Introduction
The concept of theosis (θέωσις) is originally an Eastern Orthodox
doctrine, and because it is often misunderstood, it is generally frowned upon
by scholars from the western tradition. Within Orthodoxy, the terms “deification,”
“divinization” and “theosis” are commonly interchangeable, and mean the same thing.
Orthodoxy would argue that this is an early patristic doctrine, clearly
enunciated by certain early church fathers like Athanasius, Gregory of
Nazianzus, Basil the Great, and Anastasius of Sinai. In fact, Athanasius
memorably condensed the entire concept of theosis into an aphorism, “[God] was
made man so that we might be made God” (Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word, 54.3).
Here we encounter the elusive phrase “goal of salvation.” Is this “salvation” justification, or is it “salvation” as in sanctification and subsequently glorification? It seems difficult to tease out a distinction between justification and sanctification with the terse phrase.
We ought to ask ourselves, “Are we united to God at
justification, or are we being justified by a process of deification?”
Furthermore, how are we united with God? The Western Church has no problem with
the concept of Christians being “in Christ” or united with Christ at the new
birth. As Paul wrote in the epistle to the Ephesians, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our
trespasses … In him we have obtained
an inheritance … In him you also,
when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in
him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our
inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory” (ESV,
Ephesians 1:7–14).
Perusing the Westminster Larger Catechism question 69:
Q. 69. What is the communion in grace which the members of
the invisible church have with Christ?
A. The communion in grace which the members of the invisible
church have with Christ, is their partaking of the virtue of his mediation, in
their justification, adoption, sanctification, and whatever else, in this life,
manifests their union with him.
(emphasis mine)
It becomes apparent that the Reformed tradition likewise propounds
the concept of “union with Christ,” the details of which goes beyond the scope
of this brief discourse. But the notion of theosis is more than that. It means
that we are being made more divine, hence the term “divinization.”
We must inquire, “Does theosis involve a confounding of
ontology between Creator and creature, or some form of absorption into the
being of God?” What does Orthodoxy mean when they say that Christians are being
deified? The Orthodox Study Bible describes theosis as follows:
“This does not mean we become divine by nature. If we
participated in God’s essence, the distinction between God and man would be
abolished. What this does mean is that we participate in God’s energy,
described by a number of terms in scripture such as glory, love, virtue, and
power. We are to become like God by His grace, and truly be His adopted
children, but never become like God by nature. … When we are joined to Christ,
our humanity is interpenetrated with the energies of God through Christ’s
glorified flesh. Nourished by the Blood and Body of Christ, we partake of the
grace of God—His strength, His righteousness, His love—and are enabled to serve
Him and glorify Him. Thus we, being human, are being deified.”[2]
In other words, theosis in Orthodoxy does not mean that man
become gods in any ontological sense. Rather, it refers to a process whereby
Christians via the participation in God’s “energies,” acquire godly
characteristics such as “love, virtue and power,” thereby experiencing
communion with God and eventually gaining immortality. These can be identified
as what evangelicals describe as sanctification and glorification.
Theosis is a central tenet of Eastern Orthodoxy. This
doctrine permeates all of Orthodoxy’s teachings on salvation. This terminology
has traditionally been repulsive to the Western Church as it may be
misconstrued as the assimilation of man’s essence with God’s essence, thereby
confounding foundational doctrines such as divine simplicity and the
Creator-creature distinction. This is partially due to the fact that the
Western Church has never distinguished God’s essence from His energies.
Bartos elucidates, “Yet Eastern theology says very clearly
that “becoming god” does not mean an identification with God’s divine nature
(essence) but rather something experienced by adoption, by grace, and by
imitation. Generally, the theology of the Orthodox Church understands
deification as “the religious ideal of Orthodoxy,” and “the central dogma of
Orthodoxy.’”[3]
Problems with Theosis
Would I therefore be correct to say that the concept of
theosis is innocuously palatable for Reformed theology? Not quite.
Contrariwise, there seems to be some apparently
insurmountable difficulties between Orthodoxy and Evangelicalism concerning the
concept of theosis. Kärkkäinen agrees, “According to the typical textbook
wisdom, the main dividing issue between Roman Catholics and Lutherans is the
differing interpretation of the doctrine of justification by faith, and the
issue between Western and Eastern churches is the irreconcilable breach between
understanding salvation in terms of justification and theosis, respectively.
