The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
The Son's Descent 113 change." What is more readily identified as a Greek formula, Augustine's equivalent became a constant sometime after 410.73 On Easter morning of 412, for example, we hear him tell the Catholic faithful of Hippo that a "marvelous exchange" [magna mutatio] has occurred: "For your sakes the one who was the Son of God became the Son of man, in order that you who were the sons of men might be turned into [efficeremini] sons [and daughters] of God. . . . You were sons of men and you have become [estis facti] sons [and daughters] of God. He has shared with us our ills, and he is going to give us his goods."74 God's power for our weakness is at the heart of the Augustinian exchange: "There you have something in view of your weakness; there you have something else in view of your perfection. Let Christ raise you up through the fact that he is man, let him lead you through the fact that he is God [and] man; let him bring you to that which is God."75 On the surface this language of exchange may simply appear to be another recapitulative couplet, so how is this a different soteriological metaphor?
This chapter's earlier focus of Augustinian recapitulation was on the new power of Christ as recreator, reformator, and so on. As we saw, it emphasized the restoration of humanity as renewed into a perfectly pristine condition: what was crippled was not only mended but strengthened, what was in regress was not only halted but rejuvenated. On the other hand, the great exchange highlights a goal that far surpasses the original. It involves a "double metathesis"76 of Christ's taking on hu-
73. Cf. Irenaeus, Aduersus Haereses 3.19.1, Athanasius, De Incarnatione §54. For this date of 410, see William Mallard, "Jesus Christ," Augustine Through the Ages, 463–70; 469. 74. s. 121.5; Hill, Sermons (III/4), 236; PL 38.680. 75. Jo. eu. tr. 23.6; Rettig, Tractates, 2.218; slightly adjusted. Cf. Jo. eu. tr. 108.5, where Augustine uses the human nature of Christ to illustrate how we too will be sanctified, a point Daniel Keating compares with Cyril's more overt reliance on the Spirit as sanctifier; see his The Appropriation of Divine Life in Cyril of Alexandria (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 238.
76. H. E. W. Turner, The Patristic Doctrine of Redemption: A Study of the Development of Doctrine during the First Five Centuries (London: A. R. Mowbray & Co., 1952), 89.