Incarnational Implications
Giovanni Domenico TiepoloVenetian, 1727 - 1804
Christ Leading Peter, James, and John
to the Transfiguration
A few days ago I posted a devotional type message titled Gethsemane that dealt with the humanity of Jesus. The objective was to point out that, just as we focus on His divinity, we should not stress this at the expense of His humanity. Both the divine and human natures were united perfectly and completely in Jesus Christ. A disproportionate emphasis on one over the other in either direction would be hazardous to our Christology and soteriology.
Saint Athanasius (c. 293-373), the chief adversary of Arius, wrote heavily on the topic of Christ's dual natures. In his efforts to develop his Christology, his work inevitably led him to a deeper understanding of what were the salvific effects of the Incarnation. What he concluded is that, in the Incarnation, God became human so that humans might become divine (See Saint Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word). When the Word became flesh, He did so in order that it would be possible for man to become divine - the theological concept of theosis. Athanasius argued that since the Son of God in His essential nature is "one with the Father" (consubstantial) within the being of the Triune God, then there are far-reaching implications for our understanding of the Incarnation and atonement. As the Son of God takes on the human nature He essentially elevates mankind and perfectly unites mankind with the nature of God in His body (Colossians 1:19-23).
Athanasius was very careful to point out that this theosis, or divinization of man, did not mean that man becomes divine like Jesus. Humans can never become God by nature. On the contrary, humans become by grace what Christ was by His divinized human nature. Athanasius said, "We, then, can also be divinized by participating in the incarnate deified humanity of the Son." (See Athanasius, Against Arius). What does this mean in the real world? Well, Charles Wesley, in his hymn "Love Divine all Loves Excelling," wrote beautifully on what were the results of the Incarnation in Christian experience. Read these words and try to make the connection between Athanasius' concept of theosis and Wesley's articulation of its expression in this life:
Love divine, all loves excelling,
joy of heaven, to earth come down;
fix in us thy humble dwelling;
all thy faithful mercies crown!
Jesus thou art all compassion,
pure, unbounded love thou art;
visit us with thy salvation;
enter every trembling heart.
Breathe, O breathe thy loving Spirit
into every troubled breast!
Let us all in thee inherit;
let us find that second rest.
Take away our bent to sinning;
Alpha and Omega be;
end of faith, as its beginning,
set our hearts at liberty.
Come, Almighty to deliver,
let us all thy life receive;
suddenly return and never,
nevermore thy temples leave.
Thee we would be always blessing,
serve thee as thy hosts above,
pray and praise thee without ceasing,
glory in thy perfect love.
Finish, then, thy new creation;
pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see thy great salvation
perfectly restored in thee;
changed from glory into glory,
till in heaven we take our place,
till we cast our crowns before thee,
lost in wonder, love, and praise.
For more, see Bradley Nassif in Three Views on Eastern Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism and Robert V. Rakestraw from Bethel Theological Seminary here.
9 Comments:
I think Athanasius' ideas are interesting. However, I would actually like to read the documents he wrote (On the Incarnation of the Word) that expounded his line of reasoning concerning this matter of "humans becoming divine." It seems to me, on first inspection, that he may be walking the fine line between philosophy and heresy. I am not sure that the verbage in the I Corinthians text means that Christ is reconciling us to a more divine status. Is this the only passage that the saint used to develop his ideas? Were his ideas influenced by secular contemporary philosophers? I would like to know the answers to these questions as I ponder this matter.
I'm not sure what I Corinthians passage you are referring to. However, if you meant the Colossians passage that I mentioned, I included that along with the point that both natures are present in the person of Jesus Christ and that this truth has implications for humanity. This text, verses 19-23, comes off the heels of probably the most crucial Christological text in Scripture. After declaring Christ's deity, Paul moves to the implications of the God-man, the one who represents both parties in His one body. He says, "And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him..." (vv.21-22). So what does the Incarnational/sacrificial reality produce in the Christian experience? Paul makes some bold declarations in answering this question.
I would be very careful in accusing Athanasius of possibly "walking the fine line between philosophy and heresy." He is the possibly the single most important theologian and defender of Orthodoxy in the history of the church. And also, be careful not to assume that he is suggesting that we can achieve "divine status" as you put it. Humans become by grace what Christ was by His divinized human nature - not another God-man like Him, but a new creation that is drawn into the Godhead and transformed into a holy and irreproachable vessel.
