To dive into the deep pool of how we participate in God through Christ requires wading out of the shallow, legalistic courtrooms of modern Western nominalism. When we do this, we enter into an intoxicating, transfiguring universe of sacramental participation. For centuries, the modern religious imagination has been flattened by an ontology of fragmentation: A worldview that presumes human beings are completely autonomous individuals marooned in a mechanical material order, waiting for a distant, monarchical deity to issue legal declarations (or drop occasional pieces of propositional information) across the cosmic divide. In this framework, salvation is reduced to a transactional shift in status: The celestial ledger is balanced, a sentence is commuted, and the creature remains structurally unchanged.
The ancient consensus of the historic Church offers a beautifully inverted vision. Salvation is not a legal transaction. Instead it is theosis: The progressive, ontological deification of the human person. As the Apostle Peter boldly declared, we are created to become "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). We are made to be thoroughly enmeshed in the Divine life, caught up in the eternal perichoresis of the Trinity: The dynamic, self-giving dance of Love shared between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Yet, this breathtaking claim immediately confronts us with a profound metaphysical conundrum: If the human person is genuinely drawn into the inner life of the Godhead, how do we preserve the absolute boundary between the Creator and the creature? How can we truly participate in God through Christ without collapsing into a form of raw pantheism in which we are God, or without assuming that we become distinct, autonomous "Christs" who are co-equal to the Father, Son, and Spirit?
To chart a path through this mystery, we can construct a tentative conceptual map of genuine participation. The goal of this essay is to demonstrate that theosis is a reality wherein the human person is fully divinized in God without ever becoming God as God. By synthesizing the Eastern Orthodox distinction between the divine essence and energies with the phenomenological insights of C.S. Lewis and the dual-aspect personal idealism of Anglican philosopher Keith Ward, I think we can articulate a robust, inclusive Christian panentheism. I am writing this as a kind of theological hypothesis, not a certainty. My hope that this map can to safeguard both the absolute, unapproachable transcendence of the Divine Source and the total, transfiguring immanence of the Divine Spirit working within and among us.
1. Theosis and the Essence / Energies Distinction
Any serious attempt to articulate a coherent doctrine of theosis must ground itself in the theological developments of the Christian East, particularly the structural architecture popularized by St. Gregory Palamas in the fourteenth century. Faced with the reductionist rationalism of Barlaam of Calabria, who argued that God could only be known through created effects and intellectual concepts, Palamas defended the direct, mystical experience of God as we share in the uncreated Light of God. The architectural engine of this defense was the distinction between the Divine Essence (ousia) and the Divine Energies (energeiai).
To understand the realism of this framework, we must turn to the classic formulation provided by Vladimir Lossky in his seminal work, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church:
"God’s presence in His energies must be understood in a realistic sense. It is not the presence of a cause operative in its effects: for the energies are not effects of the divine cause, as creatures are; they are not created, formed ex nihilo, but flow eternally from the one essence of the Trinity. They are the outpourings of the divine nature which cannot set bounds to itself, for God is more than essence. The energies might be described as that mode of existence of the Trinity which is outside of its inaccessible essence. God thus exists both in His essence and outside of His essence… We must thus distinguish in God His nature, which is one; and three hypostases; and the uncreated energy which proceeds from and manifests forth the nature from which it is inseparable. If we participate in God in His energies, according to the measure of our capacity, this does not mean that in His procession ad extra God does not manifest Himself fully. God is in no way diminished in His energies; He is wholly present in each ray of His divinity."
A great exposition of these ideas can be found in this essay from Eclectic Orthodoxy, which was an inspiration for this essay. As that blog unpacks, there are ongoing questions about what exactly is entailed by Palamas' distinction, and whether this gives us a "two tier" experience of God. As Orthodox theology has interacted with the West, it has tended to subtly infer that the Divine Essence is "really God" (which we cannot share in), while the Divine Energies are almost a kind of "derivative God" (which we can share in). Thus, the shadow of Barlaam resurfaces within the very categories which were used to defeat Barlaam, and we return to a sort of partial or pseudo participation in God.
