The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
238 Conclusion ger picture of freedom and transformation, Augustine is still too often read as offering a soteriology fixated on reconciliation and escape from the massa damnata, having given rise to such overly facile divisions—such as we saw in Mausbach and others—but which are also still at play in much contemporary theology.
Take William Rusch, for example, whose essay on justification in the early church was included in a set of important studies advancing Lutheran and Catholic dialogue. Rusch argues that iustificare was for the West what theosis was for the East and concludes his essay with four points which should be taken into account in any contemporary Lutheran-Catholic dialogue. The third of these points is that the "process of theosis cannot by validly translated into the categories that lie behind the sixteenth-century debate on justification." While this is a fair enough statement, Rusch then continues to advance how no "attempts" should be "made to fit theosis into an Augustinian framework. (This is not to say that Augustine was unaware of theosis)," thereby concluding that Augustine must have had some awareness of deification but it cannot be said to find a place in his "framework."3 Scholars such as Rusch err when granting Augustine a simple "awareness" of deification, while concluding that such awareness never makes its way into his theology. As we have seen, while the term deificare itself may be minimal, the reality of such transformative union with Christ in the Holy Spirit abounds.
Or consider a recent essay by a more illustrious Augustine scholar, Patout Burns. In his Festschrift contribution for Fordham's Fr. Joseph Lienhard, SJ, Burns offers three theories of atonement running through Augustine's thought: (1) ransom from the enemy, (2) assumption and renewal of sinful flesh,
3. William G. Rusch, "How the Eastern Fathers Understood What the Western Church Meant by Justification," Justification by Faith: Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue VII, edited by H. George Anderson et al. (Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Publishing, 1985), 131–42; 142.