Introduction: The Meaning of Deification

The Christian doctrine of deification—also known as divinization or theosis—is notoriously difficult to define. As Paul Gavrilyuk observes: “It is remarkable that despite its exalted status, the concept of deification is not mentioned explicitly in the dogmatic definitions of the first Seven Ecumenical Councils. The dearth of dogmatic precision has contributed to the concept’s considerable fluidity” (Gavrilyuk, “Retrieval of Deification,” 648). Often, the terminology of deification is used without a clear definition or description. For example, in the Catholic Catechism (2nd edition, 1997), terms for deification appear five times but without clear explication. In no. 398, the human being in original innocence is said to be in a state of holiness and “destined to be fully ‘divinized’ by God in glory,” but what this divinization entails (either partially or in full) is not described. In three instances, the terms appear in quotations from the Church Fathers Athanasius and Gregory of Nazianzus (no. 1589, 1988, 2670), and in a final appearance (no. 1999), the grace of Christ is identified as “the sanctifying or deifying grace received in Baptism” (italics in original). Here deification is placed in parallel with sanctification, but it remains unclear whether there is an intended distinction between the two, and if so, what this difference is.

The earliest and best-known definition of deification comes from Dionysius the Areopagite (flourished c.475–518). In Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (1.3) he writes: “Deification is assimilation to and union with God as far as possible” (Plested, “Deification,” 133). This could also be translated, “Theosis is likeness to and union with God as far as attainable.” Dionysius is building his definition of theosis upon the famous saying of Plato (Theatetus, 176b) that “flight is likeness to God as far as possible. And likeness [to God] is to become righteous and holy with prudence.” The spiritual application of Plato’s dictum is not original to Dionysius but appears in the Jewish author Philo (1st century) and later in Christian authors such as Clement of Alexandria and Basil the Great) who quote this famous saying and apply it to the goal or telos of Christian life. Cyril of Alexandria, nearly a century before Dionysius, alludes to Plato’s saying and embeds it firmly within the graced exchange grounded in the Incarnation of Christ. He identifies the result as becoming “gods and sons”:

Do you hear how the only begotten Word of God became like us that we might become like him, as far as this is possible for our nature and as far as it pertains to our renewal by grace?.... Since he became like us (that is, a human being) in order that we might become like him (I mean gods and sons), he receives our properties into himself and he gives us his own in return. (Cyril of Alexandria, <em>Commentary on John</em>, 363)

Thus Dionysius, following the path of Christian writers before him, adapts this Platonic saying, specifically framing the meaning of theosis (deification) in terms of likeness to and union with God as far as possible.

Contemporary definitions or descriptions of deification resemble one another but vary considerably in the terminology they use and the concepts they employ. Norman Russell offers this broad definition:

Theosis is our restoration as persons to integrity and wholeness by participation in Christ through the Holy Spirit, in a process which is initiated in this world through our life of ecclesial communion and moral striving and finds ultimate fulfillment in our union with the Father—all within the broad context of the divine economy. (Russell, <em>Fellow Workers with God</em>, 21)

Andrew Louth defines deification as “the doctrine that the destiny of human kind, or indeed of the cosmos as a whole, is to share in the divine life, and actually become God, though by grace rather than by nature” (Louth, “Deification,” 229). Jared Ortiz describes deification as “the process by which the Holy Spirit unites us to the Father by conforming us to Christ.... Through the power of the Holy Spirit, especially in the sacraments, we are united to God and, while never ceasing to be human, our union with God transforms us into the one to whom we are united” (Ortiz, “The Whole Christ,” 8). The editors of the Oxford Handbook of Deification offer a definition of deification that seeks to encompass a wide variety of approaches:

Deification is a process and goal by which the human being or church or in some way the whole creation comes to participate in God, Christ, divine life, divine attributes, divine energies, or divine glory by growing into the likeness of God, while remaining a creature ontologically distinct from the Creator. (Gavrilyuk, et al., <em>Oxford Handbook of Deification</em>, 5)

Deification is thus a summative or cumulative concept, variously described, that presents the goal of the Christian life in terms of being united to God and becoming like God—and even “becoming gods”—in Christ the Son through the Holy Spirit.

I. Biblical Foundations for Deification

While the Bible does not make use of the technical terminology for deification, it serves as the foundation for the concept of deification and provides warrant for the identification of Christian believers as “gods.” The biblical witness to deification is of three kinds. First, there are individual texts that serve as important foundations for key aspects of deification (e.g., Gn 1:26–27; Ps 82:6; 2 Pt 1:4). Second, there are biblical themes that comprise important facets of deification and are exemplified by clusters of biblical texts (e.g., divine filiation, mutual indwelling). Third, there is an overarching biblical narrative of salvation, running from Adam to Christ and then to the eschaton, that portrays deification as the final goal and outcome of God’s plan for the human race and the world. The aim here is to identify key biblical texts; to underline central biblical themes; and to point to the overall biblical narrative, moving from the Old Testament to the New.

The Old Testament

Deification has its roots in both the Old and New Testaments (Glazov, “Theosis, Judaism,” 16), but “biblical Hebrew has no terms equivalent to deification, divinization, or theosis: instead, the biblical writers’ own categories of language and thought offer suggestive comparison for the later terminology” (Grillo, “Hebrew Bible,” 28). The following texts and themes supply the primary Old Testament foundations for deification.

1. Image and Likeness (Gn 1:26–27). The first foundational text occurs in the opening chapter of Genesis, which presents God as saying: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.... So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gn 1:26, 27).{1} It would be hard to overestimate the importance of this text for Christian anthropology generally and for the doctrine of deification specifically. It provides “the anthropological bedrock of deification” (Meconi, “Scriptural Roots,” 18). Though referenced only sparsely in the Old Testament (Gn 5:3; 9:6; Sir 17:1; Wis 2:23; 7:26), the terminology of image and likeness figures prominently in the New Testament and provides the underpinning for the idea of the human race as created and destined for a special role in relationship to the Lord God.

2. The “gods” of Psalm 82. A perplexing verse from Ps 82 (v. 6) proved to be an important catalyst for Jewish and Christian speculation on the identification of humans as “gods”: “I say, ‘You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like men, and fall like any prince.’” In context, this verse is normally interpreted as conveying God’s decree of punishment against human rulers and judges who have unwarranted pretensions to be seen as “gods.” But the link between “gods” and “sons of the Most High” in v. 6 led to speculation on human beings as “gods” and provided the initial warrant in Christian tradition for identifying believers as “gods.” “The exegesis of Psalm 82 really was an important factor in the origin of Christian deification” (Mosser, “Earliest Patristic Interpretation,” 35).

3. Israel as God’s Son. Though references in the Old Testament to the Lord God as “Father” and to Israel as God’s “son” are relatively infrequent (e.g., Ex 4:22; Ps 68:5; 89:26; Wis 14:3; Is 63:16), they supply an important element for the notion of deification, namely, that God intended from the beginning to be in a filial relationship with the human race, a relationship expressed in adopting the people of Israel as his firstborn son (Hos 11:1), and further specified by naming David (and each of his kingly heirs) as God’s “son” who shares a special kinship with God his Father (1 Chr 17; Ps 2; Ps 110). The call of Israel (and David) to be God’s “son” is fulfilled in the New Testament through the birth of God’s eternal son in the flesh (Lk 1:32), and by calling and adopting his followers as God’s own sons (e.g., Heb 2:10).

4. Israel as the Covenantal Spouse of the Lord. The special spousal relationship that the God established with his people Israel (e.g., Is 54:4–8; Hos 2:14–20) opens outward so that the entire human race is called to be in a special, intimate relationship of love and friendship with God himself. The invitation to intimate, nuptial relationship with God appears in the New Testament (2 Cor 11:1) and figures prominently in the final vision of God dwelling with his people forever (Rev 19:6–8; 21:9).

5. Participation in Divine Wisdom. The gradual unveiling in the Old Testament of the “wisdom” of God as a personified power and being (e.g., Prv 8:22–35; Wis 7:27–28) not only prepares the way for recognizing the incarnation of the Logos (Word) of God as the incarnation of divine wisdom (1 Cor 1:21–24, 30; Col 2:3), but also opens the way for human beings to be friends of God through partaking of divine wisdom (Wis 7:27; Eph 1:17). The gift of divine wisdom “implies a genuine assimilation of a person to God” (Gross, Divinization of the Christian, 67). This share or participation in the wisdom of God then provides a pattern for human participation in other divine attributes (e.g., mercy, immortality).

