ONLINE FIRST
published on July 25, 2025
Ian Clausen
https://doi.org/10.5840/augstudies202572497
Hope¡¯s Hidden Life
Augustine on Divine Promise
In ¡°Salvator Mundi: Via Crucis,¡± Denise Levertov encounters Christ as he bears ¡°Incarnation¡¯s heaviest weight.¡± In these fleeting moments, she writes, Christ finds himself ¡°out of his depth,¡± enduring the ¡°sickened desire . . . to simply cease, to not be.¡± The poet¡¯s meditation on these moments offers a useful lens for reconsidering Augustinian hope. In view of Christ¡¯s suffering as the incarnated divine promise, how does Augustine interpret the meaning of St. Paul¡¯s ¡°one hope¡± (Eph. 4:4) and St. Peter¡¯s ¡°living hope¡± (1 Pet. 1:3)? While other hopes unfold under the shadow of death, the life that is ¡°hidden with Christ in God¡± (Col. 3:3) draws its hope out of the depths to which Christ has descended. This results in a new way of keeping time in God¡¯s promise: a way that for Augustine disrupts and exceeds, without abandoning, life in the saeculum.