Eastern Orthodox spirituality: Union with God in Theosis

Theology Today, Apr 1999 by Wesche, Kenneth Paul

The character and aim of Eastern Orthodox spirituality is summed up in the patristic formula: "God became human (without ceasing to be God) that humanity might become God (without ceasing to be human)."1 The first half of the patristic formula signifies the incarnation: the mystery of the divine Logos, through whom all things came to be and in whom all things exist (John 1:3-10), becoming flesh and dwelling among us (John 1:14). The term theosis or deification summarizes the second half of the formula to signify the soteriological consequence of the incarnation for humanity and the world: This is the possibility to attain union with God. "That they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they, too, might be in us" (John 17:21).

Union with God is the goal of theosis and the content of salvation. It is attained as one learns how to die in the mystery of Christ in order to be raised up in newness of life:

If anyone wishes to follow after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his soul will lose it; but whoever loses his soul for my sake and the gospel's will save it" (Mark 8:34-35).

The path to theosis is the way of the cross, a journey of the soul into the mystery of Christ's death. There, a deeper mystery of resurrection and eternal life through union with God is discovered. This is the divine life of the Spirit. In theosis, "it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20).

The concept of theosis roots the understanding of salvation in an earlier Old Testament meaning of "justification" or "being made righteous." In the context of the Abrahamic covenant, to be made righteous or to be justified means to be made "prosperous," or to be "blessed" with abundance of life, the substance of which in the ancient Near East is given in land and in many descendants.2 In early Jewish Christianity, calling Jesus the Seed of Abraham means that he is the one to whom the promise of the covenant-viz. land and many descendants, taken as symbols of life in the Spirit of God-refers (see Gal 3:16). Jesus is the Christ because he bears the divine Spirit who, through Christ's death on the Cross, is poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28-9; Acts 2:17-8), making what was dead to be alive in God (Ezek 37) just as the Lord made Abraham, who was as good as dead from lack of offspring, "righteous" or "fertile" or `alive in God.' As the Christ who makes what was dead to be alive, he is the deifier and his Spirit is the power of deification.

Theosis is therefore a process of transformation from death in the flesh to life in the divine. It is rooted in the Christ, himself a mystery of transformation. For, in his Incarnation, the divine Logos changes without changing; he becomes flesh without ceasing to be who he is: "O Son of God, who without change didst become man for our salvation."3 And united to Christ, humanity is changed-"To those who received him he gave the power [i.e. the Spirit] to become children of God" (John 1:12)-yet without changing, for humanity continues to be a creature made in the image of God.

This brings us directly to the theology of the icon that is central to the doctrine of theosis in Eastern Orthodox spirituality. The great Origen of Alexandria-who is to the East what Augustine is to the West-places the principal substance of humanity in our being made in the Image of the Creator.4 In the Origenistic theological tradition, the image of the Creator in whom humanity is made is the person of the divine Logos.

So God created man, in the image of God he created him. We must see what this image of God is.... What else could this image of God be ... except our Savior who is "the first-born of all creation?"5

The Image of God is his only-begotten Son. It does not say [in Gen 1:26] `Let us make the image, man,' but `Let us make man in the image,' which means that it is of this Image, the Son, that this image, man, attains to become the image and likeness.6

This means for Origen and his disciples that humankind is imago imaginis, an image of the Image or a mystery of communion with God in the divine Logos. Since he [the divine Logos] is the invisible image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15), he himself grants participation in himself to all rational creatures.7 "He was the true light that enlightens every man who comes into the world." Whatever is of rational nature has a share in the true light; and every man is of rational nature.8 Just as the master is inseparable from the disciple, so the Logos dwells in the nature of rational beings always suggesting what is to be done even if we pay no heed to his commandments.9

Made in the Image of God, that is, in the divine Logos, by nature a human being is "capable of containing the Image in himself." 10 Theosis is the mystery of human nature's perfection, not its alteration or destruction, because theosis is the mystery of eternal life in communion with God in the divine Logos and communion with God in the divine Logos is the very essence of human being as "created in the image and likeness of God":