Just want to share some excerpts from “Orthodox Christian Theosis and Deification in the New Religious Movements” by Rev. Dn. Dr. Brendan Pelphrey
Earlier this century, Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky wrote concerning the role of theosis in Orthodox Christian spirituality:
“God made Himself man, that man might become God.” These powerful words...are again found in the writings of St. Athanasius, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, and St. Gregory of Nyssa. The Fathers and Orthodox theologians have repeated them in every century with the same emphasis, wishing to sum up in this striking sentence the very essence of Christianity: an ineffable descent of God to the ultimate limit of our fallen human condition, even unto death—a descent of God which opens to men a path of ascent, the unlimited vistas of the union of created beings with the Divinity.
Today, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, following the tradition of the early Christian fathers, describes salvation in Jesus Christ as theosis. The Greek term has no real equivalent in the English language. It means to be filled with God, to take on the divine likeness, to live fully in Christ who is one with the Father. Thus it means to become one with God. The doctrine of theosis is apostolic and scriptural. A well-known reference in the New Testament is 2 Peter 1:3:
“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature.”
Protestant Christians sometimes object that the passage in 2 Peter does not mean what it says, because it is impossible for human beings to share the divine nature. Orthodox Christians, however, are always puzzled by such statements because in its original Greek the passage is very clear. It cannot mean anything else. Other passages in the New Testament offer a parallel to the statement in 2 Peter and can help us understand how early Christians thought of theosis. St. Paul speaks, for example, of human nature being changed into the likeness of Christ, that is, receiving the glory of God:
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:17-18)
The word “glory” (doxa) denotes radiance but also means appearance or face. Thus Paul’s meaning is that those who behold the glory of God’s face, as Moses did, take on the divine radiance just as Moses himself shone with the bright light of God’s glory. Similarly, the believer in Christ is transfigured into His divine likeness, and this transformation is the real purpose and destiny of human beings. By becoming human God has transformed humanity and made it to partake of the divine nature. In a parallel passage Paul explains that it is the divine purpose for human beings to be glorified (edojxasen, edoxasen):
We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified. (Romans 8:28-30)
From a Protestant perspective this passage seems to be concerned primarily with predestination and justification. Some Protestant traditions interpret the term “predestined” to mean that God determines who will be saved and who will be damned (the doctrine of “double predestination” in some Reformed theology), while other traditions understand the word more in terms of divine purpose for all humanity, even though not all persons are in fact justified by faith (Lutheran theology). In either case, justification itself is understood to mean the work of Christ on the cross, in which Christ paid the debt of sin by suffering death on behalf of human beings (substitutionary atonement). Those who repent of sin and accept the vicarious suffering of Christ on their behalf are “justified.” The term “justify” therefore has the sense of “to declare (as if) righteous,” for the righteousness of Christ is imputed to believers. This general doctrinal position may be traced to the writings of Anselm of Canterbury, who introduced it as an innovation in Christian thought in the eleventh century.
From an Eastern Orthodox perspective justification involves more than being accounted righteous because of a settled debt. Salvation in Christ is, first of all, the defeat of death. Death has been at work in humanity since Adam; therefore, the salvation of humankind necessarily involves the liberation of humanity from death and the overcoming of death in humanity. What saves us is not only the cross of Christ, but first of all the nativity of the eternal Logos in flesh, his baptism on our behalf (in which, Orthodox hymns say, the waters were cleansed and re-created as Jesus entered into them), his descent into Hades to defeat death, his resurrection, his ascension. In the theology of the early Church, God became human in order to change humanity from within, uniting humanity forever to God.
Celebrating the Nativity in hymns, St. Ephrem the Syrian, writing in the fourth century, depicts salvation as the Logos “clothing” himself with created flesh, the flesh of Adam. Christ puts on Adam, and after defeating death in Hades ascends into the heavens in the flesh. The flesh of Adam is therefore deified in Christ.
