The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
The Son's Descent 121 between 415 and 417.95 The overall subject matter of this work is, first, to distinguish the attributes of divine from human longsuffering (chs. 1–14) and then to account for the origin of all patience (chs. 15–26), which is duly located in divine wisdom. Patience unites human persons with divine persons because true patience is always motivated by charity, which God is by nature and which creatures can become only through his grace. Where does Augustine see this best played out?
Martyrs appear as the best examples of patience. Their integrity and trust show the world what God can do in those who allow him. Unlike the lustful and the wicked who only mimic patience in their tenacity fostered by a self-originating concupiscence, the Christian's patience comes from God and allows him or her to endure all sorts of trials unequivocally and magnanimously. It is here deificare enters. Contrasting the superficial similarities between a concupiscence which keeps a seeker indefatigably after that which he seeks, and the true patience which fuels Christian integrity, Augustine maintains:
There exists a concupiscence, which is not from the Father but from the world, and the more vehement and ardent it has been in a human person, the more is each person (on account of what he desires) able to endure all troubles and pains. But, as we said above, this is not the type of patience descending from above; for true patience comes to us from the Father of lights above. That first type is earthly, the second heavenly; that animal, this spiritual; that devilish, this deified [illa diabolica, ista deifica]. Concupiscence, by which sinners endure trials tenaciously, is from this world, but charity, by which those who live right endure all things patiently, is from God.96
95. Cf. ep. 231.7. Its omission from the Retractationes should not cast its authenticity into question, as an aged Augustine writes to Count Darius telling him that he will soon send him a copy of a treatise bearing the same title.
96. pat. 14 (my translation): "igitur concupiscentia quae non est ex Patre, sed ex mundo, quanto fuerit in homine uehementior et ardentior, tanto fit quisque pro eo quod concupiscit, omnium molestiarum dolorumque patientior. Idcirco, sicut supra diximus, non est ista patientia desursum descendens: patientia uero piorum