On Theosis

Icon of the Ladder of Divine Ascent from St. Kathrine's Monastery, Mt. Sinai

By Bishop Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

The Biblical, Patristic and Ecclesial Doctrine of Man’s Relationship with God and the Process of Eternal Salvation 

 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God…” –Matthew 5:8

“…Christian theology is always in the last resort a means: a unity of knowledge subserving an end which transcends all knowledge. This ultimate end is union with God or deification, the theosis of the Greek Fathers. Thus, we are finally led to a conclusion which may seem paradoxical enough: that Christian theory should have an eminently practical significance; and that the more mystical it is, the more directly it aspires to the supreme end of union with God.” – Vladimir Lossky, “The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church”

What is the Doctrine of Deification or Theosis?

“Theosis” is the eternal process of man becoming god. It is a doctrine that goes back to the root of the Church, seen in its earliest writings. It is an existential understanding of the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Its definition is an understanding of “Grace”, “Χαpις”, which means “Gift” in English, and is an insistence that this is what it truly means. As the Creator of the universe and existence itself, God the Father is unknowable in His Reality, His “Essence”, being above all forms and concepts that man can understand or experience. God does not exist – He is above existence! In His mercy, He has revealed Himself in the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ, who is Truly God and Truly Man. Through His Son, we can know and experience His Spirit, who is sent to us by the Father. Christ made God known, and revealed the Holy Trinity at His baptism in the Jordan (Matthew 3:13-17, Mark 1:9-11, Luke 3:21-22). This is the first time in history that we see the Trinity as the Son stands in the water, the Spirit descends upon Him as a Dove, and the heavens open, shining in Glory, thundering the declaration “This is my Beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased!” Then again, in His Transfiguration on Mount Tabor (Matthew 17:1-9, Mark 9:2-8, Luke 9:28-36 and 2 Peter 1:16-18), Christ was revealed in His glory to His disciples, and the Voice of the Father was once again heard. Through these visions of Glory, Christ shows humanity the true purpose of their creation, the subtext of the creation of the universe, the purpose for the establishment of the covenants with Man (Adamic, Noahic, Abrahamic, and Mosiac), the restoration of the human person to the fellowship with God, and the way in which we all may be clothed with the Light of God’s glorious righteousness.

Even before the revelation of God, the true “Theophany”, all humanity could enter the void of creation, the silence of the created world through the power of the unenlightened mind in philosophical contemplation. But, we could not accept the Light of Uncreated God without the His Grace, His manifested presence, in the power of the Holy Spirit and the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, which is the grounding line on which the energy of revelation travels to us. As Sts. Ireneaus and Athanasius both insisted, “God became man that we might become gods.” (St. Ireneaus’s “Against Heresies” 5:38, and St. Athanasius’ “On the Incarnation” 54:3) Becoming a god has long been the instinctive goal of mankind. Christ even certified this goal in human life by saying, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect”! (Matthew 5:48) Satan tempted Eve with the Forbidden Fruit by using this God-given desire in an illicit context, to tempt her to eat that which God had explicitly commanded that humanity could not touch – the knowledge of Good and Evil (Gen 3:5). Thus, Eve brought sin into the world by trying to attain what can only be God-given by rejecting His Word, but being One with the Father in the Trinity, the Word and Glory of the Holy Spirit could not be separated.  When the fall cut Adam and Eve from off from God, death came into the world. Man could only be immortal through communion with the source of life.

Even today, Hindu sadhus, Buddhist monks, New Age Mystics, and Muslim Sufis all climb to the highest peaks of silence, on to the white peaks of the created void, but they mistake the darkness they find there with the nature of the ultimate reality. They mistake discovering this God-created darkness as a leap into the Existence of the Uncreated - they confuse the mountain for the sky, and see ascetic struggle as making them into something more than they already are, both allowing them to become God by their own efforts and also joining the essence of the Uncreated.

We know that we cannot jump into the sky, but by Christ's incarnation, He shines down on us like the sun, inside of us, and transfigures us by the warmth of Uncreated Flame. Thus, we become what we were meant to be, in our relationship to God through Christ. It is not a change wrought by us, a result of our climb into silence, but it is Christ's work in us, wrought through His Incarnation. Silence is the hush that He brings into our lives by the work of the Holy Spirit, not the isolation that comes by abandonment to the devil. Christ came down, and while we can never merge into God’s Essence (Ουσια), He fills us with His Energies (Ενεργια) so that we become Like Him. God made us in His “Image and Likeness” and the Ancient Church taught that the “Imago” is God’s image within our created human form, often obscured but never obliterated; while the “likeness” is based on our actions or obedience to God and seldom present due to human iniquity. In order for the likeness to be restored, humanity must do the works of God, which can only be accomplished by God working within an open and contrite human heart. Only then are “like God”, which Eve so earnestly desired that she was deceived into disobedience by the serpent. And thus, through this likeness, the mortal soul takes on the incorruptible immortality of God - not as an attribute of who we are, mortal and created, but as a recipient of the Eternal Communion of God, His Very Body and Blood. 

The Ancient Church understood salvation to be a relationship with the Incarnate Christ, and for this relationship to manifest as an eternal process, a process that spirals into the world to come, the kingdom in which we shall eternally become closer and more intimate with our Savior. We understand all the biblical references about salvation to be definitive, and as such, salvation to be a process in which we are saved by crying to Christ for mercy (Luke 23:42), confession of faith (Rom 10:9), in reception of water baptism in the name of the Trinity (Matt 28:19, Acts 2:38), taking up our cross and following Christ (Luke 9:23), and upon our faithful death (Matthew 24:13).  This prompts the classic response, so often shared by Bishop +Kallistos Ware in his talks, that the Ancient Church believed we are “saved, being saved, and will be saved!” Salvation here being defined here in three different ways, 1) as baptism and induction into Christ’s Body, the Church, 2) the process of repentance and communion in our lifetime, preparing for death, and 3) the ultimate salvation that will come at the Last Judgment, when Christ will separate the wheat from the tares, the sheep from the goats, and finally say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant!” (Matthew 25:21)

“Theosis” seems to Western Christianity, in outward terminology, to be implying this mystical Hindu or Buddhist concept of reunion with God; however, there are several very basic and biblical differences - 1) Human origin is not within the Godhead, but is within God's creation (thus, eternal distinctions are made between that which is made and that which is not made), 2) Human salvation does not come from Human effort, but is a work of God within a human life that has submitted to God's Will (ceasing to do its own will and work per Rom 4:5), and 3) Our "Union" with God is not a swallowing up of our individuality, a loss of our distinct being, or a change in our created state - it is, in fact, "abiding" (John 15), "One with [Christ] as the Son is One with the Father" (John 17:21), and becoming "Partakers of the Divine Nature" (2 Peter 1:4). It is the "Life IN Christ" that St. Paul expounds upon in his epistles! (+Kallistos Ware, “The Orthodox Church, p. 231)

In a search for truth, many Westerners look to the East and to Non-Christian philosophies to explain reality, and so therefore many are struck by the similarity in terminology between Vedic thought and the Church Fathers; so much so that many seekers are shaken and pushed away. However, if we begin to examine the philosophy of the Early Church, the above distinctions start to contrast sharply with Hindu concepts of God, humanity, and the purpose of creation and life.

