Theosis and its relation to the oldest lie in the book... [Archive]

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J. K. Amra

25-11-2009, 02:56 AM

Brian Mickelsen

25-11-2009, 03:01 AM

Hi - Man will never become God. That should be obvious - as the rock or stone was cut out of the mountain in Daniel 2 we can only become part of the mountain again (through Christ - of course) . We (Jesus followers) will never be the the Mountain (God).

Brian

Benjamin Amis

25-11-2009, 03:22 AM

How does Orthodox Theosis differ from Satan inspired doctrines of the Mormon Church and Freemasonry, that man can become like God/Divine.

How does St. Athanasius of Alexandria's quote which states that:

"God became man so that man might become god."
[the second god is always lowercase] (On the Incarnation 54:3, PG 25:192B)

Differ from Masonic author, Joseph Fort Newton quote, which states:

".. to the profoundest insight of the human soul -- that God becomes man that man may become God."

[The Religion of Freemasonry: An Interpretation, Macoy Publishing and Masonic Supply Company, 1969, p. 37]

?

Thank you.

Here is a good time to introduce and/or expound upon the doctrines of Divine Essence and Divine Energies. In the Orthodox Church, it is understood that both of these exist and proceed from God. The Divine Essence is that which is purely God. This is the "same essence" (ὁμοούσιον in the Nicene Creed) that Christ shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit, making each person equally God. Man cannot, in any way, partake of the essence of God. This is a state of God alone, which is uncreated.

However, the energies of God can be partaken of by created beings. Many would say that God used Divine Energies to create the world, and that grace and love (in perfect form from God) among with other virtues of Scripture, are Divine Energies. As we practice these virtues (and follow God, by grace) and become more like Christ, we come to partake more and more of the Divine Energies of God. It is in this way that we become god (lowercase, of course) as St. Athanasius says.

The problem with the Mormon faith is that they do not see this distinction, and only see God as a man from another world who attained godhood and created this world out of matter, which is the only eternal thing. This is anathema, because we know as Orthodox Christians that only God Himself is eternal, and is not some exalted physical man from some other universe. Theosis is the process of partaking of the Divine Energies of God and becoming like Him (i.e., Christ), we ourselves do not become God in essence.

I hope that this helps. I'm sure there are people on this forum that can explain this better than I can, and I'll gladly yield to them, but hopefully this sheds some light on the issue.

Herman Blaydoe

25-11-2009, 03:26 AM

M.C. Steenberg

25-11-2009, 10:08 AM

Just a point of clarification on the quotation from St Athanasius:

"God became man so that man might become god."
[the second god is always lowercase] (On the Incarnation 54:3, PG 25:192B)

No, it isn't! This is purely a convention of interpretation, to comfort those who grow uneasy with the implication. But the Theos in the second part is unequivocally God Himself -- and indeed, the to draw a formal distinction between 'God' (God proper) and 'god' (god-like) in this phrase, is to utterly miss St Athanasius' whole point, which is that man is grafted into God through the incarnation.

Deification is not about becoming 'godly' or 'god-like'; it is about being drawn into communion with God Himself.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

Andreas Moran

25-11-2009, 02:10 PM

Just a point of clarification on the quotation from St Athanasius:

No, it isn't! This is purely a convention of interpretation, to comfort those who grow uneasy with the implication. But the Theos in the second part is unequivocally God Himself -- and indeed, the to draw a formal distinction between 'God' (God proper) and 'god' (god-like) in this phrase, is to utterly miss St Athanasius' whole point, which is that man is grafted into God through the incarnation.

Deification is not about becoming 'godly' or 'god-like'; it is about being drawn into communion with God Himself.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

The use of the lower case for 'god' in the well-known saying of St Athanasius may reflect two things. First, in the Greek text, the word 'God' is not used: it reads, 'Αυτος γαρ ενηνθρωπησεν, ινα ημεις θεοποιηθωμεν'. Secondly, though the word in bold means to divinize, 'become god' is the usual rendering, and the use of the lower case can be thought of as avoiding any meaning of man becoming God ontologically which is, of course, impossible. What is meant by becoming God is usually explained by reference to 2 Peter 1:4 - partaking of the divine nature. The incarnation divinized human nature. As St Maximos the Confessor puts it, 'the incarnation of God which makes man God to the same degree as God Himself became man'. What is divinized is the common nature which all human beings share. Christ assumed this common human nature in His incarnation. But individuals have an individual hypostasis and so each one must accept divinization in order to attain to theosis. Christ likewise assumed a created hypostasis (as a man with unique characteristics) as well all of the common human nature. Christ is the pioneer of theosis by His Ascension and His sitting at the right hand of the Father. The divinization of human nature does not, of course, mean the salvation of all; Christ the man was united with Christ God because He was perfect man, but we are not perfect and so must strive by asceticism towards that perfection, working out our salvation.

Owen Jones

25-11-2009, 02:13 PM

The desert fathers always add this caveat: to the extent possible while remaining in a physical body. Another way of looking at this, again via the desert fathers, is that as we are glorified, our sense perception is transformed, and we become able to see things as God sees them. But again we are referring here to God's energies, most specifically, light. We are able to see the true light that exists throughout creation, including other people. There is a very good treatment of this in the story of a Russian priest in the Gulag, whose name escapes me at present.

Michael Stickles

25-11-2009, 03:15 PM

There is a very good treatment of this in the story of a Russian priest in the Gulag, whose name escapes me at present.

Father Arseny, I believe. We read from a book about him as our family dinnertime reading for a while.

Theosis is an interesting concept to try to communicate. A proper understanding appears to rely on many prerequisites, so it's no wonder that differences in the understanding of God, the Incarnation, man's nature, salvation, etc. cause the exact same words to be read very very differently.

(Reminds me of those Coors commercials where the wife comes home, says to her husband "I need to vent", and misunderstanding immediately ensues)

In Christ,
Michael

Rick H.

25-11-2009, 03:27 PM

Theosis is an interesting concept to try to communicate. A proper understanding appears to rely on many prerequisites . . .

I wonder if there is a thread here that attempts to communicate a proper understanding of theosis?

M.C. Steenberg

25-11-2009, 09:53 PM

Andreas! The word ‘God’ (Theos) most certainly is in the phrase—in the very word you quoted and placed in bold-face: θεοποιηθωμεν. This is a compound word in Greek, of which one of its two parts is Theos, the other the verb poieo, ‘to make’. As a compound word (for which Greek has a special fondness) this may not be readily apparent to non Greek-speaking/reading eyes; but it is most certainly present.

I agree by and large with your points; the problem is in trying to sort out the whole of the Orthodox vision of deification through recourse to one passage in St Athanasius—a passage that is all too often used for precisely this. But St Athanasius expressly says ‘to become God’, without qualification. Or rather, his expression is qualified, by the entirety of the book in which that passage is found (which most who raise the quotation don’t read).

St Athanasius’ point, throughout the De incarnatione Verbi is that the incarnation makes it possible for man to be joined to God, and in this joining, this union, to be united with Him as He is united with us. Within his context and his expression, qualifying the ‘becoming God’ with some distinction of capitalisation that implies something other than the coming-into-oneness-with the true God Himself, is to miss entirely his point.

Is this the be all and end all of the Orthodox discussion of deification? Of course it is not. But we mustn’t attempt to make Athanasius do something he is not trying to do, and in the process pervert his own unique and wonderful expression. Man becomes a son of the Father through union with the Son, God Himself. Man’s ‘God-ness’ is ‘God’ and not ‘god’, precisely because it is not a moral condition, an emulation, a synthesis, but authentic union in the eternal and true God. To qualify this, to admit that the ‘God’ in man’s ‘becoming God’ is anything lesser than the true and eternal God, is—in the context of St Athanasius’ discussion—to deny the very heart of the incarnation.

There are very good reasons for making various qualifications on the Orthodox vision of theosis; but sometimes, it is precisely the ‘shock’ of the Fathers at their word, that is most necessary in our day and age.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

Owen

25-11-2009, 10:30 PM

Another Father, whose name I can't recall, said that we were meant to become by grace everything that God is by nature. This implies that God intended us to achieve the Lineness in which He created us, and which we lost in the Fall while retaining His Image in a marred state. And if He intended that we become partakers of the Divine nature, then He also set the terms and conditions on which we could do this.

The "oldest lie in the books" is, then, a half-truth (as most heresy is); it assumes that we can become like God outside the terms and conditions He has set; and this is the meaning of the eating of the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Andreas Moran

25-11-2009, 11:23 PM

Brian Mickelsen

26-11-2009, 04:25 AM

Hi -

[
This is the "same essence" (ὁμοούσιον in the Nicene Creed) that Christ shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit, making each person equally God.

Benjamin you mentioned (in the quotation pasted above) something that I have questions about. Although Christ Jesus was one with the Father and presumably experienced what is called Theosis.

I say that Jesus experienced Theosis (the preceeding may be an ignorant statement -- I don't know) because He grew in wisdom etc., Luke 2:40.

Lu 2:40 And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.
(KJV)

How is it that almost all people, when asked will say that Jesus was equal with God the Father? However when Jesus Himself commented on this realtionship He said that the Father was greater than Himself, John 14:28.

Joh 14:28 ¶ Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.

If Jesus was/is a part of God, as I feel is illustrated in Danial 2, He could accurately say that the Father was greater than Himself.

Oneness with the Father in that case would not necessarily have conveyed equality. Just as the husband and wife become one flesh and yet the Husband is said to be the Head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, Eph 5:23.

If it were possible for a person to become equal with God through "Theosis" then Jesus (our example, 1 Jn 2:6) most certainly would have desired it. Yet He did not. He said about His ascension, "Glorify me with the same Glory I had with you before the world was.

Joh 17:5 And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.

If Jesus relationship is related to the stone cut from the mountain in Danial 2 then Jesus was not asking for equality with the Father, but to again be a part of the Father as He was before He came to earth.

We are encouraged to aspire to Christlikeness - but never to Godhood.

Even in the case of Lucifer - He did not aspire to Godhood but aspired to be exhalted over the stars of God, Isaiah 14:3. In other words Lucifer's sin was to want to be exhalted over the people of God, not to be exhalted over God himself or even be equal with God the Father. Even in the example of the chief sinner (Lucifer), the thought of ascending to Godhood is not alluded to. Probably because of the ridiculous nature of the very concept of created beings aspiring to equality with or exhaltation above the Creator.

If Jesus could say (for our benefit) that the Father is greater than Himself would that not mean that the statement "Jesus was/is equal with the Father is incorrect?

The following verse seems to contradict the concept of the Father being greater than Jesus. At first glance it seems to imply that Jesus is equal with the Father.

Php 2:6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: (KJV)

Php 2:6 who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped,
(ASV)

Now having said all of that, and please forgive the length of this posting. How can the differences in translation, and in fact the very verse itself (Philippians 2:6) be pieced together with other scripture to for a coherant whole?

Could the following be a correct understanding of the information contained in Philippians 2:6 -- If Jesus though he existed in the form of God (as we exist in Christ) considered not equality with God (the Father) a thing to be reached for?

