The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
Ecclesial Reception of the Divine Life 209 upon himself to impart such unsolicited advice because, as we surprisingly learn, Laetus's mother belongs to the Bishop of Hippo's own family as well. In opening up Luke 14, Augustine explains to Laetus that his Christian mother is not exclusively his own. Given the fact that most of the maternity lavished upon Laetus took place in the past, we come to see how maternal care is understood by Augustine to be a temporal and fleeting (temporale ac transitorium) good. Therefore, Augustine concludes, insofar as she is a sister in Christ, she belongs to you and to me and to everyone who is promised the one heritage in heaven and God as Father and Christ as brother. These are eternal; these do not wear out with the passing of time; these we more firmly hope to possess to the extent that we are taught that they are to be obtained not by a private but rather by a common claim.56
In defending this claim for common relationships, Augustine turns to Acts 4:32 and the apostolic church's unified soul and heart. He goes on to explain to Laetus that "your soul belongs not just to you but to all the brothers, whose souls are also yours, or rather whose souls are not souls along with yours but are one soul, that single soul of Christ."57 This sic enim anima tua non est propria . . . sed anima una est, Christi unica58 emerges out of this exhortation as the psychological corollary to the one Christ's love for himself.
In the unitive love of God, all Christian souls become one in that they form the one Christ. Neither love of self nor love of another human person is in question here. Rather, what Augustine cannot tolerate is the love of a creature which claims that my self or some other person is properly and exclusively mine. Exclusive love is ultimately not love at all, but a concupiscence that evaluates another person in terms of oneself and
56. ep. 243.3; Teske, Letters (II/4), 165. 57. ep. 243.4; Teske, Letters (II/4), 166. 58. ep. 243.4; CSEL 57.571-72.