Historically, especially Eastern and Western traditions have been considered to
be diametrically opposed to each other.”[4]
Allow us to look at these differences in some details. The
most serious of these is the lack of emphasis on the distinction between
justification and sanctification within Orthodoxy’s doctrine of salvation and
theosis. As Fairbairn rightly observes that, “Orthodoxy’s emphasis on
deification or sanctification to the virtual exclusion of justification creates
serious problems for Western evangelicals.”[5]
The paramount evangelical doctrine of forensic justification
of the believer by faith alone arguably distinguishes heterodoxy from
mainstream evangelicalism. For Evangelicals, justification is already accomplished
for the believer, and is not a status that the believer is in a process of
acquiring. In A.D. 1672, the Synod of Jerusalem was convened, which issued the
Confession of Dositheus directed against Calvinism and her teachings. The
confession clearly repudiated the Protestant formulation of sola fide in Article
XIII, which states that, “Man is justified, not by faith alone, but also by
works.” It becomes evident why Orthodoxy’s doctrinal formulation on salvation
deliberately avoids a distinction between justification and sanctification,
with a de-emphasis on forensic justification. What the Eastern Orthodox Church
needs to cogitate upon is the doctrine of justification.
Fairbairn is correct when he states that, “Orthodoxy’s
failure to distinguish adequately between justification and sanctification and
its lack of emphasis on the former is related to its understanding of grace. We
have noticed that Eastern Christendom regards grace as the energies of God
which are communicated to people and which deify them.”[6]
Eastern Orthodoxy’s understanding of “grace” is a good
example of how theology proper (doctrine of God) affects and permeates all of
one’s systematic theology, including soteriology. In Eastern Orthodoxy, there
is a distinction between God’s essence and energies. The concept of God’s
energies is foreign to the Western Church. Therefore, when Orthodoxy preaches
that, in theosis, man becomes more divine, it refers to the infusion of God’s
energies into man, and not His essence.
So according to Orthodoxy, grace is God’s energy that is
continually infused into the believer as a process, which results in man’s eventual
divinization. But Protestantism teaches that God’s grace is His unmerited
favour in a salvific sense, which is understood as a one-time legal declaration
of the sinner as justified. Fairbairn astutely laments that, “The lack of
emphasis in Orthodox theology on this aspect of grace contributes to the
Eastern failure to stress the nature of salvation as a free gift. This in turn
leads to a failure to distinguish between justification as God’s free
acceptance of unworthy sinners when we begin to believe, and sanctification as
the process of becoming righteous, a process which involves human effort. While
the emphasis on the process of deification itself is appropriate, the lack of
stress on the event which begins that process results in a significantly
distorted view of Christian life.”[7]
Michael Horton highlights an essential dissimilarity between
Eastern and Western theology proper, “Crucial to Orthodoxy is the distinction
between God’s essence and energies. The West has traditionally acknowledged
only uncreated essence (God) and created essence (creatures), so that union
with God would mean union with God’s essence. Yet for the East, there is only
union with the energies—which are God, but in God’s activity rather than in
God’s being. This marks the crucial difference between pagan Greek henōsis
(absorption into deity) and theōsis.”[8]
In other words, “Western theology operates with two
categories: whatever is not created is divine. The Eastern church added a third
category: divine energies.”[9]
This difference in the understanding of God’s essence and energies led to a
cautious rejection of theosis by the Western Church. But the recent resurgence
in interest in the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of theosis has led to a
re-interpretation of Luther’s understanding of deification. Indeed, the
dialogue between Finnish-Lutheran and Russian Orthodoxy has culminated in an
influential document on the doctrine of salvation entitled, “Salvation as
Justification and Deification.” “The New Interpretation of Luther’s theology,
as advanced by the so-called Mannermaa school at the University of Helsinki,
has challenged the prevailing German Old School approach,” notes Finnish
theologian Kärkkäinen.[10]
But such misinterpretation of Luther’s deification theory is
nothing new. The “new interpretation” that justification is deification by the Mannermaa
school bears an uncanny resemblance to Osiander’s error. Historically, “Andreas
Osiander (1498–1552) thought that he was merely extending Luther’s logic when
he argued that, in Christ, the believer participates in the deity of God.”[11]
The errors of Osiander have been thoroughly refuted by Philip
Melanchthon, Matthias Flacius and John Calvin. According to Calvin, “[Osiander’s]
view that Christ is our righteousness solely by his divine nature, whereby he
imparts to us “essential righteousness,” was regarded as invalidating the
Reformation doctrine of Christ’s sacrifice in the agony of the cross.”[12]
He continues, “That gentleman [Osiander] had conceived
something bordering on Manichaeism, in his desire to transfuse the essence of
