Ad imaginem Dei: Christ and the Elevation of the Human Body

AUGUSTINE’S transformation of Platonism according to Christian tconcepts of Church and salvation history is a necessary bridge between Plotinus’ screen of beauty and the medieval representations of the New Jerusalem in poetry, prayer, and stone. Augustine’s treatment of Platonism in general and his indebtedness to Plotinus in particular are, of course, highly complex subjects. A thorough treatment of them requires full discussion of early Christian responses to Greco-Roman philosophical traditions. My intention here is to concentrate primarily on Augustine’s mature and most ambitious theological work, De civitate Dei (On the City of God), turning to key features of his thought that assist in our larger focus on the architectural approach to divine revelation in the medieval west. These features include his views on the relation between the sensible and invisible realms, his specifically Christian response to Platonist teachings on the soul, his sacramental theology, and his great eschatological theme of the two cities or “orders,” into which he divides the human race: the civitas terrena (earthly city), symbol- ized by Babylon, and its antithesis, the civitas Dei (City of God), symbolized by Jerusalem.

Compared with Augustine’s treatment of these subjects in some other of his major works, they do not all receive Augustine’s fullest attention in De civitate Dei. Nor are his teachings in this work always representative of his views in his other, especially earlier, works. De civitate Dei, however, is Augustine’s most comprehensive work, written between 413 and 427. It is one of the foundational texts of patristic literature and was one of the most widely read of Augustine’s works throughout western medieval Europe. Furthermore, with the exception of the Bible itself, it provides the most important theological foundation for the architecture of the New Jerusalem in the medieval west: Augustine grounds his encyclopedic presentation of theology in De civitate Dei in his interpretation of Jerusalem, the earthly city, as a figura that points toward Heaven.