The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
The Son's Descent 107 too, which you still have from Adam, may itself earn renewal and transformation at the time of its resurrection, having been preceded by newness of spirit; and thus the whole man being deified and made divine may cleave forever to the everlasting and unchangeable truth."62 At sermon 166 Augustine introduces a new image into Christian literature: the human person wholly deified: totus homo deificatus, one who is completely and wholly godly, an awesome phrase appearing nowhere else in the Latin fathers.63 Creation is again presented for the sake of divine union. Adam was created to become one with God and in typical Augustinian fashion, such deification is explicated in terms of God's gift and adoption [dono suo et adoptione]. Grace removes each of us from the influence of the fallen Adam and brings us more and more into Christ: while the fullness of this Christ-life may not be realized until the resurrection, even now it is preceded by the newness of the Spirit [praecedente nouitate spiritus] in the lives of Christians. This new state of divinity is made possible only through the Son's breaking into and assuming of the contingent and fallen.
Turning next to the two instances within Augustine's commentary on Psalm 49 where he joins deification and adoption, we see many of these same themes continued. What prompts this first use of deificare in Expositions of the Psalms 49 is again to distinguish between those who have been deified and him alone who can deify. This is very reminiscent of the pattern in sermo 23B. Now, however, we hear, "It is clear that [God] calls
62. s. 166.4; Hill, Sermons (III/5), 209–10; "Deponentes ergo mendacium, loquimini ueritatem, ut et caro ista mortalis quam adhuc habetis de Adam, praecedente novitate spiritus, mereatur et ipsa innouationem et commutationem tempore resurrectionis suae; ac sic totus homo deificatus inhaeret perpetuae atque incommutabili ueritati"; PL 38.909.
63. This image echoes Plotinus's admonition at Enneads 1.6.9 that we must become "wholly godlike" [θεοειδὴς πᾶς] if we are ever going to encounter God and true beauty.