25. ciu. Dei 18.47; Bettenson, City of God, 829.
190 Ecclesial Reception of the Divine Life
Jerusalem beginning with the church in Abel, and Babylon with Cain.22 This is how Israel prepared the nations to be one in Christ. It is also where God first revealed in time his plan to gather all sinners under one savior and all peoples under one shepherd. Therefore the nations should no longer be called disparate peoples but now one single nation in Christ.23 As the arena of God's sanctifying work, the church unifies all peoples into one Christ, a gradual incorporation of all the saints into the Son, which we can now see as predating even Christianity. The church can therefore never be said to be in only one place or time. That is why Augustine never means by ecclesia just the church visible before him, but, rather, "the Church both here and throughout the whole world; and not the Church of our own day alone, but that which began with Abel and extends to all who will be born and will believe in Christ to the very end, the whole people of the saints who belong to one city."24 The spiritual Jerusalem has therefore never been limited to the Jews. For other saints of antiquity (antiqui sancti) have also been brought forth by God "to whom this mystery [of the incarnation] was revealed, and who were compelled to go on to proclaim what they knew," and although Augustine does admit the possibility that some have been deceived by the malicious demons, he is clear that God's grace in history should be seen both to envelop the Jews in a special way but also as overflowing into "other nations who lived by God's standards and were pleasing to God."25 The church is the universal unfolding of Christ's mystical body: beginning with the angels, the church develops in and through all human persons insistent on righteousness. Persecuted but never defeated, the
22. Cf. en. Ps. 64.2: "Et uidete nomine duarum istarum ciuitatem, Babylonis et Ierusalem. Babylon confusio interpretatur, Ierusalem uisio pacis . . . Ierusalem accepit exordium per Abel, Babylon per Cain."; CCL 39.823; cf. en. Ps. 61.6.
23. Cf. en. Ps. 147.28. 24. en. Ps. 90, exp. 2.1; Boulding, Expositions (III/18), 330. 25. ciu. Dei 18.47; Bettenson, City of God, 829.
Ecclesial Reception of the Divine Life 191 church will receive its fullness of power with the coming of its king.
This is why the signs and teachings of the old covenant must give way to the fullness of God's power incarnate in Christ Jesus. A growing, visible body demands a visible head and in the Christ the created order finds its perfection. For if creation is fashioned ecclesiologically, the Logocentric turn of all creation must now become a Christocentric worship as the Christ becomes the only answer to fallen creation's dissipation. Christ has come to send his Spirit on all people and thus make his church a visible and universal body of believers. What was only spiritually realized in the celestial church and what was imperfectly anticipated in the Old Testament church finds its fulfillment in the incarnation and in Christ's bestowal of his Spirit on the apostolic body.
The Church as the Visible
Body of Christ
With the ecclesia ante ecclesiam Augustine never suggests that the celestial church or the church of the holy patriarchs and prophets existed apart from the Son. There can be "saintly pagans" only because they too have been given some (albeit limited) participation in the Word: serving as signifiers foreshadowing what is to come fully in the Son's sacred humanity. Augustine's broadened use of ecclesia is used to highlight how a segment of creation has always recognized and praised God in the Son. However, with the Son's advent in time the church exists in its fullness. With the Old Testament prophecies fulfilled, the Lord begins to extend his visible headship throughout all of the earth. Given such a strong sense of "the Church before the Church" though, what does the church of Christ actually add to his ecclesiology thus far?
With the incarnation, the head now becomes present in history through his mediatorial body. At the Annunciation,