The Doctrine of Deification in the (Coptic) Church: Part 1  

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Part 1 (of many) 🙂

Before I knew Christ, I did not know the possibilities of what I could become.” (St. Cyprian, 3rd c)

For one reason or another, the Coptic Orthodox Church has experienced an “anti-deification” movement recently without understanding what the term or what the doctrine actually professes, often times than not.

People often become disgruntled or defensive when the mere word is said – as if a newly reformed heresy arose and the Church must keep such wrong teachings outside of its doctrine.

Deification (also known as theosis in Greek) is a Christian Orthodox doctrine and it is essential to our salvation, otherwise we have all fallen short of what it means to be human and Christ-like and have completely disregarded the main purpose and restoration of Christ’s incarnation for our lives.

Frequently, when speaking about the subject, names of clergy and books are tossed about in either opposition or defense of the term – often times without again understanding of its Orthodox doctrine and teaching.

I will say that knowing mere titles of books or certain events have at times contributed to our lack of theological knowledge (we quote names or books without knowing our theology as a whole).

I believe there are a number of other contributing factors why deification (theosis) is often been a point of debate and confusion recently. Such issues will not be discussed here, as I believe it is more pertinent to understand the doctrine in its true essence of Orthodoxy. And consequently, I hope such issues of debate will eventually cease and theosis will be experienced and lived by all.

I will present a series of blogs on the subject – excerpts from my Masters’ thesis on theosis written about 3 years ago at Oxford. I hope in this platform, it will be one of many places that we begin (and continue) to learn, seek and research more about the doctrine as revealed through the Trinity in the Scriptures, as experienced in the lives of the saints, and written about by the Fathers of the Church.

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The earliest Christian patristic witness to the notion of Christian deification is found in Justin the Martyr (100-165 A.D.) in his Dialogue with Trypho, where he polemically defends the truth about the Christian faith to his Jewish counterpart Trypho. He states that the Christians are the “true children of God” because it was affirmed prophetically by the Spirit, when it was said they are “sons of the Highest.”[1] This latter reference is a clear allusion to Ps. 82.6, and unlike what some scholars may infer that early Christian writers were borrowing the idea of deification from Greco-Roman Philosophy, [2]  Justin and later patristic authors interpreted this Old Testament text as a prophesy of the Christian salvation that was promised.[3]

The doctrine of deification essentially has its primary theological origins from the Alexandrian tradition. Alexandria, being one of the main hubs of philosophy and intellectual sophistication in the first few centuries, produced eclectic minds, each of whom reflected their own understanding and interpretation of what it was to be like God and how one can attain to do so. Beginning primarily with Clement of Alexandria (150-215 A.D.), the doctrine developed extensively until it reached its climatic formation in the writings of Cyril of Alexandria (376-444 A.D.), before Alexandria took a major turn in history after the Council of Chalcedon.

In the Church of Alexandria today, there have been many debates and fiery discussions in recent times regarding this taboo-ified topic of deification, in which many of these instances the doctrine has been spoken with minimal historical and theological knowledge and thorough study of the topic.This has resulted in a misconceived and skewed perception of its theology and effectively, placing a hovering stigma on its theological implications and scriptural bases. If one sets aside these past nuances, I believe one will better and more clearly understand the Church of Alexandria’s extensive contributions on the topic.

One may ask, how did a church that principally established the doctrine of deification reach such a far-reaching point from its original patristic understanding in modern times? To answer this, one would have to study how Alexandrian theology developed and was influenced overtime, from the Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.) to the Arab Invasion (641 A.D.) until the present age. But for the sake of inquisition, it can be surmised that this stigmatized perception of deification is most probably due to linguistics and insufficient availability in the vernacular language of Egypt for a clear and accurate translation from the Greek term theosis (θέωσις).[4]

As the Church still pays great respect, allegiance and honour to these fathers, especially those of Athanasius and Cyril, in doing so, the Church must also accept all of their theological contributions that have formed and established Alexandrian theology until this day. I hope to bring new light to the topic, or rather, revive what has been said on deification from these Alexandrian fathers.

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So, then we come to the point – what is ‘theosis’?!

In simplicity, it is a divine grace bestowed on humanity to be like Him in everything, apart from becoming or transforming into His divine nature or essence.

