The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
108 The Son's Descent human beings gods, deified from his grace and not born of his own substance. For the one who justifies is just in and of himself and not by another; the one who deifies is God in and of himself and not by participation in another."64 God alone can save and such salvation is represented here as either a justification or a deification, without Augustine's sensing a need to differentiate between them. What is made clear is that only God can justify and deify. How does he achieve this? Out of God's grace human persons are deified [ex gratia sua deificatos]. He alone could effect such a change because he alone is God: all other "gods" are made so only through God's grace that allows them to participate in divinity.
The second use of deification in Expositions of the Psalms 49.2 is employed to explain further Augustine's understanding of divine adoption. As the passage unfolds, his unwillingness to set justification and deification in opposition is again encountered, and is now linked with John 1:12 and humanity's becoming children of God. Augustine writes:
[H]e who justifies is the same who deifies because by justifying he made [human persons] into children of God: he gave them power to become children of God (Jn 1:12). If we are made God's children, we are made gods: but this is through the grace of the one who adopts and not through the nature of the one who begets. For there is only one Son of God: our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. . . . The rest who have been made into gods are thus made by his grace and not born from his own substance, so as to be what he is, but they come to him through [his] generosity and are thus Christ's coheirs.65
64. en. Ps. 49.2; Boulding, Expositions (III/16), 381; adjusted; "Manifestum est ergo, quia homines dixit deos, ex gratia sua deificatos, non de substantia sua natos. Ille enim iustificat, qui per semetipsum non ex alio iustus est; et ille deificat, qui per seipsum non alterius participatione Deus est"; CCL 38.575.
65. en. Ps. 49.2; Boulding, Expositions (III/16), 381; adjusted; "iustificat, ipse deificat, quia iustificando, filios Dei facit. Dedit enim eis potestatem filios Dei fieri. Si filii Dei facti sumus, et dii facti sumus: sed hoc gratiae est adoptantis, non naturae generantis. Unicus enim Dei Filius. . . . Caeteri qui fiunt dii, gratia ipsius fiunt, non de substantia eius nascuntur ut hoc sint quod ille, sed ut per beneficium perueniant ad eum, et sint cohaeredes Christi"; CCL 38.575–76.