Sanctity As Participation in The Divine Nature

SANCTITY AS PARTICIPATION IN THE DIVINE NATURE
ACCORDING TO THE ANTE-NICENE EASTERN FATHERS,

CONSIDERED IN THE LIGHT OF PALAMISM
A dissertation submitted to the Caspersen School of Graduate Studies

at Drew University in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree,
Doctor of Philosophy
Committee chair: James H. Pain, D. Phil.

Henry and Annie M. Pfeiffer Professor of Religion
Jeffrey David Finch

The Caspersen School of Graduate Studies
Drew University
Madison, New Jersey
May 2002
INTRODUCTION
As he adds a drop of water to the cup of wine while preparing it for consecration
in the Roman Rite of the Liturgy of the Mass, the priest or deacon prays: By the
mystery of this water and wine, may we be made partakers of the divinity of Christ, who
deigned to become a partaker of our humanity.1 Startling though such an aspiration
might be to the ears of Nicene Christians, who confess the infinite transcendence of the
God with whom Jesus Christ is believed to be coessential, expressions similar to this
were entirely commonplace among those Christian authors of the first five centuries who
are today widely revered as fathers and doctors of the Church.
As early as the beginning of the second century, St. Ignatius of Antioch would
encourage the churches to which he wrote by declaring that their destiny in Christ is
always to participate in God (theou pantote metechete)."2
1James
Socias, ed., Daily Roman Missal (Princeton: Scepter Publishers, 1993), 578: Per
huius aquae et vini mysterium eius efficiamur divinitatis consortes, qui humanitatis
nostrae fieri dignatus est particeps.
2Eph.
4.2 (Schoedel, 51).

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Later in the same century, Irenaeus spoke more clearly still of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to
be even what He is Himself"1 and that man too might be a partaker of God (homo fieret
particeps Dei).2 According to Clement of Alexandria, the word of God became man,
that you may learn from man how man may become a god (anthrpos gentai theos),3
for by his heavenly doctrine, (Christ) deifies man (ourani didaskalia theopoin
anthrpon). 4 Similarly, his student Origen thought of the redeemed as those who have
become gods by participating in God (then pleionn t metoch tou Theou ginomenn),5
this through His theandric Son, Jesus Christ, the maker of gods (theopoios),6 by whose
incarnation, life, and death, there began the union (synuphainesthai) of the divine with
the human nature, in order that the human, by communion with the divine, might rise to
be divine (t pros to theoteron koinnia gentai theia).7 Athanasius made human
participation in God through Christ the soteriological lynchpin of his Nicene refutation of
Arianism: we know that Christ is not alien in essence (allotrioousios) from the Father,
but coessential (homoousios) because he is revealed first as the deifying and
enlightening power of the Father, in which all things are deified and quickened (n to
theopoion kai phtistikon tou Patros en h ta panta theopoieitai kai zopoieitai), for
by partaking of Him, we partake of the Father (toutou gar metalambanontes, tou Patros
1AH
5.pref.
2AH
4.28.2.
3Prot.
1.8, PG 8:64d.
4Paed.
1.12, PG 8:368ab; quoted by Jules Gross, La Divinisation du chrtien d'aprs les

pres grecs (Paris: Librairie Lecoffre, 1938), 163.
5In
Ioan. 2.3.19, SC 120:218-20.
6Sel.
in Ez. 1.3, PG 13:769b.
7CC
3.28, SC 136:68.
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metechomen).1 In short, the Son was made man (ennthrpsen) that we might be made
divine (theopoithmen).2
The current investigation began with a view toward exploring and exposing this
understanding of salvation as participation in God or divinization in the writings of St.
Augustine of Hippo. As a number of studies have demonstrated, 3 he also was fond of
characterizing redemption through Christ with formulations evocative of II Peter 1:4,
which promises that Gods grace will make its recipients partakers of the divine nature
(theias koinnoi physes). Augustine describes Christ as the teacher of humility and
partaker of our infirmity, granting participation in His divinity, descending to us that He
might both teach and be the way. 4 On the purpose and effect of the incarnation, he
would echo Irenaeus and Athanasius: To makes gods those who were men, he who was
God was made man.5 Much like Athanasius in response to the Arians, Augustine argued
1De
synod. 51, PG 26:784b.
2DI
54, SC 199:458.
3Gerald
Bonner, "Augustine's Conception of Deification," Journal of Theological Studies

37, no. 2 (1986): 369-86; Idem, Deificare, in Augustinus-Lexicon, ed. Cornelius
Mayer (Basel: Schwabe, 1996), 2:266-67; Victorino Capanaga, "La deificacin en la
soteriologia agostiniana," Augustinus Magister 2 (1954): 745-54; Georges Folliet,
"Deificari in otio. Augustin, Epistula 10.2," Recherches Augustiniennes 2 (1962): 225-36;
D. V. Meconi, St. Augustines Early Theory of Participation, Augustinian Studies 27
(1996): 79-96; Jos Oroz Reta, "De l'illumination la dification de l'me selon saint
Augustin," Studia Patristica 27 (1993): 364-82; M. Smalbrugge, "La notion de la
participation chez Augustin: quelques observations sur le rapport christianismeplatonisme," in Collectanea Augustiniana. Mlanges T. J. Bavel, ed. B. Bruning et al.,
(Louvain: Leuven Univ. Press, 1990), 333-47; Jan A. A. Stoop, "Die deificatio hominis
in die Sermones en Epistulae van Augustinus," Dissertation, University of Leiden, 1952;
R. J. Teske, Augustines Epistula X. Another Look at deificare in otio, Augustinianum
32 (1992): 289-99; P. Wilson-Kastner, "Grace and Participation in the Divine Life in
Augustine," Augustinian Studies 7 (1976): 135-57.
4Enar.
in Ps. 58.1.7, SL 39:734.
5Serm.
192.1.1; PL 38:1012: Deos facturus qui homines erunt, homo factus est qui Deus
erat.
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for the essential divinity of the Person of the incarnate Son from the participated divinity
we have acquired through him: If the Word of God enabled men to be called gods, how
can the Word of God Himself, who is with God, not be God? If men are made gods by
the Word of God, if they are made gods by participation, how can the one in whom they
participate not be God? 1 With more precise, discriminatory language, Augustine
specifies:
We are not God by nature; by nature we are men. Because of sin we are not
righteous. And so God, having been made a righteous man, intereceded with God
for man the sinner. The sinner is not like the righteous, but man is similar to man.
Therefore, uniting to us the likeness of His humanity, He removed the unlikeness
of our iniquity, and having become a partaker of our mortality, He made us
partakers of His divinity.2
The biblical basis upon which Augustine builds his doctrine of salvific
participation in the divine nature lies in the Pauline and Johannine theme of adoptive
sonship. St. Paul refers to our redemption as adoption in Gal. 4:5
so that we might clearly understand in what sense Christ is the only Son of God.
For we are sons of God through the kindness and honor of His mercy, but He is
the Son by nature, who is what the Father is. . . . For here we are said to receive
adoption because He, the only Son, has not disdained to participate in our nature,
1In
Ioan. Ev. Tr. 48.9; SL 36:417: Si sermo Dei factus est ad homines ut dicerentur dii,
ipsum Verbum Dei quod est apud Deum, quomodo non est Deus? Si per sermonem Dei
fiunt homines dii, si participando fiunt dii, unde participant non est Deus?
2De
Trin. 4.2.4; SL 50:164: Deus enim natura non sumus; homines natura sumus; iusta
peccato non sumus. Deus itaque factus homo iustus intercessit deo pro homine
peccatore. Non enim congruit peccator iusto, sed congruit homini homo. Adiungens ergo
nobis similitudinem humanitatis suae abstulit dissimilitudinem iniquitatis nostrae, et
factus particeps mortatlitatis nostrae fecit nos participes divinitatis suae.
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being made from a woman, so that He would not be the only-born, having no
brethren, but rather the first-born among many brethren. 1
For this very reason, the Psalmist could say you are gods, sons of the Most High, all of
you (Psalm 82[81]:6) only in anticipation of the advent of the essential Son of God,
through whom the Holy Spirit conferred on all flesh the power to become sons of God,
though quite distinctly sons by adoption:
It is clear that He calls men gods who are deified by His grace, not born from His
substance. For He justifies who is just in Himself rather than through another and
He deifies who is God in Himself rather than through participation in another.
The one who justifies also deifies because by justifying He makes sons of God.
For he gave them power to become sons of God. [John 1:12] If we are made
sons of God, we are also made gods, but this is from the grace of Him who
adopts, not from the nature of Him who generates.2
More clearly yet, God wants to make you a god not by nature, like the One whom He
generated, but by His gift and adoption. For just as He was made a partaker of your
mortality through humanity, so also does He make you a partaker of His immortality
through exaltation.3 Augustine also maintained against the Pelagians, in a letter written
1Epist.
ad Gal. Exp. 30.6, 10; CSEL 84:96: Adoptionem propterea dicit ut distincte
intelligamus unicum Dei filium. Nos enim beneficio et dignatione misericordiae eius filii
Dei sumus, ille natura est filius, quid hoc est pater. . . . Hinc enim adoptionem recipimus,
quod ille unicus non dedignatus est participationem naturae nostrae factus ex muliere, ut
non solum unigenitus esset, ubi fratres not habet, sed etiam primogenitus in multis
fratribus fieret.
2Enar.
in Ps. 49.1.2, SL 38:575-76: Manifestum est ergo, quia homines dixit deos, ex
gratia sua deificatos, non de substantia sua natos. Ille enim iustificat, qui per
semetipsum non ex alio iustus est; et ille deificat, qui per seipsum non alterius
participatione Deus est. Qui autem iustificat, ipse deificat, quia iustificando, filios Dei
facit. Dedit enim eis potestatem filios Dei fieri. Si filii Dei facti sumus, et dii facti
sumus; sed hoc gratiae est adoptantis non naturae generantis.
3Serm.
166.4.4, PL 38.909: Deus enim deum te vult facere: non natura, sicut est ille
quem genuit, sed dono suo et adoptione. Sicut enim ille per humanitatem factus est
particeps mortalitatis tuae, sic te per exaltationem facit participem immortalitatis suae.
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at the beginning of the controversy, that the transformation of human character in which
sanctity consists can be ours only through the initiative of divine grace:
We also were made through His grace what we were not, that is, sons of God.
Yet, we were something much inferior, that is, sons of men. He descended,
therefore, that we might ascend, and He became a partaker of our nature while
remaining in His nature, so that we might be made partakers of His nature while
remaining in our nature. Moreover, His participation in our nature did not make
Him worse, but our participation in His nature makes us better.1
Despite the great frequency with which Augustine describes sanctifying grace in
terms of participation, adoption, and divinization, however, the modern school of thought
associated with St. Gregory Palamas, a fourteenth century hesychast from Mount Athos,
contends that Augustines doctrines of divine simplicity and immutability conspire to
make his understanding of human participation in God incompatible with that of the
Eastern fathers and, indeed, with traditional Christianity itself. If God were not more
than a simple, immutable essence, they reason, if there were no uncreated or divine life
external to Gods essence, then it would be impossible for creatures to partake of the
divine nature without effacing Gods transcendence. Augustine is said to have removed
the divinization of the Christian from Western mystagogy by introducing an abstract
philosophical conception of an absolutely unchangeable divinity, as opposed to the
Easts living religious concept of God.2 Divinization was, for the Greek Fathers, who
separate the essential energies from the essence, the very principle of the plan of creation,
1Epist.
140.4.10-12, CSEL 44:162: Nos quoque per eius gratiam facti sumus, quod non
eramus, id est filii Dei; sed tamen aliquid eramus, et hoc ipsum aliquid multo inferius,
hoc est filii hominum. Descendit ero ille, ut nos ascenderemus, et manens in sua natura
factus est particeps naturae nostrae, ut nos manentes in natura nostra efficeremur
participes naturae ipsius, non tamen sic, nam illum naturae nostrae participatio non fecit
deteriorem, nos autem facit naturae illius participatio meliores.
2D.
Staniloae, as paraphrased by Endre von Ivnka, Palamismus und Vtertradition, in

L'glise et les glises: neuf sicles de douloureuse sparation entre lOrient et lOccident.
tudes et travaux sur l'unit chrtienne offerts Dom Lambert Beauduin, 2:29-46
(Chevetogne: ditions de Chevetogne, 1955), 30.
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the supreme end of the Incarnation of the Word and of the created life, but, thanks to
Augustine, the bridges are found abruptly cut off between the two worlds of Christian
theology, eastern and western.1
As will be seen in the course of the first chapter, both Palamites and their Western
counterparts agree that the linguistic distinction between Gods simple essence and the
energies or acts through which He reveals His essential attributes was initially devised by
the Cappadocian fathers in response to the Arian Eunomius, who had argued against the
coessentiality of the Son with the Father on the grounds of divine simplicity: everything
predicated of an ontologically simple God must be predicated of His essence; because
unbegottenness is known to be an attribute or predicate of God, therefore, a begotten Son
cannot be of the divine essence.
Prior to the Eunomian controversy, however, the fathers of the East had already
made divinization a vital component, if not the governing theme, of their soteriologies.
This study will examine whether or not these authorsIrenaeus, Clement of Alexandria,
Origen, and Athanasius in particularfounded their respective doctrines of sanctifying
participation in the divine nature upon a real distinction, in re ipsa, between the divine
essence and energies, or upon any other differentiation within God between
communicable and incommunicable elements or modes, such that Augustines absolute
simplicity and immutability could not be predicated of God. Briefly, it is my thesis that
they did not. Certainly, like Augustine and the West, they assumed a conceptual
distinction between Gods infinite, simple, immutable essence and the various analogical
qualities, titles, or perfections through which finite minds can know and speak of Him, as
well as between the intratrinitarian acts of begetting and spiration on the one hand, and
the ad extra acts of creation and adoption, common to all three Persons of the Godhead,
on the other hand. Nothing in the thought of these four Easterners, however, requires or
1Myrrha
Lot-Borodine, La dification de l'homme (Paris: ditions du Cerf, 1970), 40.

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assumes a real distinction within God between what is communicable and what is
intrinsically incommunicable or unknowable.
Instead, they established the metaphysical possibility of divinization through
grace upon the revealed datum, at once anthropological and christological, that the human
person was created according to the image and likeness of God. To be deified or
divinized through the sending of the Son and the insufflation of the Holy Spirit, as these
fathers understood it, is to be given by grace the power to achieve the end toward which
the human race was ordered by nature at its creation, namely, to acquire a dynamic, ever
greater knowledge of and likeness to God. There is no possibility anterior to Gods will
for communion between the embodied finite and the incorporeal Infinite. Man is capax
Dei only because God, in His eternal love and with immutable foreknowledge, freely
endowed him with this potentiality at the creation. To be divinized, to participate in the
divine nature, is to be given a supernatural, created likeness to God through mimetic and
obediential cooperation with Gods uncreated operations in the economy of salvation. It
is to be incorporated to the humanity assumed and healed by the Logos, the Second
Adam, and indwelt by the Holy Spirit. It is not, as the fathers of the ante-Nicene East
conceived it, to become uncreated by grace. Thus, they found no need to specify what
mode or dimension of the uncreated is multiple and alterable enough to belong to a
creature.
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I. PALAMISM AND DIVINIZATION

The manner in which St. Gregory Palamas and his followers reformulated the
traditional patristic doctrine of divinization, or sanctifying human participation in the
infinite, ever transcendent God, was to draw a real, in re ipsa distinction between Gods
multiple, fully communicable, uncreated energies (energeiai) or operations and the
simple, absolutely inaccessible and unknowable divine essence (ousia) or being. Such a
distinction is necessary, according to Palamas, because if the divine energy is not in any
sense distinct from the divine substance, then creating, which belongs to the energy, will
in no way differ from generation and procession, and therefore creation will become
divine.1
His modern disciples are still more adamant that the very possibility of an
authentically Christian doctrine of divinization such as the fathers proposed stands or
falls on this differentiation. Vladimir Lossky, the putative founder of neo-Palamism,2
1Capita
96, appealing to Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus 18, PG 75:312c: For this reason
the divine Cyril pointed out the distinction between the substance and energy of God
when he said that begetting belongs to the divine nature but creating to his divine
energy, adding the wise statement, Nature and energy are not identical.
2According
to the editors of Istina (see vol. 19 [1974]: 258), it was Lossky who
originated the neo-Palamite movement as an Orthodox response to Jugies polemical
1925 article on Palamas for the Dictionnaire de thologie catholique and in response to
Losskys Parisian teacher, Etienne Gilson, who had instructed him in the importance of
St. Thomas real distinction in creatures between esse and essentia.
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reasons that if the biblical promise of II Peter 1:4 that the redeemed will be partakers of
the divine nature is to be construed as anything more than an illusion or a rhetorical
expression or metaphor and if the Pauline/Johannine language of living in Christ
refers to a union in any sense real, then we will be
compelled to recognize in God an ineffable distinction, other than that between
his essence and his persons, according to which he is, under different aspects,
both totally inaccessible and at the same time accessible. This distinction is that
between the essence of God, or his nature, properly so-called, which is
inaccessible, unknowable and incommunicable; and the energies or divine
operations, forces proper to and inseparable from Gods essence, in which he goes
forth from himself, manifests, communicates, and gives himself. 1
The essence or nature of God must be considered absolutely incommunicable,
unknowable and imparticipable to creatures even after the Fathers self-disclosure
through the incarnation of the Son and the insufflation of the Holy Spirit (indeed, for all
eternity2) because, as the Palamite logic requires, if it were possible to know or to
participate in the essence of God even in the very least degree, we should not at the
moment be what we are, we should be God by nature and God would have as many
1Vladimir
Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (London: James Clarke,
1957; reprint, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1998), 67, 70.
2John
S. Romanides, Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics, Greek

Orthodox Theological Review 6, 2 (1961): 200, contrasts the Latin disciple of Eckhart,
who claimed to have had an immediate vision of God in this life, with the Fathers (who)
are emphatic in denying the possibility of any vision of the divine essence not only in this
life but also in the next. The Greek Fathers deny vision of the divine essence even to
angels. This denial of course means that the Latin notion of beatific vision is rejected
outright. Cf. Ibid., 9:263: the full divinization of man and his transfiguration with
uncreated light is in the future only in the sense that participation in it is consummated
in the future for either the body or the soul or nature as a whole.
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hypostases as there would be persons participating in his essence.1 For the same reason,
the divine hypostases of the Son and Holy Spirit are as utterly inaccessible as is the
essence they share in common with the Father.2 If it were true, therefore, as the historic
opponents of Palamas are said to have claimed, that there exists ontologically nothing
other than God in His absolutely simple, immutable trihypostatic essence and created
effects of Gods essence, then the uncreated operations or dwelling of God in the world
must be either identified with the essence or separated from it completely as actions
which are external to it,3 thereby rendering a creaturely participation in the divine life
1Lossky,
The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 69-70. Lossky continues on pp.
73-4 that if we dont hold an ontological distinction between Gods essence and energies
then we cannot fix any very clear borderline between the procession of the divine
persons and the creation of the world; both the one and the other will be equally acts of
the divine nature. A second but related consequence of this failure to find a real
distinction in God is that the economic or ad extra life of the Trinity in relation to the
created world would be as fully subject to necessity as is the inner life of the Trinity. See
also L. C. Contos, "The Essence-Energies Structure of St. Gregory Palamas with a Brief
Examination of its Patristic Foundation," Greek Orthodox Theological Review 12 (1967):
286: if no distinction were admitted between the divine nature and its operations, then
mans sacramental oneness with Christ, the fundamental presupposition to salvation,
would render him the equal of Christ in all respects, since it would be a oneness in
essence; the divine hypostases would be multiplied ad infinitum.
2Ibid.,
70.
3Lossky,
The Vision of God, 2d ed., trans. Ashleigh Moorhouse (Crestwood, NY: St.
Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1973), 158. Lossky continues in regard to Palamas critics:
either they must admit the distinction between essence and operation, but then their
philosophical notion of simplicity would oblige them to reject the existence of the glory
of God, grace and the light of the Transfiguration among creatures; or else they must
categorically deny this distinction, which would oblige them to identify that which cannot
be known with what can be known, the incommunicable with the communicable, essence
and grace. In both cases, the deification of created being and therefore also all actual
communion with God would be impossible.
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possible only at the expense of Gods transcendent integrity.1 The Western doctrine that
whatever is not essence does not belong to God, Yannaras complains, renders any
external manifestation of Gods activity in the world necessarily heteroessential, i.e. a
created result of the divine cause, which in turn means that, in the final analysis, the
theosis of man, his participation in the divine life, is impossible, since even grace, the
sanctifier of the saints, is itself an effect, a result of the divine essence.2
The Palamite logic of the essence-energies distinction very briefly outlined here
reveals and assumes a particular understanding of Gods operations or energies, His
essence, the precise nature of whatever distinction there may exist between the two, and,
perhaps most importantly, the meaning of human participation in God, which all are
agreed is tantamount to grace. Before treating the historical question of whether and/or
with what sense the fathers grounded their teaching on divinization in a distinction
identical or similar to that described above, which is the proper topic of the current study,
1P.
Krivosheine, as quoted by E. von Ivnka, Palamismus und Vtertradition, in

