deification – The Tao of Holy Orthodoxy

forge metal fire

The goal of the Way is the salvation of soul and body. When Christ returns at the end of the age, all the dead will receive their immortal bodies through resurrection and, following the Judgment, everyone who belongs to Christ will enter into unending Life with Him. This is the fulfillment of salvation at the conclusion of time, but salvation is not just for the future. God has called us to experience salvation now, in this life, as a foretaste of the future Heavenly Kingdom.

We call the fullest experience of salvation in this life theosis or deification. Simply put, theosis means union with God. More precisely, theosis refers to the experience of being healed, transfigured, and united with the Holy Trinity through participation in the Divine Grace.

If a cold piece of iron or steel is placed in a hot fire, the metal takes on the properties of the fire. The metal glows bright with light and radiates heat as flame. If the metal is removed from the fire, it returns to its dull, cold state. Gold may be purified in fire. The flame refines the precious metal by separating the pure gold itself from impurities. When participating in the Divine Grace, which is the Uncreated Fire, the Orthodox Christian experiences purification, illumination, and union with God.

Christ Himself has shown us what the experience of human salvation looks like. At His Transfiguration on Mount Thabor, Christ revealed His Glory to Ss. Peter, James, and John. These three Disciples witnessed the God-Man Jesus Christ radiating, not with created light, but with Uncreated Light, that is, His own Divine Energy. Even His clothes were transfigured by contact with His Holy Illuminating Body.

Transfiguration Theophanes Greek (15th_c,_Tretyakov_gallery)

Although the Divine Glory always shined brightly from Christ, the darkened eyes of human hearts were not capable of perceiving it. On the mountain, Christ opened the spiritual (noetic) eyes of His three Disciples so they could witness His Glory. Ss. Peter, James, and John did not just behold this vision with their physical eyes. The vision of the Uncreated Light is an internal experience that affects soul and body.

Jesus Christ radiated with His own Divine Glory on Mt. Thabor because He is God by Nature. (The Son of God is God in Essence with the Father and Holy Spirit.) For us, salvation means becoming by Grace what Christ is by Nature. In other words, salvation means participating in the Divine Energy so that we are healed, transfigured, perfected, united with Him, and know Him by experience. The true human being at the height of spiritual potential is one who has been united with God. To put it yet another way, Christ shares His Glory with us so that we may be like Him. Notice that union with God, seeing the Uncreated Light, beholding the vision of Christ in Glory, knowing God with the heart, being like Christ, partaking in the Divine Nature, theosis, deification, and divinization all describe the same experience.

This is real theology, both practical and mystical. In our day, theology is often confused with the study of philosophy. A philosopher knows rational concepts related to God, but a true theologian is one who knows God by experience with his heart (nous) through prayer.

The Way of salvation may be summarized like this: Always do what is in harmony with human nature and avoid whatever is in contradiction to human nature so that you may become what is beyond human nature.

Read: Matthew 16.28-17.1-9; Luke 9.27-36; Ephesians 2.1-10; 1 Peter. 3-9; 2 Peter 1.3-4, 16-18; 1 John 3.2; Revelation 21.22-27

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The bright sun in the sky lies far beyond us in space. Standing on the earth, we cannot reach out and touch it no matter how far we stretch up toward this distant, untouchable ball of fire. (For perspective, consider that the sun is located 93,000,000 miles away or 150 million kilometers. The sun is also meltingly burning hot at 27,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit or 15,000,000 degrees Celsius). The sun itself remains unreachable and unknowable to us by our own direct experience. God is also unreachable and unknowable to us. More precisely, the Divine Essence is totally beyond our ability to understand, absolutely unknowable, infinitely distant (transcendent), entirely unreachable, and completely inaccessible to our experience.

God is the Existing One. Only He, the Uncreated God, exists by Himself. Everything else exists because He gave it existence by bringing it into being out of nothing. All things are contained within Him, Who alone Is without boundary and limit. The Divine Essence is so indescribably distant beyond imagination from the created universe that we refer to the Essence of God as even beyond Being and beyond Existence.

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are One in Essence, that is, One God. So, the Essence of God is Personalized in the Person of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There is no impersonal Divine Essence apart from the Persons. If you could know God in His Essence, then you would be God Yourself, equal to God in every way. As a new Divine Person – a fourth Person added to the Holy Trinity – you would then know God as God knows Himself (His Inner Self, so to speak). Of course, a created being cannot know or experience the the Uncreated Essence. Pantheism (the false belief that created things in the universe are divine) results from ignorance of the proper separation between the Uncreated Essence and created beings.

No one knows the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as thoroughly as they know one another because the three Persons share the same Uncreated Essence. They know each other on the level of Essence. Whoever we humans think that God is or think that God is like according to our human opinions, philosophical ideas, and creative imagination, the Divine Essence is not that. We really can say little about the Essence of God other than how far and untouchable from the created universe that the Divine Essence is.

If God is so completely unknowable and separated from us, how can we be saved? Here is the good news: God is unknowable and beyond, yet He is also knowable and near.

Although we cannot know the sun by experience directly from our place on earth, we do experience the sun’s rays. We participate in the light of the sun and the warmth of the sun through its rays. Our experience of invisible ultraviolet rays enables our body to produce Vitamin D. We are nurtured by the distant sun through the sunshine that draws near to us on Earth. While God is also completely unreachable, unknowable, and untouchable in His Essence, we can know and experience Him by His Energy, which flows from His Essence. The Energy is not a created power that connects us with God, but God Himself. We call this Divine Uncreated Energy by such names as these: the Grace of God, the Glory of God, His Power, the Uncreated Light, the Divine Presence, Uncreated Fire, or Divinity. We refer to the Energy as God’s movement, operation, condescension, action, activity, or work within the creation. We can know nothing about God other than what He reveals to us about Himself, so since He reveals Himself through His Energy, then we may refer to the Uncreated Energy as God’s revelation to us. Sometimes we refer to the Energy as plural Energies since we can distinguish between the different ways a human being experiences the Uncreated Energy as Divine Life, Light, Wisdom, Love, Humility, Healing Power, Joy, Peace, and so on.

Remember this: God is One. The Holy Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) is One Essence and One Energy. We cannot know God or experience God in His Essence, but we can know God and experience Him directly in His Energy. In fact, participating in the Divine Energy so that we are healed, transformed, and perfected by His Energy is salvation.

No analogies based on rational concepts or created things can succeed in explaining the Mystery of the Uncreated One. So, our use of the sun and its rays as a teaching concept to explain the distinction between the Uncreated Essence and Energies is helpful, but we should not overthink it. Analogies do not capture the Truth, but they keep us on the path toward the Truth so that we may pursue experiential knowledge of the Truth for our salvation.

Read: Exodus 33.1-23; Job 38.1-42.6; Matthew 11.27; John 1.18; 6.46

Tag: deification

67. Like Iron in Flame (Theosis)

66. Sun & Sunlight (Essence & Energy)