Il corpo spirituale in Agostino
The Spiritual Body in Augustine

Summary/Abstract: Augustine’s anthropology didn’t only evolve throughout time, but also changed qualitatively, and understanding it has provoked bitter debates for centuries, as it does today. Even the extreme advocates of the uniqueness of his opinion do not question the fact that he later changed his youthful — Platonist — positions. Nowhere in his thought we find the idea of the pre-existence of the soul, but the creation of a man who is sexually differentiated, who is equal to today’s one, who must eat in order to live. So the man who came out of God’s hands is this man. A realistic picture of the original Adam only grew in Augustine, the initial hesitation to attribute desire to the original nature of man is later overcome, although the current pleasure is not fully identified with the original one. But this is nonetheless a shift from the original vision of passionless reproduction. The important point is that the division into sexes is not conditioned by sin, but it has the purpose of mediating the birth of all the saints who will be the inhabitants of the Heavenly Jerusalem. Also, man is seen as mortal in himself, although not necessarily dead, but as created in a “middle” state, which implies his necessary transformation from the psyhical body to the spiritual, which will not be subject to death. This transformation was necessary for Adam, because he was not perfect, but was destined to be transformed into a spiritual body, which is the body of Jesus Christ in which all other bodies are contained.

• Details
• Contents