Theosis

[turmeric]

Does anyone know how the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of theosis differs from the Reformed doctrine of sanctification?
Supposedly John Wesley derived his doctrine of "entire sanctification" from it, but when I try to read their stuff they just say it's about becoming like Christ, having His divine energies in us, etc.

 

[SRoper]

I don't know enough to be speak with much precision, but they don't believe in forensic justification. For them theosis has justification and sanctification rolled up in one. I've had one Eastern fellow explain that the way of Christ is like a road, and each person more or less follows this road. The closer we adhere to the road, the closer to theosis we are.

 

[biblelighthouse]

Theosis is another term for "deification". It was taught in the early church by Athanasius himself, the great defender of Trinitarianism between the councils of Nicea and Constantinople.

One of the key texts for this doctrine is in 1 Peter 1:3-4 ---

"His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust."

Athanasius said, "The Son of God became man, that we might become God". Of course this statement grates on our modern ears, because our ears are quick to assume that they literally mean that we are "turning into gods". But that could hardly be what Athanasius, this great defender of orthodoxy, had in mind. Rather, he was simply pointing to the fact that we Christians somehow mysteriously become "partakers of the divine nature", according to 1 Peter 1.

I personally would not use the language Athanasius used. It just flatly sounds heretical in English. But then again, 1 Peter 1:4 sounds pretty heretical in English, to a person who doesn't realize it comes right out of the Bible.

I think the passage in 1 Peter 1:4 sounds much better if we use word equivalents, and say, "we have become partakers of a divine birth/origin". Basically, I think Peter is saying that we have been "born from above", much like the apostle John wrote in John 3.

In any case, it IS quite an awesome thing! However we exegete this "partakers of the divine nature" passage, we should certainly hold it in awe, and not minimize it. Whatever it means, it is something really, really good. We do not become gods. But we are born from above, and we do partake in intimate fellowship with God. How excellent!!!

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Dr. Clark touched on theosis in a recent thread. It's helpful understanding how it applies in certain contexts. In this case, the problem becomes one of how we view man himself. Is he an analogue or is he on some spectrum of ontological being. The Reformed view is that we are analogues.

Thread is here:
http://www.puritanboard.com/forum/viewthread.php?tid=16241

This is on the second page:

Originally posted by R. Scott Clark

I guess i am having a hard time with the word covenant being used in scripture in the sense it is used by most reformers in a works paridigm [sic].

The classical Reformed tradition didn't have this problem, but lots of folk have, including the Socinians, the Arminians, the Lutherans (although Luther taught a sort of covenant of works in his lectures on Genesis in the 1540's). Be careful about rejecting the covenant of works since you may find yourself in unhappy company. The answer, "but I'm just following the Bible" won't help since that is exactly what the Socinians said as they rejected the deity of Christ, the Trinity, justification sola gratia etc.

Think of it this way, was Jesus in a covenant of works or not? Was Jesus born under the law or not? Of course the answer is yes.

If Jesus as the second Adam was in such a covenant/relation to divine justice, then there can be no theoretical objection to such a relation having existed before.

The Reformed argued also from the language of Gen 2-3 (as I've done here before on other threads) and from the prima facie evidence of Hosea 6:7 and from the legal aspect of the Israelite national covenant.

Have you read Witsius? Get the new Horton book on covenant theology from Baker -- I really ought to get a percentage for all the shilling I do for him!

I also have questions about whether that focus of obedience -disobedience was the major test in that covenant.

This objection is most puzzling. What is complicated about "the day you eat thereof you shall surely die"? Seems like a test of obedience to me and it has seemed so to catholic (including the Protestants) Christianity since the Fathers. The idea of the covenant of works is not a novelty.