Brian

Anna Stickles

26-11-2009, 04:29 AM

bk 4 ch 38
1. If, however, any one say, What then? Could not God have exhibited man as perfect from beginning? let him that, inasmuch as God is indeed always the same and unbegotten as respects Himself, all things are possible to Him. But created things must be inferior to Him who created them, from the very fact of their later origin; for it was not possible for things recently created to have been uncreated. But inasmuch as they are not uncreated, for this very reason do they come short of the perfect.

3. ....For from the very fact of these things having been created, [it follows] that they are not uncreated; but by their continuing in being throughout a long course of ages, they shall receive a faculty of the Uncreated, through the gratuitous bestowal of eternal existance upon them by God. And thus in all things God has the pre-eminence, who alone is uncreated, the first of all things, and the primary cause of the existence of all, while all other things remain under God's subjection. But being in subjection to God is continuance in immortality, and immortality is the glory of the uncreated One. By this arrangement, therefore, and these harmonies, and a sequence of this nature, man, a created and organized being, is rendered after the image and likeness of the uncreated God—the Father planning everything well and giving His commands, the Son carrying these into execution and performing the work of creating, and the Spirit nourishing and increasing [what is made], but man making progress day by day, and ascending towards the perfect, that is, approximating to the uncreated One.

Something that struck me when I first read this passage by St Ireneaus, is that it seems that there is no implication here that deification, as it was originally intended, included any kind of substantial change Rather what he appears to be saying is that man becomes god by being more of the same, not by being changed from one thing into another. God has preeminance by virtue of His eternity, His aseity*, not by virtue of superior 'substance' or something essentially different in kind. Man although of the same make up, is imperfect, not by virtue of what he is substantially, but by virute of the fact that he is less of it.

Fr Dn Matthew's comments
Man’s ‘God-ness’ is ‘God’ and not ‘god’, precisely because it is not a moral condition, an emulation, a synthesis, but authentic union in the eternal and true God. To qualify this, to admit that the ‘God’ in man’s ‘becoming God’ is anything lesser than the true and eternal God, is—in the context of St Athanasius’ discussion—to deny the very heart of the incarnation.

brought this back to mind, and I admit that on reflection it still seems incredible and I wonder if I am really understanding this rightly.

Is this why Athanasius talks somewhere in On the Incarnation, about man returning to nothingness? because man is substantially nothing apart from his godlikeness? that the essence of man then is precisely to be god? It is something man is always growing into but never reaching since only God is fully, immutably what He is, by virtue of being What HE IS in Himself? but we are what He is only by virtue of our union with Him. However, apart from our union with Him we are nothing at all for separation from Him destroys what we essentially are, it destroys our very being.

We often talk about essence and energies, but what does it really mean to say we participate in God's energies but not His essence within the context of hos the Father's understood this?

* aseity- Being self-derived, in contrast to being derived from or dependent on another; being self-existent, having independent existence.

Kosta

26-11-2009, 05:15 AM

God the Father is the fountainhead of the Trinity. The Son is not subordinate to the Father in essence, but only in the heirarchy. There is neither male nor female in Christ. Both husband and wife are equal in essence but not in heirarchy. Christ the person grew in stature and wisdom we dont divide the human and divine nature, as scripture says:

"Therefore the jews sought all the more to kill him, because He not only broke the sabbath but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God,"(JN 5.18)

The old fire and sword analogy needs to be mentioned again for deification, When a steel sword is thrown into a hot fire it begins to glow red. Anotherwords it partakes in the energy of that fire.

The hymn of Phillipians 2 along with St. Athansius statement is summed up in 2 Cor 8.9, "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ , that though he was rich yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty may become rich."

The freemason quote which mirrors that of St Athanasius is indeed like that statement of Satan. The mason does not say the same thing as Athanasius, though on the surface it seems like he does, Athanasius says God (Logos) became man (at the virgin birth).

The mason says God BECOMES man, because masonry believes in a generic god which can accomodate all theists. In christianity it was in the child of Mary that the hypostatic union took place, not everytime a human is born of woman. The masonic statement implies we are all a hypostatic union of humanity and divinity.
Christ was born of the virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit in a perfect union, the divinity assuming flesh and a rational soul. We on the other hand partake of the divine energy after the aquisition of the Holy Spirit , it is not inborn in us, for us it is an infinite process of struggle with the passions.

And judging from these posts its easier to theorize about divinization than put it into practise. It is the saints who live theosis and dont need to talk about it . They become incorrupt and fragrant upon death and illumine all of creation with their wisdom. For the rest of us, we fail miserably

M.C. Steenberg

26-11-2009, 09:15 AM

Dear Brian, that Christ is equal to the Father in godhead is a foundation of the Christian faith, indicated in Christ's words, the Scriptures, and explicitly described in the first ecumenical council. Christ is not 'part' of God; and He is 'subordinate' to the Father only in taxis within the relations of the Trinity (or, as Kosta has called it, hierarchy - though our good Father Patrick would dislike use of this term here!). Further, it is incorrect to say that Christ underwent/undergoes deification (theosis), for the process of being drawn into communion with God does not apply to one who is God by nature.

Dear Anna, your linkage to the words of St Irenaeus is interesting. One thing that it is sometimes helpful to keep in mind is that deification is really an anthropological doctrine: it describes the true state of man. We are created for communion in the living Lord; our experienced lack of this union is a fracture of our humanity. Deification is its restoration. It is not the making 'supernatural' of man, but the making man of man. For God first fashioned Adam to receive His breath...

INXC, Dcn Matthew

Olga

26-11-2009, 09:39 AM

Brian

Further to Fr Matthew's post above, may I add that in Orthodox belief, it is beyond question that all three persons of the Holy Trinity are equal in stature. Even a brief look at Orthodox liturgical hymnody, particularly the hymns dedicated to the Holy Trinity, bear this out explicitly.

Peter S.

27-11-2009, 11:55 AM

The use of the lower case for 'god' in the well-known saying of St Athanasius may reflect two things. First, in the Greek text, the word 'God' is not used: it reads, 'Αυτος γαρ ενηνθρωπησεν, ινα ημεις θεοποιηθωμεν'. Secondly, though the word in bold means to divinize, 'become god' is the usual rendering, and the use of the lower case can be thought of as avoiding any meaning of man becoming God ontologically which is, of course, impossible. What is meant by becoming God is usually explained by reference to 2 Peter 1:4 - partaking of the divine nature. The incarnation divinized human nature. As St Maximos the Confessor puts it, 'the incarnation of God which makes man God to the same degree as God Himself became man'. What is divinized is the common nature which all human beings share. Christ assumed this common human nature in His incarnation. But individuals have an individual hypostasis and so each one must accept divinization in order to attain to theosis. Christ likewise assumed a created hypostasis (as a man with unique characteristics) as well all of the common human nature. Christ is the pioneer of theosis by His Ascension and His sitting at the right hand of the Father. The divinization of human nature does not, of course, mean the salvation of all; Christ the man was united with Christ God because He was perfect man, but we are not perfect and so must strive by asceticism towards that perfection, working out our salvation.

What a sad story... This is not theosis.

The people in Christ will resurrect in a spiritual body. As St. Paul said to the corinthians in his first letter to them. As St. Chrysostom refferred to. this way to be in Christ is the key to interpretation of the Bible. The Bible is One. If you dont have the key everything will fall apart sooner or later when you compare the books in the Bible.

I will die my material death without being perfect (I guess), but I doubt I will lose my faith in Jesus. That is what counts says Jesus in John. Many people in Christ have died before perfection. It is the spiritual death that can be avoided.

Then we will have a new body. And dont doubt it, and ask how the body will be as St. Paul says, and comes with an analogy to the difference of the bodies of the stars and bodies of humans etc. There are many perspectives and dimensions I dont know. Its ok.

In Christ
Peter

Brian Mickelsen

27-11-2009, 03:56 PM

Peter -

Thankyou for this supportive posting. I am not gererally familiar with Orthodox terminology. When I use the term "theosis" I am not completely sure if I am using it correctly.

What is divinized is the common nature which all human beings share. Christ assumed this common human nature in His incarnation. But individuals have an individual hypostasis and so each one must accept divinization in order to attain to theosis. Christ likewise assumed a created hypostasis (as a man with unique characteristics) as well all of the common human nature. Christ is the pioneer of theosis by His Ascension and His sitting at the right hand of the Father. The divinization of human nature does not, of course, mean the salvation of all; Christ the man was united with Christ God because He was perfect man, but we are not perfect and so must strive by asceticism towards that perfection, working out our

It seems as though it would just stand to reason that Jesus as (our example) underwent what is termed "theosis". Since Christ is said to have Grown etc. ---

Lu 2:40 And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.
(KJV)

There may still be a plausible way to reconcile the comment's of Dcn. Steenberg and the writings of St Maximos the Confessor. I am simply not familiar with the Orthodox faith, but I do invite anyone to clarify this seeming discrepency.

Brian

Herman Blaydoe

27-11-2009, 04:17 PM

Peter -

Thankyou for this supportive posting. I am not gererally familiar with Orthodox terminology. When I use the term "theosis" I am not completely sure if I am using it correctly.

It seems as though it would just stand to reason that Jesus as (our example) underwent what is termed "theosis". Since Christ is said to have Grown etc. ---

Lu 2:40 And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.
(KJV)

There may still be a plausible way to reconcile the comment's of Dcn. Steenberg and the writings of St Maximos the Confessor. I am simply not familiar with the Orthodox faith, but I do invite anyone to clarify this seeming discrepency.

Brian

It is challenging to explain, but yes, Christ submitted to being small and helpless in His human nature, but He was still God. He did not "take off" his Divinity, but it was "covered" or hidden by His humanity. God did not have to "develop" spiritually, but merely in a physical way. Let us break down that verse if I may:

And the child grew,: in a physical sense. He grew larger, his features matured, His physical body learned to walk, talk and manipulate the physical world as would any child

and waxed strong in spirit: can be taken a variety of ways. The Moon waxes and wanes, to our eyes, but it is still the very same Moon, it does not change shape or size. As our Lord grew and His human form developed, obviously His ability to interact in a physical way quickly became more sophisticated, to those around Him, He appeared to be one smart child!

filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him: Well nothing "developmental" about that! It was there all along, it simply became more apparent to those around Him. Even as the Moon appears to become more full as the month pass, so too, did Christ appear to become more "strong" and "wise" as the years passed. He had a plan and all things had to happen in the proper times.

Christ IS God, there is no need for Him to "reunite" with a Godhead He never divided from! He simply knew things, even as a child, that He did not "learn". He wowed them in the Temple even before He was "of age". We have no indications that He attended any formal schooling, being the "son" of an itinerant carpenter. Yes I know that the average Jew, in general, tended to be more educated than in many other cultures at the time, but Holy Scripture really does not speak to it much does it?

Therefore, yes, the physical body of Jesus had to develop, just like ours. But Jesus did not have to "regain" or "grow into" His Divinity.

Or so it seems to this bear of little brain.
Herman the Pooh

Brian Mickelsen

27-11-2009, 07:50 PM

#1 I know that Jesus existed before He came to earth.

#2 I know that Jesus was made a little lower than the angels.

#3 I know that Jesus asked to be glorified with the Father and be made as He was before the world existed. In other words Jesus asked to be glorified with the Father.

Seeming to indicate that the Father would -- so to speak adorn/glorify -- Jesus, with Himself.

