Eastern and Western Christians would understand the incarnation very differently. Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) defined the doctrine of atonement that became normative in the West: God became man in order to expiate the sin of Adam. Orthodox Christians have never accepted this. The Orthodox view of Jesus was defined by Maximus the Confessor (c. 580–662), who believed that the Word would have become flesh even if Adam had not sinned. Jesus was the first human being to be wholly “deified,” entirely possessed and permeated by the divine, and we could all be like him, even in this life.
