My friend Errol Amey has shared this list on facebook a few times on the topic of early Chrisitan belief in the doctrine of deification/theosis:
"And we have learned that those only are deified who have lived near to God in holiness and virtue"
(Justin Martyr, ca. 160, First Apology 21, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:170)
"all men are deemed worthy of becoming 'gods,' and of having power to become sons of the Highest"
(Justin Martyr, ca. 160, Dialogue With Trypho 124, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:262)
"Neither, then, immortal nor yet mortal did He make him, but, as we have said above, capable of both; so that if he should incline to the things of immortality, keeping the commandment of God, he should receive as reward from Him immortality, and should become God"
(Theophilus, ca. 180, To Autolycus 2:27, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 2:105)
"And again: 'God stood in the congregation of the gods, He judges among the gods.' [Psalms 82:1] He [here] refers to the Father and the Son, and those who have received the adoption"
(Irenaeus, ca. 180, Against Heresies 3:6:1, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:419)
"Therefore, as I have already said, He caused man (human nature) to cleave to and to become, one with God. . . . And unless man had been joined to God, he could never have become a partaker of incorruptibility."
(Irenaeus, ca. 180, Against Heresies 3:18:7, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:448)
"It is not possible to live apart from life, and the means of life is found in fellowship with God; but fellowship with God is to know God, and to enjoy His goodness. Men therefore shall see God, that they may live, being made immortal by that sight, and attaining even unto God"
(Irenaeus, ca. 180, Against Heresies 4:20:5-6, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:489)
"Or how shall man pass into God, unless God has [first] passed into man?"
(Irenaeus, ca. 180, Against Heresies 4:33:4, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:507, brackets in original)
“we have not been made gods from the beginning, but at first merely men, then at length gods”
(Irenaeus, ca. 180, Against Heresies 4:38:4, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:522)
"For it must be that thou, at the outset, shouldest hold the rank of a man, and then afterwards partake of the glory of God."
(Irenaeus, ca. 180, Against Heresies 4:39:2, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:523)
"our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself."
(Irenaeus, ca. 180, Against Heresies 5: Preface, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:526)
"Since the Lord thus has redeemed us through His own blood, giving His soul for our souls, and His flesh for our flesh, and has also poured out the Spirit of the Father for the union and communion of God and man, imparting indeed God to men by means of the Spirit, and, on the other hand, attaching man to God by His own incarnation, and bestowing upon us at His coming immortality durably and truly, by means of communion with God"
(Irenaeus, ca. 180, Against Heresies 5:1:1, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:527)
Irenaeus taught that "at the resurrection of the just," men will be "passing beyond the angels, and be made after the image and likeness of God"
(Irenaeus, ca. 180, Against Heresies 5:36:3, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:567)
"Being baptized, we are illuminated; illuminated, we become sons; being made sons, we are made perfect; being made perfect, we are made immortal. 'I,' says He, 'have said that ye are gods, and all sons of the Highest.' [Psalms 82:6]"
(Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor 1:6, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 2:215)
"It is then, as appears, the greatest of all lessons to know one's self. For if one knows himself, he will know God; and knowing God, he will be made like God . . . But that man with whom the Word dwells does not alter himself, does not get himself up: he has the form which is of the Word; he is made like to God; he is beautiful; he does not ornament himself: his is beauty, the true beauty, for it is God; and that man becomes God, since God so wills. Heraclitus, then, rightly said, 'Men are gods, and gods are men.'"
(Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor 3:1, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 2:271)
"On this wise it is possible for the [true] Gnostic already to have become God. 'I said, Ye are gods, and sons of the highest.' [Psalms 82:6]"
(Clement of Alexandria, ca. 195, Stromata 4:23, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 2:437)
"Whence at last . . . it is that knowledge is committed to those fit and selected for it. It leads us to the endless and perfect end, teaching us beforehand the future life that we shall lead, according to God, and with gods; after we are freed from all punishment and penalty which we undergo, in consequence of our sins, for salutary discipline. After which redemption the reward and the honours are assigned to those who have become perfect; when they have got done with purification, and ceased from all service, though it be holy service, and among saints. Then become pure in heart, and near to the Lord, there awaits them restoration to everlasting contemplation; and they are called by the appellation of gods, being destined to sit on thrones with the other gods that have been first put in their places by the Saviour."
