Читать книгу A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Joseph Cullen Ayer - Страница 33

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So long as chiliastic expectations were the basis of the Christian's hope and his judgment of the order of this present world, the Christian felt that he was but a stranger and sojourner in the world, and that his real home was the kingdom of Christ, soon to be established here on earth. With such a view the Christian would naturally define his relation to the world as being in it, yet not of it. As time passed, the opinion became more common that the kingdom of Christ was not a future world-order to be set up on His return, but the Church here on earth. This thought, which is the key to [pg 028] the City of God by St. Augustine, was not to be found in the first century and a half of the Church.