THEOSIS

In the Latin Fathers

by Archbishop Lazar Puhalo
and Rev Fr Michael Azkoul

SYNAXIS PRESS
The Canadian Orthodox Publishing House
37323 Hawkins Road
Dewdney, B.C., V0M-1H0, Canada
ISBN: 9798386149000
Copyright: 2023
Synaxis Press

ii
 I respectfully dedicate this short book to
The Centre For Ecology, Missiology and Ecumenism
in the hope that it will contribute to the
efforts of the CEMES organisation to in-
crease the mutual respect and quest for
unity between the two wings of the Apostolic
Church.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS
A NOTE ABOUT THE TEXT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTERS
[By Archbishop Lazar Puhalo]
INTENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
CHAPTER I: Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
CHAPTER II: Deification in the Scriptures. . . . . 16
CHAPTER III The Latin Fathers . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

SAINT CLEMENT TO
SAINT GREGORY THE DIALOGIST
[By Rev. Dr. Michel Azkoul]
St Clement of Rome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
36
St Hippolytus of Rome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
37
Cyprian of Carthage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
38
St Hilary of Poitiers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
40
St Ambrose, Bishop of Milan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
St Jerome of Stridonium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
44
St Niceta of Remesiana. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
46
St Paulinus, Bishop of Nola . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
St Maximus, Bishop of Turin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
St Peter, Archbishop of Ravenna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
St Leo the Great . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
54
St Gregory the Great . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
58
The Latin Sacramentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .61
APPENDIX 1: Summary of the Nature of Redemption . . . . . 70
APPENDIX 2: Baptism/chrismation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
APPENDIX 3: On the Nature of Sin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

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 A NOTE ABOUT THE TEXT

Father Michael Azkoul was one of my teachers in the

1970s. At one time, I had asked him if there could actually
have been such a huge difference between the early Latin
fathers and the Greek fathers or if perhaps the real differ-
ences had developed on the plane of philosophy rather
than theology. A colleague and I had been translating
writings by Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky and were
aware of the scholastic contortions of theology that were
affected by philosophy rather than authentic theology.
Father Michael responded that the Latin fathers had
taught no differently than the Greek fathers but had
different concerns to focus on and so had not given
attention to the same matters. The Greek fathers were
dealing with different issues than the Latin fathers were
faced with. I then submitted a paper to him in which I
suggested that the Hesychast Controversy was more of a
conflict between scholastic philosophy and the synthesis
of Christian tradition expressed in Saint Gregory Palamas'
hesychastic theological corpus.
Father Michael, who read and spoke Latin, produced
a glossary for me in which he gave the Latin equivalent of
Greek theological terminology and expressed the thought
that the Latin fathers had been aware of such concepts as
Theosis/deification and were not unaware of the
Energy/Essence question, but had dealt with these matters
only in passing.
During the 1980s, I attempted to find these teachings
in the Latin fathers but was unable to read Latin and
realised that many of the Latin fathers had not been fully

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translated into English and certainly not into Russian. I
presented Father Michael with my introductory writing
about it, and he agreed to isolate some of the relevant
writing of the Latin fathers. This eventually developed
into a manuscript by Father Michael titled "Ye Are Gods,"
referring to the doctrine of deification among the Latin
fathers. We later agreed that I would write the introduc-
tory material and he would provide the assessment of a
series of Latin fathers. He also provided me with a further
glossary of Greek to Latin theological terms. That was the
genesis of this present book. I contributed introductory
material and Father Michael's manuscript provided the
narratives of the understanding of theosis on the part of
the Latin fathers..
We had finished this work in about 1995. I did not
continue with the editing until last year and completed the
editing only in 2023, rewriting some of my introductory
segments. What Father Michael may have done with his
copy of our manuscript before he passed away, I have no
idea, but after becoming connected with the CEMES
organisation in Thessaloniki, I decided to revisit our
original manuscript, re-edit portions of it and bring it to
publication. The result is this present short book, which I
hope will help in the construction of the bridge between
the two wings of the Church – the Latin and the Greek.

vi
 INTENT
or centuries the conventional scholarly wisdom
F has been that the Greek or Eastern Fathers and the
Latin or Western Fathers formed different traditions.
Two assumptions lurk behind this view. First,
that these two patristic traditions in fact belong to the
history of two Churches which, although in commu-
nion were, from the beginning, developing in diver-
gent directions both in organisation and doctrine. It is
true that differences in the mode of “theologising”
did occur and this divergence helped to shape some
of the theological ideas and concepts that we are even
now striving to overcome so that we may see a true
and complete reunion of the two parts of the one holy
catholic and apostolic Church. We will cover this
question in an appendix to this work, titled "The
Mystic and the Lawyer: Two Divergent Ways of
Thinking Theologically."
With the development of the scholastic mode
of thought and philosophy in Western Europe, some
divergent ways of approaching theology developed.
The result was the development of some new con-
cepts which arose from the scholastic mode of think-
ing. The most serious of these could be discussed
elsewhere, but we are interested here in examining
the basic elements of the Christian faith which have
been explicated by the holy fathers of the Church in

1
both the East and West, and which form a firm
foundation for the reconciliation and reunion of the
one Church of Christ which, since medieval times,
has found itself in an organisation of disunity.
We must, however, offer a caveat here. Secular
and sectarian writers accord the title “fathers of the
Church” to anyone who wrote theological and social
opinions in the first few Christian centuries. The
Orthodox Church would use more discernment.
Secular historians of the last few centuries read
"the patristic era" in the same way, that is, as a stage
in the development of church life and doctrine, a
stage succeeded by Scholasticism, Reformation, the
Renaissance, and all of these by modernity; and, as
some assert, by the "post-modern world" in which
feeling and intuition have displaced reason as the
criterion for understanding the human community’s
hopes and aspirations.
The Orthodox theologian who argues for the
historicity of the Christian revelation and the truth of
the Christian or patristic world-view, has a different
conception of the Church (and, therefore, history)
whose ultimate meaning is found beyond time and
space. For an understanding of that "meaning" we
turn for guidance to the holy Fathers, her spokesmen.
They are the expositors and defenders of "the Faith
once delivered to the saints" (Jude 3).1
The Latin and Greek Fathers constituted a
brotherhood of new prophets testifying in behalf of a

2
revealed and immutable Faith. As servants of the
Church, there is no significant difference between the
Latin and Greek Fathers as there was none between
the Church in the West and the Church in the East.
Geography and culture may have affected the choice
of problems they chose to confront and the nature of
their response to them. Also, despite the variety of
languages they employed; they had a single loyalty
and profession.
Thus, without difficulty, some of the Latin
Fathers (Sts Clement of Rome, Hermas, etc.) wrote in
Greek. Many Greek Fathers lived in the West (Sts
Irenaeus of Lyon, St Hippolytus of Rome, St Justin
Martyr the Philosopher, etc.) while Latin Fathers (St
Jerome, St Hilary of Poitiers, St John Cassian, St
Pope Gregory the Great) had lived in the East. As the
Greek Father, St Firmilian of Caesarea wrote to the
Latin Father, St Cyprian of Carthage, "although we
are separated by distance, we are united in spirit, as
if we were not only occupying one country, but
inhabiting one and the self-same house…the spiritual
house of God is one" (Epistle 74, 1 ANF).
The Fathers, together with the Councils, the
Scriptures, the Liturgy, the icons, sacred canons and
customs are components of one holy Tradition. It
provides us with the understanding of the salvation
she offered — deification (theosis).2
Our purpose is to show through this doctrine, if
nothing else, the unity of patristic thought and, by

3
implication, the unity of historical Christian Faith.3
We wish to do this without pretending that serious
theological divergences did not develop and still
persist. Our purpose is not to deny these, but rather to
demonstrate those most fundamental spiritual and
theological concepts which form a foundation upon
which to rebuild our ancient unity.
Both the Scriptures and the Fathers attest to the
truth of deification (theosis) as a revelation through
the Church from the beginning, universally con-
fessed even if not universally expounded. It was
taught everywhere, always, by all that the purpose of
the Incarnation was deification; hence, the raison
d'etre of the Christian Economy, a Scriptural truth
nowhere better expressed than in 2Peter 1:4 —
"whereby it is given to us exceeding great and pre-
cious promises: that by these you might be partakers
of the divine nature."4

ENDNOTES
1. New Testament quotes are generally taken from the King James version of
the Bible. Occasionally, they are taken from other translations; and sometimes
I have made the translation according to the patristic understanding of the text.
2. The eminent Liberal Protestant church historian, Adolph von Harnack
(1851-1930), was not alone in his opinion that the Christian “apotheosis
(Harnack’s word for deification) of mortal man” is an idea of salvation which
was first taught in the ancient mysteries. It was adopted by the Church and
“supported by the Pauline theology, especially as contained in the Epistle the
Ephesians…” (History of Dogma [vol. 2]. Trans. by W. M. Gilchrist. London,
1898-1910, p. 10f). The “pith of the matter” is found in St Irenaeus:
“…deification through the gift of immortality” (ib., p. 240). In this way the soul
of man “might attain divine life, i.e., everlasting contemplation of God”
(History [v. 3], p. 164).

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3. The Lutheran theologian, J. Martikainen, insists that in the early Church
“doctrinal pluralism was fully accepted” (“Man’s Salvation: Deification or
Justification,” Sobornost III, 3 [1976], 182). His remark is tendentious. The
“early Church” is with us as the Orthodox Church. There is no evidence in the
Fathers that the Church or her Councils subscribed to religious pluralism.
Heretical sects have never been part of the Church
4. Consequently, the idea of “justification” in the Protestant sense (see
Glossary) is not part of the Apostolic Tradition. A. E. McGrath explains its
absence: “justification” was “simply not a theological issue in the pre-
Augustinian tradition” which explains why so little was said about it by the
early Fathers (Justitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of
Justification [vol. 1]. New York, 1986. P. 19)

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 CHAPTER I
LATIN AND GREEK FATHERS
Neither “East” nor “West”
hen reading the Latin Fathers scholars gener-
W ally assume that "Latin" means "Western," that
is, a certain continuity of thought, style and mores
which distinguishes it from any other religious
tradition, lest, for example, it become impossible to
apply the word "Western" to "the tradition of the
Latin Fathers." Likewise, in order to identify the
Greek Fathers, it is necessary to assume that "Greek"
means something "Eastern," a constancy of thought
and way of life, perpetually associated with "the
tradition of the Greek Fathers." Thus, for such schol-
ars any differences between “Western” and “Eastern”
Churches, and the eventual schism between them,
must be explained, then as now, in terms of distinct
historical and religious development.
There is another and, we assert, a more correct
way to look at the early history of the Christian
Church and her Fathers. This view does not separate
or divide early Christian theology between “Eastern”
and “Western” Church thought. There are writers
from both East and West that were not accepted by
the undivided Church in the first centuries, and those
who were universally acknowledged were speaking
from the same tradition. Those Fathers acknowledged

6
by the whole, undivided Church constitute the stream
of living water flowing from the Apostles, the final
revelation of God to the world, the revelation of
God’s transcendent mystery (Col.1:26), the Faith
directed and protected by "the Comforter, the Spirit
of Truth" (Jn.15:26). So, whatever the time and place,
the Faith of the Church, ensured by the Holy Spirit, is
one and the same forever, as is Jesus Christ Himself.
We are concerned here primarily with the
doctrine of theosis (deification) as one point of
theological/spiritual unity.
What was believed in one part of the undivided
Church was not modified or denied in some other
“region.” Nor has time altered this doctrine. Deifica-
tion was the soteriology of the Greek Fathers and it
was, therefore, the soteriology of the Latin Fathers.
An examination of the subject among teachers of
traditional Christianity should support this conten-
tion. When we say "traditional," we are aware that
contemporary philosophical Christian scholars,
confident in the dogma of doctrinal development, will
never consent to the idea that there exists in the
Church today a body of untouchable doctrine which
has prevailed from the beginning. If they are incredu-
lous about changeless Faith, it is because they are
hostile to the very notion of the supernatural, of
revealed religion.
If there is no place among the inquiries of
twenty-first century scholars for one true God and

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"revelation," we may be certain they do not believe
there is a Church in the possession of the fulness of
the Faith. No Orthodox Christian thinks of the
Church as embracing a multiplicity of creeds, or that
what they believe is the offspring of a combination of
Hellenism and Judaism. Nor can we accept the notion
that all appeals to the writings of the Fathers are
ultimately anachronistic.
We need only to mention in passing that the
secular and skeptical interpretation of the Church and
her Fathers is burdened with so many philosophical,
historical and epistemological assumptions, that it is
impossible to list them; and, in any case, beyond the
scope of this text to consider. Nevertheless, it is
worth saying, because it is possible to show from the
Scriptures and the Fathers, that the Apostles and the
early Church never endorsed the idea of a shattered
Christianity with numerous traditions vying for
dominance. That the Church was challenged on every
side by false teachers, we gather from the words of
Apostle Paul who reminded Christians that they were
"no more to be children, tossed to and fro, and
carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the
sleight of men, their cunning craftiness. Whereby they
lay in wait to deceive; but speaking the truth in love,
may grow up into Him in all things Who is the Head
of [the Church], even Christ (Eph.4:14).
St Maximus the Confessor chose his words
carefully when he called upon his generation to

8
"reverently hold fast the confession [singular] of the
Fathers" (Op. 7 PG 91 88). He announced the exis-
tence of a single, immutable tradition of Faith to
which the Fathers [plural] consistently testified
(consensus patrum).1 Judging from their writings, the
patristic witness far exceeded any desire to prove the
rationality of the Christian Faith.
Their concern was fidelity to the Apostolic
Tradition. The Fathers did not speak as individuals in
pursuit of a personal understanding of the Faith.
Their unity was not an esprit d’corp, but rather as "a
crowd of witnesses" expressing a common devotion
to the Incarnate Lord, to a common life in the Body
of Christ, to a common reflection on the Faith deliv-
ered to them from the previous generation of Chris-
tians. So great was their authority that it ranked, then
as now, above an ecumenical council.2
What "the God-bearing Fathers" teach us, wrote
St Maximus the Confessor, is not the result of specu-
lation, but of "inspiration" (theopneustos), hardly
different from that of the Scriptures; and, therefore,
one cannot call himself a Christian who opposes what
they have delivered to us. He must abandon his
erroneous opinions "and accept what has been
reverently determined to be true by the divinely
inspired fathers of the One Catholic Church and of
the five ecumenical councils" (Pyrr., 91 PG 91 196-
197).3
St Leo I, Pope of Rome, illustrates the attitude of

9
the Church toward the Fathers in countless letters and
sermons. For instance, he ordained that all episcopal
decisions must involve no breach with "the rules of
the holy Fathers" (Epistle XI ad Maur. Epis., 5
NPNF). We must follow "the divinely inspired
decrees of the holy fathers" (ib. 10). When composing
edicts, the hierarchy must emulate them whose canons
"are framed by the Spirit of God" (Epistle XIII Aganst
Metro. Illyr., 3 NPNF). In his criticism of certain
heretics, St Leo observed that the opinions of Nestori-
us and Eutyches have "gone astray from the teachings
and knowledge of the Fathers" (Epistle 109 ad Jul. 3).
The approval of the Fathers was to be the basis of all
actions for and in the name of the Church.
Yet, in the writings of the Fathers, we know that
there is not always a common method or approach to
every challenge. Sometimes the stress fell on the
ethical aspect of the question, or on the spiritual
application of certain problems, or sometimes their
theological implications. They may have been silent
on some matters. Yet, nowhere among those writers
whom the Church recognised as her spokesmen may
be found a disparity of Faith. Finally, what is explicit
in the teachings of one Father may only be implicit in
another; for instance, the distinction between God’s
"essence" or "substance" and His "energies" or
"operations."
It is commonplace among modern writers to
ignore these facts and to examine "the patristic era" as

10
merely a stage in the development of Christian
thought.
Recently more has been written about deifica-
tion in the works of Augustine, but almost none in the
theology of other Latin writers. Modern theologians
are perplexed, of course, by his distinction between
created and uncreated light, distinctions usually found
in the writings of the Greek Fathers. To be sure, these
studies of Augustine and the Latin Fathers find no
association between deification and the theology of
uncreated energies or operations, concepts always
linked with "Byzantine theology of the Eastern
Church." This does not mean that they were unaware
of these concepts.
Contemporary Orthodox writers often take a
false pride in what they conceive as the product of
"the Greek genius." They, thanks to their Western
education, generally peer at the past through Scholas-
tic spectacles, blinding themselves to what the evi-
dence plainly discloses.

We do not argue that the Latin Fathers

elaborated a theology of the uncreated
energies or operations with all the detail of
St Gregory Palamas; but once having
admitted the unity of patristic thought, it is
arbitrary to conclude that the words "the
operations of God" found everywhere in
the writings of the Latin Fathers cannot

11
 have the same meaning as "the energies of
God" in the Greek Fathers.4

Again, it is an offence against the rules of

competent research to conclude that "Palamite theol-
ogy" — the ostensible apogee of Greek theology —
with its unique teaching on the Uncreated Energies of
God, is irrefutable evidence that East and West
developed disparate traditions. If the Uncreated
Energies played no prominent role in the thinking of
the Latin Fathers about deification, there may be other
reasons for its absence, such as the disciplina arcani5
of theLatin Orthodox Churches; or the religious
climate militated against the delineation of "assimila-
tion theology."
The Latin Fathers were not ignorant of "the
uncreated energies." We may wonder, too, why those
Latin Fathers familiar with "Eastern theology" failed
to take advantage of it. The same may be said for the
doctrine of Grace. The Latin or Western Fathers have
little to say about it, even after Saint Augustine; but
there is no reason to deny it was for them uncreated,
as it was for the Greek Fathers. Saint Augustine, did,
however assert the existence of both a created and
uncreated Grace.6 For him salvation was the result of
a created and irresistible Grace, wed to an inchoate
theory of "justification" which implied a Church
composed of an elect predestined to deification and
"the beatific vision of God"; and "the damned lump"

12
(massa damnata) destined to the fires of hell. Indeed,
this is the start of something new.
Before we come to the chapter on the Latin
Fathers we need to explore the New Testament in
order to uncover what "the sacred oracles" tell us
about deification.7 Does the New Testament inform us
that God became man that man might become God?
Was deification the motive for the Incarnation of
God’s Word? Were the Fathers right to insist that if
Christ is not God, human beings cannot be deified,
because then Baptism would merely join us to an
enfleshed angel perhaps; or of a demigod or of a man
— but not "God become a man."
At this point I would like to briefly address a
question which led Anselm of Canterbury into such
error: “cur Deus homo.” Anselm approached this
question with the dialectic of the Roman law court;
perhaps more directly, with the medieval structure of
the law or rules for the duel. I am not going to outline
Anselm's speculations here, only to say that he did
create the "human sacrifice" theory of atonement.
Instead, I would like to observe that the reason why
God became man was that there existed an alienation
of the human nature from the Divine and that the
healing of this alienation could be effected only by
God Himself. Christ, possessing naturally the Divine
nature took up on Himself the human nature so that he
might reconcile the two in Himself and bring to an
end that alienation. That the human nature could be

13
brought on of the alienation and to full communion
with the Divine nature is at the root of the understand-
ing of theosis/deification.
Moreover, we must discover whether the
Scriptures were the source of Latin patristic soteriolo-
gy. Lacking the second epistle of St Peter and its
famous verse, would the Church and her Fathers
nonetheless have taught deification?

