St. Athanasius’s understanding of theosis should always be kept in our minds as we further explore the concept: theosis must always be seen as relating to our eternal life in Christ. The Fathers, as they explored the concept, saw there was more to it than mere immortality. They noted that we are made in the image and likeness of God, and that must relate, in some fashion, to theosis. We were meant to be more than immortal, but to continuously grow in our divine participation, becoming more and more like God as we find ourselves in ever-increasing beatitude. St. Gregory of Nyssa portrays this well in his Life of Moses:
226. [The soul –ed.] Made to desire and not to abandon the transcendent height by things already attained, it makes its way upward without ceasing, ever through its prior accomplishments renewing its intensity for the flight. Activity directed toward virtue causes its capacity to grow through exertion; this kind of activity alone does not slacken in its intensity by the effort, but increases it.
227. For this reason we also say that the great Moses, as he was becoming ever greater, at no time stopped in his ascent, nor did he set a limit in his upward course. Once having set foot on the ladder which God set up (as Jacob says), he continually climbed to the step above and never ceased to rise higher, because he always found a step higher than the one he had attained.[1]
Theosis, as we have seen, is a doctrine which is related to Christology. We are able to be deified in Christ because Christ shares our nature with us. What happens to him happens to our nature. In the resurrection, Christ has perfected human nature. We can participate in that perfection and experience eternal beatitude. Eternity, however, is not to be seen as something static. As St Gregory of Nyssa has shown us, we will forever find ourselves increasing in our enjoyment of God based upon our activity in the new aeon. In eternity, we shall find ourselves being drawn deeper and deeper into the divine life, finding out that there is no end to our exploration and experience.[2]
But there is yet even more to say on the concept of theosis. Dionysius explains to us that God constantly seeks to draw us into him, to perfect and deify us, while God himself is beyond all things, even divinity. “How could it be that he who surpasses everything also transcends the source of divinity, transcends the source of all goodness? This is possible if by divinity and goodness you mean the substance of that gift which makes [us] good and divine and if you mean the inimitable imitation of him who is beyond divinity and beyond goodness, by means of which we are made divine and made good.”[3] Dionysius, famous for his apophatic methodology, was not the first to point out that what we call God is not what God is, that God must be beyond all systematic constructions, including what we call divinity, but he was the one who sought to bring it out as a central component of his theological project and to move apophaticism into a central position in Christian theology and spirituality (leading to, but not limited by, the analogia entis in the West and Palamism in the East).
St Maximus suggests that what we find in the creation story is itself indicative of eschatology; the last day of creation, the seventh day, the day of rest, represents the end of all temporality, leading to the eight, eternal day, the day of the resurrection. In this way, the unity of God’s creation with its goal (theosis) is able to be established. “According to Scripture, the sixth day brings in the completion of being subject to nature. The seventh limits the movement of temporal distinctiveness. The eighth indicates the manner of existence above nature and time.”[4] The eighth day is the day of resurrection, even as Christ was raised on the first day of the new week, or the eighth day of the old – showing the relationship between the old and new creations, and how the first leads into the second. “The one who has become worthy of the eighth day is risen from the dead, that is, from what is less than God: sensible and intelligible things, words, and thoughts; and he lives the blessed life of God, who alone is said to be and is in very truth the life, in such a way that he becomes himself God by deification.”[5]
To experience God in our theosis, we must be prepared for it; that means, we must be cleansed impurities, of sin, so that we can be raised up and participate in the glory of God’s life. A major component of this is an inward transformation: “For thought is the act and manifestation of the mind relate as effect to cause, and prudence in the act and manifestation of wisdom, and action of contemplation, and virtue of knowledge, and faith of enduring knowledge. From these is produced the inward relationship to the truth and the good, that is, to God, which is used to call divine science, secure knowledge, love, and peace in which and by means of which there is deification.”[6]
St Symeon the New Theologian’s contributions on theosis includes the important point that we should experience the first fruits of this theosis in our life now; if we cleanse our minds and bodies, purifying ourselves through grace, we should be able to experience the glory of God here and now:
If the baptized have put on Christ, what is it that they have put on? God. Hen then who has put on God, will he not recognize with this intellect and see what he has clothed himself with? The man who has clothed his naked body feels the garment that he sees, but the man who is naked in soul will not know that he has put on God? If he who is clothed with God does not perceive Him, what has he put on in fact? […] Only the dead feel nothing when they are clothed, and I am very much afraid that those who say such things [that they don’t see or experience God – ed.] are the ones who are really and truly dead and naked.[7]
Now, St Symeon was not the first to point this out, but he was to make it a central aspect of his legacy; often, he would decry academic theologians if they did theology without the experience of God, not because they couldn’t declare the truth, but they wouldn’t know if they did or not and would not be qualified judges of the truth but only be able to speculate on it. While it is often good for people to collect and reflect upon the thoughts of the saints, until they experience the life of the saints for themselves, all they have is derivative in nature.