L'glise et les glises: neuf sicles de douloureuse sparation entre lOrient et lOccident.
tudes et travaux sur l'unit chrtienne offerts Dom Lambert Beauduin, 2:29-46
(Chevetogne: ditions de Chevetogne, 1955), 30, also believes that unless one
distinguishes between Gods essence and energy, one cannot affirm a true human
communion with God sans tomber dans une confusion pantheiste de la creature avec la
Divinite. Michael Azkoul, The Influence of Augustine of Hippo on the Orthodox Church
(Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), 50, further claims that failure to distinguish
between Gods Essence and his uncreated Energies implies an ontological dualism
between God and the world and, consequently, the impossibility of deification. See also
Clement Lialine, The Theological Teaching of Gregory Palamas on Divine Simplicity:
Its Experimental Origin and Practical Issue, Eastern Churches Quarterly 6 (1945-46):
277.
2Christos
Yannaras, The Distinction between Essence and Energies and its Importance
for Theology, St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 19 (1975): 242-3. To support this
position, Yannaras contrasts a passage from Pope Pius XIIs encyclical Mystici Corporis
Christi, which warns against a doctrine of mystical union which would surpass the proper
limits of our creatureliness, with Nyssa, On the Beatitudes 7, PG 44:1280cd, which
affirms that man escapes from his own nature, becoming an immortal from a mortal that
he is . . . and from a temporal creature to an eternal one, being man becoming wholly
god.
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we will need to explore further and attempt to clarify the origin, meaning, and importance
of these more strictly constructive, thematic issues.
THE DIVINE ENERGIES OR OPERATIONS

First, we need to consider what the Palamite school understands by the term
uncreated energies, apart from their simply being the communicable aspect of the
divine nature. Can anything further be said about what it is of God that is possible to be
known and participated by creatures? Among the very few studies which have addressed
the patristic doctrine of energeia outside the context of Palamism, G. Richters survey of
the fathers employment of this language and concept, in which the referees are restricted
to Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus, and Anastasius of Sinai only, concludes
that the Christian tradition has always spoken of energeia in the sense of the activities
(Ttigkeiten) of God, but it did so with an extremely wide range of meanings, using the
terms dynamis, energeia, and boulsis similarly to designate the characteristics of the
nature of a person and to denote the actuality or concrete existence of an entity: as
thought is a movement of the soul, so is energeia a movement of ones nature.1
Historically, St. Gregory Palamas himself initially applied the term energeia to the
uncreated light which he believed that he and his fellow fourteenth century hesychasts
on Mount Athos beheld in contemplative prayer. The energies of God constitute the
inaccessible light in which, as St. Paul says, God makes his dwelling: dwelling in light
unapproachable, whom no man hath seen nor can see.2 This is the very light which
illuminated Christ at His transfiguration on Mount Tabor, the uncreated splendor with
which the righteous will shine like the sun (Matt. 13:43). It is identical to divinizing
1Gerhard
Richter, Anstze und Motive fr die Lehre des Gregorios Palamas von den
gttlichen Energien, Ostkirchliche Studien 31 (1982): 282.
2Lossky,
The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 76, quoting I Tim. 6:16. One
wonders, however, if the energies are to be identified with this unapproachable light, in
what sense is the essence of God distinctively unapproachable?
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grace (theopoiou charitos) 1 and is responsible for the theophanies of Hebrew Scripture. 2
To the allegation of Messalianism leveled against him by Barlaam and Akindynos,3
Palamas responded that the uncreated light with which worthy Christians are perfused
and deified is neither corporeal itself, nor discernible to the human eye, but only to
another unnamed faculty of the human person, which is itself the work of uncreated
grace.4 Neither is this a kind of purely intelligible light which enlightens the mind, for its
uncreated nature raises it above all sense and all intellect.5 The deifying glory of God
is furthermore not the essence of God, 6 but it is the visible character of the divinity, of
the energies in which God communicates himself and reveals himself to those who have
purified their hearts.7
More than the radiant presence with which God enables Himself to be
encountered mystically in prayer, however, the energies came to be identified by the
1Palamas,
Capita 92.
2Lossky,
The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 76, citing Habakkuk 3:3-4: His
glory covered the heavens and the earth was full of his praise. His brightness was like the
rays flashed from his hand; and there he veiled his power.
3Messalianism
was a heresy of the fourth through the seventh centuries which taught that
by the practice of continual prayer, one could come to see God with corporeal eyes. If on
nothing else, Lossky, The Vision of God, 154, and Jugie, Palamas Grgoire, in
Dictionnaire de thologie catholique, 11:1755, agree that it was Barlaams allegation that
the hesychast doctrine of a visible divinity (the light of Mt. Tabor) was Messalianism
redivivus which prompted Palamas to have recourse to the essence-energies distinction in
the first place. Cf. John Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas, trans. George
Lawrence (London: Faith Press, 1964), 46, who notes that Palamas wrote the first of his
Triads in 1341 as a direct response to this particular allegation from Barlaam.
4Meyendorff, A Study
of Gregory Palamas, 173.
5The
Hagoritic Tome, quoted by Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God, ed. Thomas
E. Bird and John Erickson (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1974), 59.
6Palamas, Against Akyndynos,
quoted by Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God, 58:

God is called light not according to his essence, but according to his energies.
7Lossky,
In the Image and Likeness of God, 58.

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!17
Palamite tradition with Gods virtues or attributes, His will, and with the ideas or logoi
with which He planned eternally the temporal creation.
The attention given to Gods virtues, attributes, or perfections by advocates of the
essence-energies distinction is a sequela from the doctrines historic roots in the Arian
controversy, when the Cappadocians sought to confound Eunomius claim that the
attribute of unbegottenness belongs to the divine essence, thus obviating the very
possibility of coessential sonship.1 Palamas himself, as do most of his disciples,
commonly assumes and implies that the divine attributes belong to the energies. In
correction to anyone who maintains that only Gods essence is uncreated, while his
eternal energies are not uncreated, for instance, he quotes in evidence Maximus the
Confessors teaching that goodness, blessedness, holiness, and immortality have always
existed.2 Dumitru Staniloae, whose book length exposition of Palamism relies almost
exclusively on Pseudo-Dionysius The Divine Names for historical precedence, defines
the uncreated energies as nothing other than the attributes of God in motion3 and
entitled his chapter devoted most fully to the energies The Super-Essential Attributes of
God. The list provided by Panagopoulos of the energies or dynameis he believes to have
been contained in the doctrine of the Eastern fathers includes goodness, holiness,
wisdom, love, freedom, power, immortality, incorruptibility, and infinity.4
Presumably in response to Jugie, who argued that Palamas had naively reified
some biblical and Greek patristic anthropomorphic and metaphorical language
1Andre
de Halleux, Palamisme et Tradition, Irnikon 48 (1975): 482.
2Hagoritic
Tome, in Philokalia 4:422.
3The
Experience of God, trans. Joan Ioanita and Robert Barringer (Brookline, MA: Holy
Cross Orthodox Press, 1994), 125.
4Johannes
Panagopoulos, Ontologie oder Theologie der Person? Die Relevanz der

patristischen Trinittslehre fr das Verstndnis der menschlichen Person, Kerygma und
Dogma 39 (1993): 5.
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regarding Gods perfections,1 Lossky boasts that Scriptures anthropomorphic

expressions do not trouble Palamas at all because he understood that Gods attributes or
perfections are living and personal forces--not in the sense of individual beings, as
Palamas opponents wanted to define them, accusing him of polytheism, but precisely in
the sense of manifestations of a personal God. 2 Yet, Lossky is elsewhere more hesitant
to identify the energeiai with those perfections or attributes which Pseudo-Dionysius
called the names of God (wisdom, life, justice, love, etc.), lest they become fodder for
Western rationalism: although one may say, to use a common expression, that the
energies are attributes of God . . . these dynamic and concrete attributes have nothing in
common with the concept-attributes with which God is credited in the abstract and sterile
theology of the manuals.3 The divine attributes are manifested or revealed by the
energies, Lossky says, and are as innumerable as the energies, but he stops short of
identifying the two terms. Whereas the energies such as Goodness, Life, Deification
are real things (pragmata) rather than just words, Palamas refuses to call the energies
qualities of God because qualities belong to anything necessarily, whereas the
energies are the expression of the sovereign divine will.4 Does this rationale from
Palamas not appear to fail to distinguish between Gods own virtues and the analogous
1Jugie,
Palamas Grgoire, 1760. Specifically, he has in mind the doctrine of certain

Greek Fathers, especially adversaries of Eunomius and Aetius, on the incomprehensibility
of God, and the language of byzantine mystics on divine light and the divinization of
man by grace.
2Lossky,
In the Image and Likeness of God, 57. See also Lialine, The Theological
Teaching of Gregory Palamas on Divine Simplicity, 270: the anthropomorphic
expressions of (Scripture) do not cause Palamas the slightest embarrassment.
3Lossky,
The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 80.
of Gregory Palamas, 225, citing Against Gregoras 1, 2. Palamas

draws the following analogy: wisdom is the necessary quality which a master must
possess to teach his pupil, but God only possesses wisdom as energy, for he only grants it
according to his will.
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virtues He gives to rational creatures by grace? According to this conception, human

wisdom is an instance of divine wisdom, rather than a finite reflection of it. God is not
determined by any of his attributes because all determinations are inferior to Him,
logically posterior to his being in itself; Gods perfections, therefore, His goodness, His
love, His wisdom, are subsequent to the essence and are its natural manifestations, but
are external to the very being of the Trinity.1
Because Gods attributes are outside His essence, Lossky adds, Eastern theology
would never countenance the Holy Spirit being assimilated to the mutual love of the
Father and the Son, since the only love of God is the love-energy possessed in
common by the three divine Persons, who are themselves higher even than love.2 For
the same reason, it is impossible to say that the Son proceeds by the mode of the
intelligence and the Holy Spirit by the mode of the will, because, in contrast to western
theology, the tradition of the Eastern Church never designates the relationship between
the Persons of the Trinity by the name of attributes.3 Yet, with respect to this and similar
oppositions drawn by neo-Palamite theologians between their mentor and Augustine, it is
interesting to note that Palamas himself did teach that the person of the Holy Spirit is
like the love (hoion tis ers) between the persons of the Father and the Son.4 Jugie
called it a theory identical to that of St. Augustine and St. Thomas,5 and most scholars
1Lossky,
2Ibid.,
81. Lossky adds rather cryptically: The trinitarian psychologism of St.

Augustine is viewed rather as an analogical image than as a positive theology expressing
the relationship between the persons. It is difficult to see how such an obviously good
willed concession to the West is compatible with Losskys otherwise constant refusal to
admit the via analogiae into discourse about God.
3Ibid.,
citing Maximus the Confessor, De ambiguis, PG 91:1261-64, as an example of the

Eastern refusal to admit qualifications in the Trinity.
4Capita
35-36.
5Palamas
Gregoire, 11:1766.
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!20
who have addressed the issue find here at least an indirect influence of Augustine on
Palamas.1
Secondly, following the definition of the Third Council of Constantinople in 680,
which resolved the Monothelite controversy by determining that the incarnate Christ
possessed two distinct wills, this on the basis that every nature has its own proper energy,
it has also become a commonplace among theologians of the Palamite school to locate
Gods will among His energeiai. 2 Palamas himself draws an equation between the
1See
Edmund M. Hussey, The Palamite Trinitarian Model, St. Vladimirs Seminary

Quarterly 16 (1972): 83-89; John Meyendorff, The Holy Trinity in Palamite Theology,
in Trinitarian Theology East and West, ed. M. A. Fahey and J. Meyendorff (Brookline,
Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1979), 40. Sinkewicz, Saint Gregory Palamas: The
One Hundred and Fifty Chapters, 16-34, argues that the Capita passage in question can be
explained adequately on the basis of Palamas known Eastern sources (Theodoret of
Cyrus, Anastasius of Sinai, Maximus the Confessor, and John Damascene), whom he
demonstrates to have outlined a psychological analogy of their own, without reference to
Augustine. Jacques Lison, LEsprit comme amour selon Grgoire Palamas: Une
influence augustinienne? Studia Patristica 32 (1997): 327-8, thinks it more likely that
Palamas found his sources in the thought of his Medieval contemporaries than in the
patristic authors to whom Sinkewicz points, even though Lison agrees with Sinkewicz
that the psychological analogy of the trinitarian image is present in the writings of those
fathers. Specifically, Lison argues that Gregory the Sinaite and Theoleptus of
Philadelphia, both of whom had access to Planudes translation of Augustines De
trinitate, clearly portrayed the Holy Spirit as the ers of the Trinity, thereby accounting
for an indirect augustinian influence on Palamas. Lison is also, however, careful to
enumerate and emphasize the differences between Augustines and Palamas respective
constructions of this erotic pneumatology, noting that Palamas evinces none of
Augustines penchant for speculation and, whereas Augustine was attempting to
distinguish the Spirit immanently in relation to the Father and the Son, Palamas was
attempting only to affirm contra Barlaam and his fellow sceptics that the human mind, by
virtue of its having been created according to the image of God, is indeed capable of a
direct or immediate knowledge of God. Most recently in this connection, Flogaus,
Palamas and Barlaam Revisited: A reassessment of east and west in the hesychast
controversy of 14th century Byzantium, St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 42, 1
(1998): 16-23, shows that references to and quotations from Planudes thirteenth century
translation of Augustines De trinitate recur frequently in Palamas writing.
2Meyendorff,
Byzantine Theology (New York: Fordham University Press, 1974.), 153,

citing Maximus the Confessor, Expos. orat. domin., PG 94:1057bc.
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!21
divine will, grace, and energies1 and, in response to his opponent Nicephorus Gregoras at
the Synod of 1351, claimed that his own theology was only a development (anaptuxis)
of the decisions of (the Sixth Ecumenical) Council about the two energies or wills of
Christ.2 Yannaras calls the will an energy of nature and believes that the real, historic
issue in dispute between Palamas and Barlaam was whether or in what sense Gods will
is distinct from His nature.3 Gods temporal missions in the world are, according to
Lossky, a work of the will common to the three hypostases, whereas the eternal
procession of the Persons is an act of the very being of the Trinity. The Greek Fathers,
he claims, used the verb ekporeuomai to denote the latter and the verbs proimi and
procheomai to denote the economy.4 This economic will of God, which Lossky also
pluralizes and calls the thought-wills of God, are contained in his simple energies.5
Yet, Lossky also seems to remove the divine will from the realm of energies when he
draws the following careful distinction: Gods will has created all things by the energies
in order that created being may accede freely to union with God in the same energies. 6
Thirdly, the will of God is as fully akin to the divine ideas or logoi as it is to the
energies, according to Losskys Palamite doctrine. A distinctively Eastern Christian
doctrine of divine ideas holds that Gods volitional thoughts (theltik ennoia)
constitute the intention with which He predestined all things to be created in their
1Contra Akindynos
3.6.1, quoted in Contos, The Essence-Energies Structure of St.

Gregory Palamas, 286.
3Yannaras,
The Distinction between Essence and Energies and its Importance for
Theology, 235-6. From Palamisms Western critics, Garrigues, L'nergie divine et la
grce chez Maxime le Confesseur, Istina 19 (1974): 278, seems to agree with this
assessment.
4Lossky,
5Ibid.,
99.
6Ibid.,
89-90, emphasis his.

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!22
manifold diversity, although they are not the eternal reasons of creatures contained
within the very being of God, determinations of the essence to which created things refer
as to their exemplary cause, as in the thought of St. Augustine which later became the
common teaching of the whole Western tradition and was more precisely formulated by
St. Thomas Aquinas.1 Instead, the Greek Fathers located the divine ideas outside the
essence of God and made them more dynamic and intentional, to be identified with
the will and thus not subject to the necessity to which the essential generation of the
Son and spiration of the Spirit are subject. If the divine ideas or models or logoi of
creation were part of the essence of God (which, Lossky complains, is all that Augustine
recognizes in God), then either the created world will be disparaged, and deprived of its
original character as the unconditioned work of the creative Wisdom, or else creation will
be introduced into the inner life of the Godhead. Augustine falls prey to the first error,
wherein the divine ideas remain static--unmoving perfections of God, while certain
Eastern sophiologists (like Bulgakov, one imagines, though Lossky doesnt mention him
here) are susceptible to the latter. 2 Although he cites Gregory of Nyssa and John of
Damascus along the way 3, Lossky takes this doctrine of divine ideas almost entirely from
Pseudo-Dionysius, who calls them models (paradeigmata), predestinations
(proorismoi), and providences (pronoiai).4 Because they do not belong to the
inaccessible essence of God, nor are they identical with created things, but remain
separate from creatures as the will of the craftsman remains separate from the work in
which it is manifested, therefore the Eastern and Dionysian doctrine of creation is so
1Ibid.,
95, citing no text from Augustine or Thomas.
2Ibid.,
96.
3Nyssa,
4De
Hexam., PG 44:69a; John of Damascus, De imaginibus 1.20; De fide orth. 2.2
divin. nom. 5.2, 5.8, PG 3:817, 824.