However, I would argue that Lossky, taken at his best, highlights the exact structural balance required for a healthy metaphysics of salvation. The distinction was originally designed to preserve two non-negotiable truths simultaneously: First, that when a human being encounters grace, they are genuinely participating in the uncreated life of God Himself, not a created surrogate. Second, that this participation never violates, diminishes, or exhaustively comprehends the absolute, unapproachable transcendence of God in Godself. This means we are NOT sharing in a shabby or second rate and derivative Divinity. When we share in the uncreated energies of God through Christ, we are really sharing in Godself just as Christ does.
However, in contemporary theological discourse, this Palamite architecture has frequently been subjected to the dangerous mischaracterizations I alluded to above. As theologian David Bentley Hart has brilliantly observed, if the essence/energies distinction is reified into two distinct, ontological "levels" or "storeys" within the Divine reality, it inadvertently undermines the very foundation of Trinitarian theology. If the energies are treated as a secondary, lesser grade of divinity that mediates between a hidden, hyper-transcendent essence and the physical world, God is effectively split into a higher, unknowable god and a lower, active god. This reification falls into a subtle form of semi-Gnosticism, subordinating the active life of God to a cold, static abstraction.
To resolve this dilemma, we must bring the Palamite distinction into direct conversation with a foundational principle of Western twentieth-century theology: Rahner’s Dictum, which states that "the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity, and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity." Karl Rahner sought to correct a Western scholastic tendency to treat the inner life of God (ad intra) as a self-contained mystery totally disconnected from how God reveals Himself in the history of salvation (ad extra). Rahner insisted that what is given to us from the Father, through the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit in the economy of grace is precisely, genuinely, and exhaustively who God is in His eternal majesty.
When we map Rahner’s Dictum onto the Palamite framework, the artificial division between essence and energy completely dissolves. We discover a radical, unified reality: the Divine energies are the Divine ousia turned "ad extra". The divine activities are nothing less than the divine essence under the aspect of manifestation and outward relationship. God is not hiding a "true" self behind His outpourings. Rather, the outpourings are the full, undiminished self-disclosure of the infinite Trinity overflowing into the finite environment of creation. The uncreated energies are not a buffer zone between God and the universe. They are the mode of the Trinity's existence outside of His inaccessible inwardness. When we touch the ray of light, we are touching the sun itself. God is wholly present in each ray of His divinity because God's activity is an extension of His being. Thus, theosis means that we participate in the absolute fullness of the Triune Godhead, but we receive that fullness according to our finite mode of existence: Bathed in the eternal outpouring of the infinite Divine nature that has no bounds to itself. And so, Rahner's Dictum is both upheld and problematized by Palamas' essence/energies distinction. In one sense, Rahner is upheld: To participate in the uncreated energies of the economic Trinity is to really share in the same Reality that is in essence the immanent Trinity. They are not two separate Gods nor two levels of Divine Reality (one more real and one less real). The experience of the economic Trinity (of God in relationship) is true participation with the immanent Trinity (of God in Godself). In another sense, Rahner is problematized: We participate in Divine energies, but not Divine essence; We share in God, but do not become God; We experience the economic Trinity, but not the immanent Trinity. We cannot exhaustively know and experience who God is in Absolute Eternal Divine Transcendence, even as we can be filled to the fullness of God in the Relational Process of Divine Immanence.
2. C.S. Lewis and the Divine Light
To translate this profoundly Eastern metaphysical architecture into a vivid, experiential Western idiom, we can redeploy one of the most famous illustrations in the writings of C.S. Lewis. In his classic 1945 essay, "Meditation in a Toolshed," Lewis describes standing inside a pitch-black toolshed where a single sunbeam cuts through a crack in the top of the door. As he looks at the beam, he can see the dust motes dancing in the light, forming a bright, solid shaft across the darkness. But when he shifts his position, stepping directly into the path of the beam, his perspective undergoes a radical inversion. He is no longer looking at the beam; he is looking along it. In that instant, the beam itself becomes invisible, turning into a transparent medium through which he looks out the crack to see the green leaves moving on the trees outside and the sun ninety-million miles away.
Lewis originally introduced this metaphor to address a severe epistemological crisis in modern reductionist thought: The cultural prejudice that an external, analytical description of an experience (looking at) automatically devalues or debunks the internal, lived experience of the participant (looking along). Lewis notes that a purely clinical culture that relies solely on looking at things ends up explaining things without knowing what they actually are, trapped in a cold, intellectual vacuum.
