The Whole Christ: Deification in the Catholic Tradition (original) (raw)

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).

An Experiential Approach to Deification: Lessons Learned from Hesychasm, Ignatian Spirituality and (Post)Modern Mysticism

Theosis/ Deification: Christian Doctrines of Divinization East and West, in J. Arblaster and R. Faesen (eds), Leuven – Paris – Bristol: Peeters, 2018

While the New Testament Christians rightly rejected the concept of deification as divinisation of the powerful, in the next generations two themes associated with deification re-emerged: the radical unity with God visible in the saints who became by grace who Christ is by nature, and the unity of love among creatures recreated through Christ-like kenosis. In my lecture I will explore more closely the content of these themes as it emerged in the spiritual advice on how to live a life relying on God’s grace which makes us alive – and in the two senses mentioned above – which deifies. I will bring into conversation insights learned from the Hesychast and the Ignatian traditions, as well as from modern and post-modern philosophical mysticism, Wittgenstein and Derrida in particular. The experiential approach will help me not to approach the doctrine of theosis/deification from the point of view of a “final product” – a deified human person, a deified creation. My main attention will be given to the process of deification, to a journey including struggles with darkness, the discernment of spirits, the kenotic losing of oneself, as well as the paradoxical encounters with the light. In attending to these elements I will ask how the personal/ascetic and the communal/liturgical expression of the journey overlap and create one whole, as well as to how a need for a radical solidarity with others gradually replaces any remains of individualism and exclusivism. In the conclusion I will consider the hermeneutical problem of how to hear and understand the experience of the journey of deification when it includes stages which we have not lived through ourselves. At the same time I will show that exploring the doctrine of deification through its experiential roots helps in appreciating the gradual and pluriform nature of our understanding of what becoming by grace what Christ is by nature may mean.

The Oxford Handbook of Deification: A Book Proposal Accepted by Oxford University Press. The volume will be co-edited with Andrew Hofer and Matthew Levering. Target Publication Year: 2023

2023

There are few Christian doctrines as all-embracing as the doctrine of deification. For this reason alone, the doctrine of deification deserves to be included in the Oxford Handbook series, which already has excellent volumes on the Trinity, Christology, Mary, the Sacraments, and so on. But the doctrine of deification has also been a point of sharp ecumenical disagreement and controversy among Christians, especially in the last one hundred years. This is so because in the Orthodox East, there is a strong concern that the doctrine has been either neglected or rendered inoperative in the Catholic and Protestant West. Indeed, most Western theologians will admit that the doctrine has been neglected at least verbally: the term “deification” has fallen into disuse due to a fear of misunderstanding, as well as, perhaps, due to embarrassment over Christian failures and divisions. At least in general, it is safe to say that Christians hardly look like a “deified” people in any sense of this term. For many Orthodox scholars, the Western rejection of the Palamite distinction between the divine essence and the divine energies has also rendered otiose any attempt by Catholics and Protestants to reclaim the doctrine of deification, at least while continuing to reject Palamite orthodoxy.

The Role of the Holy Spirit in Human Deification

This article focuses on introducing the teaching on the Holy Spirit and His relation with man. This article's main objective is to demonstrate the role of the Holy Spirit in human deification (theosis) and the experience of human relations with the Holy Spirit in Orthodox theology. When speaking of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and His grace, Orthodox theology also speaks of the kenosis of the Third Person of the Holy Trinity and human participation in the Holy Spirit.