Chapter 12: Part 4 Chapter 31 Summary and Analysis

This summary chapter covers the final chapter of Part IV. This gives the 'breathing room' to provide some analysis. Here, readers have clearly seen how true it is that the context of the time and place greatly influenced this man. What was most needed and how to go about it were themselves influenced by his era. Unlike readers of today, the people of God of the time, as far as he knew, aspired to Heavenly Jerusalem. One common contemporary Christian interpretation of Heaven is that it is somehow 'another dimension' just as real, not merely mental. The city of Jerusalem as she stands on Earth today, and by these miracles of politics and religion, she does stand today. As a supremely Jewish city, Augustine's view seems discordant. It is as if he should have dusted off his...