ENDNOTES:
1. Modern historians and patrologists ordinarily designate all Christian writers
of the ancient and medieval world as “fathers of the Church” — which makes
nonsense of the “patristic consensus” (consensus patrum). They have not the
right nor the competence to make such choices for the Church. The Church
alone anoints her spokesmen. Heterodox theologians such as Origen and
Clement of Alexandria, Didymus the Blind, Evagrius Ponticus, Tatian,
Tertullian, Lactantius, and Fulgentius of Ruspe, etc. have no place on the
patristic roll of the Orthodox Church. We may refer to them as “ecclesiastical
writers.” Many times their elaboration and defence of the Christian Faith has
been praiseworthy, but they cannot be honoured as “Fathers” having too often
and too grievously erred. In some cases, they abandoned the Church altogether.
2. “This ultimate end [of knowledge] is union with God or deification, the
theosis of the Greek Fathers,” writes Vladimir Lossky [The Mystical Theology
of the Eastern Church. Trans. by the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius.
London, 1957, p. 9]. That deification is a doctrine of “the Eastern Church”
alone seems to be the common opinion of modern Orthodox theologians and
writers. See P. Sherrard, The Greek East and the Latin West. London, 1959;
and M. Lot-Borodine, La deification de l’homme. Paris, 1970; G. I.
Mantzaridis, The Deification of Man. Trans. by P. Sherrard. Crestwood (NY),
1984.
3. In the words of Neophytus Kafsokalyvitis, “We say that the Ecumenical
doctors have precedence over the Ecumenical Councils not to refute what the
Councils bade — but rather to show how much they were revered by the
Councils…Indeed, the Councils rely on the holy and wise fathers” (quoted in
G.D. Metallinos, I Confess One Baptism… trans. by Priestmonk Seraphim,
1994, p. 52). Not without reason then, the decrees of the ecumenical councils
begin, “Following the holy fathers…” See canons 16, 19, and 20 of the Seventh

14
Ecumenical Council.
4. “For Thou hast made manifest the eternal fabric of the world through Thy
operations” (Ad. Cor. I, 60).Cf. 1Cor.12:6; Eph.1:19; St Clement of Rome.
5. Aspects of the Christian Faith were not part of the Church’s proclamation
of the Gospel (kerygma). Some teachings (dogma), such as the Nicean Creed,
were “hidden” (arcanus) from the world. It was reserved as episcopal
instructions (disciplina) to the catechumens. After their Baptism (immersion)
or “enlightenment” more religious inculcation was provided for new members
of the Church.
6. See R.J. Riga, “Created Grace in Augustine,” Augustinian Studies III
(1972), 113-130. The 20 th century Roman Catholic theologian, Karl Rahner
(1904-1984), discusses in his article “Grace” (Sacramentum Mundi [vol. 2].
New York, 1968, p. 418), the complex and troublesome nature of the
Augustinian-Scholastic theology of Grace. Deification is part of the problem.
He discourses on both a created and uncreated Grace with no allowance of the
distinction between Essence and Energy in God. Uncreated Grace is the basis
of created Grace. Although the former may abide in the soul, yet it seems that
this indwelling is “posited by created grace as such.”
7. There are numerous Biblical verses upon which Christian writers may draw
as evidence for deification as revealed doctrine. Augustine cited Psalm 81:6
(LXX) which the Lord quoted in John 10:34-36 (“I say ye are gods…”). The
Fathers, however, do not use these verses as proof-texts for deification; rather
they are understood as a defence of Christ’s Divinity, His oneness with the
Father (e.g., St Hilary of Poitiers [(De Trin. VII, 24 NPNF]; St John
Chrysostom [Hom. Joan. LXI, 2]; St Athanasius [Or. c Ar. IV, 16-17]). The
remarks of G. Bonner that the Fathers “were prepared to find meaning (in these
verses) which were not intended by the author of the text” is absurd
(“Augustine’s Conception of Deification,” The Journal of Theological Studies
XXXVII, 2 [1986], 371).

15
 Chapter II
Deification in the Scriptures
eification (theosis), the elevation of the creation
D into the Life of the Trinity, is the end of the
divine Plan as outlined in the New Testament. St Paul
refers to the divine Plan of salvation as the "Econ-
omy" (oikonomia, Greek; dispensatio, Latin), a word
often found in patristic literature as a synonym for
"the Incarnation." This Plan includes the recovery of
the fallen human race from "the mystery of iniquity"
(1Thes.2:7) — the tyranny of the devil through
corruption and mortality — caused by the "ancestral
transgression" of Adam. Nature itself "groans and
travails until now" (Rm.8:20). Therefore, God’s Plan
for man’s union with Him is the destruction of him
who "had the power of death, that is, the devil; and
the deliverance of them who through fear of death
were all their lifetime subject to bondage" Hb.2:14-
15); hence, Pascha (the Christian Passover)1 is the
central event in history.
Salvation comes to the believer by identity with
Christ’s Redemption, that is, by union with Christ in
His crucified and risen Body, the Church. That
identity is a process which begins with baptism or
"rebirth" (Jn.3:4-6). To use the language of St John
the Theologian, "as many as received Him, to them
gave He the power to become the sons of God, even

16
to them that believe on His Name: which were born
[or reborn] not of blood, nor of the will of man, but of
God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among
us (and we behold His Glory, the Glory of the only-
begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth"
(Jn.1:12-13).
St John relates man’s "rebirth" to the Incarnation
of God’s eternal Son; thus, God recreates men as
“children of God" by Grace through their identity
with Him Who is the Son of God by nature. The
crown of divine adoption is deification. "The mystery
of the Incarnation," explains St Hilary of Poitiers,
"was not for God, but for us. The assumption of our
nature was of no benefit to God, but by His voluntary
condescension, He exalts us. Yet, He did not resign
His Divinity, but conferred divinity on us" (The
Trinity IX, 4 PL 10 284).
Thus, the mysterion is God’s plan, the communi-
cation of the divine Reality Itself to the creature. The
Mystery of God has become the Mystery of the
Church. Those united to Him are "assumed" or
"assimilated" into "the great Mystery" through the
Church, the Bride and Body of Christ with whom He
is "one flesh" (Eph.5:32). Whoever is a member of
His Body, wherein dwells the Holy Spirit, has become
part of that theandric process2 whose end is to become
a "partaker of the divine Nature."
The Scriptures offer numerous passages, verses
and words to describe this process and its result, e.g.

17
the Greek preposition syn-, sym- with its Latin equiv-
alent con-, com -; phrases, e.g., "in Christ" or “chil-
dren of God," "elect" and concepts, associated with
expressions such as "doxa in Greek, gloria in Latin;
koinonia in Greek, societas and communio in Latin.
Such Biblical language discloses the grand doctrine
of the Mystery of man’s salvation: to share in the life
of a new humanity of which Christ is the Head.
Belonging to Him, the Church enjoys the remission of
sins ("justification") which ignites the process of
sanctification: holiness by the acquisition of the Holy
Spirit. The way of sanctification by Grace is the way
of deification. His children will not be put to shame in
the expectation of immortality and incorruption which
by nature belong to God alone. The Kingdom of God
has been inaugurated on earth, in the Church.

A. The Mystery

Jesus the Christ (Messiah) said to the Apostles,

"Unto you it is given to know the Mystery of the
Kingdom of God, but to them it is not given"
(Mt.13:11); "but unto them that are without, all these
things are done in parables, that seeing they may see,
yet not perceive; and hearing they may hear and not
understand, lest at any time they should be converted
and their sins be forgiven them" (Mk.4:11-12;
Lk.8:10). The Apostles themselves never came to a
full comprehension of the Mystery of which Christ

18
spoke until the events of Pascha and Pentecost. Then
it became clear to them that "according to His Mercy
He saved us, by the washing of regeneration and
renewing of the Holy Spirit…that being made righ-
teous by His Grace, we should become heirs after the
hope of eternal life" (Titus 3:6-7).
This "Mystery of piety," eusebias mysterion,
pietatis sacramentum (1Tim.3:16), as St Paul some-
times called it, is "God manifest in the flesh," "even
the Mystery which has been hid from ages and gener-
ations, but now is made manifest to His saints: to
whom God would make known what are the riches of
the glory of the Mystery among the Gentiles"
(Col.1:26-27). To the church at Corinth the Apostle
declared, "we speak the wisdom of God in a Mystery,
even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before
the world unto our glory" (1Cor.2:7). In fact, it was
Paul’s mission "to enlighten all men concerning the
fellowship (koinonia) of the Mystery which from the
beginning of the world has been hidden in God, Who
created all things through Jesus Christ" (Eph.3:9).
The reference here is not only to the creation of
the world by Christ the Logos, but, according to the
Plan, its "regeneration and renewing" by Christ the
Incarnate Word "in whom we have redemption
through His Blood, the forgiveness of sins, according
to the riches of His Grace; wherein He has abounded
toward us in all wisdom and prudence; having made
known unto us the Mystery (Sacramentum) of His

19
Will, according to His good pleasure which He had
purposed in Himself: that in the economy of the
fullness of times, He might gather together in one
head (kephale, caput) all things in Christ, both what
are in heaven and on earth" (Eph.1:7-10).3
In other words, the Plan of God "Who alone has
immortality, and dwells in Light unapproachable"
(1Tm.6:16) is to re-capitulate all things in Christ, i.e.,
under "one Head"; it is a new beginning of a new
world in Christ as the old and fallen world had its
beginning in Adam.4 Because Christ is the "new" or
"last Adam" (ho eschatos Adam, novissimus Adam)
the "one Man" of the new creation, "anyone who is in
Christ is a new creature: old things have passed away;
behold, all things have become new" (2Cor.5:17).
Moreover, when St Paul speaks of "oneness" in
Christ, he refers to a new humanity, the descendants
of Adam, recovered from the devil, and reborn in the
risen Christ. The word "oneness" refers to the new
humanity, the Body of Christ, the Church, of which
Christ is the Head; in a word, the "oneness" or "unity"
of Body and Head is visible and organic. Thus, the
transfiguration of those who have united with Him is
a physical as well as a spiritual transformation, the
"earnest" of which Christ gave on Mt Tabor. At that
moment He was bathed in the eternal Light, the Light
and Glory of the Age to Come: He became the "new
creature"; therefore, the destiny of all those who
belong to Him has already begun.

20
 This new condition is the result of Baptism by
which we are incorporated into Christ. One with Him,
in His Body, the baptised is a "new creature," be-
cause, as a member of Christ, the life he lives is the
Life of Christ. As St Paul exclaimed, "I am crucified
with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ
lives in me: the life I now live in the flesh I live by the
Faith of the Son of God Who loved me, and gave
Himself for me" (Gal.2:20). This fact of Christian
existence implies something more: the righteousness
of the Christian is the Righteousness (Holiness) of
Christ. The members of His Body possess it by virtue
of their identity with Christ. The divine Righteous-
ness is something shared with Christ in the "fellow-
ship" (koinonia) of the Church; is a work of the Spirit
Who permeates her with Grace.
No wonder the Lord proclaimed that Hades
(death and the realm of death) would not prevail
against His Church (Mt.16:18). Sharing in His vic-
tory, the "new creatures" — the sons of God — have
by Grace partaken of Christ’s Righteousness. Thus, in
Him Who has been raised in Glory, His members are
already victors over death (1Cor.15:43). They are
glorified in Him Who now, as their sole representa-
tive, sits at the Right Hand of God where He, as Man,
enjoys the eternal Glory, He showed to the Apostles
and disciples (e.g., Acts 22:11) and Saints (e.g., St
Symeon the New Theologian). These experiences are
the advent of man’s Glory, the Glory of the children

21
of God, the Glory which even unbelievers shall see at
the Day of Judgment (2 Clement 17:5 FOC).

B. The Church: the Children of God

The Church is the new humanity in Christ. He is

the Head, she is His Body. Those who are part of that
humanity "are members of His Body, of His flesh and
blood, of His bones." They are joined as branches to
a vine (John 15:5). They are substantially one in
Christ: one in His Body by which we have access to
His Divinity, "for in Him dwells the fullness of the
Godhead bodily" (Col.2:9); and, therefore, to God the
Father and the Spirit. Hence, Christ and the Church,
joined as Husband and Wife, are "one flesh… This is
a great Mystery…" (Eph.5:30, 32). The Church, His
Body, His Bride, His humanity, is the divine vehicle
of salvation; and salvation presupposes union with
Christ. Certainly, then, the Church is a dimension of
the Mystery.
To be glorified with Christ is both a present and
future state of the new humanity. Members of the
Church are already God’s children by virtue of their
koinonia with Christ Who is risen and returned to the
Glory He shared with the Father and the Spirit "before
the world was" (John 17:5). To be glorified in Christ
signifies that, in a real sense, His "brethren" have
been crucified and resurrected and ascended with
Christ. They have begun already to shed that mortality

22
which makes it impossible to share the divine Nature;
and are even now cleansed from the sins which make
them unworthy to partake in His Divinity. In the
Church, "the sons of God" receive a foretaste of
God’s eternal Kingdom.
God’s Kingdom (or eternal life) is the destiny of
the saved — the great promise of the Mystery — a
destiny which is now present in the temporal dimen-
sion of the Church. Jesus was not speaking metaphor-
ically when He said to the thief on the Cross next to
Him, "Today you shall be with me in paradise" —
Hodie mecum eris in Paradiso. The end of time is
now in Christ, in His Church, chiefly through the
Mysteries or Sacraments. "Now is the hour of salva-
tion." No wonder St John Chrysostom referred to the
Church as "the Age to Come." Thus, the saved, albeit
imperfectly, are already "conformed" (symmorphous,
conformes) to the glorified Christ, in Him Who
"dwells in the form of God…." wrote St Hilary of
Poitiers. "But there intervenes a new nature, which
began in Him with His human birth, and so all that He
obtains is on behalf of that created nature which
before was not God, since after the Mystery of the
Dispensation God is all in all. It is we, therefore, who
are the gainers, we who are promoted, for we shall be
conformed to the glory of the Body of God" (The
Trinity XI, 49 NPNF).
Furthermore, as St Jerome observed our "confor-
mity" to Christ includes the body as well as the soul

23
which our union with Christ "adorns with glory" (To
Pammachius. 29). The pagan Greeks had no such
respect for the body or anything material, for which
reason Plotinus uttered, "The true Awakening is the
true resurrection from the body and not with the
body" (apo somatos, ou meta somatos). A bodily
resurrection would have been merely a passage from
one "slavery" to another, the perpetuation of the
soul’s humiliation (Enneads III, vi, 6).
The Christian attitude toward the body is com-
pletely opposite, as demonstrated by the Incarnation
and the resurrection in the body. Put another way,
what happened to Christ, happens to all who partake
of His Body, although it happened to Him first "that
in all things He might have the preeminence… He is
the head of the body, the church: who is the begin-
ning, the first-born from the dead" (Col.1:18). For the
same reason, St Paul writes to the Romans (8:29) that
the saved "shall be conformed to the image of His
Son, that He might be the first-born among many
brethren."
First-born means that Christ is the first to be
raised from the dead in His Body, the first to ascend
to Glory. He is the first to receive all that has been
promised to the Church. "Behold, I show you a
mystery," exclaimed St Paul. "We shall not all sleep,
but we shall all be changed, in a moment…the dead
shall be raised incorruptible… For the corruptible
must put on incorruption, and the mortal must put on

24
immortality. Then shall come to pass the saying that
was written, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory. O
death where is thy sting? O grave where is thy vic-
tory? The sting of death is sin…’ " (1Cor.15: 51, 53-
54).
Sin disappears with death, the death which
brings mortality and corruption (moral and physical
decay). Now is the beginning of the end for these
evils which have afflicted the human race since the
Fall of Adam, all appearances to the contrary. Christ
is "our Pascha," Who "abolished death and brought
forth life and incorruption" (2Tm.1:10; 1Cor.5:7).
Mankind has been introduced to "all the riches of the
full assurance of understanding, a recognition of the
Mystery of God; and of the Father and of Christ, in
Whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge…" (Col.2:2).
These "treasures" reside only in the Church.
From her comes all the blessings of the Life in Christ
— the process of deification — none more important
than "the Mystery of His Body and Blood," the
Mystery of the Eucharist "the very Sacrament in
which our people are shown to be made one," stated
St Cyprian of Carthage (Epistle to Caecilius ,62, 14).
This is the Sacrament which is the crown of all
Mysteries of the Church. Without the Eucharist all
other Sacraments or Mysteries are imperfect, for the
Eucharist is the Mystery of union with God and, for
the other Sacraments to have this end, it must be

25
linked with the Eucharist by which the Church is
formed, even as Old Israel was formed by the Pass-
over.
The Divine Liturgy is the Church’s supreme act
of worship; or, what is the same thing, the Eucharist
is the ritualization of the Mystery, the means by
which God makes present in the Church the past
(Pascha) and the future (the Kingdom of God). In the
words of St Leo the Great, "The Mystery passes into
the life of the Church" (Sermon 74, 2 PL 54 398A).
The ministers of the earthly Church are "the stewards
of God’s Mysteries" (1Cor.4:1), that is, the Apostles
and their successors, the bishops, the teachers of the
Faith are the presidents of the Eucharist. Finally, it is
not incidental that St Paul relates these "Mysteries" to
"the operation (energeian) of God’s mighty Power"
(Eph.1:19). Albeit "there is a diversity of operations
(energematon), "it is the same God Who works
(energon) all in all" (1Cor.12:6).

