Open Theism Discussion Board

Deification is Maximus's preferred expression for the goal of human life(62). Fundamental to this doctrine is the tantum-quantum formula: Christ deified us by grace in the measure that he became man by nature, the κατάβασις of the divine incarnation being matched by the ανάβασις of human deification (63). This is based on what L.Thunberg has aptly called 'a reciprocity of natures between God and man'(64). The tantum-quantum formula (which goes back to Irenaeus and Athanasius) is enriched by Maximus through his basing it doctrinally on Chalcedonian christology - a mutual interpenetration without confusion of the human and the divine. On the ontological level reciprocity is expressed in terms of Archetype and image. On the dynamic level 'God's movement toward man in the Incarnation' is met by 'man's movement towards God in the imitative process of deification'(65). Yet the goal of deification lies beyond mere imitation. That which God is by essence, the creature can become by participation(66). The linking of participation in the divine nature with sharing in eternity finds expression in the Dionysian triad of being, well-being and eternal being(67). This Maximus explains more fully in his discussion of the mystery of the eighth day, a mystery which expresses a manner of existence above nature and time(68). Such a manner of existence Maximus describes as 'an identity with respect to energy between the participant and that in which he participates by virtue of the likeness'(69). A person fits himself by the moral life for union with God through the divine energy in a way which looks forward to Gregory Palamas. This is a union without annihilation and without confusion an interpenetration of created and uncreated, an αγέννητον θέωσιν (70).
http://www.myriobiblos.gr/texts/english/Russell_partakers.html

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Nesteruk

We know about the kingdom of God and the ultimate destiny of this world because we know the Christ-event. Christ through the cross, resurrection, and ascension left us with historical memory of the event and liturgical memory of the kingdom. The condescension fo the Logos of God into the world through the incarnation in Christ, and Christ's coming back to the kingdom through the resurrection and ascension, provide Christians with the typology of events that will happen to human beings, in particular with the image of the end of the world and the human being, as both transfigured and united back to God, leaving behind the images of the world in it's present state of flowing time.

One can imagine that when human beings reintegrate their personhood in God, so that their hypostatic constitution will no longer resemble the divisions in creation, human apprehension will change fundamentally. The vision of the universe, its articulation in space and in time, will cease to function at all, resembling more and more the hypostatic "apprehension" of the universe by the Logos himself, for whom the whole universe in its spatial and temporal span exists as an instant of truth, as the "eighth" boundless day, the aeon with no duration.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

"God in Christ by His Spirit empowers, enables, energizes and enacts all Christian behavior and ministry as the dynamic expression of the life of Jesus Christ. Christianity is Christ. Christian living is the life and character of Jesus Christ lived out through the Christian." -James Fowler