Theosis - Definition

[Guest guest]

BECOMING LIKE GOD: AN EVANGELICAL DOCTRINE OF THEOSIS

JETS 40/2 (June 1997) 257-269

 

Robert V. Rakestraw

 

In one of his letters, Athanasius, the fourth-century defender of the faith,

made

his famous statement that the Son of God became man " that he might deify us

in himself. " {1} In his great work, On the Incarnation, he wrote similarly that

Christ " was made man that we might be made God. " {2} This is the doctrine of

theosis, also known as deification, divinization, or, as some prefer,

participation in God.{3}

 

While the concept of theosis has roots in the ante-Nicene period, it is not an

antiquated historical curiosity. The idea of divinization, of redeemed human

nature somehow participating in the very life of God, is found to a surprising

extent throughout Christian history, although it is practically unknown to the

majority of Christians (and even many theologians) in the West. In Orthodox

theology, however, it is the controlling doctrine. Furthermore, " it is not too

much to say that the divinization of humanity is the central theme, chief aim,

basic purpose, or primary religious ideal of Orthodoxy. " {4} With the growing

interest in Eastern Orthodox/Evangelical rapprochement, it is essential that

theosis studies be pursued. Evangelicals may receive considerable benefit

from a clear understanding and judicious appropriation of the doctrine. This is

so particularly in light of the crying need for a robust, biblical theology of

the

Christian life that will refute and replace the plethora of false spiritualities

plaguing Church and society.

 

……….

 

 

DEFINING THEOSIS

 

 

It is not easy to give a definition of theosis, since so many aspects of

Christian

truth are utilized by those who advance the teaching, and different writers and

traditions emphasize different truths. The word " theosis " is the transliteration

of the Greek word meaning " deification " --being made God. Our English word

" apotheosis " has much the same meaning.{19} In his definition, contemporary

Anglican priest Kenneth Leech builds upon the words of Maximus the

Confessor (c. 580-662), considered to be perhaps the most creative of

Byzantine theologians and the most helpful formulator of the doctrine of

theosis. Leech writes that according to Maximus, " deification is the work of

divine grace by which human nature is so transformed that it `shines forth with

a supernatural light and is transported above its own limits by a

superabundance of glory'. " {20}

 

Archbishop Basil Krivocheine, expressing the thought of St. Symeon the New

Theologian, writes:

 

 

Divinization is the state of man's total transformation, effected by the Holy

Spirit, when man observes the commandments of God, acquires the

evangelical virtues and shares in the sufferings of Christ. The Holy Spirit then

gives man a divine intelligence and incorruptibility. Man does not receive a

new soul, but the Holy Spirit unites essentially with the whole man, body and

soul. He makes of him a son of God, a god by adoption, though man does not

cease being a man, a simple creature, even when he clearly sees the Father.

He may be called man and god at the same time.{21}

 

A more Westernized definition comes from Philip Edgecumbe Hughes, the

deceased evangelical Anglican clergyman, biblical scholar and theologian in

the Reformed tradition. Like a fair number of older Anglicans, he understood

and saw considerable value in the doctrine of theosis. Commenting on the

words of Athanasius that we quoted at the start of this paper, Hughes notes

that while Athanasius did not clarify in every reference what he intended by

his concept of deification, he made it quite clear from his writings as a whole

that he did not have in mind a transformation of the human into the divine, an

ontological or essential change of humanity into deity.

 

Hughes goes on to explain, correctly I believe, what Athanasius did mean,

and in so doing gives us a useful definition of theosis as

 

 

the reintegration of the divine image of man's creation through the sanctifying

work of the Holy Spirit conforming the redeemed into the likeness of Christ,

and also of the believer's transition from mortality to immortality so that he

is

enabled to participate in the eternal bliss and glory of the kingdom of God.{22}

 

Above all, theosis is the restoration and reintegration of the " image " or, as

some prefer, " likeness " of God, seriously distorted by the fall, in the children

of

God. In this life Christians grow more and more into the very likeness and

character of God, as God was revealed in the man Jesus Christ.

 

This is more than the customary Protestant concept of sanctification, however.