C. 2Peter. 1:45

"Partakers (koinonoi, consortes) of the divine

nature" may be the singularly most important verse in
the entire Bible. It is noteworthy that until the fourth
century (when the entire New Testament canon was
finally collected) not all the Fathers nor all the local
Churches6 were familiar with 2 Peter; nevertheless,
the teaching of deification existed in the Church

26
before the reception of 2 Peter into the fixed Scrip-
tural canon. The fact that the Church established the
canon suggests that she included the books of the
Bible according to her doctrinal Tradition.
Therefore, if the canon of Scriptures was estab-
lished by the Church, we look to her as the greater
authority, as the only interpreter of her Scriptures.
Furthermore, we cannot view the Scriptures as some-
thing parallel to Tradition, but as part of Tradition. It
is for this reason that we honour the Second Epistle of
Peter as belonging to that canon and the soteriology
which the document presupposes. 2 Peter 1:4 is not
the source of doctrine of deification but St Peter’s
reflection upon it.7
We are left with the conclusion that the attempt
to remove 2 Peter from the New Testament canon is
motivated by a special view of Christianity and an
interpretation of the Christian mysterion relative to
that view. Whatever else, this epistle challenges the
Protestant understanding of salvation by Juridical
Justification8; and, of course, the ideas of history
produced by 19th century liberalism, not the least of
which is the theory of doctrinal development. Further-
more, if deification is part of the Apostolic teaching,
the theology of St Gregory Palamas was not an apex
of the patristic soteriology, but merely the crystalliza-
tion of the Christian Faith.
St Gregory wrote that he who "has conformed
himself to God in Christ and has attained that for

27
which we were created, namely, deification — for
they say that God created us in order to make us
partakers of His own divinity (2 Peter 1:4) — then we
are in God since we are deified by Him, and God is in
us, for it is He Who deified us. Thus, we too, partici-
pate in the divine energy — although in a different
way from the universe as a whole — but not in the
essence of God. Hence, the theologians say that
‘divinity’ is an appellation of the divine energy"
(Topics of Nat. & Theol. Sc., 105 Ph).
There is nothing in the writings of St Gregory
Palamas or any of the Fathers that makes us suspi-
cious that they had any doubts about the source of the
Church’s soteriology. They saw nothing in common
between Christian deification and the pagan idea of
man’s "mystical absorption" or "assimilation" into the
Divine.9 This consistency of patristic thought should
have satisfied modern commentators of the Christian
past; it does not. J.B. Mayor and those who call for
the excision of 2 Peter from the New Testament view
the epistle as hellenized literature, as proved by the
presence of the term "divine,"10 found nowhere else in
the Scriptures save for Acts 17:29.
Mayor is not alone in comparing the Christian
idea of deification with Stoic pantheism which
abolishes all distinction between the Divine and the
universe. This religion involves the periodical return
of the world to God in a universal conflagration. 2
Peter mentions the heavens passing away "with a

28
great noise, and the elements melting with fervent
heat" (2 Peter 3:10, 12), but no cyclicism. For him the
end of the creation is a unique event which leads not
to the extinction of the physical world but to its
transfiguration. Thus, his (and St Paul’s) use the word
"corruption" (phthora, corruptio) and "immortality"
(athanasia, immortalitas) which, among the pagan
Greeks, signified the soul’s eventual "escape" from
the body and time to a spiritual and transcendent
realm. If anyone thinks to find such ideas in 2 Peter
(or in the Epistles of St Paul), they must be read into
it through the lens of Platonistic concepts.
St Peter proclaims, "according to His promise…
a new heavens and earth, wherein dwells Righteous-
ness" (2 Peter 3:13), the "Righteousness of Christ" (2
Peter 3:14-15). The "corruption" or "immorality"
("lust," "uncleanness"; Cf. 2 Peter 2:19; 2 John 2:15-
17)— and "mortality" of body and soul shall vanish.
The incorruption and immortality of the deified
creature require Grace (2 Peter 3:18). Since 2 Peter
belongs to the New Testament canon, we must con-
clude that participating in the divine Nature means
salvation which is nothing other than a state of
incorruption and immortality by Grace.
Mortals, body and soul, participate in that divine
incorruption and immortality through identification
with the bodily Resurrection of Christ Who is the
risen God-Man. As St Ambrose of Milan declared,
"The blossom of the Resurrection is immortality, the

29
blossom of the Resurrection is incorruption" (De Ex.
frat. Saty. II, 54). These attributes of the "new cre-
ation" have no connection with the pagan Greek ideas
of the immortality and incorruption of the soul whose
deification is the spiritual state of unchangeable
perfection and, to be sure, liberation from the body.
Christianity, on the other hand, declares with St
Cyprian, "What Christ is, we Christians shall be, if we
imitate Him" (On the Vanity of Idols. VI, 15).

ENDNOTES
1. Passover, Pesach both the Jewish and the Christian Pascha celebrate,
respectively, the passing over of death, and the defeat of the power of death.
2. A term taken from St Dionysios the Areopagite: Christ the God-man
(theandros); therefore, the Church, as His Body, is both Divine and human.
Therefore, life in the Church is a process or growth in the Holy Spirit by which
the members of Christ, especially through the Sacraments, become more and
more like Him: a deified Man.
3. anakephalaiosaisthai ta panta en to Christo… (Greek.); and instaurare
omnia in Christo… (Eph.1:10) in Latin. This is the Christian doctrine of
Recapitulation (i.e., all creation gathered together under the Headship of Christ)
about which St Irenaeus wrote so much.
4. Adamah, literally, “the first man”, with the extended meaning “dust.” This
passage (2Cor.5:17 has no connotation for the doctrine of “Original Sin,” but
rather for alienation of mankind from God, an alienation which the Incarnation
of Christ healed. He became the new “first man,” in Whom this alienation was
abolished.
5. Those interested in the debate about the authenticity of 2 Peter may consult
B. Drewery, "Deification" in Christian Spirituality: Essays in honour of
Gordon Rupp. London, 1975, 33-62; J.E. Steinmuller, A Companion to
Scripture Studies (vol. 3): Special Introduction to the New Testament. New
York, 1943, pp. 370-374; J.N.D. Kelly, A Commentary on the Epistles of
Peter and Jude. New York, 1969; M. Green, The Second Epistle General of
Peter and the General Epistle of Jude. Grand Rapids (Mich.), 1968; E.
Kaesermann, "An Apology for Primitive Eschatology" in Essays on New
Testament Themes. Trans. by W.J. Montague. Chatham, 1964, 169-195; J.B.

30
Mayor, The Epistles of St Jude and the Second Epistle of St Peter. London,
1907; H.E.W. Turner, The Patristic Doctrine of Redemption. London 1952.
6. Heterodox influence on Orthodox hermeneutics today is widespread. One
example is the article contributed to St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly by
Professor Jerzy Klinger, former Dean of the Orthodox Section of the Christian
Theological Institute in Warsaw. He maintains that "the great idea of
divinisation" (theopoiesis) which has obtained such acceptance in Eastern
theology was especially developed in St Irenaeus of Lyons and St Athanasius
the Great. In essence this idea is of Stoic derivation. And again we see that the
first attempt to assimilate it is in 2 Peter ("The Second Epistle of Peter: An
Essay in Understanding" (St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly. XVII, 1-2
[1973], 164).
7. 2 Peter was probably composed in the first century. Indirect references to the
epistle before the fourth century (when it received universal recognition) are
found in St Clement Bishop of Rome (c. 90), the sub-Apostolic Fathers,
Clement (211) and Origen of Alexandria (254), and St Firmilian of Caesarea
(269). Eusebius of Caesarea (340) places it among the deutero-canonical books
(secondary authority). Mention of it is lacking in Sts Irenaeus and Cyprian,
Tertullian, the old Syriac version and second century the Muratorian Fragment.
It was employed directly by virtually every post-Nicene Greek Fathers. St John
Chrysostom does not cite it. St Athanasius included 2 Peter in his famous
Biblical canon of 367 (Ep. fest., 39 PG 26 1337). Among the Latin Fathers, the
epistle was used by Sts Hippolytus of Rome, Ambrose of Milan, Hilary of
Poitiers, Neketas of Remesiana, Pope Leo the Great of Rome, Jerome of
Stridon, Pope Gregory the Great, and by Augustine and Pelagius; also, the
Eastern Synod of Laodicea (362), the Western Councils of Hippo (393), and
Carthage (397) cited it.
8. Actually, a neo-pagan doctrine of human sacrifice, even if it only referred
to one person, Jesus Christ who supposedly was sacrificed to God on behalf of
humnity.
9. "For the pedigree of ‘participation in the divine nature’ is not to be sought
in the biblical revelation," argues Mayor, "but in Greek philosophy" (Mayor,
J.B. The Epistle of Jude…, p. 54).
10. That the word "divine" was taken from Hellenism by the Apostle is
irrelevant; so are theos (God) and soteria (salvation). As Professor Green
states, "Peter is simply taking the language of the opposition, disinfecting it,
using it against them, charging it with Christian meaning" (The Second Epistle
General…, p. 24).

31
 CHAPTER III
The Latin Fathers
he Faith of the Church — "the Faith of Christ" —
T originates with the Apostles who were instructed
by the Lord, "Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations,
baptising them in the Name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe
all things whatsoever I have commanded you"
(Mt.28:19-20). Along with His "teaching," He also
sent them the Holy Spirit, "the Spirit of Truth"
(Jn.16:13-14) to preserve His word. As Fr Georges
Florovsky said, "Ultimately, tradition is a continuity
of the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit in the
Church, a continuity of divine guidance and illumina-
tion."1 The constant Faith of the Church is passed
from one generation of Christians to the next as
"written" (e.g., the New Testament) and "unwritten"
(e.g., rites and customs) Tradition. In other words,
these two elements (the content and the method of
delivery) compose "the Apostolic Tradition." This the
reason that it is so important for all, both clergy and
laity, to know the meaning of and understand the
actions and words of all the Divine Services of the
Church. Nothing is redundant, everything has revela-
tion and meaning.
The supreme witnesses to this Tradition are the
holy Fathers — themselves part of it. No wonder,

32
then, that whenever the councils of the Church issue
a doctrinal formula, they invariably introduce it with
the words, "Following the holy Fathers…" Not a few
of our contemporaries would be surprised to learn that
when an Orthodox Christian utters this phrase he in
fact includes the Latin as well as the Greek Fathers,
and the title encompassing Persian (e.g., St Aphra-
ates), Syriac (e.g., St Ephraim), Russian (e.g., St
Paisius Velichkovsky); and in the 18th century, Sts
Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, Macarius of
Corinth and Tikhon of Zadonsk. Twentieth century
Orthodoxy has given us St Anthony Khrapovitsky and
St Nectarios of Aegina.
We may, therefore, ignore the conventional
limits placed on "the patristic age." For as there is no
arbitrary periodization of "the age of the Fathers,"
Orthodoxy does not speak of successors to them, as if
the Fathers were supplanted by the Scholastics, and
they by the Reformers and neo-Scholastics, and these
by 19th century Protestant Liberalism. Such a history
of theology may accommodate the academic theory of
"doctrinal development," but not the mind of the
Church. "This point of view (periodisation)," ob-
served Florovsky, "legitimate for the (heterodox)
West, has been, unfortunately, accepted, by many in
the East, blindly and uncritically."2
This attitude allows us to understand why so
many Orthodox differentiate the Fathers of the East
and of the West as representing diverse traditions

33
with different versions of Christianity. Let us concede
that the Latin Fathers gave greater attention to some
aspects of Christianity than the Greek or Eastern
Fathers and writers. The distinction between them is
not in the Faith; but lies rather in their treatment of
the various theological and ethical questions. Some
writers have summarised it as the West looking at
Christ as the man who was God while East saw Him
as the God Who became man.
Such an approach, for example, may account for
some of the vocabulary employed by the Latin Fathers
— "reform"(reformare), renewal (renovare), and, of
course, deificatio, etc. as the equivalent of the theosis
of the Greek Fathers).3 In either case, the deification
means a spiritual process, beginning with Baptism,
which produces the "new creature" through the
remission of sins (justification) and the acquisition of
holiness by the Grace of the Spirit (sanctification).
The end of this process of deifying Grace is "immor-
tality" and "incorruptibility."4 This all occurs within
"the common Life in the Body of Christ."
Allow me to make a necessary digression here.
Since baptism is a pivot point in the process of
theosis, of salvation, we must discuss its meaning and
what it accomplishes more fully. If it were only a
ritual or something only symbolic, it would lack its
transforming grace. The Church is the, as apostle Paul
says, "spotless Virgin bride of Christ." If we under-
stand the baptismal font as the womb of the Virgin

34
bride of Christ, we see that in holy baptism, we are
born anew in the very image of the incarnation of
Christ. We are given a new birth in the womb of the
Church through the descent of the Holy Spirit, being
born into the "body of Christ." Moreover, through
baptism and Chrismation, we are also ordained into
the Royal priesthood, as apostle Peter says, and we
are made children of the kingdom of God. What we
do with this grace once having received it is a matter
of our free choice to either cooperate with the Holy
Spirit or to refuse to cooperate in our salvation.
Having become a Royal priesthood, we may partake
of the "things of the altar," that is, to participate in the
eschatological feast of holy Communion. What does
it mean that we enter into the "body of Christ"
through baptism? In Christ, the alienation of our
human nature from the Divine, from God, is healed so
that we are no longer in this alienation but may now
ascend, through that Divine grace, through that
participation in Jesus Christ in holy Communion,
toward theosis. (see Appendix 2)
Both the patristic East and West answered the
question: Cur deus homo?— why did God become
man?— in the same way: divina naturae possimus
esse consortes; genesthe theias koinonoi physeos —
"that we might partake of the divine Nature." The
Latin word consortes (con-sortes) and the Greek
koinonoi, are much stronger words than the fellowship
which is the usual English translation. Consortes

35
derives from consor ("a sharing in common") related
to the nouns consortio (partnership) and consortium
(society; participation), the equivalent of the Greek
verb koinoo (to share in), akin to the adjective koinos
(common),and the noun koinonia (communion;
intercourse). Not only does the language describe the
believer’s relationship with God but his organic
relationship with the congregation of believers, the
Church, the Body of Christ.
Below Fr Michael Azkoul presents a review of
Latin Fathers on the subject of deification and its
idiom. There is no need to repeat in each Father what
has been said by another; it is presupposed. Just
enough will be expressed in each Father to demon-
strate fidelity to traditional soteriology.

SAINT CLEMENT TO
SAINT GREGORY THE DIALOGIST
[by Rev. Dr. Michael Azkoul]

1. In the midst of a doxology with a confession of

sin and a plea for the Creator’s mercy, St Clement of
Rome (c. 96), third successor to the Apostle Peter,
wrote these provocative words, "For through Thine
operations (energoumenos)5 Thou hast made manifest
the everlasting fabric of the world (1 Cl. 60, 1). Of
great interest is Clement’s use of language — "ever-
lasting fabric" and "operations." There is no mention
of the divine Substance, but of the divine operations

36
(energy) manifesting the "everlasting fabric" or
"system" of the world.
Valuable, too, is the remark of Second Clement
(perhaps a letter sent to Bishop Dionysius of Corinth
by Bishop Soter of Rome [c. 170]). "The flesh is able
to share in the great life and immortality," he wrote,
"provided the Holy Spirit is joined to it" (XIV, 5
FOC). Significant here are the words "operation" and
"immortality" and the phrase "provided the Holy
Spirit is joined to it."

2. After St Clement, the word "energy" or "opera-

tion" is heard only sporadically in the early Latin
Fathers. They saw no urgency in the elucidation of
Christian theology. In the second century, however,
there is a clear reference to deification in the writings
of hieromartyr St Hippolytus of Rome (170-235).
"And you shall be the companion of the Deity," he
wrote, "and a co-heir with Christ, no longer enslaved
to the lusts or passions, and never again wasted by
disease. For you have become a god…" (Ref. Omni.
Haer. X, 30).
Arthur Cleveland Coxe refers to "this startling
expression" as explained by 2 Peter 1:4, John 17:22-
23 and Revelation 3:21.6 Yet, his reaction to
Hippolytus is curious in the face of the Scriptural
justification he himself offers. Throughout his annota-
tions in The Ante-Nicene Fathers series on third
century Christian writers, Coxe exhibits a remarkable

37
indifference to the concept of deification and its
implications for the Christian Faith. The term is
nowhere listed in the indices of the collection’s ten
volumes.