Salvation is the lifting of human nature out of the context of sin and death, and into the context of eternal life. But salvation also necessarily involves the appropriation of God’s grace by human beings, those who identify with Christ in baptism and become his followers. In the Romans passage cited above, the Greek term usually rendered “justified,” literally means “straightened out” or “made straight (righteous).” Orthodox agree with Protestant Christians that at baptism the believer is identified with Christ and declared righteous. But the “second birth” of the believer at baptism is the beginning of spiritual life, not the end of it—just as natural birth is only the beginning of life in the flesh. Justification involves more than birth; it is the growth of the believer into the fullness of life in Christ.
The Orthodox understanding of justification can be understood in terms of an event narrated in the Gospel of Luke, in which Jesus straightens the woman who for eighteen years had been bent over by an illness (Luke 13:10-17). Jesus tells her that she has been loosed from the spirit of infirmity. The evangelist contrasts the spirit of infirmity with the Holy Spirit, noting that in the Holy Spirit there is liberty. Thus, justification in Christ literally means being straightened out and given a new life, in the liberty of the Holy Spirit. Human beings, weighed down and distorted by sin, are set free in the Spirit of God. They receive new life and, through the grace that God gives continually, literally take on a new appearance. They begin to look like Christ, in whom we find divinity and therefore, genuine humanity.
From a Protestant perspective the Orthodox interpretation appears to conflate justification in Christ with sanctification, the subsequent work of the Holy Spirit in the believer. From an Orthodox perspective Protestants here misunderstand the fundamental meaning of salvation, dividing justification from sanctification as if there were two distinct operations, and understanding salvation as if it were a purely legal operation. As in the other biblical languages of Hebrew and Latin, the Greek, “I save,” is not a legal term. It means to heal, make whole, rescue, preserve, restore. It does not mean “to reckon as if one were whole,” “to reckon as though healed,” “to reckoned as if restored.” This distinction would be vitally important in a hospital or on a battlefield, and Orthodox regard it as even more vital with regard to spiritual life and death.
To say this does not subtract from the central role of divine grace in salvation. Orthodoxy has always regarded that we are saved (healed) through the grace of God, not through our own efforts (Ephesians 2:8). But at the same time salvation requires our cooperation. Redemption from sin is like being healed of a mortal illness. The physician’s care is necessary, surgery removes the evil growth, medication destroys the infection, but nevertheless healing is, finally, a process of the body itself. The patient must take the medicine; he or she must cooperate with the physician and want to get well; the body must repair its cells and organs. In Christianity the Physician is Christ, the surgery is repentance, the sterilizing is baptism, the medication is chrismation initially and the divine Eucharist often, the daily exercise is obedience to Christ’s command to love, exercised in prayer. In this connection Ignatius, writing at the dawn of the second century, refers to the Eucharist as “the medicine of immortality, and the antidote which wards off death but yields continuous life in union with Jesus Christ.”
Such healing is an operation of love, because love is the nature of God. Love cannot be forced or imposed. Human beings must receive love and nurture it by our actions and our decisions. This is what Orthodox call synergy, literally “working together.” The meaning is not that we can add anything to God’s free gift of salvation and forgiveness of sins, but that we accept and receive it by faith, and then act upon what God has done in our lives. Examples of our cooperation, then, are to receive baptism, to repent of sins, to cultivate prayer and inner peace by deciding not to engage in immoral and godless behavior, to read the Holy Scriptures, to participate in the sacraments of the Church. These create the environment in which theosis is possible and can be actualized.
Without inner discipline and peace, sinful human beings cannot provide a dwelling-place for God. The dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit is called the nous by the fathers: literally “mind,” but much more accurately translated as “heart” because it denotes the spiritual mind, the dwelling-place of God in us. The unspiritual person allows the heart to atrophy until, in some, it is altogether dead. But for those who seek the Lord, who call on His name and walk according to His will, their lives are transformed and they become children of light. Growing in grace, such persons take on the likeness of Christ in their daily lives. This is what Orthodox call theosis, to be God-filled.
Orthodox Christianity therefore understands salvation in Christ to be the restoration and completion of human nature. Adam fell into the power of death; Christ, the New Adam, overcame the power of death for all humanity. To be sure there are many ramifications of this theme, and Eastern Church fathers from the very beginning understood the mystery of salvation as encompassing many different elements: that Christ is the perfect sacrifice for sins, drawing to a close the Jewish sacrifices; that Christ is the ransom for many; that Christ has loosed the slave from bondage; that Christ is like bait on a hook, catching the sea-monster (Satan) by allowing himself to be crucified and descending into Hades. Swallowing up Christ, the sea-monster of the Deep finds the uncreated Logos clothed in humanity, and vomits Him up just as the fish vomited up Jonah. All these images are very early employed by Christian writers such as Justin, Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa and so on. But the overwhelming single image employed by the fathers is one of “justifying”—setting straight, or restoring—humanity.
