ἄλογωθέντων τῶν ἀνθρώων at De Incarnatione §13 (PG 25.117) in that sin dimin-
The Son's Descent 105 warning them and lamenting them, because they didn't want to take off Adam and put on Christ, and were eager to be, not new men, but just mere men, of the sort to whom it is said, Are you not men? And on whom the statement falls, Every man is a liar."56 Such an exhortation raises a point from earlier: deification for Augustine does not mean the cessation of humanity but its radical renovation or its "promotion" as Russell explained. Such rhetoric is neither useless exaggeration nor is it a cry to reject one's humanity, but is a call to a new type of living as a human person in Christ.
Augustine realizes that how he chooses to represent such a conversion out of "mere humanity" may be either misunderstood or even found offensive. He therefore presses on in order to provide a fuller explanation of what he means by this invitation to bring one's humanity to an end: "Don't be offended. You are not being told not to be human, in the sense that you are to be a beast, but you are among those to whom he has given the power to become sons and daughters of God."57 New life in Christ does not mean not being human but becoming a new sort of human: human children of God. It is, say, the opposite of how sin "dehumanizes" the human person.58
Deifying grace, on the other hand, makes those in Christ "more" than human, not by destroying one's humanity of course, but by enabling that humanity to experience new virtue, new freedom, and new life. It is for men and women to
56. s. 166.2; Hill, Sermons (III/5), 209: "Quia et apostolus exuendum hominem ueterem et induendum nouum monens, dicit: Deponentes mendacium, loquimini ueritatem: et psalmus illos admonebat et plangebat, qui nolentes exuere Adam et induere Christum, non noui homines, sed tantum homines esse cupiebant; qualibus dicitur: Nonne homines estis? et in quos cadit quod dictum est: Omnis homo mendax"; PL 38.908.
57. s. 166.4; Hill, Sermons (III/5), 209; PL 38.909. 58. In fact, "dehumanizes" is how an (anonymous) translator takes Athanasius' ἄλογωθέντων τῶν ἀνθρώων at De Incarnatione §13 (PG 25.117) in that sin diminishes in the human person precisely that which makes him human; On the Incarnation, translated by A Religious of C. S. M. V. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1989), 40.