  Augustine's thought on the relation of ownership to political authority is open to interpretation. One can easily read him as arguing that the Church, as the Body of Christ and earthly instantiation of the City of God, can best exemplify loving lord/subject relations through its ecclesiastical structure, thereby justifying a top-down papal monarchy. Likewise, one can read him as having so separated secular political authority from the rule of love as to make political and ecclesiastical jurisdictive authority utterly distinct. Again, one could interpret Augustine's 'all things belong to the just' as meaning that the Church is the arbiter of all property ownership in virtue of being the Body of Christ and seat of all created justice, or one could argue that the Church should abandon all claims to property ownership, just as the Apostles abstained from the possession of private property. This ambiguity in interpretation was the source of some of the competing theories that influenced Wyclif's position.