3. The English translation of The Ante-Nicene

Fathers in general, and of Hieromartyr Cyprian of
Carthage (c. 210-258) in particular, rendered into
English according to the bias of the collection’s
translators and editors. For example, Cyprian quotes
2Peter, but Coxe and his associates show little interest
in the Saint’s knowledge of the critical verse. There is
not even a footnote or elucidation about it; neither is
there a comment on Cyprian’s use of the word operat-
io (see Tr XII, Test., 59). Perhaps, we should not
expect any reaction from translators with an
Augustinian-Thomist conception of God.
The then current dispute between Rome and the
African Church over `heretical baptism' led the saint
to focus his attention on the nature of the historical
Church's visible unity. Union with the Church,
Cyprian proclaimed, is union with Christ Who is one
in substance with the other Persons of the Trinity. In
other words, salvation depends on union with God
which comes only by union with Christ which re-
quires union with His Body, the Church. Here, then,
is the implication of his celebrated comment, "He
cannot have God as His Father who has not the
Church as his mother. If it was impossible for anyone

38
to escape the Deluge outside the Ark, then he also
may not escape death who is outside the Church" (On
the Unity of the Catholic Church, 6 PL 4 501).
God is one; Christ is one, the Church is one: all
things proceed from unity. He who belongs to the
Church belongs to Christ and he who belongs to
Christ belongs to God. "God is one, and Christ is one,
and His Church is one, and the people are joined into
a substantial unity of body by the cement of concord,"
Cyprian exclaimed in chapter 23 of On the Unity of
the Catholic Church. Quoting the Apostle Paul
(Rm.8:16-17), Cyprian affirmed that members of the
Church are "the sons of God: but if sons, then heirs;
heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ" (Epistle
LXXX ad Serg., 2). The sons and heirs of God belong
to Christ in the unity of the Church.
What is this unity and how do we enter into it? In
his letter to Donatus, the Saint writes that this unity is
a "new life" found in the Church; it is acquired
through Baptism by which "there is a sudden and
rapid divestment of all…corruption" (Ep.I, 2; and Tr.
VII, 8). Here, like immortality, the word "incorrup-
tion" with its Scriptural and patristic currency, are
synonyms for deification. Baptism incorporates us
into the incorrupt and immortal Body of Christ, "the
new life"; but it is the Eucharist — "a true and full
sacrifice to God the Father" (Tract. IV, 14) — which
is the "the food of salvation" (ib., 18). It "cements"
the fellowship of her members and their union with

39
God in Christ (Epistle LXII ad Caecil., 13). Referring
to John 6:58 ("I am the bread of life…"), Cyprian
prays that they "who abide and live in Christ may not
depart from His sanctification (i.e., the Holy Spirit)
and body" (loc.cit.), so that "What Christ is, we
Christians shall be, if we imitate Him" (Tr. VI, 15).

4. Cyprian’s declaration about union with God in

the Church is not ambiguous. His work was carried on
by St Hilary of Poitiers (315-368), not by Saint
Augustine, as so many modern historians claim. The
great French Bishop was clearly an exponent of
deification as the Christian soteriology. He also
testifies, in common with the other Fathers (including
Augustine), that deification was the motive for the
Incarnation.
"It was God alone Who could become something
other than before, and yet not cease to be what He had
always been," Hilary exclaims; "Who could shrink
within the limits of a womb, cradle and infancy, yet
not depart from the power of God. This is the Mys-
tery, not for Himself, but for us. The assumption of
our nature was no advancement for God, but His
willingness to lower Himself is our promotion, for He
did not resign His Divinity but conferred divinity on
man." The Word, having been incarnate has neverthe-
less "in His own Person raised humanity to divinity"
(The Trinity IX, 4-5 NPNF). Again, "For when God
was born to be a man His purpose was not that the

40
Godhead should be lost, but that the Godhead remain-
ing, man should be born to God…not that God should
lowered to the level of man, but man should be
elevated to that level of God" (ib., X, 7; cf. I, 11, 13;
II, 25).
How was the Word to accomplish man’s deifica-
tion by His Incarnation? He offered Himself to death
on the Cross, wrote St Hilary, that "He might break
the curse of the Law, offering Himself voluntarily to
God the Father." He, although rejecting "the legal
sacrifice" of the Jews, welcomed Christ’s Body by
which He secured salvation for the human race
(Homily on Psalm LIII, 13). More specifically,
"being buried with His Death in Baptism that we
might inherit the life of eternity…and dying to our
sins be born again to immortality, that even as He
abandoned His Immortality to die for us, so should we
awaken from death to immortality with Him" (The
Trinity I, 13).
In other words, salvation comes by union with
Christ who is one with the Father (John 17:22). It is
a union which begins in this world as "we receive the
Word made flesh as food," "the sacrament (mystery)
of the flesh and blood" and, as a result, "He abides in
us naturally" (The Trinity VIII, 13, 14, 16). By the
Eucharist, then, "we are in Christ and Christ in us"
(ib., VIII, 13). We have even now the Glory of
Christ’s "reigning Body" as manifested by His Trans-
figuration on Mt Tabor (ib., XI, 1).

41
5. The Light of Transfiguration was, of course, the
manifestation of the future Glory which the deified
Christ and all the saved will share. According to St
Ambrose, Bishop of Milan (333-397), so great was
the Light that the Apostles fell to the ground and
worshipped Him. They could not see Him for their
bodily eyes could "not endure the brightness of the
divine Splendour, and the Glory of eternal Light
dulled the keenness of mortal sight as the Glory of
God shone in the face of Jesus Christ (De Sp. Sanct.,
XII, 86 FOC).
The Light of Mt Tabor is also "the Glory of the
Resurrection" (De Fid., V, vii, 71). To this he adds
that "the blossom of the resurrection is immortality
…and incorruption" (De Ex. Frat. Satyr. II, 54; Exp.
Ev. Luke., VII, 126 TT). To both events is related the
"eternal Light" of the "eighth Day" (Ex. Evang. Luc.,
VII, 170).7 We may legitimately infer the Light is
uncreated; and, as it cannot be the divine substance,
it is the uncreated Operation or Energy.
St Ambrose writes here what can be found in the
writings of St Gregory Palamas who quotes, to the
same end, numerous Greek Fathers on the experience
of Light on Mt Tabor, revealed through Christ is "the
beauty and splendour of the divine Nature, the vision
and delight of the saints in the age without end"
(Topics Nat. and Th. Sc., 147-148 Ph). Gregory’s
remarks, however, have a different context. He was

42
opposing the rationalism inherited from St. Augustine.
Ambrose’s allusion to the eternal Light was part
of his argument against the Arian theology. To this
end, he also cited 2 Peter 1:4. "Then Peter shows that
there is but one divine Nature, saying, ‘that He might
make us partakers of the divine nature’…especially
when it is through the Son that we pass over into a
participation of the divine nature. How can He grant
anything which He does not have? There is no doubt
that He grants what He has, and so He has a divine
nature in which we are welcomed to participate" (Sac.
Incar., 85 FOC).
They share in the divine Nature who are united to
"the Word Who became flesh of a Virgin that flesh
might become God" (De Virg. I, iii, 11 PL 16 202C).
It was the flesh of the God-Man that hung on the
Cross for our salvation. The Saint explains, "`For
cursed is everyone that hangs on the tree’ (Gal.3:13).
He was cursed because He bore our curses…for He
took upon Himself our subjugation by assuming the
form of a servant, but not in the Glory of God; so that,
while He makes Himself a partaker of our weakness
in the flesh, He makes us partakers of the divine
Nature in His Power. But in neither case have we any
natural society with the heavenly generation of Christ;
nor is there any subordination of the Godhead in
Christ. The Apostle has said that in Him, through that
flesh which is the pledge of our salvation, we sit in
heavenly places albeit not in ourselves, but through

43
the assumption of our nature" (De Fid. V, xiv, 178
FOC).
The human nature which the Word assumed has
been divinized by His Death, Resurrection and
Ascension. "The adopted sons of God" (Sac. Incarn.,
87), consort in that renewed humanity through Bap-
tism. This Sacrament initiates us into the Church, the
Body of the deified Christ; in other words, the Sav-
iour’s resurrection was also a regeneration of His
humanity, "so that our Baptism in the likeness of the
resurrection is our regeneration" (De Myst., III, 2
FOC).
Also, the Eucharist cements the communion of
believers and coheres our relationship with God.
"Because our same Lord Jesus is a sharer of both
Divinity and body," adds the Saint, "you who receive
the flesh and blood participate in the nourishment of
His divine substance" (ib., VI, 1).

6. St Ambrose insisted that the Grace of the Sacra-

ments or Mysteries is the Grace of the Church, of the
Holy Spirit, the power of sanctification, by which her
children are deified. St Jerome of Stridonium (342-
420) differs with Ambrose neither on this nor on
monasticism and virginity as the surest way to Glory.
Nevertheless, Jerome described "all the Christian
people as God’s well-beloved sons, the ‘partakers of
the divine nature’ (2 Peter 1:4)."8 "We have already
said…that we are not one in the Father and the Son

44
according to nature, but according to Grace…," he
asserted. "For the essence of the human soul and the
essence of God are not the same, as the Manicheans
constantly assert."
Jerome then cited the words of the Lord, "‘Thou
has loved them as Thou hast loved me’ (John 17:23).
You see, then, that we are privileged to partake of His
Nature not in the realm of Essence but of Grace.
Thus, the reason we are beloved of the Father is that
He has loved the Son; and the members of the Body
are loved because of their identity with Christ. For as
many as have received Him, to them He gave the
power to become sons of God, even to them that
believe on His Name; which were born not of blood
nor of the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of
God (John. 1:12-13). The Word was made flesh that
we might pass from the flesh to the Word" (Contra.
Jov. II, 29).
Necessarily, then, since she is composed of the
“children of God," the Church partakes of Christ’s
resurrection unto Glory, Jerome writes to Pammach-
ius. "Our bodies will be glorious without destroying
their created reality." We shall put on "incorruption
and immortality, as St Paul says" (1Cor.15:54). The
body will share in the same Glory previsioned on Mt
Tabor. We shall be transfigured as was Christ. The
Apostles who were present were blinded in the eyes
as they sought to look upon Him who "glowed with
brightness of the sun" (Cont. John Jer., 29). How

45
interesting that Jerome is not only familiar with St
Peter’s Second Epistle, but also, like St Ambrose and
the Greek Fathers, links it with deification typified by
Christ on the Mount.

7. St Niceta of Remesiana (c. 335-c. 414) did not

leave a large corpus of work; nevertheless, what we
possess shows him to have held that there is "no other
way, save by the Word assuming a visible body, that
divinity could have been borne by men" (De Sp.
Sanc. Pot., 3). The expression "visible body" is
meaningful, for if Christ had come to us invisibly, if
His Body had not been physical and historical, then,
the Church, the Body of Christ, would not be "visi-
ble" and all talk about incorporation into Christ would
be nonsense. The Grace of the Sacraments could not
be communicated to believers; in a word, there would
be no way for the creature to unite with the Creator
and, even less could the human body have access to
the invisible God.
If Christ in His Body "destroys death by death"
even more so His Rising on the Third Day, as man —
body and soul — have caused men to be free of death.
We have been joined to the risen Christ Whose flesh
has been deified "by the operation of the sanctifica-
tion of the Holy Spirit" (ib., 7). Thus, "we are made
free and a son of God and, in a true sense, an heir of
His divinity" (ib., 4). St Niceta adds that there is no

46
salvation without Grace, but "no creature may come
to eternal life without cooperating with it" (ib., 8).

8. Most of what we know about the life of St Niceta

is found in the writings of his close friend, St Paulin-
us, Bishop of Nola (353-431). He was a poet and a
lover of the classics. His treatises were more like
colloquies. His correspondence was extensive. From
all these sources, we learn what Paulinus loved and
believed. As one might expect of a Christian Bishop,
the first principle of his religion was the Incarnation.
"He is God to us and became man for us by stripping
off His (divine) Nature and assuming ours," Paulinus
declared, "while forging eternal relations between
man and God, as He Himself was both" (Poem. X, 47
ACW). To this end, Christ was lifted on the Cross in
order to draw all things to Himself and free a human
race enslaved by the devil "through his own pride"
(Epistle XXIV, 9). "Only a man of this kind could
prevail against the sentence of death and the sting of
sin, to blot out ‘the handwriting of death’ (Col.2:14)
and to humble the crafty one" (Epistle XXIII, 15). He
was crucified in His own flesh "that He might abro-
gate both the sin and curse that beset mankind"
(loc.cit.).
Therefore, the Saint implored God, "Let me not
continue as an earthly Adam, born of the virgin earth,
but fashioned as a new form after putting off the old
man" (Poem. XXVII, 607). He called upon the

47
Saviour to lead him by the Cross "along the broad
path where Paradise lies..." He wants to be "clothed in
the garment of God’s Glory" or immortality (Poem.
XXX, 185). "There is no time connected with the
immortality which the Creator has conferred on His
creatures in heaven. For He alone possesses eternity
by right as He dwells in Light unapproachable (1
Timothy 6:16). He alone has true immortality; only
He is what He is" (Epistle XL, l). Conferred immor-
tality is the Glory promised to the faithful (Epistle
XLIII, 7). Eternity is foretasted in the Eucharist, for
which reason it is called "the Bread of salvation"
(Poem. XXXI, 435).
The consummation of God’s Plan shall come
with the general resurrection when the universe is
clothed "in an imperishable garment" (loc.cit.). Until
then "Christ, the all-begetting Wisdom, while remain-
ing within Himself, constantly renews the whole
creation" (Poem. XXII, 79).

9. Very little is known about the Italian, St Maximus,

Bishop of Turin (d. 423). His extant works, mostly
sermons, throw much light on the history of the
Western liturgy whose purpose is not only worship
but instruction. Such is the meaning of the ancient
liturgical axiom, "the law of worship is the law of
belief" — lex orandi est lex credendi. The Christian
soteriology is unthinkable without the worship of
God, and the cruciality of the sermon to it. Such facts

48
should not be ignored as we scan the teaching of St
Maximus on the matter of salvation.
While instructing some catechumens, St Maxim-
us urges them "to hasten to the Grace of the second
birth (Baptism), so that old Adam in you may vanish
and Christ may begin; that death may be annulled and
life replace it; that the harsh sentence may be abol-
ished and the Grace of renewal may follow" (Sermon
CX, 1). The "second birth" involves not only union
with Christ, but liberation from the devil whom the
Saviour vanquished by His Cross. "The irony is that
he who caused our first-parents to sin and die by a
tree became through the Cross the instrument of our
salvation. On account of the devil the first Adam was
expelled from paradise, whereas by the death of the
sinless second Adam the descendants of Adam were
returned to paradise" (Sermon XXXVII, 4 ACW).
But there is more to "the second birth" than the
remission of sins and the conquest of the devil.
Maximus illustrates the point with more typology.
"When Christ the Lord, therefore, initiated the Sacra-
ments of the Church, a dove came down from heav-
en," he tells us. "I understand the Mystery and I
recognise the Sacrament. For the very dove which,
during the Great Flood, hastened to Noah’s Ark now
comes to Christ’s Church in Baptism. It announced
safety by the olive branch, now it bestows eternity by
this token of divinity. Then the dove bore a sign of
peace in its mouth, now the Spirit pours out Peace

49
itself: Christ in His own substance… For when the
Lord was baptised He instituted the Mystery of
washing and also, by contact with the divinity, chang-
ed the human race by water and, as it were, linked us
with eternal substance"(Sermon LC, 1).
According to St Maximus, Baptism into "the Son
of God" recreates men into “children of God" (Serm
XC, 1), a dignity which leads us "from corruption to
incorruption by the Lord of eternity" (Sermon CXII,
2). In other terms, "The Lord is compared to leaven,
and when He began to spread Himself through the
whole earth, He, by the Power of His Divinity, imme-
diately drew mankind into the substance of His own
strength; thus, in pouring out the operation of His
Spirit on all the saints, He made every Christian to be
what Christ was. For when the Lord Jesus was a man
in the world, alone and by Himself, like leaven in a
lump of dough, He made it possible for everyone to
be what He Himself was" (Sermon XXXIII, 3).
The transformation of humanity in Christ is
achieved by Grace. In his description of Grace, St
Maximus comes very close to the definition provided
by the Greek Fathers. God, he says, is "Light and
Fire,‘a consuming fire’ (Hb.12:29)’" (Sermon XV, 2).
"Grace is diffused by such heat of the divine Fire that
it burns itself and compels whatever takes of it to
burn" (Sermon XXIV, 2); that is, to become like Him.
Grace is uncreated, because it issues from God
Himself. It is by this "light and fire" that the creature

50
is deified, and the Sacraments are the primary instru-
ments of communication.

10. St Peter, Archbishop of Ravenna (406-450),

a great preacher, was called "golden words"
(chrysologos) in the West, so as to compare him with
the Easterner, St John Chrysostom ("the golden
mouth"). His sermons are as profound in their Ortho-
doxy as they are eloquent in their beauty. He spoke
plainly of deification.
His discussions on the salvation of the human
race always began with the Incarnation of Jesus
Christ. The reason for the Saviour’s Birth, St Peter
commented, is "to renew our corrupted nature…He
made into a heavenly being he whom he had made an
earthly one. He vivifies with divine Life man ani-
mated by human life— the whole man is raised in
God" (Sermon CXLVIII FOC). Christ "changed our
corruptibility into incorruptibility and raised our
mortality into the glory of immortality" (Sermon
CXV).
God bestowed the divine Life upon man after
reclaiming him from sin, death, and the devil, for
"man was the slave of sin, the captive of death, the
possession of the devil" (Sermon VI). Man’s redemp-
tion, St Peter stressed, is first his freedom from death
(not sin), because salvation is precisely the participa-
tion of man in God’s Immortality. Sin is the moral
obstacle to union.

51
 Thus, in one of his sermons the Archbishop of
Ravenna inquired rhetorically of his congregation
whether God the Word "entered a union with the
flesh, or does He cause you to share in the Divinity
(consortium divinitates intrare)? Did He Himself
accept death, or does He recover you from death?
Was He Himself born into your state of slavery, or did
He free you to become His own children? Does He
take your poverty upon Himself or did He make you
His heirs, yes, co-heirs (cohaeredes) of His unique
Self? It is indeed awesome that earth is transformed
into a heaven, that man is changed by deification
(homo deitate mutatur), and that those whose lot was
servitude gain the rights of domination" (Sermon
LXVII PL 52 391AB).
The entire sermon has the sound of the Ransom
doctrine (Matthew.20:28; Mark 10:45).9 "Death,
which swallows the guilty man, gets swallowed by the
Author of innocence," expounds St Peter. Death,
accustomed to consuming all, itself perishes while
trying to destroy the salvation of all" (Sermon XL).
Also, Christ overcame death because He captured the
devil, "the author of death" and thereby "opened the
way for the sheep to conquer death" (loc.cit.). Not
only St Peter but all the Fathers connect the Incarna-
tion and salvation with the defeat of the devil; or, in
the words of the Apostle Paul, "For as much as the
children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also took
part of the same; that through death He might destroy

52
him that had the power of death, that is, the devil"
(Hb.2:14).
Although Christ did indeed die for the remission
of sins, the Cross rendered the devil impotent by the
negation of death. The idea that the crucifixion was a
punishment which Christ suffered in the place of man
has no place in the tradition of the Latin Fathers. He
voluntarily surrendered his life as a ransom to the
grave. He gave Himself in exchange for the release of
the souls confined to Hades whose doorkeeper was
the devil.
Moreover, sin is "the sting of death" (1Cor.15:56)
as death is "the wages of the sin" (Rm.6:23); hence,
the "original sin" of Adam and Eve is their own. The
guild of that sin is limited to them; nevertheless, they
incurred the penalty of death not only for themselves,
but for their posterity. We have inherited death
because we share a common substance with out first-
parents; or in the words of St Peter of Ravenna, "He
who lives owes it to Christ — not himself; he who
must die owes his condition to Adam" (Sermon III).
Death, not the guilt of Adam’s sin, is inherited
from Adam by his progeny. Our sins confirm our
death. He who is unable to die is unable to sin. Sin
explains the moral corruption which renders men
"enemies" of God, unworthy of communion with
Him. So it is that God calls men to holiness whereby
we are justified and reconciled to Him by the Blood
of Christ (Rm.5:10). Sin may alienate us from God,

53
but mortality makes the sharing of the divine Life
(deification) ontologically impossible. Death is the
greater evil, even if sin was the first.