Listen, if grace swallows up everything, as pious as that sounds, grace comes to mean nothing as it does in Barth where the decree and grace obliviate law and reprobation. Then, however, Barth proceeds to re-arrange law and gospel (since it's all of grace) and voilà we have moralism, i.e., justification by grace and cooperation with grace. Murray denied or weakened the covenant of works, with no intent to damage Reformed theology and within 25 years Norm Shepherd was adopting Pelagianizing views. I don't know of an instance in the history of Reformed theology where the covenant of works has been denied without unhappy consequences (e.g., Baxter).

....I would question whether man in himself had the power in himself to thwart satans [sic] tatics [sic] without God intervening in it in some way by grace or in not allowing that temptation to effect that fall unless God limited Satan in some way.

This is prejudicing the question, however. It isn't a matter of man's intrinsic powers per se. It is a matter of the nature of the covenant of works/nature/life.

Is God able to establish such a covenant? To say no is to invoke a series of theological problems. The focus should not be on what I think is hypothetically possible, however, but on what God actually did. The text does reveal a test - eat and die; don't eat and live.

Where is grace in the narrative? God made Adam "good." There is no defect. This is why the Reformed confessions speak with one voice about Adam's prelapsarian state. HC 6

...God created man good and after His own image, that is, in righteousness and true holiness; that he might rightly know God his Creator, heartily love Him, and live with Him in eternal blessedness, to praise and glorify Him

Adam was in a probationary state. He was made to enter into a probationary state.

Consider HC 9

Does not God, then, do injustice to man by requiring of him in His law that which he cannot perform?

No, for God so made man that he could perform it; but man, through the instigation of the devil, by wilful disobedience deprived himself and all his descendants of this power.

How does the HC (and WCF 7) understand Adam's potential and ability prelapsarian state? Is Adam weakened in any way? No. Does Adam have concupiscence? No. Is Adam lacking anything to fulfill the demands of the law? No.

We have trouble imagining a purely righteous man because our imaginations are warped by sin. We make it normative and we read it back into the prelapsarian state, but Scripture doesn't have this problem. It doesn't read grace or favor back into the prelapsarian state because it understands and implies what the HC says.

The fault of sin is Adam's, not God's. Adam did not fall from grace. That is the ROMAN view not the Protestant view. Adam broke the law. This fact is the basis for John's definition of sin as "lawlessness" not "gracelessness."

The notion that the fall was a fall from grace stems, as I've said before, from an unbiblical and pagan view of divine-human relations. We do not exist on one end of a continuum with God. We are and only shall be analogues to God. Full stop.

To say that grace was necessary before the fall is to say that, in effect, divinity is a pre-requisite for obedience, that humanity as such is incapable of obedience. That scheme almost always (and certainly did in Thomas and certainly does in contemporary evangelicalism) lead to a doctrine of theosis -- divinization as salvation. See M. Karkainen's (Fuller Sem) new book where teaches this explicitly.

This, of course, destroys not only the Creator/creature relations by turning the creature into the Creator it also makes our problem ontological rather than moral. Scripture never does this. The Protestants didn't do this. Augustine and Thomas did. Augustine and Thomas were wrong! Luther, Calvin and our theologians and symbols were more biblical.

This approach also destroys the incarnation. We have a God-Man Savior. His humanity is not deified and his deity is not confused with his humanity. We have a Savior with two distinct natures united in one person.

Why did God the Son have to become, having willed to be our Mediator and representative, a true man? Why not just come without the incarnation? To fulfill the covenant of works broken by Adam. If the "fall" was a "fall from grace" then why all the fuss about the law? About Jesus "righteousness" and "obedience"? Why the brutal 40 day temptation in the wilderness? Why not just "poof" and make it all go away? Why sweat, as it were, great drops of blood? Why "learn obedience" by the things he suffered? Why die outside the camp? Why be circumcised for us on the cross? Because, he was the Second Adam? He had to go back into the garden and do battle with the evil one, as a true man, and he did that his whole life. That is why he said "It is finished!"

None of that makes any sense on an alternate scheme. The truth is that western theology was schizoid for most of 1000 years and God bless that fat little Saxon monk for finalizing the divorce from Plotinus and Dionysius and the rest of the theologians of glory!

rsc