The introduction contextualizes and outlines an approach to Augustine’s theology of the resurrection. After presenting the centrality and the meaning of the resurrection in Augustine’s works, it observes the discrepant paucity of current scholarship on this topic, while acknowledging both the merits and the limits of two modern trends in approaching it: (1) The first focuses exclusively on the bodily resurrection and (2) the second treats the resurrection in its plenitude. Following an outline of the book’s chapters, the introduction reflects upon Augustine’s theological methodology of faith seeking to understand the mystery of the resurrection through faithfully following the guidance of the resurrected Christ, the one true teacher of all, who abides in heaven and in the human heart.

Chapter 10 studies Augustine’s arguments for and descriptions of the future resurrection of all human flesh. Augustine defends the credibility and intelligibility of the fleshly resurrection not only against those pagans who doubt or deny human immorality and eschatology of any kind, but also against those who assume or assert some alternative version of human immorality and eschatology, especially such Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophers as Plato and Porphyry. Whereas their pride prevents these opponents from accepting the bodily resurrection, Augustine insists upon the Christlike humility that opens both the mind to accept it and the flesh to experience it truly and happily. Augustine’s Catholic faith in the resurrection prompts him to revise the cosmological and anthropological paradigms of classical antiquity. Furthermore, he identifies the recipients of the future resurrection as both the entirety of our human race and the entirety of our human flesh, even down to its smallest particles.

Chapter 6 investigates Augustine’s explanation, in De trinitate, of how the single paschal mystery of Christ’s dead and resurrected flesh harmonizes with our double paschal mystery, serving both as the sacrament of the spiritual death and resurrection of our interior man and as the example of the fleshly death and resurrection of our exterior man. As Augustine recognizes, the sacramentality and exemplarity of Christ’s fleshly death and resurrection are furnished to us on account of our spiritual blindness. In exegeting the theophany of God’s back to Moses, Augustine observes that living faith in Christ’s resurrection makes us friends with God and socializes us anew within the Catholic Church. Augustine articulates how Christ, the humble mediator of life, has vanquished the devil, the proud mediator of death, and his demonic and human associates, by the justice of Christ’s obedience unto death, and by the power of Christ’s resurrection to eternal life.

Chapter 4 argues that Augustine reaches a theologically coherent articulation of the resurrection in Contra Faustum Manicheum. At this culminating moment, Augustine defends human flesh and its resurrection against the Manichaean repudiations of both. Despite the Manichaean claim to promote the spiritual resurrection, Augustine diagnoses their mental captivity within their ideological constructs of an alternative reality and of a phantom and deceptive Christ as deriving from their disbelief in Christ’s true flesh and fleshly resurrection. Augustine shows how the risen Jesus and Scripture testify to the enduring substance of the flesh in its resurrection, whereby God vindicates his creation and accomplishes our salvation. Augustine progresses to a more sophisticated reading of key scriptural verses by distinguishing between the flesh’s substantial constitution and its qualitative conditions of corruption and incorruption. Moreover, in elevating believers’ hope and by transfiguring their sacraments, Christ’s fleshly resurrection has advanced them towards the kingdom of God.

Chapter 9 considers how Augustine features some of the most extreme expressions of the spiritual resurrection and of hope for the fleshly resurrection as Christians approach their bodily deaths and handle those of others. Augustine’s teaching and preaching on Christian dying, celebrating the Christian martyrs, handling Christian funerary and commemorative practices, and consoling Christian survivors serve to highlight the embodied spiritual life and activities of Christians whose souls have already been resurrected and whose bodies will eventually be resurrected, hopefully to eternal life. Among these discussions, Augustine acknowledges that Paul, the martyred apostle of the resurrection, provides some of the deepest theological insights not only into the mystery of the resurrection, but also into the interim condition of the human person after physical death and before fleshly resurrection. Despite the personal brokenness of death, Augustine sees that the continuity of human identity always remains in the hands of God.

Chapter 12 explores Augustine’s Christocentric speculations on the beatific resurrection of the saints to eternal life. Particularly in Book 22 of De ciuitate dei, Augustine displays both moderation in his tentative articulations and generosity in his allowance of a wide range of eschatological prospects within the parameters set by Scripture and the resurrected Christ. Considering the spiritual body and the ecclesial body of the beatific resurrection, Augustine discusses the perfection of human freedom, the vigor and beauty of the saints’ resurrected flesh, the vindication of history in their resurrected bodies and memories, and the unity and diversity of the resurrected Church. Augustine develops his understanding of the beatific vision to articulate the prospect that it will come not only after, but also from within the beatific resurrection. Enjoying forever the insatiable satisfaction of God, the resurrected community of the saints will indefatigably celebrate and praise the God of the resurrection.

Chapter 11 examines Augustine’s biblical acceptance, articulation, and defense of the miserable resurrection of the damned to eternal death. While admitting the difficult, but candid words of God in Scripture about the eternality of hell, Augustine refuses to subvert the Christocentric standard of final judgment by merely human preferences and sentiments. Particularly in Book 21 of De ciuitate dei, Augustine argues not only for the possibility of the fleshly resurrection to eternal punishment, but also for its suitability. He recognizes that it is not only the denizens of the earthly city which protests against its own self-selected end, but also certain citizens of the pilgrim city of God whose hearts still bear marks of the earthly city’s love. For Augustine, the God of the resurrection will forever lavish his love, his justice, and perhaps even his mercy upon the resurrected damned, who have eternally and impenitently alienated themselves from him.

The epilogue recapitulates the course of this investigation into Augustine’s theology of the resurrection. It then considers how Augustine prepared both the members of the Catholic Church in Hippo for its life after his death and himself for his resurrection after his death. It looks forward in hope of encountering Augustine, living again and forever in the flesh, at the eschatological resurrection.

Chapter 2 focuses on Augustine’s early consideration of the resurrection as the restoration of humanity to the pristine stability of paradise. In starting to describe the resurrection, Augustine begins to articulate the spiritual death and resurrection of the soul and the physical death and resurrection of the body. In this process, he begins to modify his previous notions of the soul’s immortality and the body’s dispensability. Emphasizing more a return to the original creation and less an advance to an eschatological transformation, Augustine reinforces his description of this repristination by articulating not only humanity’s spiritual change at the beginning of time, but also a version of millennialism at the end of time. At the center of these considerations, Augustine begins to explore the fleshly resurrection of Christ, who functions as the sacrament and example of our salvation. Augustine’s later clarifications of his early concept of Edenic repristination evince its limitations.