Theosis and Grace

One of the greatest breakthroughs in this process of acclimatization into the teachings of the Ancient Church is the realization that the Latin Church began to stray from the founding theology of the Nicene Creed by inserting the Filioque into the Creed and creating a mistaken definition of "Grace". While it may have been conceived to counter the insistence of Spanish Arians in the 6^th Century that only the Father was uncreated, by insisting that the Holy Spirit came from both the Father and the Son, the Western Church damaged the understanding of the “Monarchy of the Father” that had been so important to Early Christians in explaining how Three Persons (Hypostastic Prosopon) could be a Monotheistic God. Now that there were two origins of the Spirit in the Trinity, two founders in the reality of God that could be experienced in the world, there were immediate repercussions upon the theology of the Early Church Fathers. This led to a deflation in the status of the Holy Spirit’s divinity; and while, technically retaining His Godhood in the Western theology, his Personhood was drastically undercut and made into an aspect of cooperation between the Father and the Son. This also insisted that the quality for Godhood, His essential nature, was not found in Personhood, but something shared by all Three Persons, the Ousia. Unfortunately, Shared Essence becoming the qualifying aspect of Godhood made God ultimately impersonal! The East always maintained that the Godhood of God was held in the Person of the Father, thus making His Personhood the Ground of the Trinity and that which eternally “Births” the Son and “Emanates” the Spirit. Therefore, the Personhood of the Three Members of the Trinity is Their shared quality of Godhood. The monotheistic nature of this Trinitarian theology is immediately clear, as is its absolute insistence on God’s nature as Person, and the primacy of the Father and His Will within the Trinity.

These conflicting paradigms first become obvious with St. Augustine and his school, who insisted that the Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son, and that Grace was a created gift of God, a substance, granted by God for the accomplishment of His Will within humanity. At first the connection between these two ideas is not obvious. However, upon closer inspection, if the Spirit is a compound creation of two persons within the Trinity, there is an obvious need to separate Grace from the identity of the Spirit, because the Spirit “reveals the Son” (John 16:13) and Grace manifests the Spirit in the “Fruits of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22-23). This is at direct odds with the original theology of the Early Church, in which Grace is not a thing - it is the Energetic Presence of the Holy Spirit, it is the Shekinah of the Temple! (שכינה – defined as “to settle, to dwell, to fill, to nest as a bird” in the Strong’s Concordance)

As St. Augustine’s definitions gained currency in the West, the implications of his ideas gradually began to affect the communion that the East and West had once shared. In the Greek Fathers, Grace is not only a description of this Presence, but also a definition of a relationship between the Spirit and the human being, and, as a result, the relationship that those within the Church have with one another. "Granting Grace", therefore, in the Patristic understanding, was not an accumulation of "merit" or a disembodied energy that gave us "the desire and power to do God's Will." Instead, it was God gifting Himself to us in a PRESENT and PALPABLE way, just as Christ gave Himself in the Eucharist to the Church, gathered in the Spirit, in the same way. It was an experiential and existential reality for the Early Church, not an abstract and theoretical dogmatic point. In the Ancient Church view, we are truly "saved by Grace", not something other than God, but by His Presence in our lives - by His gift of Himself! Augustinian theology challenges this basic view of the Church and makes Grace and the Holy Spirit other than what the Church always knew them to be – God and the relational manifestation of God.



As St. Gregory Palamas states clearly, ““If anyone declares that…the deifying grace of God is a state of our intellectual nature acquired by imitation alone, but is not a supernatural illumination and an ineffable and divine energy beheld invisibly and conceived inconceivably by those privileged to participate in it, then he must know that he has fallen unawares into… delusion... For if deification is accomplished according to a capacity inherent in human nature and if it is accomplished within the bonds of nature, then of necessity the person deified is by nature God… For all the virtue we can attain and such imitation of God as lies in our power does no more than fit us for union with the Deity, but it is through grace that this ineffable union is actually accomplished. Through grace God in His entirety penetrates the saints in their entirety, and the saints in their entirety penetrate God entirely, exchanging the whole of Him for themselves, and acquiring Him alone as the reward of their ascent toward Him; for He embraces them as the soul embraces the body, enabling them to be in Him as His own members.” (The Philokalia, Volume 4, p. 420-424, translated by G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard and Kallistos Ware)

Lucifer and Mary in a Contrast of Theosis

When Ezekiel brought the curse of the Lord against the “King of Tyre”, he presents the first case of mistaking the Energy of God for His Essence in all of history. “Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God… Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.”(Ezekiel 28:13-15)In this passage, we see that Lucifer fell because he mistook the origin of the glory that surrounded him in his primal state for his own and believed that the angels worshipped him. Rather than understanding that, while he was receiving attention liturgically as the apex of creation and the cover of God's throne, he was actually shining with the uncreated energy of God and was not the focus of praise. Worship was directed through him, not to him, just as glory flowed through him, not from him. He functioned as a part of God's glory, but he was not God. This was the first case of mistaking the energies for the essence of God, and resulted in the original sin. While a being may be charged and sustained by God, being "divinized", it does not confound the created with the Creator, but instead, gives purpose and context to the creation –nature was made to overflow with the Energy of God’s Presence. Lucifer was an icon of God's glory, a living picture of the glory of God's handiwork, and a being created to lead the praise of the Heavens in the glory of God. Lucifer was created to carry praise, not to receive it or bask in it, as if he were the source. The failure to see himself in the role of an icon created the confusion that resulted in self-delusion and the conception of the hideous brokenness of sin.

Christ's love and mercy will raise all the saints who actively submit to His will to the position Lucifer once held, all conforming to the likeness of His glory, to be portraits of God's power while retaining their created forms. Their being, the person of the saints, energized in Christ, serves as a vessel of grace, a manifestation of the person of the Creator within the created. The saints are the reflection of glory around the throne, and they stand before us as Lucifer once stood before the angels, but they do not make the mistake of believing praise is offered to them... They turn it to Christ as an offering, casting their crowns of glory before the feet of God, and worshipping Christ continually, crying "Holy" with the angels. (Revelations 4:10).

The Virgin Mary was placed in the same situation, asked if she would become the Theotokos, the throne of God, the exalted human vessel for the incarnation of God in the world. Instead of exalting herself, she humbled herself and submitted to the will of God. She said those fateful words, “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord! So be it unto me according to Thy word…” (Luke 1:38) Thus, “All generations will call [her] blessed” (Luke 1:48), for she has become the path of salvation to the world. She became “More spacious than the Heavens” (Πλατυτέρα των Ουρανῶν)by holding the Maker of All within her womb and by humbling herself and submitting to the Will of God, rather than mistaking His glory for her own! Instead, the Theotokos glorified the Lord, singing, “My soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior!” (Luke 1:46-47)

Differing Definitions of Grace

The differing definition of the nature of "Χαρισ" or “Gratis” in the Ancient East and Roman Catholic West has historically affected the theological understanding and communion between the Churches for the last one thousand years, categorically dividing the Eastern Churches from the Western Churches. Without this doctrinal background, the Ancient insistence on the heresy of the Filioque seems completely obscure and obsessively conservative to the West. With the proper background, however, it becomes apparent that the nature of the Christian experience of God and the possibility of human salvation is ultimately on the line!

In the Ancient East, Grace has always been defined as "Uncreated Energy", starting with the Cappadocians in the 4^th Century. St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory of Nazianzus are particularly remembered in connection with the discussion of the distinctions of Essence and Energy. The metaphor most often used throughout history is of the Sun and Sunlight, which surfaced in the Early Church as it began to describe the mystery of God's involvement in human life. The Sun continues to be the Sun, separate from us and undiminished, but yet we are warmed by the Sun's rays, and while these rays are a part of the Sun, they are not the Sun (or even "a part of the Sun"). Therefore, we can be warmed by the Sun, touched by the Sun, without becoming the Sun in essence. To be warmed by the Sun does not obliterate our identities, or confuse the nature of the Sun Itself. This understanding, which was also used by St. Gregory Palamas in his apology for the Ancient Church understanding of Grace, is still deficient – “since what is uncreated cannot be imagined in creation without some diminution” (St. Gregory Palamas in the “Declaration from the Holy Mountain”).

This analogy shows how the Ancient Church view allows for our direct involvement with God, His presence in our lives, and the origin of all good in us our, without confusing the "God filled" for God. The Holy Spirit’s Grace accomplishes good works in an Ancient Christian believer’s life through synergy with that person’s will. For this reason, Eastern Soteriology would never say, as Luther, "Christ Alone Saves Us", because Christ saves us by sending His Holy Spirit, which is the Third Person of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit, being God, fills us. Our relationship, our work as a result of this presence, is Grace... Grace is a relational and manifesting name by which we call the indwelling and outworking of God in us. 

