Partakers
of the Divine Nature
The aim of the Christian
life, which Seraphim described as the acquisition of the Holy Spirit
of God, can equally well
be defined in terms of deification. Basil described man as a creature
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who has received the
order to become a god; and Athanasius, as we know, said that God became
man that man might
become god. ‘In my kingdom, said Christ, I shall be God with you as gods’
(Canon
for Matins of Holy Thursday, Ode 4, Troparion 3). Such, according to the teaching of
the Orthodox
Church, is the final
goal at which every Christian must aim: to become god, to attain theosis,
‘deification’ or
‘divinization.’ For Orthodoxy man’s salvation and redemption mean his
deification.
Behind the doctrine of
deification there lies the idea of man made according to the image
and likeness of God the
Holy Trinity. ‘May they all be one,’ Christ prayed at the Last Supper;
“As Thou, Father, art
in me and I in Thee, so also may they be in us” (John 17:21). Just as the
three persons of the
Trinity ‘dwell’ in one another in an unceasing movement of love, so man,
made in the image of the
Trinity, is called to ‘dwell’ in the Trinitarian God. Christ prays that we
may share in the life of
the Trinity, in the movement of love which passes between the divine
persons; He prays that
we may be taken up into the Godhead. The saints, as Maximus the Confessor
put it, are those who
express the Holy Trinity in themselves. This idea of a personal and
organic union between
God and man — God dwelling in us, and we in Him — is a constant
theme in Saint John’s
Gospel; it is also a constant theme in the Epistles of Saint Paul, who sees
the Christian life above
all else as a life ‘in Christ.’ The same idea recurs in the famous text:
“Through these
promises you may become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). It
is important
to keep this New
Testament background in mind. The Orthodox doctrine of deification,
so far from being
unscriptural (as is sometimes thought), has a solid Biblical basis, not only in
2
Peter, but in Paul and
the Fourth Gospel.
The idea of deification
must always be understood in the light of the distinction between
God’s essence and His
energies. Union with God means union with the divine energies, not the
divine essence: the
Orthodox Church, while speaking of deification and union, rejects all forms
of pantheism.
Closely related to this
is another point of equal importance. The mystical union between
God and man is a true
union, yet in this union Creator and creature do not become fused into a
single being. Unlike the
eastern religions which teach that man is swallowed up in the deity, Orthodox
mystical theology has
always insisted that man, however closely linked to God, retains
his full personal
integrity. Man, when deified, remains distinct (though not separate) from God.
The mystery of the
‘Trinity is a mystery of unity in diversity, and those who express the
Trinity
in themselves do not
sacrifice their personal characteristics. When Saint Maximus wrote ‘God
and those who are worthy
of God have one and the same energy’ (Ambigua, P.G. 91, 1076C), he did
not mean that the saints
lose their free will, but that when deified they voluntarily and in love
conform their will to
the will of God. Nor does man, when he ‘becomes god,’ cease to be human:
‘We remain creatures
while becoming god by grace, as Christ remained God when becoming
man by the Incarnation (V.
Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, p. 87). Man does not become
God by nature,
but is merely a ‘created god,’ a god by grace or by status.
Deification is something
that involves the body. Since man is a unity of body and soul, and
since the Incarnate
Christ has saved and redeemed the whole man, it follows that ‘man’s body is
deified at the same time
as his soul’ (Maximus, Gnostic Centuries, 2, 88 (P.G. 90,
1168A)). In
that divine
likeness which man is
called to realize in himself, the body has its place. “Your body is a temple
of the Holy Spirit,” wrote Saint Paul (1 Cor.
6:19). “Therefore, my brothers, I beseech you by
God’s mercy to offer
your bodies as a living sacrifice to God” (Romans 12:1). The full deification
of the body must wait,
however, until the Last Day, for in this present life the glory of the
saints is as a rule an
inward splendour, a splendour of the soul alone; but when the righteous rise
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from the dead and are
clothed with a spiritual body, then their sanctity will be outwardly manifest.
