“The
Word became flesh” (John 1:14) to make us “partakers of the divine nature” (2
Peter 1:4). In each Eucharistic mass the priest or deacon says quietly a very
powerful prayer––“By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in
the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”[1] The
mutual sharing of divinity and humanity is termed as theōsis, or deification, or divinization. The concept of
deification emerged mainly in the Eastern Churches. The great fourth century
theologian, St Gregory of Nazianzus coined the term theōsis. In Christian theology, theōsis
refers to the transformation of believers into the likeness of God. It is a
divine act that involves all three members of the Trinity, as humanity is
connected to the Son through the Spirit and to the Father through the Son. A
fruitful way to explore the idea of deification (or theōsis or divinization, or human beings as partakers of the Divine
nature) and its effect in the Christian belief is to examine how the Church
Fathers and contemporary theologians treat the theology of redemption, faith,
scripture, and the experience of God.
The
early Church Fathers, St Irenaeus and St Athanasius unhesitatingly
Assert that God created the entire
world, and at pinnacle of his creation, he made humanity in his image and
likeness. Due to disobedience at the Fall, humanity incurred sin and death upon
not only itself but upon all of creation. Sin obscured the image and likeness
and, therefore, it placed humanity in need of re-creation. From the results of
the Fall, the process of redemptive history jumps to the one who re-creates the
image and likeness within humanity, the Incarnate Christ.[2]
The pattern of John 1:14, “the Word
became flesh” is maintained by them. St Irenaeus affirms that, “Christ is God
the Creator in human flesh who came to the earth to recapitulate all of
humanity’s experience, including the details of each stage of humanity for the
purpose of its deification.”[3] Similarly
St Athanasius proposes, against the Arians (who held that Christ was not fully
divine) that “Christ is not merely a creature, but he is transcendent as the
Almighty Creator God and immanent as fully human so that he can connect God to
humanity and deify it.”[4] The
Church Fathers maintained that Christ could not have saved us had he not been
in one person true God and true man. The purpose of the Incarnation and
redemption is not only to undo the consequences of sin, but also to assume
mankind into God’s own Trinitarian life.[5]
St
Athanasius underlines the divine likeness of our first ancestor as the
prototype of our divinization. As God created Adam in his own image and
likeness (Gen 1: 26) and thus Adam shared the likeness (Greek term homoiousios which corresponds to
likeness) with the Logos and, by this, with God, as the most precious of divine
gifts, a similitude which was for our first ancestor (and so Adam was a
historical being) the source of the
knowledge of God, of happiness, and of incorruptibility.[6] This
divine likeness of humankind results from the indwelling of the Logos in us
which St Athanasius calls a grace. He interprets 1 John 3:2, “claiming that it
refers to humanity’s participation in God as his children, and he claims that
humanity becomes like God, but like God in habits and qualities rather than in
essence.”[7] God’s
substantial presence “implies that of the Father and of the Holy Spirit, the
Logos has transfigured the soul of Adam to the point of making of it His own
image; through this He has assured to him, with the divine sonship,
incorruptibility and a happy life in intimacy with God.”[8] Gross
illustrates what Athanasius claims humankind to be in relation to God as
follows:
By virtue of our origin and according
to our nature we are creatures and that our Creator is God through the Logos;
that we are taken as children later and that our Creator at that time becomes
our Father as well…we are not children by nature, but really the Son who is in
us, and that in His turn God is not our Father by nature, but Father of the
Logos, who is in us.[9]
The
highest goal of the Christian faith, as Gross sees in the writing of
Fonsegrive, “is to make us partake of the very nature of God––divinae consortes naturae, says Saint
Peter––to divinize us and thus, by the grace of God, to make us gods.”[10]
Following the New Testament, the Church Fathers indeed saw the new life
imparted to the Christian as a participation in the divine life itself due to the
incarnation of the Word and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the soul of
the righteous, and being completed through the actual gift of bodily
incorruptibility.[11] James
Starr points out that 2 Peter 1:4 does not speak “of apotheosis in the sense of becoming a part of God’s essence or
ceasing to be human, but of the partaking in specific divine attributes, seen
perfectly in Christ.”[12]
Starr presents the divine attributes (from 2 Peter 1: 1-4) which are “explicitly
linked with divinity, and by association, with divine nature: incorruptibility,
power, glory, excellence or virtue, and righteousness or justice.”[13]
Gross continue to assert that through the
violation of God’s precept, Adam alienated himself from, emptied himself of,
the Logos. With the knowledge of the divine, he also lost incorruptibility and
fell under the law of corruption and death.[14]
St Cyril of Alexandria distinguishes “‘two natures’: the uncreated nature,
‘incorruptible and indestructible by essence,’ and the created nature,
‘necessarily subject to corruption’ and to the return to its origin, which is
nothingness.”[15]
Gross affirms that Son of God became human in order to give back to us what we
had lost in Adam. He quotes St Irenaeus to show that the work of perfect restoration
postulates a God-Man:
The Word of God became human and the
One who is the Son of God became the Son of Man, united with the Word of God,
in order that humankind might receive adoption and became sons of God. For we
could not receive incorruptibility and immortality in any other way than by
union with incorruptibility and immortality. But how could we have been united
with incorruptibility and immortality, if incorruptibility and immortality had
not first become what we are, in order that what was corruptible might be
swallowed up by incorruptibility, what was mortal might be swallowed up by
