The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
The Son's Descent 109
Again, not through generation but through grace, human persons are made God's children and Augustine strives to explain how the two ways of being "G/god" differ. On the one hand the only begotten son [unicus filius Dei] is God in an essentially different way from those who have been made gods; yet, on the other hand, the begotten Son and those made sons and daughters share a corresponding relationship with the Father in both being his children [filii]. As such, the latter have been brought into the beneficence of the Son's graces, now rendered coheirs [cohaeredes] along with him. With the Father's extending his loving paternity beyond his unigenitus, an analogical relationship is established between the Christ who is God by nature and created persons who become gods through grace.
Furthermore, this adoption is explained as an act of great love. The Son descends out of the Father's desire to add to his children, namely to extend his paternity to creatures. Such is the love the Father has for the Son [tanta caritas] that he wants to extend it even to beings of a distinct, lesser order of being, but who are now heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.66 The Father's charity is now cast widely in terms of co-heredity and the rights accompanying such status, but Augustine presents this act as different from the procedure of human inheritance for two reasons.
As we saw when we examined the generosity of God in the act of creation, since there is no greed in God he longs to distribute all he has to as many as he can, and secondly, because he is the universal good, he is in no way diminished through such generosity. Augustine developed this notion of God as the sole, undiminishable (and therefore equally accessible) Good as early as De Libero Arbitrio.67 In this passage, though,
66. Cf. en. Ps. 49.2: "Tanta enim caritas est in illo haerede, ut uoluerit habere cohaeredes. Quis hoc auarus homo uelit, habere cohaeredes?"; CCL 38.576.
67. Cf. lib. arb. 2.15.39–17.46 where the divisibility of sensible goods and the universal accessibility of God are contrasted.