Sublime

In Augustine’s striking picture, “By your gift we are set on fire and carried upwards: we grow red hot and ascend. We climb ‘the ascents in our heart’ (Ps. 84:7) and sing ‘the song of steps’ (Ps. 121:1). Lit by your fire, your good fire, we grow red-hot and ascend, as we move upwards ‘to the peace of Jerusalem’ (Ps. 122:6).”10 Discipleship should

Augustine might make Christianity plausible again for those who’ve been burned—who suspect that the “Christianity” they’ve seen is just a cover for power plays and self-interest, or a tired moralism that seems angry all the time, or a version of middle-class comfort too often confused with the so-called American Dream.

Beeley provides much discussion and several examples from the church fathers in his Unity of Christ, esp. 39, 134, 164, 193.

Tarsicius van Bavel, in a lucid digest of Augustine’s teaching on this topic,54 cites Sermon 341 as a focal text: here Augustine says that ‘Christ’ has three meanings, referring to the eternal and pre-existent Word, to the incarnate figure of the redeemer and mediator, and to the ‘whole Christ’, head and body.