11. A contemporary and friend of St Peter of

Ravenna was Pope St Leo the Great (c. 390-461),
the most extraordinary man to sit upon the papal
throne before St Gregory the Dialogist. As a theolo-
gian, He had no equal among the Latin Fathers.10 His
Tome, presented to the Council of Chalcedon (451),
is the maximal expression of Orthodox christology.
His writings, especially his sermons on Christ’s
Nativity testify vividly to the Western Orthodox
belief in deification as the Christian doctrine of
salvation.
Thus, like St Athanasius before him, St Leo
declared, "God took our human nature that we might
partake of the divine Nature — Factus est homo nostri
generis, ut nos divinia naturae possimus esse consort-
es (Sermon XX, 5 PL 52 211C). Although He was
like us, He was yet equal to the Father, bringing down
His Godhead even to things human, and raising His
manhood even to things Divine" (Sermon III, 2
145C). Moreover, the Saviour "descended to our
estate that He might promote us to His Own by
assuming not only the substance but also the condi-
tion of our sinful nature; and by allowing the divine
Impassability to experience all miseries of human
mortality" (Sermon LXXIII, 2 387C).

54
 God redeemed man by recovering him from the
devil. "…The only-begotten (of the Father) was born
of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary," a birth
"which occurred in time while not diminishing nor
enhancing His Divinity, but rather expended Itself
wholly on the restoration (reparando) of man who
had been deceived; and in order that He might van-
quish death and overthrow by His Might the devil
who possessed the power of death. We would have
been unable to overcome the author of sin and death
unless God had assumed our nature on Himself and
made it His own" (Epistle XXVIII, 2 PL 52 759A).
The devil had gloried in his deception and in
man’s loss of the divine gifts, above all "the loss of
immortality which necessarily involved the sentence
of death" (ib., 765A). As Leo writes in another letter,
"For the Son of God, in the fullness of time, in a
moment determined by the inscrutable and sublime
Counsel of God, assumed human nature whereby to
reconcile it to its Author; and in order that the inven-
tor of death, the devil, might be conquered by the
humanity which he had stolen…" (Sermon XXI, 1
191A). "Our nature," he adds, "was purged of the old
contagion (death) and regains its honourable state:
death is destroyed by death, nativity is restored by
Nativity" (Sermon XXII, 4 197C).
What did Christ do "to set the human race free
from the bonds of deadly transgression?" Before the
Incarnation, He called men to Himself. "By day and

55
by night His voice is heard," writes St Leo, "and the
beauty of the things made by the operations of the one
true God, a beauty which never fails to instruct the
ears of the heart with the teachings of reason, so that
‘the invisible things of Him may be perceived through
the things that are made,’ whereby we may serve the
Creator rather than the creature" (Sermon XIX, 2
NPNF). He reached out to "the ears of the heart," that
is, to the knowledge of Himself which He planted in
human nature; and He spoke through the prophets.
At this point, Leo delineates the classical
Ransom11 doctrine in which "the raging devil" was
lured to the Cross by the thought of devouring God’s
special emissary. He hid the knowledge of His Divin-
ity from the evil one, lest he might have turned the
minds of the Jews minds away from His destruction.
"But the devil was foiled by his own malice. He
inflicted a punishment on the Son of God, an act
which was turned to the healing of the sons of men.
He shed righteous Blood as He became a ransom and
the drink of the world’s redemption. The Lord volun-
tarily chose to do what He had in Himself purposed to
do" (Sermon LXII, 3; and Ep. CXXIV, 3 NPNF).
Man’s freedom from the devil and the "old man"
comes by his membership in the Church, the Body of
Christ. "For the very condition of a new creature," St
Leo insisted, "is Baptism which, although it does not
remove the old flesh, excises the ancient contagion as
Baptism unites us to the Body of Christ, because

56
Christ is the body of a man" (Epistle LIX, 4 PL 52
874B). In this way, the individual becomes a partaker
of God’s "unutterable grace," "the principle of our
salvation" for "the adopted sons of God" (Epistle
XXXI, 3 PL 52 792D-793A).
In a Sermon on the Epiphany (Theophany), Leo
exhorts the Faithful to "rejoice in the Mysteries of
salvation, for unless ‘the Word’ of God had become
flesh and dwelt among us’ (John 1:14), unless the
Creator Himself had descended to a communion with
the creature and His Birth recalled human decrepitude
to a new beginning, ‘death would have reigned from
Adam’ even to the end…all would have had a single
cause for perishing."
Therefore, "the Lord Jesus alone among the sons
of men to be innocent, alone to have been conceived
without concupiscence, as a man of our race, alone
would have become ‘a partaker of the divine nature’
(2 Peter 1:4). He placed in the font of Baptism that
new origin which He had commenced in the Virgin’s
womb. For the same ‘power of the Most High’ and
‘the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit’ (Luke 1:35)
that occasioned Mary to bear the Saviour makes the
water regenerate the believer" (Sermon XXV, 5; and
Serm. XXI, 3 NPNF).
Baptism, however, is not an end in itself. There is
a higher purpose for this Mystery as there was for the
Passion of the Lord. Christ was crucified for the
reconciliation of God and man, a reconciliation which

57
is the reunion of Creator and the creature. Reunited to
God, man forms a new humanity, that is, the Church.
She calls all men to God. In her men are prepared by
Mysteries or Sacraments, especially the Eucharist, for
eternal Life. "For nothing else," Leo notes, "is accom-
plished by partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ,
save that we pass into what we have taken" — quam
ut in id quod sumimus transeamus. (Sermon LXIII, 7
PL 54 357C). As he says elsewhere, "We are found in
the nature of Him Whom we in our nature adore" —
in ipsius inveniamur natura quem adoramus nostra
(Sermon XXVIII, 1 222A).

12. There was no greater Orthodox Bishop of Rome

than St Gregory the Great (540-604). He referred to
himself as "the servant of the servants of God." He
sent missionaries to England and the continent. He
promoted monasticism in the West, often with his
own inherited wealth. Of his many writings, the
Dialogues was translated into Greek, for which
reason he was called "the Dialogist" in the East. He
made important changes in the Roman Liturgy, and
some of the prayers of the Gregorian Sacramentary
are his. He fostered the development of a liturgical
music ("Gregorian chant") strongly influenced by
Byzantine hymnography. His writings also reflect the
traditional soteriology.
In his Homilies on the Book of the Prophet
Ezekiel, he wrote that "to those who dwell in the

58
region of the shadow of death, the light is risen
(Ezekiel 9:2)…our nature is joined to the nature of
Divinity in the Only-Begotten Son in which the unity
of humanity burgeoned in the Glory of
Majesty…human nature was made more glorious…
For that immutable Nature being immanent renews all
things" Of course, we cannot look upon the Divinity
in Itself — for which reason the Word did not come
in His true guise — lest Its radiance set us afire rather
than endow us with a new life (I, i 14 PL 76 801D-
892A).
So the Word became flesh "that He might make
us spiritual. He graciously lowered Himself that He
might lift us. He went out, that He might lead us in.
He also appears visibly that He might reveal the
invisible. He bore the lash that He might help us. He
suffered dishonour and injury that He might free us
from eternal dishonour. He died that He might give us
life" (ib. I, iv, 20 984A).
Also, when this "spiritual life" is consummated in
the Age to Come, we shall see the deified Christ as
He is. St Gregory cites St John the Theologian, "`We
shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as he is’
(1 John 3:2), that is, freed from our mutability by
what we have perceived to be essence of His Nature
(per hoc quod aspicimus eius essentiam naturae), we
shall be fixed in eternity. We shall be made unchange-
able by what we have seen (videbimus); we shall be
spared from death by seeing Life (videndo vitam); we

59
shall transcend our mutability seeing (videndo) the
Immutable. We shall be incorruptible seeing (viden-
do) the Incorruptible" (ib., I, ii, 20 805BC).12
What is prepared for them who shall "see God" is
not totally alien. The Kingdom of God has been
initiated with Pascha.13 This world is the shadow of
"the eighth Day" or "Age," the everlasting Day, which
comes after the passage of the seven Days or Ages of
history. "For on that day clearly ends all the time
which unfolds in seven days, and because this Day
follows the seven, it is rightly called ‘the eighth’ or
that day when our flesh rises again from the dust and
receives from the Truth its deserts, whether for good
or ill" (ib., II, x, 5 1030BC).
It is suggestive that Sunday or "the Lord’s Day"
is the icon or image of "the eighth Day," the pledge of
"the day of eternal judgment and the resurrection of
the flesh" (ib., II, viii, 5 1030B). It was introduced to
time and space at the Pascha (ib., II, viii, 2 1029A).
The Resurrection of Christ adumbrates the Eighth, the
Saviour having risen on Sunday.
What is to come is imperfectly present in the
Church, in her wisdom, life and Sacraments. The
Eucharist is "the Sacrament of the eighth Day"
(sacramentum octavi); it is the Glory of the future
among us (sacramentum futuri). For this reason also,
the Church is said to have two lives: heavenly and
earthly (ib. II, x, 4 1060B). Although the earthly
Church offers "sacrifice of compunction," a sacrifice

60
for the remission of sins, she likewise offers with the
heavenly Church a "sacrifice of praise" (sacrificium
laudes)14 in the Liturgy; thus, what belongs properly
to eternity is present nonetheless in time, in "the
Mystery of the Eucharist." The earthly Church is
formed by the Eucharist. On account of it, she is
becoming what she will be.

2. The Latin Sacramentary

Liber Sacramentorium was the liturgical book

used by the celebrant of the Mass in the West until the
13th century. The numerous Sacramentaries of Latin
Orthodoxy taught deification as salvation. We need
only mention the 7th and 8th century Leonine,15 Grego-
rian, and Gelasian Sacramentaries. The Canons of
the Mass are anticipated by the prayers in the Liturgy
of St Ambrose of Milan which has an occurrence of
"God Who took human substance…" — Deus qui
humanae substantiae. They contain formularies for
the entire year as well as Eucharist prayers whose
form later Roman liturgies will imitate. Versions of
the Gregorian Sacramentary contains an epiklesis; it
calls upon God to "bless the gift" of bread and wine,
while the priest extends his hands over them in a
gesture of calling down the Holy Spirit.16
The Sacramentaries often contain prayers,
especially for the Nativity, whose content express
their soteriology with such phrases as "reform for the

61
better" (reformati in melius) or "marvellous reform"
(miribilius reformasti) and, sometimes they speak of
a "return to Paradise" (resitutiat Paradiso), so com-
mon in the East.17 The language here lacks the flavour
of the Byzantine liturgies without neglecting the
doctrine of deification. So "reform" is "re-form" as
"renew" is "re-new" or "to make new again," referring
to the "new life" in Christ of the "new creature."
"Return to paradise" is the return to fellowship with
God. Only gods enter paradise.18
Furthermore, the context of these words is the
same. Listen to the missal of The Leonine
Sacramentary: "God Who has marvellously created
the dignity of human nature marvellously re-formed
it, gives us by the mystery of this water and wine to
be partakers in the Divinity of Him Who deigned to
become a participant in our nature, Jesus Christ, Thy
Son and our Lord, Who lived and reigned with Thee
in the unity of the Holy Spirit in the everlasting age of
ages. Amen."19 We read in another place: "Celebrat-
ing and communicating daily the most holy Sacra-
ment by which our Lord, Thy Only-Begotten Son,
unites with our substance, and has carried us up in
Glory to Thy Right Hand…."20
Curious is the absence of the word deification
from these Sacramentaries (and, perhaps, from the
others)21 which nevertheless display all the traditional
language associated with this soteriology, mostly in
connection with the Sacraments. Thus, the Gelasian

62
Paschal Vespers Prayer states that "baptismal regener-
ation leads to blessed immortality."22 The Gregorian
Pentecostal Prayer proclaims that the daily celebration
of the Sacrament (Eucharist) unites us to "our Lord
Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who lives and reigns as God
in the unity of the Holy Spirit forever."23
There is no doubt that the lex credendi of all the
Sacramentaries of the Roman Church are the same,
the same because she confessed the "law of belief" of
the universal Church; and this Faith was embodied in
her "law of worship" so lucidly expressed in these
liturgical manuals named for the holy Fathers of the
Church. No doubt, too, they contained materials
directly attributable to Sts Leo, Gelasius and Gregory.
It would be strange if these Sacramentaries did not
presuppose the idea of deification which was so
essential to the Fathers for whom the books were
named.

Endnotes:

1. "St Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers," The Greek Orthodox
Theological Review V, 2 (1959-1960), 120.
2. Ibid., 123
3. In modern times, "reform" (metamorphosis in Greek) and "renewal"
(anakainosis in Greek), etc. are words applied to social entities and institutions
rather than individuals. But in the Orthodox West such language bore salvific
connotation. For example, in the 7 th century, the Leonine or Verona
Sacramentary reads, "baptism into Christ Jesus destroys sin and gives new birth
and life to men with whom (together with the Father) we live and reign in the
unity of Holy Spirit forever" — baptizbatis ex ea et moritiferis delictis
renascatur ac reviscat per hominem novum renatum in Xro Ihu cum quo vivis
et regnas in unitate Sps sci in saecula saeculorum (Mense Dec. XLIII, 484, 13-

63
15; Feltoe, 1896). Gerhard Ladner, in his assessment of patristic Latin, denies
that it belongs to the idiom of deification. Confidence in his conclusion depends
on his belief in the theological "advances" made by Augustine (The Idea of
Reform: Its Impact on Christian Thought and Action in the Age of the
Fathers. Cambridge [Mass.], 1959, p. 20f.).
4. "For God alone ‘has immortality’ — ho monos echon athanasian (1 Timothy
6.16). As a member of the Church, man shares that `immortality' as the word
`communion' (koinonia) intimates. "And this is much more than just a ‘moral’
communion with God and much more than just a human perfection… Theosis
meant a personal encounter (Ladner, ib., 127)."
5. The Apostolic Fathers (vol. 1): Greek with English translation by K. Lake.
New York, 1954. Until the time of St Hippolytus of Rome(c. 235), the Latin
Fathers wrote in Greek.
6. Coxe’s annotations in The Ante-Nicene Fathers (vol. 5). Trans. by A.
Roberts and J. Donaldson. Grand Rapids, 1951, p. 153. Strictly speaking,
Hippolytus should not have been included here; but he (a disciple of St
Irenaeus) lived in Rome and his writings are a witness to the fact that deification
was a Christian doctrine circulating in the West. Also, St Irenaeus, bishop of
Lyons (c. 130- 200) in Gaul taught the same (Adv. Haer. V, pref. PG 7 1120).
The Latin ecclesiastical writer, Tertullian (c. 160-225), also espoused deifica-
tion as salvation (Adv. Marcion II, 27).
7. The "Eighth Day" is the everlasting age which follows this present course of
history composed of seven days or ages; it is "the Age to Come," the Kingdom
of God.
8. In Against Jovian (I, 39), Jerome cites 2 Peter 1:4 once more, but this time
applies deification to virginity. Monasticism is the higher way to salvation.
9. Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) replaced the Ransom doctrine (held by
Christendom for more than a millennium) with what has become commonplace
in the post-Orthodox West: Christ’s death on the Cross to appease God (placare
Deum), recompense God for His offended Majesty, and satisfy His Justice. In
his epochal work, Christus Victor: A Historical Study of the Three Types of
the Idea of the Atonement. Trans. by A.G. Herbert. New York, 1966), Gustav
Aulen observes that Protestants see no direct connection between the Incarna-
tion and the Atonement. He admits that the early Church professed the Ransom
doctrine, but is unaware (or unwilling) to associate either with deification.
10. By virtue of his many serious theological errors, Augustine of Hippo (354-
430) has not been placed on the patristic roll, which is not to deny his value as
a theologian and philosopher. His rehabilitation by the Church of Greece in
1968 was purely arbitrary, if not an ecumenical gesture.
11. Still not clearly understood today is the fact that the 11 th century Scholastic,
Anselm of Canterbury, developed a theory of the Atonement which displaced
the supposedly "grotesque" patristic "ransom theory" which, it is asserted, was
a creature of its time. J.E.L. Oulton will not countenance the idea that God

64
could deceive and bargain with the devil (The Mystery of the Cross. Green-
wich, 1957, p. 20; see also G. Aulen, Christus Victor, p. 47). But the Lord
Himself taught the Ransom doctrine.
12. Traditional in his doctrine, St Gregory is aware that no creature may "see"
God in Himself, whether in this life or the next. The use of "to see" (video)
suggests the sight of something physical: Christ in Glory, in His deified Body:
He in Whom "the sons of God" are transfigured. The divine Nature, he says, "in
its incomprehensibility transcends even the perception of angels" —qui et
anglorum sensum sua incomprehensibilitas transcendit (Homilies on Ezek., I,
viii, 16 861A). If the bodiless angels cannot "perceive" (aspicimus, to receive
knowledge through the senses) God, neither can man who was made "a little
lower than the angels" (Ps. VIII, 5 LXX). Thomas Aquinas said that the blessed
shall see the Essence of God by Grace (Sum. Theol. Ia q. 12 a. 4). He was
wrong to think that such a vision could be achieved with a created Grace. If
such a vision were possible, an uncreated Grace would be required: but, then,
Thomas considered uncreated Grace and uncreated Light something that human
beings could not experience.
13. It is the universal teaching of the Fathers that Pascha, which includes Great
Holy Friday, Holy Saturday and Pascha Sunday, signifies the presence of a new
and divine reality. His Birth and Redemption have fundamentally altered the
nature of time. Pascha and the mysteries of the God’s Kingdom have permeated
history. Only in the Church, however, reside the spiritual things to come (e.g.,
Judgment, Glory, etc.) foretasted ("realized eschatology"). Thus, the Eucharist
gives now union with God and "the communion of the saint" (communio
sanctorum). Both "lives" of the Church are joined in the Eucharist (see J.
Danielou, The Lord of History: Reflections on the Inner Meaning of History.
Trans. by N. Abercrombie. London, 1958, pp. 207-208).
14. "By Him (Christ) therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise (thysian
aineseos) to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips confessing His Name
(See Hebrews.13:15. Cf. Psakm 49:14, 23 LXX; Jeremiah. 33:11). St Jerome’s
hostiam laudis is an explicit reference to the Eucharist.
15. More commonly known as "the Verona Sacramentary" because it was
rediscovered in the Chapter Library in Verona, Italy by Joseph Biancini in 1735.
This, as the Gelasian and Gregorian Sacramentaries, drew on the sermons and
writings of the Saints to which they were attributed, but neither Popes Leo I,
Gelasius nor Gregory I compiled them.
16. See The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Ed. by F. L. Cross &
E. A. Livingston. Oxford, 1983, pp. 551-552.
17. Ladner describes the prayers of the Byzantine liturgies as "radical
divinization mysticism" (The Idea of Reform, p. 294). Here again the refusal
to acknowledge the unity of patristic thought prejudices the study of the Church
and her history.
18. See note 13.