It was bestowed upon us from the start of man’s creation – created in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26):

Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness”

κα επεν θεός ποιήσωμεν νθρωπον κατεκόνα μετέραν κα καθμοίωσιν

The right of our creation is based on being an “image” of Him (ikona in Greek, where “icon” comes from) and “like” Him.

Later in Chapter 2, Genesis describes man becoming a “living being” (ψυχν ζσαν) when God breathed into Him the “breath of life”:

Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.

κα πλασεν θες τν νθρωπον χον π τς γς κα νεφύσησεν ες τ πρόσωπον ατο πνον ζως κα γένετο νθρωπος ες ψυχν ζσαν

Thus we can say, the definition of the human being means one who is made in the “image and likeness of God” and has the breath of God living inside him. Humanity is a deified creation – a creation that is like God.

Adam was a deified being, but also had the opportunity for never-ending growth (as St Gregory Nyssa defines it as ekpektasis – meaning – eternally becoming like God in this life and in the kingdom to come).

Why is it never-ending? Because as Christians we profess God is unlimited and uncontainable, and if we were made according to the image and likeness – that image is limitless – meaning, we have the potential to always grow more like the divine. This never ceases because if it did, human’s then can say we attain to be fully like God, or equal to God, which is impossible and theologically erroneous. The creature can never contain or be equal to the Creator, or the creature then becomes no longer a creature and the Creator ceases to be a Creator.

When humanity falls short of being this “image and likeness” of God, we fall short of being fully human. As many of the fathers spoke of Adam’s sin – they stated that he lost the likeness of God and ruined the divine image by departing from God (he never lost the full image or he would have returned to dust immediately). By sin, we loose our potential of becoming what we were originally made to be.

Thus, when sin entered into the nature of humanity, it not only brought death, but it disfigured this deified creation – it disfigured and transformed man into something less than what he was made and purposed for – as the image and likeness of God. Thus, if we live a life against the standard of what it means to be human – we find ourselves not achieving our potential.

The journey of deification being like God now is a restoration to the fullness of our humanity – our potential of being God-like, something Adam failed to do, and can only be achieved in Christ (this will be further discussed). In our Orthodox understanding of theosis, man’s whole life is to achieve union with God – constantly and progressively, it is not achieved over night. Our growing towards this union means that we are being like God, which as the Fathers say, is developing the image of God that was given to us.

Theosis is the embarking of the true Christian life – the one who lives according to his birth-right of being human – and this journey leads us “from glory to glory” (2 Cor 3:18), to sanctification, to holiness, and unfathomable wonder that God granted His creation this mystical gift to be like Him and sharers in His divine image by grace.

Much more to come on this subject 🙂

[1] Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Chapter 124 (124.4).
[2] Carl Mosser, ‘The Earliest Patristic Interpretations of Psalm 82, Jewish Antecedents, and the Origin of Christian Deification’, The Journal of Theological Studies, 56/1 (2005), 30-74. Mosser traces back and analyses how the earliest Christian authors interpreted Psalm 86.2 and whether these writers were utilizing this text in juxtaposition of pagan or philosophical understandings of deification. He concludes that this was not the case and the doctrine “does not represent the climax of a syncretistic affair between Christianity and Hellenism.” (p.73) There are clear Hellenistic influences in many of these authors, but it cannot be surmised that their formation of language and methodology affected and controlled their theology. Also see Normal Russell’s Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford: 2004), where he states that the language and usage of deification can attest that its Christian usage preceded pagan usage rather than following it as it is often assumed. It would most likely require another thesis to correspond and analyze the philosophical and Hellenized influences on such fathers, and for this study’s purpose particularly, the Alexandrian fathers, and see how their school of thought was shaped and influenced. But in simplicity, deification is based on a clear Scriptural notion of man’s intimate and unique relationship with God as Trinity.
[3] Ibid., p.54.
[4] The present day Arabic equivalent to theosis is tehlee ensan, which connotes that man becomes like gods in essence and not by grace, a strikingly different notion to what it is in the Christian understanding.

 

Recommended reading: (a more extensive reading list on this subject)

Achieving your Potential in Christ by Fr. Coniaris (simple read)

Divine Grace by Fr. Tadros Malaty (he speaks extensively about deification as divine grace – from p. 20.)

