From The Book of Revelation, a history of Revelation that will be published this month by the Princeton University Press. St. Augustine was a bishop and Christian scholar of the fourth and fifth centuries.

Anticipating questions from skeptical readers of the Book of Revelation, Augustine was concerned to address potential complications with regard to both the mass judgment and the mass resurrection.

In what form will the dead be resurrected? Augustine expected that the resurrected body will be a perfection and completion of the formerly fallen body into an ideal one suited for the purified City of God. Those who…