6. Heavenly Ascent and Reigning with God. The scenes depicting the translation of Enoch and Elijah to heaven (Gn 5:24; 2 Kings 2:11–12) provided the basis for the notion of human ascent to heaven (to where God himself dwells) in Second Temple Jewish literature, especially in 1 Enoch. In addition, the prophet Daniel, through his visions of heavenly realities, not only portrays the reign of the luminous figure of the Son of Man (Dn 7:12–13), whom Jesus identifies with himself at his trial before the Jewish Sanhedrin (Mk 14:62), but also describes the reign of the “holy ones” (the saints) in terms strikingly parallel to the reign of the Son of Man. Daniel announces that “the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, for ever and ever” (Dn 7:18), and that “the kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High; their kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey them” (Dn 7:27). Jesus himself ascended into heaven to the right hand of God (Lk 24:50–51; Acts 2:33–35) and promised the apostles that they would reign with him over a renewed Israel (Mt 19:28). This co-reign with the Son of Man, seated at the right hand of God, points to a human share in God’s own reign.

The New Testament

In the New Testament we encounter key texts and general themes in the context of an overall narrative of redemption. The individual texts should be viewed within the wider biblical narrative running from Adam to Christ and the eschaton.

1. The Graced Exchange: 2 Cor 8:9. A single verse from the Apostle Paul provides an important foundation for deification: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” Read in the light of Phil 2:6–8, Christ being “rich” is the equivalent of being “in the form of God” (Phil 2:6), while becoming “poor” is the equivalent of “emptied himself...was born...and became obedient to death” (Phil 2:7–8). But it is the endpoint of 2 Cor 8:9 that points to deification, that we might “become rich.” This is the biblical ground for the exchange formula, whereby Christ became a human being so that we might have some share in his “riches,” that is, his divinity (Keating, Deification and Grace, 16–17).

2. The “gods” of Jn 10:33–36. In the chapter focused on Jesus as the Good Shepherd, John the Evangelist records a dialogue between Jesus and those who seek to kill him because, as they say to Jesus, “you, being a man, make yourself God” (Jn 10:33). Jesus does not deny the claim, but cites Ps 82:6 as his response: “If he called them gods to whom the word of God came...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’”? (Jn 10:35–36). Notably, Jesus identifies human beings as the “gods” to whom God’s word came. If these are given such a high position by the Scriptures, then Jesus’ own claim to be God’s son is entirely defensible. Jesus’ citation of Ps 82:6 and his application of it to human beings contributed to the earliest references in the second century to human beings being made “gods” through baptism into Christ (Mosser, “Earliest Patristic Interpretation”).

3. Conformed to the Image and Likeness of Christ. In a cluster of texts, the goal of the Christian life is described in terms of becoming (of growing into) the image of Christ himself. In Paul, Jesus the Word made flesh is described as the image of God (2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15), but Christians in this life are also called to be “conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom 8:29) and to be “transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18). “For Paul, Christ as image of God (2 Cor 4:4) is the divine image, representing the power and nature of God. Becoming that image, therefore, carries implications for deification” (Litwa, We Are Being Transformed, 26). In the resurrection of the body, this transformation will be completed: “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” (1 Cor 15:49). Paul also speaks about the Christian disciple as “being renewed in knowledge after the image of his creator” (Col 3:10), here pointing to God the Father. Just as human beings were made in the image and likeness of God, so those in Christ are called to be conformed to and transformed into this image, and so participate in the “glory” of God (2 Cor 3:18) (Blackwell, Christosis, 190).

4. Divine Adoption in Christ. The earliest accounts of deification are closely related to the theme of Christians as adopted “sons” of God. Ps 82:6 identifies as “gods” the “sons of the Most High” and the terms “image” and “likeness” have a close correlation to “sonship,” as seen in Luke’s genealogy of Jesus in which Adam who is made in God’s image and likeness is called “the son of God” (see Lk 3:38). Paul coins the term “adoption” (υἱοθεσία, huiothesia), applying it to men and women who have been adopted by God in Jesus the Son (Rom 8:15, 23; Gal 4:5; Eph 1:5). John uses the phrase “children of God” to describe the same reality (Jn 1:13; 1 Jn 3:2). “Becoming children of God in the fourth gospel involves believing in the Son, seeing the incarnate God, eating divine food, overflowing with the life of the Spirit, participating in the communion of the Father, Son, and Spirit, and even judging like God” (Humphrey, “Johannine Literature,” 85). The divine adoption occurs already in this life through incorporation into Christ but awaits its full reality in the resurrection of the body (1 Cor 15:50–53), which Paul describes as the full revealing of “the sons of God” (Rom 8:23).

5. Divine Indwelling, Mutual Indwelling, and Divine Fullness. The New Testament describes the Christian as one who is “indwelt” by God, most often through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Paul prays that Christ would dwell in the heart through faith (Eph 3:17), but for Paul it is especially through the Holy Spirit that God comes to dwell in our bodies as a living temple (Rom 5:5; 8:9, 11; 1 Cor 3:16; 6:19; 2 Cor 1:22; Eph 2:22). Christians are living temples in which the divine Spirit of God dwells (see also Acts 4:31; 1 Jn 3:24).

This indwelling is not unidirectional. John clarifies that just as the Father, Son, and Spirit come to dwell in us (Jn 14:17, 23), so we come to dwell in them (Jn 14:20; 15:4; 17:21): “By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his own Spirit” (1 Jn 4:13). “Johannine spirituality fundamentally consists in the mutual indwelling of the Triune God (Father, Son, and Spirit) and Jesus’ disciples such that disciples participate in the divine love and life, and therefore in the life-giving mission of God” (Gorman, Abide and Go, 8). This divine indwelling—and mutual indwelling of humans in God and God in humans—communicates the divine life and so deifies those in whom God comes to dwell.

Related to divine indwelling is Paul’s regular refrain that believers are “in Christ” (Rom 8:1; 1 Cor 1:2; 2 Cor 5:17; 2 Cor 12:2; Eph 2:13; Col 1:28). Christians are not merely saved from sin and death, but they are joined to Christ and in some real sense “live” in him: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). Strikingly, Paul presents this indwelling in terms that point to a divine fullness in the believer. Christ is the one in whom “the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily,” but the Colossian believers “have come to fulness of life in him” (Col 2:9–10). Christian believers possess the “fullness” of the one in whom God’s “fullness” dwells (Blackwell, “You Are Filled,” 111).

6. Moral Likeness to Christ and to God. A central theme in deification is moral likeness to God. “Divinization is progress into greater moral excellence” (Finlan, “Second Peter's Notion,” 46). This thread runs deeply throughout the New Testament. Jesus identifies this goal in the Sermon on the Mount: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48). A cluster of texts point to the growth needed in order to arrive at “perfection” or “maturity” in Christ (1 Cor 14:20, Eph 4:13; Phil 3:15; Col 1:28; 4:12). It is here especially that we see the call to become like God and to imitate both Christ and God: “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph 5:1–2). Paul speaks of this moral likeness to God in terms of the fruit of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22–25) and the requirement to “put off” what is old and to “put on” what is new (Rom 13:14; Eph 4:22–24; Col 3:9–10), and to put to death sinful desires (Rom 8:13). Peter calls the faithful to be holy in all their conduct (1 Pt 1:15–16) and to add virtue to virtue on the basis of the divine power granted to Christians (2 Pt 1:3–11). The New Testament commends in many and varied forms what the Christian tradition will refer to as “asceticism” or “ascesis” as a necessary part of the journey toward deification.

7. Partakers of the Divine Nature: 2 Pt 1:4. To conclude, a renowned text from 2 Pt 1:4 is the closest approximation of the formal language of deification found in the New Testament. Peter describes the divine power at work among Christian believers that leads them to the “glory and excellence” of God and states that the goal of this divine work is to “become partakers of the divine nature.” Studies of this text show that there is both an ontological and moral quality to this participation (Starr, “Does 2 Peter 1:14”; Finlan, “Second Peter's Notion”; Corbin Reuschling, “Means and End”). God’s power comes to dwell in us, giving us a share in his divine attributes, but this is intended to yield a way of life and a quality of character that imitates God. However, because Second Peter was late in terms of acceptance in the Christian canon and then accepted only slowly from one geographical region to another, this text did not play a significant role in the original development of deification (Russell, “Partakers of the Divine”). It was first employed widely in the Alexandrian theological tradition (e.g., Origen, Athanasius, and Cyril of Alexandria). Despite the occasional use of 2 Pt 1:4 in the early Christian tradition, this text has played a significant, ongoing role in defining the goal of salvation as nothing less than a real participation in God.

