The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
166 The Holy Spirit's Indwelling ments. The first has to do with the very nature of love. The nature of love is triune: "love means someone loving and something loved and love."73 Lover and beloved are united by a distinct third factor, namely the love between them. This is appropriated most properly to the Spirit because, as we have just seen, the Spirit is responsible for communion between persons. The second argument runs along two distinct lines in its own right. First Augustine proves the Spirit is divine love by eliminating the Father and then the Son. The first part of this argument distinguishes between the terms est Deus and ex Deo. He admits that before he learned that Deus caritas est, he first read that caritas ex Deo (1 John 4:7). Coming from God, caritas could be either the Son or the Spirit, but as a processional, the Father is clearly eliminated. Is caritas then the Son? The second part of the argument is sacramental. Heretics and schismatics [mali] are able to enter Christ's church, and are able to display gifts of prophecy (for example, Saul while persecuting David). They can even receive the sacraments (for example, the Donatists). No doubt all the Arians, Eunomians, Macedonians, and Novatians confess that the Christ has come in the flesh.74 In effect, even the damned can partake of the Son: to receive the sacred body and blood of the incarnate Lord is possible and does in fact occur in schismatic and heretical communities. As such, Augustine points us to Paul's admonition against eating and drinking to one's own condemnation (cf. 1 Cor. 11:27). The one thing these mali cannot do is love truly.
But what then does Augustine mean by love? In the third book of De Doctrina Christiana, where he has been working out the difference between uti and frui, we learn: "What I mean by charity or love is any urge of the spirit to find joy
73. Trin. 8.10.14; Hill, Trinity, 255: "Amor autem alicuius amantis est, et amore aliquid amatur"; CCL 50.290.