The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
222 Ecclesial Reception of the Divine Life soul as well as the unity which is Christ's church. Augustine is clear that the baptismal rite is equivalent to dying for Christ, making those willing to lay their lives down for Christ members of Christ's own body (nemo fit membrum Christi nisi aut baptismate in Christo, aut morte pro Christo).89 He accordingly shows no problem in agreeing with the Pelagian Julian that the human soul was created good and is made even better by baptism because here the soul is given "spiritual enlightenment, adoption as children of God, citizenship in the heavenly Jerusalem, sanctification, transformation into members of Christ, and possession of the Kingdom of heaven."90 Of course, where Augustine sees himself diverging from the Pelagians is on the remissive or purgative nature of baptism: before it can accomplish the transformation and incorporation of the Christian into Christ, baptism must first wash away the sin of Adam which has come to taint every human soul since. Again, this disagreement is over the nature of "unity" and the solidarity all humans have in Adam. Therefore, given the stress Augustine places on humanity's unity in Christ, it follows that he would be more apt to emphasize our commonality in the first Adam as well. In Christ we are all redeemed because in Adam we have all sinned and the crying of infants is nothing other than attestation to their inherent wretchedness (miseria), life in this world beginning not with laughter but with a wail.91
Whereas Augustine viewed Pelagius as teaching that Adam left posterity only a bad example but never maliciously tainted
89. an. et or. 1.9.10; CSEL 60.311. Here Augustine suggests that dying for Christ is as valid for making one a member of Christ's body as is baptism (aut . . . aut) and makes this point more explicitly at ciu. Dei 13.7: "For whenever men die for confessing Christ (pro Christi confessione moriuntur), even though they have not yet been reborn in baptism, their death is of the same value for the remission of their sins as if they had been washed in the sacred font of baptism."; Bettenson, City of God, 516.
90. c. Jul. 1.53; Teske, Pelagians (I/25), 82. 91. s. 293.10: "Postremo et in ipso paruulo miseriae ipsius testis est fletus. Quantam potest, testatur natura infirma, parum intelligens: non incipit a risu, incipit a fletu."; PL 38.1333.