The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
154 The Holy Spirit's Indwelling is thus made, by first being lifted out of sin, freed from the enemy of our human nature, and then made fit for the eternal kingdom which the Son has inaugurated.
When discussing the divine presence within the soul, Augustine speaks of God's very presence. Yet are we able to think of Augustinian grace as something from God or as the actual indwelling of God himself? Augustine's argument originates in the cor inquietum which can be satisfied with nothing other than the divine. Our only satiety can be God, which is to be filled with God through grace: Hoc est enim Deum gratis amare . . . de Deo properare impleri de ipso satiari.45 Attempting to find contentment in anything other than God dissatisfies and ultimately perverts the human soul. Comparing the flickering lamp of John the Baptist and the refulgent sun of Christ, for example, Augustine preaches that Christ's testimony to himself throughout John 5:31–40 is meant to exhort his hearers to go beyond any created good. Instead, Christ wants us to understand how the "human soul and rational mind which is in the human being and is not in the brute animal, are not enlivened, are not made happy, are not enlightened except by the very substance of God."46 Is it possible to defend Augustine's words (nisi ab ipsa substantia Dei) here? Is the grace of union really a participation in the very substance of God? Just a few lines later, Augustine repeats this claim: the soul's only happiness can come about only "by participation in that life of an always living, unchangeable, and eternal substance which is God."47 Does Augustine ever bother to explain this grace of divine indwelling? Does he explain how the created
45. s. 334.3; PL 38.1469. 46. Jo. eu. tr. 23.5; Rettig, Tractates, 2.216: "insinuauit nobis animam humanam et mentem rationalem, quae inest homini, non inest pecori, non uegetari, non beatificari, non illuminari, nisi ab ipsa substantia Dei"; CCL 36.235.
47. Jo. eu. tr. 23.5; Rettig, Tractates, 2.216: "beatitudinem tamen eius qua fit beata ipsa anima, non fieri nisi participatione illius uitae semper uiuae, incommutabilis, aeternaeque substantiae, quae Deus est"; CCL 36.235.