This is a sample chapter from my Systematic Theology project "Theology for Thriving". 📎MORE TO THE STORY notes are not part of the main text of the book, but additional resources, charts, or other materials from Biblical Theology class resources.
2 Peter 1.3-8 [3] His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godlikeness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. [4] Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature. [5] For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, [6] and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godlikeness, [7] and godlikeness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love. [8] For if these things are yours and are increasing among you, they keep you from being ineffective and unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
🗝️ Key Concept: Theosis
What is the ultimate goal of salvation? Is it simply a ticket to heaven, an escape from punishment, or a legal declaration of forgiveness? The Christian tradition, especially in its early and Eastern forms, offers a far more breathtaking and transformative vision. The goal is not just to be saved from something, but to be saved for something: To be so filled with the life of God that we ourselves become godlike. This is the shocking and beautiful doctrine of Theosis.
The word Theosis (also known as deification or divinization) comes from the Greek word theos, meaning "God." It is the process of becoming, by grace, what Christ is by nature. This was not a fringe idea but was the assumed understanding of salvation for nearly all major Christian thinkers in the first centuries. As St. Athanasius famously declared, “God became human that humans might become divine.” This doesn't mean we usurp God or become individual deities. Rather, it means we are invited to become participants in the divine nature, to be so fully integrated into the life of the Trinity that we radiate God’s own love and glory.
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, this is understood through the distinction between God’s unknowable essence and God’s knowable energies. We can never become God in His transcendent essence, but we can fully participate in His immanent, life-giving energies. Think of an iron rod plunged into a fire. The rod never becomes the fire itself, but it takes on the properties of the fire, glowing white-hot with its light and heat. In the same way, through Theosis, our human nature is permeated by the divine life, yet we remain distinctly ourselves. This is the ultimate expression of a panentheistic vision where God is in all things, inviting all things to share more fully in the divine life. It is our destiny to be caught up in the divine dance of the Trinity, sharing in the love that flows eternally between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
📖 Scriptural Reflection: 2 Peter 1.3-8
This passage from the second letter of Peter provides one of the clearest and most concise maps of the journey of Theosis in the entire New Testament. The author begins by stating that God's divine power has already given us everything we need for "life and godlikeness." This is not something we achieve on our own; it is a gift, rooted in God's "precious and very great promises."
The purpose of these promises is breathtakingly clear: "so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world... and may become participants of the divine nature." This is the core of Theosis. We are not just cleansed of our sin; we are invited to share in God’s own being. This isn't a passive state we wait for in the afterlife. The author immediately pivots to our active cooperation with this divine gift.
"For this very reason," he writes, "you must make every effort." He then lays out a dynamic ladder of virtues, a curriculum for sanctification. We are to build upon our initial faith with goodness, then knowledge, then self-control, then endurance, then godlikeness, then mutual affection, and finally, the capstone of all virtues, love (agape). This is not a checklist to earn salvation, but a description of the organic growth that happens when a life is truly rooted in God's divine power. This process of becoming more Christ-like, of participating ever more fully in the divine nature, is what keeps us from being "ineffective and unfruitful." It is the very definition of a thriving spiritual life.
🔎 How has salvation been misunderstood across history?
If Theosis is the biblical and traditional goal of salvation, many popular modern ideas fall tragically short. Often put forward by well-meaning people, these misunderstandings tend to reflect cultural anxieties rather than the fullness of the gospel.
One common distortion is the after-life extreme. In this view, salvation is little more than a "ticket to heaven," a kind of cosmic fire insurance policy. This life becomes a mere waiting room, and our actions, relationships, and the fate of the planet are ultimately insignificant compared to securing a spot in the celestial paradise. This can lead to a passivity and resignation in the face of injustice, treating salvation as a commodity to be bought with the correct beliefs or rituals, rather than a transformative process that begins now.