On the other hand, the West viewed Grace as a created intermediary, a bridging category, in which God, through His Spirit, excites a reaction in the human person to accomplish His will. It was seen as a created response, or energy manifested in the life of the baptized, that empowered one to DO the work of God. By making Grace a created category, the origin and action of God's work in the lives of Christians was either associated with human action, or with a Grace too forceful to be resisted (as in St. Augustine’s strong contention with Pelagius, in which he constantly reinforced the idea that his conversion was the result of an initiative of God that he could not resist: while the East never agreed with Pelagius on man’s ability to do good on his own, it never adopted St. Augustine’s view that the guilt of Adam was inherited by his posterity, since this obviously contradicts revelation in Deuteronomy 24:16, Jeremiah 31:29-34, and Ezekiel 18:19-20)! In the Latin West, Grace was not the name of God's presence manifest in uncreated energies, but a tool God used to exact good works in the lives of Christians! And with this view of Grace as a created tool, St. Augustine’s followers also had to shift the classical definition of the Image of God within man to exclude the possibility of a Free Will. In their reaction against the Roman Catholic’s continued use of the Early Patristic view of Free Will and its inner contradiction with the Augustinian doctrine of “Prevenient Grace”, the Western Reformers created yet another heretical view, the doctrine of “Irresistible Grace”.

This way of thinking can be seen in the many theological definitions of Grace since Thomas Aquinas. In the Roman Catholic tradition of the Summa, “Grace is the principle of meritorious works through the virtues…” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Prima Secundae Partis, Section 110.1, ”Of the Grace of God As Regards Its Essence”) In contrast, Reformed doctrine teaches that Grace is a legal category – “The unmerited favor of God” or “[Assurance] that they are in the state of grace, and may rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, which hope shall never make them ashamed.”(Westminster Confession of 1646, Chapter XVIII:2-3, “On Grace and Salvation”) This understanding is dependent upon Luther’s understanding of God’s proclamation of substitutionary salvific status dependent upon “Faith Alone”, calls the state of the individual thereby justified “Grace”, and gives only a future hope of experiencing the Glory of God (confirming another Augustinian/Thomist tendency to define the possibility of experiencing glory to the future blessedness of the resurrection because of the condemnation of all nature under the Fall). Baptists and Evangelicals do not aspire to know the origin of Grace in their common definition – “The desire and power to do God's will.” The only common denominator is that they all agree that Grace is NOT God. But, while this may seem to be humility, it cuts man off from the possibility of having a real relationship with God or knowing God through experience. All definitions concurs with the historical enemy of Ancient Christian Soteriology, Barlam the Calabrian, who tried to place God beyond revelation by insisting that God is exclusively apophatic and non-interactive, working only in the lives of Christians through created agencies. In light of what the Ancient Church hold on Jesus Christ as a Theanthropic reality, it is easy to understand how this view of Grace could be held suspect as a form of crypto-Arianism, concealing a belief that the Person of Christ is also created!

Merit - When Grace is Not God

When Grace is not God in us, then works of grace must be our response to God, and work that we literally do on our own (since God is not there, but only in a secondary, representational sense). Then, it follows, that it is the work of man that pleases God and is used by God to glorify Himself and accomplish His will. This work, upon which God’s manifestation in the world depends, is then the basis of our standing with God. This standing is “merit”, and merit only exists if God "holds our good works to our account." (Summa Theologica, Prima Secundae Partis, “On Merit”, Question 114.1, explaining Jeremiah 31:16)

"Merit" is a concept alien to the Biblical and Patristic worldview - it is a "point" in an accumulative game of obedience, in which more merits equals higher status, influence, and power. Merits are disembodied virtues that can be bought and traded, the result of a conscious decision to do right, which can be then "traded in" to God by the righteous to obtain favors. The only problem is that good originates in God and returns to God, therefore the "good" cannot use good to request anything of God, other than to be Who God already IS, which is good! This reliance on God to be good is good, because it is not motivated by pride, fear, or a desire for reward. This reliance, however, is not merit - it is a relationship. 

Christ also uses merit to procure mankind's salvation, in the Roman Catholic view. By His suffering, Christ accumulates more merit (points of honor) than all the sin of the world, therefore making His merit available for the salvation of the world. Sharing merit before God to obtain our salvation is the Anselmian view of Christ's Sacrifice. Therefore, it makes sense that Catholics see the good works of the saints as procuring favor! The official Roman Dogma is that Christ merit erased original sin by counterbalancing it, and that it is our own merit that maintains it! (Council of Trent, Canon XIV, and the Roman Catholic Catechism, “On Grace and Justification” 55-58.2) Quiet literally, Christ saves us, and then we keep it! "O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? That which was begun in the Spirit cannot be continued in the flesh!" (Galatians 3:1)

In contemporary Protestant theology, it is commonly believed that there are two attitudes about Grace 1) "Free gift" grace, and, 2) Legalism/"Works". The "Free gift" variety does not require any outward actions, because it is a legal attribution of righteousness through a soteriogical loophole (originally “discovered” when St. Anselm of Canterbury proposed his theory that Christ procured salvation through propitiating God’s offended honor through his substitutionary death) and therefore implies "comfort" rather than "presence". Being comforted has thereby been mistaken by contemporary theological trends as implying a “state of grace” and evidence of salvation! It is little wonder why repentance, fasting, and prayer have become marginalized in contemporary Protestant Christianity. The "Works" that are often contrasted to this view is equally based on the idea that Grace is a created, human oriented response to the Will of God. Action originates in man, in response to a human desire to follow God. This human desire and proceeding action is believed to be the way in which salvation is "earned". 

Both of these views, however, lead to pride and complacency, and are both eschewed by the Fathers in the Early Church. The view that was held for a thousand years, in both the East and the West was one of "synergy", in which man submits his will to God, and God manifests Himself through the Presence of the Holy Spirit in the works of a man's life. Man's work was "ceasing to work (his own will)" (Romans 4:5), and God's work was manifesting Himself in the life of the believer. So, man could not mistake his own work for "earning salvation", because the works were of God, and were therefore a part of his salvation (we believe that the Presence of God and our hope of resurrection and eternity with Christ are really the same thing in different proportions of blessedness or stages of fulfillment). With this paradigm, Man could also not mistake being comforted or other emotional responses for the Presence of God, or find excuses to be elevated from the clear necessity of Good Works in this life. 

Good Works are the evidence of the Uncreated Energy of God, present and filling the life of man. Man cannot lay claim to the Light that comes from God, that IS God, but man must strive to be a mirror of that Light, and that takes "dusting" and "polishing", which is the process of repentance and prayer, which, again, is powered by the light! We turn away from the darkness and towards the Light, like a solar powered generator panel turns toward the Sun. We are moving, turning, repenting, but we only do it in the power of the Origin of All Good, in the Presence of the Holy Spirit! “What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith without works? Can faith save him? Thus, faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” (James 2:14&17 NKJV)

