The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
4 Creation as the Unifying Prologue and he is neither conditioned nor improved upon in the act of creation.3 It is therefore fitting that God chooses to bring other beings into existence in a wholly gratuitous manner, seeking to perfect and not destroy the integrity of the other.
In his De Genesi ad Litteram, Augustine argues that it is unfitting that the Father would have the ability to perform a beautiful act and yet refuse to do so. But since he is both omnipotens et bonus, he chose not only to create, but to create all things "very good."4 Years earlier (c. 391), Augustine used this same argument of God's lack of jealousy (inuidia) to show the fittingness of the Father's eternal begetting of the Son. Because God is both omnipotent and wholly good, and therefore incapable of jealousy, Augustine relied on this coupling of the Father's power and goodness to account for the Son's eternal procession: "Him whom God begot, because he could not beget one better than himself (for nothing is better than God), he begot as his equal. For if he wanted to do so and could not, he is weak; if he could do so and did not want to, he is envious. From this it is clear that he begot his Son as his equal."5
Our author could describe God's tri-relational substance as either a simplex multiplicitas or a multiplex simplicitas.6 The Father and Son and Holy Spirit are consummately united as well as perfectly individuated. Because God's very nature is constituted by personal relationship with the other, the Father is the Father for no other reason than that he begets the Son, the Son is entirely identified with his being begotten by the Father, while the Holy Spirit is defined by a simultaneous origination and uniting of both Father and Son. As Augustine would argue, against any Arian tendencies, the only difference
3. Cf. en. Ps. 113, exp.1.14. 4. Gn. Litt 4.16: "sed bona facere si non, nulla esset inuidentia. quia ergo est omnipotens et bonus, omnia ualde bona fecit"; CSEL 28.113.
5. diu. qu.; Teske, Miscellaneous Questions (I, 12), 62. 6. Trin. 6.4.6; CCL 50.234.