The Doctrine of God and Deification in Athanasius of Alexandria (Ph.D. Diss.) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Theosis (Deification) as a Biblical and Historical Doctrine
This is the first of the two articles by this author that research the doctrine of theosis, sometimes also called deification or divinization. The second article presents theosis as a New Testament and evangelical doctrine. This first article presents theosis as a biblical and historical doctrine. The first major section of this article analyzes the main biblical texts for the doctrine of theosis; their interpretation and appropriation for theosis. The second major section of this article gives an overview of historical development of the doctrine of theosis, from the beginning of Christian thought to modern era. It shows that theosis was not limited to Eastern theologians but was also represented in the West in certain mainstream theologians and movements. Because of its biblicity and historicity, theosis should be considered an essential historical doctrine of the Church.
With All the Fullness of God: Deification in Christian Tradition - ToC, Introduction
With All the Fullness of God: Deification in Christian Tradition, 2021
Christ came to save us from sin and death. But what did he save us for? One beautiful and compelling answer to this question is that God saved us for union with him so that we might become "partakers of the divine nature" (1 Pet 2:4), what the Christian tradition has called "deification." This term refers to a particular vision of salvation which claims that God wants to share his own divine life with us, uniting us to himself and transforming us into his likeness. While often thought to be either a heretical notion or the provenance of Eastern Orthodoxy, this book shows that deification is an integral part of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and many Protestant denominations. Drawing on the resources of their own Christian heritages, eleven scholars share the riches of their respective traditions on the doctrine of deification. In this book, scholars and pastor-scholars from diverse Christian expressions write for both a scholarly and lay audience about what God created us to be: adopted children of God who are called, even now, to "be filled with all the fullness of God" (Eph. 3:19).
Deification in Jesus' Teaching (excerpt)
Looks at the deification teachings especially in Luke 17:21 (kingdom within), Matt 5:48 (be perfect), John 10:34 (ye are gods), and the weaker teachings in the Gospel of Thomas. Originally published in Theosis: Deification in Christian Theology, vol. 2 (Pickwick/Wipf and Stock, 2011).
The doctrine of deification or divinization Ë‚ÔÔflÁÛÈÚ or Ë›˘ÛÈÚ has been of increasing interest across a wide ecumenical field in recent decades. It is all the more surprising, therefore, to note that there exist so few attempts at an extensive history of the development of this theme in early Christianity From the twentieth-century only the work of Jules Gross and Myrrha Lot-Borodine stands out as attempting serious summary of the development of this tradition, and neither offers an extensive consideration of the terminologies in which this doctrine was expressed or a consideration of the ways in which the doctrine was integrated within broader theologies and polemical contexts. Norman Russell's excellent The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition may well 1 I understand deification to be a doctrine that involves the transformation of human nature or existence such that "deified" human beings exhibit and share the divine perfections through participation. "Through participation" here is intended to indicate that the deified soul's sharing in divine perfections does not occur through the soul developing and possessing these perfections simply as its own perfections. This sharing in perfections may be expressed in language that emphasizes the transformation of the soul and its indwelling by God such that the distinction between soul and God are spoken of as if they were no more. The presence or absence of the doctrine cannot simply be read off the presence or absence of any particular terminology. This paper was first read at the 2000 meeting of the North American Patristic Society. I am grateful for the help of Roberta Bondi, Andrew Gallwitz, Nonna Verna Harrison, and Ian McFarland with earlier drafts. 2 Jules Gross, La Divinisation du chrétien d'après les pères grecs: contribution historique a la doctrine de h grace (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1938); Myrrha Lot-Borodine, La déification de l'homme selon la doctrine des Pères grecs (Paris: . Lot-Borodine's book is the more interesting, but is marred by a strong polemic against "western" theology's lack of the doctrine that demands much more historical investigation to be at all substantiated. Neither text offers any treatment of Latin theology.
The Concept of Deification in Greek and Syriac
Review of Ecumenical Studies 11(3) , 2019
The early patristic authors dealt with the idea of deification in varying circumstances, in relation to different questions, and in more than one language. This article examines Syriac and Greek discourses and vocabularies related to deification in Early Christian and Post-Chalcedonian sources, concentrating on the Syriac tradition, which is less studied. The comparison illustrates certain similarities and differences. The most striking difference is, perhaps surprisingly, that in the Syriac tradition, the idea of deification is prevalent but specific terms to indicate it are almost never used. The incommensurability of the discourses exemplifies the conceptual difficulties at the emergence of the schisms between the Greek and Syriac speaking parts of Christendom.
M Christensen & J Wittung (edd). Partakers of the Divine Nature. The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Tradition. , 2006
It would not go amiss, perhaps, to begin our conference 1 with a preliminary attempt to define and contextualize our key term. Deification in the Greek Christian understanding of that concept 2 is the process of sanctification of Christians whereby they become progressively conformed to God; a conformation that is ultimately demonstrated in the glorious transfiguration of the just in the heavenly Kingdom, when immortality and a more perfect vision (and knowledge and experience) of God are clearly manifested in the glorification () of the faithful. That shall serve as a brief initial introduction to a notion whose nuances we will proceed to refine extensively over the next two days in our common work. It is a notion that moves with a tensile dynamic 3 from the moral domain into the anthropological in a profoundly suggestive way that closely relates it to the parallel Christian notion of Transfiguration (Metamorphosis). In the hands of several of the later Greek theologians the two ideas are explicitly related. In the work of Origen and the Cappadocians, especially Gregory of Nyssa, we see the insightful reminder to us that to differentiate the moral from the anthropological is a mistake; or to put it in other words, to imagine that the life of virtue is something other than our graced existential energy, is an 'unredeemed' notion unfitting for a Christian. Deification (Greek : Theosis, Theopoiesis) was a bold use of language, deliberately evocative of the pagan acclamations of Apotheosis (humans, especially heroes, great sages, and latterly emperors, being advanced to the rank of deity) although that precise term was always strictly avoided by Christian writers because of its fundamentally pagan conceptions of creatures transgressing on divine prerogative: a blasphemous notion that several of the ancient Hellenes themselves, not least Arrian, found worthy of denunciation. Deification in classical Greek Christian thought is always careful to speak of the ascent of the creature to communion with the divine by virtue of the prior divine election and divine summoning of the creature for fullness of life. In other words, in all Christian conceptions of the notion, the divine initiation and priority is always at the basis of the creaturely ascent (at once both a moral and ontological ascent) and that progress is part and parcel of the very understanding of what salvation is. Deification theory is, therefore, a basic element of Greek patristic theology's articulation of the process of salvific revelation : put more simply, how the epiphany of a gracious God is experienced within the world (more precisely within the Church), as a call to more abundantly energised life. It is in this juxtaposition of the ideas of life and revelation (the revelation of life that is) that Christian 1 Keynote address given at the international conference on Theosis at Drew University. May 2004. 2 The language of deification was never quite as dominant in the West, where it did not carry the main burden of redemption theory as it did with the Greek Fathers, but it is a notion certainly found in parts of Augustine (Sermon 192; Exposition of Ps. 49; Exposition of Ps. 146) who uses it to denote the transformative effects of grace. See J.A. McGuckin. 'Deification', in: A Hastings (ed) The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought. Oxford. 2000. 3 Gregory of Nyssa applies that richly evocative word Epektasis to this end : the stretching out of the blessed soul alongside the endlessly fathomless being of God, in whose participation it finds itself rendered, though creaturely, in a truly authentic 'illimitability'.