For the sake of a "word picture" this appears to indicate that the Father would engulf Jesus, and the two would become one. Does this seem right?

If so, then this would again validate the verses in Daniel 2. The word picture there being that of "the stone being cut out of the Mountain without hands". This word picture from Danial presumably indicates how Jesus proceeded out of/from the Father, (as I understand this verse).

So Jesus came out of/from the Father and later he prayed to be incorporated back into Him (after He suffered death).

As a first look I would say that the wording "made" lower would probably contain the answers we are looking for.

The word "made" in the New testament is defined this way in my dictionary,

---------------------
1642. elattow elattoo, el-at-to'-o
Search for 1642 in KJV
from 1640; to lessen (in rank or influence):--decrease, make lower.
---------------------

Now, I can't really explain this either, as Mr. Blaydoe has suggested, but I am certain that the proper wording will convey the idea. It is simply hard to explain.

Jesus is referred to in this way by St Maximos the Confessor - "Christ is the pioneer of theosis" (if I understand Peter's post correctly). Dcn. Steenberg mentions that Jesus did not undergo "theosis". There has to be something that is not understood here.

Jesus was lower than the angels when he was on earth. Obviously not in the aspect of the Godhead - since the angels are instructed to worship Him.

I am not certain of the Orthodox terminology here but I trust/hope that you all get my meaning. Hypostasis would appear to define Jesus state of being after he was made lower than the Angels.

Heb 1:6 And again, when he bringeth in the firstbegotten into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him. {again...: or, when he bringeth again}
KJV)

We are even given the reason why Jesus was made lower than the angels. He was made lower (temporarily) so that he could die, as the following phrase seems to indicate.

"For the suffering of death".

Jesus was lower than the angels while He was on the earth and yet the angels were commanded to worship Him, even while He was on earth.

To explain this is difficult.

Brian

Brian Mickelsen

27-11-2009, 09:35 PM

I am gettin a little ahead in my thoughts here, but after the question about wether Jesus underwent theosis is answered. A further question would be -

After Jesus Lived His (sinless) life on earth He still had to ask to be made one with the Father as He was before he came to earth.

If He still had to ask the Father to Glorify Him then deification appears to happen after even the sinless life of the Son of God. The sinless life was not enough to accomplish this deification.

That is - if deification is defined as oneness with God.

1. Is this glorification the deification spoken of in the initial posts. In other words can deification be accomplished on earth.

2. Is deification the same as theosis in the Orthodox writings?

The phrase theosis and deification appear to have been used in this thread as meaning the same thing.

Brian

M.C. Steenberg

27-11-2009, 09:37 PM

Dear Brian,

I'm afraid there are some serious problems with your remarks in your latest post.

Some necessary corrections:

The glory 'of Himself' by which the the Son is adorned in the Father, is the Son's proper glory as God consubstantial and equal with the Father in all things. It is not the Father adding some other glory to the Son (as is implied in your phrasing, 'the Father would -- so to speak adorn/glorify -- Jesus, with Himself').
The idea that 'the Father would engulf Jesus, and the two would become one' is not a supportable theological statement. It is, in its own way, a combination of the heresies of both 'Origenistic' emanationism (that the deity is the Father's and the Son is participant in it / absorbed by it) and that of Apollinarius, highly modified (that one nature can absorb another, making them one - though Apollinarius had raised this in a Christological context).
The vision in Daniel of the stone uncut by human hands, is understood in the Orthodox Church as a prophecy of the Virgin birth of Christ. It is not taken as an indication of the Son's relationship to the Father (and, in fact, doesn't work in this context); but an indication of the Son's human birth, in human nature, from a Virgin who had never known man.
The idea that the Son 'came out of/from the Father and later he prayed to be incorporated back into Him' is unsupportable theologically. This is a rather odd concept; but it has a certain forebear in the 'Gnostic' aeonic mythologies, identified as a rather commonplace heresy as far back as the second century.
As a correction of vocabulary, the Greek verb ἐλασσόω (in later form ἐλαττόω) does not mean 'to make', 'made'; it means 'to lower, to lessen'. The English word 'made' in the phrase 'He was made lower than...' is simply the way English expresses the voice and mood of the Greek verb - it is not a separate word in Greek. And it certainly cannot be introduced as a term in its own right, suggesting a kind of fabrication/fashioning/making (which is what you are arguing: the the Son is 'made' from the Mountain, etc.).
I am not certain where you are finding the phrase 'Jesus is the pioneer of theosis' in St Maximus, as you suggest; have you some source? Andreas used the phrase above in one of his posts; but the point is that Christ 'pioneers' (if we're going to use that word) deification by joining human nature to the divine, allowing our nature to be divinised. Christ needs to undergo no process of deification, as He is 'Deus' - God. The idea of the Son going through some process of being united to God, or becoming God, is quite anathema.
It is not supportable to say that 'hypostasis would appear to define Jesus state of being after he was made lower than the Angels'. Hypostasis does not define a state: is identifies personal being. The hypostasis of the Son is eternal, and in His hypostasis comes to exist as man of the Virgin.

I apologise about the rather direct shape in which these corrections come; but these are some very basic theological issues that need to be stated rightly.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

M.C. Steenberg

27-11-2009, 09:42 PM

Dear Brian,

I'm afraid the problems have continued in your most recent post.

Further corrections are needed:

It is incorrect to state that 'After Jesus Lived His (sinless) life on earth He still had to ask to be made one with the Father as He was before he came to earth.' It is a foundational teaching of the Church that the Son is always one with the Father -- this is said time and again in the Scriptures, the Liturgical texts, the Fathers. In taking flesh, He did not cease to be in perfect union with the Father and the Spirit.
Theosis and deification are one and the same. Theosis comes from Greek, deification comes from Latin. The translation of each is 'to become divine, to become God'.
The Son's asking the Father to glorify Him (in, for example, His 'high priestly prayer') is not a question of Him imploring deification; it is a petition for His glory - the glory of One of the Holy Trinity - to be manifest fully in the cosmos.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

Brian Mickelsen

27-11-2009, 09:44 PM

Hi Dcn. Matthew - I say that Jesus is the pioneer of Theosis - because it was used in Peters post, and I assumed this was a quote from St. Maximus.

The rest of your post will take me a while to understand - thankyou for your response/correction.

Brian

Herman Blaydoe

27-11-2009, 11:28 PM

#1 I know that Jesus existed before He came to earth.

More than that, He existed before the beginning, there never was a time when He was not. He was begotten, not made. I am guessing that you do not accept the idea of the Trinity?

#2 I know that Jesus was made a little lower than the angels.

Um actually no. Absolutely not. WE, that is, you and I, mankind, was made "lower than the angels". And Jesus Christ took on our "a little lower than the angels" humanity without giving up His Divinity.

#3 I know that Jesus asked to be glorified with the Father and be made as He was before the world existed. In other words Jesus asked to be glorified with the Father.

Seeming to indicate that the Father would -- so to speak adorn/glorify -- Jesus, with Himself.

For the sake of a "word picture" this appears to indicate that the Father would engulf Jesus, and the two would become one. Does this seem right?

NO, not at all. JESUS IS GOD. He is the second Person of the Trinity. Do you not agree with this?

If so, then this would again validate the verses in Daniel 2. The word picture there being that of "the stone being cut out of the Mountain without hands". This word picture from Danial presumably indicates how Jesus proceeded out of/from the Father, (as I understand this verse).

So Jesus came out of/from the Father and later he prayed to be incorporated back into Him (after He suffered death).

Again, no. Jesus did not come "out of" the Father and go back in. Jesus is "begotten", the Holy Spirit "proceeds" and not quite in the manner you have expressed. Again, is the word "Trinity" part of your beliefs?

As a first look I would say that the wording "made" lower would probably contain the answers we are looking for.

The word "made" in the New testament is defined this way in my dictionary,

---------------------
1642. elattow elattoo, el-at-to'-o
Search for 1642 in KJV
from 1640; to lessen (in rank or influence):--decrease, make lower.
---------------------

Now, I can't really explain this either, as Mr. Blaydoe has suggested, but I am certain that the proper wording will convey the idea. It is simply hard to explain.

Jesus took on our form, which is "lower than the angels" but He did not give up His Divinity. He was still God even when He walked the Earth. As one of the stichera of Matins goes, "wrapped in the flesh like bait on the hook..."

Jesus is referred to in this way by St Maximos the Confessor - "Christ is the pioneer of theosis" (if I understand Peter's post correctly). Dcn. Steenberg mentions that Jesus did not undergo "theosis". There has to be something that is not understood here.

Jesus had no need to undergo theosis. He is already united to the Father as GOD.

Jesus was lower than the angels when he was on earth. Obviously not in the aspect of the Godhead - since the angels are instructed to worship Him.

Jesus took on our humanity which is "lower than the angels" but He did NOT, I repeat, NOT give up His Divinity. He was BOTH, it is not an either/or proposition.

I am not certain of the Orthodox terminology here but I trust/hope that you all get my meaning. Hypostasis would appear to define Jesus state of being after he was made lower than the Angels.

Heb 1:6 And again, when he bringeth in the firstbegotten into the world, he saith, And let all the angels of God worship him. {again...: or, when he bringeth again}
KJV)

God did not, does not, will not, change. We are not modalists. Even when He "put on" our humanity, He did not change.

We are even given the reason why Jesus was made lower than the angels. He was made lower (temporarily) so that he could die, as the following phrase seems to indicate.

"For the suffering of death".

Jesus was lower than the angels while He was on the earth and yet the angels were commanded to worship Him, even while He was on earth.

To explain this is difficult.

Brian

Especially when you are missing an essential piece of the puzzle. God put on our humanity, but did not "take off", remove or otherwise change, dilute, or temporarily "set aside" His Divinity. He merely withheld it from our senses. Put that piece into the puzzle and the picture becomes more clear.

Or so it seems to this bear of little brain

Herman the Pooh

Brian Mickelsen

28-11-2009, 12:03 AM

Hi Mr. Blaydoe - Yes I do believe in the trinity.

Paul Cowan

28-11-2009, 06:38 AM

Hi Mr. Blaydoe - Yes I do believe in the trinity.

Dear Brian,

In my personal life lately, I speak with people that use the same terms I do, but their understanding is different than my own. Can you share with us your understanding (definition) of the Trinity? This might help us communicate better.

Case in point: The Mormons use the word trinity to refer to the 3 persons of God. They believe in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. However their understanding is of 3 gods and not a triune God as we believe. So you see they use the same lingo, but have different definitions.

Paul

Owen Jones

28-11-2009, 02:40 PM

This is all quite backwards and, forgive me, just a tad infuriating. On the one hand, there is nothing wrong with asking questions about Orthodoxy, what Orthodox believe, what we practice, etc. But in what spirit? And under what conditions? At some point the questions and answers have to break off because there is this spiritual chasm. I am not claiming spiritual superiority here -- either for me or anyone else who is Orthodox. It's just that there must be some kind of proper spiritual seeking that goes along with the questioning...

Brian Mickelsen

28-11-2009, 04:22 PM

Dear Brian,

In my personal life lately, I speak with people that use the same terms I do, but their understanding is different than my own. Can you share with us your understanding (definition) of the Trinity? This might help us communicate better.