St Gregory Palamas’ addition to the discussions on theosis was to theologically engage those questions which have not yet been answered; he accepted and defended, with St Symeon the New Theologian, the fact that people in this world, in their lives now, can and should experience the first fruits of theosis; they can and should experience the light of the transfiguration for themselves. But there is a question: what is it that one experiences, and what is it that is happening to one in this theosis? We come to know God, but we don’t know him completely; his nature transcends all natures, and is completely ungraspable. Indeed, we do not become God by nature, but God by participation. But what is it that we are participating in? That is where Palamas comes into the discussion with his solution. Every nature is expressed and known by its energia, by its work (Christian metaphysics affirmed this by the conciliar definition when the ecumenical councils said Christ had two natures, two wills and two energies). We are united to God in his energy. “According to the Fathers, deification is an essential energy of God.”[8] It truly is God we are talking about and so we truly know God since his energy cannot be anything but himself. Since it is God, what we are talking about, God’s energy, is also uncreated. By uniting ourselves to it, we can participate in the divinity as co-workers with God, something which we should be doing in our life now.[9] “When you hear speak of the deifying energy of God and the theurgic grace of the Spirit, do not busy yourself or seek to know why it is this or that and not something else; for without it you cannot be united to God, according to those Fathers who have spoken about it. Attend rather to those works which will allow you to attain to it, for thus you will know it according to your capacities.”[10]
In Palamas’ reply, we see the mention of the “theurgic Spirit.” While theosis has always been associated with the incarnation, it is important to remember the relationship between the Spirit and the incarnate one; that the Spirit was always with him and in him. By putting on Christ and becoming a part of his body, we get that same Spirit; theosis, while incarnational, must also be seen as pneumatological (it is the Spirit, as the enlightener, who provides us the grace needed to awaken us to life and see God). Nicholas Cabasilas puts the two together in My Life in Christ. First, we see how he shows that Jesus was anointed by the Spirit, making him the source for the Spirit’s blessing. “Further, Christ the Lord was Himself anointed, not by receiving chrism poured on the head, but by receiving the Holy Spirit. For the sake of the flesh which He had assumed He became the treasury of all spiritual energy.”[11]Then he pointed out how we are to experience this anointing for ourselves through sacramental chrismation. “The chrism brings in the Lord Jesus Himself, in whom is man’s whole salvation, and all hope of benefits. From Him we receive the participation in the Holy Spirit and ‘through Him we have access to the Father’ (Eph. 2:18).”[12] We find that in this grace, we are given gifts, each according to the blessings the Spirit brings to us in and through Christ. “It activates the spiritual energies, one in one man, another in another, or even several at the same time, depending on how each man is prepared for this Mystery.”[13] Thus the Spirit, in our theosis, brings to us gifts which raise us up beyond ourselves, to be used for the glory of God.
While theosis, deification, becoming God, might at first appear heretical, the problem has been the assumption of what it means to become God. It means to be made immortal and to participate in the energizing Spirit of God, allowing us to become co-workers with God. We do not become God by nature; we are united to God according to his energy. It is a matter of grace, where God’s love raises us up, instead of a matter of pride, where we try to claim for ourselves a position we have not been given (the fall can be said, in part, to be an egoistic attempt to grab that which we could become through grace, thinking we do not need grace to do so, closing ourselves off from that grace and becoming stuck in the rut of sin because of it).[14] Theosis, because it is a gift of grace, requires us to overcome the egoistical attempt to be a God unto ourselves, and rather to open ourselves up to the person we are expected to be in Christ, where then we can participate in the divine life.
Footnotes
[1] St. Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses. Trans. Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Fergusson (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 113-4.
[2] C. S. Lewis gives a similar reading to eternity at the end of The Last Battle.
[3] Pseudo-Dionysius, “Letter 2” in Pseudo-Dionysius The Complete Works. trans. Colm Luibheid (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), 263. That God transcends all things, including names such as God, is expressed in further detail in The Divine Names. While transcending all names, because it is the origin of all names, Dionysius does point out a positive theology where we can describe and discuss God with the names God has given to us; indeed, though nameless, countless names can be used, if properly understood. “And so it is that as Cause of all and as transcending all, he is rightly nameless and yet has the names of everything that is,” Pseudo-Dionysius, “On the Divine Names” in Pseudo-Dionysius The Complete Works, 56.
[4] St Maximus the Confessor, “Chapters on Knowledge,” in Maximus the Confessor, Selected Writings. trans. George C. Berthold (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 137.
[5] Ibid., 138.
[6] St Maximus the Confessor, “The Church’s Mystagogy” in Maximus the Confessor, 193-4.
[7] St Symeon the New Theologian, On the Mystical Life: The Ethical Discourses Vol. 2. trans. Alexander Golitzin (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996), 46.
[8] St Gregory Palamas, The Triads. Trans. Nicholas Gendle (New York: Paulist Press, 1983), 86.
[9] When people criticize this by saying we should know God by the personal revelation, by knowing God as the Trinity of persons, there is a failure to understand what is being discussed here. Knowing God by the revelation of his energy comes to us through the persons, and is not distinct from them.
[10] Ibid., 87.
[11] Nicholas Cabasilas, The Life in Christ. Trans. Carmino J. deCatanzaro (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998), 104.
[12] Ibid., 106.
[13] Ibid., 103.
[14] Modern Orthodox theology have developed further aspects of theosis, leading into several different schools of thought. One of the primary points of interest has been the question of being made in the image and likeness of God and how this relates to theosis. Because this is an introductory text, these theological developments are beyond the scope of our presentation here. For those interested in what has been said recently, one might want to look at Vladimir Solovyov’s Lectures on Godmanhood; Sergius Bulgakov’s Bride of the Lamb; John Zizioulas Being as Communion; Christos Yannaras, Person and Eros; Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, et. al.
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