‘At the day of
Resurrection the glory of the Holy Spirit comes out from within, decking
and
covering the bodies of
the saints — the glory which they had before, but hidden within their
souls. What a man has
now, the same then comes forth externally in the body’ (Homilies
of Macarius,
5, 9.
It is this transfigured ‘Resurrection body’ which the icon painter attempts
symbolically to depict. Hence,
while
preserving the distinctive personal traits in a saint’s physiognomy he
deliberately avoids making a realistic
and
‘photographic’ portrait. To paint men exactly as they now appear is to paint
them still in their fallen state, in
their
‘earthy,’ not their ‘heavenly’ body). The bodies of the saints will be outwardly
transfigured by divine
light, as Christ’s body
was transfigured on Mount Thabor. ‘We must look forward also to
the springtime of the
body’ (Minucius Felix (?late second century), Octavius, 34).
But even in this present
life some saints have experienced the first fruits of this visible and
bodily glorification.
Saint Seraphim is the best known, but by no means the only instance of this.
When Arsenius the Great
was praying, his disciples saw him ‘just like a fire’ (Apophthegmata,
P.G.
65,
Arsenius 27); and of another Desert Father it is recorded: ‘Just as Moses received the
image of
the glory of Adam, when
his face was glorified, so the face of Abba Pambo shone like lightning,
and he was as a king
seated on his throne’ (Apophthegmata (P.G. 65),
Pambo 12. Compare Apophthegmata,
Sisoes
14 and Silouanus 12. Epiphanius, in his Life of Sergius of Radonezh, states
that the saint’s body shone with
glory
after death. It is sometimes said, and with a certain truth, that bodily
transfiguration by divine light corresponds,
among
Orthodox saints, to the receiving of the stigmata among western saints. We must
not, however, draw
too
absolute a contrast in this matter. Instances of bodily glorification are found
in the west, for example, in the case
of an
Englishwoman, Evelyn Underhill
(1875-1941): a friend records how on one occasion her face could be seen
transfigured
with light (the whole account recalls Saint Seraphim: see The Letters of
Evelyn Underhill, edited by
Charles
Williams, London, 1943, p. 37). Similarly, in the east stigmatization is not
unknown: in the Coptic life of
Saint
Macarius of Egypt, it is said that a cherub appeared to him, ‘took the measure
of his chest,’ and ‘crucified him
on the
earth’). In
the words of Gregory Palamas: ‘If in the age to come the body will share with
the
soul in unspeakable
blessings, it is certain that it must share in them, so far as possible, even
now’ (The
Tome of the Holy Mountain (P.G. 150, 1233C).
Because Orthodox are
convinced that the body is sanctified and transfigured together with
the soul, they have an
immense reverence for the relics of the saints. Like Roman Catholics, they
believe that the grace
of God present in the saints’ bodies during life remains active in their relics
when they have died, and
that God uses these relics as a channel of divine power and an instrument
of healing. In some
cases the bodies of saints have been miraculously preserved from corruption,
but even where this has
not happened, Orthodox show just as great a veneration towards
their bones. This
reverence for relics is not the fruit of ignorance and superstition, but
springs
from a highly developed
theology of the body.
Not only man’s body but
the whole of the material creation will eventually be transfigured:
“Then I saw a new
heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed
away” (Revelation 21:1).
Redeemed man is not to be snatched away from the rest of creation,
but creation is to be
saved and glorified along with him (icons, as we have seen, are the first
fruits of this
redemption of matter). ‘The created universe waits with eager expectation for
God’s
sons to be revealed ...
for the universe itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and
will enter into the
liberty and splendour of the children of God. We know that until now the
whole created universe
has been groaning in the pangs of childbirth’ (Romans 8:19-22). This
idea of cosmic
redemption is based, like the Orthodox doctrine of the human body and the
Orthodox
doctrine of icons, upon
a right understanding of the Incarnation: Christ took flesh —
something from the
material order — and so has made possible the redemption and metamorphosis
of all creation —
not merely the immaterial, but the physical.
