Keeping the End in View
How the strange yet familiar doctrine of theosis can invigorate the Christian life.
James R. Payton Jr. | posted 10/27/2008 09:19AM
Imagine Charles Wesley attending a Christmas morning service today and hearing that his great hymn, "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," would be sung. As the congregation started singing, he would be momentarily confused, because his original began, "Hark how all the welkin rings / Glory to the King of kings," and was not sung to the Felix Mendelssohn tune we use today.
By verse three, Wesley might get his bearings. But when "Born to raise the sons of earth / Born to give them second birth" proved to be the last verse, he would be confused again.
He'd likely exclaim, "But that's not the end. I went on to write this:
Adam's likeness, Lord, efface,
Stamp thy image in its place;
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in thy love.
Let us thee, though lost, regain,
Thee, the life, the inner man;
O, to all thyself impart,
Formed in each believing heart."
Then he might ask, "Why don't you sing that verse?"
A Good startAs evangelicals, we know how to answer the question, "Are you saved?": If we have believed in Jesus Christ, we are saved—right there, right then.
Sometimes, though, the way we talk about salvation makes it sound like little more than a get-out-of-hell-free card. With our emphasis on what sinners like ourselves are saved from, do we know what we are saved for? Is salvation solely about us and our need to be forgiven and born again, or is there a deeper, God-ward purpose?
The leaders of the ancient church thought so, speaking regularly of salvation in a way that may sound strange to many evangelicals, but which Wesley alluded to in some of his hymns. In particular, they envisioned salvation as theosis, an ongoing process by which God's people become increasingly "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet. 1:4), formed more and more in God's likeness. As the 2nd-century theologian Irenaeus urged in Against Heresies, "Through his transcendent love, our Lord Jesus Christ became what we are, that he might make us to be what he is." The great 4th-century defender of Jesus' divinity, Athanasius, put it even more forcefully: "[God] became man, that man might become god."
Though unfamiliar to most of us, this way of thinking strongly influenced John Wesley's own view of sanctification and was embraced by C. S. Lewis, who in Mere Christianity wrote, "God said that we were 'gods' and he is going to make good his words." This continues to be the basic understanding of salvation within Eastern Christianity. Also called "divinization" or "deification," it plays off of Jesus' words in John 10:34 ("Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are gods'?" as quoted by Lewis above) and several other key biblical passages.
Before considering some of those passages, however, let me provide a point of contact with our evangelical understanding, and highlight one difference. In evangelicalism's polished doctrinal teaching on salvation, we distinguish phases in the reception of salvation: conversion, justification, sanctification, and glorification. In the last step, we are completely conformed to the image of Christ (Rom. 8:29) and made like him (1 John 3:2). We are resurrected as glorified human beings, fully in communion with God, though remaining distinct from him.
However, the way we typically speak about salvation emphasizes only the beginning of the process: conversion, justification, and to some degree, sanctification.
Eastern Orthodoxy emphasizes the final result, the glorification by which we are made entirely like Christ: holy, righteous, perfect in godliness, and enjoying the fullness of eternal life. And in this, I believe Orthodox believers have something that can help better balance how we preach and teach about salvation, just as we have something for them.
October 2008, Vol. 52, No. 10
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