These key texts and themes, drawn from both the Old and New Testaments, find their home within the wider biblical narrative of salvation, grounded in the creation of the human race in the image and likeness of God, and revealed through salvation history. The overall arc of this narrative tends toward God dwelling personally and effectively with his people. In this vision, human life has its fulfilment not just through an external cleansing or blessing from God, but through direct communion with God, the source of everlasting life for his people. Deification is intended to capture and express this full and ultimate purpose: that God might dwell in and with his people.

II. The Terminology of Deification

The terminology of deification in the Church Fathers was drawn largely from the Greco-Roman world the Fathers inhabited. To express the idea of deification, Christians (and Jews before them) did not invent a vocabulary all their own, but drew selectively from terms used in the wider culture of the day (Russell, Doctrine of Deification, 333–44; Litwa, We Are Being Transformed, 58–62). According to Norman Russell, “linguistically, deification appears at first sight to have impeccably pagan credentials,” but “it is significant that Christian writers adopt some [terms] in preference to others and coin new forms for their own use” (Russell, Doctrine of Deification, 333, 342). The first appearance of this terminology to describe Christian deification is found in Clement of Alexandria (early third century), while at nearly the same time, the first appearance of deification terminology in Latin is found in Tertullian, writing from North Africa. Christian authors who made use of some form of the terminology of deification include Origen, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Eusebius of Caesarea, Athanasius, Didymus the Blind, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, and the author of the Macarian Homilies.

From the palette of terms available in the wider Greek-speaking culture, Christian authors predominantly made use of two verbs, θεοποιέω (theopoieō, to make divine) and θειόω (theioō, to deify), and coined two corresponding nouns, θεοποίησις (theopoiēsis, deification) and θέωσις (theosis, deification) (Russell, Doctrine of Deification, 343). The noun, θεοποίησις, first appears in Athanasius, who frequently used it and its corresponding verb, θεοποιέω, and bequeathed these terms to the Alexandrian tradition (e.g., Didymus, Cyril), while the noun θέωσις, coined by Gregory of Nazianzus, along with its cognate verb θειόω, became the primary terms used in the later Byzantine tradition (e.g., Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus, and Gregory Palamas). Though the Latin Fathers are considerably more reticent than the Greek Fathers in their use of the terminology of deification, from the time of Tertullian and Augustine to the Medieval theologians (e.g., John Scotus Eriugena, Thomas Aquinas), a set of terms came into common use in the Western theological tradition: deificare (to deify/divinize), deificatio (deification), deificus (deifying, making divine), and deiformitas (deiform) (Russell, Doctrine of Deification, 325-32).

The appearance and growth of a Christian terminology of deification was a significant development that signaled a concept of salvation that does not end with the forgiveness of sins and human purification but entails “becoming like God” or being “made divine” in some fashion. However, it is important to recognize a distinction between a theme or theology of deification and its characteristic vocabulary. An enriched account of deification may be present in the absence of technical vocabulary, as seen in figures from both East and West (e.g., Irenaeus and Leo the Great). The presence of the vocabulary of deification is noteworthy, indicating that some concept of deification is in play. However, the terms are not essential for signaling a theology of deification, and their meaning is not self-evident but must be explored in each instance.

The Exchange Formula

The exchange formula, known in the Christian tradition as the admirabile commercium (“wonderful exchange”), provides an important entry point for understanding deification. The remarkable variety, indeed creativity, displayed in the various versions of the exchange formula shows how important this way of viewing the Christian narrative was, not only in the age of the Church Fathers but throughout Christian history. The simplest form is found in Athanasius: the Word “became human that we might become divine” (Athansius, De Incarnatione, 54). The earliest example comes from Irenaeus in the late second century: “For it was for this end that the Word of God was made man, and he who was the Son of God became the Son of man, that man, having been taken into the Word, and receiving the adoption, might become the son of God” (Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 448). In the early third century, Clement of Alexandria wrote that “the Word of God became man, that you may learn from man how man may become God” (Clement, Protrepticus 1, 174). In the early fifth century, Augustine provided one of the most rhetorically delightful versions: “The Son of God [became] the Son of man that he might make the sons of men the sons of God” (Augustine, Tractates in John, 36).

The biblical grounding for this notion of “exchange” comes from Paul’s text in 2 Cor 8:9 (see above Biblical Foundations). Some form of this exchange formula appears not only in the Church Fathers across the geographical spread of the ancient Church (e.g., in Hilary of Poitiers, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom, Ephrem the Syrian, Ambrose, Cyril of Alexandria, Leo the Great, Maximus the Confessor, and John of Damascus), but it also in figures in the Middle Ages, both East and West, and in the early modern period up to our day.

Consider two examples of the exchange formula from the medieval period. The Byzantine monk, Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022), asked, “Why did God become man? So that man might become god” (Symeon the New Theologian, Eth. 5.31–34, 301). From the West, Thomas Aquinas offered his own version of the paradoxical exchange at the heart of Christian faith: “The only-begotten Son of God, wishing to make us sharers in his divine nature, assumed our nature, so that made man he might make men gods” (Thomas Aquinas, Opusc. 57, 74). Versions of the exchange formula also appear in the writings of the Protestant reformer, John Calvin (16th century): “Who could have done this had not the Son of God become the Son of man, and had not taken what was ours as to impart what was his to us, and to make what was his by nature ours by grace?” (Calvin, Institutes 2.12.2, 324). Matthias Scheeben (19th century) states the exchange with great simplicity: “Between God and man a wonderful exchange takes place: he adopts our nature to make us partakers of his divine nature” (Scheeben, Glories of Divine Grace, 51). Finally, a recent example appears in the writings of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI): “This exchange consists of God taking our human existence on himself in order to bestow his divine existence on us, of his choosing our nothingness in order to give his plenitude” (Ratzinger, Dogma and Preaching, 84).

The exchange formula in all its varieties is closely linked to the doctrine of deification. Norman Russell identifies it as the “fundamental tenet” of the Christian doctrine of deification (Russell, Doctrine of Deification, 321). Gerald Bonner says that the declaration that the Son became man that we might become gods “teaches deification without actually employing the word” (Bonner, “Augustine’s Conception,” 369). Hans Urs von Balthasar identifies the exchange formula as the “fundamental approach” to the doctrine of salvation found in the Fathers (von Balthasar, Theo-Drama, 244). The editors of the Oxford Handbook of Deification emphasize the value of the exchange formula, asserting that it grounds the doctrine of deification directly in the Christian narrative of salvation: “The use of the exchange formulae renders a given account of deification distinctly Christian, as it explicitly grounds deification in the divine incarnation” (Gavrilyuk, et al., Oxford Handbook of Deification, 5).

The exchange formula condenses the entire economy of salvation, the arc running from Adam to Christ, into a short paradoxical statement. The logic of the exchange formula, grounded in the Incarnation and thus in the divine-human constitution of Christ, is that the divine Son assumed human nature so that human beings could share in the Son’s divine reality and participate in what is his. Compressed within this phrase is the Incarnation of the Word and the entire saving work of the Word-made-flesh. The exchange formula, then, is not a reduction of Christian salvation to a kind of physical impartation of divine life. Rather, it is intended to convey the whole of the gospel in a short statement. This admirabile commercium reveals that “salvation” and “redemption” are not limited to the purifying and rectifying of human nature itself. They include sharing or participating in the divine life of Christ.

III. Deification Embedded within Christian Doctrine

From its origins, the doctrine of deification was embedded within Christian doctrine. Deification is not a special or gnostic path that bypasses normal Christian experience, thereby avoiding the grittiness of the Christian life. Nor is deification an exotic track for the truly enlightened, a path set apart from the mundane one marked out for the majority. Instead, deification is precisely the capstone and summation of what God has accomplished in Christ and includes the entirety of the Christian life. As noted above, deification is a summative or comprehensive concept that is meant to express all that God has done in Christ through the Spirit. Additionally, deification is a manifestation of God’s purpose for human beings. This purpose does not stop at purification and rectification of human nature but includes life forever in direct communion with God and a share in divine qualities and characteristics (e.g., immortality and freedom from sin). For this reason, deification must be understood as embedded within Christian doctrine and will find its flourishing in the context of creedal confession and liturgical prayer. It is Christian doctrine, revealed in the Scriptures, explicated in the creed, and celebrated in the liturgy that provides deification with its content and contours.

