I'm starting a new book tonight and the introduction had such a nice, succinct description of theosis I figured I'd share it.

...The struggle for human perfection within the imperfections of the world and the human psyche begins, according to the teachings of the Desert Fathers, by a humble acknowledgement of the depths of human depravity face to face with the human potential for divinization (in Greek theosis, or union with the energies - but not the essence - of God) and perfection. Having beheld the higher spiritual ideals and principles of human life, a spiritual aspirant must then develop a profound commitment to such things. In this commitment, he learns to obey and to submit to the good, to the Divine, as well as to those things and persons that represent, and guide one towards, the higher life: consciously following in obedience and with fidelity the quiet invitation of the heart to partake of the good things of the inner life of the soul. Seeing, at last, how far short he falls of the standard of perfection, an aspirant is overcome, not by self-denigrating guilt, but by a deep, ineluctable regret before all that separates the human from holy. In keeping with the true meaning of the Greek word for repentance, metanoia [a change of mind - k2] the aspirant undergoes a complete realignment of the thoughts, turning the mind naturally and spontaneously to the good. Sorrow for sin, strangely joined to an ineffable joy, creates a condition which - pierced to the heart by contrition and seemingly overwhelmed by a sense of unworthiness and an intense fear of certain perdition - the repentant struggler draws nearer to God in his burning awareness of what it is that separates him from what is so close. The gap between God and the sinner, in this repentant state, is closed, not by self-affirmations about salvation and holiness, but by a sure Grace that operates within a joyous sorrow.

Finally, having ascended through lowliness to the loftiness of obedience, and having cultivated the desire for God which repentance brings, the spiritual seeker is drawn to God by love, reaching the highest rung on the spiritual ladder that leads up to virtue and perfection. Not by compulsion, but by the energy and action of God, he is united to the Divine, transformed thereby in love. Subject to sin but drawn by love to perfection, love engenders love. So great is this love of God, that the aspirant comes to see Him in his fellow man, making the whole of life one of concern for others. He places even before self-discipline the sacred duty of loving service ot one's neighbor; for, as one holy man succinctly says, the love of one's brother is evidence for one's love for God -- the former verifies the latter.

From Flowers from the Desert.

I have noticed the word grace capitalized several times in things you write or quote, and I note how you talk about grace being present during communion for the Orthodox but not for protestants. How do the Orthodox define grace?

We understand God to be a Monad, a common essence, the inherently personal reality of the consubstantial Trinity. The Trinity is the essential subsistence of the three-personed Monad. Put another way, the common essence of the three Persons is the oneness of God, and this oneness subsists or exists as three persons. The essence of God is beyond all comprehension or understanding - it is ineffable and unfathomable. So, theologically speaking we know absolutely nothing about God as He is, because we only can understand created things on our own and He is uncreated.

However, we Christians all believe in Grace, and we believe that in a real way salvation is linked with being joined to God, to become sons by grace what Christ has by His own Sonship. So, we need to understand what is this divinity we can partake of.

God is Holy. He is Righteous and Just and Good. All of these things about God or things around god are real, and we call these His energies. This is a word borrowed from Aristotle, and it comes from the word for work. When we experience God, we experience His energies. And, because there never was a time that God did not love, or was not good, we understand that His energies are, like Him, uncreated and divine. His energy is divine, it is still God. So when we say He is our Righteousness He really is, in a real way, because the very concept of Righteousness actually only truly exists in God.

Grace, all grace, is the energy of God - which is God. When we talk about the mysteries, these are numberless, because they are just inexeplicable means of communing with God, with His energies. But some are contained in promises, like communion, baptism, and so on - we know, we are promised that these things are guaranteed grace-givers.

That's why the Eucharist is so special. Like baptism, it was instated by Christ, and like baptism, it mixes created physical things with Divinity (like Christ Himself). They symbolize the ultimate promise we hope for - that our physical self can be completely united to God's energies that we become so much like Him (love, righteous, glorious) that there is no difference, you can't tell where one ends and the other begins.

(Forgive me for going on so much, the power is out at work so I'm kinda just sitting here).

Thanks for the explanation. For way of clarification, does the Orthodox church consider grace one of the energies, like holiness, goodness, etc., or does it encompass all of His energies? Or, still yet, is it the favor through which He contacts us with His energies and bestows them on us?

GQaggie said:

---

Thanks for the explanation. For way of clarification, does the Orthodox church consider grace one of the energies, like holiness, goodness, etc., or does it encompass all of His energies? Or, still yet, is it the favor through which He contacts us with His energies and bestows them on us?

---

I need to speak carefully so I don't say something incorrect and mislead you -- I'm not an authority here. But no, His energies just are what eternally emanate from His essence. In a way I think that when we put labels on them, we're trying categorize something that doesn't really allow for categorization. It's not like some part of God is Holy and another Glorious.

