El peregrinaje y el vestigio

El oficio de la Iglesia

Abstract

When the concept of Church emerge the antique community theories were disrupted at the same time that this concept took shape giving continuity to some conceptual and practical elements from the fundamental social institutions of the Mediterranean world: polis, Empire and chosen people. The paper goes on three problematical issues relevant to the Augustinian theory of the Christian community which took place along with the concept of Church. The first is about the concept of pilgrimage and its relation with the concepts of visibility and hiding. The second analyses the concept of catholicity, specifically the way the sacrament becomes insufficient as a visible index of true Christianity. Last, I offer as a conclusion the thesis that for Augustine monasticism is a model to determine true Christianity, because it has a clear index to determine true Christianity, that is, the fight against every attempt to privatize the common good of divine grace.