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This talk of deification
and union, of the transfiguration of the body and of cosmic redemption,
may sound very remote
from the experience of ordinary Christians; but anyone who draws
such a conclusion has
entirely misunderstood the Orthodox conception of theosis. To prevent any
such misinterpretation,
six points must be made.
First, deification is
not something reserved for a few select initiates, but something intended
for all alike. The
Orthodox Church believes that it is the normal goal for every Christian
without
exception. Certainly, we
shall only be fully deified at the Last Day; but for each of us the process
of divinization must
begin here and now in this present life. It is true that in this present life
very
few indeed attain full
mystical union with God. But every true Christian tries to love God and to
fulfil His commandments;
and so long as a man sincerely seeks to do that, then however weak
his attempts may be and
however often he may fall, he is already in some degree deified.
Secondly, the fact that
a man is being deified does not mean that he ceases to be conscious
of sin. On the contrary,
deification always presupposes a continued act of repentance. A saint
may be well advanced in
the way of holiness, yet he does not therefore cease to employ the
words of the Jesus
Prayer ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.’
Father
Silouan of Mount Athos
used to say to himself ‘Keep your mind in Hell and despair not;’ other
Orthodox saints have
repeated the words ‘All will be saved, and I alone will be condemned.’
Eastern spiritual
writers attach great importance to the ‘gift of tears.’ Orthodox mystical
theology
is a theology of glory
and of transfiguration, but it is also a theology of penitence.
In the third place,
there is nothing esoteric or extraordinary about the methods which we
must follow in order to
be deified. If a man asks ‘How can I become god?’ the answer is very
simple: go to church,
receive the sacraments regularly, pray to God ‘in spirit and in truth,’ read
the Gospels, follow the
commandments. The last of these items — ‘follow the commandments’
— must never be
forgotten. Orthodoxy, no less than western Christianity, firmly rejects the
kind
of mysticism that seeks
to dispense with moral rules.
Fourthly, deification is
not a solitary but a ‘social’ process. We have said that deification
means ‘following the
commandments;’ and these commandments were briefly described by
Christ as love of God
and love of neighbour. The two forms of love are inseparable. A man can
love his neighbour as
himself only if he loves God above all; and a man cannot love God if he
does not love his fellow
men (1 John 4:20). Thus there is nothing selfish about deification; for
only if he loves his
neighbour can a man be deified. ‘From our neighbour is life and from our
neighbour is death,’
said Antony of Egypt. ‘If we win our neighbour we win God, but if we
cause our neighbour to
stumble we sin against Christ’ (Apophthegmata (P.G. 65),
Antony 9). Man,
made in the image of the
Trinity, can only realize the divine likeness if he lives a common life
such as the Blessed
Trinity lives: as the three persons of the Godhead ‘dwell’ in one another, so a
man must ‘dwell’ in his
fellow men, living not for himself alone, but in and for others. ‘If it were
possible for me to find
a leper,’ said one of the Desert Fathers, ‘and to give him my body and to
take his, I would gladly
do it. For this is perfect love’ (ibid, Agatho 26). Such is the true nature
of
theosis.
Fifthly, love of God and
of other men must be practical: Orthodoxy rejects all forms of Quietism,
all types of love which
do not issue in action. Deification, while it includes the heights of
mystical experience, has
also a very prosaic and down-to-earth aspect. When we think of deification,
we must think of the
Hesychasts praying in silence and of Saint Seraphim with his face
transfigured; but we
must think also of Saint Basil caring for the sick in the hospital at Caesarea,
of Saint John the
Almsgiver helping the poor at Alexandria, of Saint Sergius in
his filthy cloth-
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ing, working as a
peasant in the kitchen garden to provide the guests of the monastery with food.
These are not two
different ways, but one.
Finally, deification
presupposes life in the Church, life in the sacraments. Theosis according
to the likeness of the
Trinity involves a common life, but only within the fellowship of the
Church can this common
life of coinherence be properly realized. Church and sacraments are the
means appointed by God
whereby man may acquire the sanctifying Spirit and be transformed
into the divine
likeness.
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