Theosis: Becoming God

Theosis (Greek for "making divine", Deification; to become gods by grace) leads to reconciliation and union with God achieved through a relationship or synergy between God and humanity. Union with God is not based on fusion (in a physical sense) but on free will. Since God created us with free will and all that is created by God is good, we have the potential to experience this union in all aspects of life (I.E. work, school, friendships, relationships, conversations, human interactions, prayers etc.).

Theosis should not be understood as a philosophical theory but is grounded in scripture, tradition and the writings of the early Christian writers.

The following scripture passages summarizes Theosis:

Psalm 82.6: I said, "You are gods"; you are all sons of the most high.

2 Peter 1:3–4: God’s “divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness” through the knowledge of God, who called us by His own glory and goodness. Through these things, He has given us His great promises so that we “may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”

Romans 12:1–2: We are to present our bodies as a “living sacrifice,” doing so as part of our spiritual worship. And we are to “be transformed” by the renewing of our minds into the likeness of God.
1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:17: We are reminded that we are God’s “temple” and that “he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him”—union with God.

Galatians 2:20: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

Philippians 1:21: “For me, to live is Christ.”

Colossians 3:3: We have “died” and our lives are “hidden with Christ in God”—total participation in Christ.

1 Thessalonians 5:23: May God “sanctify you completely”—complete conformity to the image and likeness of God.

2 Thessalonians 2:14: We were called by God “for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

1 John 4:17: “Because as He is, so are we in this world”—the possibility of deification, total participation in Christ this side of eternity.

John 17:22: In His high priestly prayer, Jesus says that He has given us the glory that the Father gave Him.

Revelation 21:7: At the beginning of the eschaton, Christ says of each of us, “I will be his God and he shall be My son.”

1 John 3:2: “We know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”

Philippians 3:21: Christ will “transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body.”

The early Christian fathers bore witness to Theosis. More often it was the Alexandrian Fathers who preached and defended Theosis as being the aim of the Christian life. It was because of Christ's incarnation, death and resurrection that we as humans are able to achieve this union in God through Christ. Christ show's us what it is to be God in the way he lived and died as a human being. The following are a few quotations from the Fathers writing on Theosis:

St. Athanasius: "God became man so that men might become gods".

St. Gregory of Nazianzuz (who's liturgy is prayed in the Coptic Church): "Man has been ordered to become God"...and..."For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but what is united with God is also being saved".

St. Basil the Great (who's liturgy is prayed in the Coptic Church and Byzantine Church): “From the Holy Spirit is the likeness of God, and the highest thing to be desired, to become God.”

Origen noted that the spirit “is deified by that which it contemplates.”

St. Cyril of Alexandria commented that we are all called to take part in divinity, becoming the likeness of Christ and the image of the Father by “participation.”

St. Irenaeus noted, “If the Word is made man, it is that man might become gods.”

Theosis is a truly catholic understanding of the goal of our relationship with God in Christ. It is through Theosis that we can truly become human. St. Irenaeus reminds us that, "The glory of God is a living (alive) human being". In God we live and become life for others. The reason for our existence is made whole in God's existence (taking on human flesh) and the reason the Creator united with us was to complete, in its fullness, the bestowing of His grace on us because he gives abundantly. The best of gifts that God could have given us was His own self and it is because of this gift we are able to unite with Him. This is the first steps in achieving our potential in Christ!

Of the centrality of theosis and of theosis in Orthodox missiology, His Eminence Metropolitan Geevarghese Mar Osthathiose (Indian Orthodox) writes: 

“Salvation is more than liberation of humanity or humanization, but divinization of the humanity and the cosmos. Finite salvation of the created is not infinite liberation, that is the infinite divinization as humanity is not created for one another alone, but for the Creator as well.

The aim of salvation is not restitution of the unfallen state and Adam and Eve, but elevation to the status and fulness of the Second Adam, which is called Christification or Trinitification.

