The doctrine of theosis !
From the beginning, God created us so that we may live in fellowship with Him. Later, the descent of God in the person of Jesus Christ has made possible the human ascend to the Father through the work of the Holy Spirit. So this movement toward God is what we in Orthodox call “theosis” or “deification”.
The spiritual pilgrimage in which each person becomes perfect, holy and united in God is what is described in “theosis”. According to our faith, this is not a static relationship, nor does this take place after our death. The “theosis” is movement of love toward God, and this starts at our “Baptism” and continues throughout of our life, as well as the life which is to come. Salvation means liberation from sin, death, and evil. Redemption means our repossession by God. As a result, salvation and redemption, therefore, are within the context of “theosis”. Even this vision of our Christian life was well expressed by St. Peter, when He wrote in the early pages of His second Epistle: “….to become partakers of the Divine nature”. St. Basil affirmed this when he described man as the creature who has received the order to become a god.
Our Church understands “theosis” as a union with the energies of God and not with the essence of God which always remains hidden and unknown. Furthermore, our Church testifies that this is a true union with God, but in this union the divine and the human retain their unique characteristics.
In Orthodox private prayer, at the start of each day, we place ourselves under the protection of the Spirit by saying:
“O heavenly King, O Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, everywhere present and filling all things, the treasury of blessings and giver of life, come and abide in us. Cleanse us from all impurity and Your goodness save our souls”.
The definition of the “theosis” according to St. Seraphim can be described as the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. St. Basil describes us, humans, as creatures who receive the order to become a god; and furthermore St. Athanasius said that God became human so that we humans might become gods (On the Incarnation 54:3). St. Maximus the Confessor wrote, "A sure warrant for looking forward with hope to theosis of human nature is provided by the incarnation of God, which makes man god to the same degree as God himself became man.... Let us become the image of the one whole God, bearing nothing earthly in ourselves, so that we may consort with God and become gods, receiving from God our existence as gods. For it is clear that He who became man without sin (cf. Heb. 4:15) will divinize human nature without changing it into the divine nature, and will raise it up for his own sake to the same degree as He lowered himself for man's sake”. This is what St Paul teaches mystically when he says, '...that in the ages to come he might display the overflowing richness of His grace' (Eph. 2:7)."(PHILOKALIA Volume II). St. Gregory Palamas wrote: "If we have conformed ourselves to God and have attained that for which we are created, namely theosis then we are in God and God is in us, since it is He who deifies us. Thus we, too, participate in the divine energy."
Therefore, for us Orthodox Christians, our salvation and redemption means, our “theosis”. For that reason, “theosis” is entirely produced by the Holy Spirit as a result of God’s grace. In other words, the Holy Spirit is the agent by which all the benefits of theosis—i.e., immortality, incorruptibility, and Christ-likeness—are gained by believers.
As Orthodox Christians, we regard “theosis” as being, first and foremost, the result of the Holy Spirit’s activity in people. This means that we, the human race, from the beginning are meant to share in the Life or Nature of the all-Holy Trinity.
On theology of the Holy Spirit St. Cyril mentions: “Participation in the Spirit conforms us to Christ, and enables us to be described as children of God and gods.”
According to the Gospel of St. John, the union between God and us humans, God dwelling in us and we in Him is the constant theme; same we can say about Epistle of St. Paul, who sees the Christian life above all else as life “in Christ”. However, many are teaching that our Orthodox doctrine of “theosis” does not have biblical background, but we shall see that it does have scriptural basis, not only in 2 Peter, but in Paul and Fourth Gospel.
Hence, we must learn from biblical truth in its richness, and understand the biblical truth thought the history of the church. There is no doubt about, that we must go back to Holy Scriptures and study what Bible says and interprets about the “theosis”.
The doctrine of the trinity is the foundation of our faith. Like to Jews, for us the God is ultimate source and cause of all things’ that exist, therefore He is the foundation of our faith. We know that we were created in God’s image and likeneness, and we know that our destiny is to be in communion with Him – then all this has direct influence of “who” we are and what we are intended to be. Trinity (Trinitarian faith) has direct effect for Christian understanding of God, who we are, and understanding the life of the whole world. So what is different from us and other monotheistic religions? It is the faith in God, who has revealed himself to us as: Father, Son and Holy Spirit – meaning one God in three hypostases!
Trinitarian doctrine is foundational and it was experience in the life of the early apostolic Church – but final formulation was given at ecumenical councils. Throughout the history we know that Church was attacked with heresies, so the councils developed this doctrine as to refute them. Yet it is important to note (perhaps far more than is commonly done) that none of these fathers ever believed themselves to be introducing anything new to the theological content of the Christian Church. They believed themselves only to be expounding the tenants of the ancient faith clarifying and exploring what had always been believed, but not hitherto addressed in written theological texts. Church Fathers were extremely voluminous in their writings on the topic of spirituality and the mystical life. Yet a general understanding of the development of these topics can be gained from an examination of four Fathers who stand out as prime of contemplative exposition through the course of history: St. Evagrios of Pontikos, St. John Klimakos, St. Maximos (called "The Confessor"), and St. Gregory Palamas - spanning from the first centuries after Christ to the mid-14th century.
