Theosis: The True Purpose of Human Life

by Archimandrite George

Christ’s teachings could not be arrived at from the Holy Bible alone; we would simply project our modern concepts onto the early Church. Theosis stems from this tradition in which the early Church, Traditional Christianity, and Orthodoxy are identical.

The dual task of Orthodox Theology is to define and also to protect from human distortion the teachings of Jesus Christ. As can be seen, Theology is far more than knowledge about God acquired through academic study. Christianity is a living faith, founded on revelation born of the Holy Spirit,[19] giving those counted worthy intimate experience of the Triune God and of spiritual realities.[20] All attempts to understand Christ’s message from a purely rational standpoint will remain partial and incomplete.[21]

them. Theosis is the Pearl of Great Price alluded to by Christ.[22] It can become a present reality for those who are willing to tread the path, and so it is not exclusively an after-death experience. With Theosis death is transcended.[23]

Our life’s purpose is declared in the first chapter of the Holy Bible, when the Holy author tells us that God created man “in His image and likeness.” From this we discover the great love the Triune God has for man: He does not wish him simply to be a being with certain gifts, certain qualities, a certain superiority over the rest of creation, He wishes him to be a god by Grace.

* See glossary Having been endowed “in His image,” man is called upon to be completed “in His likeness.” This is Theosis. The Creator, God by nature, calls man to become a god by Grace.

Since man is “called to be a god” (i.e. was created to become a god), as long as he does not find himself on the path of Theosis he feels an emptiness within himself... he feels that something is not going right, so he is not joyful even when he is trying to cover the emptiness with other activities. He may numb himself, create a glamorous world, or cage and imprison himself within this world, yet at the same time he remains poor, small, limited. He may organise his life in such a way that he is almost never at peace, never alone with himself. Surrounded by noise, tension, television, radio, continuous information about this and that, he may seek to forget with drugs; not to think, not to worry, not to remember that he is on the wrong path and has strayed from his purpose. In the end, wretched contemporary man finds no rest until he finds that “something else,” the highest thing; the thing which actually exists in his life which is truly beautiful and creative.

The Church Fathers say that God became man in order to make man a god. If God had not taken flesh, man would not be able to achieve Theosis.

before Christ,

We know that Adam and Eve were beguiled by the devil and did not want to collaborate with God; they desired to become gods not through humility, obedience, or love; but through their own power, their own willfulness–egotistically and autonomously. That is to say that the essence of the fall is egotism. Thus, by adopting egotism and self-assertion they separated themselves from God, and instead of attaining Theosis, they attained exactly the opposite: spiritual death.

As the Church Fathers say, God is life. So whoever separates himself from God separates himself from life. Therefore, death and spiritual necrosis (i.e. physical and spiritual death) are the outcome of the disobedience of the first-created.

darkened. Since the fall, man no longer has the qualifications he needs to proceed to Theosis, as he had before he sinned. In this situation of grave illness, almost lifeless, he can no longer re-orient himself towards God. Thus there is a need for a new root for humanity; a need for a new man, who will be healthy and able to redirect the freedom of man towards God. This new root, the new man, is the God-Man, Jesus Christ, the Son and Logos of God, who incarnates to become the new root, the new beginning, the new leaven of humanity. As St. Gregory Nazianzen, the Theologian, says in his theological writings, with the incarnation of the Logos, a second communion between God and humanity is realised. The first communion was in Paradise. This was broken. Man was separated from God. The all-good God then provided for another, a second communion which can no longer be severed, a union of God and men. This second communion of God and men happens in the person of Christ.

Now, because Christ is the eternal God-Man through the hypostatic union of the two natures in the person of Christ, human nature is irrevocably unified with the divine nature because Christ is eternally God-Man. As the God-Man, He ascended to heaven. As the God-Man, He sits on the right hand of the Father. As the God-Man, He will judge the world at the Second Coming. Consequently, human nature is now enthroned in the bosom of the Holy Trinity. No longer can anything cut human nature off from God. Now, after the incarnation of the Lord –no matter how much we as men sin,* no matter how much we separate ourselves from God– if, through repentance,* we wish to unite again with God, we can succeed. We can unite with Him and so become gods by Grace.

According to St. Nicholas Cabasilas, the great 14th century theologian,* if the Panagia, in her obedience, had not offered her freedom to God –had she not said “yes” to God– God would not have been able to incarnate. Once God had given freedom to man, He would not have been able to violate His gift, so He would not have been able to incarnate if there had not been such a pure, all-holy, immaculate psyche as the Theotokos, who would offer her freedom, her will, all of herself totally to God so as to draw Him towards herself and towards us.

To continue, our Churches show deified men; those who became gods by Grace because God became man. In our Orthodox Churches we can picture not only the incarnate God, Christ, and His immaculate Mother the Lady Theotokos, but we also show the saints around and below the Pantocrator; on all the walls of the Church we paint the results of God’s incarnation: sainted and deified men.

