93. Cf. ciu. Dei 12.5; Gn. lib. imp. 16.60.
Creation as the Unifying Prologue 33 and consequent mutability is not due to an inherent evil but to the reality that creatures are not consubstantial with God.93
When Augustine sought an answer to creation's "quare fecerit?" the praise of creation came into clearer focus. Perfect and in no way lacking, the Trinity nevertheless chose to share its being and life and divinity with others. Gaining nothing by creating, God does so simply to allow others to know and enjoy his own trinitarian life. But now we must direct our attention to the human person in particular. For the ultimate purpose of God's establishing the world is ecclesial communion, the church of praise appearing as the telos of all creation. As much as Augustine sees all of creation as a divinely intended good, the human person is even more God's direct handiwork. Although all of creation is deiform, its fulfillment is realized in the glorification and divinization of the human person who alone is personally and freely capable of becoming one with God. However, because the human person has freely forfeited the divine life God intended, we shall also treat sin, cast by Augustine as the human person's misguided search for deification. The divine image has been distorted by the disobedience of humanity's protoparents: for what was once given to reflect God without weakness or diminishment has suffered a turning away from God. All creation has been affected by this Adamic aversion and, accordingly, all creation stands in need of the perfect image's advent. Genesis's divine drama already signals the Word's incarnation.
93. Cf. ciu. Dei 12.5; Gn. lib. imp. 16.60.
Two
Made to be Godly
The Divine Image Bestowed and Broken
quis ego et qualis ego?
Understanding the imago Dei is crucial to unlocking Augustine's theology of deification. This chapter, accordingly, begins with an analysis of what Augustine means by imago. By focusing on a passage from De Trinitate 7.3.5, we come to see how Augustine locates the divine image in the one creature purposefully made "incomplete," the one creature brought into being for a relationship outside of him or herself. Unfortunately, the human person rejected this invitation to genuine deification, choosing instead the enemy's illusory invitation "to be like gods" (Gen. 3:5) and the divine image was de-imaged. The final section of this chapter is therefore a brief examination of human sin, understood as the futile attempt to seize divinity, a false act of deification.
This chapter parallels the last in two important ways. First, like Augustine's doctrine of creation, the human imaging of God is not yet directly a matter of the created person's godliness but is rather the precondition by which such communion