I think the last thing you wrote is correct. Grace is how we understand God's action that we participate in - perhaps the temporal sending of eternal and uncreated things.

K2, two quick questions (which you've probably answered a million times before): did you grow up Orthodox or convert? If converted how do you find the cradle Orthodox churchmembers as far as keeping the fasts, knowing their theology, etc?

Converted when I was 28.

Cradle Orthodox depend a lot on the parish or even family. Some folks are just culturally orthodox because they're Arabic or Greek or something. Then some people I've met are incredibly pious. It just depends.

Nice. Is it true that most converts go the Antiochian route? I know Rod Dreher is a famous exception going Russian but from my admittedly limited understanding a lot go Antiochian and they've seen a lot of growth.

I don't know. The antiochian church really made a concerted effort to be open and welcoming to converts. Some of this was even a little controversial - clergy trimming their hair or wearing dog collars like Roman Catholics. But the idea was to be able to witness and connect.

Orthodoxy is really different, the liturgy is a totally new and different experience. It makes it tougher if it's in another language. I go to an antiochian church because the services are all in English. But, there is no theological difference between the various orthodox churches. It's only administrative organization.

I asked the church closest to me why their services weren't all in English and the priest shrugged and said we still have a number of parishioners who don't speak English. Catch 22, serve your parish has to balanced with being open and welcoming.

I love me a good K2 thread.

1) I have to quibble with the word choice, but probably not the overall point, that "Jesus instituted baptism" Water baptism is a very important custom in Judaism, and had a very spiritual meaning when Jesus was teaching. I guess you can speculate that God instituted baptism in the Jewish religion to point to the baptism that Jesus brought, and it has a very different meaning to Christians than to Jews, but many Christians don't know the history of baptism in the Jewish religion and what it signified during the ministry of Jesus, and I think that is a shame.

2) I don't find Orthodoxy to be too out of line with what is believed in many Bible churches that are not overtly Calvinist. Honestly, I could teach a lot of the Orthodox theology around the nature of God as as an energy, and death being the absence of God as possibilities. I might get a correction that what I was teaching is possibly correct, but impossible to know. That is why these topic in Orthodoxy are so fascinating to me. It is different than the Western theological philosophy, but not, in my view, heretical in any way.

I see your point on ceremonial washing...I think the maybe better word choice is to say the Mystery of Holy Baptism, which is the institution of baptizing in the name of the Trinity. Can you write a little thing to your point on what it represented? Wouldn't mind your thoughts on it.

I'm glad you don't think what I've written here is heretical

The distinction between essence and energy is really old, going back at least to the Cappadocian fathers (Sts Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Nazianzus). Of course, the use of the words hypostasis and energeia of God are apostolic in origin, both being used in the New Testament...Energeia by St Paul in Ephesians 1:19, 3:7, 4:16 and Philippians 3:21, Colossians 1:29, 2:12, usually translated as God's working, and hypostasis in Hebrews 1:3. This shouldn't be surprising, as the fathers ate, slept, and breathed scriptures...their writings just drip with it.

I wanted to sort of correct you, God is not an energy. He is simply not anything...if you take everything you can possibly conceive of, and negate everything, you would arrive at the place where God may exist. He is Uncreated, nothing we know can be a reference. You just can't grasp Him. But, His Energeia is still Him, because it is Uncreated. The confirmation of this identity (God's Energies = God) was confirmed in the theology of St Gregory Palamas, but the reality of it is that it is just an explanation of an extant theology, again going back through St Gregory Nazianzus, St Maximos the Confessor, and so on. (The reason for this insistence lies in the distinction between uncreated and created grace... long story...)

As for what we can or can't know... there's a reason we only give three saints the title of Theologian in Orthodoxy. St John the Theologian (the Apostle and Evangelist), St Gregory Nazianzus, and St Symeon the New Theologian. Their theology comes from God, because He is unknowable and indescribable.

You can see how we recognize this in the Kontakion / hymns of their feast days:
St Gregory
O Glorious One, you dispelled the complexities of orators with the words of your theology.You have adorned the Church with the vesture of Orthodoxy woven from on high.Clothed in this, the Church now cries out to your children, with us,"Hail Father, the consummate theological mind."

St Symeon
Shining with the Three-Sun Light, you were a true theologian of the Holy Trinity, the Lord divinely-transcendent; from on high, you were made rich with wisdom of discourse and poured forth the divine streams of godly wisdom; whereof having drunk, we cry out: Rejoice, thrice-blessed Symeon, taught from above.

In Levitical teaching, washing was in a baptismal was a ceremonial cleaning that prepared you to go into the temple, for example, or cleanse you after you had touched a dead animal. The design of a baptismal pool that you could use for this was pretty complicated, and the baptismal had to have running water. A baptismal was usually the first thing Jews would make when they went to a new place.