At the other end of the spectrum is the this-life extreme. Here, salvation is reduced to earthly prosperity or political liberation. In its individualistic form, it becomes a transactional spirituality. We "give" faith to God to "get" health and wealth. In its collective form, it can become purely political, forgetting that the Kingdom of God is not of this world. Both versions make the mistake of seeing salvation as only concerned with the now, without a transcendent hope.
Next, there is the joyless extreme, which sees salvation primarily as a matter of shame and guilt. This is the "miserable sinner" model. Martin Luther gave a great image which illustrates this: We are like a pile of dung covered in white snow. The white snow represents God's grace, and the dung represents sinners. We are forgiven and clothed with Christ’s righteousness, but we are not fundamentally changed. This view fails to capture the joyful, powerful reality of transformation. The true Christian hope is not about escaping this life or merely improving it, nor is it about wallowing in our brokenness. Instead, salvation is not about us entering heaven, but about heaven entering us, transforming us into the joyful, powerful, Christ-like people we were always created to be.
Finally, we have the impersonal extreme. Some forms of spirituality teach that our individual self "dissolves" when we are united with Ultimate Reality. This is often likened to a drop of rain returning to the sea: It merges and loses its distinct identity as it becomes united with everything. These forms of spirituality often teach that our particular identity is an illusion we must reject and try to overcome. But this is not the union of God and persons found in the vision of Theosis.
In Theosis, God desires to share loving relationships with other distinct persons, so God eternally wills us to be united but distinct, like fish immersed in water yet distinct from water. Our particular identities are not illusions or delusions. We were made to be children of God, not rain drops dissolved in God. As such, our unity with God shares in both the Trinity and the Incarnation. Just as God in Godself is a Community-in-Unity, so also God has made us to be a Community-in-Unity with other persons in God. And just as the Incarnation is fully human yet fully God, without merging or dissolving, so also we are made to be fully united to God without merging or dissolving.
🔎 How is salvation better understood through Theosis?
Theosis provides a far richer and more holistic map of salvation. It sees God's work not just as a legal transaction, but as a "good infection," to use C.S. Lewis's term. Christ injects His divine life into the bloodstream of humanity, and that life begins to heal and transform us from within. This does justice to the reality of the Christian experience. We are, as Luther also said, simul iustus et peccator: Simultaneously justified and sinner. We are declared righteous in Christ, yet we still struggle with sin. Theosis explains this by framing salvation as a process: We were infected with sin and death, but we are in the process of being healed and transformed from the inside out, as we live ever more deeply in Christ.
A powerful biblical image for this is the refiner's fire. Deuteronomy 4.24 declares that "the LORD your God is a consuming fire". The prophet Malachi elaborates by saying "God is like a refiner’s fire... he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the LORD in righteousness" (Malachi 3.2-4). Just as a silversmith heats metal to burn away impurities until the maker can see his own reflection in it, God's grace works in our lives to purify us until God can see the reflection of Christ in us.
Through this process of refining, Theosis becomes ultimate liberation. By participating in God's Life, we are liberated from everything that holds us down, oppresses us, and keeps us in bondage to sin and death. Jesus proclaimed his work as a work of liberation: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free..." (Luke 4:18-19). Christ sets free so that we can live as the glorious children of God we were created to be.
The result of salvation is a gradual but entire transformation of our whole being through God's work in us. As Paul tells his friends: "May the God of peace himself make you wholly holy; and may your spirit and soul and body be made whole and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this" (1 Thessalonians 5.23-24). God promises that every aspect of our being will be united with God so we can thrive. And this holistic healing and union is not just a single event or a future destiny in "heaven". Salvation is an ongoing reality with a past, present, and future dimension:
I have been saved by the atoning work of Christ on the cross.
I am being saved as I participate in Christ's life through the Spirit.
I will be saved when God's healing work is brought to completion in the new creation.
🔎 How is Theosis a process of growth and sanctification?
Theosis is thus a journey of growth and sanctification. The word "sanctify" comes from the same root as "saint" and "holy," and it means "to be set apart." In one sense, our sanctification is an initial, completed act: through Christ, we have been set apart for God's purposes. But in another sense, it is a lifelong, progressive process of becoming more Christ-like, of growing into the holiness to which we have been called.