See Robert V. Rakeshaw's article on theosis at www.bethel.edu/~rakrob/files/THEOSIS2.html.
Beavs007,
When the church fathers wrote about deification they did not mean that "humans become divine" by becoming like God in omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. Humans are deified in the moral and immortal characteristics of God by entering into eternal fellowship with the Triune God. We will be resurrected to a holy and everlasting life, but we certainly won’t be gods in the sense of our power, sovereignty, knowledge, etc…
Hippolytus wrote, “You will be a companion of God, and a co-heir with Christ, no longer enslaved by lusts or passions and wasted disease. For you have become divine…God has promised to bestow these upon you, for you have been deified and begotten unto immortality.” (ANF vol 5, 153)
Amen sean,
we too can be holy. In 1peter1:13-16 (specifically 15 &16), he tells us, "but be holy in all you do, just as God, the One who called you, is holy." Leviticus says YOU must be holy, because i am holy.
Wow! That is pretty bold as well.
Sorry, I meant Colossians.
Sean and Tristan,
I understand your point. My point was that we should be careful when saying that humans can become "divine," as Sean's first post along this subject said. (God became human so that humans might become divine...When the Word became flesh, He did so in order that it would be possible for man to become divine). You may need to redefine divine, because in my limited intellectual capacity, I equate "divine" with "deity." (which is probably what Sean meant in his last paragraph on the original post) Hence my comment about Athanasius bordering on heresy. I do not think Athanasius was a heretic...we needed a defender like him to fight Arius. I guess I should have said that if we say humans become the least bit "deified", then that is heresy. And, I would still like my original questions answered, just for the sake of them being answered: Is this the only passage that the saint used to develop his ideas? Were his ideas influenced by secular contemporary philosophers?
Jason, the sentence "God became human so that humans might become divine" is the language Athanasius used. I suppose our translation of his fourth century Greek requires a bit of context before we can make assumptions. I figured that the surrounding context in my original post made it clear that nowhere was anybody suggesting that we become a god, or God Himself, but rather like God. Hopefully all the posts that have followed my original have cleared that up in your mind (also, have you read the articles I linked to for clarity?).
I already answered your other question. You asked, "Is this the only passage that the saint used to develop his ideas?" In my first response to you I said, "I included that along with the point that both natures are present in the person of Jesus Christ and that this truth has implications for humanity." This was my verse for my point. I was not suggesting that Athanasius was using this verse to make any of his points. I don't even know whether or not he used it, although I'm sure he did at some point given its Christological nature.
Now, as for "Were his ideas influenced by secular contemporary philosophers?" that is a more difficult question to answer. Athanasius, as well as the Cappadocians, used controversial terms of their day that had previously been rejected by the church. For example, the Greek word homoousion was a non-Scriptural, somewhat philosophical term borrowed for the sake of expressing the character of orthodox belief in the Person of the historic Christ, by defining Him to be identical in substance, or co-essential, with the Father. However, Athanasius was not the first to use this word. It had previously been used by Paul of Samosata but was rejected because of its materialistic conceptions. But Athanasius, and his theological "children," appropriated that word for theological use and have thus articulated the Person of Christ more clearly than anyone else in church history.
I suppose that he was influenced by some of the contemporary philosphies of his day. We are no different. We are Western rationalists who struggle to understand Eastern thought because we want to rationalize everything and leave nothing to mystery. All people are a product of their day to an extent. But Athanasius was a theologian who was first and foremost committed to Scripture and Apostolic truth. He was heavily influenced by the founder of Egyptian monasticism, Anthony the Great, and even more so by Bishop Alexander, of whom he was "commensal and secretary."
I don't know if this answers your question sufficiently. I am not a historian, nor can I perfectly trace the history of Christian, or more specifically Athanasian, thought. I suppose your question could be better answered by one who specializes in this area, or one who has done a biography of the saint.
For Dr. Bill Ury's insight into this matter, see my new post at: http://truthdialogue.blogspot.com/2005/05/re-question-from-jason-in.html.
In regards to beavs007’s comment that…” if we say humans become the least bit "deified", then that is heresy.”
I would say it depends on which definition you look at. Some use “deification” and some do not. I have done some searching and came up with the following definitions, and explanations.
Definitions for Theosis:
Early Church Definitions:
At the end of the first century, Saint Irenaeus of Lyons writes that, in God's plan for us "we are not made gods from the beginning; first we are mere humans, then we become gods"1. Three centuries later, Saint Augustine says that God "hath called men gods that are deified of His Grace, not born of His Substance" 2.
