The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
Creation as the Unifying Prologue 5 between the persons of the Trinity is relational, never substantial. As such, this interrelatedness of the Trinity demonstrates an unequaled type of being whose identity is completely constituted by personal relation.7
Augustine sees this equality of the divine persons as a constant teaching of all the Catholic commentators (catholici tractatores) who have written before him, namely that, "Father and Son and Holy Spirit in the inseparable equality of one substance present a divine unity; and therefore there are not three gods but one God; although indeed the Father has begotten the Son, and therefore he who is the Father is not the Son; and the Son is begotten by the Father, and therefore he who is the Son is not the Father; and the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son, but only the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, himself coequal to the Father and the Son, and belonging to the threefold unity."8 Augustine could see such generosity in the very life of the Trinity. That is, the Christian distinction of the divine persons reveals how union with a divine person does not obliterate personal characteristics or differences. While of course the unity enjoyed within the Trinity and the unity God grants to creatures is not identical, we nonetheless see how the perfect otherness of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit prepares us to understand how creatures can be called to be partakers of the divine life without foregoing their alterity as well.
Augustine was aware that the triune agents of Genesis 1 were not conspicuously clear.9 Nonetheless, in spite of the lack
7. Augustine clarifies to his Arian opponents that there are only two ways to speak of God: "substance-wise" and "relationship-wise," not only because there can be neither change nor modification within the Godhead (thus no speaking of God "accident-wise"), but because the only personal identity each of the divine persons possesses is spoken of in terms of substantial relationship. This is his argument in the first half of Trin. 5.
8. Trin. 1.4.7; Hill, Trinity, 69; CCL 50.35. 9. Cf., Trin. 2.10.17: "Contextio quidem ipsa scripturae nusquam transire sentitur a persona ad personam"; CCL 50.102.