The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
The Holy Spirit's Indwelling 153
Abide in God and let God abide in you. God abides in you that he may hold you; you abide in God that you may not fall."43 Moreover, Augustine would come to find the Pauline description of the sanctified creature as a divine temple (cf. 1 Cor. 3:16, 1 Cor. 6:19, 2 Cor. 6:16, Eph. 2:21) very attractive. To capture the Spirit's indwelling, the human person as the temple of God accordingly becomes a prominent image in Augustine's writings.
The Human Person as
Divine Temple
Despite the frequent occurrence of the sanctified individual as an undifferentiated templum Dei (188 times), we never find Augustine describing the soul as a templum Patris or a templum Filii. The sanctifying indwelling of God is a role particularly reserved for the Holy Spirit. By reserving such inhabitation for the Spirit, Augustine clearly follows the Pauline metaphor. It is only through the Spirit that the Father and Son come to abide in their created temples. Furthermore, such temples are differentiated from all other creatures because this triune indwelling is no longer simply the presence granted to all creatures by the fact of their very existence. In the sanctified, the Trinity now dwells (habitat) in his temples in a transformative and appropriative manner: "Hence God, who is present everywhere and whole everywhere, does not dwell in all but only in those whom he makes his most blessed temple or most blessed temples, rescuing them from the power of darkness and transferring them into the kingdom of his beloved Son (Col. 1:13), which begins with their rebirth."44 One is not simply rescued from sinfulness, but is also brought into incorruptibility and therefore made a child of God. The Christian
43. ep. Jo. 9.1; Rettig, Tractates, 5.247: "Sit tibi domus Deus, et esto domus Dei; mane in Deo, et maneat in te Deus. Manet in te Deus, ut te contineat: manes in Deo, ne cadas"; PL 35.2045.
44. ep. 187.12.35; Teske, Letters (II/3), 247.