Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen: The Ecumenical Potential of the Eastern Doctrine of Theosis

One of the abiding tasks of the Eastern Orthodox tradition has been to keep alive the patristic doctrine of deification (theosis, Vergöttlichung). In fact, the idea of a man/woman becoming a god is far more than just a theological locus in the East, it is an overarching principle which permeates all of Eastern theology[1] and spirituality.

As is well known, Reformation theology has had a hard time in trying to reconcile the idea of theosis with the doctrine of justification. Historically, these two traditions have been considered to be diametrically opposed to each other.[2] A corollary problem is that - at least for Lutherans - the Eastern soteriology entertains problematic notions of the freedom of will, too positive an anthropology, and, worst of all, the idea of human-divine synergia in salvation.[3]

When it comes to the Free Churches,[4] currently the fastest growing segment of theChristian Church - and therefore a fitting dialogue partner to the Eastern Church along with the Lutherans -, there are some unexpected convergences emerging. One might even contend that had not the Free Churches adopted the doctrine of justification in its Reformation form, Free Church soteriologies most probably would have been much closer to emphases of the Eastern tradition.[5]

My line of questioning in this essay, the purpose of which is to look for possible convergences between the Eastern doctrine of deification and Western soteriologies, also relates to another orientation in the East, namely the pneumatological concept of grace. In other words, we will also ask how do these two dialogue partners draw in their doctrine of salvation from the well of the Spirit. This is relevant since the Eastern idea of deification, as will become evident in the course of the discussion, is a thoroughly pneumatological approach.

A casual look at Western soteriologies leaves one with the impression that pneumatology has not played any crucial role. It looks like traditional Reformation theology, especially in its Lutheran[6] form, is built on Christological concepts rather than on pneumatological. Even with regard to a much younger Free Church partner, the Pentecostal tradition, although a novice might easily take for granted that Pentecostals have a developed pneumatological theology, it appears that pneumatological orientations do not play any important role.

So, one might remark that the choosing of Western theologies, especially in the Lutheran form, for a dialogue partner with the Eastern view might be very problematic. Indeed, if this article had been written a couple of decades ago, not much convergence could have been found. In our present days, there are a number of positive ecumenical changes on the horizon, and happily so. Recent Lutheran ecumenical theology has discovered an unexpected motif of deification and a pneumatological concept of grace within Luther?s own writings. The so-called Mannermaa school at the University of Helsinki has provided a most promising and also to some extent a controversial claim about theosis being one of the images Luther used to describe salvation. Rapidly these findings have been introduced into ecumenical conversations, first between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Finnish Lutheran Church, and then into the international Orthodox-Lutheran dialogues.

I will proceed in the following way. After briefly tracing the biblical and patristic roots of the doctrine of theosis, as they are understood in the Eastern tradition, I will discuss first Lutheran and then Free Church views of deification and underlying pneumatological ramifications. In conclusion, I will offer some ecumenical suggestions and topics for further study and dialogue.

I start with a short exposition of Eastern views, not to teach my Eastern specialists about their own distinctive doctrine, but rather to make sure that I have correctly understood the main points. True ecumenical theology finds its point of departure in a faithful presentation of the views represented by other dialogue members. Such an exposition also makes one prone for correction and further learning about each other.

Main features of the Eastern doctrine of deification

The Bible offers a sufficient amount of passages about the idea of human participation in God for it to be taken as an important image of salvation. But perhaps, it does not speak about it so much than Eastern Orthodox theologians and some others, too,[7] sometimes let us understand. The two cardinal texts are 2 Pet 1:4 and Ps 82:6 (cited in John 10:34-35).