Some Church Fathers even state that theosis makes the elect "God", so to speak. (As we saw above, we cannot become God by nature,; yet in a certain sense the divinized do "become God" by grace since they participate in the Divine Nature). Saint Basil the Great taught that "the highest of all things desired (is) to become God" by the power of the Holy Spirit 3.
According to Saint Gregory Nazianzen, the Risen Christ "still pleads even now as Man for my salvation, for He continues to wear the Body which He assumed, until He makes me God by the power of His Incarnation" 4.
Saint Athanasius of Alexandria mentions theosis often in his writings. He even uses it as an argument against Arianism (the heterodox belief that Jesus Christ is not God), by pointing out that Jesus could not divinize us were He not God; "Man could not be deified unless the Word who became flesh had been by nature from the Father and true and proper to him" 5.
Theosis - literally, the condition or the state of deity; also, the deification of man.
Six Hundred Years later…(Just like at the movies)
In the seventh century, Saint Maximos the Confessor writes "let us become the image of the one whole God, bearing nothing earthly in ourselves, so that we may consort with God and become gods, receiving from God our existence as gods" 7. The twelfth century Church Doctor, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, asks "Why should we not become 'gods' for Him who for love of us became man?" 8.
In the seventh century, Saint Maximos the Confessor writes "let us become the image of the one whole God, bearing nothing earthly in ourselves, so that we may consort with God and become gods, receiving from God our existence as gods" 7. The twelfth century Church Doctor, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, asks "Why should we not become 'gods' for Him who for love of us became man?" 8.
The liturgies of both the Eastern and Western Churches mention theosis as well. On Holy Thursday Eastern Christians sing "In My kingdom, said Christ, I shall be God with you as gods" 9. A prayer before Holy Communion written by Symeon Metaphrastes states "The Body of God deifieth and nourisheth me, it deifieth the spirit and wondrously nourisheth the mind" 10.
In the Western liturgy, as the priest mingles the water and wine at the Offertory of every Mass, he prays "By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity" 11. The Preface for Ascension Thursday states that Christ ascended into heaven "to claim for us a share in his divine life" 12.
Then we have the modern Protestant definition: (according to Wikipedia):
Theosis as a concept is used among Methodists [5] (http://www.frimmin.com/faith/theosis.html) especially in relation to the pietist movement and in the distinctive Protestant doctrine of entire sanctification which teaches, in summary, that it is the Christian's goal, in principle possible to achieve, to live without any sin. In 1311 the Council of Vienne declared this notion, "that man in this present life can acquire so great and such a degree of perfection that he will be rendered inwardly sinless, and that he will not be able to advance farther in grace" (Denziger §471), to be a heresy. The Protestant conceptions of praxis, phronema, ascetical theology, and sacraments are quite different from Catholic and Orthodox understandings, but the use of the term theosis may illustrate a commonality of objective or hope.
Finally, the Catechism of the Catholic Church mentions theosis numerous times:
"The Word became flesh to make us 'partakers of the divine nature'...'For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.' 'The only begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods'" (CCC 460).
(See also paragraphs 1129, 1265, 1812 and 1988).
In 1995 Bishop Kallistos Ware said:
"...while God's inner essence is forever beyond our comprehension, His energies, grace, life and power fill the whole universe, and are directly accessible to us...When Orthodox [Christians] speak of the divine energies, they do not mean by this an emanation from God, an intermediary between God and man, or a thing or gift that God bestows. On the contrary, the energies are God Himself in His activity and self-manifestation. When a man knows or participates in the divine energies, he truly knows or particpates in God Himself, so far as this is possible for a created being...we are able to affirm the possibility of a direct or mystical union betweeen man and God - what the Greek Fathers term the theosis of man, his deification...There is union, but not fusion or confusion. Although oned with the divine, man still remains man; he is not swallowed up or annihilated, but between him and God there continues to exist an I-Thou relationship of person to person."
+Bishop Kallistos Ware
from The Orthodox Way (1995-St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, Crestwood, New York)
I hope this helps someone, as I still don’t know what I really think about the term. I know what I believe in this area of theology, but I don’t think that I would use the term, “Theosis” as it is confusing as to who defines what.
I will say that if you take the common threads between all the definitions, and explanations, that I tend to agree and accept the theology of “theosis.” Even though I strongly disagree with some concepts of what some people believes the word means.
-Matt Gaiser
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