Quote:
Originally Posted by Freedom
Lee's view is not the orthodox view of deification. Churches like the EO don't teach that we can take on God's nature, but WL did teach that.
Here is an example of what others teach:
So, we unite with God through His uncreated energies, and not through His essence. This is the mystery of our Orthodox faith and life.
http://www.greekorthodoxchurch.org/theosis_how.html
WL taught that we can become God in life and nature. Nature means essence. Going back to Acts 14 again, Paul explicitly spoke against that saying: We also are men with the same nature as you... It seems clear that what others teach, particularly views which have been held by the Orthodox Church are not the same as what WL taught. |
The orthodox church use of the word essence means God's person. Lee's use of the word essence means something which comes from God's nature (see "GOD’S NATURE BEING DISPENSED INTO US FOR OUR LIVING IN SPIRIT, LOVE, AND LIGHT"):
When love as the nature of God’s essence is dispensed into us, we shall react to others in love.
"Then through these promises, we can partake of God’s nature and enjoy God’s essence which is love".
So Lee does not believe that we participate in God's essence in the same sense as the Orthodox use the word essence. Rather, it is the nature of that essence, God's love, that is infused into us.
So we can't really claim that Lee's is not the orthodox view because, well, no one really knows what the orthodox view is, and it's more complicated than you describe. It is as complex as the Trinity, and has not been as well defined or agreed upon between the two major denominations of Catholic and Orthodox.
The Orthodox church divides God into an essence and energies, in which humans can participate in the energies but not in the essence. Now if essence means nature (which it can) and if someone would say we can participate in God's essence/nature, then this would be heretical.
However the Catholic church rejects this, saying that God cannot be divided in this way. Their view is a life long process of katharsis ( purification or removal of sin), theoria (illumination), and theosis (deification or union with God).
Now Protestants tend to stress katharsis and may call it sanctification, but they miss the other stages particularly theosis. Protestants generally fail to realize that God not only wants to purify us but also have intimate union with us. As the article you presented shows,
In order not to fall into pantheism, they do not speak at all about deification (gr. theosis). What then, according to them, remains as the purpose of man's life? Simply moral improvement. In other words, since man cannot be deified by means of divine Grace, the divine energies, what purpose does his life have? Only that he becomes morally better. But moral perfection is not enough for man. It is not enough for us simply to become better than before, to perform moral deeds. We have as our final aim to unite with holy God Himself. This is the purpose of the creation of the universe. This is what we desire. This is our joy, our happiness, and our fulfillment.
This sounds very much like what Lee would teach, that salvation is not the goal, the goal is God Himself.
The website you quoted makes an interesting and somewhat strange read! I was surprised to read that Orthodox consider God's love towards man to be EROS love whereas we would normally consider it to be AGAPE love.