The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification
Introduction xiii
ity as "becoming gods," or becoming a member of the whole Christ (Christus totus), or even as becoming Christ himself. By examining such a wide range of metaphors, this present work explores Augustine's teaching on humanity's divine transformation in Christ, and seeks to argue that deification is a pivotal metaphor in his presentation of the Christian life.
Those familiar with the standard interpretations of Augustine will quickly see that such a reading conflicts with how Augustine's teaching on salvation has traditionally been presented. Convention has unfortunately forbidden such a reading, exemplified by a 1925 study by Joseph Mausbach where he contrasted the East's understanding of human divinization with what he represented as the West's stress on humanity's enslavement and eventual freedom from sin, naming Augustine as the one responsible for advocating such pessimism. Mausbach singled out Augustine as the sole antagonist to the Greeks, the lone representative of a theological vision centered on humanity's depravity. Consequently, as Mausbach suggested, Augustine is to blame for the Latin West's dismissing Christian salvation as theosis and transformation, favoring a remedial and reconciliatory construal. Mausbach's judgment is not an isolated case, but has been encountered in various ways throughout the twentieth century.5
In her groundbreaking work on deification in the Greek Fathers, for example, Myrrha Lot-Borodine argued quite strongly that Augustine was unable to account for any sort of union or compénétration between God and humanity. According to Lot-Borodine, deification has historically been a foreign way
5. Joseph Mausbach, "The Greek understanding of grace is a marvelous elevation, enlightenment, and deification of the human person; with Augustine grace is a healing, a freeing, and a reconciliation of a decrepit, enslaved, person far away from God. . . . Augustine sees the human person in his sinfulness, how he is filled with the tragedy of the internal fight, and from this starting point he builds his ethics and spirituality." Thomas von Aquin als Meister christlicher Sittenlehre unter Berücksichtigung seiner Willenslehre (Munich: Theatiner Verlag, 1925), 37–38.