The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
12 Creation as the Unifying Prologue bridges Augustine's theology of creation with his doctrine of salvation.36 Since the divine Word is itself perfect likeness of unity and absolute truth, every created existent shines that Word forth insofar as each existent participates in the unity and in the truth of the imitable Beginning.37
When describing the trinitarian act of creating, Augustine's overt reliance upon the role of the Holy Spirit seems to pale when compared with the work attributed to the Father who imparts existence and the Son who forms it.38 Augustine rightly sees how the Holy Spirit is the one divine person by whom the other two are joined: by which the begotten is loved by the begetter and in whom he loves the begetter.39 Here he may have very well encountered a concept of unitive love found in Marius Victorinus's hymns on the Trinity, where the Spirit is defined as copula or connexio.40 As the eternal unity between the Father and the Son, the Spirit continues his role of uniting in the economy: first, by holding all creatures in existence and, second, by ordering each of them into a beautiful whole.
First, Augustine places the existential permanence of creatures under the domain of the Holy Spirit (as we read above in his letter to Nebridius). Augustine finds this a fitting role for the Spirit: a holy and fitting courtesy [benignitas summa, et sancta et iusta], a love coming not from any need but from his generosity.41 He then goes on to delineate the two effects of
36. The Word's uniting the "beginning" with the "end" is also found in Irenaeus, Aduersus Haereses 4.20.4; "Est autem hic Verbum eius, Dominus noster Iesus Christus, qui in nouissimis temporibus homo in hominibus factus est, ut finem coniungeret principio, hoc est hominem Deo"; SC 100.634.
37. Cf. uera. rel. 36.66. 38. "Creatio, creator, creatura," Mayer, s.v., Augustinus Lexikon, 72. 39. Trin. 6.5.7; CCL 50.235. 40. Hymnus Primus, line 4, SC 68. 620; Hymnus Tertius, line 242, SC 68.650, respectively.
41. Gn. litt. 1.5: "inest enim deo benignitas summa et sancta et iusta et quidam non ex indigentia, sed ex beneficientia ueniens amor in opera sua"; CSEL 28.9. John