Excellent article.

http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/a124.htm

Post Edited (ONE) : 4/27/2007 11:25:06 PM (GMT-5)

Beware the Matrix.

Be wise.

Be aware.

Be awake.

Know yourself.

Know the Spirit of Truth.

Post Edited (ONE) : 4/28/2007 11:09:54 PM (GMT-5)

By sharing in our nature the Word sanctifies it and makes it capable once more of eternal life. In baptism we “put on Christ,” receiving a share in His nature in return. We become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pt 1:4).  http://www.ecdd.org/index.php?pr=Catechesis__Tradition

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

It's "communication of idioms."

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 4/28/2007 11:48:43 PM (GMT-5)

The doctrine of "deification" in Maximus is based upon the fundamental patristic presupposition that communion with God does not diminish or destroy humanity but makes it fully human. In Christ the hypostatic union the communication of idioms (perichõresis tõn idiõmatõn). The characteristics of divinity and humanity express themselves "in communion with each other" (Chalcedonian definition), and human actions, "energies," have God Himself as their personal agent. Therefore, it can be said that "God was born," that Mary is the Theotokos, and that the "Logos was crucified" while birth and death remain purely human realities. But it can and must also be said that a man rose from the dead and sits at the right hand of the Father having acquired characteristics, which "naturally" belong to God alone: immortality and glory. Through Christ’s humanity deified according to its hypostatic union with the Logos, all members of the Body of Christ have access to "deification" by grace through the operation of the Spirit in Christ’s Church.

 

http://www.holytrinitymission.org/books/english/byzantine_theology_j_meyendorf.htm

Let’s try this…

The energies of God are to individual human personhood as the alphabet is to the individual meaning of a word. The relationship is asymmetrical. You can have an alphabet without words but you can’t have words with an alphabet. But words aren’t JUST alphabet letters. They are that, but they’re also something more, something that emerges over and above the letters. Aristotle argued that “the syllable is never just the sum of its letters.” When letters have a particular structure, they ‘become’ something (i.e., words), something that emerges from the structure and which functions meaningfully; something “comes into being” which is not simply the sum total of the letter, not simply reducible to the letters.

When letters are arranged, or structured, appropriately we get what Aristotle called the “thinghood” of a thing, its “ousia” (or “essence”).

One claims that God and human beings are “essentially” one, that they are “homoousios” (of one ‘ousia’). Whatever God is, remember, is of God’s essence or being. So there’s no way to affirm One’s substantive monism and deny that all that exists is “homoousios” with God. And that we are, or even become, "homoousios" with divinity is something, I submit to you, that every Greek Orthodox thinker from the Cappadocian fathers to the present day would repudiate. If I'm wrong historically, oh well. But if we are NOT "homoousios" with God, then substantive monism is dead in the water, for there are a multiplicity of ousias running around.

My basic idea is that even if some form of idealism/mentalism is true, we are not yet monists is the sense One argues, namely, that “all is one ‘ousia’ (‘substance’ or ‘essence’),” namely, God. In my view there’s an ontological, i.e., an essential distinction between God and humanity. That is to say, the divine “ousia” and the “ousia” of an individual human being are not numerically identical.

Aristotle gives an example of a ‘house’. If you contract with someone to build you a house and they pull up a truck and unload a heap of bricks, tiles, and wood and say “Here’s your house,” you’d think it was a joke. To BE a ‘house’ everything would need to be put together in certain ways and in a particular structure, noted Aristotle. And by virtue of this structure it would “be” a house. The “ousia” (or “essence”) of the house as an independent entity would emerge from the structure. Obviously “emerge” here precludes “independent” meaning “absolutely independent"; but “emerge” does tell us that what “comes into being,” what “comes into its own ‘ousia’” is not numerically identical with the material from which the house emerges. But the point is that a house's "being," it's 'ousia', is not reducible to the bricks, mortal, and tiles without which it would not be and from which it comes into being. It's 'ousia' (its essence, its substance, is greater than the sum of its parts for it "comes into being.")

[One will appeal to the incarnation as proof of his position. But we went over that. I don’t see anything there that proves substantival monism.]

What I’d suggest, perhaps, is something analagous. The divine creative energies of God are like (just an analogy OK?) the materials out of which a 'house' emerges. But what emerges in our case is a “personal subject” in its own right, over and above that out of which it emerges, instantiating an “ousia” all its own, not numerically identical with the divine “ousia.” The former is contingent and derivative, yes, but that doesn’t negate the real, essential, distinction between the “divine subject” and the “human subject.” Both are personal and sentient, so I'm cool (I think) with an attributive monism or mentalism, nut the human subject does not instantiate one and the same divine 'ousia' which is the divine subject. There is a "personal distinction" between us and God. It's RIGHT HERE where One and I differ. It's not over idealism/mentalism. Even if the entire created order derives its being at the quantum level from divine sentient probability waves collapsing into actuality whenever and wherever relationship with some other occurs, it's still possible (and very preferable) that a unique human person "comes into being" or emerges from such activity and that it is its own 'ousia' not reducible to the divine 'ousia' that permeates all the created order as the medium and context in which personally distinct ousias come into being.

OK, well, that was wordy. Sorry. That’s the closest I can get to One on this, but it’s still VERY far away.

Tom

Post Edited (MANY) : 4/29/2007 11:04:14 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (ONE) : 4/29/2007 12:45:09 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (ONE) : 4/29/2007 1:38:50 PM (GMT-5)

In the immortal words of Brittney Spears...

"Hit me baby...one more time."

The One is the Many and the Many are the One.

3.  The Little Flower is not a theologian but we can see a glimpse of what it is like to be a god. It is to address God personally as a "You."

4.  Death is the condition, the supreme kenotic act. It is when one no longer wants to live apart from the love of God.

5.  Being a god, being a property of God means that God, who is the great I AM, makes the human person, "I am YOURS." You still get to keep your personality, your "I," but it is always seen in relation to God: I am His, or much better, I am YOURS.

Now, if you want to go with the "building blocks" (which is more substance/essence oriented) and say that we are "one" with God, fine.  I don't have a problem with that LOGICALLY.  But then that would make all of material reality God.  But there are ways that we are distinct from God.  To me it seems that the primary difference between God and man is as Nicholas Lash has said.  Whereas humans "HAVE relationships; God IS the relations that he has...that is, God IS relationship without remainder which we most certainly are not."  When we participate in a CHURCH community we "participate" not only in a network of relations differently from that as a biological members and other social relations as well--a sacramental life of the ecclesial community if you want to say.

This is why I say (and I love what POW put up when he says: "... communion with God does not diminish or destroy humanity but makes it fully human.")

God IS relations.  We need to HAVE relations (with both God and others) in order to be FULLY HUMAN--which is to become deified(?).  Having said that, let me ask this question.  It seems to me that there is an eschatalogical character to our relational selves.  It seems that we become deified.  An eschatological deification.

1.  That doesn't seem to be the case with God.

2.  This is done by way of "inclining oneself toward God--we are "theological selves."  And this is done relationally in Christ starting now in the Spirit.

What say ye?

Post Edited (BBBCanada) : 4/29/2007 3:51:09 PM (GMT-5)