Theosis as Salvation in Dipartite Anthropological Theology

The Ancient Church, following the anthropological theology of St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Augustine of Hippo, teaches that man is made of two parts in an integral whole – that man consists of a soul, often called “spirit”, which consists of three discernable aspects (intellect, heart, and nous, called the “eye of the heart” – the seat of our awareness), and a physical Body. We are not, as many Protestant’s claim, “like God” in the aspect of containing within ourselves an “eternal spirit”, and essential and irreducible existence. We are mortal because our physical bodies die in this fallen world, and without the body, our souls cannot exist. Their mutual codependence is absolute, and without the supernatural work of God, we would cease to exist at our death. Hell, is not as Protestants assume, the result of God’s inability to destroy the spirit of man, its essential quality being eternal and like that of God’s own existence. However, in the love of God for His created children, God does not allow us to disappear into nothingness, but preserves our souls and resurrects all our bodies. In His great love and infinite power, He preserves every human soul after death, enfolding it with His love and glory. Those whose hearts are open with love for God will experience this relationship as love, light, glory and communion; while those who have shut themselves off from God and have refused His love during their lives will experience God’s love as fire, unwanted, unbearable, and in complete isolation. In this way, after death our souls depend upon the sustenance of God, just as they depended upon the sustenance of the body before death. Even those who reject God will be spared complete and utter destruction by the love of God. (Distilled from St. Isaac the Syrian’s famous quotes: “Hell is the flame of God’s unquenchable love”, and the “The book opened on the Day of Judgment will be Our Own Heart”– from Bishop +Hilarion Alfeyev’s “The Spiritual World of St. Isaac the Syrian”; and, C.S. Lewis’ personal reflection of this theology in the “Problem of Pain” that says, “The door of hell is locked from the inside”, and as used by +Kallistos Ware in his talks) At the Last Day, we will rise again and our souls will be reunited with their bodies in a fully perfected and glorified state. Then, both soul and body will depend upon God for their sustenance, being filled with the Glory of God, being clothed in the brightness of God’s righteousness. This will be the full realization of the Eucharist, our entrance into the “Ages of Ages” in which we partake of even now as a Church through our communion with Christ in the “New Testament” of the Lord’s Table, and the complete restoration of the universe to its purpose.

The Old Testament on Theosis

Adam and Eve lost their glory and exposed their nakedness through their disobedience in Paradise–This is shown in a unique Hebrew wordplay in the first few chapters of Genesis by the slight distinction between “Kotnot Or” - “Tunics of Light” (בגדיםשלאור - “shine” is א֖וֹרִי) and the “Tunics of Skins” (בגדיםשלעור - “skin” is ע֖וֹר)in the Midrash Rabbah commentary on Genesis 3, and also in the Zohar and Midrash of the Minhat Yehukh(Stanley Schneider and Morton Seelenfreund, Jewish Bible Review, “Kotnot Or: Skin, Leather, Light, or Blind?”). Adam and his descendants had taken off the princely robes their Father had given them, and exchanged them for unclean rags and skins of dead beasts. The slaughter of animals for the creation of the first clothes was the first death in the world God had made, a world designed for Life and Communion. It was also the first sacrifice, foretelling the clothing of man in Glory by the Death of the Last Sacrifice. Christ most certainly was referring to this “Tunic of Light” when he talked about the “Wedding Garments” which those at the Feast of the Kingdom must wear in order to avoid being cast into “outer darkness” (Matthew 22:1-14). It may also have been the garment given to the Prodigal Son, when he returned to his father, the garment that the fallen young man did not deserve. Only through returning to his father and falling before him, repenting and acknowledging his sin, was the robe of an heir returned to the one who had already squandered his inheritance. (Luke 15:11-32)

When God led His People Israel out of land of Egypt, He began the journey by revealing His Glory in the Burning Bush, which “burned but was not consumed”(Exodus 3:3-17). Then, when Pharaoh was defeated and the gods of Egypt were proven to be nothing, He led them with a cloud by day and a Pillar of Fire by night (Exodus 13:21). The night shone like the day by the Glory of God! When the children of Israel came to Sinai, God showed His Glory like a volcano that did not destroy the mountain. He called Moses to Himself upon the mountain and gave Him his Law and a vision of himself as He passed by, holding Moses in the cleft of the rock and shielding him with His Hand! Then, when Moses came down from the mountain, his face shone with such glory with the Light of God that no one could stand to look at his face! (Exodus 33-34) When the Tabernacle was prepared and the Ark of the Covenant was installed, the Glory of the Lord filled the Temple and the pillar of Glory rested on it and upon all the people. Later, when Isaiah and Ezekiel beheld the Lord, high and lifted up within the Temple, they were purified from evil by the coals from the altar before God, “glowing with heat”. (Isaiah 6:6-8 and Ezekiel 10:2)     David declared, “…Ye are gods, the children of the Highest” (Psalm 82:6), echoing Moses’ song of deliverance in Exodus 15 that inquired, “Who is like unto Thee, O Lord, among the gods?” This led to a question among the Jews under the old Covenant – “who are the gods David and Moses were referring to?” Through Moses and David, God has shown His complete and total victory over the pagan gods of darkness and the mystical superstitions of the Old Testament Gentiles, and now Christ Himself came and gave us the answer!

The New Testament on Theosis

“Jesus answered them, Many good works have I showed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me? The Jews answered him, saying, ‘For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makes thyself God.’ Jesus answered them, ‘Is it not written in your law, I said, ‘Ye are gods?’ If he called them ‘gods’, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, ‘Thou blasphemes’; because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.’” (John 10:35-38) Here, Christ addresses this mystery clearly, defeating both the pride and the scholasticism of the Pharisees. “Gods” are those to whom the Word of God came! These “gods” are those whom the Father has sanctified and made like Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.

St. John the Theologian, in the opening of his Gospel, said “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14) To those who followed Him and knew Him face to face, Christ was full of Glory, and this Glory was the Fullness of Grace and the Perfection of Truth. St. John continues to chronicle the unfolding of the Gospel of Christ in His sayings about the relationship of those His Father has given him, referring to this life through Him as “Abiding in the Vine” (John 15). The purpose of abiding becomes clear in just a few chapters as Christ asks His Father “that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one…” (John 17:21-22) Later on, exhorting believers of the First Century Church to live in love and remain faithful to the Gospel of Christ, St. John tells us that we are to "Walk in the light, even as He is in the light..." (I John 1:7)

St. Paul’s understanding of this Glory and its relationship with God in Christ was no less clear. “For it is God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” (II Corinthians 4:6) As the Gentile Church grew, St. Paul’s Gospel of Christ was preached in two simple paradigms, all vitally linked to the Church’s continual understanding of Theosis. First, St. Paul talks continuously about “Life in Christ” (2 Timothy 1:1), which can only be achieved if one can actually be joined to Christ in a real and meaningful way. Second, St. Paul reminds us that “being in Christ” is not found through some abstract practice of reading the Bible and extrapolating principles of understanding, but by entering into the New Covenant (Καινή Διαθήκη) which is the term that St. Paul calls the Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper. (I Corinthians 11:25) The reality of being in Christ, and thus, being in the Church, is found through the “New Covenant of Christ’s Blood” in Communion with Him and with one another. (Matthew 26:28 & Luke 22:20)

But of all the Apostles, none talks of Theosis more succinctly and convincingly than St. Peter himself, the first bishop, when he says… “Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” (I Peter 1:2-4) This passage of Scripture is sufficient on its own to say everything that is needful, and provides all authority that otherwise may be lacking in the philosophical debates and historical development of the doctrine Theosis within the later Church. In the Transfiguration on the Mount of Tabor, Peter said, "It is good for us to be here!" (Matthew 17:4), showing us that this should be where we desire to be, shining in the Light reflected from the Glorified Christ! 

The Historical Metaphors for Redemption

The ancient Hebraic understanding of God’s Glory as a “Robe of Righteousness” is clear throughout the New Testament, referred to by Christ Himself and by His Apostles. Spanning from Christ’s robe on Mount Tabor turning as “bright as light”, to St. John’s vision on Patmos of the Saints in Heaven, “arrayed in bright robes, white and clean”, the robe has been both a metaphor of salvation and a lived reality in the Life of the Church. It is both the restored nature of Mankind and a description of our relationship with God. (Revelations 7:14 &19:8) We are instructed to “put on Christ”! (Romans 13:14, Galatians 3:27) The Early Church maintained this consciousness in the practice of giving white robes to all those who had been newly baptized and chrismated, and also by insisting that those who served at the Holy Table wear these same white robes as a picture of the imparted and actual righteousness of Christ upon His servants (Alexander Schmemann, “Of Water & the Spirit”, p. 71). This is the origin of the tradition of vestments within the Church. This theme also developed within iconography, at first as the common depiction of Christ and His Saints wearing white robes, but later as the “Red Robe of Divinity” seen in the Icon of the Theotokos. In Byzantine times, Christ is depicted in the Pantocrator Icon wearing a red robe with a golden stripe on the shoulder, representing the Divine Nature and the Uncreated Glory of God. He wears a blue cloak that covers His shoulder and partially covers his Glory and His Nature as God – the blue representing the human nature and His common humanity, blue being the legal color of peasantry in the Byzantine period. The Theotokos, having born God into the world, is depicted fully clothed in a blue robe, covered with a red and gold cloak of imparted divinity over her head and shoulders. As a depiction of the first to ever “bear God inside”, and as the first-fruits of redemption and the icon of the Church, the Icon of the Theotokos helps us to understand the theology of Theosis in its clearest form.