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11 Comments

  1. Great post! Looking forward to reading your other follow-up posts. one thing that I didn’t see, but maybe you’ll touch on, is the verse I have heard associated with this concept, which is 2 Peter 1:4: “become partakers of the divine nature.” Thank you for sharing!

    • Thank you John, yes I am very aware of that verse – in masters thesis research you do come across it quite often, but Scripture shows much more on deification than that verse, hence I started with Genesis.

  2. yessss this is amazing, thank you and God bless!! Cant wait for more

  3. This is amazing and it’s great to see the topic being spoken about and clarified

  4. Thanks for sharing Donna! You write so well and make these topics very understandable. Can’t wait for the next posts!

  5. hi Sam! Thank you for the encouragement and kind comments!

    (I apologise for the delay – was out of town and just got back).

    According to my knowledge, as St. Athanasius repeatedly says, we have not fully lost the image but the image was marred and the likeness lost (some fathers interchange image and likeness, so this causes at times confusion; even in Hebrew in Genesis 1-3 image and likeness are interchanged). Anyhow, we cannot say the image was completely lost because if we do, then we say then sin overpowered God’s stamp (the image of God) on man. If man came into existence by the ‘breath’ of God and man became a ‘living being’ then our anthropological understanding is that man source of life is solely on God, Who is Creator (as we all know and profess).

    The problem and affect of sin is that it corrupted man and brought death; the whole purpose of the incarnation was not only to remove death but also to sanctify humanity – thus many of the fathers say what Christ assumed He saved and St Cyril also says that when Christ took flesh – He ‘sanctified all of humanity.’ Both corruption and death had to be done away with.

    Thus, corruption can dwell in man and man can still have the image of God and Him working in him; thus the saints and prophets and holy people of God in the Old Testament were able to walk with God, yet still not yet experiencing the affect of Christ’s sanctification through His incarnation.

    A few quotes from St. Athanasius to affirm this (these I have on hand from my thesis, so it is easiest for me to quote):

    “For ideas and thoughts about immortality never desert the soul, but abide in it, and are as it were the fuel in it which ensures its immortality. This then is why the soul has the capacity for beholding God, and is its own way thereto, receiving not from without but from herself the knowledge and apprehension of the Word of God.” (Contra Gentes, Sec. 33, p22)

    “For God had made man thus…and had willed that he should remain in incorruption…instead of remaining in the state in which God had created them, but they were in the process of becoming corrupted entirely.. for the transgression of
    the commandment was making them turn back again according to their nature and
    they had at the beginning come into being out of non-existence, so were they now on the way to returning, through corruption, to non-existence again (On the Incarnation, Section 4, pp29-30)

    “God knew the limitation of mankind, you see; and though the grace of being made in his
    image was sufficient to give them the knowledge of the Word and thorough him of
    the Father, as a safeguard against their neglect of this grace, he provided
    the works of creation also as means by which the Maker might be known.” (On the Incarnation, Sec. 12, 39)

    “All things derive from the Word their light and movement and life…” (Cf Acts 17.28) (On the Incarnation, 42, p77)

    – Thus we can see that corruption and death entered into man, but God still is able to work in man by his right of creation, being made in His image. By man’s will, man has the choice to return completely to non-existence (that is, full corruption, complete rejection of God and eternal death). The people of Sodom or the people during Noah’s time who were not saved in the flood etc etc… are those who we can say completely rejected God in their life and returned to corruption because of the entirety of their life – not because corruption entered after Adam’s sin. We say the same now that if we reject Christ – we will return to non-existence, that is, eternal death, although we all have been given the image of God by our right of creation (even those who also of course have been baptised – does not guarantee salvation because we can still reject God – we can still reject the image of Him in us and return to non-existence). (As we also say that He who rejects/blasphemes against the Spirit will not be saved – because again they rejected God their entire life, and it is not because the image of God does not exist in them).

    But needless to say, any eternal death is a tragedy – those of Sodom and Gomorrah – any human being from Adam until the end of ages.

    I read bits of McGuckin’s book…will have to go back and look at my notes 🙂

    I hope this helps?!

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About Me

I'm an ever-learning student, who wishes to share what I've experienced and been taught throughout the years -- whether through personal experience and/or my academia in theology. I hope to inspire others to learn more about life, God, and for each one to find their desired purpose and calling in this world.