The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
Ecclesial Reception of the Divine Life 203 and the church. Whereas one's human birth is from man and woman, one's divine birth is from God and the church.42 Elsewhere Augustine is clear that Christ needed to undergo the first birth only and in so doing, effects a spiritual connection (spiritalis connexio) between himself and humanity, regenerating men and women in the sacrament of baptism.43 These two related factors, ecclesial union with Christ and the role of the sacraments in achieving this, comprise the remainder of this chapter. Let us now turn to the first. Here is found perhaps one of the most striking aspects of Augustine's theology of deification, namely his understanding of the elect as belonging to the whole Christ.
The Nature of the Totus Christus
This query into the union of divinity and humanity in the Christ brings us to our next question: How are we to understand the dynamics of the totus Christus? How does Augustine utilize this novel concept? Is Christ incomplete without Christians? What implications does Christ's "including" others in himself have for Augustine's Christology?
Such a concept evidences yet another image of divine union, showing how the incarnation unites all human persons into Christ, "uniting us into one body with himself and making us his members, so that in him we too are Christ (in illo et nos Christus essemus). . . . From this it is obvious that we are the body of Christ, being all anointed. In him all of us belong to Christ, but we are Christ too because in some sense the whole
42. s. 121.4: "Prima natiuitas ex masculo et femina: secunda natiuitas ex deo et ecclesia."; PL 38.679–80; cf. Jo. eu. tr. 11.6.
43. ep. 187.9.30: ". . . nec uiueremus nisi per spiritualem connexionem membra huius essemus. Ideo nobis opus fuit nasci, et renasci, illi autem propter nos tantummodo nasci. Nos enim a peccato ad iustitiam renascendo transimus; ille autem a nullo peccato ad iustitiam transitum fecit: sed in eo quod baptizatus est, nostrae regenerationis sacramentum, sua humilitate altius commendauit; ueterem tamen hominem nostrum passione, nouum autem resurrectione significans."; PL 33.843–44.