The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
Made to be Godly 71 ultimately sad irony, of course, is that the divinity Adam and Eve sought could have been realized apart from Satan's prompting. That is, the promise held out to humanity to become "gods" was true but only by participating in God's truth. Satan proves to be the father of lies—not in what he told Adam and Eve, but in how he enticed them to obtain it.
The created will is a media uis for Augustine and was created with the inherent ability to have moved either toward God or toward itself.94 Solipsistic movement of the will results in pride, manifested for Augustine by Eve's prototypical interaction with the evil one. Here she exhibits a love of her own self-will (propriae potestatis) and an inordinate pride in herself (de se superbia praesumptio) instead of that filial receptivity and humble willingness which alone can fill the creature with God's own life.95 This again is the original evil: when a rational person thinks himself supreme and turns away from that very source which alone can make him so.96 This godliness is what both angels and humans most truly desire, but apart from God such restlessness will only destroy: "An angel usurped equality with God, and fell, and became the devil; a man usurped equality with God, and fell, and became mortal."97
Because Adam and Eve attempted to possess divinity through their own souls and not through participating in God, they lost the majesty God intended for them: "Craving to be what they were not, they lost what they had received."98 Augustine relies on Gen. 3:5 to show the paradigmatic nature of every rebellion against God. All created images long for divinity and all will search for it. Some will allow God to make them like
94. cf. spir. et litt. 33.58. 95. Gn. litt. 11.30; CSEL 28.363. 96. Cf. ciu. Dei 14.13; CCL 47.435. See also lib. arb. 24.72 where such intellectual distortion is a matter of pride and aversion: "Superbia enim auertit a sapientia, auersionem autem stultitia consequitur"; CCL 29.318.
97. s. 361. 16; Hill, Sermons (III/10), 235. 98. en. Ps. 103, exp. 2.11; Boulding, Expositions (III/19), 138; cf. Gn. adu. Man. 2.25.38.