The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
162 The Holy Spirit's Indwelling
Platonism" and suggests that the initial effect of grace in one's life is the detachment from "lower (external, sensible, temporal) things and a conversion to higher (inner, intelligible, eternal) things."62 We see how both of these elements, (1) the move away from the exclusively material and (2) the transition into the body of Christ are indeed related in Augustine's own story. It was his inability to conceive of a spiritual, nontangible substance which kept him from joining the catholici for over twelve years.63 Furthermore, his confession that it was the church who taught him how to think of spiritual reality again connects these two requisites of becoming spiritual.64 So what constitutes a spiritual person for Augustine?
First, the spiritual person is always a person of Christ's church. In Augustine's estimation, the Donatists and other sectarians cannot have the Spirit because, breaking from ecclesial communion, they have broken away from the Spirit of communion as well. Ecclesial membership is essential to holiness. For just as the old creation began with the carnal union of Adam and Eve, the new creation originates in the spiritual nuptiality of Christ and his church. Those outside of this marriage remain less than human, or as Augustine will call them, "beasts" [pecora] who are unwilling to be tamed and domesticated by Christ and his church. Instead, they are "given over to concupiscence like cattle [or] groping in the darkness and murk of curiosity as if they were snakes or soaring up on the wings of pride as if they were birds." The spiritualis homo, on the other hand, "is a good minister of Christ and imitates him to the best of his ability [and] feeds spiritually together with the people on the nourishment provided by the holy scriptures and the divine law."65 The spiritual person is hungry enough to
62. Philip Cary, Inner Grace: Augustine in the Traditions of Plato and Paul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 7.
63. conf. 5.10.20; Boulding, Confessions, 129. 64. Cf. util. cred. 18.36. 65. Gn. adu. Man. 1.23.40; Hill, Genesis, 65.