The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
210 Ecclesial Reception of the Divine Life not in terms of true charity, God. Attempting to love another before God is clearly an inversion of goods, an exclusive and ersatz love turned back onto the self. Love of God and love of neighbor cannot be separated and in this context one of John Burnaby's observations becomes especially poignant: "The love of God which is the desire for union with him, and the love of men which is the sense of unity with all those who are capable of sharing the love of God, are indeed bound up most intimately with one another."59 Such intimacy is achieved in Augustine's theology of the totus Christus, but this communion is not without limitations.
Limitations of the Totus Christus
Language
In the passage to Dardanus quoted above, we read how Augustine wrote very strongly in order to defend the misconception that as the Son is united to humanity, humanity is united to divinity. Is this an inconsistency when juxtaposed with humanity's deification brought about by the Son's descent as examined back in chapter 3? No answer exists in the remainder of his answer to Dardanus and we must therefore look elsewhere.
Given such stress on the unity between Christ and his church, Augustine must be careful never to subsume one into the other. He is careful to avoid suggesting that the Christian suffers a personally absorptive identity in Christ: sic iungit ut distinguat, sic distinguit ut non seiungat.60 While Christ and the Christian are not separated, their dignity is nonetheless distinct (that is, the head saving and the body being saved).61 The dignity, co-heredity, and new operations the church enjoys are always derived and participatory. The perfections
59. John Burnaby, Amor Dei, (Norwich: Canterbury Press [1938] 1991), 104. 60. Jo. eu. tr. 21.3; CCL 36.213. 61. Cf. en. Ps. 37.6.