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!23
close to that of deification that it is hard to distinguish between the first state of creatures
and their final end.1
Other Palamite theologians are less hesitant openly and clearly to identify the
divine ideas with the energies. Lot-Borodine writes that the uncreated, superessential
radiation of God through which creatures can become participants in the divine life
itself, is nothing else than the Ideas of all things, preexisting in Gods powers.2
Meyendorff also locates the thoughts of God among the uncreated energies in the
course of arguing that the dilemma presented by Origens requirement that the
omnipotent God, because He is also fully actuated and immutable, always have creatures
upon which to exercise His omnipotence, was resolved by Palamas through his doctrine
of the logoi of all created things, which Meyendorff characterizes as powers which his
sovereign will transforms into temporal acts; because they are not the essence of God,
they can change and multiply without compromising the immutability and simplicity of
Gods essence.3 Consequently, whereas Platonism had been the greatest temptation for
Eastern Christian thought from the time of Origen, inasmuch as it is characteristic of
Platonism to believe in a world of intermediary, formal realities between God and the
world of particulars, Meyendorff claims that its final defeat came only with Palamas,
who rejects any autonomous reality existing between God and creatures; God himself, in
1Lossky,
2M.
Lot-Borodine, La doctrine de la dification dans l'glise grecque jusqu'au XIe

sicle, Revue de l'Histoire des Religions 105 (1932): 5-43; 106 (1932): 525-574; 107
(1933): 8-55; reprint, La dification de l'homme (Paris: ditions du Cerf, 1970), 35.
3A Study
of Gregory Palamas, 223-4, citing Capita 140; Against Akindynos 4.11-12;

Against Gregoras 2. See also ibid., p. 119, were Meyendorff cites Triads 3.2.24-27 in
support of placing the ideas among the energies and comments: The conception of the
world as the mirror of God was clearly taken by Palamas from the Greek Fathers, and it is
founded on the doctrine of divine logoi present in the creation, which all the Fathers, after
St. Justin, had adopted, and which goes back to the Stoics.
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!24
his free condescension, is that reality.1 Sherrard also works from the Origenist
problematic of a preexistent creation of all things in God. He proposes that the
"uncreated causal energies" of all existent beings were formed in an "uncreated creation"
outside of the temporal sphere, "conceived and comprehended in the eternal life of the
Son . . . and are at one with his reality;" the creation, therefore, may be regarded as a
continuous process in which God, as the Logos manifests himself in time in accordance
with the particular nature of each of his multiple hypostatic causal energies and powers.2
Thus, whereas energeia is most literally rendered action or operation, the
term came to signify within the Palamite tradition everything which God revealed of
Himself in the economy of salvationHis attributes or predicates and His will or
thoughtsas well as the sequential, temporal acts whereby He and they are revealed,
consummately in the divine light of Christs transfiguration.
THE DIVINE ESSENCE

Secondly, in what sense is the term essence or ousia to be understood, according
to Palamas and his disciples?
Above all, however ambiguous or antinomial their language about the
relationship between Gods uncreated energies and essence, the neo-Palamites are clear
about what they believe the essence of God is not and cannot be, namely, what
Meyendorff calls the philosophical notion of essence or simple essence, with which
he believes the West uncritically identified God on the basis of Greek philosophical
1John
Meyendorff, St. Gregory Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality, trans. Adele Fiske
(Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1974), 126.
2Philip
Sherrard, The Greek East and the Latin West (London: Oxford University Press,
1959), 41.
!24
!25
presuppositions.1 The doctrine of divine simplicity as taught in Neoscholastic manuals

of theology, Lossky complains, originates in human philosophy rather than in the
divine revelation in as much as the manuals base the divine simplicity upon the concept
of simple essence, for the philosophical concept of God as pure act cannot admit
anything to be God that is not the very essence of God, thus requiring either a
communicable essence or a God who cannot be encountered by creatures except through
created intermediaries.2 In this connection, Meyendorff and Romanides both see the
mark of Augustinianism on Theodore of Mopsuestia, who seems to have had a concept
of God that identified the divine essence with the philosophical concept of immutability
and yet excluded any existence of divine ('uncreated') life ad extra, thereby effectively
precluding any form of real union between divinity and humanity, allowing only a
juxtaposition of the two natures.3 Meyendorff hypothesizes that the doctrine of
deification would not be suspected in the West of being a single transposition of neoPlatonic pantheism, if the West only shared the Eastern fathers conception that God is
more than His essence. 4 The reason why Protestants cannot come to see the truth of the
Eastern Orthodox cult of the saints or their sacramentalism is because the former are still
beholden to the Augustinian tradition from which comes the idea that God, being
1Meyendorff,
Byzantine Theology, 188.
2Lossky,
The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 77-78, citing Sebastien

Guichardan, Le problme de la simplicite divine en Orient et en Occident aux XIVe et
XVe sicles. Grgoire Palamas, Duns Scot, Georges Scholarios (Lyon, 1933), which he
characterizes as a striking example of this theological insensibility before the
fundamental mysteries of faith.
3John
Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's

Seminary Press, 1975), 209; John S. Romanides, "Highlights in the Debate over
Theodore of Mopsuestia's Christology and Some Suggestions for a Fresh Approach,"
Greek Orthodox Theological Review 5 (Winter 1959-60): 140-85, esp. 179-81.
4John
Meyendorff, Orthodoxy and Catholicity (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1966), 129.
!25
!26
identical with his essence, cannot be participated otherwise than in his essence.1
Similarly, Yannaras contends that the Thomistic conception of essence as being
requires that every relation with this ontic essence can only be merely external, a
relation or experience according to the law of cause and effect. 2 Still more insidiously,
he maintains, the Western understanding of Being as that which causes things to exist
results in the banishment of God from the universe, renders Him unavailable to direct
experience, and reduces His presence in human consciousness to the rationalistic logical
demonstration of abstract metaphysical truths.3 The practical consequence of this
development was to absent religion from daily life, to make it only something
supernatural and superadded, eventually little more than a convenient conceptual
framework for the individualistic moralism following upon Kants categorical imperative,
which Yannaras takes to be iconographic of what he contemptuously calls the West.4
The essence or ousia of God, Palamas and his followers propose in the
alternative, does not properly denote the full, incomprehensible measure of who God is,
Gods fully actuated, infinite quiddity, but refers only to a particular mode or
1Ibid.,
132. Hence, Protestants believe that Gods glory is a zero-sum equation; to the
extent that it is attributed to humans, it is deprived from God.
2Yannaras,
Theology, 234. How or why the attribution of ontic essence to God excludes the
divine indwelling in creatures, Yannaras does not say. Does he mean to suggest that
Western Christians--Catholic and Protestant--neither teach nor believe in Gods
inhabitation in the regenerated? Cannot the very being of God be present to the
redeemed while remaining fully differentiated, incomprehensible, and utterly gratuitous?
3Christos
Yannaras, Orthodoxy and the West, Eastern Churches Reveiw 3 (1971): 288.
4Ibid.,
290. This distinctively Western ethos, he continues, is characterized by the

following features: the priority of the conceptual explication of revealed truth; the
dividing boundary between the transcendent and the worldly; the will to dominate nature
and history; the banishment of God to an empirically unreachable realm; the separation
of religion from life and the reduction of religion to symbols; the elimination of ontology,
that is to say, dogma, and its substitution by Ethics. In this way, the West suffers from
an absence of the realism expressed by the theological truth of Eastern Orthodoxy.
!26
!27
dimension of Gods being. The essence is necessarily being, but being is not necessarily
essence: this principle, writes Meyendorff, is the real significance of what is called
Palamism.1 God transcends Himself, His essence transcending His being or existence
and His being or existence transcending His essence. Hence, Augustines proveniential
Western error was to believe that God is transcendent only in so far as he is
suprasensible Being, transcending all matter, and having no anthropomorphic character,
but not in so far as he is above all being, Lot-Borodine proposes: for Augustine, God's
mystery does not lie in His own nature, but in the imperfection of the human nature
which cannot raise itself to the purely intelligible.2 The Greek fathers on the other hand,
implicitly acknowledging the existence of an intrinsically inaccessible dimension of
Gods nature, denied every possibility to the creature of knowing the hyperousia, which
is unknowable in se, God ad intra hidden in the absolute transcendence of the theos
gnophos.3 As Palamism would have it, the being, existence, or uncreated glory of God
is superessential (hyperousios) and more-than-God (hypertheos).4 Palamas even finds
something in God prior to and beyond the inaccessible essence itself: in the
trihypostatic essence there is a transcendent cause, the Deity-Source.5
If the language and logic of divine supra-essentiality can seem tautological at
times, in as much as its authors appear to contain their conclusions in their
presuppositions by assuming in an a priori fashion that in order for God to be
transcendent of His creation, a mode or aspect of His nature must necessarily remain
1A Study
of Gregory Palamas, 213, quoting Palamas, Against Akindynos 2.10.
2Lot-Borodine,
3Ibid.,
La dification de l'homme, 37, n. 17.
244.
5Against Akindynos
1.7, quoted in Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas, 219.

Meyendorff identifies this Deity-Source as the hypostasis of the Father and then
comments: In neither the one nor the other is the simplicity of the divine nature found to
have been broken.
!27
!28
eternally inaccessible to creatures, 1 Lossky comes close to defining what he and the
Palamite school mean by ousia in the first place (i.e., apart from its unapproachability)
when he calls Aristotles deuterai ousiai essences, in the realistic sense of the word, as
opposed to Aristotles primary substances, which Lossky describes as individual
subsistences and applies not to Gods essence, but only to the Persons or hypostases of
the Trinity. 2 That is principally, primarily and properly called ousia which is stated of
no subject and which is in no subject, or, in other words, those species wherein the
first ousias exist.3 Ousia, according to this notion, is a kind of genus like human or
animal. Yet, Lossky immediately confuses the matter when, in the same paragraph, he
also defines ousia as all that subsists by itself and which has not its being in another, in
which case, as he admits, ousia and hypostasis are the same thing, each term being
equally capable of denoting both an individual substance and the essence common to
many individuals.4
Rowan Williams thinks the ambiguity and imprecision with which Palamas and
his followers employ the term ousia is, along with their distributive or entitative concept
of participation, largely responsible for their belief that if God were not more than His
ousia or if His ousia were communicable, then there would be no way in which to
differentiate the Trinitys threefold possession of the divine ousia from the creatures
reception of Gods ad extra self giving, nor would it be possible to distinguish between
the generation of the coessential Son and the creation and adoption of human persons. 5
1Lossky,
The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 86: Gods essence is by

definition incommunicable.
2Ibid.,
50.
3Ibid.,
quoting Aristotle, Categories 5.
4Ibid.,
50-51.
5Rowan
Williams, The Philosophical Structures of Palamism, Eastern Churches

Review 9 (1977): 30-33.
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Although, as Lossky displayed above, they sometimes correlate the essence with what
Aristotle called a secondary substance, that is, a genus or species, yet sometimes they
also use the term as though it were referring to a primary substance, an existing
particular. In either case, Williams contends, the Palamite alternative between an
incommunicable divine ousia on the one hand and pantheism on the other hand arises
from their ultra-realistic, materialistic, Neoplatonic assumption that the divine ousia is a
concrete realitythe stuff which constitutes the God-ness of God, 1 adopted proximately
from the metaphysical framework of Pseudo-Dionysius, whose proodoi and dynameis
were interpreted by Palamas as fully divine, uncreated mechanisms of mediation
between the imparticipable (amethektos), superessential (hyperousios) nature of God and
His creation.2 If ousia is to be understood in the generic, deuteroessential manner which
Lossky calls the realistic sense of the word, then to say that Gods ousia is unknowable
and unapproachable, as many of the Eastern fathers do, is little more than to state the
obvious, for in this case ousia is an abstract or formal notion and therefore by
definition is not the kind of thing that can be known in the experiential manner Palamas
and Lossky intend. Only substance-in-act can be known because it is only the
substance-in-act, or what Aristotle called primary substance, which exists. In the case of
God, then, to say that His ousia is unapproachable means that He can be known only as
He acts to make Himself known.3 Yet, Palamas and his school contend that the divine
ousia remains entirely inaccessible even after God has acted to make Himself known.
To the anticipated Palamite objection that his account of the theological meaning
of ousia fails to show how Gods incomprehensibility surpasses that of creation, since
every ousia, whether uncreated or not, is by definition unavailable to conceptualization,
Williams responds that what sets God apart is that Gods act of being (actus essendi)
1Ibid.,
34, emphasis his.
2Ibid.,
37.
3Ibid.,
40.
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alone is infinite, self-subsistent, and without composition. Unlike the theoretically

comprehensible, finite, contingent, and compound world of creatures, Gods actus
essendi itself, wherein His ousia and energeia or quiddity and act of being, perfectly
coincide, is eternally incomprehensible to those finite minds who know Him and
experience Him only through His ad extra or economic operations, which are simply the
diverse ways in which his single actus essendi is present to us.1
To summarize, whether it is more similar to primary or to secondary substance,
the divine ousia which Palamas, Meyendorff, Sherrard, Yannaras, Lot-Borodine, and
Lossky distinguish and withhold from Gods economic self-gift does not designate for
their purposes the fulness of God, but strictly one mode of His being or life. Hence, to
say that Gods essence cannot be known or communicated, as the ante-Nicene fathers
whose thought we will examine do, is not, within the Palamite framework, another way
of saying that the God who gives Himself through the sending of the Son and the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit does so incomprehensibly and inexhaustibly.
THE ESSENCE-ENERGIES DISTINCTION

Thirdly, what is the relationship between Gods acts, attributes, will, or energies
and His essence? In what sense can it be said that the two are distinct?
While recognizing that the fundamental thesis of Meyendorffs Introduction
ltude de Grgoire Palamas is that the patristic doctrine of the Christians divinization
implies the Palamite dogma of a real distinction, in God, of the essence and the energies,
Barrois cautions that one should retain some reservations regarding the words real
distinction and should prescind from its usage in patristic theology as far as possible,
this because it is a technical term of late western scholasticism, far less precise than it
1Ibid.
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sounds.1 With that admonition in mind, however, we still need to inquire into the nature
of the distinction which Palamas and his school oppose to the so-called Augustinian
Wests doctrine that the diversity of ways in which creatures encounter God does not
reflect an ontological diversity within Gods nature. Aidan Nichols, I think, neatly and
helpfully stated the heart of the issue with this question: Is the language of energies
nominal or adverbial? 2 In other words, do the names of God denote multiple, uncreated
realities external to or effluent from the simple divine essence, or are they creaturely
ways of characterizing the activity of the one, fully essential God?
Only very rarely do the Wests Palamite critics contend openly and explicitly that
what everyone, East and West alike, acknowledges to be at least a phenomenological
(adverbial) distinction between Gods attributes and His essence is also necessarily
ontological (nominal), meaning that the energies are subsistent, divine realities external
to but inseparable from the essence. In what appears to be an unguarded moment, Lossky
applies the phrase real distinctions to this keynote of Palamism, but then immediate
warns that such distinctions introduce no composition into the divine being.3
Yannaras declares that the acceptance or the rejection of the distinction between essence
and energies opposes two noncoinciding ontologies.4 Upon this distinction hangs
1Georges A.
Barrois, Palamism Revisited, St. Vladimirs Seminary Quarterly 19

(1975): 213; 215, n. 6. See also Kallistos Ware, The Debate about Palamism, Eastern
Churches Review 9 (1977): 48, who expressed his doubts that the phrase real
distinction, redolent as it is of the scholastic distinction in creatures between esse and
essentia, could correspond very well to the Palamite doctrine.
2Review
of Maxime le Confesseur: essence et nergies de Dieu by Vasilios Karayiannis

(Paris: Beauchesne, 1993), in The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 46 (1995): 494.
Nichols argues that the answer to this question given by St. Maximus is adverbial.
Note of caution: what Nichols means by nominal here is not conceptual, as when the
same appellation is used to provide an alternative to real or ontological.
3Lossky,
4Yannaras,
Theology, 241.
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the question of whether knowing God is a matter of knowledge as direct personal

relationship and existential experience or knowledge as abstract intellectual
approximation, which are not simply two different theoretical views or interpretations,
but two diametrically opposite ways of life, with concrete spiritual, historical and cultural
consequences.1 Meyendorff spurns the Augustinian option specifically because there
is no real distinction in God and emphasizes that the distinction--a real distinction-between divine 'essence' and divine 'energy' is made unavoidable in the context of the
doctrine of 'deification,' which implies a 'participation' of created man in the uncreated
life of God, whose essence remains transcendent and totally unparticipable. 2 He further
contrasts Palamas with those in the West who have an essentialist philosophy as the
foundation of their theology and consequently teach that God is known only through
his works like a simple essence whose properties are only nominally distinguished from
one another (polnnums, ou pragmatiks).3
Indeed, it is in the course of rejecting the conceptual or phenomenological
distinction of the West that Palamites come closest to proposing outright an ontological
distinction. Florovsky, for example, asks rhetorically whether we should not rather
regard all these distinctions as merely logical conjectures, necessary for us, but ultimately
without any ontological significance; without providing an unequivocal no, he
answers that such a solution could only arise from a follower of Augustine, who
diverged at this point from the Eastern tradition.4 Contos also specifies that Palamas
1Ibid.
2Meyendorff,
3A Study
Byzantine Theology, 186-7.
of Gregory Palamas, 203-4.
4Georges
Florovsky, St. Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers, Greek
Orthodox Theological Review 5 (1959-60): 129.
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differentiation between the essence and will of God is clearly not an intellectual
distinction, hence an abstraction; it is ontological.1
More commonly, though, an ontological distinction is suggested only indirectly
by one of two oppositions or antinomies the neo-Palamites find between the essence
and energies, those of freedom vs. necessity, and peri auton vs. kat auton.
First and most conspicuously, Lossky and Meyendorff oppose the freedom and
dynamism of the energies with what they characterize as the necessity of Gods inner
trinitarian life. The Greek fathers located the divine ideas outside the essence of God and
made them more dynamic and intentional, according to Lossky, because they had to
be identified with the will and thus not subject to the necessity to which he assumes
the generation of the Son and spiration of the Spirit are subject.2 Lossky seems to
contradict himself, however, when he writes again that the energies are not produced as
an act of Gods will, but are the natural processions of God Himself, like the rays of the
sun proceeding from the disk, which would come forth whether there were anyone to
receive them or not:3 the energy is not a divine function which exists on account of
creatures, for even if creatures did not exist, God would none the less manifest Himself
beyond His essence; just as the rays of the sun would shine out from the solar disk
whether or not there were any beings capable of receiving their light. 4
Romanides also denies freedom to the immanent Trinity and to the Father when
he claims that, in response to the Arian and Eunomian attribution of the begetting of the
Son to the will of the Father, the Church insisted that the will does not generate, for
only the hypostasis of the Father can be considered the cause and source of the other
1Contos,
"The Essence-Energies Structure of St. Gregory Palamas, 286-7.
2Lossky,
3Lossky,
In the Image and Likeness of God, 54, citing Palamas, Capita 92, 94.
4Lossky,

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hypostases.1 Meyendorff likewise reasons that in order for Gods relation to the world
of creatures to remain free and personal (presumably unlike the trinitarian relations!), His
eternal plans or logoi for the creation must be truly distinct from His nature or essence.
Otherwise, creation would be as necessary as generation or spiration, from which acts
Meyendorff wants to exclude the will and freedom of God: the thoughts or divine
ideas with which God planned the creation of the universe from all eternity are the
expressions . . . of divine will, not of divine nature, and represent the unlimited
potentiality of divine freedom.2 In other words, in order for God to have been directly
responsible for the act of creation, some latent potentiality within God had to have been
actuated when the created world began. Since it is axiomatic that the simple essence of
God cannot be altered by its relation to creatures, whatever of God did change must
therefore lie outside His essence. The essentialist philosophy which Meyendorff
attributes to Augustine and other Latin authors, then, would culminate either in pantheism
or Arianism because if there is no ontological basis within God upon which to
differentiate between the free act of creation and adoption on the one hand and the
necessary act of generation and spiration on the other hand, then neither is there any truly
theological reason why creation should not be considered coessential with God or the Son
1Romanides,
Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics, 9:269.
2Meyendorff,
Byzantine Theology, 131, citing Greg Naz, Carm theol IV de mundo

5.67-68; John Damasc, DFO 1.9; 2.2; Max Conf, Schol, PG 4:317. Cf. Ibid., 132, where
Meyendorff cites Maximus, Amb. 7, PG 91:1081 and Thunberg, Microcosm, 76-84, (esp
81) to argue that Maximus also located the diversity of creation in the logoi or plan or
will of God, which existed eternally in potentia in Gods mind and were actuated at the
beginning of time. These logoi can mediate between the timeless God and a temporal
creation because they are ontologically differentiated both from Gods imparticipable
essence as well as from the creation. The Logos in whom they reside remains superessential and above participation.
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and Spirit not be considered creatures, as Meyendorff sees it.1 If nothing else, this
particular line of argumentation seems implicitly to undermine the common Palamite
defense that their distinctions involve no separation; if the will of the Father is not at all
involved in the generation of the Son and if His thoughts are expression only of His will
but not of His nature, then it is difficult to see how they are not separate as well as
distinct. Moreover, if the energies are not involved in the inner life of the Trinity, then
how can anything be predicated of that life, since the neo-Palamites insist that only the
energies of God are knowable or communicable? If the generation of the Son and the
spiration of the Holy Spirit are acts of the essence only, absent the will or energies, how
can Meyendorff say anything about them at all and remain within the limitations
established by his own gnoseology?
The mutability of the divine energies which Meyendorff implies above (if the
energies were immutable in his scenario, his entire rationale for locating them outside the
divine essence would collapse), Dumitru Staniloae clearly proposes on behalf of
Palamism: God himself changes for our sake in his operations, remaining simple as the
source of these operations and being wholly present in each one of them.2 Rowan
Williams calls this doctrine the purest Neoplatonism.3 And Palamas himself, in the
very paragraph in which he wrote that the divine will is other than the divine nature,
disavowed the possibility of there being any change admitted to God: although the
energy is a quasi-accident (symbebkos ps), in as much as it is not one of those things
1A Study
of Gregory Palamas, 221-2. How does this separation of Gods will from His
nature not compromise His simplicity? We can no longer be talking about modes in this
case, for Meyendorff insists that the will or intentionality of God must be excluded from
the generation of the Son and Spirit.
2The
Experience of God, 126.
3Rowan
Williams, The Philosophical Structures of Palamism, 38.

