The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
230 Ecclesial Reception of the Divine Life agent responsible for uniting Christians with the divine and Augustine relies on the same Spirit to explain the unity effected by the church's sacraments. We therefore learn that reception of Holy Communion is nothing other than eating to our own participation in the Spirit, a move Augustine makes at John 6 in order to stress that reception of the Eucharist is indispensable but not sufficient for eternal salvation:. . . let all of this have this effect on us, most beloved people, that we not only eat the flesh of Christ and the blood of Christ in the sacrament as many evil men also do, but that we eat and drink for participation in the spirit [ad spiritus participationem], that we may abide as members in the body of the Lord, that we may be enlivened by his spirit and not be scandalized even if many now eat and drink the sacraments temporally with us, who will have eternal torments at the end.110
While the body of Christ is what we are to become, this is achieved not merely through receiving that body but living it out in spirit and in truth, namely in and through the charity that only the saints can exhibit. Both the unrepentant sinner as well as the sanctified can approach God's altar and the body of Christ, but only the sanctified can be truly enlivened by the spirit of this body.
Charity and unity again prove convertible. Those who have willingly cut themselves off from the body of Christ cannot utter a unified amen but have instead removed themselves from the universal altar, preferring their own sequestered sanctuary. Scandal is a concern for the great Bishop but he encourages his faithful to observe an integrity in both worship and living that their amen authenticates:
110. Jo. eu. tr. 27.11; Rettig, Tractates, 2.286: ". . . ut carnem Christi et sanguinem Christi non edamus tantum in sacramento, quod et multi mali; sed usque ad spiritus participationem manducemus et bibamus, ut in domini corpore tamquam membra maneamus, ut eius spiritu uegetemur, et non scandalizemur, etiam si multi modo nobiscum manducant et bibunt temporaliter sacramenta, qui habebunt in fine aeterna tormenta."; CCL 36.276.