The first Adam fell when tempted, but the Second Adam did not fall. Therefore our aim is not just humanization, but theosis. It is for this theosis that the Incarnation took place as "good news of a great joy which will come to all the people" (Lk 2:10)...

Ulltimately all the differences and separations between human beings will be dissolved in a mutual sharing of beingness (perichoresis) where 'thine and 'mine' are different in the case of property, purpose or will, but different only in different personal and group identities with full openness to penetrate each other...

The aim of mission can't be anything less than the deification, unification and reconciliation of all churches and the whole world into the unity of the measure and the stature of the fullness of Christ. It is not humanization or socialization but divinization, which is social transformation in the model of Holy Trinity, which may be called Trinification. The aim of mission is not only Theosis but along with it the establishment of the Kingdom of God.” 

+ Metropolitan Geevarghese Mar Osthathiose . “Sharing God and a Sharing World” (India: ISPCK & CSS, 1995), 150-152.

Let us Give Thanks

The gospel of John tells us that eternal life begins in knowing our creator (Cf. Jn 17.3). Christianity lies in the words of Christ. Union with God is the aim of a life worth living. In knowing God we seek eternal life. However, this knowledge is not meant to puff up, convinced that it can know everything, including God (leading to the fall of Adam), and all the while remaining ignorant of the fact that our fall lies precisely in the decay of genuine knowledge. Adam's alienation from God, in his literal sense of choosing a life not in God, but in itself and by itself, Adam chose to "know God" which means to believe through that faith about which it is said that "even the demons believe and tremble". Adam ceased to know God, and his life ceased to be that meeting with God, that communion with him-communion with all of God's creation-all of which gives life as depicted in the book of Genesis. Humanity at it weakest point thirst a great thirst. The Psalmist proclaims, "my soul thirsts for the living God". The same God in which we thirst for, the God in which we seek union with, Adam chose to know God through his ego and selfishness.

Thanksgiving is the joy, fullness, presence, of knowledge of God. Knowledge as communion and knowledge as unity leads to thanksgiving. Knowing God transforms our life into thanksgiving, and thanksgiving transforms eternity into everlasting life. Fr. Alexander Schmemann sums it well when says that the Church above all is one big chorus of praise constantly called to give thanks:

If the entire life of the Church is above all one continuous burst of praise, blessing and thanksgiving, if this thanksgiving is raised up both out of joy and out of sorrow, out of the depths of both happiness and misfortune, out of both life and death, if the most bitter graveside lamentation is transformed by it into a song of praise, “Alleluia,” then it is because the Church is the meeting with God, which has been accomplished in Christ. Fr. Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist, 176.

It is Christ's knowledge of God that has been bestowed to humanity as a gift of thanksgiving. Christ has shattered the gates of hades and opened to us the gates of paradise. After Christ trampled down death by death, and when forgiveness of sins was sealed through Christ's act of death and resurrection, then there remained only praise, only thanksgiving. Thanksgiving, which unites us with God, thanksgiving which united all human beings. St. Paul reminds us that he became a Jew in order to win the Jew, he became a Greek in order to win a Greek. Thanksgiving does not need a barrier or ethnic background. Thanksgiving only requires on condition; love. Thanksgiving is granted to us as precisely a pure thanksgiving, like those prophets (Moses) who where in the presences of the face of God. When we realize we stand in the presence of God it is then that we will be able to genuinely start giving thanks for God's creation and offer it to all for the life of the world. 

Lenten Reflection: Healing

The church is place where one seeks healing. The purpose of the Church is to heal us, to overcome the divide between God and humanity which is caused by sin leading to our very death. Healing is achieved when we are united to one another and to God in the Body of Christ, which is the Church.