65
19. Deus qui humanae substantiae dignatatem et mirabiliter condidisti et
miribiliter reformasti; da nobis huis aquae et vini mysterium eius divinitatis
esse consortes qui humanitates nostri fieri dignatus est participes, Jesus
Christus, Filius tuus Dominus noster. Qui tecum vivis et regna in unitate
Spiritus Sancti Deus: per omnia saecula saecularoum. Amen (Mense Decembre
XL, 467 5-10; Feltoe). See The Gregorian Sacramentary, Orationes de Natale
Domini, Deus qui humane substantie dignitatem… (Ed. by H.A. Wilson.
London, 1915, p. 13); and The Gelasian Sacramentary, Orationes de Natali
Domini, Seus Qui humanae substantiae dignitatem et mirabiliter condidisti et
mirabilius refomasti…(Ed. by H.A Wilson. London, 1894, V, 497).
20. Communicantes et diem sacratissimum celebrantes quo Domines noster
Unigenitus Filius tuus unitum sibi hominem nostrae substantiae in gloriae tuae
dextera collacovit… (ib., Manse Maio VI, 23-25). Cf. The pre-Communion
Prayer of St Symeon Metaphrastes: "Thou Who by Thy glorious Ascension did
deify the flesh that Thou took upon Thyself and did honour it by the session at
the Right Hand of the Father…"
21. For example, the Old Spanish (Visigothic or Mozarabic) liturgies, the
Gallican and Gothic liturgies, etc. Yet, they praise God for the "renewal of
man," for his "the marvellous reform" and "return to paradise" which the "old
man" (fallen man) cannot enter (Gerhard, p. 294).
22. …baptismo regenerarari facias beata immortalitate (LVI, 581 HAW).
23. Deus qui sacramento festuitate hodierne… per dominum nostrum Jesum
Christum tuum qui tecum vivit et regna et deus in unitate euidem Spiritus Sancti
per omnia saecula (p. 76 HAW).

66
 CONCLUSION
hy is so little said about the teaching of deifica-
W tion in the works of the Latin Fathers? The
most famous patrologies and histories of doctrine give
us very little information about it, even in Augustine
of Hippo. Some of the most familiar patristic collec-
tions in English (e.g., Ante-Nicene and Post Nicene
Church Fathers) commonly refuse to index "deifica-
tion." 2 Peter is often missing among the Scriptural
references in patristic literature.
One may surmise that calling "deification" an
"Eastern doctrine" or a teaching of "the Greek Fa-
thers" (among whom scholars, unfortunately, place
both heretics and apostates) confirms the hypothesis
that the Christian Church, from the beginning, dis-
played doctrinal diversity and regular theological
development — despite the fact that the Fathers
recognised only one Church vis-à-vis a multiplicity of
heretical sects. The search for religious pluralism,
beginning with Apostles themselves, is mandatory for
the modern interpretation of Christianity which
postulates both Hellenism and Judaism as the two
pillars of the Christian religion.
The invasion of Hellenism, scholars charge,
accounts for the rational principles of Christian
theology; thus, in the course of its development God
is far less the God of Abraham than He is the God of
Plato and Aristotle. As a Jewish sect, the Church

67
inherited the laws and rites of the synagogue.1 The
teaching of Paul that Judaism, like Hellenism, was a
preparation for the Gospel is not given much cre-
dence; likewise, the idea that history is filled with
types and anti-types which point to the Advent of the
Saviour and His Church.
But the Fathers understood Christ and Chris-
tianity as the climax of history. There was no thought
of an adjustment to Hellenism or resignation to
playing a Hebrew surrogate. Their great problem was
the development of a Christian culture which could
adequately express "the new vision of human destiny,
in the light of Christ," as Fr Georges Florovsky
maintained. Whatever the "spoils" taken from the
Jews and the Greeks they were understood as already
belonging to the Church and they were made to serve
her. Fr Georges adds, "The problem was not that of
adjustment, but rather of a radical change of the basic
habits of mind."2
Thus, the Fathers set the Incarnation against the
Greek idea of the soul's natural divinity. He who has
been identified with the risen God-Man through
Baptism: body and soul partakes of the divine Nature
by the uncreated Grace. Against the particularism of
the Jews, they proclaimed the Gospel of the universal
Kingdom of God with the promise of immortality by
Grace and true Faith. This was the salvation wrought
by the God Who became man that man might become
divine. This revealed truth was proclaimed by the

68
Church wherever she went. Deification was "the good
news"; indeed, the "old news" which was God’s
promise from the beginning, to Adam; now renewed
and realized in Christ. Therefore, it was taught by the
Latin as well as the Greek Fathers, by the Western
and Eastern Churches.

ENDNOTES
1. We recall the words of St Ignatius of Antioch, "For Christianity did not
believe in Judaism, but Judaism in Christianity; it was in this that men of every
tongue believed and were gathered together in God" (Epistle ad Magn., 10
FOC).
2. "Eschatology in the Patristic Age: An Introduction," The Greek Orthodox
Theological Review II, 1 (1956), 31.

69
 APPENDIX 1
A BRIEF SUMMARY OF
THE NATURE OF REDEMPTION
This is drawn from memory from various writings and conversations
with Fr John Romanides. Some of it must be verbatim fromRomanides

he Orthodox concept of redemption may be

T briefly epitomized as follows: the meaning of
"atonement" is really "to remove (or overcome) the
cause of alienation, of separation." In other words,
man is separated from God by sin (that is, by his
constant "missing of the mark") and so he is in
bondage to death. Since man sins continually because
of the power of death (which is held by Satan), sin
separates man from God and death perpetuates the
separation (and vice versa). By death, we fall short
(again, by "missing the mark" — sin) of our original
destiny, which is to live through unity with the
Creator. We are ransomed by Christ from the power
of death, so that we can become partakers of the
divine essence and share in immortality, which is
belongs to God alone. Being ransomed from the
power and fear of death, we are thus redeemed from
bondage to the Evil-One, a bondage which has been
effected and strengthened by our own sinful passions.
Christ did not die to save us from God, as the neo-
pagan doctrine of “substitutionary sacrifice atone-
ment” teaches.

70
 Christ saves men, who have fallen into the
power of the devil, by breaking that power. He
became Man for this purpose; He lived and died and
rose again that He might break the chains by which
men were bound. It is not His death alone, but the
entire Incarnation, of which His death was a neces-
sary part, that freed men from their captivity to Satan.
By becoming Man, living a sinless life, and rising
from the dead (which He could not have done unless
He had first died), He introduced a new power into
human nature. This power is bestowed on all men
who are willing to receive it, through the Holy Spirit.
Those who receive it are united with Christ in
His Mystical Body, the Church; the corrupted human
nature (the bad habits and evil desires, which St Paul
calls "the old man": Rm.6:6; Eph.4: 22; Col.3:9) is
driven out by degrees until at last it is expelled
altogether, and the redeemed person becomes entirely
obedient to the will of God, as our Lord Himself was
when on earth. The prisoner is set free from the
inside; both his mind and body are changed; he comes
to know what freedom is, to desire it and, by the Holy
Spirit working within him, to break his chains, turn
the key and leave the dungeon. Thus he is freed from
the power of sin. God forgives him, as an act of pure
love; but the condition of his forgiveness is that he
must strive to sin no more. "While we were yet
sinners Christ died for us" (Rm.5:8-9) but, if we
continue to be sinners, Christ's death will have been

71
in vain for us; and we are made capable of ceasing to
be sinners by the power of Christ's Resurrection,
which has given us the power to struggle against
sinfulness, toward moral perfection.
The advantage of this Orthodox teaching is that
it is firmly based on the New Testament. "God was in
Christ reconciling the world to Himself" (2Cor.5:19);
the act of reconciliation is effected by God in the
Person of His Son, for it is man that needs to be
reconciled to God, not God that needs to be recon-
ciled to man. Throughout the New Testament we find
the proclamation that Christ has broken the power of
the devil, to which mankind was subject (see Lk.10:
17- 18); 11:22; 1Cor.15:25; Gal.1:4; Col.2:15; 2Tm.1:
10; Hb.2:14; Jn.10:11; 12:31; 16:11; 1Jn.3:8; and fre-
quently in Rev.). Moreover, this teaching of the
atonement/ redemption requires no "legal fiction,"
and attributes no immoral or unrighteous action to
God. Man is not made suddenly good or treated as
good when he is not good; he is forgiven not because
he deserves to be forgiven, but because God loves
him, and he is made fit for union with God by God's
own power, his own will cooperating. He is saved
from the power of sin by the risen life of Christ within
him, and from the guilt of sin by God's forgiveness, of
which his own repentance is a condition.
Thus, salvation consists in the union of the
faithful with the life of God in the Body of Christ (the
Holy Church) where the Evil-One is being progres-

72
sively and really destroyed in the life of co-suffering
love. This union is effected by Baptism (the Grace of
regeneration) and fulfilled in the Holy Communion of
the Body and Blood of Christ, and in the mutual,
cooperative struggle of Orthodox Christians against
the power and influence of the Evil- One. This is
precisely why the last words of the "Lord's Prayer"
are, "deliver us from the Evil-One," and not "deliver
us from evil."

73
 APPENDIX 2
BAPTISM/CHRISMATION
The Beginning of the Journey1
“The grace of the Sacraments is the grace of the
Church, of the Holy Spirit, the power of sancti-
fication by which her children are deified.” (St
Ambrose of Milan).2

esus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee,

J Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he
cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is
born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the
Spirit is spirit. (Jn.3:5-6)
There is no “born again” without water. Jesus
Christ did not say you must be born again of an
emotional experience generated by an hyper-emo-
tional pastor or preacher, but that you must be born
again of water and the Spirit. This is a mystery of the
grace of the Holy Spirit. This mystery unfolds within
the bosom of the Church, which is the body of Christ.
The meaning of this mystery of holy bap-
tism/chrismation3 is inseparable from the revelation
that redemption consists in ransom and theosis.
Baptism cannot be understood as only symbolic, as an
external symbol of something that has taken place
mentally. It is an error to liken Christian baptism to
the baptism of John, and Apostle Paul makes that

74
abundantly clear.4 The word “baptism” means simply
“immersion,” and it was practised among the Jews as
a ritual purification While John’s baptism might not
have been a prescribed mikvah,5 it was certainly
related. He himself makes the distinction that he
baptised only with water but that Christ would also
baptise with the Spirit.6 Christian baptism is an
“initiation,” but an initiation into what? If into the
Church, let us remember that the Church is called “the
body of Christ” and also the “pure virgin bride of
Christ.” Let us assert that both these descriptions
indicate the Church as the vector of theosis, and that
Baptism is “mile 0" the beginning of the path to that
goal. All of the sacraments, as vectors of Divine
Grace, are both nourishment for the journey and
mileposts to mark the way.

WHAT DOES BAPTISM ACCOMPLISH?

“All of you that have been baptised into Christ
have been robed in Christ.” (Gal.3:27)7

Why the Baptismal font? Why do we immerse

the person under the water when we baptize? In The
first place because Christ was incarnate in the Virgin
Mary by the descent of the Holy Spirit, born of a
virgin. One is born again into the Body of Christ in a
type and likeness of Christ's birth. With the descent of
the Holy Spirit upon the Baptismal waters the Baptis-
mal font becomes the womb of the Virgin Bride of

75
Christ, the Church. So, we are born again in the
womb of the Virgin by the descent of the Holy Spirit.
In baptism, one is born again from the carnal into the
spiritual, from the mortal into the eternal. This is also
an image of the creation of life at which “the Spirit of
God hovered over the water” (Gn.1: ),8 bringing forth
life.

“That she/he may become a partaker of the

death and resurrection of Christ.”9

How are we made "partakers" of the death and

resurrection of Christ? The mystery of redemption is
clearly explained in the Epistle to the Hebrews. We
are told that mankind was held in bondage to the fear
of death by the one who has the power of death,
namely the devil. The death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ is the conquest of death.10 We are ransomed
from death Itself and, therefore, the fear of death
which held us in bondage. Being ransomed from
bondage, we are also redeemed from the power that
Satan holds over us. Since the death and resurrection
of Jesus Christ manifests His victory over these
things, to be partakers of the death and resurrection of
Christ is to participate in this ransom and redemption.
Being immersed under the water in baptism and
brought back up from the water is a type of the death
and resurrection of Christ. We die to sin, to our
alienation from God, we rise to Life. The service of

76
baptism is designed to teach us this, not to teach us
only but to make us actual participants, even as
baptism and chrismation unite us to the body of Christ
– the Church.

WHAT ARE WE BORN INTO?

It is well to recall at this point that the reason

for the incarnation of Jesus Christ, His taking on the
human nature while retaining his divine nature, has
the purpose of ending the alienation between man and
God by uniting the two in Himself and thus making it
possible for each individual to be delivered from that
alienation by becoming united to Christ.11 This
alienation from God is really the "sin of the world."
We are told in Scripture that Christ came to take away
the "sin of the world" (John 1:29).
Why do we call the Church the Body of Christ?
The word sin in our “Orthodox language”12 means to
fall short of or miss the mark, to fall short of the goal,
which is a reunion with the Divine, the healing of the
Fall. So, Christ came, in this Person, to reunite God
and Man and overcome our alienation from God. The
“body of Christ” consists of those who in faith have
become united with Him, having “put on Christ” and
having Him dwelling within them. Let us turn to the
Scripture for a more complete explanation:

77
 "Know you not that so many of us as
were baptized into Jesus Christ were
baptized into His Death? therefore bur-
ied with Him [syntaphemen, consupulti]
by Baptism into His Death? that like as
Christ was raised up from the dead by
the Glory of the Father, even so we also
should walk in newness of life. For if we
have been planted together [symphytoi,
conplantanti] in the likeness of His
Death, we shall also rise in the likeness
of His Resurrection… For if we be dead
with [syn, cum] Christ, we believe we
shall also live with [syn, cum] Him."
(Rm.6:3-5, 8).

Reborn or regenerated in Christ’s Body through

Baptism (Titus 5:6), the believer becomes a "par-
taker" of Christ’s Sonship (Gal.4:4-7). He also be-
come a "partaker of the Spirit" Who dwells in his
body as in a temple, because the baptized are mem-
bers or parts of His Body individually. The body of
each becomes a "temple" and the Spirit dwells in him
(1Cor.3:16). God lives in each Christian who acquires
the Grace of fellowship (koinonia, societas) in the
Spirit (Philippians 2:1).13 "For as the body is one, and
has many members, and all the members of that one
body, although many, are one body; so also is Christ.
For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body…

78
and have been all made to drink into one Spirit…"
(1Cor. 12: 13).
The members of the Church, partake of Christ
and His Spirit and, consequently, have become the
adopted “children of God." "For as many as are led by
the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. You have
received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry,
‘Abba, Father’…we are the children of God; and if
children, then heirs of God and joint-heirs with
(synkloronomoi, coheredes) Christ; if, then, we suffer
with Him (sympaschomen, compatimur), it is that we
may also be glorified with (syndoxathomen,
conglorificemur) Him" (Rm.8:17-17).
The alienation between God and Man has been
abolished, and we are born into a new life in Christ,
in which, by cooperation with the Holy Spirit, we are
able to make our gradual assent toward glorification,
toward “paticipation in the Divine Nature.”

