Met Ephrem (Kyriakos): Theosis
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Notes on Arab Orthodoxy – 4/4/18
The purpose of the Christian’s life on earth is theosis.
Theosis is our participation in the very life of God. This is accomplished through the divine grace that is active within us after we are purified from passions and lusts: “those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24). According to Saint Maximus the Confessor, God made us in order for us to become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). The sin of contemporary man is that he wants to be self-sufficient without any relationship with God his creator. In the end, this constitutes his real death. Here we recall the words of Saint Irenaeus, “God became man so that man might become a god” (through the uncreated divine grace).
This patristic issue stands against the challenges of rationalist thought. The true challenge lies in the Christian experience that desires a true renewal of man from within. Of course, man’s participation in the life of God is possible for human creation. But this human mind, with the struggles of body and soul, is closely linked to the work of divine grace. This leads to the descent of the mind into the heart and to the enlightenment of the mind and the heart through prayer and fasting. That is, through the uncreated divine energies.
This communion with God through divine grace– that is, theosis– preserves God’s absolute transcendence, something that is called apophatic theology. When we say that God is good, merciful, just… this does not reveal God’s true nature. That is, His essence. Rather, it expresses what is around this nature and the positive attributes that come forth from it, in which man participates, but it does not touch upon God’s ineffable essence. Participation in what comes forth from God is possible, but God’s essence or His true nature completely transcends our perception: this is apophatic truth.
This explanation does not quench the thirst of the human soul that longs for God. It is merely an intellectual preamble, encouragement for the practice of the ascetic spiritual life in this blessed Lenten season, that we may touch God’s hand in our life and have a foretaste of the joy of the kingdom.
+Ephrem
Metropolitan of Tripoli, al-Koura and their Dependencies
