The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
The Son's Descent 115 of any deal or transaction. After examining each of these three aspects of Augustine's "great exchange," we shall take up the one passage where he uses deification explicitly to express how such a commutation of properties occurs.
First, the "great exchange" begins with God's descent into humanity. Accordingly, humanity is raised to the divine by what can be described as a unique instance of downward participation, given as the only antidote to the hubris of humanity. Augustine worked out this new form of participation as early as the Confessions, as he sought to distinguish the truths of Christianity from the books of the Platonists. Here we encounter a radically new form of participation which a pure Platonist would not easily grasp. Augustinian deification begins with a "downward" participation involving not the creature's clinging to immutable being but the absolute's descending into that which is in need of restoration. Augustine is seen here reaching deep into his philosophical purse and drawing out a term that has been used hitherto only for creatures' reliance on the absolute.79 By reversing this order, the Son's participation in our mortality redeems humanity from the "inside" by assuming the worst of its conditions: "He heals their swollen pride and nourishes their love, that they may not wander even further away through self-confidence, but rather weaken as they see before their feet the Godhead grown weak [infirmam diuinitatem] by sharing our garments of skin, and wearily flinging themselves down upon him, so that he may arise and lift them up."80 This passage captures the essence of Augustine's notion of the divine exchange. Never foregoing his own divinity, the Son's unmatched humility allows him to enter into the "swollen pride" of fallen humanity. But in becoming weak,
79. For more on the significance of "downward participation," see my "The Incarnation and the Role of Participation in St. Augustine's Confessions," Augustinian Studies 29:2 (1998): 61-75.
80. conf. 7.18.24; Boulding, Confessions (I/1), 178. For more on pride as a swollen tumor, see en. Ps. 118.9.2.