13. Among the first exclusive focuses on deification in Augustine is an article (continued)
Introduction xvii
there are encyclopedia entries on his theology of deification.14 However, the most helpful examinations of Augustinian deifiby the Augustinian canon, Victorino Capánaga, which has proved very influential, being quoted throughout most of the subsequent studies in the twentieth century: Victorino Capánaga, "La deificación en la soteriología agustiniana," Augustinus Magister 2 (1954): 745–54. Capánaga stresses the anthropological capacities and effects involved in Augustine's view of divinization. The result is human sanctification in Christ through his church's sacraments. Of the twentieth century scholars who build on the work of Capánaga, Gerald Bonner emerges as the most influential. His 1986 essay treats the (then available) 15 instances of deificare, providing both the context and the implication for each of these examples: Gerald Bonner, "Augustine's Concept of Deification," Journal of Theological Studies 37 (1986): 369–86. Other studies of note include: Georges Folliet, "Deificari in otio: Augustin, Epistula 10," Recherches Augustiniennes 2 [supplement: Hommage au R. P. Fulbert Cayré] (1962): 225–36; Francisco Juberias, La Divinización del hombre (Madrid: Editorial Coculsa, 1972), 115–18; Patricia Wilson-Kastner, "Grace as Participation in the Divine Life in the Theology of Augustine of Hippo," Augustinian Studies 7 (1976): 135–52; Roland Teske's response to Folliet in "Augustine's Epistula X: Another Look at Deificari in Otio," Augustinianum 32 (1992): 289–99; José Oroz Reta, "De l'illumination à la déification de l'âme selon saint Augustin," Studia Patristica 27 (1993): 364–82; a one-page treatment in Steven Botterill, Dante and the Mystical Tradition: Bernard of Clairvaux in the Commedia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 206–07; a paragraph in A. N. Williams, The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 29; Pedro Urbano López de Meneses, Theosis: La doctrina de la divinización en las tradiciones cristianas: Fundamentos para una teología ecuménica de la gracia (Pamplona: Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, S.A., 2001), 112–24. Treating the recently discovered sermons is Augustine Casiday's analysis of Dolbeau 23B in "St. Augustine on deification: his homily on Psalm 81," Sobernost 23 (2001): 23–44; two works by Henry Chadwick: "Note sur la divinisation chez saint Augustin," Revue des sciences religieuses 76.2 (2002): 246–48 where Chadwick reproduces most of the standard primary texts first found in Capánaga, showing how participation in the divine life is at the heart of Augustine's understanding of salvation; see also the passing remarks of Henry Chadwick, Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 211 and 236, admitting that Augustine would not have found Boethius's language of "becoming gods" intolerable; and finally, Robert Puchniak, "Augustine's Conception of Deification, Revisited," Theosis: Deification in Christian Theology, edited by Stephen Finland and Vladimir Kharlamov (Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick Publications, 2006), 122–33. Perhaps the most salutary aspect of this essay is simply its inclusion in a collection examining the history of theosis, indicating that Augustine is finally being recognized as a theologian for whom the divinization of humanity was not unknown.
14. While Capánaga's 1954 article is not quoted directly, his work is evident in the encyclopedia entries by Gustave Bardy in the Dictionnaire de Spiritualité (Paris: Beauchesne, 1957), edited by M. Viller et al., and continued by C. Baumgartner et al., Tome 3, section 3: Gustave Bardy, "Divinisation: Chez les Pères Latins"; Augustine is treated at 1395–97. Bonner has also been called upon to include two very helpful encyclopedia entries: "Deificare," Augustinus-Lexicon, 2.265–67; "Deification, Divinization," Augustine Through the Ages, 265–66.