Orthodox theologians claim that the doctrine has a solid biblical basis that goes beyond the two explicit texts mentioned above.[8] They refer to other biblical passages, such as Ex. 34:30 where Mose's face shone, or Ex. 7:1 which reveals that Moses became a god to Pharaoh. The transfiguration of Peter on Mt. Tabor (Matt. 17:4) is also considered another classic text. Orthodox fathers often cite 2 Cor 8:9, Heb 4:15, and a host of texts from Johannine corpus.[9]

The two most often referred to patristic[10] texts are from Irenaeus and Athanasius. Irenaeus says: "The Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ who because of his limitless love became what we are in order to make us what even he himself is."[11] Athanasius is more succinct: "Christ became human that humans might become divine."[12]

Many more patristic texts could be added for example from Symeon the New Theologian, whose view is always towards a pneumatological orientation, to Maximos the Confessor, the Cappadocian Fathers, etc. Basil attributes the experience of theosis to the Holy Spirit who, "being God by nature deifies by grace those who still belong to a nature subject to change."[13] St. Macarios likewise accentuates the role of the Spirit in theosis when he says that persons to be deified, though they retain their own identity (i.e., do not overstep the distinction between God and human), "are all filled with the Holy Spirit."[14]

Even though Orthodox Vladimir Lossky's comment that theosis is "echoed by the fathers and the theologians of every age"[15] might intentionally be an overstatement, it does however reflect the general mindset among patristic fathers.

The patristic doctrine of theosis can be briefly formulated as follows:

Divine life has manifested itself in Christ. In the church as the body of Christ, man has a share in this life. Man partakes thereby of the "divine nature" (2 Pet 1:4). This "nature," or divine life, permeates the being of man like a leaven in order to restore it to its original condition as imago Dei.[16]

The distinction between God and human person is not made void. God still remains God and human remains human though participating in the divine. Orthodox theology, as is well known, has tried to solve this problem by making a distinction between divine essence and divine energies. According to Eastern understanding, deification means participating in divine energies not divine essence as such. The classical formulation is that of Gregory Palamas.[17]

Following this short tracing of biblical and patristic roots, it is time to look at later developments in Eastern soteriology and its pneumatological ramifications to orient the future discussion. As is well known, there is a pronounced difference in orientation in Christology and soteriology between the East and West. According to Eastern theology, Latin traditions have been dominated by legal, juridical, and forensic categories. Eastern theology, on the contrary, understands the need of salvation in terms of deliverance from mortality and corruption for life everlasting. Union with God is the goal of Christian life, even becoming ?in-godded?. The underlying anthropology[18] is not necessarily more positive but, instead of operating mainly in guilt-concepts, it looks upward, so to speak, to the image of God to be fulfilled in mortal human beings.[19] The idea of divine-human co-operation in salvation is not only accepted but is enthusiastically championed, although it is not understood as nullifying the role of grace.

According to the Eastern view, the descent (katábasis) of the divine person of Christ makes human persons capable of an ascent (anábasis) in the Holy Spirit. It was necessary that the voluntary humiliation, the redemptive kénosis, of the Son of God should take place, so that fallen men and women might accomplish their vocation of theosis, the deification of created beings by uncreated grace.[20]

Eastern theologians do not speak of deification only as a metaphor; they also stress the reality of the union with God, promised to the faithful.[21] They do of course struggle with the compatibility of the two seemingly opposite ideas: the absolute incommunicability of the divine being and a real partaking of humanity in God. Whatever one may think of traditional Eastern solutions (e.g., essence-energy -distinction), there is no denying their passion to affirm the idea of the divine-human union.

The deification of the creature will be, of course, realized in its fullness only in the age to come. This deifying union has nevertheless to be fulfilled ever more and more even in this present life. Consequently, Eastern theologians do not shy away from speaking of divine-human synergy,[22] co-operation of man/woman with God. Men and women are to be saved by grace, but not without one's total devotion and willingness to be transformed.

Prayer, asceticism, meditation, humble service, and similar exercises are recommended for the attainment of this noble goal. The notion of merit, though, is foreign to the Eastern tradition. In general, their attitude towards grace and free will is less reserved than their Western partners. In the East, the question of free will has never had the urgency which it assumed in the West from the time of St. Augustine onwards. The Eastern tradition never separates grace and human freedom. Therefore, the charge of Pelagianism (i.e., that grace is a reward for the merit of the human will) is not fair. It is not a question of merit(s), but of co-operation, of a synergy of the two wills, divine and human. Grace is a presence of God within us which demands constant effort on our part.[23] In the nineteenth century, Bishop Theophanes, a great Russian ascetic writer, asserted that "the Holy Ghost, acting within us, accomplishes with us our salvation" and that "being assisted by grace, man accomplished the work of his salvation."[24]

