Tools for Theosis: Becoming God-like in Christ

By Father Anthony M. Coniaris

The tools of Theosis (becoming like God) are made available not only to special saints or monastics but given to all Christians when they are baptized and chrismated. This book explores the countless tools that our Lord has placed at our disposal to enable us to move from being created in His image to becoming like Him. Orthodox Christians refer to this movement as Theosis (deification or Christification) and it is the goal of every Orthodox person.

Faith is not something to be intellectually understood as much as it is something that must be experienced and lived. God is not a concept or an idea to be argued about but the Creator with Whom we commune and emulate. "Taste and see that the Lord is good," said the psalmist. To be deified is to enable God to be born in ourselves. ~ Dionysius the Areopagite.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781933654485

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Light & Life Publishing Company

Minneapolis, MN

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Copyright © 2014

Light & Life Publishing Company

2nd Printing: Copyright © 2016

eBook: Copyright © 2021

Anthony M. Coniaris

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the written permission of Light & Life Publishing Company. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

ISBN: 978-1-933654-48-5 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014951760

Table of Contents

I. Introduction

Preface

Theosis: Our Potential

II. Tools for Theosis Within Baptism & Chrismation

Baptismal Renunciation and Affirmation

Grafted Into Jesus—Baptism

In Christ All Baptized Become the Chosen People

Lay Ordination

The Baptismal Candle

The Sacrament of Chrismation

III. Tools for Theosis Within The Bible & Holy Writings

The Bible

The Philokalia

IV. Tools for Theosis Within Prayer

The Lord’s Day (Kyriaki)

The Daily Rule of Prayer

The Prayer of the Hours

The Practice of Silence (Hesychia)

The Jesus Prayer

The Eye of Contemplation

V. Tools for Theosis Within Repentance

Repentance

The Church as a Spiritual Hospital

The Alb (Sticharion)

The Gift of Tears

Forgiveness

VI. Tools for Theosis Within Liturgy

The Church is not They but We

The Divine Liturgy

The Bible and the Liturgy

The Eucharist

Inner Attention (Proscomen)

The Liturgy After the Liturgy

The Resurrected Lord Appears at Every Matins Service

The Sacraments

Orthodox Holy Week

Memorial Saturdays

An Orthodox Family Practice for Saturday Evening

VII. Tools for Theosis Within Liturgical Practices

Fasting, Prayer and Almsgiving

Holy Water

The Cross

Crossing Ourselves

Incense

The Church Kiss (Aspasmos)

The Two Episcopal Candlesticks

The Bishop’s Throne

VIII. Tools for Theosis Within Icons

The Icon

Why are Byzantine Icons So Unnatural?

The Family Icon

IX. Tools for Theosis Within Spiritual Growth

Preparation

Ascesis

Don’t Stay the Same Size All Your Life

Remembrance of Death

That Inner Voice

Love

Free Will

God’s Enveloping Presence

Dying Daily

X. Tools for Theosis Within Resurrection

Christ’s Resurrection

Afterword

St. John Chrysostom on Tools

Chapter I

Introduction

Preface

Theosis: Our Potential

Preface

A believer once told an unbelieving friend that his aim in life is to experience God. The nonbeliever asked, How can I experience God? The believer took off his cloak and stepped into the pouring rain. Lying on the grass, he opened his mouth and spread out his arms. Then, turning to his questioner, he said, This is how I experience God.

Faith is not something that must be intellectually understood as much as it is something that must be experienced and lived. That is one way of saying that God is not to be found at the end of an argument or syllogism. He is not a concept or an idea to be argued about. He is an old name for a profound experience. Taste and see that the Lord is good, said the psalmist. This is also a communion hymn in the Orthodox Church.

To help us experience the presence of God that ultimately leads to Theosis, the Orthodox Church has given us several ways or tools to help us. Some of these tools are explained in this book.

During Lent one year a Christian was asked, Have you been thinking at all about Easter? The answer he gave was, I really haven’t had time to think about it.

That answer seems to be part of our problem today. It is not only Easter, but life itself that is allowed to just slip up on us.

The Church has given us Lent to prevent Easter from just slipping up on us, to help make it a period of discovery and growth in holiness, a period of more intense exposure to God, a period of real dying to sin through repentance and real rising with Christ to new life. The same is true for Advent, the first fifteen days of August and the other periods of spiritual emphasis and preparation in the liturgical year.

