Theophany & Theosis (1) - The Cosmos is a Temple & You Are Gods
Some Quotes to Pique Your Interest
“For what is more desirable to God’s precious ones than to be divinized?”
-Saint Maximus the Confessor (Ambigua VII)
Later on… much later on… certainly months and perhaps even years from now, I will come back to this series. I must first wrap up my two series Mystagogia and Koinonia-ism series’, of which the Mystagogia series is a long long way from being complete. I don’t want to give away the farm, but I actually intend that those two belong together, and will eventually belong to a much larger “collection of series’” on this Substack - Haunted by God. This “eventual” series - Theophany & Theosis - will be among that collection. For now, this is meant only to pique your interest.
We are made for Theophany and Theosis. According to the Church Fathers, this is the purpose for the Incarnation: that the glory of God be revealed in the cosmos, and that we would become communicants/partakers in the divine nature. The cosmos is a temple, and you are gods. Of course, these two realities await final consummation, and so in the interim they take a different shape. But we are nonetheless still made for these.
Theophany
Theophany is a physical manifestation of the presence of God - like Moses’ burning bush, or Jacob’s ladder, or Elijah’s chariots of fire. The most vivid and complete theophany we have in scripture is that of the Mount of Transfiguration.
Mount of Transfiguration - Luke’s account - Luke 9:28-36
And it happened that, about eight days after these exchanges, he took Peter and John and James and went up into the mountain to pray. And as he was praying the appearance of his face became different and his raiment became gleaming white. And look: Speaking with him were two men who were Moses and Elijah, who - appearing in glory - spoke to him about his journey forth, which he was about to complete in Jerusalem. And Peter and those with him were weighed down by sleep; but waking thoroughly they saw the glory of him and of the two men standing with him. And it happened that, when they parted from him, Peter - not knowing what he was saying - said to Jesus “Master, it is a good thing for us to be here
Our destiny (indeed, the destiny of all humanity) is to be brought into the new world that God is making, something like this scene, at the Apokatastisis (Acts 3:19-21).
Theosis
Theosis is all but a lost dogma in Western Christianity. One wonders reading the New Testament (or the First Testament, for that matter) how this is so. The claim is that our destiny (all humans) is to be made gods is found at every turn. The most explicit of these claims is perhaps Jesus plainly stating to the Judaeans “You are gods.”
Jesus in John 10:31-36
Again the Judaeans picked up stones so that they could stone him. Jesus replied to them, “I have displayed to you many good works from the Father; for which work among them do you stone me?” The Judaeans answered him, “We stone you not on account of good work, but rather on account of blasphemy, and because you who are a man make yourself out to be a god.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law ‘I said, You are gods.’? If he called ‘gods’ those to whom God’s Logos came, and the scripture cannot be dissolved, how is that, because I have said I am the Son of God, you say, 'You blaspheme’ to one whom the Father sanctified and sent out into the cosmos.?”
Saint Paul in Romans 8:29 (Past tense)
Because those he knew in advance he then marked out in advance as being in conformity to the image of his Son, so that he might be the firstborn among many siblings.
Saint Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:18 (Present Tense)
But all of us with face unveiled, mirroring the Lord’s glory, are being transformed in the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Lord, the Spirit.
Saint John the Seer in 1 John 3:2 (Future Tense)
Beloved ones, now we are children of God, and what we shall be has not yet become apparent. We know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.
Or, Saint Peter more explicitly speaking of virtue in 2 Peter 1:2-4a
…grace and peace be multiplied for you by a full knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, just as his divine power has given us all the things pertaining to life and piety, through the full knowledge of him who has called us to his own glory and virtue, whereby he has given us his precious and majestic promises, so that through these you may become participants in the divine nature.
Or what about Saint Athanasius, from whom we get the true doctrine of the Incarnation against the Arian heresy:
God gave the Logos a body in order that in him we might be renewed and divinized…
or again he says…
The Son of God made himself man in order to divinize us in himself…
or yet again…
We do not participate in the body of an ordinary man but we receive the body of the Logos and in him we are made gods/godlike…
Or what about Gregory of Nyssa (known among the Church Fathers as “the pillar of orthodoxy”) in his catechesis:
THAT Deity should be born in our nature, ought not reasonably to present any strangeness to the minds of those who do not take too narrow a view of things. For who, when he takes a survey of the universe, is so simple as not to believe that there is Deity in everything, penetrating it, embracing it, and seated in it?
For all things depend on Him Who is (Exod. 3:14) , nor can there be anything which has not its being in Him Who is.
If, therefore, all things are in Him, and He in all things, why are they scandalized at the plan of Revelation when it teaches that God was born among men, that same God Whom we are convinced is even now not outside mankind? For although this last form of God’s presence amongst us is not the same as that former presence, still His existence amongst us equally both then and now is evidenced;
only now He Who holds together Nature in existence is transfused in us; while at that other time He was transfused throughout our nature, in order that our nature might by this transfusion of the Divine become itself divine, rescued as it was from death, and put beyond the reach of the caprice of the antagonist. For His return from death becomes to our mortal race the commencement of our return to the immortal life.
Or what about Saint Maximus, the Confessor in his Ambigua VII:
For what could be more desirable to the worthy than theosis, according to which God - united to gods who have come to be - makes everything his own through his own virtue?
Or what about the Seventh Prayer of Saint Symeon the New Theologian, in preparation for Eucharist, that we pray as we prepare to receive the body and blood of Christ:
See my lowliness and toil! Lo, the greatness of my suffering And O God, of all, forgive me All the sins I have committed So that with a cleansed and pure heart, And a mind with ‘fear and tremble,’ And a soul contrite and lowly, I may draw nigh to partake of Thine all-pure and spotless Myst’ries, Wherebyall who eat and drink Thee With heart sincere and guileless Are both deified and quickened.
Well, I pray your mind is filled with curiosity and visions of glory. Theophany and Theosis, coming… not so soon. Until then, let us pray for the authentic article as the Widow before the King in Luke 18. In the meantime, perhaps, be on guard against Western Christian heresies concerning: Calvinistic human depravity, that our destiny is “somewhere else,” and that we humans will never become like God.