The role of the Holy Spirit in Eastern soteriology is highlighted by the ultimate goal of salvation. Redemption has our salvation from sin as an immediate aim, but salvation will have its ultimate realization in the age to come in our union with God, the deification of the created beings whom Christ ransomed. But this final realization involves the dispensation of the Holy Spirit. The work of the Spirit is, of course, inseparable from that of the Son. In the words of St. Athanasius, "God bearing flesh," and Christians, "bearing the Spirit."[25]

Interestingly enough, Eastern Fathers attribute to the Spirit all the multiplicity of names which can be attributed to grace,[26] as is evident for example in St. Gregory Nazianzen and St. Basil. They freely speak about the Holy Spirit as effecting deification, perfection, adoption, and sanctification.[27] Eastern Christians sing: "The Holy Spirit giveth life to souls; he exalteth them in purity; He causeth the sole nature of the Trinity to shine in them mysteriously."[28] The Eastern Church teaches that that which is common to the Father and the Son is the divinity which the Holy Spirit communicates (cf. perichoresis) to humans within the Church, in making them partakers of the divine nature.[29] According to Gregory Nazianzen, deification is the highest gift and blessing of the Holy Spirit.[30] In this sense, as St. Seraphim of Sarov said, "The true aim of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God."[31]

In fact, the idea of deification cannot be expressed on a Christological basis alone, but demands a Pneumatological development as well. For the mystical tradition of Eastern Christendom, Pentecost, which confers the presence of the Holy Spirit and the first-fruits of sanctification, signifies both the end and final goal of the spiritual life. It is important to note that in the Eastern rite confirmation[32] -"anointing" with the Spirit - follows immediately upon baptism. The Holy Spirit is operative in both sacraments. The Spirit recreates human nature by purifying it and uniting it to the body of Christ. The Spirit also bestows deity upon human persons.[33] Eastern theology even speaks about Christians as "christs," anointed ones: The Spirit who rests like a royal unction upon the humanity of the Son, communicates Himself to each member of Christ's body.[34]

The mystical theology of the Eastern wing of the Church is often more experience-based and concrete than Latin theology. "As he who grasps one end of a chain pulls along with it the other end to himself, so he who draws the Spirit draws both the Son and the Father along with it," Basil writes.[35] The role of the Spirit in this understanding - although the language is of course not to be taken at face value - is to make the "first contact," to be followed by the revelation of the Son and, through Him, the Father.[36] There is a genuine Trinitarian outlook in the Eastern view: "The Father does all things by the Word in the Holy Spirit."[37]

In ipsa fide Christus adest: Theosis in Luther's Theology

Lutheran-Orthodox Conversations on Deification

Two developments in recent years have opened new horizons for a more positive appraisal of the Eastern doctrine of deification by Lutherans: ecumenical conversations between Lutherans and Orthodox, and a "new quest for Luther's theology' initiated by the Mannermaa school at the University of Helsinki.

Already in the 1970s, the Finnish Lutheran Church, in its conversations with the Russian Orthodox Church, adopted a number of soteriological statements which compare the Lutheran doctrine of justification with the Orthodox view of deification/theosis.[38] After the publication of the Finnish-Russian dialogue results in English,[39] other regional conversations have made use of them.[40]

The Finnish-Lutheran dialogue produced a highly influential soteriological document in Kiev 1977 titled "Salvation as Justification and Deification." The preamble to the theses claims that

Until recently, there has been a predominant opinion that the Lutheran and Orthodox doctrines of salvation greatly differ from each other. In the conversations, however, it has become evident that both these important aspects of salvation discussed in the conversations have a strong New Testament basis and there is great unanimity with regard to them both.[41]

It was found that the doctrine of deification covers the idea of a Christian's life as righteous and sinful at the same time, as the Lutheran theology has always emphasized. The idea of deification makes more explicit what is sometimes in danger of being under-emphasized in Lutheranism, namely the sanative role of grace: "When the Christian has been justified, he takes a new road leading to deification."[42]