Though Lewis did not originally intend for this tool to be applied to the mechanics of theosis, I think it serves as a helpful phenomenological key for understanding the relationship between the Divine Essence and the Divine Energies. If we redeploy this metaphor theologically— and again I grant this was not Lewis' original intention— we discover that Essence and Energy are the exact same Reality viewed from two radically different orientations: Within and without.
Let us map out the first orientation: Looking along the inner experience of the Triune God. In the absolute sense, this is an ontological impossibility for a created being. Throughout Holy Scripture, we are warned that no one can look directly upon the raw, unshielded face of God and live. The blinding brilliance of the midday sun will utterly destroy the physical and spiritual eyes of a finite creature. To look along the divine essence from the inside would require a person to actually be God in the ultimate, uncaused sense: To sit at the absolute epicenter of the unbegotten fountain of the Father. Therefore, the absolute inwardness of the Divine Essence remains forever inaccessible to us.
However, let us map out the second orientation: Looking at the world through the Light. When God brings a universe into being, God pours out God's own uncreated energies as a dynamic, relational beam that cuts through the nothingness. In every blade of grass, every burning star, and every human face, we are constantly encountering the objective action of God ad extra. Creation is a grand "theophany": A visible showing of God’s invisible glory. Every atom of existence is currently being held, sustained, and upheld by the active energy of God giving being to all beings.
Therefore, a real, participatory experience of theosis requires a profound both/and synthesis of both orientations. True spiritual thriving requires us to embrace the fullness of the polarities:
Essence + Energies: Recognizing the hidden Source while plunging into His active outpourings.
Subjective + Objective: Experiencing the inner transformation of the heart while honoring the objective, historical structures of the sacraments and the material world.
Looking along + Looking at: Shifting from an analytical study of dogma to a lived participation in love.
Divine Inwardness + Divine Outwardness: Revering the immanent mystery of the Trinity while operating boldly within the economic arena of creation.
When a person steps into the lifeworld of theosis, they step into the sunbeam of the Holy Spirit. By using the Spirit as the transparent window through which they look, their concepts about God fade from immediate focus. They are no longer standing to the side, clinically analyzing a doctrine. Instead, they are looking along the illuminated energy of God, looking out at the cosmos and seeing all things transfigured by Divine Love. Yet, they never become the sun itself. They remain finite subjects bathed in the Light, looking up to the Source with wonder, gratitude, and praise.
3. Keith Ward and Dual-Aspect Theism
To anchor this synthesis in a highly rigorous, contemporary philosophical framework, we can turn to the work of the eminent Anglican philosopher and theologian, Keith Ward. Throughout his vast contributions to comparative theology and the philosophy of religion, Ward has championed a model known as Trinitarian Panentheism or Dual-Aspect Theism. Ward recognizes that classical Western scholasticism left the church with an impoverished view of God: A frozen deity who cannot genuinely respond to history, cannot feel empathy for the suffering of creatures, and is locked away in a state of timeless, impassible isolation.
To break free from this metaphysical straightjacket without falling into the trap of pantheism, Ward insists on a vital, dual-aspect understanding of the Divine Mind. Depending on the context of his writing, he articulates this foundational distinction using different phrases:
"The Divine Being in itself" vs. "God in relation to the world" - In his text Christ and the Cosmos: A Reformulation of Trinitarian Doctrine (2015), Ward explicitly rejects "social Trinitarianism": The highly popular modern theory that God in Himself is a literal society or committee of three distinct human-like selves or minds. Ward notes that this model borders on tritheism and creates a fragmented deity. Instead, he defines the Trinity as one singular Divine Mind operating in three necessary, eternal modes: the transcendent Source (the Father/God in Himself), the intelligible Expression (the Logos/Son/God manifest), and the actualizing Spirit (God in relational action). For Ward, we can never map out the absolute depths of the divine Source in itself. Our knowledge is strictly limited to how the single Divine Mind chooses to relate to, and manifest within, the arena of creation. And yet, this relation is a REAL relation with Godself, and not merely an interaction with created causes and effects.