Baptism/Chrismation as Ordination

It seems somewhat dissonant and inconsistent

to separate Chrismation and Baptism as two different
sacraments. Baptism is not complete without
Chrismation, and there can be no Chrismation without
a Baptism. Perhaps the two have been separated just
for the sake of creating the number seven because the
Church of England and the Roman Catholic churches
have a sacrament that they call "confirmation," which

79
takes place when a person is 12 years of age, and it
permits them, at that age, to receive their first commu-
nion. In the Orthodox Church, Baptism and Chrisma-
tion are clearly combined, and an infant will receive
Communion immediately, or as soon as possible, after
Baptism/Chrismation. Even when someone converted
to Orthodoxy is received through the ekonomia of
Chrismation alone, it is clearly understood that the
Chrismation is the completion of their previous
baptism and supplies what was deficient in that
baptism.
Chrismation is, in a manner of speaking, an
anointing into the Royal priesthood.14 What does it
mean to be a such a priest of the royal priesthood?
Under the law, only priests were allowed to
partake of the Bread of the Presence and the things
offered on the altar, that which was sacrificed in the
temple.
What is now offered up on the altar except the
bloodless sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ
Jesus? We are made a royal priesthood first of all so
that you may “partake of the things on the altar.”15
The priest or bishop is fulfilling a higher
priesthood, consecrated and ordained to serve
Christ’s Priesthood visibly for the sake of the faithful,
offering the "Bloodless Sacrifice," calling for the
Holy Spirit to Change the Gifts, making them truly
“the Bread of the very real Presence.” This is an
indefinable mystery in which we offer to Him that

80
which we have received from Him, “Thine own of
Thine own we offer unto Thee.” The people, as a
Royal priesthood, are able to participate fully in the
worship, in the offering itself, and to partake freely in
the things offered on the altar. That is the result of our
Chrismation at the end of our Baptism, it is our
“ordination” into the Royal priesthood.
Thus through Baptism and Chrismation, we
have been reborn into the “Body of Christ,” and
having been born anew, we are babes. We must grow
and mature with the help of the Holy Spirit. This is
the aspect of the mystery that is so often missing
when we think about or talk about the holy mystery of
Baptism and Chrismation.

WATER AND THE SPIRIT

Perhaps we should say something about the

blessing and consecration of the baptismal water since
Jesus Christ told us specifically to be born again of
water and the Spirit. Why does one go under the
water and come back out again, and why is water so
significant here.
In the Creation narrative the Spirit of God
hovered over the waters and life came forth from the
waters. When God’s people were being delivered
from bondage, they passed through the Red Sea, and
Apostle Paul tells us that the Hebrews were baptized

81
in the Red Sea by Moses. This is why we refer to
Baptism as “delivering us from the spiritual pharaoh.”
When the Hebrews came to the undrinkable
bitter waters of Mara, perishing from thirst, God
instructs Moses to cast a two-branched tree limb (in
the form of the Cross) into the bitter waters, and they
become sweet and saved the perishing people. That is
the first clear-cut blessing of the waters that we have.
We imitate this blessing of the water both at a Bap-
tism and at Theophany, the commemoration of the
baptism of Christ. It is not a mere ritual, for the Holy
Spirit is called down into the water to bless, conse-
crate and sanctify it.

ENDNOTES:
1. From The Sacraments and Theosis, Archbishop Lazar Puhalo, Synaxis
Press, 2023.
2. The Mysteries, III, 2 FOC
3. “Knowing only John’ bap-----
4. See FN 1 above.
5. MIKVAH: Mikveh or mikvah is a bath used for the purpose of ritual
immersion in Judaism to achieve ritual purity. Most forms of ritual impurity
can be purified through immersion in any natural collection of water. However,
some impurities, such as a zav, require "living water", such as rivers, springs
or groundwater wells. In Aramaic or Hebrew, John the Baptizer would be
literally, “John The Dipper.”
6. Acts 19:3-5: And he said unto them, Unto what then were you baptized?
And they said, Unto John's baptism.Acts 19:4 Then said Paul, John verily
baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people, that they
should believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus.
When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. See the
command of Christ himself in the last verses in Matthew’s Gospel.

82
7. Ðóïéé ã•ñ åßò ×ñéóôÎí ¦âáðôßóèçôå, ×ñéóôÎí ¦íåäýóáóèå. “...For if Christ
is the son of God, and you have put Him on, You have the Son in yourself and
you are likened to Him, brought into one kinship and one form” (St Jhon
Chrysostom, P.G. 61:704, c656)
8. Man is about 60*% water and 40%dust.
9. From the Litany of the Baptism.
10. Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also
himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him
that had the power of death, that is, the devil; And deliver them who through
fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. (Hb.2:14-15)
11. “...For if Christ is the son of God, and you have put Him on, You have the
Son in yourself and you are likened to Him, brought into one kinship and one
form” (St Jhon Chrysostom, P.G. 61:704, c656) 2
12. ‘amartia (Gk) “to miss the mark, or fall short of the target.”
13. Commonly translated "fellowship," koinonia or societas signifies much
more than a community of interest or friendly relationship; it refers to organic
unity of those who have been baptized into Christ. St Ambrose defines it as "a
unity in the Faith by the bond of baptism, kinship in grace, by communion in
the mysteries" (De Off. I, xxiii, 170). Thus, koinonia is a sharing of the divine-
human life in the Body of Christ. The expressions "partaking in Christ" or
"partaking of the Spirit" or, indeed, "partaking of the divine Nature" (See L.S.
Thornton, The Common Life in the Body of Christ. London, 1944; and Odo
Casel, The Mystery of Christian Worship and other Writings. Ed. by B.
Neunheuser. London, 1962).
14. See 1 Peter 2:9 “ you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy
nation, a chosen people; that you should show forth the praises of Him who
has called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.” [cf Is.43:20; Ex.19:6,
23:22; Dt.7:6, 14:2; Is.43:21] “
15. And, of course, to “with one mouth and one heart” praise and glorify him
in the temple, and proclaim His gospel.

83
 APPENDIX 3
ON THE NATURE OF SIN1
aith is an orientation of the soul, not an accord
F with a collection of facts or doctrines. If sin
ultimately means alienation from God, then its cure,
true repentance, must consist in a re-orientation of
one's mind, soul and life toward Jesus Christ and His
great moral imperatives.

WHAT DOES "SIN" MEAN?

The term in Greek ('amartia) means "to fall

short of the goal, miss the mark, fall short of one's
proper vocation.”
This term is rendered in Latin as "sons,"
"sontis," which means "guilt; guilty," and has a
forensic significance. We can see already that there is
an important difference here. The terms used in Holy
Scripture ('amartia, etc.) refer to something far greater
than the Latin term used to translate them. The Latin
term (and the understanding usually given to the word
in English) is legalistic and juridical and understood
in a forensic sense.
Perhaps, also, the absence of an awareness of
the meaning of the concept of “energies,” both as Paul
uses the word, as the holy fathers have expressed the
word, and as we understand it in a more “human”
context. Sin is the misuse of our energies, and vice or
84
addiction is a habitual misuse of our energies. Repen-
tance is the re-orientation of the soul toward God
through Jesus Christ. It has to do with the struggle to
discover and use our energies in a proper manner our
energies. “Energy” concerns relationships. We know
God through His uncreated energy, which we call
Grace. Our relationships with other human beings
involve the proper use of our created energies. Per-
haps this is the underlying meaning of Christ's two
great commandments, which, He said, are the founda-
tion of all the law and the prophets, “love the Lord
your God with your whole being, and your neighbour
as yourself.” This can be accomplished only through
the proper use of our energies.
Ironically, the juridical concept of sin also
lowers and degrades the concept of morality. If sin is
only a violation of the law, then morality consists
only in obeying the law. Such morality could not
contribute to one's salvation but could only render
one as hypocritical as the Pharisees and as alienated
from Christ as the rich young ruler (Mt.16:19- 12).
It was, and is, in fact, perfectly lawful for
righteous and moral “pharisees” to throw a pov-
erty-stricken widow out of her house if she owed
them money or they held a lien on the house (see
Mt.23:14). In the same way modern "prosperity
gospel" moral evangelicals could foreclose on a poor
widows' mortgage or lien without violating a law so
that it would be a perfectly moral act from a juridical,

85
forensic point of view. "Sin" does not refer simply to
a "violation of the law" which is "punished by God's
justice." “Sin” can be any act, physical or mental, that
creates an alienation of one from God. God is not
alienated from us; we become estranged from Him.
Although guilt is not the primary meaning of
“sin,” this is not to suggest that there is no guilt in sin,
and we will discuss this later. The essence of sin
should also not be understood as a contravention of
God's will in a legalistic sense, nor to fall below a
given norm of behaviour. To sin means to violate
God's will in this sense, that "God wills all men to
turn from their sin and be saved." ( ) Sin means to
fall short of the destiny (mark, goal) for which man
was created. Since the "goal," "destiny," and "mark"
for which man was created is full communion with
God and ultimately to become, by grace, partakers of
the Divine Nature (theosis) (2Pet.1:4), sharing in His
glory and immortality, then "sin" (as a noun) means to
fall short of the destiny of theosis (participation in
God).
In this context, death, then, may be called "the
sin of the world" since death is both cause and result
of missing the goal of immortality, which results from
union with God, and is the consequence of the alien-
ation or estrangement of mankind from God. Ulti-
mately, alienation from God (which is the cause of
death) may be seen as “the sin of the world” which
Christ has “taken away” (Jn.1:29)

86
 The Apostle expresses this concept of sin when
he says that "all have sinned and fallen short of the
glory of God" (Rm. 3:23) (that is, "everyone has
missed the mark and fallen short of the goal of man's
destiny, which is to participate in the glory of God"
— theosis). All mankind, therefore, is "sinful," and
each one is a "sinner" because, in the life of all and
each, we fall short of the destiny for which we were
created. "Sins" are those things we do that openly
manifest and reinforce our separation from God or
"falling short." All sin is "mortal" sin because all sin
separates us from the only source of immortality,
from God. Indeed, even our virtues can be sin if they
somehow separate us from God, for instance, through
pride taken in our virtues.
Living and true faith in Christ is an uncondi-
tional orientation of the whole person toward the will
of God.
God does not condemn man for his sins and
sinfulness in this life or even in the life to come
(Jn.12:47- 48); our own conscience does. We shape
our own destinies. That which we call "hell" is our
own creation, and we may experience it already in
this life and, by our own choices in relation to our
conscience, and experience the fulness of it in the age
to come.2
God has set as the possible destiny of all
people; immortality, participation in the glory of the
Godhead, and the joy of the all-embracing Divine

87
Love. God has set this as our destiny and not only
taught us how to attain it but in Christ has made it
clearly possible for us to arrive at it. Because of his
sins, man always falls short of this destiny, but
because of Christ, Who, as true human, arrived at this
destiny and attained it on behalf of all mankind
(Rm.5:12),3 we can inherit it anyway by choosing to
strive for a life in Christ (Rm. 3:24-30).4

SIN IS MORE THAN BREAKING A LAW:

ALIENATION FROM GOD (THUS DEATH) IS
THE "SIN OF THE WORLD"

Death, according to the holy fathers, is not a

punishment from God: it is, rather, the result of man's
alienation from the Source of life and failure to live
up to his destiny of participating in God's immortality.
Death is the primary manifestation of estrangement
and alienation from God; it is also our principal
source of bondage (Hb.2:15) and the driving force
behind individual sins. Thus death (alienation) is the
"sin of the world." Mankind is in a form of bondage
to the world’s alienation from God, which includes
that bondage to the fear of death with which Satan
holds us in that bondage (Hb.2:15), to the manner in
which the world in its alienation deals with the
question of death, as Paul again says, "Even so we,
when we were children, were in bondage under the
elements of the world..." (Gal.4:3). Christ has taken

88
these things away, though many reject this freedom
and remain in that bondage or having been liberated,
return again to it (Gal. 4:9).
"Sin" refers to all those things which f o r m a
barrier between us and becoming partakers of “the
glorious freedom of the children of God” (Rm.8:12)
and participation in God.
We also refer to these things as passions, and
we should remember that the word “passion” means
“suffering." The passions are sources of inner human
suffering, and this form of mental and emotional
suffering is the generator of those manifestations that
we refer to as sin. We will discuss this later, but these
passions are the tares and weeds that clutter the
garden of the soul. Defeating these passions requires
the gardening of the soul to prepare it so that "the
Kingdom of God is within you" (Lk.17:21), and we
can become, by grace, fit “temples of the Holy Spirit”
(1Cor.6:19).
From this, we see that the essence of the
struggle against sinful passions is really this: we
choose to build in our hearts either the principality of
this world or the Kingdom of God. The struggle
against sin, against the passions, can really be meta-
phorically defined as man's role in building a new
kingdom within himself, as Paul says: "Are ye not
aware that to Whom you yield yourselves to obey as
slaves, you are truly the slaves of whom ye obey;

89
whether of sin unto death or of obedience [to God]
unto righteousness?" (Rm. 6:16)
The principality of this world rules in a man's
heart. He chooses to conquer that principality and
replace it with the Kingdom of God. He knows that
with God's help, by cooperating with divine grace, it
can be done. Such a person then becomes an athlete
of God's Kingdom. He begins to train for the battle.
This war, this “Unseen Warfare,” is fought in one's
own conscience, mind and soul; each "sin" is a defeat,
a failure to conquer one of the enemy's strongholds
and attain our goal. Sin is not merely a "violation of
the law," as our Saviour made plain to the rich young
ruler (Mt.19:16-26). For no matter how perfectly the
young man had fulfilled the law, he still fell short of
the mark and goal (sinned), not because his wealth
was evil, but because he chose to give it, rather than
Christ, dominion over his heart. He made a choice
between two rulers.

THE PROBLEM WITH LEGALISTIC

MORALISM IN PLACE OF
TRUE MORALITY

Sin is an existential problem. It is about the

human condition, not law. It is a mistake not to see
sin as part of the suffering of humanity. It is also a
mistake not to see some of the actions which we
consider not only sinful but even evil and not con-

90
sider the psychiatric conditions which underlie some
of these actions. When we think of sin only as a moral
failing and do not consider some of the underlying
causes and attempt to deal with them, then we have
reduced sin down to a legal failing rather than a moral
failing, and this is one of the difficulties which we
often have even in confession. We have too often use
the word "moral" when we are actually talking about
"legal."
When we look at sin as "breaking a moral law,"
rather than the struggle with normal human emotions
and inclinations, and often with intense inner human
pain, then we present a dry, brittle moralism and often
prescribe mechanical actions against them rather than
understanding that we are dealing with the products
of evolution and the nature and inclinations of the
following human nature. We should regard sin in a
more systemic way and see how the entire Orthodox
Christian spiritual life, including the holy mystery or
sacraments, the Divine Liturgy and the system of
prayer and fasting offered by the Church, are all a part
of our struggle with "sin." In this context, let us
continue.
We can already see how ludicrous it is to give
any kind of literal or theological significance to the
allegorical pictures of sin and corresponding punish-
ments in a purgatory or in a literal hell, such as
"visions" in various paterikons, which were often
actually concocted stories used as teaching devices

91
for monks. Some of these artificial "visions" show,
for example, liars or gossipers being suspended from
hot meathooks by their tongues or demons judging
souls at toll houses with bus stop-like designations for
legally specific sins. Some, in not most, of these
“visions” are also evidence of the “visionaries”
psychiatric disorders.
We can also see the fatal danger of regarding
ourselves as being "as good as the next person" or
following the delusion of "I feel really good about
myself. I don't feel that I have any sins." People who
offer such prideful opinions of themselves are also
victims of the legalistic, forensic view of "sin." They
are also capable of quite harsh judgment of others.
This is why Christ Himself specifically refuted such
ideas in the parable of the Pharisee and the publican
(Lk.18:10-14). The Pharisee, who was "ethically
perfect" and spitefully judged the publican, remained
unrighteous and was lost, whereas the publican, who
was an active sinner, far from being ethically perfect,
through repentance obtained righteousness as a gift
from God and was saved. Perhaps this delusion is
why Paul warns us not to think more highly of our-
selves than we should (Rm. 12:3).
We do not enter the heavenly kingdom by
means of ethical perfection (i.e., "correct behaviour)
in this life, by completely conquering the inclination
to sin or by becoming sinless. We enter the heavenly
kingdom by grace, by having received it already, in

92
ourselves, in this life, by having the Holy Spirit
dwelling in us and having acquired divine grace as a
"wedding garment" (Mt. 22:11).
But let no one think that these things are
acquired without prayer, fasting and struggle! Sincere
faith and the reorientation of the soul is not so easy to
attain and not so easy to be steadfast in. Grace is not
compulsion and is not magical; it calls for our consent
and cooperation. People who boast of themselves that
they are "born again" and have "Jesus set their own
personal Saviour" are capable of the most harsh and
brutal judgments and condemnations of others, of
cruel behaviour and very negative attitudes toward
others. These are all manifestations of sin and of
alienation from Jesus Christ, even while people are
claiming to be lawfully united with Him. And this is
why we should take the prayer of Saint Ephraim the
Syrian, which we read many times during Great Lent,
very seriously and deep into our hearts: O Lord and
Master of my life, take from me a spirit of despon-
dency, sloth, love of money, and vain talk. Rather
bestow on me Thy servant a spirit of
sober-mindedness, humility, patience, and love. Yea,
O Lord and King, grant me to see my own sins and
not to judge my brother, for blessed art Thou unto
ages of ages. Amen.

93
 REPENTANCE, CONFESSION
FORGIVENESS AND REMISSION OF SINS
THE CONSCIENCE: GUILT AND HEALING

We can never attain true repentance from fear

of wrath, judgment or punishment; we can come to it
only by means of love. The only fear which can help
lead us to true repentance and moral victory is the fear
of being separated forever from the love and glory of
our beloved Father. At some point, whatever fear
might drive us to have regrets for our actions must
pass over into love. The “beloved apostle has made it
clear that “There is no fear in love; but perfect love
casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that
feareth is not made perfect in love.” 1Jn.4:18)
When one "repents" from fear of punishment,
he is only "repenting" that he cannot get away with it,
responding to the natural law of self-preservation. We
have civil law to enforce behaviour thru fear of
punishment. Fear cannot produce moral behaviour; it
can only produce socially correct behaviour according
to one or another legal code by force of repression.
Only love can produce true morality and moral
behaviour. No deed which is constrained or forced by
fear of punishment has moral significance; it is hardly
useful for salvation.5

94
 REPENTANCE

Repentance is not just saying that you are sorry

for some action or thought. It involves an intent to
struggle to change, not just one's actions, but one's
perspective. It is of little use to be repeatedly sorry for
a repeated action or haunting thought. One also needs
a change in attitude and perspective. Such a change
requires prayerful and thoughtful struggle. We need
to contemplate why we are sorry for the action, as
well as why we repeat it.
Ultimately, it is not sufficient simply to regret
the action, word or thought, but we must assess why
we regret it in order to sincerely focus on striving
against the impulse which caused us to do, say or
think the action. Self-awareness is an essential part of
our spiritual and moral struggle. Our conscience may
inform us that something is wrong, that some attitude
or disposition we may have is not right, and certainly
not acceptable from an Orthodox Christian point of
view. If we wish to take action on this cue from our
conscience, we do need some focus, and we certainly
need some awareness as to why the action is unac-
ceptable and why and how we need to change the
attitude or disposition which led to the action, word or
thought.
This is actually a healing process, and Confes-
sion is part of that process. We should always ap-
proach Confession, and the priest should always

95
understand Confession as a part of the healing minis-
try of the "Church as spiritual Hospital."

