Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
Nothing specifically saying that we gain status as deity. (And what is deification except to become deity?)
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Mike, I think we understand the terminology differently. Probably, because for the Orthodox, God is not only essence but also His uncreated energies.
Deification is man’s union with God, wherein we participate in the uncreated energies of the Trinity.
The footnote commentary in the Orthodox Study Bible for 2 Peter 1:4 reads:
This [Theosis] does not mean we become divine by nature. If we participated in God’s essence, the distinction between God and man would be abolished. What this does mean is that we participate in God’s energy, described by a number of terms in scripture, such as glory, life, love, virtue, and power. We are to become like God by His grace and truly His adopted children, but never becoming God by nature.
BTW, here is how Calvin understood deification:
(1) How did Calvin understand 2 Peter 1:3-4? and (2) Did Calvin in fact believe in theosis? When we look at Institutes 3.25.10 we find something quite close to the Orthodox doctrine of theosis. The only difference is that Calvin seems to understand the conferring of divine glory, power, and righteousness as future events that accompany the resurrection, not as blessings for the current age. Calvin writes:
Indeed, Peter declares that believers are called in this to become partakers of the divine nature [II Peter 1:4]. How is this? Because “he will be . . . glorified in all his saints, and will be marveled at in all who have believed” [II Thess. 1:10]. If the Lord will share his glory, power, and righteousness with the elect—nay, will give himself to be enjoyed by them and, what is more excellent, will somehow make them to become one with himself, let us remember that every sort of happiness is included under this benefit. (Institutes 3.25.10)
Did Calvin affirm theosis? Consider the following:
Let us then mark, that the end of the gospel is, to render us eventually conformable to God, and, if we may so speak, to deify us. (Commentary 2 Peter 1:4)
But as we read on we find Calvin qualifying his earlier statement:
But the word nature is not here essence but quality. The Manicheans formerly dreamt that we are a part of God, and that, after having run the race of life we shall at length revert to our original. There are also at this day fanatics who imagine that we thus pass over into the nature of God, so that his swallows up our nature. (Commentary 2 Peter 1:4)
Thus, Calvin’s concern that theosis not be understood as our sharing in God’s essence is identical to Orthodoxy’s.
So, what did theosis mean for Calvin? He writes:
They [the Apostles] only intended to say that when divested of all the vices of the flesh, we shall be partakers of divine and blessed immortality and glory, so as to be as it were one with God as far as our capacities will allow. (Commentary 2 Peter)
For Calvin theosis consists of our “reverting to our original” state, that is, a return to Adam’s original pre-Fall condition. It appears that Calvin did not give much thought to the possibility that our union with Christ the Second Adam may result in something rather different. In other words, Calvin underestimated the significance of the Incarnation for our salvation.
Calvin assumes that theosis is accomplished through a process of the removing of the “vices of the flesh.” This is consistent with the moral or juridical understanding of salvation but to share in immortality and divine glory has ontological implications that Calvin seems reticent to pursue. Prof. J. Todd Billings in a 2005 Harvard Theological Review article examined Calvin’s understanding of deification and found that although Calvin interacted with the early church fathers his understanding of deification is “distinctive” (p. 334). Rather than follow in the hermeneutical tradition of the early church fathers, Calvin here is venturing off in his own direction with a new interpretation.
http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/orthod...ion-in-christ/