The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
Made to be Godly 43 man person was made to the image, "not of the Father alone or of the Son alone or of the Holy Spirit alone, but of the Trinity itself."20 The divine image found in the human person is a complex but equally unified reflection of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Its capacity is actualized and the image perfected not only in communion with the Son but only when union with each person of the Trinity is realized.
Augustine has one more argument from scripture that gives another hint of this trinitarian imaging in the hortatory faciamus of Gen. 1:26. Unlike the straightforward declaration, fecit, which brings about all other non-personal creatures, here Augustine sees the divine deliberation of humanity's creation implying a trinity: "[W]hile with the other works it says, God said: Let it be made, here on the other hand we have, God said: Let us make man to our image and likeness, to insinuate, that is, a plurality of persons, if I may so put it, on account of Father and Son and Holy Spirit."21 The scale of ontological difference is set in principio: whereas the rest of creation was made through simple decree, the human person is introduced as one created through an internal consultation within the Trinity.
But in what does this triune image consist? This is the inquiry running throughout the second piece of Augustine's masterpiece, De Trinitate, and we shall come to see how the imago Dei is worthy of the name only when in union with God. Whereas the first part of the De Trinitate seeks to unfold the mystery of the Godhead, namely the relationship of the divine persons as well as their distinct roles in the economy, the latter books seek to name the image revealed at Gen. 1:26–27. Building on the scriptural claim that God is love (cf. 1 John 4:8), Augustine in De Trinitate 9 first entertains the triad found in the imaginem et similitudinem nostram: a qua pluralitate spiritum sanctum separare quis audeat?"; CSEL 28.502.
20. Gn. litt. imp. 61; Hill, Genesis, 150; "quia non ad solius patris aut solius filii uel solius spiritus sancti, sed ad ipsius trinitatis imaginem factus est homo"; CSEL 28.502.
21. Gn. litt. 3.19; Hill, Genesis, 234; CSEL 28.85.