331 David Vincent Meconi Popular Opinion Still Has It That Deification Is
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book reviews 331 David Vincent Meconi The One Christ: St. Augustine’s Theology of Deification, Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press 2013, xx + 280 pp., ISBN 978-0-8132-2127-4, US$ 64.95 (hardback with jacket). Popular opinion still has it that deification is typical to Eastern theology and virtually absent in Western theology. The main source to be blamed for this nonappearance or—at least—deficiency would be Augustine. Sound research has indicated more than once, however, that the notion of deification occurs in Augustine, even as an integral element of his theology, though it is only sparsely specified by the technical term deificare. While this specific term is only used 18 times, so Meconi, the concept forms a constituent part of Augustine’s theological system. In this respect Meconi is in line with previous scholars such as Capánaga, Ladner and, more recently, Bonner.1 For Augustine, deification is the same as that implied by the NT doctrine of the ‘sonship’ of the believers, i.e. sonship by adoption and not by nature, through God’s participation in our humanity through Jesus Christ. In other words, dei- fication is the consequence of humanity being assumed by God in Christ’s incarnation. In this way, the divine imago in man is reformed, as is the simili- tudo. All this does not imply any ontological change (the created being remains a created being, even though deified); also, it is not achieved in this life, but only after the resurrection. In the above lines I rather closely follow Gerald Bonner, who in two brief and fairly identical summaries outlined the topic and indicated the essential prooftexts.2 Meconi deals with the problem in five rather lengthy chapters, but in essence he says the same. Perhaps one may remark that he lays somewhat more stress on the Holy Spirit’s indwelling (the topic of ch. four) and con- stantly emphasises the fact that humankind’s participation in God is seen by Augustine as only taking place through Christ’s humanity (and not his divinity). All this sounds fairly theological and, indeed, such is the essential character of Meconi’s rather long-winded but lucidly written book. The topic might have been dealt with in a broader historical context and, also, based upon more explicit philological analyses of the terms involved. Apart from the studies by 1 See e.g. Victorino Capánaga, ‘La deificación en la soteriología agustiniana’, Augustinus Magister 2 (1954) 745-754; G.B. Ladner, The Idea of Reform, Cambridge, Mass. 1959, esp. 185- 203; G. Bonner, ‘Augustine’s Conception of Deification’, JTS 37 (1986) 369-386. 2 Bonner, ‘Deificare’, Augustinus-Lexikon 2, fasc.1/2, 1996, 265-267; ‘Deification, Divinization’, Augustine Through the Ages, Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK 1999, 265-266. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi ��.��6�/�57��7��-���4��74 332 book reviews Bonner, all these merits are characteristic of an earlier work on the topic, sc. the 1952 Leiden doctoral dissertation by J.A.A.A. Stoop entitled Die deificatio hominis in die sermones en epistulae van Augustinus.3 Meconi is aware of the existence of this book (87 densely printed pages, plus title page and contents and curriculum vitae auctoris),4 but at the same time asserts that his own work ‘is the first book-length study of Augustine’s theology of deification’ (xvi). Scholars able to understand Dutch (or, more precisely, its cognate language Afrikaans) may still very profitably consult the in-depth 1952 study by the not only historically and theologically, but also philologically well-trained young doctor theologiae (by then Stoop was only 26!). The present book, finely produced by CUAP, contains a number of small mistakes in French (the first one on p. ix: Oeuvres of Saint Augustine should read: Oeuvres de saint Augustin), in some German and other names (read Adolf for Adolph Harnack and Uwe Knorr for Knoor; Goulven for Goulvan Madec) and, for instance, sometimes in the title of one of Bonner’s studies (e.g. in the bibliography on p. 252 read ‘Conception’ instead of ‘Concept’). These are minor points, of course, and as a rule one may say that the author displays a sound knowledge of both the primary Latin texts and a considerable number of Augustinian studies in a whole range of languages. However, he incorrectly states that Augustine put the words ‘sermo deificus’ into the mouths of Manichaeans like Faustus and Felix: both in c. Faust. 32,7 and 32,19 Augustine is quoting from Faustus’ own Capitula, while in c. Fel. 1,13 it is, according to the official acts of the dispute, the Manichaean doctor Felix who is speaking. All this leads to the interesting question of what, in actual fact, sermo deificus may have meant for a Latin Manichaean? Did it not have some specific meaning different from its use in non-Gnostic Christianity? Be that as it may, Meconi’s remark after enumerating these and some other appearances of deificus, namely that ‘[f]rom each of these occurrences we can safely ascertain that a “deified word” is a formalized phrase in late antiquity to prove the orthodoxy of anyone who would grant a canonical writing such godly status’ (86), does not make much sense to me. Here one may delve deeper and ask precisely what a Manichaean may have denoted by such a term. The same might go for the sources of the Augustinian concept of the totus Christus, which is rightly so often stressed by Meconi as being pivotal for understanding Augustine’s notion of deificatio. Should we not evaluate the fact that this very same concept of totus Christus, so essential in Augustine’s theology, was central to Manichaean 3 Printed and published by Drukkerij ‘Luctor et Emergo’, Leiden 1952. 4 See pp. xvi and 84 (although on the last mentioned page it is wrongly stated that Jan Stoop’s work was a ‘doctoral thesis for the Netherlands’ University of Groningen’). Vigiliae Christianae 68 (�0�4) ��9-�46.