For situating deification within Christian doctrine, Norman Russell’s distinction between the “realistic” and “ethical” senses of deification is helpful (Russell, Doctrine of Deification, 1–3; Russell, Fellow Workers, 25–26; Keating, “Typologies of Deification,” 2–7). Human deification is anchored in what God has done in Christ to redeem our nature and make it once again a dwelling place of the Spirit. This is the realistic sense, communicated principally by the real indwelling of God that comes through Baptism, the Eucharist, and the indwelling word of God found primarily in the Scriptures. But deification also includes our graced response, the full cooperation of the human mind, will, and emotions. This is the ethical sense by which, through free cooperation, we grow progressively into the likeness of God.

Christian doctrines are inextricably linked in a fabric of truth. It is useful to recall that the various accounts of deification, ancient and modern, were shaped by the particular theological concerns of a given time and theological tradition. Here we consider central Christian doctrines in sequence in order to understand with greater clarity the relation of deification to each of them.

Trinity

The first and primary mark of a Christian account of deification is that it is informed and governed by Christian belief in God as Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. “The Trinity is not some accidental aspect of Christian divinization. Getting God right is key, because we are called to be like him” (Hofer, “Becoming Icons,” 58). Christian deification is not becoming “God” in a generic sense or in whatever way we may choose to define and understand “God.” It is shaped by the biblical revelation of God as Father who sent his Son into the world to redeem and give life to the human race (and the world), and who sent his Spirit to dwell in human beings so that they may be conformed in the Son to be “sons and daughters” of God the Father.

Human deification, however, is not just accomplished by the trinitarian God; it involves genuine and transforming communion with the triune God. “An illuminating way to highlight the Trinitarian dimension of deification is to grasp it as a participation in the communion of the Holy Trinity” (Emery, “Deification and the Trinity,” 569); “To be divinized is to enter into the life of the Trinity” (Fagerberg, “Liturgy and Divinization,” 279); “The originality of our Christian lives is built upon the idea of a life shared with God, bound together in friendship and nourished on a gracious communication in the secrets of the divine life” (Gardeil, True Christian Life, 64). How this communion in divinity occurs is accounted for differently by the Eastern and Western Christian traditions (see below, Ontological Issues), yet the result of this transforming communion is the vision of God and genuine friendship with the persons of the Trinity. “Through the Son and the Holy Spirit, God the Father makes human beings ‘friends of God’ (Dei amici). Friendship with God, which is founded on the communication of beatitude, is just another way to describe deification. Such friendship is procured by Christ... and attributed especially to the Holy Spirit” (Emery, “Deification and the Trinity,” 568).

Incarnation and Christology

The doctrine of the Incarnation is the central hinge on which deification depends. A Christian account of deification is entirely premised upon the fully divine Son who took on human nature in order to redeem that nature and unite it forever to God. The “exchange formula” communicates this reciprocal and unequal relationship of deification to the Incarnation. “Within the framework of the exchange formula, then, Christology functions as the ground for deification, while deification functions reciprocally as a criterion for measuring the adequacy of Christology” (Luy, “Deification and Christology,” 578). “Theosis is therefore the mystery of the divine Logos making himself one with humanity—‘God becoming human’—in order to make humanity one with God—‘that humanity might become God’” (Wesche, “Eastern Orthodox Spirituality,” 33). As expressed eloquently by Columba Marmion,

God takes our nature so as to unite it to himself in a personal union.... What the Word Incarnate gives in return to humanity is an incomprehensible gift; it is a participation, real and intimate, in His Divine Nature.... In exchange for the humanity which He takes, the Incarnate Word gives us a share in His divinity.... What Christ is by nature, that is to say the Son of God, we are to be by grace. (Marmion, <em>Christ In His Mysteries</em>, 120-21)

Moreover, the divine-human constitution of Christ (Christology) is fundamental to the unequal “exchange” that the Incarnation brings about (Keating, Deification and Grace, 11–19). Here Paul’s narrative of the Incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ (Phil 2:5–11) is defining. The very one who was in the form of God (who was God by nature) took on the form of humanity (human nature), and in that form humbled himself even to death. God’s Son took on the poverty of our condition in order to enrich us with his divine life (Gal 4:4–6; 2 Cor 8:9). In the stirring words of Irenaeus of Lyons:

Unless it had been God who had freely given salvation, we could never have possessed it securely. And unless man had been joined to God, he could never have become a partaker of incorruptibility. For it was incumbent upon the Mediator between God and men, by his relationship to both, to bring both to friendship and concord, and present man to God, while he revealed God to man. For, in what way could we be partakers of the adoption of sons, unless we had received from him through the Son that fellowship which refers to Himself...? (Irenaeus, <em>Adv. Haer.</em> 3.18.7, 448)

The Incarnation was not merely a strategic act, enabling the Son to achieve human redemption as a human being; through his Incarnation, passion, death, and resurrection the divine Son divinized our humanity in himself so that human beings might share in his divine life. “The thinkers of the early church indeed did use a multiplicity of images and metaphors to characterize Christ’s salvific work, but underlying these was always a christological framework that identified the ultimate content of salvation as the unity of humanity and divinity in Christ, by which humanity was enfolded in the life of the divine Trinity” (Anatolios, Deification Through the Cross, 28).

The Role of the Holy Spirit (Pneumatology)

The mission of the Holy Spirit, especially as described in the Church Fathers, plays a pivotal role in deification. For Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria, the true and full divinity of the Spirit can be demonstrated by the fact that the Spirit is the principal agent in human deification. This is based on the theological principle that only one who is God can deify human beings. No creature can communicate God’s own life to another creature. “Sanctification and deification take place through the reception of the uncreated Gift himself who is the Holy Spirit” (Emery, “Deification and the Trinity,” 565). The gift of the Spirit is frequently linked with 2 Peter 1:4, which states that, through the indwelling Spirit, we become partakers of the divine nature, as shown in this text from Cyril of Alexandria:

And [the Son] himself is also in us, since we have all become partakers in him, and we have him in ourselves through the Spirit. Therefore, we have become partakers in the divine nature [2 Pt 1: 4].... But when God sent out his Spirit and made us partakers in his own nature [2 Pt 1: 4] and through that Spirit renewed the face of the earth, we were transformed to “newness of life” [Rom 6:4]. (Cyril, <em>Commentary on John</em>, 188–89)

Received principally through baptism, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell effectively in Christian believers, causing them to become “sons and daughters” of God (divine filiation) and filling them with divine life and its fruits. “Through the Holy Spirit the faithful become sharers of the divine nature. They are formed in the new life. They put off corruption. They return to the original beauty of their nature. They become participants of God and children of God. They take on the shape of God. They reflect the light of Christ and inherit incorruptibility” (Stavropoulos, Partakers, 30–31). Most accounts of deification, following the Scriptural witness, hold that the Spirit of God himself comes to dwell effectively in the hearts of the faithful. In the words of Matthias Scheeben:

It was not enough for God merely to have the Holy Spirit work in us with his sanctifying power and to place in our hearts the gifts of that divine person. In order that we may be certain that this power will not fail and that these gifts will not be taken away, he has enclosed in our hearts the giver of the gifts and the very principle of supernatural power. (Scheeben, <em>Glories of Divine Grace</em>, 72)

Theological Anthropology

“Any account of human deification (theosis) presupposes an anthropology, an account of what we are such that we can be deified” (Spencer, “Deification and Theological Anthropology,” 606). Theological anthropology draws from sources of divine revelation in its study of human beings in their relationship to God. Deification invariably builds upon a view of the human person that is grounded in the creation of the human race in the image and likeness of God (Gn 1:26–27). Various interpretations of “image” and “likeness” are found within the Christian tradition, but all of them recognize in these terms the fundamental affinity of the human race for relationship with God. Some commentators draw attention to the serpent’s words to Eve, “you will be like God” (Gn 3:5), as fundamentally presenting the true destiny of the human race—deification—with the serpent presenting a false path to arrive at this destiny.

