1. Beyond almost any other Christian thinker, Augustine magnified Christ. This name, drunk in piously and deeply, even with his mother's milk {Conf. iii. 8), never lost its power over him even during his years of wandering. Having become emancipated from Manichsean dualism through the study of Neo- Platonic writings (Plotinus, Amelius, ct al. ) he found himself unable with satis- faction to fix his gaze upon the glories of the invis- ible and unchangeable God until he had embraced that ' Mediator between God and man, himself man, Christ Jesus,' ' who is over all, God blessed for ever,' 'the way, the truth, and the life.' Yet he did not at once grasp the mystery of the Incar- nation, and he failed for a time to attain to any- thing higher than Adoptianism. He thought of Christ ' as of a man of excellent wisdom,' virgin- born and surpassing other men, an example to us of ' contemning temporal things for the obtaining of immortality.' Fully assured of the unchange- ableness of the Divine Word, he was unable to be- lieve that He ate, drank, slept, walked, rejoiced, w<as sad, and discoursed ; and so felt compelled (against Arians and Apollinarians) to insist upon a complete humanity in Christ to which such actions and experiences would be appropriate {Conf. vii. 24, 25). Though strongly influenced by Neo- Platonism, which generally made for Monophy- sitism, Augustine was a Dyophysite of tlie most pronounced type. Yet one would search in vain
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in his writings for any accurate definition of the relations of tlie Divine and the human in the Person of Christ, or of the manner in which the Divine Logos and tlie man Jesus were united in a single personality. He guarded carefully against any admission of a blending of Deity and humanity, as well as against the siipposition that Christ's humanity is converted into Deity. He calls tlie humanity of Christ 'garment,' 'temple,' 'vehicle,' ' instrument. ' By virtue of its association with Deity, the soul of Christ possessed perfect know- ledge from the very beginning ; and His disclaim- ing of knowledge about this or that was for the sake of His disciples. Yet Augustine denied free- dom of choice to the humanity of Christ, which he made subject to predestination. He regarded the Incarnation of the Logos as necessary in order that our souls might become His members, and that the devil might be vanquished by the same nature that he had seduced. The Incarnation was the work of the entire Trinity, and the Word stood in no nearer relation to the Son than did the entire Trinity (cf. Harnack, Dogmengesch. iii. 116 [Eng. tr. V. 226]). The following sentence is highly significant :
' God assumed (suscepit) our nature, i.e. the rational soul and flesh of the man Christ, by an assumption singularly wonderful and wonderfully singular, that, no merits of his own righteous- ness having preceded, he should thus become Son of God from the beginning in which he began to be man, that he himself (the man Christ) and the Word might be one person ' (de Cor- reptione et Gratia, 30).
Augustine seems never to have reached a thor- oughly wrought-out and self -consistent Christology. He was uncertain whether the Incarnation was necessary to man's redemption, conceiving it pos- sible that God might have chosen another way. The body of Ciirist he regarded as a part of the Adamic mass, which was constituted a body by the act of assumption, conceived by Mary not by carnal concupiscence, but by spiritual faith (Dor- ner, Pei'S. of Christ, II. i. 398). By the Incarnation our souls become Christ's members, and the devil is vanquished by the same nature that he seduced. As in accordance with the Divine plan of redemp- tion Christ must needs purchase sin-cursed men with His own death. He assumed a human body with all human attections and infirmities, including mortality, yet without concupiscence. In assuming human nature He cleansed it. ' He became man in order that He might make us gods.' Yet He did not renounce the ' form of God,' but continued with the Father in heaven, while Jesus was so- journing upon earth. His emptying was merely an occultation. Like St. Paul, Augustine laid the utmost stress on the humiliation involved in the Incarnation, the human life, and the obedience even unto death ; and yet he insisted that the Divine nature as being absolutely immutable could only join sympathetically with the human in psychical and physical sufl'ering. The atoning work of Christ he thought of as redemption from the power of the devil — who liad taken up his abode in human souls deserted by God because of sin, and who was conceived of as having a sort of vested right in them — quite as much as reconciliation to God. By receiving the penalty of sin, and not taking upon Himself the fault (culpa). He blotted out both penalty and fault for us. Christ's death possessed atoning power because of His virgin birth, spotless righteousness, and voluntary obedience to God. The temporal death of Christ frees believers from eternal death.
Side by side with Augustine's magnifying of Christ went his disposition to exalt the Church and its sacraments. He supposed that the benefits wrought for man through the Incarnation and suflerings of Christ become available for man only