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to Lutherans in how they perceive Eastern soteriology is the question of the freedom of human will. Orthodox speak freely of the freedom of human person in a strongly ontological sense whereas for Lutherans there is not much left to human initiative.[43]

Deification in Recent Luther Research

The theological grounding of the suggested convergence between Orthodox and Lutheran soteriologies - which has since its publication created debate - was done by Prof. Tuomo Mannermaa and his students at Helsinki. For Mannermaa, the contact point is Luther's idea of 'Christ present in faith" (in ipsa fide Christus adest).[44] According to Mannermaa, the idea of Christ's presence is "real-ontic"[45] for Luther, not just a subjective experience (Erlebnis) or God's effect on the believer (Wirkung) as the neo-Protestant school has exclusively held.[46]

The core of the doctrine of deification from this viewpoint is the idea of real participation in the divine life in Christ. We receive the salvatory gifts through participation in Christ.[47] The Lutheran tradition holds to the idea of God living in the believer (inhabitatio Dei). This for Mannermaa is analogous with the doctrine of theosis. According to Luther, Christ and thus his person and work is present in the faith itself.[48] For him, Christ present in faith is the forma fidei, i.e., the realization or concrete manifestation of faith. Whereas Catholic theology considers love as a forma, Luther regards Christ himself as the link between faith and good works.[49]

Mannermaa's student Simo Peura has written a full scale monograph on the idea of deification in Luther.[50] Peura shows that even though Luther does not often use term deification itself,[51] the idea of deification is an integral motif of his theology. The most explicit passage comes from Luther's Sermon on the day of St. Peter and St. Paul (1519):

For it is true that a man helped by grace is more than a man; indeed, the grace of God gives him the form of God and deifies him, so that even the Scriptures call him "God" and "God's son."[52]

To cite but another obvious example from Luther's Christmas sermon of 1514: "Just as the word of God became flesh, so its is certainly also necessary that the flesh become word. For the word becomes flesh precisely so that the flesh may become word. In other words: God becomes man so that man may becomes God. Thus power becomes powerless so that weakness may become powerful. The logos puts on our form and manner."[53] It is easy to see that Luther presents here the idea of deification with the help of the formulation from Athanasius and Irenaeus, as a union of logos and flesh, or word and man. Although God does not stop being God and man does not stop being man, the unio is real, it is "a community of being of God and man."[54]

Although the term deification is not frequent in Luther, the core idea is integral to him; he usually prefers terms like presence of Christ in faith, the participation in God, union with God, perichoresis, the famous Eastern term, and others.

As already noted, Christ's real presence in believer is the leading motif in Luther's soteriology. A classic formulation can be found for example in his Lectures on Galatians (1535). Speaking about "true faith," Luther says: "It takes hold of Christ in such a way that Christ is the object of faith, or rather not the object, but so to speak, the One who is present in the faith itself. Therefore faith justifies because it takes hold of and possesses this treasure, the present Christ."[55]

The idea of participation in God is related to this. Luther does not hesitate to say that "we are born again into eternal life by faith, that we may live in God and with God and be one with him, as Christ says (John 17:21)."[56] Participation in Christ, following Paul (Phil. 3 et al.), is also participation in his cross. For Luther, the idea of deification is closely linked with his theology of the cross.[57] This is a helpful reminder not to get too easily carried away by the idea of divinization which borders on the theologia gloriae, the arch-enemy of Luther's thinking.

Pneumatological implications of this new approach of Luther scholarship are obvious. The leading idea, Christ present through faith, can also be expressed pneumatically: it is through the Spirit of Christ - it has to be remembered that Luther always thinks Christologically - that mediation of salvatory gifts is accomplished. Participation in God is possible only through the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of adoption.[58]