Case in point: The Mormons use the word trinity to refer to the 3 persons of God. They believe in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. However their understanding is of 3 gods and not a triune God as we believe. So you see they use the same lingo, but have different definitions.

Paul

Of course, Paul I will answer your question --

I believe that God is the Father

Jesus Christ is His Son

The Holy Spirit is the person who joins them together.

Usually when I/We have departed from the stated topic, I have been told that I am not on topic and asked to either stop or start another thread. The moderators may just tell us the same thing regarding this side topic, Or they may allow this departure. Just so you know Paul.

Brian

Brian Mickelsen

28-11-2009, 04:24 PM

Owen Jones

28-11-2009, 04:41 PM

I guess I am asking -- what is the point of the questions?

Brian Mickelsen

28-11-2009, 05:15 PM

We are discussing what is called in Orthodoxy "theosis". A side discussion was touched upon regarding the trinity. The point was (from my point of view) wether Jesus had to develop or undergo "theosis".

I have receive clarification from Dcn. Steenberg and Mr. Bladoe, which I have printed out for further consideration. From my standpoint there is no animosity. This is simply a discussion.

If I have offended you - it was unintentional, and if it is required, I apologize for anything I may have said that provoked you.

Brian

Owen Jones

28-11-2009, 06:23 PM

No, it's not that. I don't accuse you of anything intentional. It's just that the underlying question needs to be brought into clarity for any discussion with a non-Orthodox person to be fruitful. It ought to be -- how can I save my hopelessly sinful and corrupted soul (and body)? That should be the same question for those of us who are Orthodox as well, but at least if we are Orthodox one might make some modest assumptions without having to look at the underlying question in each and every case. But in the case of an inquirer from outside of Orthodoxy, I think it is important to ask, what are you after? This is serious, life and death business here. While Christological issues are complex and sometimes confusing, they do not arise in a vacuum, but arise out of the struggle to conform ourselves to Christ's life -- these questions that are discussed and debated all relate back to an underlying question of how, then are we to be saved. We cannot treat them as abstractions, or as if we are carrying on a course in comparative religion...that would essentially be doing violence to our beliefs and practices. Our beliefs and practices are to be lived, not debated, and if someone wants this life, then monachos is a good place to share and learn, in the context of a living community of worship, typically an Orthodox parish. They cannot really be understood apart from that.

I'm not trying to drive off non-Orthodox participants, and it wouldn't be my right to do so if I were, but this is a living reality that can abused by focusing too much on abstractions and generalities.

Owen

28-11-2009, 07:20 PM

While people tend to speak of theosis as occuring in stages--purification, illumination, union--the fact is that these are more like energy-states. When you develope your spiritual muscle enough, you become capable of experiencing illumination, though the ground-state of purification is never left behind. And the great Saints are strong enough that they become capable of experience union with the Divine while yet in the body, but again, the ground-state is never left behind.

Brian Mickelsen

28-11-2009, 08:35 PM

Again Owen I really don't know how to respond. But I will try. I have been reprimanded twice (maybe more - I can't remember) to stick to the topic. The overarching topic in all of these discussions is in effect as you say ----

It ought to be -- how can I save my hopelessly sinful and corrupted soul (and body)?

These pieces of the puzzle are not abstractions to me either. I know this is your life - please know that the pursuit of Christ has been my life for 25 years as well. I don't know Orthodox terms or your practices but this is certainly not an abstract discussion to me either.

The point as far as an overarching point in my opinion and life is how to conform to and glorify Christ Jesus.

But in this forum/community I have been reminded to stick to the topic of the particular thread. In this case Theosis. It took me a while to simply understand what the Orthodox meant when they used the word "theosis".

I find that it is familiar to my thinking but I have not generally used that word to describe it in the past.

The "lie" so to speak is not really theosis as stated by Dcn Matthew --

Theosis and deification are one and the same. Theosis comes from Greek, deification comes from Latin. The translation of each is 'to become divine, to become God'.

The "lie" then from post #1 is something that I have not yet understood from these discussions.

While I never expect to be God - I do aspire to have my sins forgiven and attain to the image of Christ at some point - wether in this lifetime of not. I do not consider that to be a personal divinization. But this may just be a matter of symantics.

This is the thread topic and it involves what you term Theosis. The answers I got from Dcn. Matthew and Mr. Blaydoe contain thoughts that I probably don't quite understand yet and somehow that relates to the trinity. Now how that realtes to the "lie" mentioned in post #1 - I am not certain, yet. Mr. Blaydoes comment seems to suggest that He feels that my perceived misunderstanding has to do with my understanding of the trinlty -

Especially when you are missing an essential piece of the puzzle. God put on our humanity, but did not "take off", remove or otherwise change, dilute, or temporarily "set aside" His Divinity. He merely withheld it from our senses. Put that piece into the puzzle and the picture becomes more clear.

My thinking is very different from that of an Orthodox believer. I have never been exposed to these ideas. When I try and work out what I consider to be doctrine/salvation in my postings I am sure you are confronted with thoughts and concepts that are foreign to you. If you consider them to be unscriptural let me know. These thoughts/concepts since they concern the most importnt thing in our lives (our relationship with God), will be threatening to us personally especially if a deeply held personal; belief is challanged in a way new to us.

Challanging personal beliefs can be painful. God can change a heart without causeing emotional pain (through our thoughts etc.) but mankind is sometimes not as careful of the other persons sensibilities. So damaged feelings will be inevitable.

In general when a person receives correction or even a new insight/direction from another person it will probably not be acknowledged to the person who has been capitulated to. Of course with my finely developed sense of humility (joke), I may from time to time acknowledge that I have learned something from you folks.

It has been my experience however that to expect a public demonstration of capitulation will only lead to the frustration that I think you are becoming familiar with.

Brian

Paul Cowan

28-11-2009, 08:53 PM

Of course, Paul I will answer your question --

I believe that God is the Father

Jesus Christ is His Son

The Holy Spirit is the person who joins them together.

Usually when I/We have departed from the stated topic, I have been told that I am not on topic and asked to either stop or start another thread. The moderators may just tell us the same thing regarding this side topic, Or they may allow this departure. Just so you know Paul.

Brian

This is not how Orthodoxy views the Trinity.

Do you remember in Star Trek IV when Dr. McCoy asked Spock to discuss death and re-life from Star Trek III and Spock's reply was they could have no meaningful discussion without a base point of reference. Meaning McCoy would have to experience death and re-life to have the discussion?

Same here. We are not comparing apples to apples. We have a different understanding of our terms and until they are the same, we can have no meaningful discussion. The problem comes in that we don't know what terms we DO have in common. I do wish our Monachos dictionary was back online.

Our definition of the Trinity is this
God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit are totally undivided and never without. The Holy Spirit does not "join" them together as they are never separated and never can be. They are all 3; one. There is never a time when one is without the other two.

Jesus said multiple times over God the Father is in me as I am in Him. Just because he did not specifically mention the Holy Spirit does not mean He is to be excluded. They were not ready for Him yet. Words are very limiting. God is not. Jesus said He would "go" to the Father and send the Holy Spirit. These action words are not meant to mean God the Son and God the Father are not present "in" the Spirit with us. God is omnipresent, the Trinity is unseparable, therefore the Trinity is always everywhere all times. "Where ever 2 or more are praying in My name, there I will be with them." How can this be if only the Holy Spirit is with us?

When Jesus was separated from His family in Bethleham as a child, he marveled the church elders with his knowledge. He only shared with them as much as was supremely permissable for a child of His age to share with them to make them marvel. Had He shown them more of His wisdom than was humanly conceivable for a child to have, He would have been marked a freak and dismissed. There are several places Jesus "hides" His abilities from those around Him.

1) When His disciples ask him to tell them when He will return and He said only the Father knows. Of course He knew since He is "in" the Father and the Father "in" Him. He is God, but being a loving God he withheld the knowledge from them so they (we) would stay diligent until his return. Do earthly fathers not withhold things from their children who are not ready for them? Like car keys.
2) When Peter cuts off the dude's ear and Jesus tells him to put away his sword since He could ask for legions of angels to come and save Him if He asked.
3) How many miracles did He perform in secret away from crowds so they would not see them strictly telling the beneficiaries not to tell anyone?

I shared once with a Mormon co-worker our Creed. He said "yeah, that's what we believe too". The words may have been right, but the definition behind them was not. When we talked a bit more about definitions, it was clear to both of us, we were not talking about the same thing.

Paul

Ben Johnson

28-11-2009, 08:58 PM

Hi Brian

Do you come from a protestant background? I do and thererfore have treaded the subject of theosis very carelfully. I think the main thing to remember is that theosis begins with God. It can only be accomplished WITH God. It cannot be done alone.

--Ben

Owen

28-11-2009, 09:28 PM

Indeed, synergy (cooperating with/working together with) between us and God is necessary for theosis. That is another concept difficult for some Protestants (i.e., Calvinists) to accept.

Brian Mickelsen

28-11-2009, 09:43 PM

Yes Ben - I was from a protestant background when I was younger, but I was not really religious then. My parents just attended a lutheran church - so I did.

I am really from a pentacostal background - although I am no longer an active participant in the group or doctrines.

Brian Mickelsen

28-11-2009, 10:10 PM

No, I dont remember that scene from the movie Paul but I see your point.

I have never really worried about how the Trinity was constituted - to tell you the truth. I formed and opinion and that was fine with me. I was and am more concerned with what I must do to be saved etc., than I am /was with what constituted the nature of God.

As far as the Trinity goes, and your definition...

Our definition of the Trinity is this
God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit are totally undivided and never without. The Holy Spirit does not "join" them together as they are never separated and never can be. They are all 3; one. There is never a time when one is without the other two.

... I disagree with the joining part, but really have no disagreements with the concept of the three being together all the time.

Since Mr. Blaydoe thinks that some my misconception's may arise from that opinion - I am willing to talk about it.

As far as theosis is concerned and the "Lie" of the supposed Divinization of the Morman's etc. I still don't see how that fits together.

Would not divinization/theosis of the Orthodox faith be the same Divinization of the Mormon faith?

Irregardless of the fine points or differences in the doctrine of both groups, the basic result of both doctrines is divinization.

Now is this Divinization equal to attaining Godhood? That may be where the difference between the two doctrinal stances lies. But these are just differences in terminology - is there not a difference between the two divizination processes that is substantial. Do the Orthodox believers expect to become divine in the same way as the Mormons do?

Please don't be offended by the implication, I know the answer is "no" but how do the two notions of Divinization differ?

After finding out how the end results differ - then the process of Theosis etc. will become clearer.

Just as the Journey to Christlikeness May differ from the morman understanding of the journey to Godhood.

Brian

Brian Mickelsen

28-11-2009, 10:17 PM

In particular - I still don't understand this post.

Just a point of clarification on the quotation from St Athanasius:

No, it isn't! This is purely a convention of interpretation, to comfort those who grow uneasy with the implication. But the Theos in the second part is unequivocally God Himself -- and indeed, the to draw a formal distinction between 'God' (God proper) and 'god' (god-like) in this phrase, is to utterly miss St Athanasius' whole point, which is that man is grafted into God through the incarnation.