One line of interpretation (found in Irenaeus, Basil the Great, Augustine, Maximus the Confessor, and John of Damascus) draws a distinction between the terms “image” and “likeness,” with “image” typically denoting the constitution of the human race that was not lost in the fall (even if tarnished or wounded), and “likeness” normally identifying what was lost in the fall and only regained in Christ through graced moral effort. In this view, deification is the process of moving, through human cooperation with the grace of God, from the renewed image to the full likeness. Summed up by Norman Russell: “The image gives us the capacity for a conscious relationship, finite as we are, with the infinite God. The likeness is our dynamic realization of that capacity within the life of ecclesial communion” (Russell, Fellow Workers with God, 91).

Another line of interpretation (found in Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose, Cyril of Alexandria, and Leo the Great) treats “image” and “likeness” roughly as synonyms. In this second line of interpretation, there is a recognition that aspects of our image and likeness were lost in the fall and regained in Christ, with human progress in moral growth offering a dynamic re-acquisition of what was lost, but no distinction is made between the terms image and likeness (Keating, “Wonderful Exchange,” 218–26).

The Doctrine of Salvation (Soteriology)

Deification is normally viewed as a comprehensive account of soteriology, inclusive of what Christ has saved us from but highlighting what he has saved us for, namely, genuine participation in God and a sharing in the divine nature. In this view, a Christian account of “salvation” or “redemption” is not simply a matter of overcoming our enemies (sin, death, and the devil) and putting things right. These traditional aspects of salvation are fully included (not supplanted), but a doctrine of deification builds upon them by showing that the full telos of human salvation is nothing less than real participation in God and communion in his divine life forever. “Christ accomplishes the salvation of man not only in a negative way, liberating him from the consequences of original sin, but also in a positive way.... His relationship with man is not only that of a healer. The salvation of man is something much wider than redemption; it coincides with deification” (Nellas, Deification in Christ, 39).

It is important to underscore that deification does not amplify the place of the Incarnation to the detriment of Christ’s atoning work on the Cross. The Fathers of the Church often spoke of the Incarnation in a manner that includes not just the birth of Christ (his coming in the flesh) but also his passion, death, and resurrection. The Incarnation is the first “act” in the saving activity of Christ, completed by his resurrection and ascension to the Father. Kallistos Ware observes that “no sharp distinction can be made between Christ’s Incarnation and his Crucifixion,” such that “through the Incarnation and Passion God shares totally in human life and thereby enables humankind to share to the full in divine life.” In this way, “salvation signifies deification” (Ware, “Salvation and Theosis,” 167).

Deification ensures that our understanding of salvation as “justification” and “sanctification” does not stop short with cleansing from sin or even participation in God’s holiness. The ultimate goal of these is communion with God himself brought about by his indwelling, inclusive of what Athanasios Despotis calls “dynamic kinship to God” or “divine kinship” (Despotis, “Deification,Justification,” 620, 628). “Since grace makes us partakers of the divine nature, we are taken into the very family of God. God becomes our Father, his only-begotten Son our brother, and we ourselves children of God” (Scheeben, Glories of Divine Grace, 91). A soteriology that includes deification ensures that our understanding of salvation culminates in the full communion with God for which we were created. In the words of Maximus the Confessor:

For by giving our nature impassibility through his passion, relief through his sufferings, and eternal life through his death, he restored our nature, renewing its capacities by means of what was negated in his own flesh, and through his own Incarnation granting it that grace which transcends nature, by which I mean divinization. God, then, truly became man and gave our nature the new beginning of a second birth. (Maximus, <em>On Difficulties</em>, 437)

Reception and Appropriation of Deification

The first truth that governs human reception of deification is that the capacity for being made “divine” is not a natural capacity of human nature but a gift of divine grace. Again, Maximus the Confessor speaks clearly to this distinction:

Deification is not an ability (<em>dynamis</em>) that has been sown into our nature: we have neither the ability nor the action (<em>praxis</em>) for it, since an action is performed by means of some ability, and ability in turn is proper to an essence. But deification is not something we can bring about by our own power (<em>dynamis</em>) because it is not within our power but beyond it. It comes about only as a divine power: it is not a reward for righteous works of the saints but is proof of the Creator’s lavish generosity. (Maximus, <em>Letter to Marinus</em>, 193–94)

A second truth follows from the first: deification comes about through the initiative of God, through the Father acting by the Son and through the Spirit. In a profound sense, human deification begins in Christ himself. Through the Incarnation of the Word, and through his passion, death, and resurrection, Christ has deified human nature in himself. “Deification was understood to be accomplished through the hypostatic union of divinity and humanity in Christ, whereby divinity transforms the humanity, assimilating it to itself” (Anatolios, Deification Through the Cross, 168). The process of our deification begins when we become incorporated into the Son and receive the divine life through his own deified humanity:

The Divine life which is in Jesus Christ is meant to overflow from Him to us, to the whole of humankind.... The grace of Christ, Son of God, is communicated to us to become in us the wellspring of adoption; it is upon the fullness of the Divine life and grace of Christ Jesus that we all have to draw. (Marmion, <em>Christ the Life of the Soul</em>, 27)

In order to track the reception and appropriation of deification, the distinction (noted above) made by Norman Russell between the “realistic” and “ethical” senses of deification once again proves very useful. The “realistic” sense refers to the activity of God (the means) by which he imparts the divine life to the human person; the “ethical” sense identifies the free human response and effort by which the human person cooperates with the grace of deification. Though this distinction could artificially divide the action of God from human response, it does help to clarify the order of divine grace and human response, both of which are necessary for deification to occur. This distinction between the realistic and ethical sense of deification closely resembles a distinction found in Leo the Great (following Augustine) between sacramentum and exemplum. The first refers to the power of Christ’s saving acts now made present through the sacraments, and the second includes our graced cooperation in receiving this divine life and appropriating it in daily life (Keating, “Wonderful Exchange,” 222–26).

A. The Realistic Sense of Deification: Reception of Divine Life through the Sacraments and the Liturgy

In the Church Fathers, the primary means by which deification is conveyed to human beings is through the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist, accompanied by the divine word in Scripture (Keating, “Deification in Prayer,” 639–45; Collins, Partaking in the Divine Nature, 182–83). For the Fathers, what would later be called “chrismation” (in the East) and “confirmation” (in the West) were included in the act of baptism. “The sacraments of the Church make it possible for man to enter freely and personally into communion with the divinizing grace which the Logos of God bestowed upon human nature in assuming it” (Mantzaridis, Deification of Man, 42). The Byzantine theologian Nicholas Cabasilas (14th century), eloquently expresses this role of sacramental grace in conveying deification:

What could be a greater manifestation of goodness and love for humanity than that he should cleanse the soul from filth by the washing with water and grant it to reign in the heavenly kingdom through the anointing with chrism and set a table for it with his own body and blood? And what’s more, that human beings should become gods and sons of God, and that our nature should be honored with God’s honor, and that dust should be raised to such glory as to attain the same honor and the same glory as the divine nature? (Anatolios, <em>Deification Through the Cross</em>, 373; <em>Life in Christ</em> 1.26)

What the sacraments convey is nothing short of a participation in the divine nature and the transformation of our humanity into the image of Christ himself. “The divinization of the faithful originates in the font of baptism and is nourished by feeding on Christ himself at the Eucharist.... We become by grace what Christ is by nature. That is the purpose of sacramental liturgy” (Fagerberg, “Liturgy and Divinization,” 274, 278). As Matthias Scheeben explains, the sacraments produce “not a visible work in sensible nature, but an invisible work in the spirit of man, an effect absolutely and essentially supernatural, namely, participation in the divine nature and the divine life” (Scheeben, Mysteries of Christianity, 569).

The sacraments operate within the divine liturgy of the Church, and so the liturgy itself is also a means by which worshippers are deified. “All the elements of the Eucharistic liturgy divinize—from the opening sign of the Cross, with the greeting that the Lord be with the people and the priest celebrant, to the dismissal with the blessing and sending forth into the world” (Hofer, “Becoming Icons,” 9). As Daria Spezzano explains, “divinization is not for the privileged few who are especially prayerful or saintly; it is the fruit of grace received by all Christ’s members through the liturgy on earth, which flowers forever in the praise and worship of God in eternal life. Divinization is salvation, and it is given to us through the awe-inspiring mysteries of the Church’s liturgy” (Spezzano, “Divinization and Liturgical Renewal,” 80).