However, by the time of Jesus, baptism had started to take on additional meanings. New converted Jews were baptized. There were some sects of Jews that believed that effective ritual washing required an obedient heart.

John the Baptist added even more meaning to it, adding repentance to the equation. Of course, he was a profit who was setting the stage for Jesus, so you could say that this was part of establishing the Christian practice of baptism.

I think that the history of Jewish baptismals is rich and interesting.

The book I quoted is a series of short vignettes from the Evergetinos and the Philokalia of and about the Desert Fathers. The book covers the major themes of humility, obedience, repentance, and love. I wanted to share a few because I thought they were challenging and edifying.

Quote:

---

Abba Poimen said that when a man succeeds in grasping the saying of the Apostle, "Unto the pure all things are pure" (Titus 1:15), he sees himself as being lower than all of God's creatures. A brother who heard this said to him, "How can I reckon myself lower than a murderer?"

The Elder replied, "If a man attains to the measure of this saying, such that he acquires purity, and sees a man engaging in murder, he will say, 'He has committed only this one sin; but I commit murder daily.' "

---

Quote:

---

Three Elders once visited Abba Sisoes, after having heard of him. The first of them said to him, "Father, how can I be saved from the gnashing of teeth and the unsleeping worm?"

Abba Sisoes did not give him an answer.

The second asked, "Father, how can I be saved from the gnashing of teeth and the unsleeping worm?"

Abba Sisoes did not reply to him, either.

The third one said, "Father, what am I to do, for from my fear of the recollection of the outer darkness, I cannot even breathe?"

The Elder then said to them, "I do not think about any of these things, but I hope that God, compassionate as He is, will have mercy on me."

On hearing his reply, the Elders were upset and got up to leave. But Abba Sisoes, since he did not want to let them go away in distress, said to them, "You are blessed, brothers. Truly, I envy you, for if your minds are always dominated by such thoughts, it is impossible for you to sin. But what am I to do, hard-hearted as I am, for I have not been granted to know even whether there is a punishment for men? Because of this I sin every hour."

---

Quote:

---

Abba Matoes said, "When I was young, I thought that I was perhaps doing something good; but now that I am an old man, I see that I have not even one good deed to show."

A brother asked him, "How is it that the monks succeed in doing more than the commandment says, that is, in loving their enemies more than themselves?"

"Up to now," replied the Elder, "I have not loved even Him Who loves me as much as I love myself."

---

Quote:

---

A certain brother asked Abba Sisoes, "Counsel me Father, for I have fallen to sin. What am I to do?"

The Elder said to him, "When you fall, get up again."

With bitterness the sinning brother continued, "Ah! Father, I got up, yet I fell to the same sin again."

The Elder, so as to not discourage the brother, answered, "Then get up again and again."

The young man asked with a certain despondency: "How long can I do that, Father?"

The Elder, giving him courage, said to the brother, "Until the end of your life, whether you be found in the commendable attempt to lift yourself up from sin or falling again to it."

---

Quote:

---

Satan appeared to a brother who had fallen to sin and said to him: "You are not a Christian."

The brother answered, "Regardless of what I am today, from now on I will flee from you."

Satan, attempting to cast him into despair, spoke again to him: "I tell you that you are going to Hell."

The brother, not losing his courage, said a second time, "You are neither my judge nor my God."

So Satan left, having accomplished nothing.

---

Thanks.

This captures the part of Grace that I find to be most beautiful. What you did yesterday has no impact on your decision to wake up this morning and choose to serve the Lord. We have the opportunity to live in Christ each new moment, and our past sins never preclude us from this choice.

Man has such a difficult time with forgiveness, especially forgiving himself.

I was reading a book by Jordan Cooper, an AALC pastor who tends to lean eastward... I like him quite a bit.
The book is Christification: A Lutheran Approach to Theosis.

I highly suggest it for any protestant interested in the subject.

From the introduction

Quote:

---

There have also been recent attempts to argue for theosis within the theology offJohn Calvin and John Wesley, leading to a discovery of the doctrine within Baptist, Presbyterian, Anglican, and Methodist traditions.

This has, I think, been a positive movement within the church. With all of the divergences of the doctrine of justification since the Reformation, there is need for a soteriological starting point that can promote ecumenucal dialogue, and deification is a doctrine that is truly catholic. That being said, the various theological traditions are not wllling to simply admit agreement here by dismissing all their various other disagreements with a feigned unity of faith, nor should they.

---

First chapter defines theosis,then goes through theosis in Lutheran tradition, Holy Scripture, as Christification in Early Patristic Sources, and then the Neoplatonic approach to deification. (I admit, I haven't read the neoplatonic chapter yet...)