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Doctrine

Theosis

Also Known As Deification · divinization
Salvation and Liberation
Origin 200 to 1351 CE

Summed up in the patristic saying that God became man so that man might become god, theosis frames salvation not primarily as the remission of a debt but as a real participation in the divine life. The Palamite distinction between God's unknowable essence and his uncreated energies is what lets the East affirm genuine union with God while denying that the creature is absorbed into the divine essence. The theme is present in the West too, in the language of grace, of adoption, of the beatific vision, but it is the organising centre of Orthodox soteriology in a way it is not of Western. In Eastern accounts, theosis supplies the frame within which the Atonement itself is understood.

Facts
Status
Status Within the Tradition
Defined and binding within this tradition 1Tradition: Eastern Orthodoxy
Binding since the Palamite councils of 1341-1351, which received the distinction between the divine essence and the divine energies
Status Within the Tradition
Standard teaching, not formally defined 3Tradition: Roman Catholicism
Sourced to the subject's own accountAffirmed as divinization (Catechism 460)
Status Within the Tradition
Rejected, or not held, within this tradition 3Tradition: Roman Catholicism
Sourced to the subject's own accountThe Palamite essence-and-energies distinction is not received
Standing as a Comparative Category
A standard analytic category in the study of religion 4
Origins
Origin Period
200 to 1351 CE 1
Held By
Held as dogma within Eastern Orthodox Christianity, binding since the Palamite councils of 1341 to 1351; Roman Catholic teaching affirms a related doctrine of divinization without receiving the Palamite distinction between the divine essence and the divine energies. 2
The Claim
The Claim
Theosis names the Eastern Orthodox doctrine that the ultimate goal of the Christian life is union with God and participation in the divine nature, understood as a real transformation of the believer rather than a merely moral improvement. 2
Doctrinal category (class)
God and Divine Nature 5
Learn More
Partakers of the Divine Nature

Theosis, or deification, is the doctrine, central in the Christian East, that the goal of salvation is not merely pardon but participation in the life of God: to be, in the words of 2 Peter 1:4, "partakers of the divine nature," united with God and transformed by him, while never becoming God in his essence. The classic slogan is Athanasius' statement that God "became man that we might become god."

The doctrine turns on a distinction the East draws sharply: between God's essence, which remains forever unknowable and unshareable, and God's energies, his real activity and self-communication, in which the creature can genuinely partake. On this account salvation is a true union with the uncreated God, the believer really shares the divine life, without the pantheist collapse in which the creature would become a piece of the divine essence. Deification is thus offered as the answer to what human beings are ultimately for: not a legal transaction completed and filed, but a transformation without a natural ceiling.

Palamas, and the Argument Over the Uncreated Light

The essence-energies distinction was forged in a fourteenth-century controversy. Monks of Mount Athos practised hesychasm, a discipline of stillness and the repeated Jesus Prayer, and some claimed to perceive the uncreated light, the same light, they said, that the apostles saw at the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor. The Calabrian scholar Barlaam attacked the claim as crude: God is beyond the senses, and any light seen must be a created effect, not God himself.

Gregory Palamas answered by distinguishing God's inaccessible essence from his uncreated energies, in which God is truly present and truly seen. A series of councils at Constantinople between 1341 and 1351 vindicated Palamas, and the Palamite distinction became settled Orthodox teaching. The Christian West took a different route, generally speaking of created grace and framing the final goal as the beatific vision of the divine essence, and some Western theologians have regarded the Palamite energies as an illegitimate division within God. The atlas notes the divergence: deification language is not absent in the West, but the essence-energies framework and the centrality of theosis to the whole of salvation are distinctively Eastern.

Theosis
Filter Results1 entry

Theosis (deification)

Theosis
Connections

Affirmed By

Theosis (deification), Beliefs & Restrictions

Reconciliation: affirmed Belief -> contested Doctrine concept (Theosis).

Belongs to Tradition

Christianity, Religions
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Church of Cyprus, Denominations

Salvation is framed as participation in the divine life rather than as a debt discharged. The Palamite distinction between God's unknowable essence and his uncreated energies is what lets union with God be affirmed without the creature being absorbed into the divine essence.

Source Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal ThemesJohn Meyendorff
Church of Greece, Denominations

Salvation is framed as participation in the divine life rather than as a debt discharged. The Palamite distinction between God's unknowable essence and his uncreated energies is what lets union with God be affirmed without the creature being absorbed into the divine essence.

Source Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal ThemesJohn Meyendorff
Eastern Orthodoxy, Denominations

Theosis, deification through participation in the divine energies, is central soteriology in this tradition's Palamite theology.

Source The Mystical Theology of the Eastern ChurchVladimir Lossky
Georgian Orthodox Church, Denominations

Salvation is framed as participation in the divine life rather than as a debt discharged. The Palamite distinction between God's unknowable essence and his uncreated energies is what lets union with God be affirmed without the creature being absorbed into the divine essence.

Source Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal ThemesJohn Meyendorff
Greek Orthodox Church, Denominations

Salvation is framed as participation in the divine life rather than as a debt discharged. The Palamite distinction between God's unknowable essence and his uncreated energies is what lets union with God be affirmed without the creature being absorbed into the divine essence.

Source Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal ThemesJohn Meyendorff
Oriental Orthodoxy, Denominations

Theosis, deification through participation in the divine life, is central soteriology shared with the wider Eastern Christian tradition.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Roman Catholicism, Denominations

Theosis or divinization is affirmed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 460, drawing on the church fathers.

Source Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd editionHoly Seethe holders' own account
Romanian Orthodox Church, Denominations

Salvation is framed as participation in the divine life rather than as a debt discharged. The Palamite distinction between God's unknowable essence and his uncreated energies is what lets union with God be affirmed without the creature being absorbed into the divine essence.

Source Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal ThemesJohn Meyendorff
Serbian Orthodox Church, Denominations

Salvation is framed as participation in the divine life rather than as a debt discharged. The Palamite distinction between God's unknowable essence and his uncreated energies is what lets union with God be affirmed without the creature being absorbed into the divine essence.

Source Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal ThemesJohn Meyendorff

Related To

Imago Dei, Doctrines

Eastern Christian theology reads the divine likeness lost at the fall as what theosis restores, so the two doctrines describe the same trajectory from opposite ends.

Recapitulation, Doctrines

Recapitulation is the model most often paired with theosis in Eastern Orthodox theology, where a nature healed and a nature deified are described in continuous language.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)
Sin as Illness in Orthodox Theology, Doctrines

The end point of the healing.

Unio Mystica, Doctrines
Sources
1. Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes
John Meyendorff, Fordham University Press, 1979Palamas and the hesychast councilsView the Source
2. The Orthodox Church
Timothy Ware (Kallistos Ware), Penguin Books, 1993View the Source
3. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd edition
Holy See, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997para. 460the holders' own accountView the Source
4. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source
5. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church
Vladimir Lossky, James Clarke, 1957Deification and the essence-energies distinction
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005View the Source

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