The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
180 Ecclesial Reception of the Divine Life grow into the full headship of Christ (cf. Eph. 4:15), the angelic creature finds itself instantly in the celestial church. Here God's church is instantaneously and perfectly conformed to the Word. This immediate laud of creation only underscores the love and freedom involved in God's sharing his life with contingent being. The celestial church is essentially a repository of divine glory, the locus where the Trinity is first recognized as creator and bestower of being. The highest spiritual beings are held together by a bond of charity, a role Augustine normally attributes to the Holy Spirit, although not explicitly mentioned in the Enchiridion passage above. The good angels are ordered first because they are the most refulgent part of creation, constantly contemplating God perfectly and wholly without ceasing. As Augustine maintains elsewhere, these good angels are the light of creation's first moment.4
Such a reading of Genesis accounts for both the existence of the angelic host, not otherwise mentioned in the creation narrative, as well as the lux appearing before the stellar luminaries which were not created until the fourth day. Creation's zenith is this angelic abode alone in its consistency: only here are the distentions of time and the erosion of sin kept at bay. This first moment of ecclesia for Augustine retains an immunity from the struggle that persecuted humanity will come to know all too well; here is a body of believers characterized not by the process of forgiveness and sanctification but by instantaneous and eternal worship of the Trinity.
Is this pristine church not the caelum caeli which Augustine assiduously examines at the end of his Confessions? It is difficult to state confidently why most scholars have ignored the possibility of this connection, but it has escaped notice of three recent commentaries on the Confessions.5 In his study,
4. ciu. Dei 11.9: ". . . ipsi sunt illa lux, quae diei nomen accepit . . ."; CCL 47.329; cf. Gn. litt. 2.8.16; s. 341.18.
5. Cf. Die Confessiones des Augustinus von Hippo: Einführung und Interpreta-