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that can subsist on its own, it also admits or effects no increase or diminution and is
absolutely immutable.1
Secondly, the neo-Palamite school assumes and implies an ontological distinction
in God by setting up an opposition between what the Cappadocians described as peri
auton (concerning Himself or around Himself) and katauton (according to
Himself or in Himself), illustrated here by Gregory Nazianzen:
The divine nature cannot be named. . . . For, just as no one has ever inhaled the
entire atmosphere in one breath, neither has any mind ever understood, nor any
word ever expressed adequately the essence of God. Yet, beginning from His
attributes (ek ton peri auton), we can draw a sketch of what God is in Himself (ta
kat auton).2
Observing in 1973 that the linguistic distinction between God as He is in Himself and
God as He acts to reveal Himself derives in particular from the anti-Eunomian polemic
of the Cappadocians,3 de Halleux recognized the legitimacy of the question of whether
Basil and the two Gregories intended with this terminology to propose an ontological or
rather a conceptual distinction between the two. He concluded at that time that their
literature reasonably remains vulnerable to both interpretations. Yet, two years later, after
the 1974 publication of an issue of the journal Istina devoted to the Western critique of
Palamism, de Halleux would ask again whether the Cappadocians understood the
difference between Gods essence and operations to be objectively grounded in God or
born of the infirmity of our discursive reason, and would answer with the familiar
Palamite refrain that the latter view can come only from confusing the living God with
1Capita
135. Cf. Capita 127-128; Against Akindynos 6.19. He also writes in Against
Akindynos 6.21: the energies are not accidents (symbebkota) of the essence, because
they belong to it as its own by nature.
2Gregory
Nazianzen, Or. 30, PG 36:125bc, quoted in Houdret, Palamas et les

Cappadociens, 267.
3Andr
de Halleux, Palamisme et scolastique: exclusivisme dogmatique ou pluriformit

thologique? Revue Thologique de Louvain 4 (1973), 430.
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the pure act of the philosophers.1 The difference between katauton and peri auton
cannot be understood merely as the difference between God as He is in Himself and God
as finite minds are able to know Him, de Halleux contends, because when peri takes the
accusative it must be translated as around (autour de) and not as concerning (au sujet
de). For this reason, the peri auton is not what God has revealed of His katauton, or
the essence in so far as we are able to know it, the simple perceived as multiple, but
refers instead to a coming forth (jaillissement), distinct in God Himself, from the
inaccessible center of His being.2 De Halleuxs requirement that this distinction be
objectively grounded in God comes primarily, it would seem, in direct response to
Garrigues, who sought to demonstrate textually in the aforementioned issue of Istina how
Maximus the Confessor clarified what the Cappadocians left rather murky, namely, that
peri auton is correctly translated concerning God, not around God, indicating that
Gods predicates are multiple and distinct from one another only phenomenally, this
because the finite, time-bound human mind is not capable of knowing them as they
actually are in God, which is perfectly simple and indistinguishable because eternal and
infinite.3
It is difficult to see how the rational creatures inability to know God as He is in
Himself would not need to be attributed entirely to the limitations of the created mind,
however. Are not unintelligibility and incomprehensibility terms of relative predication?
Is not God unknowable only specifically in relation to rational creatures, if at all? If God
were intrinsically unknowable, He would be unknowable to Himself, it seems. Yet,
Meyendorff joins de Halleux in opposing what they believe is the Eastern and correct
position that God is unknowable in se to the Augustinian Wests belief that Gods
unknowability is attributable only to creaturely finitude. For Augustine, Meyendorff
1de
Halleux, Palamisme et Tradition, 483-4.
2Ibid.,
484.
3J.-M.
Garrigues, L'nergie divine et la grce chez Maxime le Confesseur, 272-96.

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!38
bemoans, Gods transcendence is relative to the deficiency of the creature, especially

that of the fallen creature. God is invisible, incomprehensible, unknowable, because man
does not possess the necessary vision to see him, the necessary intellect to comprehend
him, and the necessary knowledge to know him.1
Endre von Ivnka also asks in what sense the teaching of the uncreated energies
is to be understood and replies that the Cappadocians and other Eastern fathers spoke of
a difference between Gods essence and His energies only to combat the Arian claim that
human knowledge of God through creation is an adequate knowledge and to affirm that
salvation involves a participation in God, but one that does not introduce creatures into
His essence. The fathers, he attempts to show, held to a strictly conceptual distinction
between Gods essence and His energies, one which was only a parable and an
illustration whereby the suprasensible and suprarational can be expressed in finite
language, but not a distinction intrinsic to God.2 Ivnka furthermore applauds the
distinctively apophatic character of Eastern Christianity, but opines that it is better
preserved with an antinomy between Gods essence and energies which is grounded in
the insufficiency of the human mind than it is with the notion of a conflicting
coexistence (Nebeneinanderbestehen widersprechender) in God which the human mind
ambitiously pretends to grasp ontologically. Indeed, Ivnka thinks the latter alternative
ironically cataphatic. 3 His interpretation of the matter bears some resemblance to that of
1Meyendorff,
Orthodoxy and Catholicity, 121. Cf. Idem, A Study of Gregory Palamas,
204.
2Ivnka,
Palamismus und Vtertradition, 33, citing Basil, PG 29:648a; 32:869b; Nyssa,

PG 45:960cd; 44:1280ab; Pseudo-Dionysius, PG 3:645a, Maximus, PG 90:1083b. De
Halleux had earlier in 1973 (Palamisme et scolastique, 426, 430) called Ivnkas
philosophical critique of the Palamite doctrine of divine energies most penetrating and
had listed Ivnkas article as the best of what he calls the most technical and apparently
most impartial inquiries of Catholic patrologists, which collectively conclude that the
real distinction between the divine essence and energies contradicts the thought of the
fathers.
3Ibid.,
41-42.
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Akindynos, St. Gregorys fourteenth century opponent, who emphasized the limitations
of finite human language to give expression to the infinite God, thus producing a
gradation in the dogmatic value of various theological formulae, both biblical and
philosophical. For instance, Akindynos observes:
the fathers did not seem to speak or think of the divine will in a univocal manner,
but sometimes presented the Son as the will of God the Father . . . and sometimes
utilized their terms for the will of God to designate things which are neither
uncreated nor coeternal with Him, such as His commandments.1
Without attempting a textual analysis of the Cappadocians use of peri auton,
Rowan Williams also maintains that the authentic patristic apophaticism was established
on the incapacity of the finite vis-a-vis the Infinite, rather than in differentiating the latter
from itself. Because the Cappadocians are not preoccupied with the problem of
participation, he thinks it highly unlikely that their employment of the language of ousia
and energeia implies any more than this fairly simple epistemological point, referring
to Aquinas distinction that creatures can know that God is (quod est), but not what God
is (quid sit), or in other words, according to His esse but not according to His essentia.2
Although by virtue of our mutable, temporal finitude, we creatures necessarily encounter
1Nadal,
La critique par Akindynos de lhermneutique patristique de Palamas, Istina 19

(1974): 304, quoting Akindynos, IIIe traite contradictoire de Gregoire Akindynos contre
Palamas. Nadal notes that Akindynos also wants to give a great deal of attention to the
context within which any particular patristic document was written, for each author was
induced by the usually polemical demands of the moment to emphasize some aspects of
the one Faith and to ignore others. In this way, Akindynos warned, the specific purpose
of the author can be decisive to the sense in which his language is to be taken. For
instance, he argues that Cyrils use of the term accident in relation to Gods perfections
(Thesaurus 31, PG 75:445d-448a.) is not a proper basis for Palamas to conclude that
Gods energies are in actuality a sort of accident (symbebkos ps, quoted above), since
the polemical, ad hoc context in which the term was used does not support such a
realistic interpretation.
2Rowan
Williams, The Philosophical Structures of Palamism, 43. All this leads

Williams to the conclusion that Palamass distinction has no more than verbal parallels
in earlier theology.
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Gods activity as a sequence of apparently discrete operations, there can in fact be no

temporal succession of acts whereby the eternal, infinite God is constituted as what He is
without rendering Him less than eternally self-actualized or without recourse to an
emanationist, ontological gradation within God, akin to what Plotinus and Porphyry
developed. Indeed, it is the very vocation of Christian theology, as distinct from that of
other religions, to steer us away from the mythical notion that these (operations) are
sequential to God, even though they appear sequential to us, according to Williams.1
The Palamite school itself seems conflicted in this regard. In contrast to the
doctrine of Lossky, Meyendorff, Florovsky, and de Halleux exposed above, LotBorodine, Ware, and Sherrard come close to agreeing with this conceptual distinction as
proposed by Garrigues, Williams, et al. An otherwise ardent and often polemical devotee
of Palamism, Lot-Borodine attributes the idea of an intrinsically incommunicable God to
pagan Greek philosophy and contrasts this conception with that of the Jewish or biblical
one:
For the Greeks, as for the Jews, God is equally inaccessible, but for different
reasons, philosophical and religious: the Greeks regard the first Principle to be
unknowable in se, due to the absence in Him of any definable quality, for He is
simple substance. And for the Jews, the overwhelming majesty of Him whom
they dare not name does not permit an imperfect human nature to approach Him
or to know Him outside of revelation.2
Bishop Ware likewise, against charges of obscurantism, chooses to defend the use of the
term antinomy to characterize the postulation of a distinction in God on the basis that
the creatures discursive reason is incapable of seeing the complementarity of opposed
truths, although he believes that a reconciliation is possible on the higher level of
1Ibid.,
31, emphasis his.
2Lot-Borodine,

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contemplative experience.1 And Sherrard rather awkwardly concedes that the difference
between Gods essence and energies is not a distinction in divinis, but a distinction
which the human mind is forced to make if that all-important paradox of which we have
spoken is to be preserved. 2 None of these three statements, it would seem, are
incompatible with the apophaticism of Augustine or Aquinas.
Moreover, many representatives of the neo-Palamite school give vigorous
expression to a doctrine of divine simplicity, with which they frequently combine modal
language for the essence-energies distinction, grounded in God Himself though it may be.
Essence and energies are not, for Palamas, two parts of God, as some modern critics still
imagine, Lossky explains, but two different modes of the existence of God, within His
nature and outside His nature; the same God remains totally inaccessible in His essence-and communicates himself totally by grace. 3 Elsewhere, Lossky attempts to capture the
essence-energies distinction as follows: Wholly unknowable in His essence, God
wholly reveals Himself in His energies, which yet in no way divides His nature into two
1Ware,
The Debate about Palamism, 46. The only alternative, as Ware sees it, is
between the Palamite essence-energies antinomy on the one hand and, on the other hand,
the rationalism of the Sabellian modalists and the Arians, both of whom attempted to
resolve the mystery of a God who is at once one and three by reducing Him either to the
one or to the three. The rationalism of the Apollinarians and Nestorians also attempted to
reduce the mystery of the incarnation to neat formulae. The carefully constructed
distinction between hypostasis and physis with which Chalcedon itself resolved these
disputes, Ware cautions, does not in fact explain but merely safeguards the
mystery. (Ibid., 48) All this, it seems, is fully compatible with a conceptual distinction.
2Sherrard,
The Greek East and the Latin West, 38.
3Lossky,
The Vision of God, 157. Lossky also writes of another mode of the divine
existence outside the essence of God, the mode of grace, in which God communicates
Himself and manifests Himself. (Ibid., 166)
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parts--knowable and unknowable--but signify two different modes of the divine

existence, in the essence and outside the essence.1
Yannaras likewise proposes that Gods will or energy, which are ontologically
(but not ontically) distinguishable from the nature as well as from the person, constitutes
the mode of being of nature.2 Whatever this modal language indicates precisely for his
doctrine of God, Yannaras is careful to ensure that it does not make the energies parts
or components or accidents of the divine nature, for each energy recapitulates
impartially and wholely the entire nature, but that it makes of them the multiple
means by which humans can name or signify the simple nature, in support of which
construction he quotes St. Basil: Essence and energy can both receive the same name
(logos).3
Meyendorff acknowledges that Palamas was willing to consider the divine
essence itself as Goodness, Wisdom and Majesty, but he qualifies this immediately with
the explanation that as this essence is imparticipable, these appellations in fact apply to
it alone and all signify the same thing. 4 He also recognizes that, for Palamas, in a
certain sense, essence and energies are identical in God, but neglects to say anything
further about how they are identical and prefers instead to emphasize only their
1Lossky,
The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 86. See Ibid., 76: Even though
the uncreated energies are not God in His essence, they are nonetheless inseparable
from His essence and bear witness to the unity and the simplicity of the being of God.
2Yannaras,
Theology, 236, emphasis his. The negative qualifier in this statement would seem to
make the distinction a conceptual one (only -logically), in which case there is no real
conflict with the so-called Western approach.
3Ibid.,
quoting Basil, Epist. 189, PG 32:696b.
4A Study
of Gregory Palamas, 221, citing Against Gregoras 2; Capita 34. One is tempted
to ask Meyendorff: if the essence of God is absolutely inaccessible and unknowable, how
can these perfections be predicated of it?
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distinction.1 Meyendorff also affirms divine simplicity when he contends that the
Palamite distinction introduces no division to God because in virtue of the simplicity of
His being, God is wholly and entirely present both in His essence and in His energies.2
The essence-energies distinction does not involve complexity in God because both
belong to one unique living God3 and because there is one sole God living and acting in
the imparticipable essence as in the energies.4 This notion that the divine essence only
belongs to God in the same way the energies belong to Him, but is not the full,
infinite measure of who God is in His trihypostatic Being seems to render Meyendorffs
affirmations of ontological simplicity vacuous, however.
Panagopoulos also, who begins his consideration of this matter by recalling that
the Greek fathers of the Church made a clear differentiation between the
incomprehensible ousia and the dynameis or energies common to the trinitarian divinity,
Sacred Scripture naming the latter kataphatically, quotes approvingly Maximus the
Confessors doctrine of simplicity: The identity of the energy of the Father Son and
Holy Spirit shows clearly the simplicity (Ununterscheidenheit) of their nature. We can
1Ibid.,
225.
2St.
Gregory Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality, 126. Cf. A Study of Gregory Palamas,
214: the uncreated operations are not a part of God, for God is not thus subject to
partition for our benefit; complete he manifests himself and does not manifest himself,
complete he is conceived and is inconceivable by the intelligence, complete he is shared
and is imparticipable. Furthermore, because the divine energies have no hypostasis of
their own, but are powers of the one essence of God share by the three hypostases, they
cannot be understood as parts of God. (Ibid., 216.)
3A Study
4Ibid.,
215.
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recognize the nature of the actor through our knowledge of the energies. 1 Staniloae,
although claiming that God himself changes for our sake, otherwise seems to suggest
that the energies or attributes of God are not ontological entities, but are the multiple,
changing ways in which the simple, immutable essence of God is present and active in
relation to creation: In his descent to us, God communicates to us in modes adapted to
our conditioning something of what he is in fact, leading us to stages which correspond
more and more to himself.2 Staniloae also seems less bound than other Palamites to the
formula of the absolute inaccessibility of the essence of God, as when he writes:
Through his attributes God makes something of his being evident to us and the words
which have reference to divine operations can also serve as names of Gods being. 3
These two statements together would seem to suggest an adverbial rather than
nominal identity to the energies; the energies of God are distinct from the essence only
as activities of the essence, similar to the way in which Nichols characterized the position
of St. Maximus, who, he wrote, presents the divine nature as energetic--but not as
formally distinct from its own energies.4
Furthermore, it is not at all clear that Palamas himself taught or assumed a real or
ontological distinction between Gods essence and energies. While reproving the West
for trying to impose its own constructions on Eastern theology in order to judge it, D.
1Panagopoulos,
Ontologie oder Theologie der Person, 6, citing Opusc. theol et polem.,

PG 91:284a. He further admonishes: The only ontological category of being which the
Eastern fathers of the Church recognized deals with the infinite difference between
uncreated being and created being. (p. 10) Panagopoulos develops this point specifically
against any suggestion that the Father alone is properly called the fountain of all being,
that is, of both uncreated as well as created being, since the energies of the essence
common to each of the divine Persons is the font of created being, not just the person of
the Father.
2The
Experience of God, 127.
3Ibid.,
128.
4Aidan
Nichols, review of Maxime le Confesseur, 494. Nichols cites Garrigues,

L'nergie divine et la grce chez Maxime le Confesseur, Istina (1974): 272-96.
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Coffee implicitly recognizes the materiality of their questions directed toward Palamism
when he responds to the 1974 Istina editorial by answering that Palamas himself
nowhere goes so far as to characterize his distinction as real.1 He later reiterates:
Palamas does not intend the distinction between the essence and the energies to be taken
as real.2 Palamas energeiai are not to be understood as subsistent entities, Coffee
proposes, but the essence in act and the actual manifestation of the essence.3 As
felicitous to Western ears as these expressions may sound, however, neither Palamas
himself nor his modern Orthodox disciples use this kind of language or any other
language which might alleviate non-Palamite suspicions about there lurking an
ontological distinction behind it: witness Coffeys failure here to cite any texts from
authors in the Palamite school. To the contrary, their contention that the essence of God
remains inaccessible would require that the uncreated energies which they place outside
or around the essence of God be neither the essence in act nor the manifestation of the
essence.
Nevertheless, Palamas has his Western advocates. Philips contends that he taught
no objective distinction at all: because Palamas also declares that the energies are really
identical to the essence of God, his antinomial distinction is merely another way of
approaching an ineffable mystery and a typical example of perfectly admissible
theological pluralism.4 The essence-energies distinction of contemporary Palamism
could be comparable to the formalis-ex-natura-rei distinction dear to Duns Scotus,
Philips suggests, which is a distinction between the inseparable attributes of Gods simple
essenceneither ontological nor merely conceptualand therefore finally within the realm
1D.
Coffey, The Palamite Doctrine of God: A New Perspective, 329-30.
2Ibid.,
336.
3Ibid.,
332.
4G.
Philips, La grce chez les Orientaux, Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 48