B. The Ethical Sense of Deification: Asceticism, Growth in Moral Virtue, and the Worship of God

Although deification is fundamentally a work of God, it must also involve the free cooperation of the human person for its accomplishment. This includes first of all the practice of ascesis or asceticism, the putting off of the old person and the putting on of Christ (Eph 4:22–24; Col 3:9–10; Rom 13:14). “The journey to divinization now lies at the end of a path called asceticism.... Our path to divinization must follow the route of healing the vices and passions until our love is properly ordered” (Fagerberg, “Liturgy and Divinzation,” 278).

In the language of the Fathers, deification proceeds through growth in virtue as the human person works with the grace of God to manifest the fruit of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22–23) and the virtues that imitate and participate in God (2 Pt 1:5–8). “The calling of each Christian disciple is to a virtuous life in Christ. In the classic statement of deification, the ascetic following and development of the Virtues is pursued towards participation in the divine communion of love” (Collins, Partaking in the Divine Nature, 188). The pilgrim traveling the path toward deification partakes in all the ups and downs of Christian life as described in the wisdom of the saints. As Lev Gillet helpfully conveys:

Deification may be a constant and progressive union. It may also be very intermittent and interrupted by falls. It is not, for the Christian, something extraordinary, but the quite ordinary development and stabilization of the state which man is called to experience after baptism, after Chrismation, and Eucharistic communion, and generally whenever he adheres to God with his whole heart and with his whole mind. Deification, therefore, is something much simpler and more frequent than is often thought. It admits of various degrees, which represent the growth of Christ in us. (Gillet, <em>Orthodox Spirituality</em>, 98)

Our growth in the divine life is due especially to the gift of the theological virtues: faith, hope, and love, a love that is a participation in God’s own love: “Through grace we participate in the divine nature; and just as we are called to know God as he knows himself, so we must be enabled to love him as he loves himself. As grace is a participation in the divine nature, the love proceeding from grace is a participation in the divine love” (Scheeben, Glories of Divine Grace, 204). If participation in divine love is the apex of Christian growth into deification, this is manifested most profoundly in “the praise and worship of God” which is “the final goal of Christian salvation” (Anatolios, Deification Through the Cross, 30). Our worship, grounded in faith, hope, and love, attains to God himself: “Our worship through the theological virtues directly attains God, indeed, God in Himself. It is the worship of those who adore in spirit, without any other sacrificial material than the spiritual acts of faith, hope, and love.... The life of the theological virtues is human life in its highest perfection” (Gardeil, True Christian Life, 71). Just as the divine liturgy is the locus of deification for the Christian, so the divine liturgy is the context in which the Christian returns this gift of divine life and love through praise and worship offered for the glory of God.

Ecclesiology

The topic of deification in its relation to ecclesiology (the study of the Church) is often addressed in contemporary accounts of deification but typically receives little development. In his study of the relation between deification and theosis, Cyril Hovorun concludes that “in the patristic texts, we can scarcely find direct references to theosis in the context of the Church” (Hovorun, “Deification and Ecclesiology,” 592). In modern theology, the connection between the two is upheld as important but normally expressed through short statements that only assert the necessary connection. Kallistos Ware presents a clear link between the two subjects, speaking broadly about a salvation that includes the notion of theosis: “Salvation is ecclesial: it is not solitary but social, for we are saved in the Church, as part of the communion of saints. We are saved personally yet not in isolation” (Ware, “Salvation and Theosis,” 181). Gilles Emery likewise sees the Church as the necessary context for the experience of deification: “This understanding of man’s deification must be placed in a broader context that is both ecclesiological and cosmic. It is ecclesiological, since the ultimate perfection of man’s beatitude is identified with full membership in the glorified Church” (Emery, “Deification and the Trinity,” 564).

The close connection between deification and the Church is probably best expressed through reference to the reception and appropriation of deification (see above). If deification occurs primarily through the sacramental liturgy of the Church (Baptism and Eucharist), then the Church is the essential locus for receiving deifying grace. As Kallistos Ware explains, “[T]he experience of sharing or participation in the divine energies has as its basis precisely the ecclesial mysteries of baptism and holy communion” (Ware, “Salvation and Theosis,” 181). The path of ascesis and growth in prayer and virtue are eminently personal matters but they too occur within the communal life of the Church. “Through communal liturgy and personal prayer, the members of the Christian community are progressively transformed, season by season, into the likeness of God as they actively cooperate with grace and pursue a life of holiness and communion with God and with each other” (Keating, “Deification in Prayer,” 647).

Creation, Cosmic Deification, and Eschatology

Deification offers an account of Christian salvation, but for many commentators it does more than this. Deification is not simply the remedy for human ills or the defeat of the powers of sin, death, and Satan that bind human beings. It is the fulfillment of creation and contains within it the transformation of the cosmos. “Deification is not simply another expression for salvation, the repair of the damage done by sin. It is the final end of salvation, the attainment of the destiny originally intended for humankind that Adam had in his grasp and threw away” (Russell, Doctrine of Deification, 262). Andrew Louth speaks of a wider “arch” that runs from the creation, through fall and redemption, to the recreation of the human race and the world. “Deification is the fulfillment of creation, not just the rectification of the Fall,” the result being that the cosmos “is destined to share in the divine life, to be deified.” (Louth, “The Place of Theosis,” 34-35; see Theokritoff, “Deification and Ecology,” 652).

Biblical indications of the deification of the cosmos appear in Paul’s remarkable statement that “the creation” waits with eager longing for its own redemption, and this redemption is tied to the resurrection of the dead (Rom 8:19–23). Thus, the created world will itself experience a transformation that is linked to the full perfection of human beings. The final vision in the Book of Revelation presents images of this transformation of the created order, revealing a new heavens and a new earth in which God will dwell as a temple among his people (see Rev 21–22).

Maximus the Confessor in particular connects the deification of the cosmos to the Incarnation of the Word, asserting that cosmic deification is intrinsically linked to human deification through Christ:

[The Word became flesh] to purify nature from evil, making it as it was in the beginning, and enriching the first creation by divinization. And just as in the beginning he brought it into being out of nothing, so too now his aim is to rescue and restore it from its fallen condition, preventing it from falling again by means of immutability, and to realize for nature the entire design of God the Father, divinizing nature by the power of his incarnation. (Maximus, <em>Responses to Thalassios</em>, 343)

Gilles Emery identifies a similar perspective in the teaching of Thomas Aquinas: “In Christ’s Incarnation, not only is humanity restored, but the entire universe also is ‘led back’ to God. In his own person, Christ realizes the perfection of the universe” (Emery, “Deification and the Trinity,” 568). However, Kallistos Ware clarifies that while the cosmic aspect of deification is already underway through the resurrection of Christ, the fullness of the transformation of the world will occur only at Christ’s second coming: “Salvation is not only ecclesial but cosmic.... For it is the Church’s mission—never to be fully realized until the second coming—to become coextensive with the cosmos” (Ware, “Salvation and Theosis,” 181–82).

While in the Fathers cosmic deification was closely tied to Christ’s Incarnation, passion, and resurrection, in the modern period “the relation between cosmic deification and Christology is highly ambiguous” (Luy, “Deification and Christology,” 586). In these contemporary accounts, the cosmos is often understood to be already saturated naturally with the divine, and so there is a kind of in-built divine telos in nature, making Christ’s person and work less necessary for the world’s fulfillment. Tracy Rowland traces a further step in the modern period, whereby secular eschatologies reject key aspects of Christian doctrine and provide “this-worldly” counterparts to the Christian vision of the end (the eschaton) (Rowland, “Deification and Eschatology”). Elizabeth Theokritoff proposes that, just as a Christian account of human deification has served as an antidote to versions of human self-deification, so cosmic deification grounded in Christ and a Christian understanding of God’s purpose for the world can provide an antidote to contemporary neo-pagan versions of cosmic deification: “The world is indeed created for fulfillment in God, and the surety of that final goal is already with us. But the paradisal harmony we long for is not achieved either by human action or by letting nature be, but only through the transforming power of God” (Theokritoff, “Deification and Ecology,” 663, italics in original).