Not only to the robes of Christ and His Saints in the icons show His Glory. The halos that surround the heads of all those with Christ, the “Crown of Glory”, is a reference to the reflected Glory of the Trinity within the hearts and lives of those who have put their trust in God. This is why there is always a difference between the plain gold halos of the saints and the halo that surrounds the head of Christ. Within Christ’s halo, to show that He is the origin of the glory of the saints, and to clarify that He is illumined with the Glory of God AS GOD, the two words formed of three letters, “Ο ΩΝ” (“I AM THAT I AM” – אֶהְיֶהאֲשֶׁראֶהְיֶה), are written within the form of a cross in which only three arms are visible, representing the Trinity and calling to mind our salvation by Their Work.  As “God’s glory shines brightest in the face of His saints”, we see His Glory represented in halos of the Holy Icons of those who are recognized by the Church as having been “image bearers”.

The Historical Process of Defining Theosis

St. Ireneaus of Lyons’ ancient apology, “Against Heresies”, is the earliest testimony to the teaching of Theosis outside of the New Testament itself. His teaching was very simple: Christ became man, so that we could be unified with God. Only by taking on human nature could God make His Nature available to mankind. After this, the next great historical witness for Theosis was the father of monasticism, St. Antony the Great (251-356AD). In his “Life” (The “Vita” written by St. Athanasius around 356AD), St. Anthony had a vision of Divine Light that scattered the demons that were attacking him. Upon further questions as to why God had not scattered the demons sooner, he was answered in prayer that “I waited to see if you would persist before I showed myself.” This is a profound moment in the history of theology, for this illustration prompted many later saints to see in the delayed revelation of God’s true light an instance of "synergy" (συνέργεια) between human effort and God's Free Grace. (Gregory Hillis, “To Be Transformed with Divine Light”, p. 3)

Never was it believed that effort could make one “worthy” (worth being given by God’s love and mercy alone), but it could “prepare” the heart to receive what God would do. As Cabasilas says in his “Commentary of the Liturgy”, “Christ, in his parable of the sower, has illustrated this way that God has of dealing with us. ‘A sower went forth to sow,’ he says, ‘to sow’ – not to plough the earth, but to sow: thus showing that the work of preparation must be done by us.” (Nicholas Cabasilas, “Commentary on the Divine Liturgy”, Chapter 1, p. 25, translated by J.M. Hussey and P.A. McNulty).

St. Clement of Alexandria and Origen of Alexandria, both, to a degree saw Platonic ascent into a God-given “Gnosis” as the object of spiritual life, thereby creating a Christian approach to the mystery of Theosis that has often been confused with the “Philosopher’s Way” in the Greek Philosophical Tradition of “Henosis” and “Thermaturgia”, which are so aptly presented in Plato’s “Timeus” and the “Enneads” of Plotinus. While it is true that Early Christianity felt free to borrow terminology and analogies from every corner of human experience, it is also wrong to see this as evidence of an unbiblical or pagan root within the Early Christian concept of salvation. Origen was later deemed unreliable by later generations of Christian theologians and proclaimed a heretic by the Fifth Ecumenical Council. Some of Origen’s analogies and terminology still remain within the world of theological speculation, but his syncretized concept of the soul’s fall from Paradise (he believed in the preexistence of the soul), its gradual cleansing by accumulating experiences and virtue, and its reunification with God, was completely rejected by the Church on biblical and patristic grounds. The Ancient Church does not embrace reincarnation, the preexistence of the soul, or an ideal of unification with God that makes us one with God in Essence. The reason for the necessity of Hellenic terms in the development of Christian theology was the fact that Christ’s claims to Godhood and His teachings of “radical unity” and communion with God could not be expressed within the Rabbinic Jewish inheritance of the Early Church. These concepts were inferred in the Old Testament, but never explicitly stated, thus making the new “vocabulary of oneness” essential to the teaching and growth of the Early Church. This was not an easy transition, however, as the conflict between the Alexandrian and Antiochian Schools would prove in the Post-Nicene period of Christological debates.

St. Athanasius (293-373AD) provided the primary key through which the Ancient Church now see the “mechanism” of salvation. He expounded upon St. Ireneaus’s (Died 202AD) earlier teachings and shows the inner cohesion of the Gospel Narrative in his work, “On the Incarnation”, which makes Christ’s Incarnation the pivotal act in God’s Economy of Grace and His Divine Plan of Redemption. This “incarnational” focus would later become the primary difference between East and West, as the East would maintain its focus on the “Mystery of the God-Man Incarnate” and the West would become increasingly focused on the “Revelation of the Cross”. This difference would also be seen clearly in the different approach to depiction and iconography within church buildings, as the East maintained the use of Icons as a declaration of Christ’s incarnation, His “Circumscribement” as a man, while the West would give greater focus to the Cross and the Agony of the Passion, rather than upon His Resurrection, Life, and His Eternal Glory in the Heavenly Kingdom.

St. Evargius (345-399AD), another great monastic leader in the 4^th century, under the influence of Origen, wrote extensively on prayer as an intellectual function, an exercise in “Christian Gnosis” that could partake in God’s being through contemplation. While many of his ideas were rejected, his basic insistence that “praying without ceasing” should be a goal for Christian life was highly influential, as was his idea that we could benefit mentally from a constant realization of the presence of God. In many ways, his work was the ancient equivalent to Brother Lawrence’s “Practicing the Presence of God”, which has so helped and encouraged modern Catholic and Protestant Christians.

Later on, St. John Climacus (523-603AD), the abbot of the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, would describe the process of following Christ and being cleansed from evil in his classic text, “The Ladder”, which brought an element of “gradualism” and “long-term spiritual planning” into the monastic life, giving men who had devoted their whole lives to prayer a “goal” for the realization of intimate life with Christ through prayer. He used Christ’s 33 years on earth and “Jacob’s Ladder” as analogies for the trials and struggles that all who set out to follow Christ must surely endure, he also recommended the use of a short, profound prayer for those times when the mind was not otherwise occupied with prayer or worship, consisting of the Name of Christ and a plea for mercy.

St. Macarius (300 – 391AD), through his “Homilies” greatly changed the focus of those who concentrated on the inner life of noetic prayer. Instead of seeing it as a function of the “intellect”, St. Macarius saw it as an exercise of the mind and heart together, focusing much more on the ancient Hebrew understanding of the Heart as encompassing all of the human being. Therefore, the whole body could pray, focusing on Christ in the most holistic sense, and experiencing the blessing of this prayer with one’s whole body. (+Kallistos Ware, “The Orthodox Church”, p. 64-65) It was within these homilies that the Jesus Prayer was identified as the “Prayer of the Heart”, and continual, heartfelt praying of the phrase, “Lord Jesus Christ Have Mercy on Me”, began to be seen as one of the best ways for realizing and experiencing the Grace of God, a simple metaphor for the whole Christian experience.