CONFESSION
THE MYSTERY OF PEACE
AND RECONCILIATION

Ultimately, the Mystery of Confession is an

element in the process of the purification of our
conscience on the path toward Theosis. Taking
responsibility for our sins and spiritual shortcomings
and coming to sincere repentance helps keep us on
that path toward the glorious destiny to which God
has called us through Jesus Christ and with the help
and guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Confession is therapeutic and is a manifestation
of the Church as a spiritual hospital. Our conscience
is our sternest judge. An unpeaceful conscience is a
spiritual illness and can be more tormenting than
physical pain It can even lead to emotional and
mental illness and even to physical illness.
The sacrament of confession has been given to
us to help heal an unpeaceful conscience and aid in
our spiritual struggle. If we confess before an experi-
enced and compassionate priest, this can heal our
confusion, cleanse our conscience and strengthen our
struggle against our passions.6
At times we may feel estranged from God, but
we also have times when we feel estranged from our

96
community and even feel estrangement from our own
selves. Confession is intended to help us through such
times and reconcile us with God, our community, and
our own selves. This is psychologically very benefi-
cial. A skilful priest can help us take responsibility for
our actions and thoughts in a positive manner, com-
fort us in our distress, and apply those healing actions
and mental dispositions which can make us feel whole
and restore our peace of mind.
A primary function of Confession is the act of
taking responsibility for one's actions and for those
negative thoughts that one allows to occupy one's
mind. Accepting and acknowledging one's responsi-
bility is the first step in the process of moral healing
and reconciliation, first of all with oneself, cleansing
your conscience and bringing it to peace.
Confession is never about punishment. Punish-
ment and forgiveness are mutually exclusive. If you
are punished, you are not forgiven, and if you are
forgiven, there can be no punishment. We need to
realise this because we often punish ourselves,
sometimes ruthlessly. This is destructive. It is far
better to be guided in taking responsibility without
despair. If the one to whom we are confessing feels
that we need to take some action that will help to heal
our conscience, make it easier for us to accept for-
giveness, and also to forgive ourselves through
repentance, these actions are not for the sake of

97
punishment, but are spiritually and mentally therapeutical.
For example, if we are told to make some
number of prostrations with prayer, then we might
understand a prostration as an image of the death and
resurrection of Christ. We should image ourselves as
dying to sin and rising to life as we make each pros-
tration and rise up again. Such physical actions that
we take when necessary help us in the process of
repentance and also help us to be open to accepting
forgiveness and also forgiving ourselves. This can be
very powerful in helping us to come to peace and
reconciliation.
An important aspect of the healing process is
accepting the forgiveness that comes in response to
sincere repentance and letting go of the guilt that
preceded the repentance. Having received God's
forgiveness and the reconciliation with the body of
Christ that comes with it, one must readily forgive
oneself and not cling to guilt or shame. While we
struggle against judging others, we must also realise
that judging ourselves too harshly can also be spiritu-
ally destructive and can actually lead to unhealthy
self-focus.
The self-pity that can ultimately arise from this
is one of the most destructive spiritual conditions we
can develop. Holding on to guilt and shame after one
has repented can lead to self-pity and psychological,
sometimes physical, illness. When one has received
forgiveness from God, it is irrational not to accept

98
that forgiveness completely and forgive oneself with
the resolve of truly striving to correct our life.
The spiritual healing and reassurance we
receive in confession can lift a heavy burden from our
souls and help keep us on the path of spiritual growth
toward unity with God, reassuring us of His love just
as the prodigal son was assured of the father's com-
passion. This is why many people feel relieved of
heavy burdens following Confession.
Ultimately, the Mystery of Confession is an
element in the process of the purification of our
conscience on the path toward Theosis. Taking
responsibility for our sins and spiritual shortcomings
and coming to sincere repentance helps keep us on
that path toward the glorious destiny to which God
has called us through Jesus Christ and with the help
and guidance of the Holy Spirit.

RECONCILIATION

The Mystery of Confession is, in fact, a mys-

tery of reconciliation and reunion with the Church,
the Body of Christ, the community of the redeemed.
Confession and repentance cannot be separated, as we
see, because repentance means to "reverse one's
mind" to "reverse one's perspective." Epitimias given
under the canons of the Church are never punish-
ments (since what is forgiven cannot be punished) but
guides and means of helping in the process of reshap-

99
ing the mind and will of the one who sins. This is why
prostrations, as types of the death and Resurrection of
Christ, are the most frequent form of epitimia.
In the Mystery of Confession, the repentant
person receives, by Divine Grace, the remission of his
sins. What does this mean? Sin means to fall short of
union with God. If this "falling short" is remitted, it is
obvious that "forgiveness" or "remission" here means
reconciliation with God: precisely, reunion with the
Holy Church, the Body of Christ.
Putting aside the crude anthropomorphism of
sectarian literalism in interpreting Divine Scripture,
let us summarize:
Human nature is yoked by sin,7 so man can
never attain his destiny by himself. For this reason,
God became man, truly man, perfect man, and healed
human nature, manifesting once more the perfect
human nature on earth. Thus, the yoke and bondage
of sin and death are broken in One Man. We choose
either to unite ourselves with the perfect human
nature of Christ (which is united to God) or to remain
yoked by the fallen human nature (which is bound to
Satan by the power of death. (Hb. 2:15).
We accomplish this union with the true human
nature through the Holy Church, which, in a way,
constitutes this true human nature being united with
Christ God just as a wife is united with and made one
flesh with her husband. Our true union with the
Church is our real union with God. This is why when

100
we sin again (once more fall short of the goal), we
must be reunited with that goal (union with God).
This is the essence of the Mystery of Con-
fession-Repentance.
Nothing is given by God as a punishment, but
everything He allows to happen is given to teach, to
educate, to heal, to save us. God does not punish us
for our sins in the manner often asserted,8 and He
does not become "angry" with us over them (for then,
to whom would God confess and repent for being
bound with the passion of anger?) We do not, cannot,
make "expiation" for our own sins, for then Christ
would have died in vain and Holy Scripture would be
a lie.
Let us hear the words of St. Antony the Great
about this:
"God is good, without passions and
unchangeable. One who understands that
it is sound and true to affirm that God
does not change might very well ask:
`how, then, is it possible to speak of God
as rejoicing over those who are good,
becoming merciful to those who know
Him and, on the other hand, shunning
the wicked and being angry with the
sinner?' We must reply to this, that God
neither rejoices nor grows angry because
to rejoice and to be angered are passions.
Nor is God won over by gifts from those

101
who know Him, for that would mean
that He is moved by pleasure. It is not
possible for the Godhead to have the
sensation of pleasure or displeasure from
the condition of humans. God is good,
and He bestows only blessings and never
causes harm, but always remains the
same. If we humans, however, remain
good by means of resembling Him, we
are united to Him, but if we become evil
by losing our resemblance to God, we
are separated from Him. By living in a
holy manner, we unite ourselves to God;
by becoming evil, however, we become
at enmity with Him. It is not that He
arbitrarily becomes angry with us, but
that our sins prevent God from shining
within us, and expose us to the demons
who make us suffer. If, through prayer
and acts of compassionate love, we gain
freedom from our sins, this does not
mean that we have won God over and
made Him change, but rather that by
means of our actions and turning to God,
we have been healed of our wickedness,
and returned to the enjoyment of God's
goodness. To say that God turns away
from the sinful is like saying that the sun

102
 hides itself from the blind". (St. Antony
the Great, Cap. 150).

We have set forth in outline the Orthodox concept

of sin and repentance. For a more theological and
in-depth study on this subject, we recommend that
one read On The Ancestral Sin by Fr. John Roman-
ides.9

GUILT

We had promised to say something about the

question of guilt; we cannot do this without also
mentioning the conscience of man. A rational con-
sciousness of guilt is necessary in order to take and
accept responsibility for our actions and sins. In
circumstances in which such a rational awareness is
not possible, the complexion of the matter is changed
and must be approached otherwise. Certain forms of
mental illness, for example, create a extenuating
circumstances and make it difficult or even impossi-
ble for the person to have a full awareness that can
lead to an understanding of guilt and grasp the es-
sence of true and sincere repentance. In such circum-
stances, a competent professional, other than a priest,
needs to be consulted.
Repentance and forgiveness, if they are to be
healing must not leave a person under a burden of
guilt. People can become burdened under a weight of

103
guilty feelings and complexes and be destroyed by
them. Nevertheless, guilt is a valuable and necessary
aspect of human self-awareness. A person who does
not feel guilt when he or she actually is guilty of
something is usually referred to as a psychopath.
Without the realisation of guilt one could not repent
and struggle to change ones perspectives and course
of life. How do we have a healthy sense of guilt and
how do we deal with that guilt?
The conscience is a holy prophet that has been
implanted in us by God. It testifies to us if we are
undertaking an action which is wrong, leads us away
from God, harms someone else, etc. It is our con-
science that informs us that we are guilty of some-
thing wrong, and calls upon us to correct ourselves.
This is why our Saviour tells us:

"Be reconciled with your ac-

cuser/adversary [i.e., our conscience] in
the way [in this life], lest he ...deliver
thee to the judge......"( Mt.5:25).10

To have a healthy conscience is as important,

perhaps even more important, than to have a healthy
body. Enmity with one's own conscience can result in
genu- ine mental illness. There is, however, no excuse
for guilt complexes. If we follow the teachings of
some Christian groups, we could be burdened by a
crippling sense of guilt over practically every aspect

104
of our ordinary humanity. It is necessary to have some
idea of what things we should feel guilt for and what
things about which we should not feel guilt even if we
feel regrets
Let us begin by mentioning the "blameless
passions," as some of the fathers have called them.
What we are speaking of is those "appetites" which
are necessary for life. Hunger is not the same as
gluttony, for example. However, what might be seen
as gluttony might result from a medical condition, and
the fact should not be overlooked in cases of such
compulsive excesses.
If there is any "rule of thumb" that can give us
a general idea of what constitutes "sin" and what does
not, then per haps it is this: If an action or way of life
is pursued from egoism, self centredness and
self-love, then it is a sin. If a course of life is chosen
which is based in unselfish love and humility about
one's self, then it is likely not sinful. This is only a
rough “rule of thumb,” not a complete criterion. We
must pay attention to our conscience.
Egoism and self-centredness are, perhaps, the
most clearly defining factors in sin. If we feel guilt for
such actions or manners of life, then our conscience
is likely trying to bring us to an awareness of this and
lead us to repentance — that is, a life of continued
re-orientation toward the will of God, toward
co-suffering love.

105
 REMISSION OF SINS AND HEALING
FROM GUILT

Remember that repentance means to "re-

think," to "turn and go in another direction" with our
lives and deeds. These feelings are called "guilt."
Without them, we might have a society that is a living
hell or nightmare. If the feeling of guilt is transposed
into a "complex" or a general sense of ourselves, it
can also create, for the individual, a living hell. It can
and does create serious neuroses and psychotic
disorders. It is a great sin to burden people with a
sense or feeling of guilt for their very humanity itself
or to leave people unhealed of their actual guilt. Such
spiritual abuse is common in Evangelical Protestant-
ism and is the cause of many depressions, suicides
and other psychiatric and personality disorders.
How do we approach guilt? This is a funda-
mental aspect of both prayer and the Holy Mysteries,
in particular, Confession — the Mystery of Repen-
tance. Realisation that we are genuinely guilty of
some wrong should lead a believing person to pray
about the matter and find true repentance. This
includes apologising to someone we have hurt and
making amends where possible. The Mystery of
Confession is given to us so that our parish priest or
spiritual father can help us come to true repentance
and find the means to turn our lives around to
strengthen our focus on transformation. This determi-

106
nation to turn our lives around is the source of our
forgiveness. This process is by no means limited to
Confession, although it is referred to as the "Mystery
of Repentance." The life of the Church is a mystical
or "sacramental" life, a life of continued sanctifica-
tion. In this divine/human life of the Church, the
unseen is revealed through those things which are
seen. The presence of the Church is a seamless life in
which we do not isolate the Holy Mysteries in some
legalistic fashion, nor do we limit them in number as
if they were "departments" or "closets" of ritual.
The life of the Church is a unified and harmoni-
ous working of divine grace among the faithful. Every
aspect of it serves for the sanctification of the believer
and his world. We clearly declare in the prayers of the
Church that we receive Holy Communion "for the
remission of sin and life everlasting."
In the Mystery of Anointing, we also proclaim
that we are anointed for the remission and healing of
both bodily and spiritual infirmities and receive the
remission of sins. The blessing with holy water is for
the sanctification of those who receive it. Confession
should not be understood in a narrow, legalistic
manner, nor should the matter of forgiveness.11
Confession is not the only manner in which we
receive forgiveness and remission of our sins. With
regard to Confession, here is the crucial point: it is
easy to gain forgiveness from God sometimes, how-
ever, not so easy to forgive ourselves and reconcile

107
ourselves with our own conscience. And yet, Christ
has warned us to be reconciled with our conscience in
this life. It is in confession that we receive, through
the prayers of the Church, "permission" or help in
forgiving ourselves so that we do not labour under a
harmful and destructive burden of guilt. True repen-
tance should deliver us from the burden of guilt
because it reconciles us and brings us into agreement
with our conscience. We often need help in this
process, and the Church responds to that with the
Mystery of Confession.

SUMMARY

Let us briefly summarize these matters. Death

is the result of separation from God, Who alone has
immortality and is the source of life. Death is the "sin
of this world" because through it we “miss the mark,”
“fall short of the goal.” It is the result and manifesta-
tion in all mankind of alienation from God.
When we refer to individual sins, we are not
referring to "breaches of law" but to any and every
action which separates us from God or increases our
alienation from Him. Fear of death leads us into more
and more individual sins and also into the corporate
sins of society (such as neglecting the poor, waging
wars of conquest, etc.) The root of all sin is egoism
and self-love, and the fear of death pushes man into
more and more deeds and lifestyles of egoism and

108
self-love. Thus, "The wages of sin is death" (Rm.6:
23) while death is the product of sin (Rm.5: 12). Sin
is the falling short of the goal of ever-lasting life in
union with God (theosis). Thus sin and death are
partners or rather "shades of the same thing."
As the root of them is our egoism and self-
love, our self-absorption and self-centredness, the
healing of them is the unconditional, co-suffering
love of God in Jesus Christ, which recapitulates our
nature (Eph.1: 10). Having received such a gift of
divine love, our struggle is to assimilate it to our-
selves and struggle to conquer our own egoism,
replacing it with unselfish love. This is the path
toward a re-orientation of our lives toward the will of
God, and the very meaning of faith, the faith that
saves us where works of the law could not, is an
unconditional orientation toward the will of God. This
is not a call for moral codes or moralisms, but a call
for a transformation of the human heart toward
unselfish love of God and neighbour.

ENDNOTES:
1. From The Sacraments and Theosis, Archbishop Lazar Puhalo, 2023,
Synaxis Press.

2. See St. Mark of Ephesus, Ten Refutations of Pugatory, in “Gehenna” by

Lazar Puhalo, Synaxis Press, 2010. Romanides, John, Dogmatiki kai Symboliki
Theologia tis Orthodoxon Katholikis Ekklesias (pp.13-14); Kalomiros,
Alexandre The River of Fire (St. Nectarios Press). On the actual nature of hell
and punishment, see The Nature of Heaven and Hell According to the Holy
Fathers (Synaxis Press).

3. ”Everything is ascribed to God’s love and not to our own achievments...The

love of God has been shown to us. (Homily 9)

109
4. KJV, etc., translates incorrectly. The following is a correct rendering of the
text: "All have sinned, falling short of the glory of God, but are made
righteous freely by His Grace through the redemption which is in Christ
Jesus. God presented Him as a sacrifice to make us one (with Himself)
through faith in His Blood. He did this to demonstrate His righteousness,
because in His Divine forbearance, He overlooked all the sins which had
previously occurred. This He did to demonstrate at the present time that He
is righteous and the One Who bestows righteousness upon the one who has
faith in Jesus. What then becomes of our prideful boasting? It is ruled out.
On what principle? Good works? No, but on the principle of faith. For we
maintain that a man is righteous by faith apart from works of the law." (Rm.
3:23-28).
5. cp. St. John Damascene, Concise Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2:12.

6. The word "passion" means "suffering," not sin. When a normal human
emotion or appetite becomes so powerful within us that it begins to dominate
us and bring about inner suffering, we call it a passion. The urge to fulfil this
controlling passion leads us into real sin because it is a distortion of that which
is natural (even though natural only to the fallen nature). This distortion may
even twist our personalities to such a degree that we will commit crimes we
normally would not even dream of.

7. We do not categorise sin as “mortal” or “venial.” All sin is “mortal” because

it alienates from the Source of life. The origin of the Latin idea of "venial sin"
lies in Jerome's mistranslation of the Scripture. At 1 Cor. 7:6, he erroneously
translates the Greek "sungnomen" into Latin as "veniam" (guilt necessitating
pardon). The word actually signifies "concession," and here means "to allow
for individual differences."

8. Such assertion usually come from the “fullness of one’s own heart.”

9. Zephyr Press, Ridgewood, NJ, 1998

10. See Abba Dorotheos of Gaza in the Philokalia.

11. We do, in fact, often find such legalism in various books written within the
Orthodox Church. There are two sources of this. The first has to do with the
Turkish conquest of Greece and the Balkans. During that era, books were
seldom published in Greece because of the restrictions of the Turkish
overlords. Thus many of the Greek texts were printed in Italy, and were
adulterated and "laced" by the Latin editors. This adulteration was so blatant
that St. Nikodemos of Mt Athos is said to have once wept openly over the
corruptions of one of his texts by the Roman Catholic editors and publisher in
Venice.

110
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