The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
The Son's Descent 83 one last time. Enjoying the new life and daily order of a seruus dei, however, Augustine admonishes one who had been a mentor to him against the errors of divination and of Manichaeism.6 In Augustine's estimation, traveling to and fro on this earth is not "the mark of a man who ponders that one last journey, which is called death," the only trip truly worth anticipating. Instead, he bids Nebridius to enjoy the break from the busyness such a time in one's life brings and thereby to "become godlike in leisure" (deificari in otio).7 He then concludes by admitting that he, at least, requires such freedom from "the tumult of perishing things" and insists that both men should seek instead "the journeys upward (itinera in superna) . . . the pleasure of the life of the mind when it dies to a love that is bodily."8 In arguing that deificari in otio is derived from Porphyry's Sententiae, scholars have tended to read this phrase as smacking of pagan pride, seeking to attain divine union without any reliance upon God's humble elevation of humanity.9
According to Georges Folliet, Augustine found the source of the maxim deificari in otium in the thirty-second proposition of Porphyry's Sententiae.10 Folliet goes on to argue that Augustine's initial use of the term "deification" sometime between 388 and 390 is to be taken in a strictly philosophical sense, similar to what the non-Christian sage sought in his desire to be godlike.11 What is more, Folliet argues that far from connoting divine grace acting upon the passive creature, deificari cannot here mean the elevation towards the supernatural. Why not? He contends that the infinitive is used reflexively,
6. Cf. conf., 4.3.6, 7.2.3. 7. ep. 10.2; Teske, Letters (II/1), 33–34. 8. ep. 10.3; Teske, Letters (II/1), 34. 9. Cf. Gerald Bonner, "Augustine's Conception of Deification," 371–72; Georges Folliet, "Deificari in otio: Augustin, Epistula 10, 2," Recherches Augustiniennes 2 [supplement: Hommage au R. P. Fulbert Cayré] (1962): 226.
10. Folliet, "Deificari in otio," 230–31. 11. Ibid., 233–34.