DIVINIZATION. It is clear that the divinization of human beings
was a fundamental theme of patristics, esp. the Greek. Unfortunately, its
consideration by Ritschl and his followers as, along with sacramentalism, a
typical case of the Hellenization of the gospel, means that to this day its
study has been compromised by more or less partial debates on certain
unilateral premises, such as Christ’s assumption of universal human nature,
salvation by means of a physical contact between divinity and humanity in
Christ, and the absorption of human beings into God. But research on
divinization has also been greatly complicated by the historical data itself.
The relevant vocabulary, for example, underwent a considerable evolution. Theopoiein and its various forms appear
only from Clement of Alexandria on (Lampe 630f.). Under the influence of
ps.-Dionysius, theōsis assumed more
importance than theopoiēsis (Lampe
649f.). The equivalent Latin terms, deificare
and deificatio, obtained a rather
modest importance only in the 5th c. (Blaise 250; ThLL 5,403f.). The reality
itself, however, was expressed by many other words, both Greek and Latin, such
as aphtharsia, methexis, koinōnia,
henōsis, glorificatio, profectus ad Deum, etc.
The
anthropological premises, moreover, vary according to author, since they don’t
all evaluate Adam’s intimacy with God and hence the injurious consequences of
his sin in the same way. The theological and christological premises were
equally diverse: the way they were conceived corresponded to how the divine
transcendence was understood. This problem includes a not unimportant tension between
divinization understood as a work carried out by Christ the savior, and
divinization seen as a divine action carried out in souls, i.e., between Jesus’
assumption of humanity and the union of Christ with the church.
Even the
biblical basis of the patristic doctrine of human divinization seems, at first
sight, far from solid. There are few explicit texts, all of a clearly
Hellenistic stamp, such as Wisd 2:23 (ὁ θεὸς ἔκτισεν τὸν ἄνθρωπον
ἐπʼ
ἀφθαρσία) and 6:18ff. (aphtharsia); Acts 17:28 (citation of ps.-Epimenides and Aratus), 2
Pet 1:4 (koinōnoi). The biblical
foundation is much more solid than it appears, however, as long as one makes
use of the Scriptural evidence without forcing it. Texts concerning human
beings as God’s image (Gen 1:26–27), divine sonship (Gal 4:5ff.; Rom 8:15),
imitation of God (Mt 5:44–48) and of Christ (Phil 2:5–11), and texts presenting
the new life of Christians as a pledge and anticipation of future glory (1 Cor
13:12; 2 Cor 3:18; 1 Jn 3:1–3), must all be considered in this light.
Reinterpreting,
in particularly open milieus, this rich heritage of the biblical tradition,
esp. the Johannine, Pauline and Wisdom literature, Christian authors soon began
to develop the theology of divinization. Early on, the apostolic fathers and the
Greek apologists saw the intimate union of human beings with God in an
eschatological perspective, stressing the divine gift of immortality (aphtharsia), assured by Jesus’
resurrection and by the Eucharist, and conferred in the Lord’s parousia (Ign., Eph. 4,2; Polyc. 2,2f.; 6,1; Eph.
20,2; 1 Clem. 36,2: immortal gnosis; 2 Clem. 6,6–9; Hermas, Sim.
V, 6,5ff.; Just., Apol. 10,3; 52,3).
While Justin mentions this Christian hope in the context of true philosophy (Dial. 1), his disciple Tatian presents
the human being’s destined immortality as an assimilation to God to be attained
in gnosis (Orat. 12f.). It is in
Theophilus, however, that the technical vocabulary of divinization first
appears (Autol. 2,24; 27). All these
references to immortality, divine privilege to be conceded to those who live by
faith in Christ, were not limited only to eschatological hope, but they were
nevertheless only somewhat occasional.
The situation
changed under the decisive influence of 2nd-c. gnosticism which, taking up the
myth of the primordial man dispersed in matter and illustrating it by, among
other things, the parable of the lost sheep (see Hübner, Einheit, 290–311),
was not per se interested in a divinization in the sense of a transformation to
divine life, but taught rather a return to the divine sphere of those who were
akin to God per naturam. Against this
religious movement, esp. in its Valentinian form, Irenaeus worked out the first
authentically Christian synthesis on human divinization (Tremblay). Integrating
elements of gnosticism into his history of the saving incarnation of the Word,
he shows how God, manifesting himself in his goodness through the Son in the
power of the Holy Spirit, leads back the whole person (created in the image and
likeness, i.e., destined to resemble the immortal God, but fallen through sin
into corruption), by knowledge of the Son in the Spirit, to the eternal vision
of and thus union with him in immortality (Iren., Adv. haer. III, 19,1; IV, 20; V, 36). Irenaeus’s line, at once
gnostic and historical, would be followed by later Greek, esp. Alexandrian,
authors, though they put the accent elsewhere, insisting more on assimilative
knowledge, or perhaps preferring impassibility (apatheia) to incorruptibility (aphtharsia),
according to the stronger or weaker influence of Greek philosophy. Thus Clement
of Alexandria, the first to make full use of the technical and religious
language of the philosophy of his time, further defined the divine pedagogy
spoken of by Irenaeus as a process of divinization that made human beings rise
from incredulity, through faith and gnosis, to charity, source of
impassibility, though not forgetting the illuminative role of baptism (Strom. 2, 22; 7, 10; Paed. 1,6,26).