Nor is humanity merely restored to the state of Adam. Adam was made in the “image and likeness” of God. Orthodoxy distinguishes between “image” and “likeness.” The divine image is found in all human beings, and represents our God-given human potential. It is never fully erased, even if it is heavily obscured by sin. But to have the likeness of God is to actualize human potential, to look like Christ. We obtain this only in Christ, as we are joined to Him in His Body, the Church. We have it through a life of faith, in the Holy Spirit.
The Orthodox claim is therefore that the grace of God is given to human beings in very real ways, so that through faith and self-discipline the Christian begins to take on the likeness of Christ. The fruit of the Spirit mentioned by St. Paul in Galatians 4:22-23 is observable and practical. Those who receive the Holy Spirit actually undergo a transformation of life. Nor is this transformation limited to one’s lifetime. Orthodox Christians claim—and it is a claim based on experience, even in our own time—that the lives of saints are so transformed that even their flesh and bones become vessels of grace.
An important example of a dimension of early Christian teaching which is central to understanding theosis is the Orthodox distinction between divine essence and divine energies. Eastern Christianity is apophatic: that is, the fathers see the essence of God as absolutely unknowable. In this view the mystery of the Divine Being, which is the Trinity, cannot be understood or in any way imagined or experienced by a created being. The divine energies, on the other hand, are the movement of God to humanity and may be experienced directly by human beings in the graces (charismata) of the Holy Spirit. The uncreated light seen by the Hesychasts is divine energy. So is the Christian experience of salvation and sanctification. While it is God Himself who comes to us, it is the energies of God which we can receive and experience, because we are not God but creatures in God.
In this light, it is nowhere argued by the Church fathers that human beings become “gods” in their own right, because it is impossible to share the divine essence. We cannot be God. Nor could we, of ourselves, become “gods.” But in Christ human beings share the divine energies of God and in that sense become God-filled. Nor, as I have said, is theosis an experiential reality for everyone who claims to be Christian. Rather, the extent to which we live by the Holy Spirit, in meekness and submission to Christ and in His will, is the extent to which we develop a home for the Holy Spirit at the center of our lives, and our lives are transformed. The heart of this way of life is continual repentance, even the shedding of tears for our sins, and the recognition that whatever we are, we are not God, whose mercy we need. This is why Orthodox continually pray the Jesus-prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
In summary, the theological background to the doctrine of theosis is the doctrine, taught by the Church since the beginning, that God the Word became human in order to transfigure humanity. In this context Palamas makes the startling and radical statement that in Christ it is possible to take on all the characteristics of the Logos, who was not a creature but was unoriginate, pure, holy, obedient of the Father, to eternal life. The emphasis here is upon the nature of Christ, not upon the believer. Christ, Palamas says, is not a creature or angel or a deified human, as certain heresies would teach (today such heresies include Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons). Rather, he is God in flesh; and being God, He is without beginning. It is only because he is truly God that he can lift us out of the well of sin. In this context, Palamas says that the believer can share the nature of God the Son, who is “unoriginate.”
Reading passages such as this out of context, some students—at least a few who are currently posting on the internet—have concluded that Palamas means the believer becomes an uncreated god. This is not Palamas’ meaning, since it would be impossible to become uncreated in any case. Palamas is saying that by grace human beings can partake of the energies of God, though as creatures we cannot receive the essence of God. The love of God is without-beginning; it is this love which we receive from God and share by divine grace. It is in the context of Orthodox liturgical life and assumptions about essence/energies—and solely in this context—that the great writers like St. Athanasius, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Maximos the Confessor or St. Gregory Palamas can argue that human beings “become” divine. Now it will be possible to compare other teachings of deification which are popular today.
http://www.dialogcentret.dk/index.ph...tent&Itemid=37