We said earlier that God have been revealed to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, therefore doctrine of trinity is faithful to His revelation. This reveals God as pure love, who does not stay in Himself, but comes out of Himself, through his economy, so that whole world can participate in His glory. From this we can say that God is understood as Trinity and God wanted to save the world; for that reason, this leads us to salvation as communion with Him. Salvation means communion with God; salvation of “theosis”, as a result, implies that God Himself wants to share His glory.
This salvation is ground of all Christian domination, and the doctrine of trinity is linked to it, but for us Orthodox, we believe that whole biblical revelation revels God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; even that we know that New Testament does not provide technical language of the Trinity. On the other hand, liturgical life of the New Testament and the Church is where we find the doctrine of the Trinity, but as I said earlier, this was founded in early apostolic life, but later developed/formulated by the Ecumenical Councils.
Understanding God is Christian doctrine of trinity. This doctrine as I said earlier, developed from God’s revelation to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit: so did we discard “Monotheism” or did we introduced “Deism”? One might ask, how can we affirm that Jesus of Nazareth is the “Word of God”, the self-communication of God distinct from God the Father and yet one with him? Probably with this same logic, our holy fathers developed the divinity of the Holy Spirit.
From history of earlier Christians, we can see that they believed that they cannot be united with God, unless God Himself allows them to be with Him. Well then, if in Jesus Christ, the fullness of God’s revelation has been given to us and if our unity with Him (Jesus Christ) is achieved by grace of Holy Spirit, then the Spirit as well as the Word of God must be God Himself. We see this in our liturgical life, since liturgical life is a reflection of this process – worshiping Jesus Christ and Holy Spirit is constant in our liturgical life.
Early on, Holy Fathers had problem explaining this, so they used “substance”. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one in essence, but this was totally different from essential dimension of the created world. And so, essence of God is totally unknown and totally other, not being able to communicate, it is diverse, beyond our understanding – all what we know is that he revealed Himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit and this is what set apart God from this world. We cannot and never will take part in God’s essence; we only need to accept that in the hypostatic existence of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit the totality of the God’s being exist.
Our Church does not teach us that this is God who has three parts….but each person of the Holy Trinity is revelation of the fullness of God. The only difference is how they relate to one another. So if they are fullness of God, then whatever Father has is also something that the Son and Holy Spirit have. It is out of the Father that Holy Spirit proceeds and hypostatic existence is only differentiated by who they are. The un-begotten Father is hypostatic existence; Son and the Word of God is unique hypostatic existence who exists as begotten Word of God and the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God who proceeds from the Father. All this begotten-ness and procession is difficult for us to understand, as I said earlier, because it is not from this world.
It is possible that many other Christian domination, throughout the history, understood us Orthodox as innovators of new faith/theology: “trhree-teism” – but that is because they could not understand that in God’s Trinitarian life, the category of space and time cannot be applied – the three persons of the Holy Trinity are inseparably united with one another and they incorporated with each other. Holy Fathers reflected the Holy Trinity to be considered to be so-equal, so-eternal, individual and simple.
To summarize, our union with God is not a fairy-tale or automatic process. We know that Christ has destroyed the powers of sin, death, and evil once and for all, and for that reason; this victory must be appropriated by each person in cooperation with the Holy Spirit. As individuals we are called to join the life giving and liberating spirit, in becoming conscious of the fullness of our human life in spiritual union with Father. Theosis, which is our participation in the life of the Holy Trinity, takes place within the Church. We come to Church and we meet God – thus, the Holy Spirit and Church are organically connected. Saint Irenaeus reminded us of this by saying: "Where the Church is there is the Spirit, and where the Spirit is there is the Church." What this means is that, Holy Spirit moves through the life of the Church to reveal our shared humanity in Christ and unite us with the Father. This is manifested in our celebration of the Eucharist and the reception of the Holy Communion where we acquire the Holy Spirit. This is also manifested through our participation of the Holy Sacraments, but more importantly through our self-discipline of daily prayer and fasting. All of this is what resulted in Christ-like life. In his letter to the Galatians, Saint Paul identified these as: "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control." Certainly, these are the virtues of a Christ-like life. They testify to the fact that the love of God and the love of neighbor are inseparable.
We have witness that God wishes to share Himself with us, but reality of “theosis” is to express positive view of the human person. Each of us have unique relationship with God, and we’re never depraved. Sadly, the “image of God” can be destroyed by our own sins, but never eliminated. Hence, through the life of the Church, there is always the opportunity for fulfillment. We constantly tell other Christians, who left the Church that you cannot be believer without being a part of the Church, because the process of the “theosis” takes place with the context of believing community. On the other hand, to be united with God within the midst of the Church does not mean that our unique personality is destroyed, because His love is not to destroy. Entering this life of God, we become the persons we are meant to be.