Deification is not about becoming 'godly' or 'god-like'; it is about being drawn into communion with God Himself.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

Brian

M.C. Steenberg

29-11-2009, 12:06 AM

Dear Brian, dear others,

Owen is quite right. Even if well intentioned, intellectual theorising about deification will never yield a result. It can be discussed to a certain useful degree, so long as certain common realities of Christian experience are shared; but beyond this, it simply becomes a series of abstractions and the fruit of one's own will. And the same is true, and to a far greater extent, if these truths are not shared. Realities such as God in Trinity, the Son's union with the Father, the nature of salvation, etc., are not things that can be got to by a process of will: they are given by God. The Church ensures this. And without them, the discussion of deification has no grounding.

Here is the way to understand the Orthodox doctrine of deification:

1. Become Orthodox.
2. Pray, worship, fast within the embrace of the Church. Live a life of spiritual obedience.
3. Experience a deified life - in the shared life of the saints, in the Eucharistic communion, in the gradual transformation of the heart

If the goal of a discussion of deification does not take as its aim the progress toward or along this route, it has little hope of bearing any fruit. So we must ask ourselves: do we discuss these matters for such reasons? If so, let the discussion carry forward, with God's blessing. But if for any other reason, we have no hope of our words bearing fruit.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

Paul Cowan

29-11-2009, 12:28 AM

Fr. Dcn.

My dyxlecia got the best of me on that post. I saw "Become Orthodox" as "Become Priest".

The 'pr' for priest from 'pr' for pray and the 'st' for priest from 'st' from fast; both of these words from the line below. I was shocked and disheartened until I realized what I was reading. So much for the public school system and my speed reading. At least now there is a chance for my pitiful self. Not so if I had to first become a priest. Whew.

Paul

Herman Blaydoe

29-11-2009, 01:32 AM

Here are some basic "thought" questions. I am not challenging and not expecting an answer, just throwing some things out there to think about.

God is Trinity. I think we have all agreed to this. Bearing that in mind:

1. The Son is not "made". He is continually "begotten" of the Father. The Holy Spirit continually "proceeds" from the Father (and some say, "through the Son", but not from the Son). Did the Father exist "before" the Son and the Holy Spirit?

2. If the Father "made" the Son "lower than the angels", then how can the Son still be part of the Trinity? How can the Trinity exist?

3. Could it be that the terms "son of man" and "lower than the angels" are misunderstood? Are you and I not "sons of man"? If the Divine Jesus takes human form while retaining His Divinity (wrapped in the flesh like bait on the hook), is He not taking the FORM of a servant, appearing "lower than the angels"?

5. Is being God and man mutually exclusive? Do you think that Jesus cannot be both at the same time?

6. If the Son has never actually divided from the Father, why would there any need for Him to be re-united to Him?

7. Is not "theosis" the degree to which we "put on Christ" and in cooperation with the Holy Spirit, renewed the "likeness" to Christ that we lost in the Fall?

8. For Christ to have to "undergo" theosis, it would mean that He was somehow severed from the Trinity. How can there be a Trinity with a sundered Son?

To get back to the original question, the "lie" is that we can become "God" on our own, without God's will. "Theosis" is what is supposed to happen, acting in accordance with God's will and not contrary to it. The father of lies takes Truth and twists it. He does not eliminate it, he merely bends it in a direction that takes us away from where we are supposed to be. The key is we can't get there from here, without God. The lie is that we can.

Or so it seems to this bear of little brain
Herman the Pooh who really needs a nap after this one

Anna Stickles

29-11-2009, 01:40 AM

If Jesus relationship is related to the stone cut from the mountain in Danial 2 then Jesus was not asking for equality with the Father, but to again be a part of the Father as He was before He came to earth.
Heb 1:3 The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.Orthodox understanding of the Trinity is that Jesus was never separated from the Father, just as the sun is never separated from the light it emits, even if that light travels thousands of miles into space, it is still one continuous 'sunbeam' connected to its source. Even while here on earth, having taken on human form and having been made a little lower then the angels, He did not cease to be still upholding and sustaining the universe. His humanity is something added to His divinity, He did not cease in any way to be what He was before in becoming man.

In particular - I still don't understand this post.
man is grafted into God through the incarnation.
Deification is not about becoming 'godly' or 'god-like'; it is about being drawn into communion with God Himself.
Brian

John 15
4Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. 5"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. In the Orthodox understanding of theosis, there is a certain underlying understanding of human nature lying at it's heart. Human nature only finds fulfillment in it's union with God. Apart from God we are nothing. We are not immortal in and of ourselves, rather when separated from God, decay and death sets in. We are not righteous, or loving, or virtuous in any way by nature, rather only in union with God do these things become part of us because they are part of His character and being.

Only in union with Him do we become like Him. We take on His characteristics so to speak.

Christ did not have to undergo theosis, because the Incarnation is God joining Himself to human nature (Philip 2:5-8). Theosis itself is man coming into communion with God. The Incarnation is what makes theosis possible.

If we postulate that Christ, when he became a man, was separated from the Father, then we have no solution to the Fall. There is no rejoining of human and divine, there is no healing to the separation from God that happened at the Fall.

Also, Brian, if your view of Christ is accepted then one has to deny the basic principle that "the LORD is one." (Duet 6:24) In a situation where Christ is less then or separate from the Father, we have two gods not one.

The basic Orthodox creed to describe the Trinity is "three persons, one in essence, undivided". To make Christ less then the Father is to deny that they are one in essence, to make Christ separate is to say they are divided.

This is why people were wondering if you believe in the Trinity. What they were really asking is do you believe in this understanding of the Trinity, but I don't think that was made real clear in earlier posts.

Owen Jones

29-11-2009, 02:37 PM

One does not strive toward theosis as the goal. One does not use a definition of theosis as one's starting point in this striving. One strives toward obedience. Theosis is the result...I say this as an expert on disobedience...

Fr Raphael Vereshack

29-11-2009, 03:09 PM

Anna Stickles wrote:

If we postulate that Christ, when he became a man, was separated from the Father, then we have no solution to the Fall. There is no rejoining of human and divine, there is no healing to the separation from God that happened at the Fall.

It may also help to keep in mind that there has been a gradual drift away from an Orthodox understanding of the Incarnation during the past centuries. This has been partly conscious but also partly a reflection of a cultural transformation since the renaissance.

Basically what this understanding of the Incarnation amounts to is the belief that the Son of God does purposefully distance Himself from the Father at the Incarnation. This is partly the result of how human and created nature is sinful. But it is also as a sign of the self-humiliation of the Son away from the Father and towards humanity; of the 'solidarity' of Christ with weak humanity. In other words this 'laying aside' or 'covering over' to some extent of His divinity is taken as the very sign of His kenosis, of His love for mankind.

Why I bring this up is because some of us who were raised in non-Orthodoxy may well remember this teaching about Christ. It wasn't hidden. And again it was supposed to explain the very basis of how the Incarnation was significant at least to its own humanist eyes. For in reality that is what this understanding of the Incarnation is since it focuses on Christ's incarnation mainly as a moral act; ie Christ acts as the good man, our model.

It is thus no accident that this understanding provided the foundation of the shift from a Patristic understanding of Christ's Nativity to later humanistic understandings of this feast.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

Owen

29-11-2009, 03:49 PM

The problem with any non-Patristic understanding of the Incarnation (taken as a whole from the conception of Christ in the Virgin Mary to the Ascension and sitting down at the right hand of the Father) is that such an understaneding cannot make sense of the theophanies of Christ's baptism in the Jordan and the Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor; for the Uncreated Light seen in those eventsis something Christ always had with Him.

Anna Stickles

29-11-2009, 10:56 PM

Basically what this understanding of the Incarnation amounts to is the belief that the Son of God does purposefully distance Himself from the Father at the Incarnation. This is partly the result of how human and created nature is sinful. But it is also as a sign of the self-humiliation of the Son away from the Father and towards humanity; of the 'solidarity' of Christ with weak humanity. In other words this 'laying aside' or 'covering over' to some extent of His divinity is taken as the very sign of His kenosis, of His love for mankind.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

Before starting to read more widely in the patrisitcs I could say with Brian I never really worried about how the Trinity was constituted. However, looking back at what was involved in what I believed, I would say that the idea of Christ's kenosis I absorbed from the Protestant tradition is what you say here. Christ laying aside some of His powers and glory, giving up the beauty of heaven, giving up some or all of the intimacy and union in His relationship with the Father, etc.

Rereading Philip 2:5-8
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!

with more of an Orthodox mindset, I notice that the emphasis in these verses is not what Christ gives up, it focuses on what He takes on - servanthood, human likeness (human condition), obedience (really a struggle for obedience due to taking on a body. Obedience before the incarnation was not a struggle), and suffering. And yet He takes these on while still being in very nature God.

What is an Orthodox view of Christ's kenosis? Obviously it goes beyond a moral act of selflessness, and involves the power of God to raise up humanity, but I think there are still things that are not sliding into place.

I think that there are very practical issues here for our salvation also. If our attitude is to be the same as Jesus Christ.... then it is important for us to see what the Son was doing... otherwise we end up imitating something Christ is not, rather then striving toward a true image of who Christ is and what He is doing.

Olga

30-11-2009, 08:20 AM

This is but one snippet from Anna's post:

Even while here on earth, having taken on human form and having been made a little lower then the angels, He did not cease to be still upholding and sustaining the universe. His humanity is something added to His divinity, He did not cease in any way to be what He was before in becoming man.

This teaching can be distilled further. Here's a magnificat verse from ode 9 of the canon for the feast of the Meeting of the Lord; the "old man" referred to is Righteous Symeon, who, with awe and joy at the fulfilment of the prophecy he had received many years before, took the Christ-child in his arms when He was presented in the Temple:

It is not the old man who holds Me, but I uphold him; for he begs Me to let him depart.

A major theme of the Vigil service of this feast is the divine humanity of this Child. A look at the hymnody of this feast, and, indeed, of the other major feasts of the Lord should leave one in no doubt as to the equality of God the Son with His Father.

Fr Raphael Vereshack

30-11-2009, 04:13 PM

Anna Stickles wrote:

What is an Orthodox view of Christ's kenosis? Obviously it goes beyond a moral act of selflessness, and involves the power of God to raise up humanity, but I think there are still things that are not sliding into place.

I believe that this is taken up by the continual use of the word 'condescension' by the Fathers. This means the adoption of humanity in its fullness by Christ save for sin. The word though also implies a certain mercy & humbling by Christ towards mankind as part of God's pre-eternal providence through the Incarnation for our sake.

Condescension however does not mean the laying aside by Christ of His divinity at the Incarnation. As the service texts for Nativity make clear, Christ comes in humility in taking on the human condition. But simultaneously the glory of His divinity shines through this very same 'taking on' of our humanity.

This is why regardless of the variety of traditions in regards to the manner of the divine/human unity of Christ (eg Alexandrian, Antiochian, Latin) there was always with the Fathers a universal emphasis on the continuity of the divinity of the Incarnate Christ.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

Brian Patrick Mitchell

30-11-2009, 06:19 PM

What is an Orthodox view of Christ's kenosis? Obviously it goes beyond a moral act of selflessness, and involves the power of God to raise up humanity, but I think there are still things that are not sliding into place.

I think we might be underestimating the power of Christ’s “moral act of selflessness,” perhaps because we are still thinking of His example in Western terms, as mere model of good behavior and not as a revelation about God and man — perhaps also because, with the West, we are not putting the Incarnation into historical perspective and are therefore missing what it meant “in the fullness of time” — both at that time and for all time.