(1972): 43, emphasis his, citing Capita 34.
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of Catholic orthodoxy.1 It is noteworthy, in this connection, that Romanides has argued

that it was Palamisms principle Medieval nemesis, Barlaam, who preferred the Scotist
formal distinction over against the Palamite essence-energies distinction, which, he
hypothesizes, explains why Barlaam opposed the Thomistic identification of everything
in God with His essence.2 The Scotist distinction is not sufficiently comparable to the
Palamite distinction, however, to render Gods essence incommunicable because the
Subtle Doctor finally identified each of the formally distinct divine attributes with the
divine essence. 3
Kuhlmann also takes a remarkably irenic posture toward Palamism from a
Western, Thomistic perspective. The Palamite operation, according to Kuhlmann (who
devotes the second part of his book to demonstrating that Palamism was never judged to
be heretical by the Catholic Church--not by the Council of Florence, nor by Pope
Benedict XIIs encyclical, Benedictus Deus4) is not God in himself, but God for us, in so
far as He is the being of creatures. Since the essence of God neither can be this nor is
this, the operation is obviously in some way truly (wirklich) different from the essence.
Palamas, he continues, repeatedly refuses to conceive of a composite God, and wishes
only to say with his teaching that God does not remain within himself alone, but wills to
exist also for us and that both are not simply identical. 5
1Ibid.,
38.
2Romanides,
3Frederick
Copleston, S.J., A History of Philosophy, 9 vols. (Westminster, MA: Newman

Press, 1946-74), 2:509.
4Jrgen
Kuhlmann, Die Taten des einfachen Gottes: eine romisch-katholische

Stellungsnahme zum Palamismus (Wurzburg: Augustinus-Verlag, 1968): 107-35. The
first half of this work (pp. 3-104) consists of a comparison between Aquinas and
Palamas respective interpretations of Pseudo-Dionysius.
5Ibid.,
56. But see for a critique of Kuhlmanns efforts at detente: P. B. Schultze, Die
Taten des einfachen Gottes, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 36 (1970):135-42.
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The most recent study on his thought also suggests that Palamas proposed no real
distinction, but it does so with less than decisive conviction. In the publication of her
1995 doctoral thesis at Yale University, A. N. Williams observes that only in two loci1
does Palamas state explicitly that the energies are as constitutively and ontologically
distinct from the essence as are the three Hypostases and only once2 does he clearly insist
that the essence and energies are not the same thing, although he repeatedly implies as
much by speaking of the imparticipable essence and the divinizing energies.3 These are
the only instances in which Palamas seems to propose a threefold distinction in God:
substance, persons, and operations. But Williams believes that even here an ontological
or fully real distinction need not be understood, since Palamas purpose in making these
statements was merely to affirm emphatically that the operations of God in the world are
God Himself, rather than some created intermediary. Indeed, she contends, Palamas
never sets out to construct a new doctrine of God, one that would develop or augment the
Cappadocian definition of one nature and three persons. Neither does Palamas ever seem
concerned to defend or justify or even to define and clarify the essence-energies
distinction, but prescinds altogether from the question of whether the language he simply
adopted from the fathers is to be understood in an ontological or modal or conceptual
fashion: Whether or not contemporary Western scholarly opinion regards the distinction
as firmly rooted in patristic thinking about God, Palamas evidently thinks it is.4 As was
true for the fathers, the manner in which the distinction functions within the larger
argument Palamas was attempting to build is of far more importance than whether or not
1Capita
75: There are three realities (trin ontn) in God, namely, substance, energy
and a Trinity of divine hypostases. (Sinkewicz, 171) Cf. Triads 3.2.4:
2Triads
3.2.10.
3A.
N. Williams, The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1999), 148.
4Ibid.
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he understood it to entail a real difference within Gods own nature. The purpose for
which he uses the distinction is to affirm that God is infinitely knowable and
communicable and at once infinitely transcendent and incomprehensible. This, Williams
maintains, is identical to the constant faith and dogma of the Western Christian tradition,
which expresses the mystery of the communicability of the ever transcendent God in
different language.1 She further argues that Palamas doctrine is to be distinguished from
that of his unnamed modern disciples whose often polemical, tendentious approach has
been obstructive to a proper and accurate understanding of the doctrine of Palamas on the
part of Westerners. In particular, it is not obvious whether the (essence-energies)
distinction is real or nominal in his work.2
Von Ivnka, on the other hand, believes precisely the reverse to be the case, to wit,
the distinction which Palamas himself thought to be a metaphysical differentiation and
not only a necessity of our (finite) thought has been somewhat sanitized by the neoPalamites who, he believes, have carried out a reinterpretation (Umdeutung) of the
original teaching of Palamas and have thereby brought themselves in closer
correspondence to the doctrine of the Eastern fathers than Palamas himself ever was.3
Podskalsky offers a similar judgment:
It is striking that modern Palamism (Lossky, Meyendorff), which claims to
represent Palamas himself, in actuality approximates more closely the early Greek
fathers (Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, Ps.-Dionysius, Basil). In
what way? On the one hand, Palamas is correct not to understand the simplicity
of God so exclusively as to preclude every impartation (Mitteilung) of and
participation (Teilhabe) in the divine attributes. On the other hand, he goes too far
when he characterizes his distinction as a true, valid statement about Gods nature
and then forecloses the rational disputability of this teaching on the basis that the
infinite is incomprehensible.
1Ibid.,
150-56.
2Ibid.,
138.
3Ivnka,
Palamismus und Vtertradition, 33.

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Modern Palamites now understand the teaching of a distinction in God

which follows from the fact of the creatures participation (Anteilhabe) in God not
as a positive, metaphysical statement, but only as a conceptual schematic through
which we can make our participation in Gods nature understandable: a schematic
that must be understood antinomially together with the principle of the absolute
simplicity of God (only logically antinomial, however), and not to be regarded as
more important than the latter, but only complementary with it.1
Podskalsky, however, cites in evidence only one modern Palamite text.2 Moreover, as I
have attempted to demonstrate above, Ivnka betrays an incomplete understanding of the
neo-Palamite school when he writes that they regard the differentiation between the
essence and energies in God only as a necessity for our finite minds . . . but not as a
metaphysically valid expression of an actual reality (Sachverhalt) in God.3 In any event,
Ivnka finds utterly unacceptable what he perceives to be Palamas attempt at comparing
the difference between the Persons of the Godhead to the difference between Gods
essence and operations.4
Philips, Kuhlmann, and Williams notwithstanding, Ivnka seems to be broadly
representative of Western scholars in this regard. As far as Jugie, Palamisms first
modern critic, is concerned, the teaching of Palamas himself is effectively contained
almost entirely in the following statement: there is in God two things really distinct,
although inseparable: the essence and that which flows from the essence, the nature and
1G.
Podskalsky, Gottesschau und Inkarnation, Zur Bedeutung der Heilsgeschichte bei

Gregorios Palamas, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 35 (1969): 41.
2P.
B. Schultze, Die Bedeutung des Palamismus in der russischen Theology der

Gegenwart, Scholastik 26 (1951): 390-412.
3Ivnka,
Palamismus und Vtertradition, 46. He further opines that the neo-Palamites

are in agreement with Aquinas, who recognized the legitimacy of the Palamite
formulation when he located a distinctionem quandam et pluralitatem rationum
intellectarum in the mind of God. (Summa contra gentiles 1.54) Yet, when Aquinas then
again dissolves this assumed multiplicity in the unity of the divine nature he does
nothing other than the Fathers did when they at first introduced the concept of divine
powers and energies and then again removed it.
4Ibid.,
41.
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the properties, qualities, operations, and attributes subsisting in this nature, being also
uncreated and eternal.1
Garrigues also understands Palamas to have taught a real distinction in God, such
that His attributes, what He has, the multiple aspects, virtues, and particular wills
according to which our finite minds are able to know Him, are truly outside His essence.2
He locates the remote source of the Palamite real distinction in Barlaams tutor, William
of Occam, who had rejected the Thomistic doctrine of the creatures analogical
participation in God (the uncreated act of the Creator, participated in a created manner
by creatures in the causality of Being) in favor of an absolutely imparticipable God who
relates to the world only by the acts of His perfectly arbitrary will, that is, a will which is
detached from and reflects nothing of His nature. Palamas drew his distinction when
accused of Messalianism by the nominalist Barlaam, therefore, only because he first
never questioned the notion of the divine essence as pure aseity, which Garrigues
regards as a contraction (rtrcissement).3 Having mutually accepted the PseudoDionysian doctrine of the absolute incommunicability of the divine essence as axiomatic,
then, the rationalists sacrificed divinization to the logic of aseity and the Palamites
safeguarded the Christian dogma of divinization only at the price of innumerable
metaphysical incoherences and of seriously compromising the mystery of the simplicity
of the divine being. 4
Perhaps the most stinging critique of Palamism from the West, however, comes
from those who believe that its characteristic essence-energies distinction is a reversion to
1Jugie,
Palamas Grgoire, 1750.
2J.-M.
Garrigues, L'nergie divine et la grce chez Maxime le Confesseur, 278, citing

Capita 132-33, 135.
3Ibid.,
275.
4Ibid.,
276. Garrigues also blames their mutual reduction of participation to the entitative
mode, which we will treat below.
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Neoplatonism. As Podskalsky reads him, Palamas needed recourse to and indeed did
propose a real distinction only because he first mistakenly gave a Neoplatonic,
emanationist construction to Pseudo-Dionysius, who in fact had emphasized repeatedly
that the differentiation of Gods powers from His unknowable essence did not mean that
truth, life, light, etc., were something other than being, but only represents the attempt
on our part to put into words the incomprehensible relationship between Creator and
creature.1 The central question at issue between Palamas and Barlaam, as Podskalsky
reads the history, was not how the transcendent God could be immediately present to and
in the baptized, but the following: if the human mind is capable of the immediate vision
of Gods uncreated glory in this life, how does the status viatoris differ from the status
comprehensoris or, in other words, how does this vision differ from the eternal beatific
vision?2
Rowan Williams similarly warns that it was the Neoplatonists who first
perpetrated an ontologizing of Aristotles logic by reifying the terms (like substance
and quality) which he intended merely to govern the laws of logic and by assigning to
each of them different degrees of being. Only within this ontologically hierarchical
1Podskalsky,
Gottesschau und Inkarnation, 36-7, citing Pseudo-Dionysius, PG 3:816d;

953c-65a. Cf. p. 8-9, where Podskalsky asks rhetorically of the Palamite doctrine: Did
Palamas take into account an authentically Christian concept of the vision (=faith), which
affirms both the inexorable creatureliness of man and the necessity of a supernatural
redemption in the historical Christ . . . or did he mix in with this some Neoplatonic
elements which are incompatible with Christian dogma--namely, the fall from the One to
the many and return to union? In other words, he continues, Does the category of the
historical (as salvation history) and its related emphasis on personal freedom and
encounter in relationship to God have decisive importance in his system, or does he work
finally with impersonally material (neutraldinglichen) conceptions: light-illuminationbecoming light?
2Ibid.,
15. See also Jugie, Palamas Grgoire, 1753, who finds some of the later
hesychast methods and conceptions to be crudely physical, many speaking of grace as
though the Spirit of God were as palpable as the air we breathe and teaching that the
position of the body is decisive in prayer. It was only this extremely mecanique form
of hesychasm that provoked Barlaams opposition, Jugie maintains.
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framework would it make any sense at all to say, as the neo-Palamites do, that the
uncreated, natural energies of God are objectively outside His ousia. Apart from an
emanationist or hierarchical doctrine of God, however, the ousia cannot be construed as
the irreducibly unified, intrinsically unknowable and imparticipable core reality lurking
behind Gods three hypostasis, relations, and activities, but simply Whatever-it-is-to-beGod.1
Hans Urs von Balthasar, who claims that the fathers who influenced him the most
were all Easterners (namely: Irenaeus, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Maximus the
Confessor),2 also regards the Palamite essence-energies distinction as a reversion both to
Middle Platonism3 and to the Hellenized, cabalistic doctrine of late antique Judaism
which hypostasized the utterances and attributes of God and distinguished them from
His essence in order to secure Gods transcendence. 4 More specifically, he locates the
origin of the real distinction between participable and imparticipable in Proclus, whose
language was introduced into the Christian lexicon by Pseudo-Dionysius, but radicalized
and systematized by Palamas, specifically in the latters claim that the creature can
1The
Philosophical Structures of Palamism, 32-33, citing The Cambridge History of

Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, edited by A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1970), 319ff.
2Hans
Urs von Balthasar, Unser Auftrag: Bericht und Entwurf (Einsiedeln: Johannes
Verlag, 1984), 33-36.
3Hans
Urs von Balthasar, Theodramatik, 5 vols. (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1973-),

2.1:11-12.
4Hans
Urs von Balthasar, Herrlichkeit: eine theologische sthetik, 3 vols. (Einsiedeln :

Johannes Verlag, 1961-), 3.1:52. Cf. Dorothea Wendebourg, Geist oder Energie: Zur
Frage der innergttlichen Verankerung des christlichen Lebens in der byzantinischen
Theologie, Munchener Universitats-Schriften, Bd. 4, Munchener Monographien zur
historischen und systematischen Theologie (Munich: Kaiser Verlag, 1980), 8; C. Journet,
Palamisme et Thomisme, Revue Thomiste 60 (1940): 443.
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never encounter the essence of God even through all eternity.1 What Balthasar believes is
the Palamite idea that an ungiven remainder is withheld in the self-donation of God to
the world through the sending of His essential Son is, he warns, a reversion to the
amethekton of the Platonists.2 The absolute unknowability of Gods essence would
also render trinitarian theology irrelevant to soteriology. In the alternative, Balthasar
cites Romans 8:32 (alles gegeben) and Hebrews 6:4-8 to contend against the Palamite
distinction that Gods self-disclosure to the world through the sending of His only
begotten Son by the Spirit is generously unreserved (rckhaltlose): the trinitarian life
of God is no penultimate, behind which hides an abysmal essence inaccessible to all
creatures. 3 Balthasar thinks that the difference between Eastern and Western concepts of
mystery can be explained most readily by their respective notions of participation
(Teilnahme), about which I will have more to say below; according to the Western
notion, the Father withholds nothing in the generation of the Son except His fatherhood
and the trinitarian God withholds just as little for Himself when He allows His creatures
to become partakers in the divine nature (2 Petr 1,4), except that they cannot themselves
become God.4 Balthasar additionally finds the Palamite emphasis on Christs
transfiguration disproportionate to its place and function in the canonical gospels, where
it always serves as a prelude to the more soteriologically decisive event of the cross.5
In reply to similar arguments against Palamism, Lossky attempts to show that the
God of Pseudo-Dionysius and his Eastern progeny is not the God of the philosophers,
1Hans
Urs von Balthasar, Theologik, 3 vols. (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1985-87),
3:117.
2Ibid.,
3:119.
3Ibid.,
2:137-38. Cf. Theodramatik, 2.1:175. See also Herrlichkeit, 3.2:252-53. See

ibid., p. 16 for positive valuation of the Greek complementarity to Latin theology.
4Ibid.,
2:138.
5Hans
Urs von Balthasar, Explorations in Theology IV: Spirit and Institution, trans.
Edward T. Oakes, S. J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 326.
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nor the One of the Neoplatonists. He does so by arguing that Plotinus One is
unknowable only because every other intelligence belongs to the world of multiplicity
and cannot therefore conform itself sufficiently to the unity of the One in order to receive
the One noetically, whereas the Christian God of Pseudo-Dionysius is equally
unknowable in His essence, but specifically because He is above unity and above oneness
and, indeed, intrinsically impredicable of anything.1 More commonly, however, Lossky
and other modern advocates of Palamism are content simply to deny such allegations of
Neoplatonic emanationism by asserting antinomially that the essence-energies
distinction does nothing to compromise Gods simplicity.
Whether Palamas himself taught a real, ontological distinction within God
between the trihypostatic essence and the common attributes-operations, or an
adverbial distinction, as between the essence and its ad extra activity, or a conceptual
distinction, or no distinction at all, the item of greatest significance from the foregoing
discussion to be gleaned for the purposes of the current study is that most of the neoPalamite theologians we have considered do indeed propose, either explicitly or
implicitly, that sanctifying, human participation in the ever transcendent, infinite God
requires that God Himself consist of more than His altogether simple, immutable,
inaccessible, imparticipable essence, lest one fall unwittingly into a pantheistic
soteriology. Such an ultimatum rests upon a certain, idiosyncratic understanding of the
meaning of participation, to which we now need to turn our attention.
PARTICIPATION AND GRACE

When, in relation to the biblical promise of II Peter 1:4 that the redeemed will
become partakers of the divine nature (theias koinnoi physes), Lossky admonishes
that the uncreated nature to which this sublime hope attaches cannot refer even in the
1Lossky,
The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 29-32, citing Div. nom. 13.3;
Enn. 6.9.3-4; 6.9.10.
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most strictly qualified, delimited manner to Gods essence, for if we could at a given
moment participate to some degree in the essence, we would not in that moment be what
we are, but gods by nature,1 he appears to have relied upon Palamas himself: because a
part of the substance, even the smallest, contains all of its powers, Palamas reasons, if
indeed we participate in that undisclosed substance of God, whether in all or part of it, we
will be all powerful, 2 from which rationale he is able to extrapolate this further
principle: A substance has as many hypostases as it has participants. 3 To participate in
an ontologically simple God, as Palamas and his school understand it, would necessarily
entail becoming a divine person. What particular concept of participation, if any, is
implied by this logic and by similar statements, as noted above, to the effect that Gods
essence must remain absolutely inaccessible even to those who have come to participate
by grace in the divine nature?
Many participants in the dialogue between the Christian East and West agree that
this particular question, which is also a question about the proper meaning of grace, 4 cuts
to the heart of the dispute over divinization, as well as to much of what remains
theologically obstructive to fuller communion between the two traditions. In his account
of the ecumenical discussions held at the monastery of Chevetogne in 1953, for instance,
Moeller concluded that the defining differences between the Orthodox, Catholic, and
Protestant faiths can be captured with the following designations for their respective
1Lossky,
2Capita
108.
3Capita
109.
4Meyendorff,
Byzantine Theology, 138 et passim, identifies Gods uncreated energies
with grace.
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doctrines of grace: deification, created grace, extrinsic grace.1 From the West, Congar
contends that in spite of a broad, foundational agreement between Palamism and the
Catholic faith, the formers essence-energies distinction, which they believe is required
by the affirmation of the full truth of our deification, remains problematic for the
tradition to which Augustine and Aquinas belong: this difference, he specifies, comes
from the idea of participation.2 Lot-Borodine, from a Palamite perspective, also finds
their respective theologies of grace to be decisive in the divergence between East and
West, which she attributes to the Augustinian and Thomistic doctrine according to which
Gods attributes, integral to His essence, are uncreated, but not His operations and
therefore not the entire order of charisms, concluding: it is here where the watershed
lies between the West and the Christian East.3 D. W. Allen, another devotee of St.
Gregory Palamas, decries the rise of scholasticism and a static theology of things rather
than a dynamic theology of the redemptive process and proposes that the highly
technical and controversial distinction between the divine Essence and the divine
Energies, which he believes to have drawn a less sharp distinction between creation
and redemption, nature and grace, than the western tradition, is certain also to be more
serviceable in the New Reformation than the western concept of the created
supernatural. 4 Yet another Palamite, Theodor Damian, agrees that the problem of
Palamism in its ecumenical dimension is primarily related to the theology of grace, to
the simplicity of Gods essence and to the interpretation of the Fathers or, more
1C.
Moeller and G. Philips, The Theology of Grace and the Oecumenical Movement,
trans. R. A. Wilson (London: A. R. Mowbray, 1961): 1. John Meyendorff was among the
participants present at this event, along with Philips and Moeller, who was editor of
Irenikon at the time and provided reports therein from the colloquium.
2M.
J. Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, 3 vols., trans. David Smith (New York:
Crossroad, 1983), 3:65. Cf. Jurgen Kuhlmann, Die Taten des einfachen Gottes, 43-57.
3La
dification de l'homme, 244.
4Orthodoxy
and the New Reformation, Sobornost 4 (1966): 228-29.

