The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
120 The Son's Descent life. Through God's subjection and suffering comes humanity's (1) elevation, (2) perfection, (3) glorification, (4) victory over death, and (5) ultimate salvation. Such transformation manifests the might of God, for there is no greater power than God's making humans like himself—exalting the humble and deifying the mortal [magna uirtus exaltare humilem, deificare mortalem]. No human person can cause his or her own existence, no sinner can bring about his own salvation, and no mere human can prove strong enough to raise himself.
We are able to be raised only because he first has become one of us, has entered the condition from which we need saving. Whereas our eyes were kept on Christ above by focusing on the promissory nature of deification (cf. sermo 23B), here Augustine emphasizes the tremendous power it would take to transform sinful humanity.94 Such a transformation should clearly have practical consequences, and so it comes as no surprise that the final occurrences of Augustinian deification appear precisely here.
Acting as God Acts
Augustine's final uses of deification all point to its ethical implications and the new gifts the divinized are granted in Christ. This is a fitting conclusion. For if we take the language of divine union seriously, would we not expect some practical or moral changes in the lives of the deified? The De Patientia is a lesser-known work of Augustine's, composed sometime
94. Here soteriological and epistemological concerns are intertwined. The pagans cannot truly know God because they have misunderstood both the source and the nature of divinity. Only God's humility and not humanity's haughtiness can elevate the fallen soul. John Rist therefore argues that against non-Christian philosophers more reliant on their own intellectual prowess than on the humility of the crucified one Augustine levels "the criticism that [pagan philosophy] involved the arrogant notion of self-sufficiency [and] Augustine maintains that the belief that the soul is by nature, rather than by creation, divine is itself the cause of the pagan philosopher's failure to know God"; Eros and Psyche (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964), 220.