Please forgive the length of the following. It’s an excerpt from the final chapter of a book I am finishing on salvation, which seems especially relevant to the issue at hand:

Christianity is a historical religion, a faith based on actual historical events, and yet none of these [Western] doctrines of divine atonement for human sin makes any attempt to explain the Gospel of Christ within its historical context. They all regard Christ’s saving work as a cosmic event, without reference to the hopelessness of the ancients, the failure of their philosophy, or the work of early Christian apologists in relating the Incarnation to the predicament of their day.

Before the preaching of the Gospel, the ancients felt entrapped both within and without by forces beyond their control. Externally, they were subjects of fate, pawns to the unseen, unknowable, unsympathetic powers of the universe; internally, they were slaves to the body, dominated by its desires, persecuted by its passions, and frighted by its fears. The leading philosophies of the era were of little comfort. Platonism held out only the slightest hope that through supreme effort a man might eventually escape the slavery of the body, though perhaps only after many incarnations, while Stoicism sought only relief from perplexity and strife through hopeless resignation to whatever happens — and if that failed, suicide. Neither of these alternatives provided much support for enduring pain and death for the sake of goodness and truth. Neither, in fact, provided much sense of what goodness and truth are and mean to mortal men.

In contrast, early Christian apologists confidently proclaimed the optimism of natural goodness and freedom of will. St. Ignatius, martyred in 107, writes in his epistle to the Magnesians, “If anyone is truly religious, he is a man of God; but if he is irreligious, he is a man of the devil, made such, not by nature, but by his own choice.” St. Justin the Philosopher, martyred in 166, writes that “unless the human race have the power of avoiding evil and choosing good by free choice, they are not accountable for their actions, of whatever kind they be.” St. Irenaeus writes around 180: “But if some had been made by nature bad, and others good, these latter would not be deserving of praise for being good, for they were created that way. Nor would the former be reprehensible, for that is how they were made. However, all men are of the same nature. They are all able to hold fast and to do what is good. On the other hand, they have the power to cast good from them and not to do it.” Clement of Alexandria writes around 195, “It is by one’s own fault that he does not choose what is best. God is free of blame.” Tertullian writes around 210, “As to fortune, it is man’s freedom of will.” Origen writes around 245, “The Scriptures. . . emphasize the freedom of the will. They condemn those who sin, and approve those who do right. . . . For it is not the nature in us that is the cause of the evil; rather, it is the voluntary choice that works evil.” Likewise all true teachers of the Gospel have maintained in every age that man is not bad by nature or doomed by fate, but free to sin or not sin.

The choice to sin, however, carries consequences. In choosing to sin, man turns his back on God, willfully separating himself from his source of light and life, the objective Other to whom he owes his being. Thus separated, man withers and dies. Thus separated, man can no longer see things rightly and often mistakes evil for good. He loses sight of spiritual reality and is left with only the material reality of the five senses, which can only tell him of his own pain and pleasure. The free-willing man who wishes not to sin must therefore struggle against his senses to do good. The Apostle Paul speaks of this struggle as a conflict between the flesh and the spirit pitting his mind against his members: “I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.” (Romans 7:22-24) In contrast, the free-willing man who wishes to sin relies solely on his senses to direct him and acts against his higher nature to obtain what he wrongly thinks is good. He lives in fear of pain and death and strives against his brother to escape them, inflicting upon his brother the pain and death he himself fears. He makes a habit of his bad behavior, accustoming himself to his errors while ignoring other options, thereby becoming a slave to sin. Then, feeling that he has no choice but to sin, he blames nature, fate, his fellow man, or God.

But God is not to blame, for God has made man good. God indeed has made man very good. (Gen. 1:31) Man alone has made a mess of things. Man alone is responsible for his fallen situation and sinful condition — the anti-natural consequences of his freely chosen isolation.

The empirical proof of this is Jesus Christ. Only in Christ does man again catch a glimpse of God and of his own true nature. For Christ was fully human, sharing with us the same human nature and enduring like us the needs and desires of both mind and body, knowing pain and pleasure as well as joy and fear. He was a man in all respects like us, with one exception: He was not estranged from God. In Him, one personal instance of human being kept its proper place next to God and so became all that it was meant to be — sinless, immortal, and divine. Nothing human held Him back. Nothing that we are by nature — and therefore cannot help but be — kept Him from living perfectly and sinlessly. What is more, nothing Christ did is beyond human nature when the person bearing that nature it is likewise one with God.

In uniting divine nature with human nature, Christ reconciles God with man — divinity with humanity — actually in Himself and potentially in every man. For every man who so chooses can regain a knowledge of God through the preaching of the Gospel and the sharing of Christian communion. Only with that knowledge can any one of us become what we were meant by nature to be, for by nature we were meant to live with God and like God. Thus we may say with St. Maximus the Confessor that Christ “reestablished human nature in conformity with itself,” this time with a fuller knowledge of God informed by the revelation of God’s own self-giving nature, a glory withheld from all the saints who came before Christ. For only after the Incarnation could the living and the dead know the self-giving God; only then could the faithful patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament be “made perfect.” (Heb. 11:40) “For in no other way,” St. Irenaeus writes, “could we have learned the things of God, unless our Master, existing as the Word, had become man. For no other being had the power of revealing to us the things of the Father, except His own proper Word.”

The revelation is both theological and anthropological: Man is shown a sight of the self-giving God, who does not demand sacrifice but gives of Himself not only to redeem the world, but also to create and perfect it; at the same time, man is shown a sight of a truly holy and Godlike man — man as he is meant to be.

For the revelation to work, Christ had to be both fully God and fully man. He had to be fully God for God to be revealed as self-giving; He had to be fully man for man to be revealed as capable of God-likeness. If Christ were not fully God, God would still appear to man as a distant deity who demands obedience and requires propitiation; if He were not fully man, man would still appear incapable of holiness and not called to Godlike self-giving. For this reason, the Church has jealously guarded both Christ’s divinity and Christ’s humanity, as any compromise on either point would cripple the Christian Gospel:

1. If Christ is not God, then God is an unknowable Other who demands of us what he himself does not do.
2. If Christ is not God, then goodness is purely arbitrary — a mere matter of obedience to God’s arbitrary will.
3. If Christ is not God, then God himself is not good because he obeys no one, humbles himself before no one, gives of himself to no one.
4. If Christ is not God, then to be godlike is to be aloof, imperious, and unloving.

Many gods men have worshiped are just such gods — distant, unknowable, inhuman, arbitrary, handing down laws for men to obey, demanding sacrifice but never demonstrating it. The Allah of Islam is such a god. He is utterly unlike man. He deals with man only through his prophet, who passes on his edicts. What Allah wants from us is not love for each other or imitation of him; what Allah wants from us is submission. The word Islam means just that — submission. Allah doesn’t set an example for us to follow; he creates creatures and expects them to suffer and die for him, but he never returns the favor. That’s the god you get if Christ is not God.

Equally important to the ancients was the man you get if Christ is not man. The more pious, more moral, more philosophical pagans were greatly tempted to despise material existence, embarrassed as they were by the body’s irrational impulses and physical weakness. Their piety, morality, and reason could have been forces for good in the world, but their contempt for the material inclined them toward a fatalistic detachment from the world and a selfish focus on their own spiritual escape. At the same time, less pious, less moral, less philosophical pagans believed that goodness was for the gods and that man could hardly resist much less be blamed for doing what comes naturally to the body. To both, it therefore mattered whether Christ was also fully man:

1. If Christ is not man, then man can blame human nature, human genetics, human hormones, human frailty, human disease, or the human predicament for his sinfulness, as people today very often do.
2. If Christ is not man, then man can still complain that human weakness makes following Christ’s example impossible and “what would Jesus do” irrelevant.
3. If Christ is not man, then man is but a beast, barely above other beasts despite his superior intelligence and hardly worthy of divine adoption as a co-heir with Christ.
4. If Christ is not man, then His Resurrection was just what we might expect from God, but not something we should expect for man.

Other religions have their avatars. Even the gods of the Greeks and Romans were said to sometimes walk about in human guise. But no mere appearance of a god in human guise can reveal anything about what it means to actually be human or inspire in humans a life that we can fairly call divine. In all such religions, there remains a great divide between the spiritual and the material, with dispassionate divinity on one side and passionate humanity on the other. Only the Incarnation of Christ bridges that divide, revealing that neither the body nor human nature nor the material world are unfit habitations for God. Christ’s demonstration of divine approval sanctifies human nature and the material world in the minds of men, preparing them for salvation not, says St. Irenaeus, “by a casting away of the flesh, but by the impartation of the Spirit.”

That’s the best answer I can give at the moment to the question of salvation and theosis. Your thoughts are welcome.

In Christ, Dn. Patrick

Anna Stickles

30-11-2009, 10:28 PM

Dn Patrick
You asked for my thoughts, but I am afraid that there is a lot in this that does not really seem to reflect the Orthodoxy that I have been learning in my study of the fathers.

But God is not to blame, for God has made man good. God indeed has made man very good. ([/URL]) Man alone has made a mess of things. Man alone is responsible for his fallen situation and sinful condition — the anti-natural consequences of his freely chosen isolation.

While it is true that God is not to blame, the fathers do not blame man alone, but rather Satan is given a significant part in the Fall. This is something that particularly struck me when I started reading some of the fathers because this was new to me.

"From then on (after the Fall) the irrational element became imbedded in the soul, developed with the soul, and, as it happened at the very beginning gave every appearance of being an essential element of the soul. .... We are in danger of attributing irrationality to God ... if we say that irrationality is natural to the soul. Now the impulse to sin proceeds from the Devil and since all sin is irrational, the irrational therefore proceeds from the Devil whence comes sin." (Tertullian, On The Soul, 16.1)

"Besides the evil that mars the soul as a result of the machinations of the Devil, still another evil has previously affected it, and this is in a certain sense natural to it, since it flows from its origin. As we have said, the corruption of nature is second nature, one which has its own god and father, namely the author of all corruption. (41.1)"

Consider the subtlety of what Tertullian is saying here about 'natural goodness'. Taking your statements in the context offered in your post, what Tertullian means by 'natural goodness' is not the same as what you are implying when you say

In contrast, early Christian apologists confidently proclaimed the optimism of natural goodness and freedom of will.

It seems to me that your presentation borders on a Pelagian optimism and does not really make clear the dire straights we are in after the Fall. Your presentation does not seem to take into consideration the weakening of human will that happened due to our separation from God, nor the 'poison' that entered into human nature as St Gregory Palamas explains more in detail below.

In the beginning, there was one who rose up against us: the author of evil, the serpent, who dragged us into the abyss. Many reasons impelled him to rise up against us, and there are many ways by which he enslaved our nature: envy, rivalry, hatred, injustice, treachery, slyness, etc. In addition to all this, he also has within him the power of bringing death, which he himself engendered, being the first to fall away from true life.

