The process by which human persons are transformed in their being (and, consequently, in their actions) by grace. Such supernatural transformation belongs to the entitative order and is not a juridical fiction, merely declaring that a given believer is holy in the eyes of God.  Although referred to by various terms in Greek or Latin, the notion of theosis is as ancient as the Gospel message itself.  The Fathers of the Church regularly connected the notion, and at times the term itself, to Christology: Christ’s human nature, through the hypostatic union, is divinized (enjoys the plenitude of created grace, a grace inherently linked to the hypostatic union). The dogmatic truth of Christ’s own divinity is so connected to the reality of theosis that to deny one of these realities would imply the denial of the other.  The reality of theosis is closely connected to a variety of scriptural themes: filial adoption and new birth through baptism; the relation of the “Old Adam” to the “New Adam”; Christ’s headship; Christ as the life of the believer.  A classic maxim found in the Fathers and the Church’s various liturgical traditions expresses this reality in terms of a divine exchange: God became man, so that man might become God.