The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
The Son's Descent 99 cine, the sickly are ill never again, and so on. By embracing the imperfect, perfection extends itself to all who succumbed to the former deficiency. This is how recapitulation rejuvenates and fulfills rather than discards a fallen reality. By seeking to clarify and comprehend, rather than to break with the past, recapitulation offers a continuity and totality not as evident in other soteriologies.
Such Augustinian recapitulation consists of four moments: (1) the initial enmity between the two antagonistic contraries; (2) the incarnate Son's identification with the perfect, operative reality within that antithesis; (3) the Son's uniting the deficient reality with his own divine humanity, and (4) the subsequent healing and final transformation of that former condition. A helpful example of this pattern is Augustine's discussion of the psalmist's enigmatic cry, non derelinquas me, Domine Deus at Ps 37:22. Here he argues for a typological casting of Christ speaking in place of the first Adam because in his descent, "Christ had taken the identity of the first human being to himself. . . . He came for no other purpose than that we should be renewed in him, for it is by longing for him and imitating his passion that we are made new."43 The Son's incarnation incorporates the fallen Adam into himself and not only remakes him in Eden but now brings him into his very own being [personam in se transfigurauerat]. The new Adam reconciles himself with the first by putting on the first Adam's true flesh [ueram carnem portare] and thereby incorporates all of the enfleshed into himself. What was once opposed becomes unified into the perfect and is not only restored to its original condition [primus Adam] but is now elevated into the divine Son.44
Another way Augustine emphasizes God's unique ability to
43. en. Ps. 37.27; Boulding, Expositions (III/16), 166. 44. Cf. Gn. litt. 6.20 where Augustine again quotes 1 Cor. 15:53 to show that what faithful Christians receive is not only the primal innocence which Adam lost, but immortal perfection.