The author of evil was jealous of Adam, when he saw him being led from earth to Heaven, from which he was justly cast down. Filled with envy, he pounced upon Adam with a terrible ferocity, and even wished to clothe him with the garb of death. Envy is not only the begetter of hatred, but also of murder, which this truly man-hating serpent brought about in us. For he wanted to be master over the earth-born for the ruin of that which was created in the image and likeness of God. Since he was not bold enough to make a face to face attack, he resorted to cunning and deceit. This truly terrible and malicious plotter pretended to be a friend and useful adviser by assuming the physical form of a serpent, and stealthily took their position. By his God-opposing advice, he instills in man his own death-bearing power, like a venomous poison.

What seems clear here then is that while man is responsible for freely giving into the Devil's promptings, and thus voluntarily falling into sin, it is not man alone who has made a mess of things. Satan helped cause the mess in the first place and the Devil continues to perpetuate and make worse the mess in accordance with man's voluntary enslavement to Satan's will. As St Paul says, "You are a slave to that which you obey."

For every man who so chooses can regain a knowledge of God through the preaching of the Gospel and the sharing of Christian communion. Only with that knowledge can any one of us become what we were meant by nature to be, for by nature we were meant to live with God and like God.

In this quote you again seem to be implying a freedom of will that we do not have, and also a solution to the Fall that is not patristic.

I am not sure what you mean here by "Christian communion" but if what is meant is Christians in fellowship with one another then this is false. Hopefully what you mean here is communion with God through/within the sacramental reality of the Church. We are not a source of life for each other, and ultimately it is Life, not simply teaching and encouragement that we need.
Maybe I am misunderstanding you, but you seem to be implying that we can regain our unfallen nature simply through preaching and study. Nowhere do the fathers teach that we regain a knowledge of God through the preaching of the Gospel. Rather a true and saving knowledge of God comes through spiritual struggle and ascesis. As St Gregory says in the next paragraph after the one I quoted above.

If Adam had been sufficiently strong to keep the divine commandment, then he would have shown himself the vanquisher of his enemy, and withstood his deathly attack. But since he voluntarily gave in to sin, he was defeated and was made a sinner. Since he is the root of our race, he has produced us as death-bearing shoots. So, it was necessary for us, if he were to fight back against his defeat and to claim victory, to rid himself of the death-bearing venomous poison in his soul and body, and to absorb life, eternal and indestructible life.

As St Gregory says, the only way to get rid of the poison is struggle against Satan's machinations and the forces of death and sin that have so thoroughly infected us. Through ascetical struggle, step by step, the mind is cleared of it's darkness, of the effects of this poison, in a way that mere preaching cannot do. Step by step, our will regains its strength such that those who reach a high level of spiritual maturity attain a state where their will, in accordance with the degree of their union with God, is stronger then Satan and he no longer has the power to hold them captive. The immature or carnal Christian is still a puppet and not free at all, and even the moderately spiritual Christian is often overcome and pulled into sin.

To repeat, the Christian message is that we need far more then merely a moral example or knowledge in the form of words for our salvation - we need a Life-Giver. St Gregory goes on to explain the Incarnation, not in terms of a moral revelation or an empirical proof, but as a life-restoring reality. It is only through the Incarnation that we gain the power to enter into the struggle to cast off our voluntary enslavement.

It was necessary for us to have a new root for our race, a new Adam, not just one Who would be sinless and invincible, but one Who also would be able to forgive sins and set free from punishment those subject to it. And not only would He have life in Himself, but also the capacity to restore to life, so that He could grant to those who cleave to Him and are related to Him by race both life and the forgiveness of their sins, restoring to life not only those who came after Him, but also those who already had died before Him. Therefore, St Paul, that great trumpet of the Holy Spirit, exclaims, "the first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit" (1 Cor. 15:45).

Except for God, there is no one who is without sin, or life-creating, or able to remit sin. Therefore, the new Adam must be not only Man, but also God. He is at the same time life, wisdom, truth, love, and mercy, and every other good thing, so that He might renew the old Adam and restore him to life through mercy, wisdom and righteousness. These are the opposites of the things which the author of evil used to bring about our aging and death.

As the slayer of mankind raised himself against us with envy and hatred, so the Source of life was lifted up [on the Cross] because of His immeasurable goodness and love for mankind. He intensely desired the salvation of His creature, i.e., that His creature would be restored by Himself. In contrast to this, the author of evil wanted to bring God's creature to ruin, and thereby put mankind under his own power, and tyrannically to afflict us. And just as he achieved the conquest and the fall of mankind by means of injustice and cunning, by deceit and his trickery, so has the Liberator brought about the defeat of the author of evil, and the restoration of His own creature with truth, justice and wisdom.

It was a deed of perfect justice that our nature, which was voluntarily enslaved and struck down, should again enter the struggle for victory and cast off its voluntary enslavement. Therefore, God deigned to receive our nature from us, hypostatically uniting with it in a marvelous way. ([URL="http://ocafs.oca.org/FeastSaintsLife.asp?FSID=103357"]DISCOURSE ON THE FEAST OF THE ENTRY OF OUR MOST PURE LADY THEOTOKOS INTO THE HOLY OF HOLIES by Saint Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica (http://biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?language=english&version=NKJV&passage=Gen.+1%3A31)

Fr Raphael mentioned that it is not Orthodox to focus on Christ's incarnation mainly as a moral act; But neither is it Orthodox to focus on the Incarnation as a moral revelation. For the Fathers, the Incarnation is far more then an empirical revelation of God's selflessness and love, which seems to be the main point you are trying to make here.

Brian Patrick Mitchell

01-12-2009, 12:07 AM

Thank you, Anna, for letting me try this on you. I do indeed think you misunderstand me, much in the way that St. Augustine misunderstood St. John Cassian, the "semipelagian." By "Christian communion," I mean THE Christian communion, which is the Church, the Body of Christ, through which we received through the Holy Spirit the mystical power and grace necessary for our salvation, first of all in the partaking of the Body and Blood.

But we are not saved only by ascetic struggle and mysteries we cannot understand; we are also saved by revelation, by real wisdom, indeed by Wisdom — that is, Christ, Who is Life, as you say, but also Light. It is Christ who reveals to us the loving and giving character of the Father, being the "express image of his person." (Heb. 1:3) We should not therefore diminish that Image by dismissing it as "merely a moral example." It is a revelation of immense proportion, but for the revelation to work we must believe that Christ was both God and man, and not merely a good man.

The problem with the West is that it pins so much of our salvation on the "substitionary sacrifice" that the only way to view the rest of Christ's life is as mere moral example, "mere" because in Western soteriology our salvation is accomplished by the sacrifice, not by the whole Incarnation.

Unfortunately, the Orthodox sometimes make a similar mistake, taking too literally the many poetic metaphors used by the Apostles and Fathers to impress upon us the significance of a great mystery. Thus one sometimes hears Orthodox pastors and writers giving an essentially platonic explanation of salvation, according to which Christ mystically fixes human nature by merely assuming it. If that's the case, why do we still need ascetic struggle? And wouldn't everyone then be saved?

What I have attempted to do, with difficulty, is get behind the metaphor and explain what can be explained. The result in no way contradicts anything of the fathers you have cited. It merely understands them in a different way. I think a different way is needed. I think we need to truly understand Christ and not just keep repeating patristic poetry about "poison" to ourselves.

I do believe there are very real devils, though I believe they possess only the power of temptation, which Adam could not resist because he had not yet seen how much God would do to save him. That knowledge is power indeed.

In Christ, Dn. Patrick

David Lindblom

19-12-2009, 05:18 AM

Please forgive the length of the following. It’s an excerpt from the final chapter of a book I am finishing on salvation, which seems especially relevant to the issue at hand:

Well now, that's begging the question...when will this book be published? Have a title yet?

Andreas Moran

19-12-2009, 11:38 AM

I've noticed that Protestants call our Saviour 'Jesus' while we call Him 'Christ': that reflects something of the difference in thinking, perhaps.

Brian Patrick Mitchell

19-12-2009, 02:49 PM

Well now, that's begging the question...when will this book be published? Have a title yet?

Sorry to be a tease, but I did want to try something out and Anna's response was very helpful. The working title is TRUTH OR TRIBE: An Uncompromising Contrast of the Christian Gospel and the Way of the World.

No publisher yet, and I won't begin for another month, so it won't likely be out for another year. This is my fifth book, by the way. My most recent book, EIGHT WAYS TO RUN THE COUNTRY, was published by Praeger in 2006.

In Christ, Dn. Patrick

David Lindblom

19-12-2009, 07:45 PM

Sorry to be a tease, but I did want to try something out and Anna's response was very helpful. The working title is TRUTH OR TRIBE: An Uncompromising Contrast of the Christian Gospel and the Way of the World.

No publisher yet, and I won't begin for another month, so it won't likely be out for another year. This is my fifth book, by the way. My most recent book, EIGHT WAYS TO RUN THE COUNTRY, was published by Praeger in 2006.

In Christ, Dn. Patrick

Look forward to it. I did like your take on one aspect of Christ coming in the fullness of time and how it contrasts what the world was experiencing.

Off topic question, what does it mean to be a Father and a Deacon? That seems odd to me.

Anna Stickles

19-12-2009, 08:13 PM

If that's the case, why do we still need ascetic struggle? And wouldn't everyone then be saved? Sorry it's taken me awhile to get back to this, but I think that you are not understanding what the Fathers present in terms of the relation of the individual person to our human nature as a whole. Yes Christ assumed all of human nature but this doesn't guarantee the salvation of every individual because every individual still has their own freedom to participate in or reject what Christ did.

In freely accepting Christ we become fully human, we participate in that redeemed humanity. In closing ourselves off from Christ through agreeing with and accepting defensiveness, anger, and the other passions, we become, are becoming, something less then fully human. We are rejecting our own nature, and hence destroying ourselves as well as negatively effecting those around us on a spiritual level. You noted Orthodoxy does not have a substitutionary paradigm but what it does have is a participatory paradigm and we have to learn to look at our relation to God and ourselves this way to truly understand the Fathers.

BTW maybe I am being nitpicky and maybe not, but I think the scriptures say that we are saved by grace, not by revelation. Revelation is an indication of the presence of grace. Grace enlightens the mind. Ascetic struggle helps to develop in us the prerequisite disposition to receive grace. Grace is what brings about the restoration of our relation with the rest of humanity as well as the restoration with God.

by "resoration with humanity" I don't mean we are all externally at peace with each other, but I am refering to a restoration, a communion, on a more intimate and spiritual level. You can't just dismiss the mystics as writing "patristic poetry". They are speaking of real experiences where the barriers that we experience in our fallen state do not exist. Read some of the modern elders. It makes you realize we are mostly living in the 'old man' and how far short we ourselves are of living in the restoration that God offers us in Christ.

Brian Patrick Mitchell

19-12-2009, 08:56 PM

Off topic question, what does it mean to be a Father and a Deacon? That seems odd to me.

Deacon is an actual rank, like presbyter and bishop. "Father" is a term of reverence applied to presbyters and deacons and sometimes bishops ("Pope" means father).

Orthodox deacons are customarily addressed as "Reverend Deacon" or "Father Deacon," which many people shorten to simply "Father."

My understanding is that Roman Catholic deacons are never addressed as "Father," even though their deacons do things Orthodox deacons do not, like marry people.

