On Theosis

Introduction

In Christ, we are offered a "great salvation" (Hebrews 2:3), full of "precious and very great promises" (2 Peter 1:4). At the same time, as mere creatures and not the Creator, we are capable of comprehending this greatness in only a small way: "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:9). Because of this limitation, whenever God wants to communicate truth to us, He has to use condescension or accommodation. That is, He uses metaphors or parables to help us grasp a part of the truth. We see Jesus’ using parables all the time, and the metaphors in the Bible are uncountable: God is a King, a Judge, a Shepherd, a Lamb, a Husband, a Rock, a Father, etc. Because all the metaphors taken together create a very manifold mental picture of God that is hard to keep in the mind all at once, different groups of people have focused on different subsets of the metaphors, giving them as a group a distinctive approach to Christianity. Western Christianity, for example, has drawn heavily on juridical metaphors because it developed around Rome, which had a highly developed law system. For example, God is a wrathful Judge, we have guilt because of our sin, and Jesus’ blood placates the wrath of God through being our substitute. Thus, in the West, justification, or a change in legal status before God, is the dominant metaphor for understanding salvation (Payton 134). In the East, however, union with Christ has been the dominant metaphor, and the word theosis, or deification, is used to refer to the goal of salvation as experienced through that union (Payton 137). In this post, I argue that theosis is a shorthand for a model of salvation that makes coherent sense of disparate Biblical data. The doctrine of theosis is built upon a particular reading of the Biblical data that connects into a unified whole three of the Church’s teachings: 1) the creation and vocation of man, 2) the nature of the Good News, and 3) the outworking of theosis in the life of the Church. In this post, all Scripture quotations are from the ESV translation of the Bible.

Creation and Vocation of Man

The foundation of theosis is the creation and vocation of mankind. The book of Genesis records four times that God created mankind in his image (1:26, 1:27 twice, 9:6). It also records twice that God created mankind in or after his likeness (1:25, 5:1). Many church fathers understand image and likeness to have different referents. To be created in God’s image implies that each person is endowed with certain inalienable faculties from the very moment of his conception that distinguish him from other animals, for example, free will, reason, and moral responsibility. The gulf between Creator and creature is infinite, but by making us His image-bearers, God already took the first step in bridging that gulf. Our capacity to have communion with Him flows from the fact that we bear His image (Ware 219). Quoting Greek poet Aratus, Saint Paul invokes a familial metaphor to capture the deep significance of being God’s image-bearers: “For we are indeed his offspring” (Acts 17:28).

To be created after God’s likeness, on the other hand, implies that we are endowed with a potential to grow in similarity to God through exercise of virtue (Ware 219). Since virtue depends upon the free exercise of our will, which is a component of God’s image, our potential to assimilate to God is predicated upon our privilege as image-bearers. What it means to assimilate to God is mysterious and requires humility to discuss, but we see a theme of transformation toward godlikeness throughout Scripture. For example, Saint John writes “Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (1 John 3:2-3). Here John contrasts between what we are now (“God’s children”) and what we will be in the future (“like him”). Without contradicting other uses of the word, Saint Paul sometimes uses the word image to describe the goal of our glorious assimilation to God: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). But Saint Peter uses the strongest language to capture the magnitude of our potential assimilation: “[H]e has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire” (2 Peter 1:4). When Peter says that we may become “partakers of the divine nature”, he really drills down to the essence of what it means to assimilate to God: We become a god by grace, or are deified (Ware 232).

With this as context, one of Jesus’ obscure sayings becomes clearer:

Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken—do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? (John 10:34-36)

This is how Saint John Chrysostom paraphrases this passage in his 61th homily on the Gospel of John: “If those who have received this honor by grace, are not found fault with for calling themselves gods, how can He who hath this by nature deserve to be rebuked?” (222). Thus, it is Scripturally and theologically justifiable to describe the human vocation of assimilating to God as the process of becoming a “god by grace”.

