Augustine's Heaven

And the difference 1600 years makes

I’m fascinated by Christian conceptions of afterlife. Since they are a space of speculation, imagination, and rich metaphor, they often provide a different angle into understanding the ideology of a theologian. How does our imagined “ultimate end” provide a reflection on how we think we ought to live right now? As we arrived at Eschatology week in my intro to Theology class this winter, I was excited to see if I could use this method of “eschatology as mirror” to do anything interesting with the week’s assigned reading. I was not disappointed, as we were reading an excerpt written by of the most over-psychoanalyzed figures in Christian patristics, Augustine!  

Near the end of The City of God, Augustine speculates on what heaven will be like. Initially, he is drawn to the image of the sabbath and of rest. There will be no “weariness to call for rest” yet “in the stillness of [our] rest we shall see [God]”. Our movements will be of “unimaginable beauty”, and each body part will “play its part in praising God” (shall we speculate how our kidneys or intestines may praise God?). We will retain the “freedom of will”, yet be in a state of “Non posse peccare”, which is fancy latin for “the power not to be able to sin”. Though we will remember our past, both the joys and the sufferings, in heaven we won’t suffer anymore, so remembering when we suffered won’t bring back the “feeling” of suffering, merely the “mental contemplation” of it. Heaven is both a place where our physical toils, and the moral toil of resisting immoral actions cease. I’m seeing a few things here about how Augustine views daily life; first and foremost that it’s hard! But also that in the restful moments Augustine isn’t always able to witness God (maybe like me he is too busy playing games on his phone). To me, I see Augustine identifying this present world as a life of extremes, without equilibrium, and a longing for balance and order.

Looking to the relationships between people in heaven, Augustine writes that the saints will “undoubtedly be graded according to their variously merited honor and glory”, but “there will be no envy of the lower for the higher” due to an awareness of the interconnectedness to all saints regardless of station. Saints will also be aware of the damned in hell, though as with their own past misery the saint will not themselves suffer in their awareness of such unending torments.

I was really fascinated by this reading; the content itself is interesting, but also my emotional responses to the text could pretty clearly be attributed to the cultural and temporal gap between myself and Augustine. Specifically, Augustine’s neutral-to-positive descriptions of hierarchy and inequality produced a sense of disgust in me that I feel is quite “21st century”. As I see it, equality (or some semantic variation, don’t @ me) is almost totally seen as morally good today. Because of my recognition, I was able to re approach this reading with more charity, and find some things I would have missed otherwise. 

Firstly, on my re-read I was able to see the biblical resonances in Augustine’s description of this holy inequality. After all, Jesus doesn’t say that “the last will be equal”, but rather that they will be first. Those in heaven with high standing aren’t necessarily going to be those who we view as powerful today, even though that was my initial reading of the line. Sidebar: There’s a posture of hopelessness towards the idea that the balance of power might shift, huh? I’ve even noticed it reflected in our prayers – I feel like I hear a lot more prayers that those in power use it well than I do that power would pass to those who would use it well. Modern Global South theologians preaching the preferential option for the poor provide a challenge both to an uncritical elevation of equality and the fearful helplessness we sometimes adopt here in prevailingly white Christian circles. 

I also began to notice some echoes of Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths, particularly the second noble truth: that suffering is caused by ego and desire. The saints do not desire the position of their neighbours, and therefore do not suffer in their disparate positions. Ultimately, the lesser and greater will be “linked in perfect peace”. Also,due to the saints coming to understand the true spiritual reality of their own past, their suffering no longer holds power over them. It’s giving ego death and submission to oneness with all! Sounds pretty great, right?

But there’s a sticking point to the virtue of the contentment of the lowly and this ‘mystical union’ framing. For Augustine, one can only be so lowly. This state of contentment and cessation of desire is, as the text clarifies, not pointing towards the oneness of all humanity, and is instead content with the suffering and cutting off of those humans who have become damned to suffer unendingly. So all the saints from the highest to the lowest may mentally contemplate the unending torment of the damned as they would contemplate the pain of their own past, and be unmoved. Here is where Augustine loses me once more. If Augustine seeks to describe saintly perfection, and by extension to describe Godliness, then our conceptions of Godliness diverge drastically. The God I worship, the God revealed in my own experience and in the person of Jesus is certainly not unmoved in the face of suffering. 

Thus concludes my fun little thought experiment with Augustine’s City of God! In class, we also read an essay by Shelly Rambo (full title in Bibliography), who engages with theologies of afterlife from the angle of Trauma Studies, which I found was a good tool to add to my toolbox of analyzing how our understanding of afterlife affects our lived realities in the here and now. She talks about theories of afterlife as providing a “secure” or “insecure” foundation for believers, using Julian of Norwich and John Calvin as examples of the two, respectively. Do you think a God unmoved by suffering as described by Augustine provides a “secure” or “insecure” base for you to live your life? Let me know, I love chatting about this stuff and I don’t think I’m done with Augustine just yet!

Love,

Fen

Bibliography

Augustine, “The Eternal Happiness of the Saints” (City of God, Bk 22, Ch. 30) In Readings in Christian Theology, edited by Peter C. Hodgson and Robert H. King

Shelly Rambo, “Salvation in the after-Living: Reflections on Salvation with Joshua Ralston and Sharon Betcher.” In Comparing Faithfully, edited by Michelle Voss Roberts