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precisely, to the theology of grace, as created, and its relation to the created natural
order, in a way understood and developed by the Eastern Tradition and in another way by
the Western Tradition.1 And the most recent major study on the topic concludes that
among all the theological issues in dispute between the Palamite East and the scholastic
West, the most apparently intractable is that of created grace.2
As suggested by Lot-Borodine above, the neo-Palamite schools understanding of
grace and participation is most clearly demarcated from the Western view by its refusal to
recognize as grace any created, transformative effects of Gods presence and activity in
the world and by its refusal to recognize any acquired or perfected likeness to God on the
order of supernatural, human virtue as an aspect of sanctifying participation in the divine
nature. Addressing these differences forthrightly is made especially difficult by the fact
that the neo-Palamite authors we are considering pay very little attention to the meaning
of participation (methexis, metoch, metousia, etc.) as such. Nevertheless, we can attempt
to extrapolate their working definition of participation from their common doctrine of
grace.
It is the universal teaching of the Fathers, Azkoul writes, that created grace
cannot deify.3 According to the Fathers, grace is uncreated, an extension of the
Divinity. 4 Reading the Christian tradition unapologetically through the hermeneutical
1Theodor
Damian, A Few Considerations on the Uncreated Energies in St. Gregory

Palamas Theology and His Continuity with the Patristic Tradition, Patristic and
Byzantine Review 15 (1996-97): 101.
2A.
N. Williams, The Ground of Union, 15.
3Azkoul,
252, n.11.
4Ibid.,
124, n. 97. He continues: Grace impacts man and nature in various ways. We
experience the effects of grace as Gods love, wrath, etc. The Fathers do not provide,
as does Aquinas (Summa Theologica II-II, Q. CXI), a classification of different graces.
His authority on the topic is, of course, Augustine, whom he quotes five times in this
question. Although Azkoul seems to acknowledge here that the effects of uncreated
grace can also be called graces, he reproaches Aquinas and Augustine for attempting to
recognize a distinction between the two.
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lens of the fourteenth century hesychast controversy, Lialine identifies grace purely and
simply with the contemplative vision of divine glory which the monks who experienced it
believed was uncreated: deifying gracethe only grace to interest us here, and no mere
function or effect of God produced in the soul, but God Himself communicating Himself
and uniting Himself in ineffable union with manis the Divine Light.1 Romanides
likewise claims that for Palamas and the whole Greek Patristic tradition the kingdom of
God, or the Basileia tou Theou, which has caused an endless and conflicting debate in the
West, is the uncreated glory and unapproachable light and darkness in which God
dwells; nothing else may be admitted to membership in the Kingdom of God except the
justifying, life-giving, glorifying (or divinizing) uncreated grace of God. 2 Against
Roman Catholics, he specifies, the Kingdom of God is not the Church . . . and this
uncreated glory or grace or kingdom (rule) is not the divine essence.3 In reply to the
position of unnamed contributors to the 1974 issue of Istina (presumably J. M. Garrigues,
J. P. Houdret, M. J. Le Guillou, and J. S. Nadal), who attempted to demonstrate that the
authentic patristic doctrine of divinization involves the acquisition of a created habitus
(Greek hexis or diathesis [disposition]), consummately formulated by Maximus at the end
of a lineage which includes Athanasius, Basil, and Cyril, de Halleux objects that the
terms hexis and diathesis are utilized by the fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries in the
context of deification only in an extremely fluid and non-philosophical manner.4
Whereas the scholastics developed a theory of created habitus in conformity with their
moralistic and Augustinian vision of grace and in harmony with the philosophical
principles of their psychology, such that the soul must possess a habitus entitativus
1Lialine,
The Theological Teaching of Gregory Palamas on Divine Simplicity, 277.
2Romanides,
Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics, 9:263, emphasis
his.
3Ibid.,
4de
264.
Halleux, Palamisme et Tradition, 488.

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exceeding its natural possibilities, but at the same time truly its own, therefore created,
the Greek fathers reject the precise meaning of an effect produced ex nihilo, for their
approach, which is more theocentric, although not pantheistic, leads them to conceive
deification as an immediate communication of the divine life.1 Even though Maximus
the Confessor is the only patristic text cited by de Halleux to support his attempted
rebuttal of the 1974 Istina volume in question, Jacques Lison is bold to announce that de
Halleux refutes convincingly the opinion of the authors according to which the theology
of the created habitus corresponds to the true patristic tradition.2 It was due to his
secularism, nominalism, and opposition to the contemplative vocation of monks that
Barlaam defines the term habitus (hexis) as grace, Romanides maintains, since the only
alternative he can see to restricting grace to Gods uncreated operations received through
prayer is another kind of reductionism, viz. the state-of-grace activism expressed in
good works which he believes to be defining of post-Augustinian Latin theology.3 As
an example of the general Palamite neglect to engage in linguistic, philological, or
otherwise critical analysis of the Greek patristic doctrine of participation, however,
neither de Halleux, Lison, nor Romanides evince any awareness that the terms most
commonly used for participation by the Greek fathers, methexis (meta + hexis) and
metoch (meta + echein), are compounds formed from the Greek equivalent of the habitus
which they dismiss as of Augustinian lineage. Another of the fathers favorite terms for
participation, metousia (meta + ousia), would also seem to confound the Palamite
distinction, since the ousia in question, if understood within the context of the Christian
1Ibid.,
491.
2Jacques
Lison, Lesprit rpandu: La pneumatologie de Grgoire Palamas (Paris: Cerf,

1994), 131, n. 139. Lison is especially interested in contesting Garrigues, L'nergie
divine et la grce chez Maxime le Confesseur, 272-96.
3Romanides,

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doctrine of grace, must refer either to the divine essence or to a created substance, in
either case violating the principles of Palamism.
In contrast to the West, which attempts to express the transcendent
communicability of God by distinguishing between Gods uncreated presence in the soul
and its created fruits, between the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the infused virtues, and
habitual and actual grace, Eastern Orthodoxy recognizes no such thing as a created
supernatural in the economy of salvation, i.e., no recreation, rebirth, or perfection of
human faculties, according to Lossky.1 The great soteriological difference between East
and West therefore consists in the fact that the western conception of grace implies the
idea of causality, grace being represented as an effect of the divine Cause, exactly as in
the act of creation, whereas the Eastern Orthodox believe that it is in creation alone that
God acts as cause; grace, on the other hand, is the presence of the uncreated and eternal
light, the real omnipresence of God in all things.2 The Palamite essence-energies
distinction, Lossky writes elsewhere, eliminates the necessity of distinguishing between
grace as the presence of God in us and grace as a created habitus, a distinction which can
only be a separation. 3 Why the distinction between Gods indwelling and its
transformative manifestations in and on His human habitation is necessarily a
separation he does not attempt to explain. Human virtues, then, even the theological
virtues of faith, hope and charity, are not in any sense the sanctifying end toward which
Gods operations lend necessary assistance to a fallen and weakened humanity, according
to Lossky, but are only the means to the sole end of Christian existence, which is the
acquisition of grace.4 And grace, it bears repeating, is for Lossky strictly uncreated and
by its nature divine, for it is the energy or procession of the one nature: the divinity
1Lossky,
2Ibid.,
89.
3Lossky,
The Vision of God, 166.
4Lossky,

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(theots) in so far as it is ineffably distinct from the essence and communicated itself to
created beings, deifying them.1 For this reason, the notion of merit is foreign to the
Eastern tradition, since unlike the West from the time of St. Augustine onwards,
Easterners believe the reception of grace to be conditioned only on human cooperation, or
synergy.2 Grace is neither a reward for the merit of the human will, as it is in
Pelagianism, nor is grace the cause of the meritorious acts of our free will. Rather, the
presence of God within us requires constant effort on our part, an effort which is not
in any measure aided or empowered by grace: nor does grace act upon our liberty as if
it were external or foreign to it. 3
The only attention Lossky gives to love, the form of all virtue, comes in the
context of his exposition on the hesychast method of prayer. There, he identifies human
participation in Gods love with uncreated grace purely and simply, defining it as an
uncreated gift, a divine energy, and the name of God Himself. There is no talk of
charity as apostolic self-gift for the good of the other in imitation of the descending love
of the incarnation and cross. Relying upon one quotation from Gregory of Nyssa (love
is the very life of the divine nature4), Lossky specifies contrary to Aquinas that love is
not a created effect, an accidental quality whose existence would depend upon our
created substance, but an uncreated gift, a divine and deifying energy in which we really
1Ibid.,
172. Uncreated grace is further contrasted with the Old Covenant, when, prior to
the incarnation of the Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit, grace was only an effect
produced in the soul by the divine will acting externally upon the person.
2Ibid.,
197, citing Gregory of Nyssa, De instituto christiano, PG 46:289c.
3Ibid.,
198. Both Pelagius and Augustine, he proposes, were guilty of the same error,
which consisted in transposing the mystery of grace onto a rational plane, thereby
making grace and human freedom mutually exclusive concepts. John Cassian
represented the Eastern perspective by standing above the rationalistic debate between
Pelagius and Augustine.
4Ibid.,
212, quoting from Nyssa, De anima et res., PG 46:96c.

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participate in the nature of the Holy Trinity, by becoming partakers of the divine nature.1
When he attempts finally at the end of his treatment of the theme of love to speak of
human love, of whatever created effect divine love might have on the human person,
which he previously refused to consider as a grace, Lossky acknowledges that love for
God is necessarily bound up with love of ones fellow-man and that this perfect love
will make a man like Christ.2 Yet, as though sensing himself close to agreement with the
West, Lossky quickly insists that the path toward conformity to Christ does not include
the imitation of Christ, which is foreign to Eastern spirituality. Instead, the only
valid or authentically Christian way of acquiring likeness to Christ is that of ascent, a
rising up towards the divine nature by means of union with uncreated grace
communicated by the Holy Spirit.3 It would seem that Lossky could have included
imitation as an aspect of the synergy he so admires, but he will recognize as human
cooperation with divinizing grace only those ascetical practices which contribute toward
the apatheia required to see or experience Gods indwelling energies. Following Christ
by attempting to order ones relation to the Father and to the world as Jesus did seems to
have no place in Losskys soteriology.
Meyendorff also finds an either/or opposition between discipleship to Christ and
deification in Christ: The Christian is called not to an imitation of Jesus--a purely
extrinsic and moral act, but to life in Christ, which is a
1Ibid.,
213-14. Here, Lossky cites Basil, Regulae fusius tractatae, PG 31:908cd, to

establish that this uncreated gift presupposes a corresponding disposition in created
nature, a germ or potentiality for love.
2Ibid.,
214.
3Ibid.,
215.
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communication (perichrsiscircumincessio) of the energies divine and human.1 He

is thus able to say that the miraculous power of the Saints, which in potentiality belongs
to all the baptized, is an uncreated power.2 The gifts of the Holy Spirit of which Paul
writes in I Cor. 12 and 14wisdom, knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, working of
miracles, prophesy, the discernment of spirits, various tongues, the interpretation of
tongues, etc.--are not the created effects of the uncreated operations of God, but are the
uncreated operations themselves.3 Therefore, to participate by grace in Gods wisdom is
to become an instantiation of divine wisdom, not a created manifestation or image of the
same. Lot-Borodine also boasts that the Eastern church, contrary to the West under
the influence of Augustine, has constantly maintained the uncreated nature of the
variety of charisms or gifts of the Spirit--modes of human participation in divine life.4
To be grafted into Christ, to be united to God, and to be saved is to become uncreated
through grace, for in Christ and in the baptized there is one sole indivisible Spirit and,
in him, all distinction between created and uncreated is inadmissible.5
When Akindynos objects to this sort of monophysite reasoning that the humanity
of Christ into which we are incorporated is itself created, Meyendorff accuses him of
having a static notion of the concept of nature; the redeemed themselves become
uncreated because the human nature and the divine nature of the God-man are
permeable to each other while remaining distinct, whereas the Nestorian christology
1Meyendorff,
Byzantine Theology, 164, emphasis his. Cf. Lot-Borodine, La dification

de l'homme, 63, who finds in the Greeks a healthy balance between bearing the cross and
sharing the transfiguration, whereas Medieval Christianity wanted to imitate above all
the sacred humanity, faithful still to the Augustinian motto per Christum hominem ad
Christum Deum.
2A Study
3Ibid.,
4La
of Gregory Palamas, 176, emphasis his.
167, citing Triads 2.2.11; Against Akindynos 3.6; Hom. 24.
dification de l'homme, 36, n. 16, emphasis hers.
5A Study
of Gregory Palamas, 177, emphasis his.

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toward which Barlaams nominalism forced him to move taught a purely external
relation of juxtaposition in Christ between His divinity and humanity and implied a
similar extrinsicism for those who are members of Him.1 To combat such cryptoNestorianism, a heresy at once christological and soteriological, Palamas resorted to the
classification of three types of union: essential union, hypostatic union and union
through the energies.2 The essence belongs to the Persons of the Triune God alone. The
hypostasis of the Son, who alone among the three Persons of the Trinity was united to our
humanity, belongs to the Son alone. Neither of these modes of the divine nature can
belong also to creatures, lest they become coessential with God or God becomes
polyhypostatic (myriupostatos). What remains possible for creatures is a union with
Gods uncreated energies: because Christs body into which the baptized are grafted was
perfused with uncreated grace, or the divine life or glory, they too can become
uncreated in the same way that Christs humanity became uncreated, absent only the
hypostasis of the Son.3
Like Lossky and Meyendorff, Barrois also wants to eliminate all causality from
his doctrine of grace: in contrast to the Western roundabout way from effect to cause,
Gods eternal plan of salvation as seen by Athanasius and the Cappadocians was to
restore in man the divine element, which was in danger of getting lost or forsaken, and
invite the creature to a real participation, not merely intentional (in voto), in the inner life
of the divine persons. 4 Such a theology of participation would be more sharply defined
by St. Gregory Palamas, who would clarify that salvific participation does not involve
access to the divine essence, for we cannot possibly know what God is in his inner self,
1Ibid.,
181.
2Ibid.
3Ibid.,
183.
4Georges A.
Barrois, Two Styles of Theology and Spirituality, Saint Vladimirs

Theological Quarterly 26 (1982): 95, 99.
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but only an encounter with the trinitarian activity.1 How a human participation in the
inner life of the divine persons can be coincidental with absolute ignorance of God in
his inner self Barrois leaves unexplained, except to say predictably that such a
possibility rests on Palamas real distinction of the energeiai from the essence of the
divinity, without prejudice to the transcendent simplicity of the divine being.2 The
metaphysical foundation upon which all of this relies, he continues, is the axiom that
the finite is not capable of the Infinite.3 Are we to understand from this rationale that
Gods uncreated energeiai are finite? Yannaras also maintains that there can be no divine
indwelling sans the Palamite distinction: If we reject this distinction (between nature
and energies) and if we accept, with the Roman Catholics, the intellectual leap to the
essence itself--an active divine essence--then the only possible relation of the world to
God is the rational connection between cause and effect.4
Much of the argumentation above assumes or implies that the Western or Catholic
doctrine of the habitus reduces Gods grace to its created effects and that it takes no
account of Gods uncreated indwelling. God does not remain present and active in and to
the person, as Yannaras reads Western doctrine, but merely creates an autonomous state
which disposes the individual to conform his or her behavior to the divine will. Such acts
of created causality exhaust . . . the relation of God with the world and of God with man
in an entirely external and only rationally conceived aitiological connection, according
to Yannaras, and are both impersonal and deterministic.5 Romanides also believes
that the principle threat to the possibility of deification in Christ is the doctrine of created
1Ibid.,
98-99.
2Ibid.
3Ibid.
4Yannaras,
Theology, 239.
5Ibid.,
243.
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grace, for in the Latin tradition participated supernatural grace is something created,
there being no direct or real participation in the uncreated divine essence.1 LotBorodine attributes the divergence between East and West over the formal content of
beatitude to the Medieval, scholastic doctrine that the light of glory, which makes
possible the final beatific vision of the unveiled face of God, belongs to the created
order, like every grace.2 Wilson-Kastner concurs and blames this defect on the influence
of Augustine: Augustines notion that the Holy Spirit created love in the soul, as well as
dwelling in it, and . . . that grace was an aid God gave us for salvation, tended to
depersonalize the notion of grace as participation in the divine life.3 Unlike the Greeks,
who believed that the very person of the Holy Spirit was freely received by the penitent
in the actualization of salvation, Augustine often wrote of grace as though it were a
name for a non-personal reality created in the soul to aid it to do good, a conception
which eventually, in its Medieval, scholastic embodiment, depersonalized grace,
reducing it from a relationship between God and the believer to an instrument God uses
to mold people according to his will. In this way, Augustine had given impetus to
considering grace as a created entity.4 Barrois also lays responsibility for the scholastic
doctrine of created grace on Augustine: Following Augustine step by step . . . Aquinas
1Romanides,
Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics, 6:198. Barlaam,

whose Latin training drove him to deny that the Old Testament theophanies and the
transfiguration of Christ were deifying communications of the uncreated glory of God
because he had accepted their assumption that all the energies and powers of God
distinct from the divine essence are created, represented the Augustinian position that
there are two glories, the created lumen gloriae of Latin theology by which or in which
the elect will see the divine essence, and the uncreated glory which is this very same
divine essence.
2La
dification de l'homme, 241-42.
3Wilson-Kastner,
Grace and Participation in the Divine Life in Augustine, Augustinian

Studies 7 (1976): 152.
4Ibid.
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held the view that grace causes, even actually creates, the freedom of the human will.1
This he regards to be Aristotelian and concludes by contrasting the Latin
understanding of grace as an intermediate quantity whose function it is to insure or
restore a right relationship between man and God with that of the Greek fathers who
go further when they call the effect of grace a deification, thesis.2 The difference
between these views is expressed also as the difference between the image of God in
man restored in its pristine beauty, which Barrois calls formal similitude, and man
being made a participant in Gods trinitarian life, which he calls vital assimilation.3
To those who would count Augustine and Aquinas among the doctors of the
Church, the entitative or distributive concept of participation implied by Palamisms
refusal to include causality in its doctrine of grace is a truncation of the Eastern patristic
teaching at best. The threefold ontology of the imparticipable (amethekton), the
participated (methekton), and the participating (metechon) proposed by Palamas is taken
almost directly from Proclus, according to Flogaus, 4 who believes that it was Palamas
understanding of participation as necessarily introducing a division in that which is
participated which caused him to reject Augustines teaching that uncreated grace is the
very Person of the Holy Spirit in the soul, contrary to Wilson-Kastners theory outlined
above.5 Garrigues also argues that Palamas effected a kind of reduction of the idea of
participation to that of entitative participation, which he defines as being made part of
1Barrois,
Two Styles of Theology and Spirituality, 92-4.
2Ibid.,
94.
3Ibid.,
95.
4Reinhard
Flogaus, Palamas and Barlaam Revisited, 9, citing Palamas, Capita 89, 93,
and 110; Proclus, Inst. Theol. 23f.
5Ibid.,
15, citing Augustine, De trinitate 15.19.36; Palamas, Capita 75, 93; Triads 3.1.8;
3.1.27; 3.1.34. Cf. Lison, LEsprit rpandu, 79f, 99f.
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another and calls a neo-platonic conception.1 Palamas ignores two other modes of
participation: participation in the causality of the act of being and the volitional
(intentionnelle) participation proper to spiritual beings, which together dispense with
the need to postulate participable intermediate entities in order to safeguard the
transcendence of the divine essence. 2 Because the West grounds the difference between
the generation of the Son and the adoptive filiation of the redeemed in the immutable
eternity of the former and the created temporality of the latter, unlike Palamism, they
would have recourse to a theory of participation which is not a parceling out (coupure en
morceaux).3 For Palamas, metousia Theou entails taking part in God entitatively and
ontologically, thereby making it possible for us to be deified in a literal and absolute
sense.4 This Congar regards to be elementary and material, almost Neo-Platonic.
The tradition which he identifies with Maximus the Confessor and Aquinas, on the other
hand, understands human participation in God to involve the acquisition of a likeness of
Gods perfections of being . . . through the efficient causality which confers existence. 5
Rowan Williams is prepared to go so far as to argue that the entirety of the
patristic and Christian doctrine of human participation in God is reducible to what he
calls intentional participation: the deification of man in grace is the identification of
1J.-M.
Garrigues, L'nergie divine et la grce chez Maxime le Confesseur, 275-6. Cf.

