Eastern Orthodox spirituality: Union with God in Theosis

Theology Today, Apr 1999 by Wesche, Kenneth Paul

The church's personal character is made clear from her identification with the Theotokos, as is evident from liturgical texts, where both the church and the Theotokos are the "New Jerusalem" and the "bride and Mother of God," and in the church's liturgical calendar. Beginning with the feast of the nativity of the Theotokos, and concluding with her falling asleep, the church year is in essence the life of the Theotokos. As the Theotokos holds the Christ in her womb, so the church year holds in its bosom the whole mystery of Christ, from his conception to his birth, to his death, resurrection, and glorification, and finally to his eschatological presence in the world in the mystery of Pentecost. The church and her mysteries are revealed in the "icon" of the liturgical calendar to be the extension into time-space-the embodiment or incarnation, the manifestation-of the eschatological mystery of the Theotokos and her Son, Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior. The church and her life-the life of Christ's Holy Spirit-are not grounded in history for they are not temporal or spatial phenomena. They are the eschatological mystery of Christ and his preexistent bride, the church. Their union is the eschatological mystery of our salvation. In the womb of the church, time and space and all they contain are sanctified, deified by being made one with God and filled with his Spirit in the mystery of Christ's marriage with his bride, the church.

One may yet complain that the nuptial imagery of the church and her mysteries, as inspiring as it may be in its poetic beauty and fascination, is nonetheless quite abstract, irrelevant, and unconnected to the banality of everyday life. The relevance of the imagery to our banal, mundane life is immediately realized when the church is identified as the soul, so that the imagery of bride and mother are taken as images making manifest some mystery that is inherent to the soul. Cyril of Alexandria, for example, writes in his commentary on the wedding of Cana in Galilee (John 2):

The divine Logos descended from heaven in order that he might seduce the human nature, after endearing himself in the manner of a bridegroom, to be impregnated with the spiritual seeds of wisdom. For this reason, humanity is properly called the bride, and the Savior the Bridegroom.23

Makarios of Egypt writes in his Freedom of the Intellect: "One should guard the soul which is the bride of Christ," and: "Let the soul ceaselessly maintain befitting love for the celestial bridegroom."24 Origen describes the soul as both bride and mother of Christ:

In spiritual nuptials, consider the union of the Logos as bridegroom with the soul as bride: She is not hurt or harmed by him, but with each embrace receives incorruption and fertility; and the children born of such nuptials are spiritual offspring.25

Just as the seed is formed and shaped in those with child, so is it in the soul which accepts the Logos. The conception of the Logos is gradually formed and shaped in it. In his epistle to Timothy, Paul says that "woman will be saved through bearing children, with modesty." But who is this woman, if not the soul which conceives the divine Logos of truth and brings forth good works which are like Christ?26