The saint that best typifies the lifestyle and experience of the Macarian way of prayer was not St. Macarius, but a poet of prayer and a lover of God, St. Symeon the new Theologian (949–1022AD). While he did not add anything to what he received in the Hysechastic theological theory, he was probably the best expression of the heart of the Jesus Prayer, which was a soul completely enthralled with the Love and Light of God. It is within St. Symeon’s visions of light and passion for the Divine Eros that the heart’s prayer can be best contextualized, not as a process of mechanical meditation and self-structured “progress”, but as a romantic adventure with the Person of God. St. Symeon proved that those who dedicate themselves to experiencing God do not loose their personality or become passionless automatons, but, instead, are those who truly live like Christ and His Apostles, forming faith the size of a grain of mustard seed so that mountains truly will leap into the seas!

In the late 1200’s, the Byzantine Orthodox Empire was crumbling, the Roman Catholic Church and the claims of the Pope were ascending, and in order to avoid a 4^th Crusade mounted by the Holy Roman Empire, Michael VIII, the Emperor of Byzantium and the East, tried to negotiate peace with their Western brothers. In response to these inquiries of peace, the Pope of Rome, Clement VI, called a council in Lyon in 1274, and official ratified the pope’s declaration of the Filioque’s addition to the Creed. From Pope Leo IX, the first pope to proclaim papal supremacy and universal jurisdiction over the other Churches at the beginning of the Gregorian Reformation, which split the Roman Church from the other Churches in 1054 by the excommunication of the Byzantine Patriarch through Pope Leo’s legate, Cardinal Humbert, the Flioque was said in the Roman Church but had not been officially received. Now, as if to prove the papal claims and to make the reconciliation of the two Churches impossible, the claims of the Filioque were ensconced in the Western Creed, not by universal council of all the Churches, but by the profound deviation of a council ratifying a papal decree based on the anti-patristic claim of papal infallibility! Patriarch Gregory of Cyprus responded to this heretical Roman move by writing his “Tomus”, which defines the outward manifestations of God as distinct from His Unknowable Essence as a response to the Latin use of the biblical phrases “Spirit of the Son” and “Shining from the Son” as referring to a double progression. Patriarch Gregory showed the nature of the “Spirit” in glory upon Christ, not as a double origin, but as the “Spirit resting in the Incarnate Christ.” (The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy, p. 221-236, and quoting from Fr. John Meyendorf’s translation of the text “De Processione Spiritus Sancti”) Therefore, in the vision on Mount Tabor, we see the Presence of the Holy Spirit visible in Glory upon Christ, sent by the Father, resting in the Son, but not proceeding from the Son (this is also clearly seen in the icon of Epiphany in the Jordan).With this theological buttress in place, the stage was set for the final teachings of the Ancient Church regarding Theosis to be received, championed by an obscure monk from Palamas in the face of the Roman Catholic Church’s claims to papal infallibility.

St. Gregory Palamas (1296-1359AD) was a singular figure, obviously brilliant but not a scholar. He had chosen the path of practical learning, spiritual hardship and silence, studying “Hysechasm”, “Inner Stillness”, from an early age with monks on Mount Athos. When Barlaam of Calabrian, an equally brilliant and well-trained Greek theologian who had studied in the West, published scathing criticism against the Hysechast monks, scorning them for “naval gazing” (the monks would often stare down at their heart while chanting their prayers), St. Gregory spoke out. His floury of writings in defense of those who seek God with their whole being, and who experience visions of light and love in response, will never be forgotten. Rarely have there been such eloquent or philosophically cohesive responses to criticism! It was based upon the Palamite synthesis of the biblical and patristic witness that the teachings of the Ancient Church regarding Theosis were clarified in contrast to the Augustinian and Filioque-based teachings that gained prominence in the West. St. Gregory did not believe he added anything to the teachings that he defended, and the Council of Constantinople in 1351 states this belief clearly as well. What he did do was to give the classical teachings of the Church regarding the identity of Grace, the difference between Essence and Energies, and the reality of God’s Glory within the created world a framework that would withstand the theological scholasticism and Aristotelian reductionism that the West began to employ during the High Middle Ages. It insured that the Eastern Church never fell into the errors of scholasticism, abstraction, and the de-hypostisizing of Christian philosophy by the Protestant Reformation (forgetting the central place that the Person of the Father played in the Trinity, and that the human person ultimately plays in creation and the unfolding plan of salvation). Because the East was able to formulate its radical rebuke to the West’s error of applying logic to revelation, and was able to reject the de-linking of the current age from the biblical and patristic experience, the Ancient Church was able to maintain the theology of the Early Church without addition or truncation.

What does Theosis Tell us about Man and Creation?

The concept of Theosis teaches us, fundamentally, that reality is based upon the Trinity, and that it is within the communion of the Trinity, the infinite love and shared life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that man finds his salvation. This is a vision of life, destiny, and of the cosmos that is explicitly personal, being based on the super-existential nature of the Father’s Person, and as such, shows Christ and the Spirit to also be persons in their relationship with one another and personal in their relationship with us. This vision contrasts sharply with the view that would have God’s divinity be one of essence, expressed in person, which is ultimately impersonal and akin to the Hindu understanding of God and reality as “Atman”. Without God’s Person to safeguard the Trinity, the concept of multiplicity becomes polytheistic, logically insisting that if one essence can take three forms, it can take on many more as well. The uniqueness and the necessity of the Trinity in relationship to the Father is lost.

With the foundations of reality being established in personhood, our human existence takes on new meaning. While we are infinitely inferior to God’s existence in every way, unable to even comprehend the true nature of God’s existence by any positive description, we become, by our very existence, reflections of God’s Being. We become “apophatic icons” of our Creator God. This makes our lives, insignificant as they are, incredibly important as a witness to God’s nature, to His Love, and His purpose. Our persons become purposeful because reality is expressed in its highest, most real form, within personhood itself! This, along with the assertion that we can experience God, directly, unmediated, and personally, makes our humanity the apex of the cosmic creation and the object of the Trinity’s love. We have become the lovers of God!

Theosis also teaches us that God’s Energies are multiple, as St. Gregory Palamas points out in his discussion of the “Seven Spirits of God”. Without the distinction between Essence and Energies, we fall again into the danger of polytheism, but with these distinctions in place, we see that the seven spirits that the scripture describes, in both the Old Testament and within the Book of Revelations, are not inferior spirits or other, heretofore un-described members of an ever-expanding Godhead, but as the primary Energies of God, the works of the Holy Spirit in specific relationship to the needs of the universe and of man. Therefore, the Spirit of Wisdom, the Spirit of Understanding, The Spirit of Justice, the Spirit of Judgment, the Spirit of Equity, the Spirit of Truth, and the Spirit of Mercy, all of which are affirmed within Scripture, are all the Holy Spirit in His Multiplicity of Energies. (St. Gregory Palamas, “The Philokalia”, “Topics of Natural and Theological Science”, points 69-71, p. 378) 

Theosis teaches us that the Holy Spirit is Present, in His Energies, within the created world, and that He is “in all places and fills all things”, as the Ancient prayers insist. He is always with us, no matter where we are or what we’ve done, and even with this filling of all things, we may still hold that the universe is not God. We can live in a world where “every blade of grass hides an angel” without being pantheists. How? Through the distinctions drawn by the Ancient Church in Essence and Energies!

The greatest thing that Theosis’ incarnational view contributes to the Christian philosophy of being is the realization that Christ’s Incarnation allowed Him to assume all that is human. Not only does God love us humans, but God is now one of us. God is sitting in heaven as a man, the Glorified Jesus Christ, and his physical body is real, not a Docetic mirage, not a Gnostic demiurge, but a real human body. By assuming all that was human, by conquering all that was evil, by overcoming death by His Death, we are now free. Salvation was universally acquired for every man, living and dead. God truly does “not will that any should parish, but that all should come to eternal life.” (2 Peter 3:9) Christ’s Glorified Body is our promise of eternal life, and His life has been promised to us as our life!