In fact, several major research projects at the University of Helsinki are currently underway focusing on pneumatological orientations in Luther.[59] The title of Prof. Miikka Ruokanen's preliminary study clearly expresses its purpose: Spiritus vel gratia est ipsa fide (Spirit or grace is the faith itself), with the subtitle, A Pneumatological Concept of Grace in Luther's De servo arbitrio.[60] Opposite to what is usually thought of Luther's major work De servo arbitrio (in which he attacks Erasmus vehemently), Ruokanen argues that the theology of grace and justification is conceived very much in terms of pneumatology.[61] Ruokanen shows that Augustine's concept of pneumatological gratia increata (i.e., the personal presence of the Triune God in man through the Holy Spirit) might be an indispensable theological background for Luther's emerging pneumatology of grace.[62] [63]

Christ's Real Presence In Faith Through the Spirit in Charismatic Lutheran Theology

A highly interesting study for the purposes of the present essay is the inquiry into the pneumatological implications of the doctrine of salvation in Charismatic Lutheran Theology. Dr. Markku Antola has recently published his dissertation entitled, The Experience of Christ?s Real Presence in Faith.[64]

The Charismatic theology of Lutheranism describes charismatic experience[65] as the presence of the Triune God through his Spirit.[66] The actual purpose of the Holy Spirit?s work is to create faith in Christ and lead the believer into a "living union" with Christ. "But the Holy Spirit alone creates true faith, whereby one is actually united with the living Christ as the present and redeeming Lord."[67] It is noteworthy that Christ's presence is often expressed by the union with Christ-concept:

"If any one is in Christ, he is a new creation." (2. Cor. 5:17). The newness is not simply the fact that human nature has been forgiven and cleansed. The newness goes deeper: a person now lives in union with the risen Christ. That which has been created, the "new creation," is precisely this reality of the indwelling Spirit establishing and maintaining the risen Christ and the believer in a living union.[68]

Explicitly using Luther's language, the Charismatic theology maintains that "in the faith itself Christ is present."[69] And: "Faith describes the whole action by which the Holy Spirit brings the living, redeeming presence of Christ into a living union with a human being. The initiative and the power to accomplish this lies with the Spirit."[70]

Also, in line with Luther's own theology - but not necessarily of subsequent Lutheranism - Charismatic theologians teach that the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of Christ's work to the believer (favor Dei) is to be followed by unio with Christ, where Christ comes to live inside the believer as God's gift (donum). In other words, justification does not only include God's favor but also Christ as the gift living inside the Christians.[71] The Charismatic Lutheran theology is also helpful in maintaining that - in line with Luther himself, but against his later interpreters - justification and sanctification, rather than being two distinct matters, occur inside each other and happen simultaneously.[72]

An important bridge to both Eastern and some Free Church (e.g., Pentecostal-Holiness) traditions is the accent on experience:

No one can correctly understand God or his Word unless he has received such understanding immediately from the Holy Spirit. But no one can receive it from the Holy Spirit without experiencing, proving, and feeling it.[73]

Deification, Grace, and Spirit in Free Church traditions

Anabaptist and Mennonite traditions

Not only by Reformers but also by their counterparts, Radical Reformers, the Reformation's "left wing," was the idea of deification embraced. This is the conclusion of Thomas Finger, a Mennonite theologian, who has compared Eastern Orthodox theology with Anabaptism. Finger maintains that Anabaptism can be seen as a sixteenth-century expression of an ascetic impulse originating in Eastern cenobitic monasticism.[74] He shows evidence that for these persecuted people, the doctrine of theosis brought hope and encouragement.[75] Finger lists a host of Mennonite leaders, such as Hans Denck, Melchior Hofmann, Menno Simons, and others who have championed the idea of divinization.[76]

According to the classic study of E. Troeltsch, Anabaptists and Spiritualists (the latter group of which has contemporary "relatives" in the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements) translated the radical implications of sola fide into a practical life-style and everyday religion without cultus.[77] Anabaptists, as well as their successors, focused on sanctification much more than Reformers, even to the point of being accused by Reformers for "salvation by works".[78] Modern Pentecostals and Charismatics inherited from Anabaptists and Spritualists an intensive eschatological awareness coupled with the emphasis on the Holy Spirit's transforming power.[79]