The Good News From the Perspective of Theosis

Having established that theosis is a useful model for describing the vocation of mankind, let us now look at what the Good News is from the perspective of theosis. We will explore both the problem and the remedy. First, the problem. When the serpent tempted Eve, he said this: “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5 emphasis mine). It is important to realize that one reason the serpent’s words were so appealing is that the goal he proposed was coterminous with their own vocation to become like God. The problem is that he proposed the shortcut of eating fruit rather than the diligent means of exercising virtue. When they ate the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve entered into the new unnatural mode of existence of separation from God, who is the source of life, which inevitably led to “the disintegration of their being” (commonly called corruption), one outward manifestation of which was their eventual physical death. Because of the mysterious unity of all humans, this principle of corruption affected not just Adam and Eve but also their descendents. And this corruption was not limited to their body but affected their whole person: They and we, their descendants, now have a strong proclivity toward sin (Ware 223). From the perspective of theosis, the Fall had two significant consequences: 1) the Fall distorted but did not destroy the image of God. For example, although sin restricts its scope, we retain freedom of will. Thus, exercise of virtue is still possible and necessary for progress toward godlikeness. 2) However, the path toward godlikeness became strewn with obstacles making its attainment practically impossible apart from God’s direct intervention (Ware 224-225).

And through the incarnation of the Son of God, direct intervention is exactly the remedy that God undertook. Jesus Christ, being fully God and fully man, eternally united in His own person both divine and human natures and thereby reopened for us the path to union with God and its accompanying godlikeness (Ware 225). That Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully man is absolutely crucial as Ware eloquently states here:

No one less than God can save humanity; therefore if Christ is to save, He must be God. But only if He is truly human, as we are, can we humans participate in what He has done for us. A bridge is formed between God and humanity by the Incarnate Christ who is divine and human at once. (21)

In the Scriptures we see how Christ’s sharing in our human condition has the effect that we can share in his divine condition. For example Saint Paul says, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). Christ shared our poverty that we might share in his riches (Ware 21). Saint Paul also says, “For our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Because of the work of Christ, we humans can inexplicably “become the righteousness of God”. Apart from a doctrine of theosis, it would be hard for this statement to have the full shock value that Paul intended. It would seem that the mystery of the goal of redemption (our attainment of theosis) is surpassed only by the mystery of the work of redemption itself. And our union with God in Christ is a profoundly intimate union of both body and spirit: “The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body… But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Corinthians 6:13b, 17).

Saint John uses the theme of sharing as well but packages it differently. Christ prays that His disciples may attain mutual indwelling or union with God because of their sharing in Christ’s glory (Ware 21): “[T]hat they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us … The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me” (John 17:21-23). John also uses the really strong metaphor of multiple persons of the Trinity taking up residence to describe the union with God that is the goal of our redemption: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23). As we can see, whether it is Saint Paul’s or Saint John’s treatment, the Good News is that in Christ the obstacles to union with God that resulted from the Fall are remedied, and we are empowered once again to make progress toward theosis.

The Outworking of Theosis in the Life of the Church

Having looked at the Good News from the perspective of theosis, we finally turn to its outworking in the life of the Church. We will look at the principle of synergy and the necessity of Church community. Synergy describes the relationship between God’s grace and human freedom. The English word is related to the Greek word συνεργός which is translated as “fellow workers” in 1 Corinthians 3:9: “For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building.” Our union with God and thus our progress toward godlikeness depends upon the cooperation of two quantitatively unequal yet equally necessary forces: divine grace and human will. We absolutely depend upon God’s grace, which constitutes 99.9% of the equation: “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me” (John 15:4). At the same time, without the virtuous exercise of our free will as the remaining 0.1%, we will not progress toward theosis (Ware 221-222). We see this synergy clearly in Philippians 2:12b-13: “[W]ork out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Both parties (God and mankind) need to work. This does not, however, imply that we earn merit by accepting and guarding God’s grace (Ware 222). We have no rights before God: “So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty’” (Luke 17:10). At the same time, moral effort is required because “as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead” (James 2:26). It is crucial to realize that regardless of how much virtue we practice, until or unless God responds with grace to that virtue, theosis will not occur. God is a free, personal, moral agent, not a manipulable force. “Divine grace secretly performs man’s deification, while virtue simply renders him capable of receiving deification” (Mantzaridis 90).

