The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
92 The Son's Descent is by nature. Conversely, those who become gods are never so by what they are by nature but only through God's fulfilling his promise.
Given Augustine's phraseology here, a word of caution is in order. Notice how he does not fear being misunderstood in using various temporal tenses to highlight the contrast of this exchange. Without ever claiming that God forfeits divinity in the incarnation or that humans cease to be creatures in the act of deification, he nonetheless stresses how those who are deified "were" human persons [homines erant]. What can he mean by such a claim? Does he intend for his hearers to think that their humanity is something transient? If so, why would God take human mortality to himself?
I maintain that in Augustine's preaching such a phrase is not to be taken literally but is intended to have rhetorical effect: deification does not mean humanity's elimination but its perfection. This is why he utilizes a hyperbolic past tense, so as to highlight the new condition involved in humanity's new way of being in Christ. Such a move is not an isolated event. For example, years later (Christmas morning of 412), the Bishop will again utilize this hyperbolic past tense in one of his most felicitous turns of phrase: "in order to make gods of those who were merely human, one who was God made himself human" [deos facturus qui homines erant, homo factus est, qui deus erat].31 With more maturity in guiding a congregation, Augustine may have noticed how such a contrast could be misleading and consequently follows this phrase up with the clarification that this was done "without forfeiting what he was, he wished to become what he himself had made. He himself made what he would become, because what he did was add man to God, not lose God in man."32 Here Augustine is
31. s. 192.1; Hill, Sermons (III/6), 46; PL 38.1012. 32. s. 192.1; Hill, Sermons (III/6), 46; "nec amittens quod erat, fieri uoluit ipse quod fecerat. Ipse fecit quod esset, quia hominem Deo addidit, non Deum in homine perdidit"; PL 38.1012.