The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
232 Ecclesial Reception of the Divine Life
Both the metaphysical as well as the pastoral importance of unity cannot be overstressed in Augustine's ecclesiology. As anyone trained in the basic principles of Neoplatonism would have insisted, unity gives fleeting reality intelligibility by imparting cohesiveness and structure to an otherwise disparate creation. Here Augustine's philosophical training and Christian creed came into harmony. Or as William Mallard rightly observed, "How much better could the philosophy of a single universal truth harmonize with religion than with a single worldwide Church, drawn without discrimination from all nations and races? . . . Augustine came to see in the worldwide unity of the Catholic movement an entranceway into the worldwide unity of wisdom."113 Likewise, in his important study into the nature of Augustine's ecclesiology, Jörg Trelenberg makes the point that unity is both the origin and the goal of the church: it is an ideal realized only in the universal, Catholic community.114 This community is the unified body of the elect, no longer many but now one in Christ. The deified know no division, the sanctified know no schism.
The church for Augustine is ultimately the mystical body of Christ traversing toward full communion with God and those already sanctified in his everlasting kingdom. Such an ecclesiology aimed toward the transformation of the human person and the "whole Christ" best depicts the ultimate purpose of God's church. For this to occur, the mediator between divinity and humanity must be more than a historical figure. Therefore, Christ continues to live through his church, making himself available through his sacraments. Given Augustine's developed theory of the human need for transformation this is a much needed move. By mediating divinity with all
113. William Mallard, Language and Love: Introducing Augustine's Religious Thought Through the Confessions Story (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), 170.
114. Cf. Jörg Trelenberg, Das Prinzip "Einheit" beim frühen Augustinus (Lübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 166.