The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
98 The Son's Descent significant pedigree. With seeds in St. Paul's understanding of instaurare omnia in Christo (Eph. 1:10), Irenaeus developed this idea as an essential part of his theology. That is, he situated the incarnation in terms of the restoration and elevation of humanity: the incarnate Son "recapitulated himself in the long line of humanity [longam hominum expositionem in seipso recapitulauit] and gave us salvation so as to regain in Jesus Christ what we had forfeited in Adam."41 Eric Osborn summarizes such an approach to the work of Christ as every created being finding "meaning in the person and work of Jesus Christ, [whose] work involves joining the end to the beginning and changing reality in a radical way."42
Augustine's earliest use of recapitulative deification achieves precisely this, reuniting the end of humanity to its beginning and thereby radically changing what it means to be human. This is how a recapitulative deification is at work here, occurring whenever two contrary members of an antithesis—the former distorted and deficient, the latter perfect and operative—are joined together by the perfect member's penetrating that fallen reality and conforming it to itself. In a theory of recapitulation, the healing agent wholly enters into the ongoing destruction, reversing it by uniting it to its own perfection. The healthy doctor, for example, stoops to the level of the infirm and risks illness in order to cure; the learned simplify their thoughts and words so as to instruct the ignorant; and (once) the living underwent death in order to bring the dead to life. In this consummative process, the first antithesis is penetrated by the second and its deficiency is not only remedied, but is remade into an even more perfect state: once healed by the perfect medi-
41. Irenaeus, Aduersus Haereses 3.18. Irenaeus's "long line" of humanity is especially important given his understanding of Adam and Eve as younger children growing through the various stages of human development, the same development which Christ passes through for their sakes.
42. Eric Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 21.