The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
46 Made to be Godly
We began by analyzing what Augustine means by imago as well as its relationship to similitudo and aequalitas. We then located the divine image in the human person: in his mens, manifested as remembering, knowing, and loving the triune God. This movement out of creation toward the creator is what ultimately constitutes the imago Dei for Augustine. Let us now turn to this chapter's primary text which will prove beneficial to our understanding of the Augustinian notion of image and the human person's union with God.
Much of the discussion in De Trinitate 7 revolves around Augustine's teaching on 1 Cor. 1:24 and how Christ's being the power of God and the wisdom of God should be understood correctly. It should be taken neither as a way to subordinate Christ to the Father, nor should it be taken in a way that robs the Father of also being wise.30 Yet, why does scripture almost always insist on predicating sapientia only of one begotten or created?31
Augustine's solution comes in terms of the economy of salvation. Since the Son is the one by whom humans come to God, he is revealed as God's very wisdom so as to show human persons that true human wisdom consists in imitating the Son. Those created in the divine image are illumined when they imitate the Father's lumen, the Word, who has now become flesh so as to reveal the Father to enfleshed images. Augustine therefore exhorts his readers in this way:
Let us copy the example of this divine image, the Son, and not draw away from God. For we too are the image of God, though not the equal one like him; we are made by the Father through the Son, not born of the Father like that image; we are image because we are illuminated with light; that one is so because it is the light that illu-
30. For a look at how 1 Cor. 1:24 was used in the "Arian" controversies, see Richard Paul Vaggione, Eunomius of Cyzicus and the Nicene Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 83–86.
31. Trin. 7.3.4: "Cur ergo in scripturis nusquam fere de sapientia quidquam dicitur nisi ut ostendatur a deo genita uel creata?"; CCL 50.251.