The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
The Holy Spirit's Indwelling 165
This process of elevation and transformation is not individualistic for Augustine, but communal. Unity with the Spirit is an ecclesial act, or in the words of John Rist: "It is appropriate that 'social' and 'communal' beings should be redeemed socially, and membership in a corporate body is appropriate for the redemption of that part of us which is not just 'our own life'. We need to be reformed and glued back together as members of the new Adam."70 The Spirit thus unites us to a divinely human head and in so doing makes us into the body of Christ. Finally, if this body is anything for Augustine, it must be a body of love, a collection of charity. Let us now turn to the third predicate of the Spirit and see how the caritas Dei is also realized in the lives of his followers.
Divine Love Poured into
Human Hearts
Augustine is the first to make this guiding principle explicit: whenever we hear the word "love," we are to understand the Holy Spirit.71 Scripture never comes right out and makes this claim clear but Augustine realizes that the more restricted Spiritus caritas est instead of Deus caritas est (1 John 4:8) may have very well led some astray in failing to attribute charity to the Father and Son as well.72 We should remember that whatever is said of the Father and Son with regard to substance is equally said of the Spirit; conversely, whatever is said of the Spirit with regard to substance is said of the Father and the Son. Why then is the Spirit considered the love between the two?
Augustine's answer takes the form of two distinct argu-
70. John Rist, Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 288.
71. Carol Harrison argues that Augustine is the first to identify love properly with the Holy Spirit; Beauty and Revelation, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 254.
72. Cf. Trin. 15.17.27.