The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
106 The Son's Descent become, to use Capánaga's provocative term, superhombres.59 Augustine next explains this new state of humanity by way of adoption: sharing in Christ, humans have been made children of God. It should not surprise us to see this contrast between a mortal mendax and becoming an adopted child of God in the commentary on Psalm 116, the psalm upon which this sermon is partially based. In this commentary Augustine teaches that, "Every human being is a liar, but in the measure that men and women are not merely human but divine, being children of the Most High, they will be liars no more."60 He goes on to link this adoption model with the notion of the human person's godliness. Returning to the next line of sermo 166, this divine adoption metaphor is extended to the image of becoming a god: "God wants to make you a god; not by nature, of course, like the one whom he begot, but by his gift and by his adoption. For just as he was made a participant in your mortality through humanity, so through his exalting you he makes you a sharer in his immortality."61 An essential distinction is again made. As we saw in sermo 23B, God's gift [donum suum] of this new life in Christ cannot be brought about by creatures but only by God's humbly taking on human mortality. Considered in itself, humanity cannot achieve what God deigns to do; yet humanity is the means by which God enters the human condition to exalt [per exaltationem] it to himself.
The transformation of human flesh thus becomes Augustine's final point in this homily. Here he is explicit that this adoption is simultaneously a deification: "So, putting aside lying, speak the truth (Eph. 4:25), in order that this mortal flesh
59. Victorino Capánaga, "La deificación en la soteriología agustiniana," Augustinus Magister 2 (1954): 750.
60. en. Ps. 115.3; Boulding, Expositions (III/19), 328–29. 61. s. 166.4; Hill, Sermons (III/5), 209; slightly adjusted; "Deus enim deum te uult facere; sed non natura, sicut est ille quem genuit; sed dono suo et adoptione. Sicut enim ille per humanitatem factus est particeps mortalitatis tuae; sic te per exaltationem facit participem immortalitatis suae"; PL 38.909.