In theosis, while there is no ontological change of humanity into deity, there

is

a very real impartation of the divine life to the whole human being--body and

soul. Lutheran Ross Aden observes that Orthodox theologians, such as John

Breck, use the expression " communion with God " to mean " ontological

participation. " In contrast to Lutheranism, " the Orthodox hope of salvation in

its

broadest sense is more than hope of a divine sentence of 'not guilty' or even

of a beatific vision; it is `human participation in the being of God . . . a

total

sharing in the Triune life.' . . . Created in the image of God, human beings are

called to become like God by realizing the potential for ontological sharing in

the life of God, " yet never in such a way that theosis means sharing in God's

essence (nature). " Lutherans and Orthodox would agree that the essence of

God is utterly transcendent and therefore inaccessible to any created

reality. " {23}

 

G. I. Mantzaridis of the University of Thessaloniki writes in a recent work that

deification is God's greatest gift to man and the ultimate goal of human

existence.

 

 

It is that which from the beginning has constituted the innermost longing of

man's existence. Adam, in attempting to appropriate it by transgressing God's

command, failed, and in place of deification, met with corruption and death.

The love of God, however, through His Son's incarnation, restored to man the

possibility of deification:

 

 

Adam of old was deceived:

 

wanting to be God he failed to be God.

 

God becomes man,

 

so that He may make Adam god.{24}

 

 

 

The Greek Fathers and St. Gregory Palamas incorporate a strongly " physical "

view of theosis, which derives the deification of human nature from its

hypostatic union with the incarnate Logos of God. This view " does not imply

any mechanical commutation of humanity, but an ontological regeneration of

human nature in the hypostasis of the incarnate Logos of God, accessible to

every man who participates personally and freely in the life of Christ. " {25}

 

Concerning the time factor in divinization, Vladimir Lossky writes:

 

 

The deification or theosis of the creature will be realized in its fullness only

in

the age to come, after the resurrection of the dead. This deifying union has,

nevertheless, to be fulfilled ever more and more even in this present life,

through the transformation of our corruptible and depraved nature and by its

adaptation to eternal life.{26}

 

With regard to those who receive this gracious gift, Krivocheine gives the

thought of Symeon:

 

 

While remaining a spiritually conscious state and clearly felt by the one who

receives it, divinization will always remain an awesome mystery, surpassing

all human understanding and unobserved by most people. Indeed, the ones

who are granted it are rare, although all the baptized are called to it. It is

their

fault if they deprive themselves of it.{27}

 

John Meyendorff speaks of the never ending nature of deification.

 

 

Man is not fully man unless he is in communion with God. . . . However,

because God remains absolutely transcendent in his essence, man's

communion with Him has no limit. It never reaches an End, which would be a

dead end. God is both transcendent and inexhaustible. . . . In Christ

[according to Palamas], man enters into communion not with " the God of the

philosophers and the savants " but with the one who in human language can

only be called " more than God. " {28}

 

While the doctrine of divinization or theosis is associated primarily with the

Orthodox churches of the East, it has similarities with the teaching about

sanctification in the West. As noted above, however, the two are not identical.

In the Western churches, as Bray notes, the concept of the imitation of Christ

is the closest analogy to the theosis doctrine of the East. In Orthodox

theology,

while we are called to imitate Christ, we are also called to manifest the

energies of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit who proceeds from the Father rests on

the Son and becomes his energies. The Spirit then, by adopting us as sons of

God, makes accessible to us the spiritual power which belongs to Christ.{29}

Eastern writers stress, however, the distinction between God's essence and

his energies. According to theosis proponent Timothy Ware (Bishop Kallistos

of Diokleia), " union with God means union with the divine energies, not the

divine essence: the Orthodox Church, while speaking of deification and

union, rejects all forms of pantheism. " {30}

 

Orthodox churches also work more with the incarnation than with the

crucifixion of Christ as the basis for man's divinization. This is not to say

that

Christ's atonement is minimized in the work of redemption,{31} but that the

intention of the Father in creating humanity in the first place, and of joining

humanity to divinity in the incarnation, is so that human beings might assume

Godlikeness, and be imagers of God in his divine life, character, and actions.