The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
The Holy Spirit's Indwelling 157 be."50 In a beautiful passage from the Enchiridion, the body is explicitly expressed as an indispensable part of becoming godly. Here Augustine relies on the Holy Spirit to argue for humanity's becoming gods, echoing Athanasius's dictum that the Son could not be the agent of divinization if he himself were not divine.51 Augustine employs the same methodology to prove the divinity of the Spirit. If the Spirit were not divine by nature, the Spirit too would be a created temple and would hence be unable to dwell within other created temples:
So neither the whole Church nor any part of it desires to be worshipped instead of God, nor does anybody want to be a god to those who belong to the temple of God which is built of those made into gods by the uncreated God. So the Holy Spirit, if he were a creature and not the creator, would certainly be a rational creature—for rational creatures are the highest of creatures—and so would not be placed before the Church in the rule of faith, since he also would be a member of the Church in that part of it which is in heaven, and would have no temple himself but be himself a temple. But he has a temple, of which the apostle says do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? (1 Cor. 6:19).52
The sanctified human person, body and soul, becomes the created receiver of the Spirit's presence. He or she is made a god by the one God [aedificatur ex diis quos facit non factus Deus], a linguistic pattern common to Augustine's deification. This helps him again to explain how worship is, of course, due not to those made gods but should instead be offered solely to the one who has the power to deify. Now human activity,
50. s. 217.4; Hill, Sermons (III/6), 179. 51. Cf. Contra Arianos 1.27 and 2.61. 52. ench. 15.56; Harbert, Enchiridion, 307: "Vnde nec tota nec ulla pars eius uult se coli pro deo, nec cuiquam esse deus pertinenti ad templum dei quod aedificatur ex diis quos facit non factus deus. Ac per hoc spiritus sanctus, si creatura non creator esset, profecto creatura rationalis esset—ipsa est enim summa creatura—et ideo in regula fidei non poneretur ante ecclesiam, quia et ipse ad ecclesiam pertineret in illa eius parte quae in caelis est, nec haberet templum sed etiam ipse templum esset. Templum autem habet, de quo dicit apostolus: Nescitis quia corpora uestra templum in uobis est spiritus sancti, quem habetis a deo?"; CCL 46.79–80.