Having looked at the principle of synergy, we also look at the necessity of the Church for providing a context for working out theosis. The Church is a necessary context because deification is both socially practical and sacramental. First, it is socially practical. Jesus distilled the Law and the Prophets into two commandments: Love God and love people (Matthew 22:37-40). Obeying these commandments are fundamental for deification (Ware 236). Although praying for another is one way to manifest love, it is easy to mistake feelings of goodwill for actual love: “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:15-17). For it to be alive and real, love needs to be practically expressed in the lives of other people. Thus, the pursuit of theosis requires a social context in which to grow in love. Furthermore, given the fact that God exists in a communion of a Trinity, all Persons of which share a single divine nature, humans also can only realize the divine likeness when they also live in communion with others who share their one human nature. The true nature of theosis is learning to dwell in our fellow humans just as the Persons of the Trinity dwell in each other (Ware 237).

Deification is also sacramental. According to Ware, “Church and sacraments are the means appointed by God whereby we may acquire the sanctifying Spirit and be transformed into the divine likeness” (238). It is in baptism that deification commences, for that is the time when we are initially united to Christ (Romans 6:3-5). The sacrament of repentance is a second baptism, by which the penitent is reconciled to the Church and thus renews his union with Christ (Ware 288). And it is in the Eucharist that our deification is furthered through partaking of Holy Communion. Jesus said: “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him” (John 6:56). Earlier in the section on synergy, we saw where Jesus said, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me” (John 15:4). So we see that receiving the Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion is a means of abiding in Christ and of His abiding in us. It is a means of strengthening our union with Christ and thereby synergistically empowering us to bear the fruit of theosis, God’s likeness. On this point, Paul returns to the theme of sharing or mutual participation: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16). Just as Christ participated in our humanity through his incarnation, so we participate in his divinity through Holy Communion. As Gregory of Nyssa said:

Since … the God who manifested Himself mingled Himself with our mortal nature in order that by communion with His Godhead humanity might at the same time be deified, He plants himself, in accordance with His plan of grace, in all believers by means of that Flesh, which derives its subsistence from both wine and bread, mingling Himself with the bodies of believers, in order that, by union with that which is immortal, man also might participate in incorruption. (111-112)

In this post we have explored theosis as a useful model for understanding the Biblical data regarding our salvation. We saw that it flows from the Scriptural presentation of our creation and vocation as human. We saw that it provides a coherent way to present the Good News. And we saw that its outworking in our lives depends upon synergy and community. We close with a quote from C. S. Lewis whose words so many years ago planted the first seed that opened the way to this author’s eventual acceptance of theosis:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship. (18)

Works Cited

English Standard Version Bible. London: Crossway, 2010. Print

Gregory, of Nyssa. The Catechetical oration of St. Gregory of Nyssa. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1917. Web. http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013333003;view=1up;seq=115.

John Chrysostom. A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. Ed. Philip Schaff. Vol. 14. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Web. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf114/Page_222.html

Lewis, C. S. The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, Rev. Ed. New York: Macmillan, Collier Books, 1980.

Mantzaridis, Georgios I. The Deification of Man: St. Gregory Palamas and the Orthodox Tradition. Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s, 1997.

Payton, James R., Jr. Light from the Christian East: Light from the Orthodox Tradition. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2007. Print.

Ware, Timothy. The Orthodox Church. New York: Penguin, 1997. Print.