The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
110 The Son's Descent such universal beneficence is presented as God's love for his own, rendering them his children:
Even if one such were found who was willing to have coheirs, and he divided the inheritance with them, he would have less himself than if he had kept the whole. But the inheritance we look to, as coheirs with Christ, is not diminished by the crowd of people who are to inherit, nor does it dwindle because they have become so numerous; but there is as much when the heirs are many as when they are few, and as much for each individually as for all. See what love the Father has bestowed on us, says the apostle, that we should be called God's children, and so we are.68
The gifts of God are not lessened when distributed. Christians do not need therefore to compete against one another to guarantee their inheritance. The Fatherhood of God is for all. Christians can claim the title of God's sons and daughters even now because that is what indeed they have been made. Having said this, however, Augustine then concludes by quoting 1 John 3:1-2, that the fullness of our divine likeness will come only when we see God face to face. So, we hear Augustine stressing how God can rightly be called "Father," while also maintaining that the fullness of this adoption and the completeness of deification will take place only in heaven.
At John 20:17, Augustine easily finds warrant to account for this dual-paternity. Christ tells Mary Magdalene that he has not ascended ad Patrem meum et Patrem uestrum and it becomes obvious why, "He does not say 'our Father.' Therefore, in one way, 'my,' in a different way, 'your.' By nature, 'my,' by grace, 'your.' "69 In this way Augustine grounds human deification in the natural filiation of the Son without ever wrong-
68. en. Ps. 49.2; Boulding, Expositions (III/16), 381; adjusted; "Sed et qui in uenitur uelle, diuidet cum eis haereditatem, minus habens ipse diuidens quam si solus possideret: haereditas autem in qua cohaeredes Christi sumus, non minuitur copia possessorum, nec fit angustior numerositate cohaeredum; sed tanta est multis quanta paucis, tanta singulis quanta omnibus. Videte, inquit apostolus, qualem dilectionem nobis dedit Deus, ut filii Dei vocemur et simus"; CCL 38.576.
69. Jo. eu. tr. 121.3; Rettig, Tractates, 5.59.
The Son's Descent 111 ly subsuming the creature into the creator. Only the Son can call God "Father" immediately and unconditionally; if any of creation is able to understand God as the generative Father, it does so only through the grace which comes through the enfleshed divinity of the natural Son. Created persons thus remain created, but in Christ are now able to know and love God truly as Father.
We again see how guarded Augustine's reliance on the word deificare is. Where he might seize the opportunity to explain the Christian's adoption into the divine family as a matter of human divinization, he connects these two ideas only twice. As mentioned, sermo 166 coins a beautiful phrase to describe the Christian elect, the totus homo deificatus, but during this homily Augustine chose not to explain what this might mean practically. Deification's use at Expositions of the Psalms 49 emerges to explain scripture's use of the plural "gods," a move we have seen Augustine make before. Sermon 166 and Expositions of the Psalms 49 are good examples of how explicit deification language arises indiscriminately to explain that apart from God there can be only those divinely adopted "gods" in Christ and that such sons and daughters are called to a new way of life. Exactly how this happens or what it entails, Augustine seems content to leave unexplained.
To conclude this section, let us highlight the words of some contemporary scholars who have commented on Augustine's connection between deification and divine adoption. In his sweeping survey of Christian justification, Alister McGrath has noticed that, "By this participation in the life of the Trinity, the justified sinner may be said to be deified. Augustine's understanding of adoptive filiation is such that the believer does not merely receive the status of sonhood, but becomes a son of God. A real change in man's being, and not merely his status, is envisaged in his justification, so that he becomes righteous and a son of God, and is not merely treated as if he were righ-