More Thoughts on Theosis

 “God became man so that man might become God. The Lord took the form of a servant so that man might be turned to God. The Founder and Inhabitant of heaven dwelt upon earth so that man might rise from earth to heaven.”

-St. Augustine, 5th century

“Because He became human so that we would be made God.”

-St. Athanasius, 4th century

“What man is, Christ was willing to be—so that man may also be what Christ is. … What Christ is, we Christians will be, if we imitate Christ.”

-St. Cyprian, 3rd century

“As I have already said, He caused man to cleave to and to become one with God. … Unless man had been joined to God, he could never have become a partaker of incorruptibility. … He became what we are so that we might become what He is.”

-St. Irenaeus, 2nd century

“Make your home within Me, and I within you. Just like the branch can’t produce on its own if it doesn’t make its home within the vine, so neither you if you don’t make your home within Me. I am the vine, you, the branches. The one making his home within Me and I within him, this one produces a lot of fruit, because separated from Me you can’t do anything at all. If someone doesn’t make his home within Me, he is tossed outside like the branch and dried up and they gather them together and toss them into the fire and they are burned. If you make your home within Me and My words make their home within you, you would ask whatever you wish and it will happen for you.”

-Jesus Christ, 1st century

“Yet I am not requesting about these alone, but also about those putting their trust in Me through their message, so that all of them would be one thing, just like You, Father, are within Me and I within You, so that also they would be one thing within us, so that the world would trust that You sent Me. And I have given to them the glory which You had given to Me, so that they would be one thing just like we are one thing; I within them and You within Me, so that they would be having been brought to completion into one thing, so that the world would know that You sent Me and loved them just like You loved Me. Father, what you had given to Me, I wish that where I am  those also would be with Me, so that they would watch My glory, which You had given Me because You loved Me before the foundation of the world.”

-Jesus Christ, 1st century

     The subject of theosis, or deification, is generally ignored in today’s churches, especially those having descended from the Reformation, yet it forms the very basis of our salvation in Jesus Christ. As the quotations above demonstrate, our union with God through Jesus Christ is something which was taught from the very beginning of the Church, even by Christ Himself. 

     Through union with Jesus Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection, we are made one thing with Him, joined with Him. As we voluntarily submit to the Spirit of Christ so that He becomes the source and origin of our actions, thoughts, and words instead of our own malfunctioning biology, we inherit His inheritance, the eternal life, the kingdom of Christ and of God. What is His becomes ours just as what is ours became His. Where He is we are, and where we are He is. We are one with Him just as Jesus Christ was one with the Father, as He asked the Father in John 17.

     By refusing to submit to the Spirit of Christ with whom we have been joined, we continue to operate from our own devices, our own faulty biology and resources. We close ourselves off from our inheritance, and separate ourselves from the one with whom we are one thing. We shut ourselves off from His eternal life, from the inheritance which is ours through Christ Jesus when we, for whatever reason, choose to not disengage from our own behaviors and responses, and explicitly or implicitly hand ourselves over to His Spirit, the Breath of Christ.

     Think about that for a minute. By refusing to submit to the Breath of Christ, we choose to be homeless paupers digging through the trash to hoard crap we can’t keep, and try to keep rules and regulations in order to restrain our faulty and malfunctioning impulses and behaviors to do the right thing and yet end up doing the wrong thing regardless. And the absurdity of it is that as one with Jesus Christ, literally everything in creation is ours because everything in creation is His, and as one with Jesus Christ, He, the God who is love incarnate, becomes the source and origin of all our actions and words which can never produce the wrong thing. As Jim Elliot said, “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” But in order to gain what we cannot lose, we must let go of what we cannot keep.

     Theosis is what salvation is, and what it is about. Not pardon. Not an escape from hellfire. Not a paradaisical afterlife. But union with God through union with Jesus Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection and everything which goes with it.