How is this healing achieved? When we come to know Christ, when we become one with Him and with one another then the healing process takes shape within all of us. Everything the Church does, through it's liturgical and sacramental life, is directed at restoring our relationships between God and creation. Our restoration is made possible through our interaction with creation which unites all of creation including all of humanity. The real meaning of Christian healing involves the whole person. The healing is made possible through the salvific events of the church, the Eucharist, Baptism which initiated us into the body of Christ.

As members of the body of Christ we enter this "membership" through Baptism which takes of the old "man" and puts on the new "man". The Eucharist is the means by which this membership is realized and continues to be lived out. In fact, everything the Church sets out for us, prayers, sacraments, feasts, have the Eucharist as their goal. We are the Church when we gather together, to celebrate the mystery of the incarnation, death and resurrection on behalf of all. Not only do we remember these events of the past, but we become partakers of Christ in the present, sharing in His divine nature for the restoration (healing) of soul and body. It is in the Eucharist that the famous line spoke by St. Athanasius is realized: "God became man, so that man might become god". This is what it means to be united to God and become divinized in His body; the Church.

Humanity and all of creation is created to be in union with God and the Eucharist is the realization of this union. True healing is precisely the restoration of union with God, the restoration of the proper relationship between God and creation. Every time we partake of the Eucharist we receive this grace of healing. This healing not only affects humanity but enters all of creation through our restoration with the one in whom salvation was realized through his body; the body which we all called to unite with.    

Being the Wounded Healer

Within the last 5 months I've had many people ask me, "Bavly what exactly do you do at a Hospital and what is a Chaplain"? It is a loaded question and I don't think there is a direct answer. Depending on who asks I give an answer based on the person standing in front of me. But for everyone who does ask I always say, "I am a wounded healer providing spiritual care to those who are also wounded".

In my "profession" we must recognize that we are broken humans seeking to help others on their journey of healing which begins in suffering. Each person is different and each patient has a story. My starting point is diving into that story to see how the experiences of that person have shaped there understandings and realities around them. It's not easy talking to people and it's not easy when we have to deal with heavy things that come our way. Chaplains deal with a lot of human suffering and we must accept our suffering and the suffering of other humans as the starting point to wholeness and healing. In his classic work, "The Wounded Healer", Fr. Henri Nouwen says that we must make the individual realize that they are first and foremost a human being who is loved:

The Christian leader, minister or priest, is not one who reveals God to the people-who gives something to those who have nothing-but one who helps those who are searching to discover reality as the source of their existence. In this sense we can say that the Christian leader leads humans to confession, in the classic sense of the word: to the basic affirmation that humans are human and God is God, and that without God, humans cannot be called human. The Wounded Healer, Page 43.  

In finding our humanity in others we begin to see God in all. When an atheist asks me how do I understand death, or when a patient asks if dying because I am in pain is a sin, or when a patient is refusing medical care because they are DNR, I do not look just at the surface "issue", but I dig deeper and ask why are you afraid of death? Why do you think it's a sin? And why did you choose to have a DNR? Being a Chaplain can take on many roles and we have to embrace that as we offer spiritual care. Sometimes we do not have to talk at all, other times we are a 3rd party providing help to the extended family and sometimes we are the only ones at the bedside of a patient because they have no family and no one to be with them. What matters the most, and this is echoing the thoughts of Fr. Henri Nouwen, no matter what happens there is someone out there who loves you not because of who you are and what you accomplished but because you are a human being created in the image and likeness of your creator! 

"So what do I do at the hospital"? I still do not know how to answer such a question. However, my starting point rests in seeing the human being who is love and wants to be loved. If the message of the gospel is not about love we have forgotten how to be a human being. We have forgotten how to see our brothers and sisters as human beings. If the person in front of us becomes nothing more than a "person I must physically cure of his or her sickness" then our system has collapsed and we have forgotten how to look at each other as a human being. Being in that room and in the presence of the human is what I do at the hospital! Being a wounded human being approaching the bedside is my starting point. Shaping my beliefs on seeing the human being first is what I am slowly starting to understand being a chaplain in the hospital.