immortality, and in order that we might receive the adoption of sons?[16]
In
the same line, Paul proclaims that one becomes a son or a daughter of God
through the ontological son, Jesus Christ and, therefore, one receives the
adoption as a son or a daughter of God through grace (Rom 8:16, 23; Gal 4:4-7;
Heb 2:10). Christoforous Stavropoulous
wonders if the human beings are ready to listen to the voice of God that echoes
in the Bible, “God speaks to us human beings clearly and directly and He says…
‘You are gods, sons of Most High––all of you’ (Ps 82:6 and John 10:34).” He
continues to ask: “Do we understand the meaning of this calling? ... As human
beings we each have this one, unique calling, to achieve Theōsis.”[17]
The
grace of God, through our faith, transforms us to imitate Christ who humbled
himself to share our humanity through the Incarnation. He did so because of his
love for the human race that had lost the immortality and had embraced death
through the sins of Adam and Eve. St Augustine highlights the understanding of
original sin and its influence against Pelagius: “1) as inherited guilt; 2) as
total destruction of God’s image in the human being; 3) as a ‘sin of nature’
and not a ‘personal sin’ of Adam and Eve [which the Eastern Church believes];
and 4) as legalistic relations of human beings with God and salvation based on
Christ’s death as satisfaction of divine justice.”[18]
The
greatest purpose of the Incarnation is to bring back all of humanity to God. Salvation
is not understood primarily as liberation from sin, but rather as a return to
life immortal and the reshaping of the human being into the image of the Creator.
St Athanasius and the Cappadocian Fathers held that it was nothing but “by the
incarnation of the Logos that humanity was anointed by the Holy Spirit.”[19]
Maximus the Confessor looks at deification as a participation of the “whole
man” in the “whole God”:
In the same way in which the soul and
the body are united, God should become accessible for participation b the soul,
through the soul’s intermediary, by the body, in order that the soul might
receive an unchanging character, and the body, immortality; and finally that
the whole man should become God, deified by the grace of God-become-man,
becoming whole man, soul and body, by nature, and becoming whole God, soul and
body, by grace.[20]
St
Irenaeus underlines that for Christians the Holy Spirit is the origin, the
source of divine life and this new life does not come from us or from our
nature, but it is given to humankind according to the grace of God; it is a
partaking of the divine life itself.[21]
Gross perceives in the writing of St Irenaeus that superior likeness that
exists between God and redeemed humankind––is conditioned by the possession of
the person of the Holy Spirit, and constituted by a created grace that
transfigures humankind and makes them like the three Trinitarian persons.[22] The
Eastern Church looks at redemption as an immediate aim for our salvation from
sin, but salvation (as a whole) has its ultimate realization in the age to come
(eschaton) in our union with God, the
deification of the created beings whom Christ ransomed.[23]
Karl Rahner views human divinization as
the center of gravity in the Roman Catholic Church for the relationship between
the grace and nature. He follows St Thomas Aquinas and employs the concept of
participation in both a philosophical and a theological sense in order to
distinguish between God’s efficient presence in all created things, and his
“quasi-formal” presence as grace in humanity.[24]
The quasi-formal mode of divine presence occurs through the Church, the
sacraments, and the theological virtues, in all of which God’s
self-communication is actualized in the human person as a creature of history
and transcendence. Aquinas expresses the essence of Catholic position between
nature and grace ––– grace does not destroy but perfects nature. Aquinas goes on to say in Summa Theologiae,
Grace, as the divine movement that
justifies, sanctifies, and ultimately divinizes the human person, is ‘a certain
participation in divine nature,’ and ‘ a special love, by which God draws the
rational creature above its natural condition to have a part in the divine
goodness.[25]
Rahner sees grace as the “innermost
heart” of the world. Since God wants to give himself away freely, he creates
non-divine “nature” to which he could impart himself. Therefore, he believes
that creation is the first movement toward divinization because creation takes
place for the sake of grace and is, in some level, open to the divine self-bestowal,
the personal self-communication of God.[26]
In the light of Rahner’s understanding of creation, that means we are offered
divinizing participation in God through Jesus Christ.[27] Gerald O’Collins borrows from Aquinas as
follows:
Through the grace of union [Christ’s]
humanity enjoyed the highest imaginable gift, that of being ‘assumed’ by the
person of God’s Son. Habitual or supernatural grace sanctified and perfected
his human nature in the fullest possible way. The grace of ‘headship’ endowed
Christ with the power to sanctify others as the head of the Church or Mystical
Body.[28]
To conclude, Aquinas asserts that God’s
love for the human beings is everlasting. Heim
asserts that “God became human in order that humans may become divine, sharers
and participants by grace in the divine life that Christ enjoys by nature.”[29]
When we share what Christ enjoys, we not only encounter and relate to others as
persons, but in some measure we share in their own personal life. The way we
can most deeply and mutually participate in divine fullness is through our mutual
awareness of indwelling of the Holy Spirit in us. Heim even dares to say “the divine
nature is so great that even God cannot encompass it except through ‘sharing’
in the trinitarian communion.”[30]
This communion and sharing is best understood in the self -giving of Christ in
the holy Eucharistic celebration where Christ nourishes everyone through his
body and blood. Through reconciliation with God, human beings are able to
experience God’s compassion and love by the experience of being forgiven and
forgiving others; thus to share the celebration of eternal life for which
Christ became human so that we might share in his divinity.