As St. Gregory Palamas put it, “The Son of God, who in His compassion became man, died so far as His body was concerned when His soul was separated from His body, but His body was not separated from His divinity, and so He raised up His body once more and took it with Him to heaven in glory. Similarly, who those who have lived here in a godly manner are separated from their bodies, they are not separated from God, and in the resurrection they will take their bodies with them to God, and in their bodies they will enter with inexpressible joy there where Jesus has preceded us (Hebrews 6:20) and in their bodies they will enjoy the glory that will be revealed in Christ (I Peter 5:1). Indeed they will share not only in resurrection, but also in the Lord’s ascension and in all divine life. But this does not apply to those who live this present life in an unregenerate manner and who at death have no communion with God. For though all will be resurrected, yet the resurrection of each individual will be in accordance with his own inner state (I Corinthians 15:23). He who through the power of the Spirit has extirpated his materialistic and worldly proclivities in this life will hereafter live a divine and truly eternal life in communion with Christ. But he who through surrendering to his materialistic and worldly lusts and passions has in this life deadened his spiritual being will, alas, hereafter be co-judged with the devil, the agent-provocateur of evil, and will be handed over to unbearable and immeasurable chastisement, which is the second and final death.” – St. Gregory Palamas, Letter to the Most Revered Nun Xenia, Point 15 (Philokalia, Volume 4, p. 298, translated by G.E.H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard and Kallistos Ware)

The Doctrine of Theosis teaches us to take that “Great Hope” of the Universal Resurrection seriously, teaching us “to look for the resurrection of the dead and life in the world to come!”

St. Gregory Palamas

What Is the Importance of Synergy in this Process?

The Ancient Church clearly teaches that man is restored to a life of repentance by Baptism. The tense of “repentance” (μετάνοια) being a continuous action verb in the New Testament, Baptism not only marks a past point of repentance, but is an induction into a continuous process of repentance! Being initiated by the “Gift of the Holy Spirit” in baptism, we are given the gift of repentance as the primary fruit of this indwelling, in a state of our restored relationship with God not yet consummated in the Kingdom. We must consciously practice the putting down of our pride, confess our sins in public and in private, partake in the Communion of the Church, and center ourselves in the reality of Christ’s presence through the inner invocation of Christ’s name. When we do this, we will experience the Uncreated Energies of God through the Holy Spirit, receiving clear vision of the nature of things and of ourselves, and experiencing the God through inner stillness and light (“Hysechasm”). 

The Church has always maintained that when God said, “let us make man in our image and likeness” (Genesis 1:26), man’s flesh/soul being are his “Image” and his actions are his “Likeness”. While man’s image can never be erased, his likeness depends upon submission and obedience, therefore, Theosis is not a state of moral reformation, or becoming better through the application of the Law; it is a transformation that comes through the radical repositioning and relational reorientation of the human person with the Spirit of God. Any moral change that occurs is incidental to this reality, not the focus!

God’s Love is freely given, unconditional, and complete and restricted to those who freely receive. Any area that we withhold is withheld because God loves us so much that He respects our choices and allows us to maintain our infinitely inferior likeness to Himself, which is the integrity of our wills! Therefore, our submission, or Patristically put, our “preparation”, is necessary. Once we have been baptized and brought into the life of the Church through the Eucharist, our continued repentance and life of prayer is necessary for growth and health. With the Grace of God already available to us in our lives, we must “pick up our cross” and follow Christ. We do this through a life-long ascesis, a “podvig”, a personal struggle for more Grace, in which we learn God’s power and gradually come to rely on it in increasing faith and works.

In the experience and life of the Church, a pattern can be seen that is called a life of Hysechasm, inner silence. Fathers always encouraged their disciples to “take every thought into captivity” and to “pray without ceasing”, realizing that our will, our wrong intentions, our self-deceit is the reason for our lack of Communion with God. By doing these two things, their hearts and minds would be silent enough to hear the “still small voice” of the Holy Spirit within. But, while these simple areas of obedience sound easy, to live a life dedicated to God take intense inner struggle and a long time of persistence. Most of all, it takes a healthy spiritual life, full of worship, corporate prayer, Communion, fasting, Bible reading, and the singing of Psalms.

The name “Hysechasm” can be deceiving, however, because those who live a life of obedience and the silencing of their own thoughts and passions are not “quietist” – they may live and work in hectic, noisy surroundings. They may be monks or nuns, or they might be professional men or housewives. As St. Seraphim of Sarov is reported to have said, “I am a monk and you are a layman and that doesn’t make any difference”. St. Gregory Palamas himself didn’t lead a very “quiet life”, but lived in the midst of controversy, wars, and Church schism.

Man’s “Work” in all of this is to cease from self, to recognize our origin in God’s creation, acknowledge our constant need for God, to understand God’s boundless love for us, and to constantly repent of our falling short of God’s Will and His Purposes. Repentance is the core of the Christian life, our central value, and the primary operative around which the synergy of our Theosis operates. Repentance is putting ourselves down, changing our mind, and warring against our inner brokenness that was inherited from Adam that always rears up within us as propensity toward pride. Only by prayer, fasting, repentance, confession, and absolution, can we enter back in to the reality of our “One Baptism” that has remitted our sins by the power of the Holy Spirit and made us a part of the Church. A special place is given to the “baptism of tears” in the Fathers, which only occurs when we have true heart recognition of our need for God and the seriousness of our error, which leads us back to our baptism and makes us ready to partake in again in Communion. (+Kallistos Ware, “The Orthodox Way”, p. 55)

“When man starts to repent, to confess, and to cry for his sins, he receives the first experiences of God’s Grace. Such experiences are first of all tears of repentance, which bring inexpressible joy to the psyche, and then the deep peace that follows this. For this reason, this mourning for our sins is called ‘gladsome mourning,’ as the Lord also said in His Beatitudes: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).” (Archimandrite George, “Theosis: The True Purpose of Human Life”, p. 56)

The Cycle of Christian Life - Repentance, Confession, and Communion in the Life of the Spirit

A)   Life “in the World but not of it” (I John 2:15-17), as Members of Christ’s Body, the Church (Romans 12:5, I Corinthians 12:12-20), having “put off the old man and its lusts and put on Christ” through Baptism and the Gift of the Spirit through Chrismation and the Laying on of Hands (Acts 8:17, 19:5-6, II Timothy 1:6, Romans 13:14, Colossians 3:9, Ephesians 4:22)

B)   Seeking After God in Prayer, Fasting, Bible Study, and Good Works (Keeping God’s Commandments, Living Life of the Holy Spirit’s Virtues, Ministering to Fatherless, Widows, Poor, Aged, Sick, Suffering, and Serving in the Church) (Matthew 3:8, 5:32, 6:16-18, 25:40, Acts 4:32-35, 26:20, II Corinthians 8:1-24, Titus 2:14, James 1:27, I John 3:17)

C)   Repentance of “Falling Short” in This Process, Confession of the Sinful Acts that Alienate from God to Christ, to One Another, to Our Presbyters and to a Spiritual Father or Mother (Matthew 18:18, James 5:14-16, I John 1:9)

D)   Drawing Together with the Body of Christ in Public Confession of Sin (Psalm 106:6, Daniel 9:5), Worship, and Mutual Love and Submission for the Liturgy – the “Common Work” of the Church (the literal meaning of “λειτουργία”) (Psalm 122:1-9, 150:1-6, Matthew 5:23-24, Romans 12:5, Colossians 3:16, I Timothy 3:14-15, Hebrews 10:25)

E)   Communion with Christ and Each Other through the Holy Eucharist (Mathew 18:20, John 6:50-59, I Corinthians 10:16-17, 11:1-34)

The Process or Praxis, Synergia and Theoria, Growing Towards Maturity in Christ:

1)   Accountability to a “Spiritual Father”, a Counselor Who Can Guide Us Past Himself and Our Lusts and Passions to Follow After Christ, Who Can Ask Hard Questions, Who Will Not Condone Our Weaknesses, and Who Will Not Allow Excuses for Our Sins (1 Corinthians 4:15, I Thessalonians 12:12, Hebrews 12:7-11, 2 Timothy 4:1-2, James 3:13)

2)   Constant Prayer (“Pray without ceasing…” 1 Thessalonians 5:17)