The question of religion is what we do with the presence of God. An Orthodox Christian might put it this way: What do I do in my life with the presence of Christ? How do I keep it alive? Do I keep it alive? Am I striving toward Theosis? Am I trying by God’s grace to become a partaker of divine nature? (St. Peter).

The tools of Theosis or becoming like God are made available not only to special saints or only to monks in monasteries. They are bestowed upon all Christians when they are baptized and chrismated. If we love God, keep His commandments, rise as often as we fall (through repentance), we are already in the process of being deified. We are already on the road to becoming God-like in Christ, which we might call Christification.

The purpose of this book is to make us aware of the countless tools that our long-suffering Lord has placed at our disposal to enable us to achieve Theosis (deification or Christification) which is the goal for all Orthodox Christians.

To be deified is to enable God to be born in ourselves. - Dionysius the Areopagite

Theosis: Our Potential

Orthodox theology calls the potential for which God created us: Theosis. Don’t be frightened by this word. It’s really a very simple concept, namely the core of the good news of Orthodox Christianity is that we are saved from sin to share in the very life of God. Salvation in its Orthodox understanding is much more positive than negative. It means not only justification and forgiveness of sins; it means also—and even more so—the renewing and restoration of God’s likeness in us, the lifting up of fallen humanity through Christ into the very life of God. Christ forgives us and frees us from sin and death that we may proceed to fulfill our potential, which is to become like God in Christ and to share in His life (Theosis).

Jean-Claude Larchet describes Theosis as follows:

Man was created to be united with God. The faculty of desire was placed in his nature so that he could desire God, yearn for Him and be raised and united to Him. Therein lies the correct usage of this faculty, in conformity with its nature, and contributing to the building up of his health. The eye was created for light, the ear for sounds, every thing for its end, and the soul’s desire so as to soar up towards Christ, affirms St. Nicholas Cabasilas. Christ, our God, is the goal of all desire, writes St. Symeon the Theologian in like manner. To unite oneself to God is the most desirable thing for man, in conformity with the goal of his very nature: the summit of what is desirable is to become god, writes St. Basil.¹

Christ came to save us from sin for participation in the life of God. In other words, we are saved from sin for Theosis, which is our great potential.

Theosis is the positive aspect of salvation. To describe Theosis we may use the following words:

•transfiguration of man;

•participation in the life of God;

•putting on Christ;

•receiving the Holy Spirit;

•becoming temples of the Holy Spirit;

•ascending to the throne of God;

•participating in the kingdom of God; and

•becoming by grace what God is by nature.

St. Gregory of Nazianzus defines the human being as an animal in the process of being deified—in Greek zoon theoumenon. This is what sets us apart from the rest of creation, i.e., our calling to become partakers of divine nature, gods by grace, sharing in God’s glory. This is what defines an authentically human life. Created in the image of the Triune God, we find our true self in the image of the Triune God, in the God-Man, Jesus Christ.

Some Protestant scholars, such as Adolph Von Harnack, reject the ancient Christian doctrine of Theosis as both unscriptural and also a product of a pagan Hellenic influence. Modern research, however, has shown that despite a Hellenic precursor, Theosis in the thought and teaching of the Greek Fathers is thoroughly Christian and highly defensible scripturally.

Two scholars, Kerry S. Robichaux and Paul A. Onica, have written, It is easy to confuse Christian Theosis with some of the very pagan notions that preceded it, such as apotheosis, and to therefore dismiss the former because of the undesirable nature of the latter. But the Fathers of the early Church were not so easily confused, probably because they were close to the sources of confusion and were therefore forced to clearly enunciate the differences.

The above quotation is from one of the most recent studies of this doctrine, translated from the French, The Divinization of the Christian According to the Greek Fathers, by Jules Gross, translated by Paul A. Onica, and published by A and C Press, Anaheim, CA. 2002.

Comparing Theosis with its pagan Hellenic precedents, Gross has shown how the Fathers saw Theosis as a decidedly Christian doctrine.

Theosis is not part of what Harnack called the transformation of the primitive Gospel into pagan Greek metaphysics. It is rather the development of something that was there from the very beginning, something to which we must continually return. The early Fathers of the East did not Hellenize Christianity; they Christianized Hellenism.

