Worship in the Orthodox fashion came to propel first monks, then laypeople beyond the monasteries, towards an idea which over centuries became basic to Christian Orthodox spirituality: union with the divine, or theosis – dizzyingly for humanity, and alarmingly for many Western Christians, the word can be translated as ‘deification’. The concept was likely to take the Christian believer in a very different direction from Augustine’s Western emphasis on the great gulf between God and humanity created by original sin. It asserted that human society could be sanctified through the ministry and
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