Origen, for
his part, placed divinization within the vast framework in which he explained
the relationship between God and the world through the mystery of the Logos. To
a greater extent than his predecessors, he sought to base himself on the
biblical data (Comm. in Jo.), and
insisted on the human freedom that is the consequence of growing union with the
Logos, God’s image. Above all he stressed the incarnation, as the supreme
mystery of the Word. For him, the union of the Word with the ever-faithful soul
of Jesus, likened to the interpenetration of iron and fire, is the model of all
divinization (Princ. 11,6). On the
other hand, Jesus’ kenōsis in death
was not just the highest expression of his love for God (Comm. in Jo. V, 284), but also the prelude of the glorious
resurrection which, begun in Christ, would be fulfilled for the whole church (Comm. in Jo. X, 228f.). This doctrine of
divinization, while distinguished by its synthetic strength, like all of
Origen’s theology, is defective in two points: the preexistence of Jesus’ soul
and the excessively spiritualistic tendency.
The enormous
progress made by theology in the 4th c., however, made itself felt in the
question of divinization. Athanasius, the great defender of Nicene faith,
managed to reduce Irenaeus’s heritage to an impressive simplicity, asserting
that the incarnation of the Word has definitively restored the human being’s
primordial resemblance to God on two levels: that of the incorruptibility of
the body and that, impossible without the first, of gnosis (Incarn. 9). He also used the doctrine of
human divinization, by now a firmly established theological doctrine, to
demonstrate, against the Arians, the divinity both of Christ (Ar. II, 70; III, 33) and of the Holy
Spirit (Ep. Serap. 1,24). Gregory of
Nyssa, expounding his ideas on divinization esp. in his Oratio catechetica magna, dedicated to teachers “who need system in
their instruction” (Or. catech. prol.),
considers this doctrine an essential part of Christian teaching. Aware of the
risks of pantheism inherent in the ideas he and his predecessors had taken over
from Platonism, he stressed the distance that exists between God’s image in
human beings and its eternal model (Or.
catech. 5,6), i.e., the mutability of the former and the immutability of
the latter (ibid., 21,1f.). To overcome the mutability, the cause of the loss
of Adam’s likeness to God, the immutable Word was made man (ibid., 32,3), a
saving work that is fulfilled, however, for each person in baptism (ibid.,
33–36) and the Eucharist (ibid., 37). This doctrine could be easily deepened on
particular points with texts of Basil and Cyril of Alexandria on the role of
the Holy Spirit, of Theodore of Mopsuestia on baptism or of John Chrysostom and
Cyril of Jerusalem on the Eucharist. As a whole, however, Gregory’s remains the
most substantial synthesis prior to the theology of ps.-Dionysius and Maximus
the Confessor.
Under the influence
of Proclus, ps.-Dionysius integrated human divinization into his grandiose
vision of the emanation of all things from God and their return to him (Cael. hier. 1,3f.); Maximus, in line
with Chalcedonian Christology, maintained the christological indivise-inconfuse in his explanation of
divinization (Quaest. ad Thal. 59),
and opposed divine love, the motive of the incarnation, to human love, the
measure of divinization (Ambig.: PG
91, 1113B). This broad vision of human restoration to the primordial state
(kinship with God, freely given him from the beginning), founded on the
incarnation of the Word, eternal image of God, including his kenōsis unto death, and fulfilled in
individuals esp. by means of the sacraments, is characteristic of Greek
theology.
The Latins,
more interested in moral holiness and therefore insisting more on the
elimination of sin as culpa than on
liberation from mortal corruption, seem to have been less open to it. Yet
divinization is not absent from Latin theology, itself indebted to the Greek
and dependent on the same philosophical influences. Tertullian took from
Irenaeus the idea of the admirabile
commercium between God and humanity (Adv.
Marc. 11,27); Hilary, influenced by Origen, developed a theology of the
glorification of the human being that is a doctrine of divinization, based on
the communio naturalis with the
incarnate Word and realized in a special way in the Eucharist (Fierro); Ambrose
attached importance to transformation to divine life (Myst. 7,37–42; Incarn.
4,23). Augustine, while seeing grace primarily as medicina and adiutorium,
and giving great importance to the church as Christus totus, did not neglect the communion in which the
individual, thanks to Christ’s mediation, is united with God (Serm. 47,21; 192,1). For him, the
baptized person is just with the only Just One, and thus he is a child of God
like Christ, though not yet in the perfect state, since he hopes, by the Spirit
diffused in him, to see God as he is in the resurrection (Ep. 140 and 147). Leo the Great expressed the same thought with
formulae that were perhaps even more precise (Serm. 21,3; 23,5; 26,4). For him also, the Word was made flesh so
that human beings could be raised, in the grace of the Spirit, to become
children of God (Serm. 22,5). (Basil
Studer, “Divinization,” Encyclopedia of
Ancient Christianity, ed. Angelo
Di Berardino and James Hoover, 3 vols. [Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2014],
1:726–728)
