The Middle Ages on the whole did not understand well this worldly future dimension of the kingdom of God. This was so due to three factors: a widespread ignorance of the apocalyptic Jewish background of this expectation, together with an acute Platonizing longing for the eternal, for a place outside of time and history. This is the first factor. To it we must add the Augustinian transformation of the kingdom into the church militant and triumphant, and lastly the imperial ideology of the Christian empire as the kingdom of God on earth. - Benedict T. Viviano, The Kingdom of God in History