Theosis and The Way of A Pilgrim

Thank you for your note and your ideas and critiques concerning the admittedly esoteric and mystical theology of The Way of A Pilgrim. There are certainly aspects of the book and the mystical practices it endorses which easily puzzle and even befuddle Western Christians, given our penchant for a more carefully expressed and examined explication of the theology and practice of the Catholic Faith. Since the time of Saint Anselm of Canterbury and especially Saint Thomas Aquinas, we in the West have certainly preferred having theological and mystical concepts explored and articulated in a way that leaves Eastern Orthodox mysticism alien and somewhat frustrating to our deeply Western Christian ethos. And I assuredly agree that, given my own deep Westernisation, some of the expressions in The Way appear to me at least to be hyperbolic and loose-ended at best, and at worst, reckless and negligently sloppy.

Given those problems, one can understand how The Way is understandably interpreted in a Western context to smack of pantheism or panentheism. But given the strict doctrinal standards of orthodoxy in the Eastern Churches, I would purposely hesitate to attach such labels to the mystical and ascetical theology of the Orthodox. Orthodox dogmatic theology, the content of necessary and salvific doctrine, like Anglicanism's, is contained in the Liturgy and the consensus of the Fathers, which in turn interpret the Holy Scriptures: Scripture and Tradition fit hand-in-glove and support and interpret and fulfill each other. The Orthodox, like Anglicans, believe in the absolute primacy and infallibility of Scripture. So the seemingly wild expressions in The Way must be subject to both Scripture and the consensus patricum of the Undivided Church, and that even the Pilgrim should know quite well.

You offer the excellent and very observant question - What does the Pilgrim mean when he refers to the inner self, or entering into oneself? If such sentiments were gesticulated in a pagan or heathen context we should surely say he has fallen prey to the New Age movement or gnosticism. But he is an Orthodox Christian. The answer to the dilemma is found in the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of theosis or deification, divinisation, which emphasises the fact that God is Light and the Christian, regenerated by the Holy Ghost and infused with the divine life in Baptism and the Eucharist, is capable of participating in the life and light of God to such a degree that he may have a mystical vision and communion with the Light of God. Many of the great Eastern Fathers, including Saint Gregory Nazianzus (4th c.), Saint Maximus the Confessor (5th c.) and Saint Symeon the New Theologian (11th c.), directly and explicitly describe the Vision of Light they experienced through hesychasm and the Prayer of the Heart. II Saint Peter 1.4 is the locus classicus for this doctrine in the New Testament, 'we are partakers of the divine nature.' In the Old Testament the Fathers emphasise Psalm 82.1,6, which refers to the children of God as being like God Himself. 'ye are all gods and children of the Most High'.

Therefore the mystical tradition of the Eastern Churches does not intend to convey some gnostic self-centred new ageish assertion that man is a spark of the divine or a manifestation of a god-force or other such nonsense. Quite the opposite is intended - Orthodox anthropology sees the human person united to Jesus Christ as one who has been made by grace to become what God is by nature, or to use the Athanasian formula, 'God became Man so that man may become God.' Saint Gregory the Theologian writes along the same lines: 'The Son of God became the Son of Man so that the sons of men may become the sons of God.' The 'inner self 'or 'entering into oneself' to which the Pilgrim makes reference is the participation of the soul in the divine grace, and union of the human person with the Trinitarian Communion of the Godhead. The Pilgrim is not worshipping himself as some piece or part of God, nor is he trying to find a self-emanation of a god-force by self-meditation or self-contemplation. He moves into the heart in prayer because it is there, in his heart sanctified by the life-giving Trinity, where the miracle of the union of God and man in Christ is revealed in all of its power, grace and glory. God living in the heart is not merely metaphor; it is reality.