Brian Patrick Mitchell

19-12-2009, 09:40 PM

BTW maybe I am being nitpicky and maybe not, but I think the scriptures say that we are saved by grace, not by revelation. Revelation is an indication of the presence of grace. Grace enlightens the mind. Ascetic struggle helps to develop in us the prerequisite disposition to receive grace. Grace is what brings about the restoration of our relation with the rest of humanity as well as the restoration with God.

We seem not to share the same definition of grace. I take grace to mean all the things God does to save us, including revelation. How do you define it?

David Lindblom

19-12-2009, 11:28 PM

Sorry it's taken me awhile to get back to this, but I think that you are not understanding what the Fathers present in terms of the relation of the individual person to our human nature as a whole. Yes Christ assumed all of human nature but this doesn't guarantee the salvation of every individual because every individual still has their own freedom to participate in or reject what Christ did.

In freely accepting Christ we become fully human, we participate in that redeemed humanity. In closing ourselves off from Christ through agreeing with and accepting defensiveness, anger, and the other passions, we become, are becoming, something less then fully human. We are rejecting our own nature, and hence destroying ourselves as well as negatively effecting those around us on a spiritual level. You noted Orthodoxy does not have a substitutionary paradigm but what it does have is a participatory paradigm and we have to learn to look at our relation to God and ourselves this way to truly understand the Fathers.

BTW maybe I am being nitpicky and maybe not, but I think the scriptures say that we are saved by grace, not by revelation. Revelation is an indication of the presence of grace. Grace enlightens the mind. Ascetic struggle helps to develop in us the prerequisite disposition to receive grace. Grace is what brings about the restoration of our relation with the rest of humanity as well as the restoration with God.

by "resoration with humanity" I don't mean we are all externally at peace with each other, but I am refering to a restoration, a communion, on a more intimate and spiritual level. You can't just dismiss the mystics as writing "patristic poetry". They are speaking of real experiences where the barriers that we experience in our fallen state do not exist. Read some of the modern elders. It makes you realize we are mostly living in the 'old man' and how far short we ourselves are of living in the restoration that God offers us in Christ.

If I may be so bold as to poke my nose into this discussion, both of you and your knowledge of the Fathers is way above mine, it seems to me that what you are saying is something Fr. Mitchell would not disagree w/. It seems you might be talking past one another a bit.

As far as what Christ brings to humanity and to each individual, here's a quote from Elder Cleopa that might bridge the gap between what each of you are saying:

Our objective salvation is realized only in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, whereas our personal or subjective salvation, which in the language of the New Testament is called righteousness, holiness, or salvation (in the narrow sense), is realized as a continuance of this objective salvation, with our personal energy or activity acting in co-operation with Divine Energy or Grace.

The truth is that Christ has brought salvation to everyone, something theologians have labelled general (or objective) salvation. And yet, everyone does not actualize this objective salvation, only those who seek and pursue it. While objective salvation is granted to every human being, subjective or personal salvation depends on the intent of man. Those who desire to be saved and work toward that goal receive divine Grace as their aide and guide. This Grace does not work in us violently; rather it abides with us peren- nially as a specific offering for the work of our salvation. Subsequently, it is not possible for us to speak of an unconditional predestination and its inadequate presuppositions for salvation.

If I'm missing both of your points then disregard my blatherings.

Brian Patrick Mitchell

20-12-2009, 02:28 AM

David, your comments are very welcome, and I think you are right that in a sense Anna and I are talking past one another. I have no problem with your citation of Elder Cleopas. I'm concerned, though, that some other Orthodox talk of Grace as some mystical power that reworks our spiritual DNA independent of hearing and understanding the Gospel and acting in imitation of Christ. I suspect they do this because they don't really understand how powerful and revolutionary the Gospel is as a revelation of both God and man. It is too familiar to them to stand out as exceptional, and so they try to explain our salvation through mystical or juridical means. Unfortunately, it may take my whole book to show how exceptional the Gospel is.

This of course does not deny that, after hearing the Gospel and being enlightened, we still work out our salvation through struggling spiritually and partaking mystically of the life of Christ through the Church. But our struggling and partaking also work toward our enlightenment and appreciation of the awesome mystery of Christ's Incarnation.

In Christ, Dn. Patrick

Anna Stickles

20-12-2009, 02:50 AM

Well the definition connected with theosis is that grace is the uncreated energies of God which is God Himself. But to separate God from his own action is a false dichotomy. So while your own definition only mentions God's action, I can't be sure whether or not you are limiting your definition of grace to this or not.

Accepting this dichotomy is what St Gregory of Palamas protested against because it leads to the denial of the possibility of union with God. As far as I understand it, the view of Barlaam was that God acted on the soul renewing it and making it holy by adding virtue to it, but that God Himself never entered the soul. It had to do with Catholic views of God that evolved out of the good intention to avoid pantheism, but in result led to a denial of theosis.

but the Orthodox view is that God renews the soul by virtue of His own union with the soul, imparting to it His own energy. Barlaam was separating the presence of God from His acting.

I didn't word it very well, but the main point behind my assertion that we are saved by grace, not revelation, is that grace is a much wider term then revelation, more foundational. Part of what God gives us is truth, part is righteousness, part is love, part is incorruption and eternal life. All of these are just different manifestations of grace. To say we are saved by revelation kind of misses the wider picture.

It particularly misses the wider picture because one of the radical contentions of Orthodoxy is the contention that God gives us incorruption and eternal life, not simply as a continuation of being after we die, but as something real here and now.

Peter S.

20-12-2009, 05:06 PM

I've noticed that Protestants call our Saviour 'Jesus' while we call Him 'Christ': that reflects something of the difference in thinking, perhaps.

Our Saviour is Jesus Christ. Just as in the Jesusprayer. How else can the Jesusprayer have any real effect, not being an expert on this?

Jesus ressurected from the tomb just as he foretold. "He has given us eternal life and great mercy". Remember this hymn and Ressurection text? It is not that we dont call our saviour Jesus. It is that the protestants seldom, maybe never call him Christ. Jesus became man in the incarnation. The core in the mystery is that Christ ressurected. So we say: Christ is risen! The Father raised him up. Then he ascended with a spiritual body.

Peter
in Christ

Peter S.

20-12-2009, 06:01 PM

Jesus Christ ascended to Heaven in a spiritual body. Nothing less:

1 Tim 6,20-21: "Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge- 21 by professing it some have strayed concerning the faith."

Brian Patrick Mitchell

21-12-2009, 12:24 AM

Well the definition connected with theosis is that grace is the uncreated energies of God which is God Himself. But to separate God from his own action is a false dichotomy. So while your own definition only mentions God's action, I can't be sure whether or not you are limiting your definition of grace to this or not. ... but the main point behind my assertion that we are saved by grace, not revelation, is that grace is a much wider term then revelation, more foundational.

Thank you, Anna. Again I think we are talking past one another and are not really that far apart. I agree that "grace is a much wider term than revelation and more foundational." I also agree that one cannot separate God's energies from God's actions. But you are writing in reaction to my stress on revelation and I am writing in reaction to your diminishment of revelation, and in your previous post, you seemed to me to separate God's energies from God's actions by excluding revelation from grace. I see now that that is not the case.

Part of what God gives us is truth, part is righteousness, part is love, part is incorruption and eternal life. All of these are just different manifestations of grace. To say we are saved by revelation kind of misses the wider picture.

The issue is HOW God gives us truth, righteousness, love, incorruption, and eternal life. I think revelation -- being shown the image of the Father, the image of God in man, the knowledge of the self-giving God -- is a large part of the explanation, which has not been understood as well as it should be.

In Christ, Dn. Patrick

Paul Cowan

21-12-2009, 03:32 AM

It is not that we dont call our saviour Jesus. It is that the protestants seldom, maybe never call him Christ.
Peter
in Christ

A young street urchin was adopted by a religous (protestant) family. Upon returning home from church one Sunday the new and proud parents asked their new foster son how he enjoyed church. He looked down and very sheepishly, almost in a whisper said "Oh, it was ok. But that guy up front kept cussing the whole time." The parents we naturally shocked and asked "When? What did he say?". He replied "He kept saying Jesus Christ the whole time he was talking. I thought someone would say something to him, but everyone just kept nodding and smiling. Some of them were raising their hands like in school and waving them, but he never called on them."

Paul

Peter S.

21-12-2009, 10:34 AM

It is that the protestants seldom, maybe never call him Christ.
Peter
in Christ

This is wrong and arroganse by me. Shame on me.

Anna Stickles

21-12-2009, 02:09 PM

Thanks for the encouragement to look again at the Gospels. A reminder of how important they are is something we can't hear too much of. I can certainly use the reminder to read them more and with more attention and prayer. We do tend to take them for granted. Was it St Seraphim or Sarov that used to read the entire Gospel daily? It was one of the saints anyway.

and in your previous post, you seemed to me to separate God's energies from God's actions by excluding revelation from grace. I see now that that is not the case. Guilty as charged. I just didn't notice it until I started the post to you on the same problem so I tried to clarify in my second post. Isn't there something in the Bible about logs..... one of the things I really like in discussions like this is that it helps us see our own misthinking and stretches us out of our ruts.

The issue is HOW God gives us truth, righteousness, love, incorruption, and eternal life. I think revelation -- being shown the image of the Father, the image of God in man, the knowledge of the self-giving God -- is a large part of the explanation, which has not been understood as well as it should be.
This is a really good observation. And it would be well worth discussing further. In reading Augustine I've started to realize that certain underlying assumptions about the nature of reality lead to drastically different conceptualizations of theosis. And many of the assumptions about reality that the Greeks had are not all that different from modern science and so the same types of errors tend to pop up. These errors don't just exist in Freemasonry and Mormonism, but you find them even in Orthodox writers such as Augustine. It's just that in Augustine, they don't get out of hand because Church life and Tradition mitigate the damage. Within the safety net of Tradition the mistakes are prevented from being taken to the logical extreme while the good pastoral application of what is said can still be effective. Outside Tradition you get the extremes, and the further outside Tradition you get the more extreme you get.

Although this thread is marginally on theosis I know so little of either Freemasonry or Mormonism (and it seems most other people are in the same boat) that maybe it would be better to start a new thread dedicated to how materialistic or mechanistic worldviews cause a distortion in our view of theosis and what the Fathers have said in answer to these distortions.

Anna Stickles

21-12-2009, 03:14 PM

Although I guess one of the most basic answers to the question how God gives us eternal life is here

II Peter 1:3-11 His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. 4Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

5For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.

8For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins.

10Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, 11and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
St Peter starts out talking about the "mystical power that reworks our spiritual DNA" ( I kind of liked this description) and goes on to show how we cooperate with this. Then goes on to encourage us that in the union of the two is life and growth, but that a rejection of this is a death and a fall.

I think here too we have both understandings of knowledge. In vs 1 we have knowledge as contemplation of, participation in Grace, which is God's part and in vs 5 we have knowledge as what we gain by our own efforts in reading the Gospels and other spiritual books. And in vs 8 the union of the two.

Faith is the foundation. Faith as submission and trust is our first response to God's presence and power, but we also see our need for moral goodness, for knowledge such as you suggest, for ascetic striving toward self control, for perseverance (the monastics often refer to stability- ie we don't run away from the hard things God gives us)

I admit I have often wondered here what is meant by godliness. How is this different from goodness?

(my pastor once talked about the Greek word used here when it says "increasing" measure saying it can be understood similar to compounding as in compound interest.)