The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
212 Ecclesial Reception of the Divine Life
This is an important step in our discovery of how Augustine sees human deification. He is adamant that no created person could ever cross the ontological distinction between God and creation so as to become divine the way Christ is divine. Situating Augustine's doctrine of deification here reinforces a central point: human perfection does not mean a transmutation of natures but communion with the living Son of God. Referring to this differentiating tricolon between God and humanity (creator/creatura, effector/facti, conditor/conditi), Pasquale Borgomeo argues that Augustine goes to lengths to mark the distance between the implied terms in the mysterious unity of the totus Christus:
The double order, the historic (he willed) and the ontological (he who is) is always respected and more explicitly against an eventual and illegitimate application of identical terms (A = B, B = C : A = C), Augustine prevents this possibility by stating <<aliter est unum cum Patre, aliter unum nobiscum: he is one with the Father because there is one substance of the Father and of the Son . . . ; one with us because he became one with us, because he emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave (Phil. 2:7) . . . ; he became one with us according to the descendants of Abraham>>. Once again the ontological transcendence is safeguarded even within the historic mystery of the abasement of God. . . .64
When looking at the "whole Christ," Borgomeo recognizes an essential distinction between the Son in his being and the Son in his will. In and of himself (lui qui est), the Son is perfect and complete; he has, however chosen (voulu) to include his cundum diuinitatem quod est ille nos esse non possumus; quia ille creator, nos creatura; ille effector, nos facti; ille conditor, nos conditi: sed ut essemus cum illo unum in illo, caput nostrum esse uoluit, accipiendo carnem ex nobis, in qua moreretur pro nobis: ut noueritis ergo quia hoc totum unus est Christus, per Isaiam dixit: Sicut sponso alligauit mihi mitram, et sicut sponsam induit me ornamento (Isa. 61:10)."; PL 38.571.
64. Pasquale Borgomeo, L'Église de ce temps: dans la prédication de saint Augustin (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1972), 220–21 (quoting s. 144.4; PL 38.790); my translation.
Ecclesial Reception of the Divine Life 213 body, the church, in his own understanding of himself. In his graciousness, the Son of God has willed to identify himself with his followers. In so doing, natures are preserved. Regardless of how abased the Son becomes, he remains God; conversely, we are right to add, regardless of how holy men and women become, they remain human.
Borgomeo, while thus seeing how Augustine's totus Christus allows for great intimacy between Christ and his followers, continues to show how this is never a matter of complete identification. The Son of God may have become human so humans may become one with God, but that does not mean that humans will become God the same way the Son is God. As such, Christian sanctification becomes a matter of perfect and integrated humanity, a process Augustine may call deifying or "becoming godly" but one that never renders a saint equal to divinity. In this creaturely communion with the divine, we see how the totus Christus is always a matter of solidarity and dissimilarity: one with Christ in his will, yet other than Christ in his divinity.
In one of Dolbeau's newly-discovered sermons, we encounter much of this same pattern: God as Father, church as mother, Christ as the one in whom divinity and humanity uniquely meet, and his agency in bringing human persons into a new union with God. Found in the middle of his lengthy discourse against the pagans, what is now labeled as sermo 198 (Mainz 62), Augustine takes up the theme of divine mediation and naturally uses this opportunity to speak of Christ as the perfect mediator between heaven and earth. Augustine distinguishes malignant mediators from true by their willingness to unite: pagan demons only wish to divide, but Christ, the one true reconciler, and by extension Christians, long to unify all in God and in God's church. The world is moving from the former deceivers to the Christ and thus all are invited to seek the purification of Christ which can come only within his