3)   Stilling Thoughts (“Bringing every thought into captivity” 2 Corinthians 10:5)

4)   Centering the Heart on the Name of Jesus Christ (“Day and night”, “upon my bed” and “in the night watches”, David “meditated upon God’s precepts”, and “cried out unto His Name” Psalms 119-150), which is experienced as “Inner Stillness” (“Be still and know I am God” Psalms 46:10) in which the “Still, Small Voice” can be heard (1 Kings 19:11-13)

5)   Experiencing a Real Relationship with Christ through the Spirit and the Life of the Church (John 14:26, Matthew 18:20) and Becoming a Partaker in Christ’s Suffering – Spiritual Warfare (Matthew 5:11, I Peter 4:13)

6)   Visions of Uncreated Glory Illuminating the Heart and Mind, Being Felt and Experienced as Joy of Body and Soul (“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” Matthew 5:8, Joel 11:28), and Manifesting the Gifts of the Spirit Manifested in Teaching, Preaching, Healing, Prophecy, and Counsel (Romans 12:3-8, I Corinthians 12:1-14, Ephesians 4:11-13)

7)   This Walk with God is Evidenced in Increased Humility, Intentionally Putting Down of the Self, Hiding from Acclaim and Attention, and Living a Life of Love, Mercy, Service, and Contentment. (Philippians 1:21, Ephesians 4:1-3) The works done by those who are thus illumined by the Spirit do not glorify the individual, who only act as vessels and agents for God’s power. (John 3:30, 2 Corinthians 10:17, 2 Timothy 2:21) Remembering that, at any point in this process, before our death and ultimate salvation by Christ (Matthew 24:13), we can fall from Christ through lusts and pride, “becoming shipwrecked” (I Timothy 1:19), and “having preached to other, we ourselves become castaways” (I Corinthians 9:27). The “later state of such a one is worse than before they believed”. (2 Peter 2:20) The rewards of humility and fear of the Lord is spiritual riches, honor for Christ, and life. (Proverbs 22:4)

8)   Final Resurrection and Glorification when Christ comes to take us to the “Place that He Has Prepared for Us.” (John 6:40, 11:25, 14:3, Romans 8:38-39, 2 Corinthians 4:14, I Thessalonians 4:16, Titus 2:13) This is the goal of Theosis. This is the Eighth Day, the Ages of Ages, where we will live with Christ forever in His Kingdom. This is the great hope of the Christian life, the purpose of the Creation, the glory that we taste in Communion, and that which gives meaning to all the suffering and pain of this life. (2 Timothy 4:5-8, 2 Corinthians 14:54-55) This hope erases the fear of death, inspires us to live as martyrs (“witnesses”), and fills our hearts with joy at the possibility of seeing Christ Face to Face, to “Know Him as He Is”. (Philippians 3:10-11)

Just as our experience of the Holy Spirit, our Communion with Christ in the Eucharist, and our salvation, must be shared and cannot be personal, so our process of repentance and Theosis is a corporate process. Our “Synergia” is cooperation with God, but it is also reflected in cooperation with others. Thus, there are corporate fruits for personal struggle. We all share in the spiritual work of the Church. City-bound laymen share in the fruits of desert ascetics, each being a member of the Body, which feeds itself with the Blood of the Glorified Christ.  There is no such thing as personal virtue or personal salvation. All are saved by our sharing in Christ’s life, and our individual partaking with Christ and our experience with Him in the Spirit is shared by those around us. His Light is brought into all our relationships in the humility and sweetness of Church fellowship - κοινονια –the communion we share in our shared life and by putting others first. This is fruit worthy of repentance and shows our houses of prayer to truly be the family of God. The Church, which is the body of Christ struggling for the salvation of all, is worked out corporately in the personal quest to deification. As St. Seraphim of Sarov said, "Acquire a spirit of peace and thousands around you will be saved!" This is the evangelical aspect of Theosis.

Repentance and Communion in Theosis

The Holy Spirit's work is to call us to unity with Christ, and in this process the Spirit clarifies, illuminates, and communes us through Christ's Incarnate Body and Blood with the Father through the work of the Holy Spirit in the Eucharist. Those who experience the movement of the Holy Spirit know His action as a call to repentance, a call to return to the waters of baptism, to the washing of the Spirit's forgiveness. Those who respond to His call are involved in a continuous motion of returning, renewing, refreshing, as the concept of “Metanoia”, changing the mind, turns us back to God. This is the process of sanctification and salvation, and the process of our conversion from death into life. 

Every time we sin, we come out of communion with Christ. Christ cannot co-exist in our person with that which is not of God, no more than light can exist in darkness. When we sin, we choose our passion over the Person of Christ, and thus break our relationship with God. When we confess our sins, Christ forgives us our sins, and cleanses us from all unrighteousness (I John 1:9) - and we are commanded to confess our sins to one another that our sins may be healed (James 5:16). Since the greatest healing is found in the guidance and prayers of those who minister in the place of the Apostles, and who have had the laying on of hands for the work of the ministry, we especially confess our sins to our Presbyters, who pray to God for us and affirm us of God's complete forgiveness! Christ gave the power of binding and loosing to His Apostles, and the priest has received ordination and spiritual gifts from the Apostles in Succession (Matthew 16:17-19). Therefore, the priests serve to “loose sin” when they witness our confession and affirm the forgiveness of Christ Our Savior!

Unfortunately, due to the political involvement of Peter the Great in the Russia Orthodox Church, and the collapse of the normal, canonical structure of the Church at that time, the wording of absolution in the Slavic usage no longer refers to the priest as a witness of forgiveness, but imitates the Roman Catholic form, “I forgive”, implying that the priest has power to forgive sins.  This obscures the theological truth of confession and creates a situation where confession could be misunderstood as “repenting to a priest”. Nothing could be further from what the Church has historically maintained. (+Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church, p. 289)

We partake of the Eucharist as a mystical seal of the reestablished communion with Him, becoming one with Him in both Spirit and in Body, as 1 Corinthians 11 shows. It is in communion that we are joined to Christ in a real way, and that joining to Him joins us with all other Christians who are joined to Him. It is within this action that we know that the Holy Spirit is at work, in the macro level as in the micro level, for Christ Commanded that we "are one, even as I and my Father are one." This is why, corporately, the Ancient Church place so much emphasis on being “in communion”. Those outside of communion cannot properly be considered a functional part of the Body of Christ, because this Body is primarily discerned in the Lord’s Table.

The Body of These Saints Also Takes Part in God’s Energies

The Full Glorification of Body and Soul Must Wait Until the Last Day, But, until then, the body of the saint and martyrs serves as a special witness to the New Covenant of Christ’s Body, the Reality of the Church, and also functions as a vessel for God’s grace (as per the bones of the prophet that brought to life the man laid upon them). (TOC, p. 233-234) This has resulted in a special veneration of the bodies of the saints, and has led to the particular care and concern shown for burial, the relics of saints, and the consecration of Church buildings. The bodies of the saints are a part of the Body of Christ, and therefore, will share in the temporal story of Christ’s Gospel unfolding in the world, and will also share in the Eternal Glory of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Physical Salvation

Christ chose physical means to save us, both in His own body, but also in his Life, Death, and Resurrection, He used physical means. He has promised the physical rebirth of our bodies after death, and the physical recreation of the world. Therefore, we have physical recourse to Salvation on Earth - through the Grace of God that is present in the Church, a physical place with physical people, through a physical act of renouncing sin through confession to our brothers and sisters, and with priests acting as witnesses to our confessions, and through a physical act of taking communion. Thus, in the flesh, we have our sins forgiven and we are brought back into the physical and spiritual communion of the Saints, who are cleansed by Christ's Forgiveness and who have turned their backs on sin. This is the Eternal Church that is both here on earth and in heaven, which is not just a spiritual kingdom, but is a physical presence on earth, and as such, is the “firstfruits” of all creation glorified at the End of Time.

The Transfiguration of Christ is the First Fruits of the New Creation