Bibliography
Caponi, Francis J. OSA. “Karl Rahner:
Divinization in Roman Catholicism”. ed. Michael J.
Christensen
andJeffery A. Wittung. Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History
and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions. Michigan: Grand
Rapids, 2008.
Gross, Jules. The Divinization of
the Christian: According to the Greek Fathers, Trans. Paul A.
Onica.
California: A & C Press, 2002.
Heim, S. Mark. “Salvation as Communion: Partakers of the
Divine Nature”. Theology Today 6.
Oct 2004.
Kärkkäinen, Veli-Matti. One With God: Salvation as Deification and
Justification. Minnesota:
Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 2004.
Kereszty, Roch A. O. Cist., ed. J.
Stephen Maddux. Jesus Christ: Fundamentals of Christology.
New York: Alba House, c1991.
Living
with Christ. Vol. 22 No. 4, April 2016.
Maximus the Confessor. Book of Ambiguities. Quoted in Veli-Matti
Kärkkäinen. One With God:
Salvation as Deification and
Justification. Minnesota: Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 2004.
O’Collins, Gerald SJ. Christology: A Biblical, Historical, and
Systematic Study of Jesus. 2nd ed.
New
York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Starr, James. “Does 2 Peter 1:4 Speak
of Deification?”. ed. Michael J. Christensen and Jeffery A.
Wittung.
Partakers of the Divine Nature: The
History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions.
Michigan: Grand Rapids, 2008.
Stavropoulous, Christoforous. Partakers of Divine Nature. Minneapolis:
Light and Life, 1976.
Wilson, Daniel E. Ph.D. Deification
and the Rule of Faith: The Communication of the Gospel in
Hellenistic Culture. Bloomington:
CrossBooks, 2010.
[2] Daniel E. Wilson, Ph.D., Deification and the Rule of Faith: The Communication of the Gospel in
Hellenistic Culture (Bloomington: CrossBooks, 2010), 208.
[5] Roch A. Kereszty, O. Cist., ed. J. Stephen
Maddux, Jesus Christ: Fundamentals of Christology (New York: Alba House,
c1991), 163.
[6] Jules Gross, The Divinization of the Christian: According
to the Greek Fathers, Trans. Paul A. Onica (California: A & C Press,
2002), p. 164.
[7] Daniel E. Wilson, Ph.D., Deification and the Rule of Faith: The Communication of the Gospel in
Hellenistic Culture (Bloomington: CrossBooks, 2010), 191.
[10] Jules Gross, The
Divinization of the Christian: According to the Greek Fathers, Trans. Paul
A. Onica (California: A & C Press, 2002), p. 1. Quoted from Fonsegrive, Le catholicisme et la religion de l’esprit
(Paris, 1913), p. 21.
[12] James Starr, “Does 2 Peter 1:4 Speak of
Deification?”, ed. Michael J. Christensen and Jeffery A. Wittung, In Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History
and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions, (Michigan:
Grand Rapids, 2008), 85.
[17] Christoforous Stavropoulous, Partakers of Divine Nature (Minneapolis: Light and Life, 1976),
17-18.
[18] Quoted in Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, One With God: Salvation as Deification and Justification
(Minnesota: Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 2004), 22.
[20] Maximus the Confessor, Book of Ambiguities, Quoted in Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, One With God: Salvation as Deification and Justification
(Minnesota: Liturgical Press, Collegeville, 2004), 27.
[24] Francis J. Caponi, OSA, “Karl Rahner: Divinization in
Roman Catholicism”, ed. Michael J. Christensen and Jeffery A. Wittung, In Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History
and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions, (Michigan:
Grand Rapids, 2008), 259.
[27] Caponi, 263. Here, Rahner again follows Aquinas, who
consistently addresses grace through the conceptuality of participation,
speaking of “the light of grace, which is a participation in the divine nature”
(Summa Theologiae, 1-2.110.3), “that participation in the divine goodness which
constitutes grace” (ibid., 1-2. 110.2, ad 2).
[28] Gerald O’Collins, SJ, Christology: A Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Study of Jesus,
2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 208.
[29] S. Mark Heim, “Salvation as Communion: Partakers of
the Divine Nature”, Theology Today
61(Oct 2004), 323.
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