IV. Ontological Issues

Ontological Concerns

Much of the controversy concerning the Christian doctrine of deification centers around ontological questions. Does deification, by means of potentially exaggerated language, compromise the fundamental distinction between God and the created order and so lead explicitly or implicitly to a form of pantheism? Critics fear that talk of deification plays into the hands of contemporary religious movements that claim that the self is God and so cast off the notion of a sovereign and transcendent God deserving of our worship and obedience. At the very least, some Christians worry that deification undermines the centrality of Christ and his mediation and blurs the proper distinction between creature and Creator. Yet, a Christian account of deification, grounded in the patristic writings, not only preserves the ontological distinction between God and the created order, but is premised on it and requires this boundary to achieve its end.

Deified Not by Nature but by Grace

In the Christian tradition, the primary remedy for the fear of pantheism and the main response to the need to maintain ontological distinctions is the assertion that humans are deified not by nature, but by grace. A chorus of Christian voices from the from the Fathers to the present time confirms this fundamental statement . Cyril of Alexandria expresses this distinction between nature and grace clearly, while at the same time pointing to the impiety of claiming to become “God” by essence:

We are called sons of God and gods by the Holy Scriptures in the passage, “I said, you are gods, and you are all sons of the Most High” [Ps 82:6]. Shall we then leave what we are by nature [κατὰ φύσιν, <em>kata physin</em>] and climb up to the divine and ineffable substance [οὐσίαν, <em>ousian</em>]? Shall we expel the Word of God from his true sonship and take our seat in his place next to the Father? Shall we turn the grace of the one who honors us into a pretext for impiety? May it never be! When the Son is in a position, he is in it unchangeably. But we are placed into sonship, and we are gods by grace [θεοὶ κατὰ χάριν, <em>theoi kata charin</em>]. (Cyril of Alexandria, <em>Commentary on John</em>, 49)

The Antiochene John Chrysostom expresses this same distinction: “See what superb honor! For what the Only-begotten was by nature, this they also have become by grace” (Chrysostom, Homilies in Romans, 453). Augustine is particularly eloquent on this point, holding that our share in the divine life (ours by grace and not by nature) is distinct from Christ’s natural divinity: “It is evident, then, as he has called men gods, that they are deified by his grace, not born of his substance.... If we have been made sons of God, we have also been made gods: but this is the effect of grace adopting, not of nature generating” (Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 49.2, 331). Likewise, Leo the Great, speaking of our new birth in the Spirit through grace, follows the path set by Augustine: “With this power, you who were born of the flesh that is subject to decay can be ‘born again from the Spirit’ of God and can obtain through grace what you do not have through nature” (Leo the Great, Sermons, 85).

Maximus the Confessor, whose statements regarding human deification are among the most elevated and daring in the Christian tradition, maintains that we become “gods” through divine grace, but are unchanged in nature: “For just as having loosed the laws of nature supernaturally he was made low for us without change—a human being as we are, sin alone excepted—so also shall we consequently come to be above because of him—gods as he is by the mystery of grace—altering nothing at all of our nature” (A. Cooper, Body in St. Maximus, 112). Thomas Aquinas speaks in similar terms about our destiny as “gods by grace,” citing two of the central biblical texts in support of this view of deification:

For [the Son] did not love [his disciples] to the point of their being gods by nature, nor to the point that they would be united to God so as to form one person with him. But he did love them up to a similar point: he loved them to the extent that they would be gods by their participation in grace—“I say you are gods” (Ps. 82:6); “He has granted to us precious and very great promises, that through these you may become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). (Aquinas, <em>Commentary on the Gospel of John</em>, 105)

Contemporary theologians, both Eastern and Western, continue to express the ontological import of deification in the terms “not by nature but by grace.” Lev Gillet distinguishes deification from pantheism: “What is meant is not, of course, a pantheistic identity, but a sharing, through grace, in the divine life” (Gillet, Orthodox Spirituality, 22). John Saward explains that “deifying grace does not destroy our human nature, but rather perfects it, and far from abolishing our personalities it ennobles and enriches them” (Saward, “Strange Immoderation,” 175). Andrew Louth underlines the specifically “human” result of deification, that by participation in the divine life we fulfill the purpose for our humanity. “The aim of the Christian is to become once again truly human, to become the human partners of God as we were originally created, and as human partners to share in the divine life.... Deification, then, is not a transcending of what it means to be human, but the fulfillment of what it is to be human” (Louth, “The Place of Theosis,” 39). Hans Urs von Balthasar sums it up in this way: “No matter how deeply God will initiate us, too, into his divine life, we will never pass from being creatures to being God” (Balthasar, Credo, 38).

Ontology and Participation

If deification does not involve a change in human nature or advance to another nature (the divine), then in what sense does deification involve an “ontological” change or transformation? The New Testament describes life in God in terms of “union/unity” (Eph 4:3, 13), “indwelling” (Eph 2:22; Jn 15:4), “imitation” (Eph 5:1), and “image/likeness” (Rom 8:29; 1 Cor 3:18). In what sense, if any, do these realities include some kind of ontological impact on the human person or on human nature, or are they simply relational and ethical realities that have no impact on human nature as such?

In the early Christian tradition, the primary means used to describe how we are “gods, not by nature, but by grace” was through the concept of participation. This concept was originally developed in the Platonic philosophical tradition but was then transposed by the Church Fathers to express the various senses, found in biblical revelation, for how creatures participate in God (see Keating, Appropriation of the Divine, 146–50). In Christian use, participation is used in two main senses. First, it describes how different particulars all share some common element. For example, all individual human beings share a common humanity, and so “partake” of a common nature. Hebrews 2:14 uses terms for participation in this first sense to describe the Incarnation, that is, the Son’s genuine share in our common human nature: “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same nature.” Second, the concept of participation is used to describe the unequal relationship between what is essential and what is derivative. If God is the source of all being, then we as creatures participate in his being. For the Fathers, we do not share or participate in the divine being as God himself possesses it. He has it essentially; we have it derivatively and by participation. He is being, but we participate in being.

It is important to grasp the dynamics of this second use of the concept of participation. When used in this sense, participation necessarily requires a relation between two things that are unequal, and that remain unequal and distinct in the act of the one participating in the other. In other words, that which participates is necessarily distinct in kind from that in which it participates. For the Fathers, it would make no sense to say that something participates in itself. And if something simply becomes another thing, then it no longer can be said to participate in that thing. Consequently, participation entails (and guarantees) both a true relation and a real distinction. “The ability to hold likeness and differences together is among the principal merits that a participatory metaphysics brings to theology. To say that a participates in b is both to say that a receives a likeness to b and, equally robustly, to stress that a is not b” (Davison, “Metaphysics of Participation,” 547).

A further distinction was typically made between two modes of participation, namely, our participation in God in the order of being and in the order of grace. In the first, we have our very being through participation in God. This is what all human beings possess by nature from the sheer gratuity of God. In the second mode, human beings, made in the image and likeness of God, participate in the life and qualities of God through Christ and in the Spirit. This is what we possess “by grace.” Deification describes our supernatural participation in God through grace. This supernatural participation in grace is no less real than our participation in being; rather, it is of a different and higher order, since it is participation in God. It is a personal participation in God through which we enter into the communion of the love of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and come to share in the divine qualities that elevate our nature to a higher level. This is done without changing our nature or erasing the distinction between creature and Creator (Williams, “Deification,” 106). The phrase from 2 Peter 1:4, that we may become “partakers of the divine nature,” is thus understood in the manner outlined above. We do not become the divine nature, but through grace we become partakers of the divine nature and so have a genuine share in the divine life.

Because of this genuine sharing in the life and qualities of God through grace, this participation can be recognized as “ontological” without entailing a change from human nature to the divine nature. Both the “realistic” and “ethical” senses of deification can be understood as involving an ontological impact on human nature: the realistic identifies the means by which God himself comes to communicate his divine life to us; the ethical describes the graced cooperation of the human being with the grace of God that genuinely transforms us from within, and enables us to grow into the likeness of God and to share in the divine activity of God in a creaturely mode (Davison, “Metaphysics of Participation,” 553).