God into men. … He says that we are one with Christ. We agree. But we deny that
Christ’s essence is mixed with our own. Then we say that this principle is
wrongly applied to these deceptions of his: that Christ is our righteousness
because he is God eternal, the source of righteousness, and the very
righteousness of God. … Although he [Osiander] may make the excuse that by the
term “essential righteousness” he means nothing else but to meet the opinion
that we are considered righteous for Christ’s sake, yet he has clearly
expressed himself as not content with that righteousness which has been
acquired for us by Christ’s obedience and sacrificial death, but pretends that
we are substantially righteous in God by the infusion both of his essence and
of his quality.”[13]
Similar to Eastern Orthodoxy’s teaching on theosis, Osiander
alleges “that we are not justified by the grace of the Mediator alone, nor is
righteousness simply or completely offered to us in his person, but that we are
made partakers in God’s righteousness when God is united to us in essence.”[14]
Hence, the teaching that righteousness is infused denies the
Reformation’s clarion call for forensic justification by faith alone, in Christ
alone. Similar to Orthodoxy’s salvation by theosis, the imputation of Christ’s
righteousness to the believer as a single, particular occurrence is repudiated
by Osiander. He asserts “that to be justified is not only to be reconciled to
God through free pardon but also to be made righteous, and righteousness is not
a free imputation but the holiness and uprightness that the essence of God,
dwelling in us, inspires.”[15]
Michael Bird justly conclude that, “Calvin’s Christology
will not actually allow God’s essential life to be communicated to believers
(and rightly so, to avoid the error of Andreas Osiander that we share in God’s
essential righteousness in justification).”[16]
He perceives that, “For Calvin, the believer participates
only in the human nature of Christ. Moreover, since there can be no interpenetration
of the natures in Christ, participation in the human nature of Christ cannot
result in a participation in the divine nature. The upshot is that one simply
cannot find the ontological purchase needed for a deification theory in
Calvin’s Christology. In my mind, Calvin is at best an advocate of a soft form
of deification (i.e., participation), but not in the fully orbed Eastern sense.”[17]
Conclusion
For those who understand salvation as a deification process
or theosis, the primary message from Protestantism is that Christ has purchased
believers with His blood, and through His lifelong obedience in the fulfilment
of the Law and His Passion, His perfect righteousness is imputed to believers
by faith alone, and in Him alone. Thus, God pronounces believers righteous in
Christ, and justified, not via a process of divinization or infusion of grace,
but by forensic justification as a legal declaration.
Lastly, it would be prudent for us to give heed to McGowan’s
advice that “there are certain key theological affirmations which must be
maintained. First, the Creator-creature distinction; second, the ontological
difference between God’s being and human being; and third, the doctrine of the
two distinct natures of Christ under the one Person of the Logos. The
affirmation of these doctrines will distinguish Reformed theology from various
forms of deification theology.”[18]
[1]
Wyndy Corbin Reuschling, “The Means and End in 2 Peter 1:3–11: The Theological
and Moral Significance of Theōsis,” Journal
of Theological Interpretation 8, no. 2 (2014): 276.
[2] The Orthodox Study Bible: Ancient
Christianity Speaks to Today’s World (Nashville: Nelson, 2008), 1691–92.
[3]
Emil Bartos, Deification in Eastern
Orthodox Theology (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 1999), 7.
[4]
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, “Deification View,” in Justification: Five Views, ed. Paul Rhodes Eddy, James K. Beilby,
and Steven E. Enderlein, Spectrum Multiview Book Series (Downers Grove, IL: IVP
Academic, 2011), 219–220.
[5]
Don Fairbairn, “Salvation as Theosis: The Teaching of Eastern Orthodoxy,” Themelios 23, no. 3 (1998): 47.
[6] Ibid., 49.
[7] Ibid., 50.
[8]
Michael S. Horton, “Traditional Reformed Response,” in Justification: Five Views, ed. Paul Rhodes Eddy, James K. Beilby,
and Steven E. Enderlein, Spectrum Multiview Book Series (Downers Grove, IL: IVP
Academic, 2011), 245.
[9] Michael
Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines
for Christian Disciples (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 328.
[10]
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, “Deification View,” 220.
[11] Michael
S. Horton, “Traditional Reformed Response,” 244.
[12] John
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian
Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1, The
Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press,
2011), 3.11.5, 730.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid., 731.
[15]
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian
Religion, 3.11.6, 731.
[16]
Michael F. Bird, Evangelical Theology: A
Biblical and Systematic Introduction (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2013),
578.
[17] Ibid.
[18]
Andrew McGowan, “Colossians 3: Deification, Theosis, Participation, or Union
with Christ?,” in Theological Commentary:
Evangelical Perspectives, ed. R. Michael Allen (London; New York: T&T
Clark, 2011), 170.
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