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“You Adore a God Who Makes You Gods”: Augustine’s Doctrine of Deification
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 May 2024
Abstract
Twentieth-century theologians advanced a consensus position that the doctrine of deification was alien to Augustine’s theology—even impossible to square with his other commitments—and that even if traces of the doctrine could be detected, they were, at best, of marginal importance to his intellectual topography. This position, however, has been persuasively challenged by several investigations during the past three decades. This article builds upon these latter investigations to demonstrate how the notion of deification is prevalent throughout his corpus—whether linguistically evident by his use of technical terms such as deificare and cognates, or more often, conceptually in his reflections upon anthropology, Christology, and ecclesiology. The article concludes by noting two of Augustine’s distinctive contributions to the post-Nicene development of deification—that is, an emphasis upon the sacramental and ecclesiological contours of the doctrine.
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References
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39 This is one of twenty-six sermons rediscovered by Francis Dolbeau in the Stadtbibliotek in Mainz in the 1990s. They were all published in Augustin d’Hippone: Vingt-six sermons au peuple d’Afrique (Paris, 1996). This particular homily was translated by Augustine Casiday and published with a brief introduction in Casiday, “St. Augustine on Deification.”
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43 This is a common term used in reference to God during the patristic era.
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59 Additionally, Augustine draws a distinction between the terms imago, aequalitas, and similitudo (image, equality, and likeness). In question 74 of De diversis Quaestionibus, he argues the following: “Image and equality and likeness must be differentiated, because where there is an image there is necessarily a likeness but not necessarily equality; where there is equality there is necessarily a likeness but not necessarily an image; where there is a likeness there is not necessarily an image and not necessarily equality. Where there is an image, there is necessarily a likeness but not necessarily equality, as in a person’s image in a mirror: because it is a reflection of him it must also be a likeness, but there is no equality because many things are lacking to the image that are in the thing whose reflection it is. Where there is equality there is necessarily a likeness but not necessarily an image, as is the case of two of the same eggs: because there is equality there is also a likeness, for whatever properties one of them has the other has as well, but there is no image because neither of them is a reflection of the other” (Raymond Canning, ed., Responses to Miscellaneous Questions, trans. Roland Teske, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, part 1, vol. 12 (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2008), 137).
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73 In his classic study, Rudolph Arbesmann states that “Augustine easily holds the first place among the patristic writers of the West who made use of the Christus medicus figure”; Arbesmann, Rudolph, “The Concept of Christus Medicus in St. Augustine,” Traditio 10 (1954): 1–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 2.
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79 For further reading, see Casiday, “St. Augustine on Deification: His Homily on Psalm 81.”
80 Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 48.9-10. From NPNF, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. M. Dods, vol. 7 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1888; reprinted in 1978).
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82 Augustine, “Sermon 192.” From Sermons 184-229Z; emphasis added.
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102 Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John 39.5. Here, Augustine is referencing Romans 5:5.
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