It should also be noted that Ward qualifies Rahner's dictum by refusing to collapse the economic Trinity onto the immanent Trinity. For Ward, the Economic Trinity of "God in relation to the world" actualizes genuine temporal properties— such as history, responsiveness, and empathetic suffering— that do not characterize the Absolute "Divine Being in itself". Indeed, we cannot make positive statements about who God is in Godself prior to creation based on our experiences of God in Relationship after creation. Ward wants to safeguard our epistemic humility and distance us from making triumphal claims to have God's inner mechanics all figured out. However, this epistemic humility leads to ontological confidence: Because we can describe how God supports and upholds and fulfills creation in relation to us, this gives us a true insight into the divine life. We may not be able to become or know what it is like to be God in the hidden depths of God's own Self-experience, but we can know with certainty what it is like to "live and move and exist" as cooperative participants within the responsive, relational life of God's Spirit. To take it back to Palamite terminology: While we cannot penetrate or comprehend God's essence (in the immanent Trinity), we really do participate in God's energies directly (in the Economic Trinity).
The Non-Temporal/Eternal Ground vs. The Temporal/Relational Agent - In his Dual-aspect Theism, Ward argues that under the eternal aspect of His being, God is the eternal, changeless Ground of all existence, holding within His infinite consciousness all possibilities. But by the free, unconstrained act of creating a physical universe, God intentionally takes on a temporal aspect. He voluntarily chooses to limit Himself, entering into a real, dynamic dialogue with time. In this relational mode, God genuinely experiences the passage of chronological history, responds with absolute flexibility to the choices of creaturely freedom, and undergoes real empathy, vulnerability, and suffering alongside His creation.
Nirguna Brahman vs. Saguna Brahman - As a pioneer in cross-cultural comparative theology, Ward frequently adopts these classic terms from the Indian Vedanta tradition to clarify his metaphysics for the Western mind. Nirguna Brahman refers to the Absolute, unmanifested Source: God without attributes, completely beyond any human categories, language, or definitions. Saguna Brahman is the personal, active Creator with attributes: The God who reveals Himself as Lord, Counselor, and Savior, entering into covenants of love with human beings. For Ward, participating in Saguna Brahman is a real sharing in the life of Nirguna Brahman, because the God known in creation is really God, even if it is not all that God is.
When we line up Keith Ward’s personal idealism with the Palamite essence/energies distinction and C.S. Lewis’s toolshed, a striking, harmonious structural synthesis emerges. We can map the entire reality of God and creation into two primary realms: The Transcendent Realm of God's own experience in Godself, and the Relational Realm of God's creation, sustainment, and interaction with all beings.
The Relational Realm (The Beam of Light): This is the exact point where the infinite intersects with the finite. In Keith Ward’s system, this corresponds to God in relation to the world, the Temporal Agent, the Actualizing Spirit, and Saguna Brahman. In the Palamite framework, this is the realm of the Divine Energies (Energeiai).
When we engage in academic theology, analyze cosmological arguments, or parse out definitions of fine-tuning from modern physics, we are standing to the side looking at the beam. We are mapping the external, objective properties of the Relational Realm. This is a critical task for verifying that the light is real and avoiding formless emotionalism.
Furthermore, this realm is the very ground of our physical existence. Our life is not our own independent substance; our very being is the active Energy of God giving us being as separate selves. God acts through us to establish individual agency, giving us the staggering freedom to choose to work with the light or work against it.
The Transcendent Realm (The Sun): This is the absolute, unapproachable horizon of the Divine. In Ward’s philosophy, this is the Divine Being in itself, the Non-Temporal Ground, and Nirguna Brahman. In the Eastern Church, this is the Divine Essence (Ousia), the Father from whom all things exist.
It is completely hidden from creaturely sight; we cannot analyze it from the dark toolshed of a finite perspective. Yet, when we step into radical spiritual practice, contemplative prayer, and self-giving Christlike love, we are seeking to look along the beam. God's very own Holy Spirit— the dynamic, Personal Energy of God— becomes our transparent window into the heart of Godself.
By looking along the beam, our personal consciousness is carried back up the stream of illuminated energy toward union with the Transcendent Source. But this experience is always qualified: It is enabled by the Spirit according to our capacity, strictly limited by our finite cultural horizons and conceptual abilities. We are bathed in the light, transfigured by the light, but we never mutate into the Transcendent Source itself. We are seeing and receiving the Sonlight without becoming the same as the Son who radiates the Light.
4. The Infinite Self and the Finite Gift of Being
To ground this complex metaphysical map in our daily human experience, we can examine a profound analogy embedded in our own creaturely architecture. To be made in the Imago Dei— the image and likeness of God— means that our finite nature reflects some aspects of the dual-aspect structure of our infinite Creator. Consider the everyday relationship between the human Soul and the human Body.
