For Augustine the trumping conviction is we believe in the resurrection of the body. And so I think you do see a development across Augustine’s corpus, so I think the early young Augustine when he’s first converted is still in the throes and thrall of a certain Platonic devaluing of embodiment. And I think if you just look at the early works you get that. But by the time you get to later in his work, there are two convictions that have got hold of him. One is the resurrection of the body, which just means he can’t be a Platonist anymore about embodiment; and the other is the sacraments—the whole Christian theology of the sacraments is this taking up and affirming of the material world.

So I actually don’t think you will properly understand Augustine if you don’t realise that an animating core conviction for him is the goodness of creation. If all you’ve ever heard is this caricatured Augustine, that makes no sense whatsoever, but I think if you read the Confessions, if you read the City of God, this fundamental affirmation that anything that is is in virtue of coming from God and God is good, therefore anything that exists is good insofar as it’s been created, that’s at the heart of Augustine’s whole metaphysic, his whole ontology and his whole account of reality.

And so it’s almost like his Christian convictions press him later in his life to affirm the importance of materiality embodiment as something that’s affirmed in the Incarnation; you know, if the body was essentially bad, how on earth could God ever mix Himself up with that? And yet that’s the heart and soul of the gospel and of the Christian faith. I think it’s affirmed in resurrection; I think it’s affirmed in the sacraments.

And this is why I think desire is actually so central in Augustine.

James K. A. Smith, interview with David Rutledge, "The Devil Has All the Best Stories"
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/encounter/eer-07-07/4105382#transcript