The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
146 The Holy Spirit's Indwelling always results in some measure of identity.25 Finally, this type of "clinging" to God is depicted as humanity's only good [Et nobis haerere deo bonum est]. Such divine "adhesion" is what consummates those made in God's image and what satisfies all human longing.
I have chosen this passage from De Trinitate 6 because it is a helpful illustration of how Augustine understood the Holy Spirit's eternal role in uniting Father and Son. It also provides us with the basis from which to see what the Holy Spirit accomplishes in the economy of salvation. As stated from the outset of this chapter, the immanent life and the historical agency of each divine person are related and, as such, the unity, sanctity, and love of the eternal Spirit will also be realized in the lives of those in whom the Spirit dwells. Each of these three predicates will therefore be examined in the order in which Augustine presents them in our primary text.
The first section will consider the life of the Father and the Son as a life of co-inherence and unity. This act of union is most often and most clearly attributed to the Holy Spirit by Augustine. Within the economy, union between persons, human and divine, is primarily the gift of the Holy Spirit. The second section will take up the Spirit's ability to elevate the creature's being into a living holiness. The Spirit recreates the human person into a homo spiritualis, achieving godly attributes not attainable by unaided human nature alone. We should note here that this aspect of the economy differs subtly from the other two. Whereas union and love are attributes more unequivocally attributed to the Spirit as he dwells between the Father and the Son and in the life of God's faithful, his sanctification of creatures is only analogous to his life as "holy" and
25. Cf. s. 349.2; c. Faust. 12.14; cath. 5.9; c. Jul. 6.14.2. The only place where gluten is not identified with a unifying and identifying love is at ciu. Dei 15.27 when it is simply the glue Noah uses to hold together the ark. For more on becoming what one loves, see my "Becoming Gods by Becoming God's: Augustine's Mystagogy of Identification," Augustinian Studies 39 (2008): 61–74.