The One Christ: St. Augustine's Theology of Deification (continued)
22 Creation as the Unifying Prologue sistence that light is an illuminating medium which brings all else into visible existence.67
At the end of the preceding section, Augustine proposed that a creature is simultaneously made as well as illumined by the creator's calling all contingent being back to himself (eam [lucem] reuocante ad se creatore, conuersio eius facta atque inluminata intellegatur).68 A creature's turn toward God is synonymous with its being made as well as with its being "illumined" into a particular nature.69 Seemingly, Augustine settles on light as an apt image with which to describe the divine initiative of creation because it better highlights the simultaneous nature of the creative act. As God's power is not weakened or threatened in the act of creation, so too is light not diminished when distributed. Not only is light an ecclesially sanctioned image for the Son (Nicaea's lumen de lumine), it also seems to admit more readily of co-equality with the Father than either speech or thought. In this way, light can come from light without gradation or subordination while also illumining others without their becoming equal in nature to the light which shines upon them.70
Such adherence of the Word to the Father becomes the pattern from which God creates. In so doing, creation is constituted to follow its creative Word and imitate that same divine adherence. Completely one with—yet, not personally identical with—the Father, the Son's filial adherence is the paradigm of creation's essential turn to the divine. This is the second important component of this passage: creation's conversion.
Conversion for Augustine is an equivocal term, taking on different meanings in different contexts. Borrowed from the philosophical world of his day, terms such as strépho and epis-
67. Cf. Plato, Republic, 508d. 68. Gn. litt. 1.3; CSEL 28.7. 69. At s. 170.11 this metaphor will be used again: to turn to God is to enter into light whereas divine aversion translates into darkness.
70. Cf. f. et sym. 6; CSEL 41.