Friedrich Normann, Teilhabe: Ein Schlsselwort der Vtertheologie, Munsterische
Beitrage zur Theologie 42 (Munster: Aschendorff, 1978), 8, who characterizes the
transition between the Judaic and Hellenic contexts this way: The Greek philosophical
way of thinking tends more toward mixing the divine and the human together, whereas
the Judaic theological method turns toward the unique grandeur of Jahweh.
2Ibid.
3Philips,
La grce chez les Orientaux, 45.
4Congar,
I Believe in the Holy Spirit, 3:65.
5Ibid.,
65-66. Concurring is G. Philips, Lunion personnelle avec le Dieu vivant. Essai

sur lorigine et le sens de la grce cre, 2d ed. (Louvain: Leuven University Press,
1989), 253.
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his will with Gods.1 Yet, Williams here fails to address the key biblical concepts of
divine indwelling, adoptive filiation, recovery of the image and likeness of God, and the
en Christo of Sts. John and Paul. He praises some of the neo-Palamite emphasis on
personalism, or a theology which focuses upon the act of Gods self-communication to
men, but seems to consider Palamism only a rival epistemology and never takes full
account of its soteriological claims, as revealed by the complaint he lodges near the end
of the article: Palamism has come to be presented as the doctrine of the Eastern church
on the knowledge of God.2 Moreover, as Bishop Ware observes in reply to Williams,
the impossibility of salvation apart from grace requires that there must be an entitative
or ontological participation through the entry and dwelling of God in the human soul
before there can be an intentional participation or union of the two will; we are able to
conform ourselves to God only because God comes to us first.3
Wares comments here recall yet another school of thought, one which recognizes
and seeks to demonstrate that the alternative between entitative participation and
analogical participation, or between uncreated grace and its equally gratuitous created
effects, is a false one. Giving a certain privileged attention to the entitative dimension of
divinizing participation in God, provided that one also gives analogical manifestations
their due, recalls the prevenience of divine initiative and of the incarnation in
salvation.4 Congar believes that Palamites tend to reject the scholastic or Thomistic
doctrine of created grace only because they fail to grasp the depth and realism of the
1Rowan
2Ibid.,
3Ware,
Williams, The Philosophical Structures of Palamism, 41, emphasis his.
42-43.
The Debate about Palamism, 60.
4de
Halleux, Palamisme et Tradition, 485. It must be noted, however, that Halleux

never addresses the Palamite denial of an analogical sense of participation to accompany
the entitative sense.
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intentional union of the Thomists.1 The truth, he contends, is that Thomas Aquinas and
his fellow high scholastics never reduced the effusive light of glory to the created yet
gratuitous means by which the human soul is made capable of receiving it, nor did they
reduce the indwelling of God to the created effects of which He is the cause, for Western
theologians knew that there is no created grace without uncreated grace, since grace is
that gift with which God himself is given or rather, it is what God gives when he gives
himself.2 As for most of the fathers, so also for Aquinas, uncreated grace, that is, the
gift of the Holy Spirit, logically and causally precedes created grace which recreates us
according to God. The new presence and indwelling are the fruit of this simultaneous
coming.3 In his irenic zeal, Moeller also is at pains to demonstrate that the created grace
taught by Augustine, Aquinas, and Bonaventure does not serve as a fixed, static,
intermediary res between God and the soul (as was the case with the aberrations of the
decadent scholasticism of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), nor does it otherwise
replace the uncreated operation of God in the soul, but is the dynamic gift
contemporaneous to and constantly arising from the divine indwelling. 4 The difference
between Catholic doctrine of created grace and the Orthodox emphasis on deification
he attributes to the fact that the former have been more concerned to discover what it is in
man that enables him to be a partaker of Gods indwelling, whereas the latter are more
concerned about what it is in God that enables Him to give Himself to creatures while
remaining transcendent. He also observes that the Catholic teaching on created grace
1Congar,
2Ibid.,
I Believe in the Holy Spirit, 3:62.
2:84.
3Ibid.,
citing L. B. Gillon, La grce incre chez quelques thologiens du XIVe sicle,

in Miscellanea A. Combes (Rome and Paris, 1967), 275-84.
4Moeller
and Philips, The Theology of Grace and the Oecumenical Movement, 12. He
also argues in Augustines defense that the language of gratia creata did not arise until
the thirteenth century and that Augustine knew nothing of a purely created grace . . .
such as the scholastics distinguished.
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denies nothing of what the Orthodox affirm of the uncreated energies.1 G. Philips booklength treatment of the history and theology of created grace, which begins with the
acknowledgment that it was never called created grace before the year 1225, when the
term was first proposed by way of responding to Peter Lombards proposal that the
person of the Holy Spirit was Himself the agent of the believers love for God,2 maintains
that only the doctrines decadent, late scholastic formulation is responsible for
provoking Scotist, nominalist, Protestant and ultimately Orthodox objections to it,3 in as
much as the eras Catholic manuals of theology lost the sense of dynamism (i.e.,
continual dependence upon divine operation) given to the sanctifying habitus by Aquinas
and tended instead to speak misleadingly of grace as something reified (chosifie), a
state, and a measurable object.4 Although Augustine is the patristic fountainhead of
the Latin theology of grace, this deviation did not arise from his teaching, Philips
contends, but from extraneous factors in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
specifically Matthew of Aquasparta (d. 1302) and his Franciscan colleagues.5
Coffee, however, does not accept the implicit claim that in Thomism uncreated
grace has a logical priority over created grace; St. Thomas believed that God is already
present in the soul of every human person, as He is in the entire universe, but that His
1Ibid.,
9.
2Ibid.,
15: By insisting that sanctified human love is none other than the Person of the
Holy Spirit loving in us, rather than anything like a habitus or hexis of love given to the
human soul by grace, Moeller writes, Peter Lombard (I Sent. distinc. 17) misunderstood
Augustines teaching (De Trin. 15.17.27; Serm. 34.2.3; 169.14) that we must love God
with the love with which He loves us.
3Each
of the first three groups, in the overzealous interest of protecting Gods freedom to
punish and reward from any obligation which a static habitus might threaten to impose
upon Him, also failed to show how His divine liberty wasnt finally arbitrary, according
to Philips.
4G.
Philips, Lunion personnelle avec le Dieu vivant, 9.
5Ibid.,
27, 181-88.
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presence by grace consists in His efficient causality, rather than a new manner or mode
of His uncreated presence in the soul, as Coffey reads Aquinas. Because efficient
causality implies a disjunction of cause and effect, he concludes, created grace is
logically prior to uncreated grace in Thomism.1 A. N. Williams, on the other hand, who
treats the ecclesially divisive topic of created grace in a brief, but very equanimitous way,
demonstrates convincingly the reverse to be the case with Aquinas. St. Thomas never
uses the term gratia creata or its equivalent in his section of the Summa Theologica
devoted to grace, but does so only in the context of Christology (S.Th. III.7.11.),
addressing the created status of the human soul of Christ by way of refuting the
Apollinarian position; the infinite, uncreated grace which informed the soul of Christ,
because His soul was fully human, had to take on the creaturely character of its finite
subject in order truly to be possessed by its subject without thereby annihilating it. Apart
from this consideration, however, grace qua gratia in Thomas doctrine is always
properly Gods own uncreated life itself, or what he calls the principal cause. What
later scholastics came to define as created grace was what Thomas taught were the
analogous effects of Gods economic activity on the soul, even though Aquinas never
called this created grace himself: The principal cause works by the power of its form, to
which form the effect is likened; just as fire by its own heat makes something hot. In this
way none but God can cause grace, since grace is nothing else than a participated likeness
of the Divine Nature, according to 2 Peter 1:4.2
A number of scholars have argued that Palamas himself held a doctrine of created
grace similar to that of Aquinas, the neo-Palamite school notwithstanding. Williams
shows that Palamas doctrine of divinization is so all-encompassing of biblical and
1The
Palamite Doctrine of God: A New Perspective, 338-9, citing Aquinas, S.Th. I.

43.3. This makes no sense to me. Is not the cause of anything logically prior to its
effect?
2The
Ground of Union, 87-9, quoting S.Th. III.62.1.

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traditional images for sanctification as almost to defy definition, much less suffer
limitation to divine indwelling. She identifies and discusses fully ten cognates in the
Palamite lexicon: virtue, knowledge, vision, contemplation, light, glory, grace, adoption,
participation, and union, each of which Palamas at times uses interchangeably with the
language of thesis.1 More directly on point, Lison maintains that just as Augustine
clearly affirmed that God deifies by giving Himself, so also Palamas taught that Gods
uncreated gift of Himself has enduring created effects (charites ktistai).2 Palamas never
at all denied the notion of created grace, Philips observes, even though his emphasis
was fully on uncreated, deifying grace.3 Contra Meyendorff, who contends that
although Palamas accepts the idea of a created grace in the sense that created gifts
from God can be called graces because they are gratuitous, he knew nothing of a created
supernatural in the Thomist sense of that term, for the supernatural can only designate
the reality essentially distinct from the creature, the divine life itself,4 Coffee argues that
Palamas did indeed affirm the existence of a created supernatural, quoting as evidence
of this his Letter to Athanasius 12, in which Palamas writes of the consequences of the
coming of the Holy Spirit to the baptized: The new spirit and the new heart are created
things: that is what the Apostle also calls a new creature, because it was recreated and
renewed by the coming in flesh of him who first created it.5 This passage demonstrates
that Palamas had no difficulty with the reality which Catholicism calls created grace,
or, more precisely, sanctifying grace. His difficulty lay with awarding this grace any
1See
The Ground of Union, 106-25.
2J.
Lison, LEsprit rpandu, 118-21, citing Augustine, De fide et symbolo 19, CSEL
41:22.
3Philips,
La grce chez les Orientaux, 45.
5D.
Coffey, The Palamite Doctrine of God: A New Perspective, St. Vladimirs

Theological Quarterly 32 (1988): 333.
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kind of independence from, or even priority over, uncreated grace.1 Coffey further
hypothesizes that Karl Rahners notion of quasi-formal causality is better suited than
efficient causality to the Palamite understanding of uncreated grace and its created
effects, since formal causality is more adept at expressing the intrinsic nature of the
relationship between acquired human perfections (sanctifying grace) and the divine
perfections of which they are likenesses. 2
Le Guillou also quotes Palamas at length in support of his preference for treating
the virtue of love as an infused human disposition, rather than an uncreated energy, and
believes that such a prophylactic against Platonic emanationism can be found throughout
Palamas writings: in authentic correlation with Maximus and the Chalcedonian
doctrines, divinization is thus understood (by Palamas) as an intentional participation in
love and as a communion founded on the causality of the grace of God. It rests on a
disposition created by grace. 3 The monoenergist crisis had
revealed to St. Maximus that he could not restrict himself to the theurgical
language of Neoplatonic participation, but that he must utilize the language of the
divine causality which creates mans divinization by placing him in the state of
the knowledge of God. God enables His creature to enter into a relationship of
love with Him; it is the habitus of charity transfiguring mans liberty which
establishes him in an intentional communion of knowledge and love. 4
It was Maximus burden to demonstrate that the humanity of Christand our humanity in
Himretains its own created will and its own created energy even while united to God.
Such a conception is perfectly consonant with the Western or Catholic tradition,
1Ibid.
2Ibid.,
341-42. Cf. Rahner, Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated

Grace, in God, Christ, Mary and Grace, vol. 1 of Theological Investigations, trans.
Cornelius Ernst (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1966), 330; Andr de Halleux, Palamisme et
scolastique: exclusivisme dogmatique ou pluriformit thologique, 417-18.
3M.-J.
Le Guillou, Lumire et charit dans la doctrine palamite de la divinisation, Istina

19 (1974): 336.
4Ibid.,
337.
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exemplified by Aquinas. A certain segment of the Eastern Orthodox tradition, however,

fails to recognize Maximus genius in holding together the two vocabularies . . . that of
love and that of entitative, Neoplatonic participation, according to Le Guillou. Yet, as
Palamas demonstrates, these two vocabularies have the same fundamental
signification, provided that the entitative language is understood to be metaphorical,
aiming only to safeguard the dogmas of the divinization of man and of the
transcendence of God.1
This latter, more conciliatory school of thought seems to be vindicated by the
best, most independent patristic scholarship on the topic, that is, by those studies which
evince no interest in the dispute over Palamism. In perhaps the most comprehensive
study to date on the doctrine of participation in the patristic era, Friedrich Normann
writes that the language of participation employed by the fathers was used in a threefold
sense.2 First, it could be said that each partaker possesses something different from the
very same whole in such a way that each participant gets a piece, as it were. Secondly,
several individuals can partake of a whole which remains nevertheless indivisible,
according to which scenario each participant possesses the whole in its own idiosyncratic
manner, mode, or degree. Thirdly, what Normann calls the most reasonable
interpretation is grounded in a sharp differentiation between participation and
identification, such that the individuation of either party is not compromised.
According to this latter conception, participation can never be misconstrued as mixture,
since the fathers intended their affirmations of human participation in the divine nature to
be taken only in an analogical sense, even though they would widely prefer the more
startling formulas like God became man so that man might become God over the
1Ibid.,
338: the mutual recognition of this true intent of the entitative language of
participation, Le Guillou is hopeful, will put Orthodox and Catholics . . . on the way
toward an ecumenical rediscovery of our great spiritual tradition.
2Teilhabe:
Ein Schlsselwort der Vtertheologie,73-74.

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biblical language of 2 Peter 1:4.1 Theodorou likewise characterizes the patristic doctrine
of divinization in terms of fully differentiated assimilation: the ontological cleft which
underlies their understanding of participation protects the fathers doctrine of divinization
from any and all objections that it might lead to pantheism, since the finite being of the
divinized creature remains eternally finite and the infinite being of God remains utterly
unchanged. The grace of divinization is thus understood as a moral (sittliches) work by
the fathers, one which finally elevates the creature to the incorruptibility and immortality
of eternal life, but leaves its creaturely nature intact. This is what the Cappadocians
meant when they warned that we can participate in God only according to the capacity
of human nature.2 And in response to Harnacks allegation that the fathers taught a
crudely physical or magical soteriology, Martin George calls the ethical way of
divinization through the praxis of the good an essential and the most striking
component of the Eastern patristic teaching on participation in the divine nature.3 For
those fathers who rarely speak explicitly of divinization, like John Chrysostom, George
maintains that assimilation to God by the practice of virtue serves as a parallel concept.4
1Ibid.
2A.
Theodorou, Die Lehre von der Vergottung des Menschen bei den griechischen
Kirchenvtern, Kerygma und Dogma 7 (1961): 290, citing Ignatius, Romans 8.2; Magn.
8.2; Justin, PG 6:340c, 464b; Irenaeus, PG 7:1035a; Basil, PG 32:69b; Nyssa, PG
44:161c, 377a; Nazianzen, PG 35:1084c, 1164. He also quotes Anastasius of Sinai:
Divinization is an elevation to the better, but not an improvement or a change of nature.
3Martin
George, Vergttlichung des Menschen. Von der platonischen Philosophie zur

Soteriologie der griechischen Kirchenvater, in Die Weltlichkeit des Glaubens in der
Alten Kirche: Festschrift fr Ulrich Wickert zum siebzigsten Geburtstag, 115-55, ed.
Dietmar Wyrwa et al. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1997), 137, n. 122.
4Ibid.,
citing Chrysostom, Phil. Hom. 6.1, PG 62:217f. See also p. 152, where George
reiterates, again in reply to Harnack, that the moral dimension of the Christian patristic
understanding of divinization was not neglected in the slightest, but was an essential
characteristic of their doctrine, for agape leads to incorruptibility.
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The key question for our purposes, then, is whether or not efficient and exemplary
causality is implied by the patristic teaching on divinizing participation in God. Pursuant
to its historic roots in the dispute over the nature of the vision of light St. Gregory
Palamas and his fellow hesychasts experienced in prayer, the neo-Palamite school,
especially as represented by Lossky and Meyendorff, insists upon excluding causality
from grace and participation, even though Palamas himself seems to have been willing to
include it. It would appear that this, more than any other single factor, compels them to
portray Gods essence as a mode of the uncreated fully transcendent of the equally
divine energies or ad extra activities. If charismata and sanctifying virtues were
understood to be supernatural, created effects of Gods gratuitous operations/energeiai,
however, appropriated in the economy of salvation through human cooperation/synergeia,
then Gods eternal transcendence would not require that His essence or any other mode of
the uncreated remain utterly inaccessible to those who have become by grace partakers
of the divine nature. Instead, the God who has given Himself through the sending of the
Son and the insufflation of the Holy Spirit remains eternally transcendent of the Bride to
whom He has given Himself because He is uniquely uncreated, self-existent, timeless,
incomprehensible, inexhaustible, without composition, and immutablein short, infinite.
ANTHROPOLOGY
One especially unfortunate consequence of denying, ignoring or minimizing the
supernatural, created effects of divine grace is that doing so removes the image/likeness
anthropology of the Bible and the fathers from its central position as the providential
possibility of divinizing, creaturely participation in God. For this reason, Congar could
conclude that the Medieval Byzantine and Western theological traditions are
distinguished by two different anthropologies resting on two different conceptions of
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causality or participation. 1 Does the quality of having been created after the image and
likeness of God consist in possessing the power to reflect in an analogical way something
of Gods goodness, wisdom, love, personhood, etc., or does it consist in something more
similar to an instantiation, an interior spark, of the divine? Is image and likeness just
another expression for divine indwelling, or is it not the given, human capacity to know
and love as God knows and loves?
The anthropology of the Palamite school (perhaps also the Christian East in
general) is distinguished above all by its central focus on the identity and function of the
rational soul, the nous. Palamas believed the human nous to be itself the image of God
in man and taught that its purpose was to be turned entirely toward God, to lead the
whole human organism, body and soul, towards its Creator.2
Without citing anyone in particular, Lossky claims that the Greek Fathers also
regarded the nous to be identical to the image of God in man and the faculty by which
man enters into communion with God. 3 More than merely his cognitive power, the nous
is the highest part of the human creature, the seat of the person, and the portal
through which all grace enters the kardia, which Lossky rather confusingly also regards
as the center of the human being, the root of the active faculties, of the intellect and of
the will, and the point from which the whole of the spiritual life proceeds, and upon
which it converges.4 Likeness to God, therefore, is acquired by living according to the
1M.
J. Congar, "La dification dans la tradition spirituelle de l'Orient," La Vie Spirituelle

43 (1935): 99.
of Gregory Palamas, 154, citing Palamas, Hom. 26. Cf. Ibid., 138:
Origen, Nyssa, and Evagrius made the common anthropological mistake of identifying
the biblical word heart with the nous. Maximus the Confessor, however, influenced by
Pseudo-Macarius, provided a full and finally corrective measure to this error by teaching
that Man remains wholly man in soul and body, and by grace becomes wholly God in
soul and body. (Ambigua, PG 91:1088c)
3Lossky,
4Ibid.,
200-1, citing Macarius, Hom. Spirit., 15.32; 43.7.