(Clement of Alexandria, ca. 195, Stromata 7:10, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 2:539)
"The [true] Gnostic is consequently divine, and already holy, God-bearing, and God-borne."
(Clement of Alexandria, ca. 195, Stromata 7:13, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 2:547)
"it will be impossible that another god should be admitted, when it is permitted to no other being to possess anything of God. Well, then, you say, we ourselves at that rate possess nothing of God. But indeed we do, and shall continue to do—only it is from Him that we receive it, and not from ourselves. For we shall be even gods, if we shall deserve to be among those of whom He declared, 'I have said, Ye are gods,' [Psalms 82:6] and, 'God standeth in the congregation of the gods.' [Psalms 82:1] But this comes of His own grace, not from any property in us, because it is He alone who can make gods."
(Tertullian, ca. 200, Against Hermogenes 5, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 3:480)
"And thou shalt be a companion of the Deity, and a co-heir with Christ, no longer enslaved by lusts or passions, and never again wasted by disease. For thou hast become God . . . these God has promised to bestow upon thee, because thou hast been deified, and begotten unto immortality."
(Hippolytus, ca. 225, Refutation of All Heresies 10:30, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 5:153)
"I am of opinion that the expression, by which God is said to be 'all in all,' means that He is 'all' in each individual person. Now He will be 'all' in each individual in this way: when all which any rational understanding, cleansed from the dregs of every sort of vice, and with every cloud of wickedness completely swept away, can either feel, or understand, or think, will be wholly God; . . . when God will be the measure and standard of all its movements; and thus God will be 'all,' for there will no longer be any distinction of good and evil, seeing evil nowhere exists;"
(Origen, ca. 225, De Principiis 3:6:3, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 4:345)
“And thus the first-born of all creation, who is the first to be with God, and to attract to Himself divinity, is a being of more exalted rank than the other gods beside Him, of whom God is the God, as it is written, ‘The God of gods, the Lord, hath spoken and called the earth.’ [Psalms 50:1] It was by the offices of the first-born that they became gods, for He drew from God in generous measure that they should be made gods, and He communicated it to them according to His own bounty. The true God, then, is ‘The God,’ and those who are formed after Him are gods, images, as it were, of Him the prototype.”
(Origen, Commentary on John 2:2, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 9:323)
“Now it is possible that some may dislike what we have said representing the Father as the one true God, but admitting other beings besides the true God, who have become gods by having a share of God. They may fear that the glory of Him who surpasses all creation may be lowered to the level of those other beings called gods. We drew this distinction between Him and them that we showed God the Word to be to all the other gods the minister of their divinity . . . As, then, there are many gods, but to us there is but one God the Father, and many Lords, but to us there is one Lord, Jesus Christ”
(Origen, Commentary on John 2:3, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 9:323)
"What man is, Christ was willing to be, that man also may be what Christ is."
(Cyprian, ca. 250, Treatises 6:11, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 5:468)
"[The chaste man will become] identical in all respects with God"
(Lactantius, ca. 304-313, Divine Institutes 6:23, in The Mystery-Religions 106-107)
"the saints also can enjoy precisely the same kind of fellowship with the Father [as Jesus Christ.]"
(Eusebius, in Early Christian Doctrines 226)
"[God] made man for that purpose, that from men they may become gods."
(Jerome, The Homilies of Saint Jerome 1:106)
"I too might be made God so far as He is made Man."
(Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 29:19, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Series 2, 7:308)
Further Reading
Jordan Vajda, "Partakers of the Divine Nature": A Comparative Analysis of the Patristic and Mormon Doctrines of Divinization
"And we have learned that those only are deified who have lived near to God in holiness and virtue"
(Justin Martyr, ca. 160, First Apology 21, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:170)
"all men are deemed worthy of becoming 'gods,' and of having power to become sons of the Highest"
(Justin Martyr, ca. 160, Dialogue With Trypho 124, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:262)
"Neither, then, immortal nor yet mortal did He make him, but, as we have said above, capable of both; so that if he should incline to the things of immortality, keeping the commandment of God, he should receive as reward from Him immortality, and should become God"
(Theophilus, ca. 180, To Autolycus 2:27, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 2:105)
"And again: 'God stood in the congregation of the gods, He judges among the gods.' [Psalms 82:1] He [here] refers to the Father and the Son, and those who have received the adoption"
(Irenaeus, ca. 180, Against Heresies 3:6:1, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:419)
"Therefore, as I have already said, He caused man (human nature) to cleave to and to become, one with God. . . . And unless man had been joined to God, he could never have become a partaker of incorruptibility."
(Irenaeus, ca. 180, Against Heresies 3:18:7, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:448)
"It is not possible to live apart from life, and the means of life is found in fellowship with God; but fellowship with God is to know God, and to enjoy His goodness. Men therefore shall see God, that they may live, being made immortal by that sight, and attaining even unto God"
(Irenaeus, ca. 180, Against Heresies 4:20:5-6, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:489)
"Or how shall man pass into God, unless God has [first] passed into man?"
(Irenaeus, ca. 180, Against Heresies 4:33:4, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:507, brackets in original)
“we have not been made gods from the beginning, but at first merely men, then at length gods”
(Irenaeus, ca. 180, Against Heresies 4:38:4, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:522)
"For it must be that thou, at the outset, shouldest hold the rank of a man, and then afterwards partake of the glory of God."
(Irenaeus, ca. 180, Against Heresies 4:39:2, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:523)
"our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself."
(Irenaeus, ca. 180, Against Heresies 5: Preface, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:526)
"Since the Lord thus has redeemed us through His own blood, giving His soul for our souls, and His flesh for our flesh, and has also poured out the Spirit of the Father for the union and communion of God and man, imparting indeed God to men by means of the Spirit, and, on the other hand, attaching man to God by His own incarnation, and bestowing upon us at His coming immortality durably and truly, by means of communion with God"
(Irenaeus, ca. 180, Against Heresies 5:1:1, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:527)
Irenaeus taught that "at the resurrection of the just," men will be "passing beyond the angels, and be made after the image and likeness of God"
(Irenaeus, ca. 180, Against Heresies 5:36:3, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 1:567)
"Being baptized, we are illuminated; illuminated, we become sons; being made sons, we are made perfect; being made perfect, we are made immortal. 'I,' says He, 'have said that ye are gods, and all sons of the Highest.' [Psalms 82:6]"
(Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor 1:6, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 2:215)
"It is then, as appears, the greatest of all lessons to know one's self. For if one knows himself, he will know God; and knowing God, he will be made like God . . . But that man with whom the Word dwells does not alter himself, does not get himself up: he has the form which is of the Word; he is made like to God; he is beautiful; he does not ornament himself: his is beauty, the true beauty, for it is God; and that man becomes God, since God so wills. Heraclitus, then, rightly said, 'Men are gods, and gods are men.'"
(Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor 3:1, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 2:271)
"On this wise it is possible for the [true] Gnostic already to have become God. 'I said, Ye are gods, and sons of the highest.' [Psalms 82:6]"
(Clement of Alexandria, ca. 195, Stromata 4:23, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 2:437)
"Whence at last . . . it is that knowledge is committed to those fit and selected for it. It leads us to the endless and perfect end, teaching us beforehand the future life that we shall lead, according to God, and with gods; after we are freed from all punishment and penalty which we undergo, in consequence of our sins, for salutary discipline. After which redemption the reward and the honours are assigned to those who have become perfect; when they have got done with purification, and ceased from all service, though it be holy service, and among saints. Then become pure in heart, and near to the Lord, there awaits them restoration to everlasting contemplation; and they are called by the appellation of gods, being destined to sit on thrones with the other gods that have been first put in their places by the Saviour."
