Augustine and Deification

Some coolness provided by the Ignatius Insight blog:

...A friend, Jared Ortiz, whose doctoral thesis (in progress) for Catholic University of America is on Augustine's Confessions, sent me the following observations:

The Confessions can be understood as Augustine coming to terms with what it means to be created, that is, with both the distinction and relation between God and the world.  The first half of the work (Books 1-7) deals with his coming to terms with the distinction--the Manichees blur this distinction because, for them, God is material and man has a part of God in him; the Platonists grasp this distinction, understanding that God is utterly transcendent to the world and therefore not a part of the world.  The second half of the work (Books 7-13) deals with his coming to terms with the relation--how does the utterly transcendent God work in the world?  The answer: "Tolle, lege."  The Incarnation is key here. 

Book 7 is a crucial point in all this: he reads the Platonists and, with God's help, ascends to the truth about God for the first time.  He withdraws from his senses, enters into himself, and then above himself where he "sees" a Light, "different, far different from all other lights...it was not above my mind, as oil is above water, or sky above earth.  It was above my mind, because it made me, and I was beneath it, because I was made by it" (conf. 7.10.16).  God is 'above' Augustine not because of material density or place, but because of creation: God creates and Augustine is created.  Augustine sees that God is, simply, and that he, Augustine, is not fully.  God has his being in Himself, whereas Augustine receives his being from Another.

This new awareness of the ontological distinction between God and the world, rooted in the meaning of creation, bespeaks the relation: in the awareness of the distinction, Augustine "hears" God say, "I am the food of grown men.  Grow, and you shall feed upon me.  You will not change me into yourself, as you change food into your flesh, but you will be changed into me" (conf. 7.10.16).  With its Eucharistic overtones and deification language, this is a remarkable thing to say here: God as sheer Being is sheer salvation. 

For the first time, Augustine recognizes God as God, as unchanging fullness of Being, utterly distinct from the world and in this recognition he sees that he, whose being is utterly dependent on God, is destined for full participation in this unchanging fullness of Being.  The way this radical transformation occurs is hinted at in the Eucharistic overtones of the passage quoted: Christ.  Augustine experiences Christ, how God works in the world, in Book 8 when he hears the words of the children, "tolle, lege."

These convey the call of the Word of God to pick up the word of God.  Because God is not a part of the world, He does not compete with the world: this is the key Incarnational insight that Augustine needs to understand how God works in the world.  This call begins Augustine's conversion and re-formation in Christ which, in Augustinian terms, means his 're-creation'. The rest of the work is a working out of what it means for God to Incarnationally work in the world.

He also sent this link to the entry for "Deification, Divinization" from Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, edited by John C. Cavadini.

Also worth reading is a passage from City of God, found in Book XXI, chapter 15:

Now, therefore, let us walk in hope, and let us by the spirit mortify the deeds of the flesh, and so make progress from day to day.  For “the Lord knoweth them that are His;” and “as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are sons of God,”  but by grace, not by nature.  For there is but one Son of God by nature, who in His compassion became Son of man for our sakes, that we, by nature sons of men, might by grace become through Him sons of God.

For He, abiding unchangeable, took upon Him our nature, that thereby He might take us to Himself; and, holding fast His own divinity, He became partaker of our infirmity, that we, being changed into some better thing, might, by participating in His righteousness and immortality, lose our own properties of sin and mortality, and preserve whatever good quality He had implanted in our nature perfected now by sharing in the goodness of His nature. 

For as by the sin of one man we have fallen into a misery so deplorable, so by the righteousness of one Man, who also is God, shall we come to a blessedness inconceivably exalted.  Nor ought any one to trust that he has passed from the one man to the other until he shall have reached that place where there is no temptation, and have entered into the peace which he seeks in the many and various conflicts of this war, in which “the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.” Now, such a war as this would have had no existence if human nature had, in the exercise of free will, continued steadfast in the uprightness in which it was created.

But now in its misery it makes war upon itself, because in its blessedness it would not continue at peace with God; and this, though it be a miserable calamity, is better than the earlier stages of this life, which do not recognize that a war is to be maintained.  For better is it to contend with vices than without conflict to be subdued by them.

Better, I say, is war with the hope of peace everlasting than captivity without any thought of deliverance.  We long, indeed, for the cessation of this war, and, kindled by the flame of divine love, we burn for entrance on that well-ordered peace in which whatever is inferior is for ever subordinated to what is above it.  But if (which God forbid) there had been no hope of so blessed a consummation, we should still have preferred to endure the hardness of this conflict, rather than, by our non-resistance, to yield ourselves to the dominion of vice. [emphasis added]...