The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
124 The Son's Descent
With deified eyes, a phrase again unmatched in Latin patristic expression, like all who gaze upon him we see not only the humanity of Christ, but now see more deeply, more accurately: the divine in the human.
Here Augustine may be drawing from the Neoplatonic insistence that only like could encounter like. In Plotinus, for example, assimilation and cognition were necessary correlatives because one must "become" the object of knowledge. Only that which was similar and like [συγγενὲς καὶ ὅμοιον] could ever come into contact with each other. This is why Plotinus would hold that one must first become "sun-like" in order to see the sun, or in some way "god-like" [θεοειδὴς] in order to gaze upon God.99 Would such an insight help fuel Augustine's imagery of "deified eyes" to some extent? To gaze upon the forma Dei one must become somehow like God, for only like can know like. This is precisely what Augustine was exhorting us to become when he opened De Trinitate by warning his readers that the power of sight which would be able to "see" such mysteries as the incarnation or the Trinity, is not unaided sight but a power which can be described only as something more than human [ultra homines].100
Augustine's final use of deification is similarly an instance of ethical deification, appearing toward the end of The City of God. In that work's lengthy chapter 19.23, Augustine returns to a topic first encountered in Book 10, pagan magic and Porphyry's reliance on Hecate's "praise" of Christ. This "praise" is nothing more than an attempt by the pagans to appropriate Christ for their own ends. By acting admirably in regarding Christ a deity, the pagans then hope to bolster the authenticity of their vituperation of Christ's followers. Since this move of Hecate comes through the pen of Porphyry, Augustine returns there and to his endorsement of establishing various
99. Enneads 1.6.9. 100. Trin. 1.2.11; CCL 50.40.