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Can someone elaborate on "thesosis"?thanks

Dear Valentino,

Theosis is the process by which we participate in the Divine Energies of God by participating in the Life and Body of Christ through the Holy Spirit and are transfigured thereby.

It is the process by which we are brought into the Transfiguration of Christ on Mt. Horeb and are "Divinized" without, however, actually "Becoming God."

The icon of the saint teaches us about this. The saint's depiction makes him or her resemble the icon of Christ to show he or she is "Christified."

Theosis is accomplished through a lifelong communion/union with Christ by the Holy Spirit. Salvation is not only by faith and good works, as the Western Christians often argued about.

It is also by the union with Christ Himself, the Word Incarnate, whereby our bodies as well are transfigured by the deifying rays of His Divine Energies.

Prayer, Holy Communion etc. are means to this end.

Alex

Dear Alex,

Thank you for the explanation.

A question:

Would Theosis and grace/sanctifying grace be equivalent?

Teaching my children from a catechism has helped me to understand grace as "God's life in us". I never got that concept of grace when I was a kid.
The term grace was unclear to me at that time.

God bless you,

Paul

Dear Paul,

Well, theosis is about our participation in the Uncreated Grace or Energies of God.

"Sanctifying Grace" as explained in RC manuals isn't on that same level (I believe it is created) and is therefore different.

One main difference here is that we are called to "acquire the Holy Spirit" whereas the West often talks about "attaining holiness."

The former is about our relationship with the Holy Spirit, the Source of all Good and Holiness, Himself, Who sanctifies and deifies us.

Another difference is regarding the overall impact of sanctification on us.

The West basically has little to say about Deification, Divinization or Theosis - the CCC has nothing to say about it.

When the West was arguing about faith and works, the East went a step ahead and added that it is our communion with God in Christ by the Spirit that is what it is all about.

Our participation in the Life of Christ is what communicates to us the experience of the Transfiguration.

Alex

Dear Alex
(your posts so often make me smile)
Would you please elaborate on the Energies
as written about by Gregory Palamas. I am at the
moment reading a book by Daniel Rogich "Becoming
Uncreated: the journey to human authenticity"
dealing with Gregory's teachings on the Uncreated
Energies of God. I find his teachings so much more satisfactory than the West's sanctifying
grace.

I think other folks here would benefit from some
discussion.
denise

Dear Alex,

I want to add what I've been taught from Scripture that describes theosis (correct me if I'm wrong).

2 Peter 1: 3-4

His divine power has bestowed on us everything that makes for life and devotion, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and power.

Through these, he has bestowed on us the precious and very great promises, so that through them you may come to share in the divine nature , after escaping from the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire.

Man! That is something to meditate on.

Paul

Dear Denise,

St Thomas More was once chided by John Colet about the fact that More's wife was so short, while More was so tall.

"You should have gotten a wife that was more your size," John said.

To which More replied, "One must always choose the LESSER of two evils . . ."

And that is the source where both sayings became common in the English language, More's famous one and John's "pick someone your own size."

Believe it or not . . .

Palamas makes the important distinction between the inner Divine LIfe of God Himself, to which we have no access as it is beyond us, and the Uncreated Energies of God that emanate from the Holy Trinity and in which we most certainly do have access as we participate in the Life in Christ.

Again, here is a distinction between Western and Eastern perspectives.

The West often talks about the "Imitation OF Christ" as the famous work by Thomas Kempis is titled.

The East emphasizes the fact of our actual participation in and partaking of the Life IN Christ.

Just as God became Man in Christ and so permeated our Humanity with His Divinity, transfiguring and Divinizing it thereby, so too are we called to partake of the Body of Christ in Holy Communion, prayer, the liturgy etc. to live the Life in Christ and be divinized thereby.

The West also has tended to see in the Incarnation an expression of "Divine Humility" in taking on our human nature.

The East, however, understands the Incarnation as something that impacted US with Christ's own Divinity.

We are made "Divine," we are lifted up to heaven to become members of the Kingdom of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Our very bodies are deified through participation in the Body and LIfe of the God-Man, our Lord Jesus.

We are to become one with Christ to allow His Divine Blood to flow in our veins, to allow His Life to be ours.

The Uncreated Energies of God are channelled into us by the Holy Spirit as we acquire Him more and more throughout our Life in Christ, as St John of Kronstadt so brilliantly wrote about in his diaries.

