Notes About the Expensive Pearl

In my previous ramble I attempted to describe the teaching of Deification. We all know how great a job I do at explaining things... The truth is, when you look at the writings of the Church Fathers, they can be a little jarring because of how they word things, and because of how explicit their wording is.

Deification is the goal of salvation. It is the end result. It doesn't fully happen until after death. But one thing must be clear is that it is a teaching of the Church, has been since the beginning, and still is today. In other denominations Christian theologies it is called “glorification,” and it is also referred to as “divinization.”

The Fathers that I quoted were not some fringe group of radicals, they were the pillars and foundations of the Ancient Church. For example, St. Athanasius was the principle advocate for the doctrine of the Holy Trinity as we know it at the Ecumenical Councils which laid out and defined what we know as the Nicene Creed, the standard of faith of the Church. St. Irenaeus was the Bishop of Lyons and an important theologian and apologist of the second century. St. Augustine of Hippo should need no explanation as the author of “The City of God”, and the “Confessions”, neither should St. John of the Cross as the author of “The Dark Night of the Soul.”

The Holy Scriptures themselves refer to it several times:

John 10:34-36
Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken—do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?”

John 17:20-23
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word,that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”

Hebrews 3:14
“For we have become partakers of Christ, if truly we hold the beginning of the assurance firm to the end;”

2 Peter 1:3-4
“As His divine power has given to us all things pertaining to life and godliness through the full knowledge of the One calling us through glory and virtue, by which means He has given to us the very great and precious promises, so that through these you might be partakers of the divine nature, escaping from the corruption in the world by lust.”

1 John 3:2-3
“Beloved, now we are the children of God, and it was not yet revealed what we shall be. But we know that if He is revealed, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is. And everyone having this hope on Him purifies himself even as that One is pure.”

It is the teaching of Holy Scripture that we are united to Christ Jesus through baptism into His death. Deification begins, but does not reach it's fulfillment, here. As we engage in the “cycle of Grace” which I described previously, His Grace, His uncreated energy, becomes more and more active in our lives, transforming us as we partake or share in His nature through Christ. The end result is that we become divinity without becoming The Divine. We take on the nature of Deity while remaining human, until we are in full union with Him while remaining separate beings from him.

You must forgive the Church Fathers for using the admittedly disturbing word “gods” because there is simply no other good word to describe it. This is what it means to be sons of God having received the full Adoption through Christ Jesus, bodies included, in the Resurrection.

St. Paul believed this was worth considering everything else in his life, everything which was considered an advantage to him to be rubbish. He wanted this and was willing to throw away everything else to get it. This is the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, and it really can't get much higher. The Church Fathers called it as they saw it.

This is to what we, like St. Paul, are called. This is the goal, and it isn't just handed to us on a silver platter as a certain popular teaching professes. St. Paul knew that He hadn't attained to it yet, and wouldn't attain to it in this life, but what does he say?

“Not that I already received or already have been perfected, but I press on, if I also may lay hold, inasmuch as I also was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brothers, I do not count myself to have laid hold, but one thing I do , forgetting the things behind, and stretching forward to those things before, I press on after the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:12-14)

He continued on, shedding everything which could possibly hold him back from reaching it even in this life, and encouraged and taught others to do the same. He held it up in front of them and basically said “Here it is! This is the finish line! Keep your sights set on this and dump everything which could hamper you getting there!” When you're running a race to win, you don't carry a bunch of extra weight with you, and you don't stop in the middle of the race and call it good. We are called to seek full deification in this life, or at least get as close as possible to it. This is the process of sanctification.

I have said this before, Eternal Life begins here and now, not when you stop breathing. Deification is Eternal Life. It is the Kingdom of Heaven and it is worth everything to attain it in the here and now.

We get disturbed by the use of such phrases as “God became man so that men might become gods.” It isn't language that we use today in this world. It sounds heretical, like something from the Latter Day Saints, or something New Age. These are only perversions of what it really means. It really means shedding this corruptible body for an incorruptible. It means shedding this mortality for what is immortal. It means receiving our Adoption as sons of God in full. And it does not come from giving up the race in the middle.