The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
156 The Holy Spirit's Indwelling
Turning to his explanation of 1 Cor. 3:16, on how the human person becomes a divine temple, we find a helpful distinction between the presence of God, which is ubiquitous throughout all that is, and his special communication of himself into the filiation of the Son: "Hence we must say that God is everywhere by the presence of his divinity [ubique esse deum per diuinitatis prasentiam] but not everywhere through the indwelling of grace [per habitationis gratiam]. For, on account of this indwelling, in which we undoubtedly recognize the grace of his love, we do not say 'Our Father who art everywhere,' though this is also true, but Our Father who art in heaven."49 Nature is to presence what grace is to indwelling. God may be praesens in all things (as we saw in chapter 1)—sustaining and ordering all of creation—but God takes up habitatio only in those he enables to be his children. This divine indwelling achieves a familiarity between created and divine persons, as the graced are brought into a new union with God which is evidenced by the human person's new ability to call upon God as "Father." The divine habitation achieves a filial relationship between creator and creature. The ever-present God who sustained all of creation from all time is now enjoyed and known in a much more personal and paternal manner.
Earlier in chapter 2 we saw that the erect posture of the human body best symbolizes the divine transcendence, but in the Holy Spirit the human body now becomes the place where the divine dwells personally on earth: "That temple [of Israel] was a shadow; the light came, and put the shadow to flight . . . [because] it is the body of Christ that is God's temple. What are our bodies? Members of Christ. . . . Let us trust the body of Christ and our bodies to be the temple of God, and we will
49. ep. 187.5.16; Teske, Letters (II/3), 237: "unde fatendum est ubique esse deum per diuinitatis praesentiam, sed non ubique per habitationis gratiam. propter hanc enim habitationem, ubi procul dubio gratia dilectionis eius agnoscitur, non dicimus: 'Pater noster qui es ubique', cum et hoc uerum sit, sed: 'Pater noster qui es in caelis' "; CSEL 57.94.