy, this mental capacity seems, as it were, asleep and practically non-existent, but over the course of years it awakens into a life that involves learning and education, the perception of the true and the pursuit of the good. This capacity flowers into that wisdom and virtue that enable the soul to battle with the arms of prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice against error, waywardness, and other inborn weaknesses, and to conquer them with a purpose that is none other than that of reaching the supreme and immutable Good. Even when this Good is not attained, there still remains, rooted in all rational nature, a God-given capacity for goods so high that the wonders of God's omnipotence are beyond any tongue to express or any mind to comprehend.
And quite apart from the artistry of living in virtue and of reaching immortal beatitude, which nothing but the grace of God which is in Christ can communicate to the children of promise and heirs of the kingdom, there have been discovered and perfected by natural human genius innumerable arts and skills which serve not only the necessities of life but also human enjoyment (voluptariae). And even in those arts where the purposes may seem superfluous, perilous, even pernicious, people exercise an acuteness of intelligence of so high an order that it reveals how richly endowed our human nature is. For our intelligence has the power of inventing, learning, and applying all such arts. Just think of the progress and perfection which human skill has reached in the astonishing achievements of cloth-making, architecture, agriculture, and navigation. Or think of the originality and range of what has been done by experts in ceramics, by sculptors, and by painters. Think of dramas and theatrical spectacles so stupendous that those who have not seen them simply refuse to believe the accounts of those who have. Think of the tricks and traps devised for capturing, killing, or training wild animals. Or think of numerous drugs and devices that medical science has discovered in its zeal for preserving and restoring health. Or, again, of the poisons, weapons, and equipment used in wars devised by military science for defense against enemy attack. Or even of the endless variety of seasonings and sauces which culinary artistry has discovered to be of service to the pleasures of the palate.
It was human ingenuity, too, that devised the multitude of signs we use to express and communicate our thoughts, especially in speech and in writing. The arts of rhetoric and poetry bring delight to hearts by their ornaments of style and the richness of their musicality. Instrumentalists soothe our ears by inventing new variations on old songs. Both theoretical and applied mathematics have made great progress. Astronomy has been most ingenious in tracing the movements of the stars and in distinguishing their magnitudes. In general, the richness of scientific knowledge is beyond all words and becomes all the more astonishing when one pursues any single aspect of this immense corpus of information. . . .
Let us turn now to the body itself. It is true that it is no better than the body of a beast as far as dying is concerned, and, in life, it is even weaker than that of many animals. Nevertheless, the human body is a revelation of the goodness of God and of the providence of the body's Creator. It is a body obviously meant to serve a rational soul, as you can see from the arrangement of the senses and limbs and other parts. This is obvious, too, in our whole appearance, form, and stature. The bodies of irrational animals are bent toward the ground, whereas the human person was made to walk upright with eyes on heaven, as though to remind us to keep our thoughts on things above. And if we need further evidence to show what kind of mind the body was meant to serve, we have only to think of the marvelous dexterity of tongue and hands, so perfectly suited for speaking and writing, for the arts, and for countless other tasks.
What is more, quite apart from these practical purposes, there is in the body such a rhythm, poise, symmetry, and beauty that it is hard to decide whether it was the body's uses or its beauty that the Creator had more in mind.
It is clear that every organ whose function we know adds to the body's beauty, and this beauty would be still more obvious if only we knew the precise proportions by which parts were fashioned and interrelated. I do not mean merely the parts on the outside, which, no doubt, can be accurately measured by anyone with proper skill. I mean the parts hidden below our skin, the intricate complex of veins and nerves, the inmost elements of the human viscera and vital parts, whose rhythmic relationships have not yet been revealed. Surgeons, of course, have done something in their relatively crude anatomical study of corpses (and in the course of their almost inhuman operations on living bodies) to explore the last recesses of the organs they have had to handle in order to learn the best technique in dealing with this or that disorder. But what I have in mind is the rhythm of relationships, the harmonia, as the Greeks would say, whereby the whole body, inside and out, can be looked upon as a kind of musical instrument with a melody all its own. The beauty of this music no one has yet discovered, because no one has dared to look for it. Nevertheless, if this total organic design could only be discerned, even in the seemingly ugly elements of the human viscera, there would be revealed to the soul so ravishing a beauty that no visible shapeliness of form that delights the eye—the mere minister of our mind—could be compared with it.
Of course, some parts of the human body appear to have no other purpose than to add to beauty, such as the mammillae on a man's chest or the beard on his face. Certainly, if the beard were meant for protection rather than for beauty, it would have served a better purpose for the weaker sex, whose face remains uncovered. If, then, we argue from the facts, first, that, as everyone admits, not a single visible organ of the body serving a definite function is lacking in beauty, and, second, that there are some parts which have beauty and no apparent function, it follows, I think, that in the creation of the human body God put form before function. After all, function will pass, and the time will come when we shall delight solely in the contemplation of one another's beauty without any lust, knowing that our joy will be giving glory to the Creator, of whom the Psalmist says: "You have put on praise and beauty" (Ps 103:1).
Turn now to the beauties and great usefulness of the rest of creation— what words can describe the riches God has scattered for us to behold and consume, a divine largesse amid the weariness and miseries of our fallen and punished lot in life? What words can describe the myriad beauties of land and sea and sky? Just think of the boundless abundance and the marvelous loveliness of light, or of the beauty of the sun and moon and stars, of shadowy glades in the woods and of the colors and perfume of flowers, of the songs and plumage of so many varieties of birds, of the innumerable animals