Movement Toward Perfection

To be perfect as God, is impossible for us. But to keep moving toward perfection is always within our possibility with the help of God. In Orthodox spirituality, salvation is not a state of being; it is the motion toward Theosis, toward becoming like God, toward union with God, which can never be fully achieved here on earth. It is growth toward perfection. It is moving from sin to Christ, from slavery to freedom, from darkness to light, from falsehood to truth, from despair to hope, from death to life. And once we have reached truth, it is moving from truth to greater truth, from wisdom to greater wisdom, from joy to deeper joy, from understanding to deeper understanding, from all-embracing love to more all-embracing love. And this process goes on eternally. We can never reach the point where we can say, Well, now I’ve made it. I just have to sit around and be perfect. This is not Theosis or Christification.

Why Tools? Is Not Theosis a Gift from God?

A very important word in Orthodox spirituality is the word synergy. Orthodox theologians use the New Testament Greek word synergy to express the biblical teaching that God does not force His grace upon us, but guides and strengthens us after we submit to His will. Synergy is derived from the word synergoi, fellow workers with God, used by Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:9. It comes from two Greek words: syn, meaning with; and ergon meaning work. We cooperate. God works with us. We work with Him.

St. Isaac the Syrian said, For the Christian no thought, no feeling, no action can come from the Gospel without the help of God’s grace. Man, for his part, brings the desire but God gives the grace, and it is from this mutual activity, or synergy, that Christian personality is born.

God Wants Free-Will Partners

God wants free-will partners. He created us to be His sons and daughters not His blind slaves. Once we come to know Him, however, we do become His servants, but we do it willingly, out of love. The will of man is an essential condition, said St. Macarius of Egypt, for without it God does nothing. Draw near unto God and He will draw near unto you (James 4:8). Faith begins with obedience. Obedience is what we mean when we say, draw near to God.

Not a Fifty-Fifty Proposition

Synergy does not mean that God does one-half of the saving work and I do the other half. For God always takes the crucial initiative. He alone provides the saving grace. God does all of the saving work; we merely respond. He stands knocking and calling at the door of our soul. Yet, He will not break down the door. We have to open it freely. That effort on our part of opening the door and then taking up our cross to follow Jesus is our part in God’s plan of salvation. If we were to use percentages here, we would say that God does 99.9% of the work of salvation. Our response to God in accepting the gift would amount to one-tenth of one percent. Yet that one-tenth of one percent is crucial. It represents our free response, our acceptance of His great gift.

Before salvation and union with God can take place, two things must happen. First, God must reach out to us. This is the divine initiative and it is called Grace. Grace is God’s hand stretched out to us in Baptism. Then, there must be our response to God’s reaching out, and the name of the response is Faith. Faith is our hand reaching out to clasp God’s hand which is already extended to us. Paul brought these two words—grace and faith—together when he described salvation in Ephesians 2:8, By grace you are saved through faith. When God’s hand of grace is grasped by our hand of faith, the result is salvation, wholeness, union with God, Theosis. We work with God, yet all is by grace. In the words of Vladimir Lossky, the notion of merit is foreign to the Eastern Church. Thus, although salvation is a gift of God, we do have a part to play in it. We need to grasp by faith the hand of Christ that is already extended to us. That grasping of the hand of Jesus by faith becomes for us a powerful tool for Theosis.

From Image to Likeness

Jean-Claude Larchet writes, "Most of the Fathers distinguish between the image and likeness in order to show this dynamic character of the acquisition of virtues and of deification. According to this distinction, God’s image in man determines the sum of possibilities for realizing the likeness—that is, the potentiality of the likeness of God. The likeness, however, is constituted by the image’s fulfillment. It consists of the image’s blossoming forth, consistent with its integral nature, and resides in the realization of its perfection. Whereas the image is natural, the likeness is virtual (acquired)—it is to be realized by man’s free participation in God’s deifying grace. Thus, St. Basil the Great explains:

Let us make man in Our image and likeness: we possess one by creation, we acquire the other by will. In the first structure, it is given to us to be born in the image of God; being in the likeness of God is formed in us by the will. Our nature possesses potentially what belongs to the will, but we procure this for ourselves through action. If in creating us, the Lord had not taken precaution in advance to say, Let Us make and in the likeness, if He had not bestowed upon