The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
The Son's Descent 95 true God who alone can deify [deus deificator] with the pagan idols who, according to Augustine, have only a nominal claim to divinity. Deification language is employed here to provide the congregation with the hope that they will be made like God and not like the false idols to which their non-Christian neighbors have fallen.
As we saw in chapter 2, humanity's primal sin had to do with pursuing deification apart from God. Given both this framework of sin as well as Augustine's audience in Carthage, deificare is presented here as the object of Christian spes while simultaneously allowing Augustine to lay down rules for distinguishing between the various types of dii: (1) the only true God who alone can deify, and (2) those who are called gods because they have been made so through grace and adoption. Given the perhaps misleading wording of Psalm 81 on which he is preaching, Augustine knows he must clarify among what kind of "gods" God stands: "Our God, the true God, the one God, has stood up in the synagogue of gods, many of them of course, and gods not by nature but by adoption, by grace. There is a great difference between God who exists, God who is always God, true God, not only God but also deifying God; that is, if I may so put it, god-making God, God not made making gods, and gods who are made, but not by a craftsman."36 Here Augustine distinguishes between (1) the one true God who deifies [deificatorem deum] and (2) those gods who have been legitimately made so in grace [non natura deorum, sed adoptione, sed gratia]. As we have been mapping, Augustine often refers to the sanctified as "gods" and here he provides further characteristics of such a lofty title: they are not
36. s. 23B, section 2; Dolbeau, Sermons, 459; Hill, Sermons (III/11), 38; "Deus noster, Deus uerus, Deus unus stetit in synagoga deorum, utique multorum, non natura deorum, sed adoptione, sed gratia. Multum interest inter Deum exsistentem, Deum semper Deum, uerum Deum, non solum Deum, sed etiam deificatorem Deum, hoc est, ut ita dicam, deificum Deum, Deum non factum deos facientem, et deos qui fiunt, sed non a fabro."