The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
186 Ecclesial Reception of the Divine Life ing of God's kingdom. These Jewish men and women are sanctified through a proleptic faith in the Messiah:
Now by Church, brothers, you must understand not only those who began to be saints after the Lord's advent and nativity, but all who have ever been saints belong to the same Church. You can't say that our father Abraham does not belong to us, just because he lived before Christ was born of the virgin. . . after all, the apostle says that we are the children of Abraham (Gal. 3:7) by imitating Abrahams' faith. If then we are admitted to the Church by imitating him, are we going to exclude the man himself from the Church? It is this Church that was also represented by Rebecca the wife of Isaac . . . also to be found in the holy prophets.14
The holy men and women of the Old Testament are worthy of Christian emulation. They already enjoy an uprightness of heart so as to lead them to Christ when he does in fact appear: "So, the ancients were justified before the Word's incarnation in so far as they had faith in Christ, and by a true justice who Christ is for us: they believed that Christ would indeed come, just as we believe he has come; the ancients were saved, like us through faith, not by their own works but by the gift of God."15 The grace received through faith in God is a gift of his Spirit, and Augustine refuses to relegate it exclusively to those who explicitly bear the name of Christian and who just happened to be born after the advent of Christ.
The story of Tamar's twins provides him with an allegory of how this can be. A hand appears before the rest of the baby (cf. Gen. 38:28), yet that hand is obviously connected to and anticipates the head still to emerge. Thereafter we realize: "Before his coming in the flesh he sent ahead of him certain of his members; and after they had foretold his advent he came him-
14. s. 4.11; Hill, Sermons (III/1), 191. 15. pat. 18 (my translation): "Unde et antiqui iusti ante incarnationem uerbi, in hac fide Christi. et in hac uera iustitia, quod est nobis Christus, iustificati sunt; hoc credentes futurum quod nos credimus factum: et ipsi gratia salui facti per fidem. non ex semet ipsis, sed Dei dono; non ex operibus, ne forte extollerentur."; CSEL 41.683.