The journey of theosis is an unending adventure because God's Love is endless, and we can always fall deeper in Love with God! This unending growth in God's Life is sometimes called "epektasis", which comes from Paul's letter to the Philippians, where he describes himself as "forgetting what lies behind and striving forward to what lies ahead" (Philippians 3:13). The Greek word for striving is epekteinomai, from which we get epektasis. The early Church Fathers used this word for the idea that because God is infinite, our journey into God must also be an infinite, unending process of growth, always pressing onward into an ever-deeper participation in the divine life.
The New Testament is filled with metaphors of organic growth to describe this process. We are branches rooted in Christ, the true vine (John 15), and if we remain connected to him, we will naturally bear the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5). This growth is not haphazard; it follows a pattern, a "ladder" of virtues like the one described in our scriptural reflection from 2 Peter. We start with faith and, by grace, add goodness, knowledge, self-control, and so on, until our character is crowned with agape love.
The final outcome of this transformative growth is a glorious reflection of our Creator. As St. Paul writes, "All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit" (2 Corinthians 3:18). This is the promise of Theosis: a continual, unending journey of transformation into the very likeness of Christ, an ever-deepening participation in the divine dance of life.
📎MORE TO THE STORY: See this chart on Human Growth and Development, which outlines the ways we grow physically, spiritually, socially, emotionally, and mentally.
📚 Topical Scriptures
Here are some Scripture passages which explore and elaborate on the themes of this chapter. As you look them up and study them, think about how they relate to the Key Concept and Guiding Questions.
Psalm 82
This is a foundational text for theosis, where God declares to the divine council, "You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you." Jesus later quotes this passage in John 10 to defend his own divine Sonship and, by extension, our potential to share in God's life.
Wisdom of Solomon 7:25-8:1
This passage describes divine Wisdom as a pure "emanation of the glory of the Almighty" that is mobile and penetrates all things. Notice how this Wisdom "passes into holy souls," making them "friends of God and prophets," a clear image of divinization.
Matthew 5:1-12
This is the classic ladder of growth into Christlikeness called the "Beatitudes". Jesus describes the actions and virtues which lead us onward and upward to become more and more like him.
John 17:20-23
In his final prayer, Jesus asks the Father that all believers might be "one, just as we are one," a perfect unity that mirrors the relationship within the Trinity. This passage reveals that the goal of salvation is a deep, participatory union with the very life of God.
Romans 5:1-5
Another classic ladder of growth into Christlikeness as we co-operated with the Holy Spirit who has been poured into our hearts, so that we may fully live into the new "justified" life that God has brought us into.
Romans 8:14-17
Paul describes the spiritual life as being "led by the Spirit of God" to become "children of God" and "co-heirs with Christ." Look for how this adoption into God's family means sharing not only in Christ's inheritance but also in his glory, a key aspect of divinization.
2 Corinthians 3:17-18
This is a beautiful description of progressive sanctification. Paul explains that as we gaze upon the Lord's glory, we "are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another," a process empowered by the Spirit.
Galatians 3:28-4:19
This passage describes our adoption as sons and daughters through Christ, enabling us to cry out "Abba! Father!" Paul then uses the powerful metaphor of a mother in labor, expressing his wish that "Christ is formed in you."
Philippians 3:12-16
Paul models a dynamic spiritual life that is not about arriving at a static state of perfection, but about being on an infinite, forward-moving journey into Christ. This is the foundational passage for the concept of epektasis, a perpetual "straining forward toward what lies ahead."
2 Peter 1:3-8
This is the most explicit New Testament passage on theosis, stating that through God's promises we may "become participants of the divine nature." Notice the "ladder of virtues" it presents as the practical path of this divine participation.
1 John 3:1-3
John marvels at the love that allows us to be called "children of God," a reality that is true now but not yet fully revealed. He expresses the ultimate hope of theosis: "we will be like him, for we will see him as he is."
No comments:
Post a Comment