The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
94 The Son's Descent of the Son becomes both the means by which God infuses divinity into creation as well as the exemplar of what the faithful will become, namely that which God will take to himself and that by which we are remade:
The Son of God became a son of man, in order to make sons of men into sons of God. Hold on to this absolutely. . . that neither is he mortal from what is his own, nor are we immortal from what is our own; not from what is his own, [not from himself and] not from the substance by which he is himself God; but in another way, yes from what is his own, because from his creation, from what he established, from what he created.35
Augustine repeats how God does not save simply by what he is [non de substantia qua est ipse dues], but manifests his power through his condescension, thus saving the world through that which is not his own. In this way, creation is again seen to be the instrument of God's deifying activity. The humanity of Christ establishes a new relationship between divine and created persons. The Son has become one with humanity so as to establish a new bond between the Father and created persons.
The next section of this homily begins at paragraph 2, lasting through paragraph 10 and taking up the theme of false divinities. Should it surprise us that after fifteen or so years of refraining from using the term deificare, Augustine should clarify his preceding comments with a relatively lengthy explanation of the different realities we call "gods"? This is precisely what prompts his use of deification language in sermo 23B. That is, deificare becomes explicit in order to contrast the
35. s. 23B.1 (lines 16-22); Dolbeau, Sermons, 459; Hill, Sermons (III/11), 37; "Filius Dei factus est filius hominis, ut filios hominum faceret filios Dei. Hoc plane tenete, quod iam locutos nosse esse caritati uestrae credo quod memineritis, quia ille nec de suo mortalis, nec nos de nostro immortales—non de suo, nec de natura sua, non de substantia qua est ipse Deus; alio autem modo de suo, quia de eo quod condidit, de eo quod creauit." Hill omits nec de natura sua as redundant, following directly upon non de suo—a phrase that seems to me, however, to be a typical Augustinian reinforcement of his point here, namely, that the humanity which God takes on is not from his own nature but from his creation.