We are not followers of Christ in the way that one might perhaps follow a philosopher or a teacher. We are members of Christ’s body, the Church. The Church is the body of Christ, the real body, not a moral one, as some mistaken theologians have written, not having looked deeply enough into the spirit of the Holy Church. Despite our unworthiness and sinfulness, Christ takes us Christians and incorporates us into His body. He makes us members of Himself. We become real members of Christ, not just followers of a code of morality. As the Apostle Paul puts it, “We are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones” (Ephesians 5:30).

Certainly, depending on the spiritual state of Christians, they are sometimes living members of Christ’s body, at other times they are dead. Even as dead members, we still do not cease to be members of Christ’s body. For example, someone who is baptised has become a member of Christ’s body. If he does not confess, does not take Communion, does not live a spiritual life, he is a dead member of Christ’s body, but when he repents, he immediately receives divine life. This permeates him and he becomes a living member of Christ’s body. Someone like this does not need to be re-baptised. Someone who has never been baptised, however, is not a member of Christ’s body even if he lives a moral life according to human standards. In order to become a member of Christ’s body, in order to be incorporated into Christ, he needs to be baptised.

blood. St. John Chrysostom says that God has nothing more to give man than what he gives him in Holy Communion. Man cannot ask anything more of God than what he receives from Christ in Holy Communion.

man. A Christian is not a Christian simply because he is able to talk about God. He is a Christian because he is able to have experience of God. And just as, when you really love someone and converse with him, you feel his presence, and you enjoy his presence, so it happens in man’s communion with God: there exists not a simple external relationship, but a mystical union of God and man in the Holy Spirit.

become an Orthodox Christian, you must first accept that the centre of the world is not yourself but Christ.

According to the holy Fathers, this first stage of Theosis is also called “praxis.” This is practical guidance given at the start of the path Naturally, this is not at all easy, because the struggle to uproot the passions from within us is great. Much effort is required, so that gradually our inner wasteland is cleansed from the thorns and stones of the passions so that it can be cultivated spiritually, and so that the seed of God’s logos may fall and bear fruit. Great and continuous effort towards ourselves is necessary for all this. Therefore the Lord said that “the Kingdom of God* suffers violence, so the violent seize it” (Matthew 11:12). And again, the holy Fathers teach us: “give blood and receive Spirit,” i.e. you cannot receive the Holy Spirit if you do not give the blood of your heart* to the struggle to cleanse yourself from the passions, in order to repent really and in depth, and in order to acquire the virtues.

All the virtues are aspects of the one great virtue, the virtue of love. When a Christian acquires love, he has all the virtues. It is love that expels the prime cause of all the evils and all the passions from the psyche of man. This cause, according to the holy Fathers, is selfishness. All the evils within us spring from selfishness, which is a diseased love for one’s own self. This is the reason why our Church has asceticism. Without asceticism, there is no spiritual life, no struggle, and no progress. We obey, fast, keep vigil, labour with prostrations, and stand upright, all so that we may be cleansed of our passions. If the Orthodox Church ceases to be ascetical, it ceases to be Orthodox, because then it ceases to help man rid himself of his passions in order to become gods by Grace.

The Church Fathers developed a great and profound anthropological teaching on the psyche and the passions of man. According to them, in the psyche you can distinguish intelligent and passible parts. The passible, again, comprises passionate and desiring parts. The intelligent part contains the reasoning powers of the psyche; the thoughts and cognitive powers. The passionate parts are the positive and negative emotions; love and hate. The desiring part contains the good desires of the virtues and the bad desires for pleasure; for enjoyment, avarice, gluttony, the worship of the flesh and the carnal passions. Unless these three parts of the psyche, the intelligent, the passionate, and the desiring, are cleansed, man cannot receive the Grace of God within himself, and cannot be deified. The intelligent part is cleansed by watchfulness, which is the continuous guarding of the nous f...

The passions cover Divine Grace as ashes bury a spark. Through asceticism and prayer, the heart is cleansed of the passions, the spark of Divine Grace is rekindled, and the faithful Christian feels Christ in his heart; the centre of his existence.

Experiences of Theosis are proportional to the purity of man. The more someone is cleansed from the passions, the higher the experience he will receive from God; he sees God just as it was written: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8).

This is the second stage of Theosis, called “theoria,” in the course of which man, having already been cleansed from the passions, is illumined by the Holy Spirit, is made luminous on the way to becoming deified. Theoria means vision. Theoria of God means a vision of God. To see God, he must be a deified man. Thus, theoria of God also means Theosis. Of course, when he has been thoroughly cleansed and has offered himself entirely to God, then he also receives the greatest experience of divine Grace available to men, which, according to the holy Fathers, is the vision of the uncreated light of God. Those who are very advanced in Theosis see this light, very few in each generation. God’s Saints see it and appear within it, and, incidentally, this is what the halos in the holy icons show