These Energies are not the Inner Being of God - for if God communicated that to us, we would be truly become God!!

Alex

Yes, St. Gregory Palamas made a distinction between the essence and energies of God. Before him, in the Cappadocian Fathers, notably St. Gregory of Nyssa, we can see foundations of these principles. St. Clement of Alexandria coined the term "synergy" to describe the cooperation between our will and the divine energy. The idea of theosis, essence and energy are very different in meaning and approach from the Western idea of sanctifying grace.

The West as generally tried to quantify and define that grace, when it occurs, what the effects are, etc. while the East has taken a more organic and mystical approach of intimate communion with God through theosis, and experiencing God through His energies.

I thought up an analogy of a light bulb, although any analogy is very dangerous and very limiting. You can see the light, feel the warmth. These are energies, manifestations. The electricity is the essence. You can't see it with human eyes, and you can't touch it or else ZAP - you know what happens. The electricity in this example is "unnapproachable" in a sense as the essence. I know this is a very allegorical and primitive example to describe such a profound reality.

One short but very illuminating quote relating to theosis is that from St. Athanasius in his work "On the Incarnation": "God became man so man might become God". Through theosis we all partake of the divine nature.

Alex:

With all due respect, I believe that we're in another linguistic situation that approaches the same thing from different angles.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition seems to be saying what you are saying when you describe theosis but uses the term sanctifying grace. At any rate, given the explanations there, snactifying grace is certainly not created.

Check out paragraphs 824, 1266, 1999, 2000, and 2023-24.

Your explanations of theosis, however, are right on the money and are a very concise description of what I have read about this before.

If I may compare--as a layman without formal theological training--it seems to me that sometimes Latin approaches try to define in specific terms--for the benefit of people being taught, of course--what sometimes is an experience. It reminds me of the analogy I have used before wherein language and the thought patterns it engenders causes us to look at things the way we do. Latin asks "what is the law" or "what is the definition" while the Eastern Fathers through the Greek language ask "what is life" or "what are the shades of meaning."

This is not totally the picture and is certainly oversimplified, but it seems to me to give some focus on how the different mindsets approach the same mystery. And no one approach can wrap itself around the totality of the mysteries that we are all trying to understand.

Thank you for your posts. They continue to nourish.

BOB

Your entire explanation was well done... and you are right, the arguments have passed. Yes.. there are some smaller evangelical churches which still hold to the old rumors and there are some who see it as an assignment from God to hammer the RC for its supposed errors and corruption. The Orthodox hierarchy down here in American cringe at the influx of bible-belting evangelists who convert and then spout their RC hatred as if it were Orthodox hatred. While the Orthodox and Catholics here do not agree on words - there is no display of animosity either. I am RC but am somewhat adopted by the local Russian Orthodox church. The priest there is my spiritual director - plus my best friend. I am building one of the first Orthodox biblical research web sites for the Orthodox seminary. When we go out to lunch we are the only two in the restaurant who say grace and cross themselves in public. The Orthodox deacon teaches Patristics at the local RC seminary. We have much more in common than we do that may separate us (words semantics and long held misunderstandings).

The arguments between main Protestant churches and Catholics has been over for awhile. For many years - Protestants believed that Catholics believed - that one works his way to heaven through good works and indulgences - while the Protestants place the emphasis on faith. A keyword, understood a bit diffrently by both - was "merit".

The reapir culminated with the Lutherans culminated in 1999
http://www.cesnur.org/testi/cath_luth_1.htm

�We confess together that good works - a Christian life lived in faith, hope and love - follow justification and are its fruits�

through dialog they came to understand that the RC means to say all along - that God will not make us saints despite ourselves - at some point he needs our cooperation. He does not make us saints against our will or without our free will cooperation. Being human - our cooperation will naturally be manifest in human ways.

So as you say here...
[B}Theosis is accomplished through a lifelong communion/union with Christ by the Holy Spirit. [/B]

Most main Protestant churches have declared they agree, that acts of faith and acts of good works are the visible human side of the faith and the cooperation born of communion and union with Christ through the Holy Spirit.

Was it Paul or James who said "what good is faith without good works?" meaning a faith that does not bear active fruit - is still-born. The man who receives coins from his master and buries them in the ground instead of spending them - earns no interest for his master. He has not put the money he had received to work and action.