Every human person possesses a deep, inner sense of selfhood: An inward, subjective awareness of consciousness that operates within the boundaries of the physical body. We experience our arms, legs, fingers, and toes as objective, physical extensions of our selfhood. Yet, our core self-awareness is not experienced "in" our left shoulder or our right pinky toe in the exact same way that we are inwardly aware of our identity. If a person undergoes an amputation, their physical body is diminished, but their inner sense of "I am"— their unique, personal soul-identity— remains intact.
The inner experience of the self is constantly aware of, and operating through, its extended objective body without ever collapsing the difference between the two modes of experience. The soul is completely present in the hand when it writes a letter of love, yet the soul is never exhaustively consumed or trapped by the hand.
This creaturely dualism serves as a perfect pointer for the mechanics of theosis. As St. Athanasius famously wrote in the fourth century: "The Logos of God became human so that humans might become divine." This is to say that through Christ, by the power of the Spirit, we become by grace what Christ is by nature. To understand this, we must carefully distinguish between what Christ is by nature and what we are called to become by grace.
Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Logos, is the Archetype of humanity and divinity perfectly united in a single, uncreated subject. He is God by nature, possessing the raw, infinite essence of the Father from all eternity. Through the mystery of the Incarnation, He wrote Himself into His own story, taking on human flesh so that He could recapitulate and heal our fractured existence.
Our deification, however, is an act of sheer grace. We do not possess the divine nature as an independent, uncaused right. Instead, we are like an iron rod plunged into a blazing forge: As the metal is heated by the fire, it begins to glow white-hot, radiating the exact light, warmth, and energy of the furnace while structurally remaining a distinct piece of iron. Through theosis, we become by grace what Christ is by nature: Permeated by the divine life, glowing with the uncreated energies, yet remaining distinctly ourselves.
This reality is governed by the absolute metaphysical distinction between the divine life ad intra (God within Himself) and ad extra (God in relation to creation):
Infinite Divine Life ad intra > The sum of all finite receptions of Divine Life ad extra
The infinite, self-giving gift of God in Godself (ad intra) will always infinitely exceed any and all finite receptions of that gift (ad extra). A finite container can be filled to its absolute, brimming maximum with the ocean of God, but the container can never become the ocean itself. Even if we aggregate the entire collection of created reality— every galaxy, every angel, every saint, and every dimension of the omniverse— the sum total of creation remains definitionally less than the absolute, limitless infinity of the Divine Source. Any finite reality, no matter how great, will always be infinitely less than the Infinite Reality we call God.
Therefore, our participation in God is a dynamic, eternal frontier. We can expand into the divine life forever— a process the Cappadocian fathers called epektasis— growing from glory to glory without ever hitting a final ceiling, precisely because the infinite fullness of God always outruns our finite capacity to contain it.
5. Conclusion: How Palamas, Lewis, and Ward help us participate in Christ
Put it all together, and the synthesis of Palamite architecture, Lewisian phenomenology, and Wardian personal idealism provides us with a magnificent, liberating map of the spiritual life. We no longer have to choose between a dry, rationalistic theology that keeps God locked away in a distant heaven, and a formless, pantheistic mysticism that erases the beauty of individual human identity.
The essence/energies distinction safeguards the profound truth that we are invited to a genuine, real, and transfiguring union with the living God. Through the path of Theosis, we discover that salvation is an invitation to step boldly into the sunbeam of the Holy Spirit, allowing the dynamic, personal Energy of God to flood our spirit, soul, and body.
This map frees us to live with radical courage, intellectual rigor, and profound creativity. We are not autonomous cogs in a cold, accidental cosmos. We are beloved creative creatures swimming in the literal presence of our Creator. Every decision we make, every act of compassion we perform, and every moment of contemplative prayer we enter, is a direct participation in the uncreated light of the Lord of Love.
By understanding that we are deified in God but not as God, we can cast off the anxiety of trying to be the source of our own light. We can rest in the beautiful reality that we are mirrors made to reflect the Universal Light of Jesus Christ. Let us then step fearlessly into the forge of Divine Love, allowing the indwelling energy of the Holy Spirit to set our lives ablaze, transfiguring our character into the image of Christlikeness, and boldly fulfilling the limitless divine potential that the Creator has placed in each of us to heal and transfigure the world.
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