In line with Eastern Christians, but in difference from Reformers, Anabaptists understood grace as a transforming divine energy.[80] According to the groundbreaking research of Alvin J. Beach, grace brings about "a reversal of the incarnation in which the eternal Word becomes man in order that man may become God".[81] The Swiss Anabaptist theologian Balthasar Hubmaier often characterized redemption as rebirth through the Spirit.[82] Similarly, among South German-Austrian Anabaptists, clear references to divinization abound; the same can be said of the Hutterites of the same area, as well as of the Dutch Anabaptists.[83]

It is amazing how Eastern sounds the text from Dirk Phillips, a colleague of Menno Simons:

All believers are participants of the divine nature, yes, and are called gods and children of the Most High; they yet do not become identical in nature and person itself to what God and Christ are. Oh, no! The creature will never become the Creator and the fleshly will never become the eternal Spirit itself which God is. But the believers become gods and children of the most high through the new birth, participation, and fellowship of the divine nature.[84]

J. A. Osterhuus makes a highly interesting ecumenical claim that whereas Catholicism considered grace an accident of the human soul, bestowed in somewhat mechanical fashion, and the Reformers considered it a divine activity, yet one making little direct contact with the human, for the Dutch Anabaptists, grace played a far more comprehensive role: it was the divine energy underlying creation, incarnation, and sanctification.[85] Even if this caricature might not do full justice to either Catholic or Reformed soteriology, the convergence of the Anabaptist view of grace with the Eastern soteriology is startling.

Nothwithstanding some methodological questions (e.g., the linkage, if any, between the sixteenth century Anabaptism and Eastern Orthodoxy[86]), enough evidence is available to show clear convergences between these early Free Church theologies and the Eastern view of salvation. How much of this is convergence due to the similarity of language only, cannot be determined in the confines of this research, anymore than for example the question whether the terms, such as "divinization," have the same meaning or not. These kinds of questions have to be left for further scrutiny.

Wesley and Holiness Traditions

Ecumenically, it is significant that Wesleyan and Holiness traditions, the most influential Free Church movements antecedent to the Twentieth Century Free Church developments in general and Pentecostal-Charismatic Movements in particular,[87] carry along the similar kind of Eastern influences and pneumatological emphases which were found in Anabaptist and related movements of the sixteenth century.

In fact, Jürgen Moltmann has shown in his Spirit of Life that John Wesley, the theological architect of the Holiness traditions, was himself open to the idea of deification and to a pneumatological understanding of the concept of grace. Wesley was able to discern five stages in the sanctification of life from an awakening of the conscience by a preliminary divine grace to a gradual sanctification of life to the final stage: "Believers are wholly interpenetrated by the Holy Spirit and arrive at the state of Christian perfection, the theosis."[88] Moltmann correctly notes that for Wesley, sin is a sickness that requires healing rather than a breach of law requiring atonement. Therefore, Wesley was less interested than Reformation theology in the permanent justification of the sinner, and more interested in the process of a moral renewal.[89] This kind of orientation does, of course, bear the marks of Eastern Orthodox spirituality.

David Bundy, in a research conference at Prague, Fall 1997, where there was a fruitful encounter between theologians from Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, and Pentecostal-Holiness traditions, read a paper titled, "Vision of Sanctification: Themes of Orthodoxy in the Methodist, Holiness and Pentecostal Traditions."[90] In his paper, Bundy attempted to detect some common theological roots in Pentecostal-Holiness and Eastern traditions. He referred to several Methodist researchers who have found evidence of Orthodox themes pervading Wesleyan theology. Albert Outler years ago made the claim that Wesley's reading of Orthodox theologians had a definite influence on Methodist theology.[91]

Bundy summarizes his well documented piece of research on the formative Eastern Orthodox influences through Holiness Movements to Pentecostalism:

One particular strand of Eastern Christianity can be traced from Clement of Alexandria to Origen to Pseudo-Macarius to Wesley to Madame Guyon and from both of them to the Holiness theologian Thomas Cogswell Upham, Phoebe Palmer, and from them to formative theologians of Pentecostalism including William Seymour. Minnie Abraham and Thomas Ball Barrett.[92]

Wesley's sermons can suggest that the goal of the Christian life is "Christian perfection," a movement toward the goal of unity with God. Like Eastern spiritual guides, there is empha