This “ontological” impact of grace is summed up by Kallistos Ware: “Through the sacraments, through the total experience of justification and salvation in Christ, not merely analogically but ontologically his vital energy is directly communicated to us” (Ware, “Salvation and Theosis,” 170; see also Despotis, “Deification, Justification,” 628–30). Maximus the Confessor, making use of the concept of participation and of deification not by nature but by grace, offers this rousing account of deification:

The whole of God is participated by the whole of them... that the whole of man might be deified, raised to the divine life by the grace of the incarnate God, the whole remaining man in soul and body by nature, and the whole becoming god in soul and body by grace and by the divine brightness of that blessed glory.... For what is more desirable to the worthy than deification by which God makes the whole of himself through goodness united to those who have become gods? (Russell <em>Doctrine of Deification</em>, 276; Amb. 7)

Participation in the Divine Essence or Energies

The Eastern and Western Christian traditions have typically adopted different ways of conceiving deification (i.e., real participation in God). The Western tradition, following Thomas Aquinas (13th century), describes the fullness of deification as participation in the divine essence, culminating in the Beatific vision (the vision of God as he is in his essence). The Eastern tradition, following Gregory Palamas (14th century), says that we participate, not in the very essence of God himself, but in the divine energies of God. “In broad summary, the East will say that the creature is deified by participation in the divine energies, and the West that the creature is deified by participation in the divine essence” (Davison, “Metaphysics of Participation,” 554).

For Aquinas and for the West, deification means making real contact with God himself, and thus with his essence. When 2 Peter 1:4 says that we participate in the divine nature, this is understood as participation in God’s essence, though we never fully comprehend or become that essence. We remain human beings who have the privilege of sharing in the life and being of God himself and of seeing him as he is in the life to come. Aquinas explains it in this way: “For perfect happiness the intellect needs to reach the very Essence of the First Cause. And thus it will have its perfection through union with God as with that object, in which alone man’s happiness consists” (ST I-II, q. 3, a. 8). This claim by Aquinas is, however, carefully framed by the truth that human participation in God’s essence is sheer gift, and that we never come to know God as he knows himself. In other words, we have real communion with God as he is, but God always remains beyond what we can know, and our communion with God is always by way of a partial, creaturely participation.

In the Eastern view, to say that we participate directly in the essence of God would be to threaten divine transcendence. In order to uphold the claim that we participate in God himself, and yet to preserve the fundamental unknowability of God in himself, the Eastern tradition developed the distinction between God’s essence and his energies. The distinction between God’s energies and essence first appears in Basil the Great (Letter 234) and was developed by Dionysius and Maximus. It received dogmatic affirmation in the East as a result of the 14th century Hesychast controversy in which Gregory Palamas became its primary exponent (see Russell, Gregory Palamas, 169–76). This Eastern view is well expressed by Kallistos Ware:

Fundamentally the terms “grace” and “divine energies” both denote one and the same reality: God in action, transmitting his power and life directly to human persons.... Man becomes god by grace or status, but not by nature. The essence-energies distinction makes it possible to assert a genuine mystical “touching” between God and man, while at the same time avoiding pantheism. (Ware, “Salvation and Theosis,” 177–78)

Gilles Emery further explains that “the energies are God insofar as he is participable. These energies are distinct from the divine hypostases of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and are also distinct from the unparticipable divine essence” (Emery, “Deification and the Trinity,” 571).

Connected to the difference between divine essence and energies is the question of uncreated and created grace. Palamas and the Eastern tradition teach that we participate, not in a created effect, but in uncreated grace, which is God himself in his divine energies. Aquinas and the scholastic tradition are often portrayed as emphasizing the created effect of grace in us and sometimes caricatured as presenting grace in such a way that we are removed from any real direct contact with God himself.

From the Eastern perspective, participating in God’s essence would entail becoming God by nature. “To participate in an ontologically simple God, as Palamas and his school understand it, would necessarily entail becoming a divine person” (Finch, “Neo-Palamism,” 240). Such participation would involve unacceptably multiplying the number of “hypostases” that bear the divine nature. From the Western perspective, distinguishing the divine energies from the divine essence seems to threaten the simplicity of God, dividing God into energies that are capable of participation and an essence that is not. Further, the question is raised about the relation between the “energies” and the “persons.” Does an account of participation in God’s energies effectively remove the personal realities of the Son and Spirit through whom we have direct contact with God?

Are the Eastern and Western positions fundamentally incompatible? The question of compatibility remains a source of considerable discussion and debate. The Eastern and Western positions are each seeking to uphold that we have real communion with God himself, but that, simultaneously, God remains distinct, transcendent, and incomprehensible even as we participate in him. One key distinction between the two positions hinges on differing accounts of “participation.” The earlier, patristic understanding of the participation of creatures in God, as reflected for example in Cyril of Alexandria, concludes that if one entity participates in another, it cannot be or become what that other entity is by nature. Participation precludes identity; participation by its very inner meaning requires the thing participating to be distinct in nature from that in which it participates. The Eastern view, as found in Palamas, builds on the Dionysian teaching that holds God in his essence to be utterly beyond being and participation, and concludes that a claim to participate in the essence of God would mean that the one participating would become God by nature. “The whole question of the appropriation of divine life had come, in the century after Cyril, to be set within the parameters established by Dionysius the Areopagite” (Russell, Gregory Palamas, 239).

In her study of Aquinas and Palamas, A.N. Williams concludes that, despite real differences, the two approaches uphold the same fundamental truths concerning human participation in the divine life. The things they share in common vastly outnumber their differences (A.N. Williams, Ground of Union, 175). Antoine Lévy suggests that we are dealing with “two different systems which express a fundamentally identical reality” (Lévy, “Woes of Originality,” 106). Gilles Emery proposes that “because of the structural differences of Trinitarian doctrine between the Eastern tradition (Maximus the Confessor and Gregory Palamas) and the Western tradition (Augustine and Thomas Aquinas) it is not possible to unify both traditions in a higher synthesis. The two traditions, however, converge in several central points.” Among points of convergence, Emery identifies “the ontological and transforming nature of deification by virtue of the uncreated gift,” the special role of the Holy Spirit, and “the real union, beyond comprehension, with the Triune God” (Emery, “Deification and the Trinity,” 572). Norman Russell draws attention to the common ground between Aquinas and Palamas whereby for both authors “uncreated grace” is the cause of “created grace” in the human person (Russell, Gregory Palamas, 190–93). Recognizing a close correlation between what the East means by the “divine energies” and what the West means by “uncreated grace” may enable the two perspectives to come into greater accord.

If Aquinas accents the created effects of grace in us, he is no less clear that it is the Holy Spirit himself who dwells within us (and therefore the entire Trinity dwells within us) as the constant source of all the created effects of grace that transform us into the image of Christ (Keating, “Justification, Sanctification,” 139–58). At the same time, the Eastern view maintains that the divine energies are not a stand-in or substitute for God but God’s self-manifestation in the world. By virtue of participation in the divine energies, humans really participate in God himself. However, at the same time, his essence remains beyond reach. In the end, both positions are attempting to uphold biblical revelation concerning our real participation in the divine life through Christ in the Spirit while ruling out any suggestion of pantheism.

Conclusion

As noted in the Introduction, defining deification is challenging because the term contains within it all that the Father has planned for us through the Son and in the Spirit. For Gilles Emery, deification “designates the progressive perfection of human beings who, by the illuminating and transforming power of divine grace and glory, are led to full communion with the Triune God” (Emery, “Deification and the Trinity,” 562). Eric Mascall characterizes deification in terms of the fullness of our adoptive sonship in Christ: “Everything that is Christ’s in virtue of his sonship is ours by our adoption in him. We receive—of course in a way adapted to our mode of existence as creatures... —a real participation in the life of the Holy Trinity” (Mascall, Christ, 96). Andrew Davison considers deification as the complete and utter fulfillment of our creaturely capacity: “Measured not in terms of God’s being, but in terms of the creature’s capacities, deification is total participation and fulfillment: hope perfectly fulfilled in attainment, faith in vision, and love in ‘fruition’” (Davison, “Metaphysics of Participation,” 551).

Andrew Louth helpfully reminds us that deification, by its very nature, is beyond our understanding: “What it is to be divine is beyond our comprehension, and indeed is revealed as precisely beyond our comprehension: deification is not becoming something we know and understand... it is to enter into a mystery, beyond anything we can understand” (Louth, “The Place of Theosis,” 41). Begun in this life through the effective indwelling of the Triune God, deification will be completed only in the life to come when all that God has in store for us will be fully manifested and perfected. As the First Letter of John declares so profoundly, “Beloved, we are God’s children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 Jn 3:2).