The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
82 The Son's Descent concept of humanity's deification in an explicit or systematic manner. It is a word that turns up and, as soon as it appears, falls away. Nonetheless, some scholars, like Augustine Casiday, have observed that, "What is striking, and frankly frustrating, about these references to deification is how effortlessly Augustine makes them."4 Now, a term surfacing eighteen times in a corpus numbering roughly 5.4 million words may not appear "effortlessly," but Casiday's remark nonetheless occasions an important clarification. It would be a disservice to limit our study into Augustine's understanding of the deified life to only the lines where deificare and its cognates appear explicitly. Therefore, while various uses of deificare may be incidental, they are not unimportant, as they prompt Augustine to develop related, further-ranging images for the Christian life.
In the course of this chapter a triptych of related incidences of deificare emerges: (1) the early philosophical usage, (2) the literary usage, and (3) the explicitly soteriological use. Augustine's first use comes in an early letter to Nebridius, dated sometime between 387 and 390. This is a letter full of the rich rhetoric one would expect from a young intellectual who has just discovered the splendors of philosophical contemplation.5 As we shall see next, this use of deification is by far the most studied, perhaps because for some it also stands apart as the one most easily identifiable with pagan divinization.
DeificarI In Otio (387–90)
Unwell and with thoughts of his nearing death, Nebridius wishes to travel from Carthage to visit his friend in Numidia
4. Augustine Casiday, "St. Augustine on deification," Sobernost 23 (2001): 23– 44; 24. 5. Between 387–90/91, Augustine and Nebridius (d. 390–91) exchanged a dozen letters: nine from Augustine (ep. 3, 4, 7, 9–14) and three from Nebridius (ep. 5–6, 8); for more, see Georges Folliet, "La correspondence entre Augustin et Nebridius," in L'opera letteraria di Agostino tra Cassiciacum et Milano: Agostino nelle terre di Ambrogio, edited by Giovanni Reale (Palermo: Edizioni Augustinus, 1987), 191–215.