In theosis, man in Christ becomes truly, intrinsically and ontologically, and not only nominally, forensically or exteriorly, the Likeness of God, and shares in the energy and life of the Holy Trinity, although he does not share in or know the essence of God, which essence is inaccessible and unknowable. Or so says Saint Gregory Palamas! In Eastern Orthodoxy, grace is nothing short of God Himself graciously and gratuitously working is us to make us the full and complete Likeness to God in moral and spiritual virtue, in holiness, by Christ and the Holy Spirit. The Prayer of the Heart, in Orthodox theology, is permitted to look in the self and enter the self only, and strictly only, because the Holy Ghost lives there, Jesus Christ lives there, and has made the Christian the Temple and dwelling-place of the Trinity.

In theosis, what we Westerners usually call the process of sanctification, God conforms us more and more closely and intimately to Himself, and makes us really to share in His life, His grace, His holiness and His attributes, the most tangible of which is the Divine Light. The concept of God as Light is, of course, Scriptural and found as well in the Constantinopolitan Creed. In theosis, we enter into the energy and life of God, His Light, so that like Our Lord on the Mount of Tabor in His Transfiguration, and in the resplendent glory of His Resurrection and divinised Body, we are made to participate through our human nature in the glorified human nature of Jesus Christ. Theosis is our own transfiguration, the foretaste and preparation of our own resurrection and glorification in the Risen Lord, Who gives us His own Light and Life by the Holy Spirit.

The Fathers use the analogy of iron plunged into fire to describe what happens to us in theosis: although we remain completely and immutably human, we take on by grace the properties of God, Who causes us to partake of Him in such a mysterious and ineffable manner that we can be said to be entered indissolubly into His self-giving and self-offering existence of love. The iron remains iron but takes on the property of the fire; Christ in the Incarnation remained God but truly assumed human nature in every way; the Christian remains human but is caused by grace to share the life of God. Deification is the extension of the Incarnation and the purpose for which the Incarnation happened. 'Only that which is assumed is redeemed,' and thus man's whole nature is freed from sin and made incorruptible, immortal and like unto Christ, the Imago Christi, 'we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is' (I St John 3.1-2).

In the sixteenth century, the protestant revolt rejected the possibility that man could, by grace, interiorly, intrinsically and ontologically become one with God, a holy one, a Saint, a 'God by grace', and hence it developed a generally lop-sided view of justification by faith alone as being an alien and external righteousness legally imputed to the believer solely on the basis of his personal assent of faith (Luther) or predestination (Calvin). Vindication not transformation. Luther says that justified man is a dung heap covered in snow - his sins are only covered over, not washed away and replaced by divine life, and man is still inherently sinful, not healed, restored and recreated in nature. In all protestant systems, the idea that grace is objectively infused and imparted so as to make man objectively a genuine partaker of the divine nature is refuted in favour of the doctrine of total depravity and its concomitant view that justification is a matter of subjective faith alone, which changes one's legal status before God but does not divinise from within. We maintain, of course, that both elements of justification and sanctification are necessary, the objective and the subjective...

The Church Catholic has always held that righteousness and grace are not only imputed but really given, really infused into the body and soul, and man, once fallen and deprived of the divine life, is given the capacity to be renovated and renewed into the Image and Likeness of God. Image of God in creation and soul, Likeness to God in holiness and virtue. The Orthodox believe in this synergy of man and God and this transformation of human nature through Christ's assumption of human nature very strongly, and Anglicanism has always, on some level, followed their lead. We believe it too, and thus our doctrine of the Church and Sacraments as means of sanctifying grace.

In the end, I believe we do need to be very careful about expressions of mystical experience and communion with God, and we need to be very theologically and doctrinally precise with our language so as to avoid error or misunderstanding, but with those caveats offered, I do not believe in the instance of The Way we have any heretical or unbiblical perspective being presented. The context of the Eastern patristic and conciliar tradition is here all important. Rather, in language we Westerners find bizarre and even troubling, the Orthodox are expressing the ancient belief of the whole Catholic Church that those who are adopted as the children of God by grace and regeneration, and transformed inwardly by the Sacraments, are made to participate in God and to live the life of God in the communion of the Holy Trinity, which mystery both East and West call theosis or God-likeness.

My ability to elucidate these mysteries is very limited indeed and I appreciate your patience in bearing with me! Please feel free to send along your thoughts and comments. God bless you and keep you!