As you know � well .. Let us take this from the joint declaration �

"Many antitheses could be overcome if the misleading word �merit' were simply to be viewed and thought about in connection with the true sense of the biblical term 'wage' or reward"

Now look at that - a word which fit perfectly well in Latin with its Latin meaning and inflections - did not works as well when translated to English (at least not for those who had not the Latuin heritage) - imagine that - it took more than what 500 years of arguing to boil down to the sematics of a word. Ah - the human condition. Without the love of Christ operative within us - we shall never overcome Babel.

As you know and well note in this present Pope.. what was once written in words and form for the purpose of the fuller understanding of its own charge (members) put into words appropriate for the cultures comprising its people - the RC has been bending over backwards to make understandable to peoples and churches of different cultures, social circumstances, traditions and history, and the changes inheriant in the languages that comprise its own charge.

In these times, in the shrinking of Christendom, where secular values are replacing Christian values on all government levels - that backdrop is highlighting the shared Christian values and beliefs of all Christian churches. The divisions of Chritindom have certainly had something to do with the advance of secularism.

The time when the catholic churches, each being preserved by the presents of the seven sacraments and a valid sucession - the time is coming and indeed is already in the sprouting - that they shall be re-united in hearts and ecclesiastical cooperation and open to understanding the other. Past rumors eventually die away, as dead as the orginal ones who began them. The active sin lay with those who began them - the continuation of is simply our human condition of weakness and frailty and the repair certainly constitutes what is also faith and good works to fruition. Where esle does love begin but within ones own family?

The trouble with the Mid East is that the Palestinians and Jews - never forgive and forget. Each believes that the way to peace of the future - is to assign blame, correct past faults and wrongs, assign hatred and uncover conspiracy . The past is gone, never to return, and its history really depends on who is doing the interpretation. Nothing has ever been cleared up or corrected - in the past. No one can reach back there and change a thing let alone figure out for sure who was the first blame and was he justified. All side - react in what it considers is its own self-defense - and that self-defense is in turn assumed by the other - through lack of understanding and trust - to be aggression. They are chained (as it were) to misunderstandings of the past which can never be figured out or righted because the past is a book closed and sealed which allows no changes and no further reading.

They remind me of some children, who, when grown, blame their horrible lives and the way they are and act upon their parents and upbringing. They see themselves as mostly and almost totally - products of their environment - where is free will? No child becomes a mature adult until he ceases trying to fix the past.

Cheers and good will

Dear Bob,

One problem with the CCC is that it really has adopted a number of perspectives from the Eastern Church and presents it as normative for Catholics NOW.

I can only applaud its effort and that of the Pope!

Its view of Original Sin, Purgatory etc. are closer to the East, or right on, than RC doctrine ever was before. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But it also means that we have to look elsewhere for older RC theological points of view on the created nature of sanctifying grace etc.

But the most important difference here remains.

In the RC system, it is "sanctifying grace" that is at work. In the East, it is the communication of the Holy Spirit Himself.

As St Seraphim of Sarov said, the aim of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit!

Alex

Dear RayK,

Excellent, as per your usual!

For me, the truly wondrous aspect of the East's theology of sanctification and Theosis is "Communion with God" and partaking of the Divine Nature.

And you are right - the entire Bible speaks of this. Christ Himself asked us to remain in Him, to live in Him, the true Vine as His branches.

Alex

Here's an interesting web site that includes a pages on mysticism and theosis:
http://www.frimmin.com/

What you ya'll think?

Sophia

Though I am not that well acquainted with the traditional Latin distinctions of grace, I do believe that Alex really overdoes the alleged differences between East and West on theosis. I suspect that the differences here are much more semantic than substantive.

Traditionally, Catholicism has addressed our participation in the divine nature of God under the category of adoption [newadvent.org] .

The West gets hit hard by the Orthodox for the traditional formulation of created grace. I do not want to either defend or criticize this category; but I will note that its true function is to protect the Creator/creature category. Orthodoxy accomplishes this task by another means, namely, its (problematic?) distinction between the being and energies of God.

Alex may be right that the Catholic Catechism does not actually use the word theosis, but the entire Catechism is based on the proposition that Christian life is grounded upon and participates in the trinitarian life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Please look at the sections on Baptism and Eucharist and then look on the section on Grace. Do you see a huge material difference here?