(Clement of Alexandria, ca. 195, Stromata 7:10, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 2:539)
"The [true] Gnostic is consequently divine, and already holy, God-bearing, and God-borne."
(Clement of Alexandria, ca. 195, Stromata 7:13, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 2:547)
"it will be impossible that another god should be admitted, when it is permitted to no other being to possess anything of God. Well, then, you say, we ourselves at that rate possess nothing of God. But indeed we do, and shall continue to do—only it is from Him that we receive it, and not from ourselves. For we shall be even gods, if we shall deserve to be among those of whom He declared, 'I have said, Ye are gods,' [Psalms 82:6] and, 'God standeth in the congregation of the gods.' [Psalms 82:1] But this comes of His own grace, not from any property in us, because it is He alone who can make gods."
(Tertullian, ca. 200, Against Hermogenes 5, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 3:480)
"And thou shalt be a companion of the Deity, and a co-heir with Christ, no longer enslaved by lusts or passions, and never again wasted by disease. For thou hast become God . . . these God has promised to bestow upon thee, because thou hast been deified, and begotten unto immortality."
(Hippolytus, ca. 225, Refutation of All Heresies 10:30, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 5:153)
"I am of opinion that the expression, by which God is said to be 'all in all,' means that He is 'all' in each individual person. Now He will be 'all' in each individual in this way: when all which any rational understanding, cleansed from the dregs of every sort of vice, and with every cloud of wickedness completely swept away, can either feel, or understand, or think, will be wholly God; . . . when God will be the measure and standard of all its movements; and thus God will be 'all,' for there will no longer be any distinction of good and evil, seeing evil nowhere exists;"
(Origen, ca. 225, De Principiis 3:6:3, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 4:345)
“And thus the first-born of all creation, who is the first to be with God, and to attract to Himself divinity, is a being of more exalted rank than the other gods beside Him, of whom God is the God, as it is written, ‘The God of gods, the Lord, hath spoken and called the earth.’ [Psalms 50:1] It was by the offices of the first-born that they became gods, for He drew from God in generous measure that they should be made gods, and He communicated it to them according to His own bounty. The true God, then, is ‘The God,’ and those who are formed after Him are gods, images, as it were, of Him the prototype.”
(Origen, Commentary on John 2:2, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 9:323)
“Now it is possible that some may dislike what we have said representing the Father as the one true God, but admitting other beings besides the true God, who have become gods by having a share of God. They may fear that the glory of Him who surpasses all creation may be lowered to the level of those other beings called gods. We drew this distinction between Him and them that we showed God the Word to be to all the other gods the minister of their divinity . . . As, then, there are many gods, but to us there is but one God the Father, and many Lords, but to us there is one Lord, Jesus Christ”
(Origen, Commentary on John 2:3, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 9:323)
"What man is, Christ was willing to be, that man also may be what Christ is."
(Cyprian, ca. 250, Treatises 6:11, in Ante-Nicene Fathers 5:468)
"[The chaste man will become] identical in all respects with God"
(Lactantius, ca. 304-313, Divine Institutes 6:23, in The Mystery-Religions 106-107)
"the saints also can enjoy precisely the same kind of fellowship with the Father [as Jesus Christ.]"
(Eusebius, in Early Christian Doctrines 226)
"[God] made man for that purpose, that from men they may become gods."
(Jerome, The Homilies of Saint Jerome 1:106)
"I too might be made God so far as He is made Man."
(Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 29:19, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Series 2, 7:308)
Further Reading
Jordan Vajda, "Partakers of the Divine Nature": A Comparative Analysis of the Patristic and Mormon Doctrines of Divinization