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divine image, the nous, through which the total human person, sma and psych, is
destined to become spiritual (pneumatikos).
Lot-Borodine also appeals to les Pres grecs in general, who, she claims,
following a tripartite anthropology consisting of body, soul, and mind, taught that the
mind, the nous, was naturally deiform, having a primordial divine vocation to unite the
sensible world and the intelligible/uncreated world in itself:1 In assuming the role of the
Logos on earth, in being substituted for Him in a way, man must harmonize all the
oppositions of creation . . . and accomplish, by virtue and understanding, the
spiritualization of all that exists. 2 For this reason, the Fathers of the Eastern Church did
not hesitate to call man the created god in the full force of the term, without any
attenuation; because of the nous, the human person is a true earthly hypostasis of
God.3 Whereas Augustine conceived of the image of God in man as a distant
reflection in the soul, Lot-Borodine bemoans, the Greeks thought of the divine image as
an ideal copy suffusing not only the soul, but the whole of the embodied creature.4
As the crowning achievement of creation, according to Sherrards reading of the
Greek fathers anthropology, man is the hinge between the supernatural and the natural, a
microcosm of the entire universe, because he contains within himself the uncreated and
divine image" as a third faculty, in addition to body and soul, through which he is capable
1Lot-Borodine,
La dification de l'homme, 42-43. She also suggests that the nous of the
Greek fathers is equivalent to Augustines spiritus and to the scholastic mens.
2Ibid.,
46.
3Ibid.,
43. The human body is to the human soul what the cosmos is to the Logos,
according to Lot-Borodines reading of the Eastern fathers. Because the human nous is
the repository in the soul of the eikon of God, the hidden reservoir of His triune image,
the illumination by the Ideas comes to the nous directly from its divine source. . . . One
can therefore say that the nous is the organ of apprehension of the charismatic intuitionknowledge and not just a simple extension of discursive reason. . . . This entire theory of
knowledge is fundamentally irrational, although it does not refuse to make use of the
concepts of ratio in order to express the truths of dogma.
4Ibid.,
51.
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of an immediate, "face to face" knowledge of God here and now. This uncreated image
of God in man is the "naturally deiform" nous.1 Thus, it is only in the effective
realization of his uncreated nature that man achieves his deification, for in the beatific
vision, man does not merely contemplate what is outside and beyond himself; he
become himself what he contemplates, the uncreated centre of his own proper being."2
In similar fashion, Romanides maintains that the literal deification of the noetic
faculty is both a precondition and a consequence of knowing God, for only the
uncreated can know the uncreated:
being divinized in revelation, man receives the self-seeing uncreated light and
thus, having acquired this divine eye, which he did not have before, he, the
whole man, body and soul, sees God in His glory. Thus the Uncreated Light is for
man both the Means and the Object of vision, That Which in man sees itself, and
That by Which man becomes by grace God.3
The human person has therefore been endowed by God with no created power to know
and love Him, since it is only by becoming God by grace that one can see God my
means of God, not only in the future age, or in the next life, but also in this life, both
before and after the Incarnation and formation of the Church.4 For this reason,
Meyendorff maintains, Easterners are correct to understand man as naturally possessing
in himself a divine spark.5
This understanding of the nous as an uncreated faculty passed intact from
paganism, from the Platonic tradition especially, into Christian speculation, according to
Congar, who also immediately acknowledges that it can be found in the literature of some
1Sherrard,
2Ibid.,
The Greek East and the Latin West, 141.
140-41.
3Romanides,
4Ibid.,
9:247.
5Meyendorff,
Byzantine Theology, 139.

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of the Eastern fathers.1 In more irenic tones, he later proposes that the ontological
anthropology of the East, which views humanity as bearers of God, needs be
complemented by the moral anthropology of the West, which conceives human nature
as a power of action oriented toward an end, the end of attaining to the Supreme Good
by holy actions. Whereas the East will contemplate the cosmos as an icon of deifying
illumination, the West will seek to marshal the cosmos to the service of holy activity. In
the East, the body is subordinate to the soul in the sense that it must be spiritualized by
the soul. In the West, the body is subordinated to service to the soul by performing holy
actions.2
Anthropology: Hamartiology
Romanides suggestion above that deified man did not have the divine eye
before his redemption from sin is typical of the neo-Palamite hamartiology. Original sin
consisted in man freely choosing to repudiate the vocation he had of spiritualizing the
body by perfusing it more fully with Gods uncreated energies and in his decision to
seek happiness in created goods rather than in God. The nous, consequently, turned
toward the world and became subject to material conditions. 3
1Congar,
2Ibid.,
La dification dans la tradition spirituelle de l'Orient, 94.
102-03.
3Lossky,
The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 130-31. Cf. Ibid., 140-41: the
dogma of the immaculate conception is foreign to the Eastern tradition because it
separates Mary from those who struggle under the weight of original sin, giving her an
exemption from the destiny common to all humanity. His real problem with the
doctrine, it would seem, is that he believes that it implies that our redemption was
entirely the work of God without human cooperation, whereas the patristic consensus is
that the whole human race freely consented to the incarnation in Marys fiat. Yet, in
explaining why Mary, of all people, was uniquely able to express such consent, Lossky
attributes her singular holiness not to the uniquely perfect obedience of her free will, but
to successive purifications which have taken place in the nature of her ancestors, as well
as in her own nature from the moment of her conception, which seems to be remarkably
similar to the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.
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Most of what the neo-Palamites have to say about the nature of the fall into sin
has a sharply anti-Western edge to it. The Greeks alone, Lot-Borodine boasts, insist
on the intellectual character of sin or hamartia. For them, all evil comes from agnoia
(ignorance), the nous having stopped serving as the perfect regulator.1 Augustine and
the West, on the other hand, believed that the effect of sin was to throw humanity back to
its natural status, once again bereft of the superadded grace of righteousness. For the
Greeks, the effect of sin was precisely to deprive humanity of its true nature, which was
and is theandric.2
The need for the first humans to change and be transformed was
strictly as a consequence of their sin, as Lot-Borodine reads Augustines prelapsarian

anthropology. This betrays his static conception of beatitude, she reasons, which,
contrary to the thought of the Greek fathers is unable to grow. . . . Moreover, the state of
justice in which our ancestors were found in paradise was not naturally theirs, in the
Augustinian system; it was a superadded gift, a privilege conferred by God, and not the
master root of their being. From Augustines point of view, God owes nothing to His
creature. Even the immortality of the first man consisted only in his not deserving death,
rather than in the impossibility of death for him. Neither does Adams righteousness and
the love imperturbatus belong to humanity's own nature, which remains an enigma.
Aquinas, LB adds, has modified Western thought to include a subsisting incorruptible
human nature. Among the Greeks, however, only the incarnation, by an unparalleled
miracle, recreated the ideal divinity of our species, of which immortality was the very
mark, that which John of Damascus calls its true nature. . . . Moreover, the foreseen fall,
1Lot-Borodine,
La dification de l'homme, 47-8.
2Ibid.,
49-51: Admirable psychologist and master of introspection, the great African, led
by a poignant personal experience, is almost exclusively attached to the empirical
realities of our current state. Adam is above all, for Augustine, a creature drawn from
nothingness. And this nothingness . . ., in the eyes of Saint Augustine (reminiscent of his
former Manicheanism, no doubt), has such a deficient character that he can say positively
of it that it is already a predisposition to imperfection, if not to sin.
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almost desirable in the Augustinian system, on account of the Incarnation necessitated by

it, has never been the felix culpa for the Eastern Church, especially in as much as the
Incarnation is not necessarily conceived by them as a function of the Redemption, but
may have happened anyway, except without the death of the Son. (Emphasis hers)
Meyendorff also characterizes the Eastern anthropology and hamartiology first
and foremost in contrast to what he believes are Augustinian, Western errors. The
Eastern concept of sin understands that although human nature incurs the consequences
of Adams sin, only what Maximus calls the gnomic will, which is the individuals
free mind, can incur the guilt of sin. This he opposes to the Western doctrine of
inherited guilt and to the radical individualism which he attributes to Augustines
polemics against Julian of Aeclanum. 1 The Western doctrine, Meyendorff theorizes,
arose from Augustines mistranslation and consequent misinterpretation of Romans 5:12,
which reads eph h pantes hmarton, or because all men have sinned. The Vulgate
translation, in quo omnes peccaverunt, or in whom (i.e., in Adam) all men have sinned,
led Augustine and his followers to understand original sin as inherited guilt. According
to what Meyendorff calls a consensus in Greek patristic and Byzantine traditions, in
contrast, the fall into corruption was and is the origin and cause of human proclivity to
sin.2 Without attempting to suggest how the post hoc is also a propter hoc, he maintains
1Meyendorff,
Byzantine Theology, 143, citing in evidence Maximus, De Char. 4.90; Lib.

Asceticus, PG 90:953; Expos. Or. Dom., PG 90:905. Cf. idem, Christ in Eastern
Christian Thought, 124-25, where Meyendorff attributes the Western allegation that
Gregory of Nyssa et al. were semi-Pelagian to a misunderstanding of Eastern
anthropology, which, in fact, holds that "human freedom and effort can only be achieved
in participation with divine life, in the real communion with the Archetype of whom man
is an image, in other words, in what the Christian East calls deification." In this way,
then, "the problem of the relationship between grace and human freedom is on a different
level from that which opposed Augustine to Pelagius in the West. Nature, and therefore
true freedom, presuppose communion with God in grace."
2Ibid.,
144, citing Cyril of Alex., In Rom., PG 74:789; Theod of Mop, In Rom., PG

66:801; Theod of Cyrus, In Rom., PG 80:1245; Chrysostom, In Rom. 10, PG 60:474-75.
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that everyone sinned after Adam because of the death which they inherited. Thus, eph
h refers to death: As sin came into the world through one man and death through sin,
so death spread to all men; and because of death, all men have sinned.1 Therefore,
infants are baptized not for the remission of sin (the creedal reference to this refers
strictly to adults, Meyendorff explains) but only for regeneration.
Augustines misinterpretation of Romans 5:12 further served to reduce the
soteriology of the New Testament to extrinsic justification, or the forensic remission of
inherited guilt, according to Meyendorff, overshadowing all the other concepts with
which the Bible describes salvation: sanctification, new life, union with God,
participation in the divine nature.2 These errors, he believes, were absorbed by the
Medieval schoolmen and hardened into an ecclesiocentric soteriology in which the guilt
of original sin could be extirpated only through the created grace or meritorious habitus
dispensed by the sacramental and magisterial offices of the Church, thus justifying
Luthers essential lan, which was to return behind the rationalistic and worldly
philosophical systems developed by the Western Church to the living God of the Bible
and to recover the great drama played out between the human soul, God, and the devils
powers of death and sin.3
The heart of Eastern anthropology, Meyendorff proposes in the alternative, is the
concept that man is not an autonomous being, that his true humanity is realized only
when he lives in God and possesses divine qualities, for his participation in the divine
life, understood as the possession of an uncreated faculty, a divine spark, is natural to the
human person. Hence, there is an essential openness of man for the Greeks, one that
does not fit into the Western categories of nature and grace, which erroneously
1Ibid.,
emphasis his.
2Meyendorff,
3Ibid.,
Orthodoxy and Catholicity, 121.
122-25.
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understood the human being to be a closed, autonomous entity who is saved strictly by
the extrinsic action of God in conferring created gifts.1
This Greek openness also consists in what Meyendorff calls a dynamism
which further distances the East from the static anthropology of the West. Specifically,
the natural participation of man in God is not a static givenness; it is a challenge, and
man is called to grow in divine life, thereby making his divinization a gift but also a
task. The distinction between gift and task arises from a further distinction between the
concepts of image and likeness as found in Gen. 1:26, for likeness suggests the idea of
dynamic progress (assimilation).2 Meyendorff, who would later write that the breath
of God which first animated Adam (Gen. 2:7), identified with the Holy Spirit on the
basis of the Septuagint version, is what made man to be Gods image,3 never specifies,
however, how the image differs from dynamic likeness, except to say that the likeness
was lost through sin while the image was not.4 From the teaching of Palamas, one would
assume that he understands the image to be the gift, the nous itself, and the likeness to be
the task, the actuation of the power of the nous to spiritualize the body. Lossky, for
instance, holds that their likeness to God was not lost as a result of the sin of our first
parents, but never achieved at all: because of his disobedience, Adam was unable to
attain to union with God and the deification of the created order.5 Like Meyendorff,
Lossky maintains against what he believes to be the Western Christian tradition that the
cosmology and anthropology of the Eastern Church are dynamic in character and
resolutely exclude the possibility of juxtaposing the ideas of nature and grace, for nature
and grace enjoy a mutual penetration of one another, meaning that nature was destined
1Meyendorff,
Byzantine Theology, 2-3; 139.
2Ibid.,
139.
3Ibid.,
169, citing Cyril of Alexandria, In Iohan. 11.10.
5Lossky,
of Gregory Palamas, 122, citing Palamas, Triads 1.3.47; Capita 39.

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and equipped to be united more and more with the fullness of the Godhead, which was
to penetrate and transfigure created nature. Thus explains why Adam was neither in a
state of pure nature, nor was he a deified man.1
Theodorou confirms that such an understanding of the matter is similar to that of
the Eastern fathers, most of whom, especially under the influence of Platonic
philosophy, differentiated between the image, which is the dynamic possibility of
achieving likeness to God through the pursuit of virtue and the exercise of free will, and
the likeness, which is the actualization or perfection of the image.2 Not of the Palamite
school, however, Theodorou assumes throughout his article that the fathers believed that
the dynamic divinization toward which the human person is ordered by nature entails
an ever increasing created likeness to God, corresponding to the fully created rational
soul with which these same fathers associated the image of God in man.
Anthropology: Gnoseology
The neo-Palamite anthropology outlined above generates its own peculiar
epistemology or gnoseology, one which disallows human knowledge of God by way of
analogy, but requires instead that all knowledge of God involve a direct, immediate,
deifying encounter between the nous and the divine energies. It is axiomatic for both
Plotinian Neoplatonism and the Greek fathers, Lot-Borodine claims, that in order to
know fully, the subject must be one with the object of knowledge -- identity of essence
and knowledge.3 This is why it must be held that Gods essence will remain absolutely
1Ibid.,
126, citing John of Damascus, De fide orth., 2.12.
2Theodorou,
Die Lehre von der Vergottung des Menschen bei den griechischen
Kirchenvtern, 291.
3Lot-Borodine,

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unknowable throughout all eternity, lest the beatific vision be understood to effect a
pantheistic confusion between the beholder and the Beheld.1
For Lossky also, the way of the knowledge of God is necessarily the way of
deification. 2 There is a stark alternative presented here, an uncompromising either/or:
either theology consists in created, analogical concepts of the nature of God, revealed
preeminently through the sacred humanity of the incarnate Word and through the doctrine
He entrusted to His chosen apostles, or it will only be attained in the way which leads
not to knowledge but to union--to deification. Lossky leaves no room for
complementarity; the latter possibility excludes the first, according to his rationale:
theology will never be abstract, working through concepts, but contemplative: raising
the mind to those realities which pass all understanding.3 Mystical or ecstatic encounter
with the uncreated operations of God on the human soul doesnt only surpass and perfect
the created revelation through Christ, therefore, but seems to render the latter somehow
idolatrous.
Meyendorff similarly insists that man, when he is in communion with God (i.e.,
restored to his natural state) can, and even must, enjoy a direct knowledge and
1Ibid.,
38-39: despite Augustines carefulness, Lot-Borodine admonishes, his view of

contemplation has been opened to the dangerous road of ontologism, of the visio Dei per
essentiam, even though she acknowledges that Augustine never taught that the creature
could have an immediate vision of Gods nature in this life. Indeed, her primary
grievance against Augustine is not that he was a pantheist or that he failed to give Gods
transcendence its due, but rather that his theological epistemology was not realistic
enough to allow for a union between Gods uncreated light and the human mind in the act
of prayer: Although illuminated by the divine ideas, here below the soul cannot see
directly into God and therefore has only an imperfect, mediated vision.
2Lossky,
3Ibid.,
43. Cf. Ibid., 67: For the Greek Fathers, the supreme object of theology is to
know the mystery of the Trinity in its fullness, which is also to enter into perfection
union with God and to attain to the deification of the human creature: in other words, to
enter into the divine life, the very life of the Holy Trinity, and to become, in St. Peters
words, partakers of the divine nature.
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experience of his creator, this in opposition to Western Scholasticism, his customary

foil, which has assumed that this knowledge is based upon revealed premissesScripture
or church magisteriumwhich serve as a basis for development by the human mind in
conformity with the principles of Aristotelian logic.1 Indeed, he reminds us, this was the
very issue in dispute between Palamas and Barlaam the Calabrian, who had maintained in
the face of the hesychasts experience of what they thought to be a direct, face to face
vision of uncreated light, or God Himself, that the natural human mind could never
reach divine truth itself, but only draw conclusions from revealed premises.2 For this
reason, Meyendorff elsewhere acknowledges, the theology of St. Gregory Palamas and
the tradition he founded is inseparable from its historic origin in the hesychast
controversy, wherein Palamas sought to defend a particular interpretation of what the
monks experienced in contemplative prayer against its allegedly rationalistic, Westerneducated critics.3 The latter, according to Meyendorff, were humanists preoccupied
with profane learning who started from the assumption of a sort of autonomy for human
reason, and its independence in relation to a God whom they conceived as some
impenetrable and inaccessible Essence.4 In this context, Palamas repeatedly appeals for
dominical foundation to the light of the transfiguration of Christ on Mt. Tabor because it
was as light that the mystical tradition derived from Origen and Gregory of Nyssa
described the divine presence and sanctifying grace. 5 Almost the entire debate with
Barlaam and Akindynos revolves around the question of whether the light of the
Transfiguration was created or uncreated, according to Lossky, who believes that what
1Meyendorff,
Byzantine Theology, 139-40, emphasis his.
2Ibid.
3A Study
4Ibid.,
27.
5Ibid.,
151.
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was at stake in this historic debate was the possibility of deification in the real and not
the metaphorical sense of this word. 1
Lossky further claims, yet without citing any textual evidence, that St. Gregory
Nazianzen, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Maximus, and others also taught that the light of
Christs transfiguration was uncreated.2 The biblical assertion that God is light, which
Palamas understood to refer to the uncreated divine energies, but not to Gods essence, is
neither the light of reason, Lossky insists, nor an otherwise analogical illumination of the
human soul by Gods operations, nor a reality of the sensible order, but the visible
quality of the divinity, transcending both sense and intellect, which was seen at each of
the theophanies of the Old Testament, blinded St. Paul on the Damascus road, and
appeared to Mary Magdalene in Christs tomb.3
Romanides likewise maintains that the angels of the Old Testament were the
means by which the prophets were initiated into the meaning of their immediate vision
of the glory of God; it is only with Augustine and the Latin West that the angels
become symbolic substitutes for God.4 For the Augustinian tradition, he continues,
symbols and concepts and rational knowledge become the only means by which man
can come to know God; this is not a matter of one preparing for and leading to the other,
because within the Augustinian framework, as Romanides reads it, there can be no
1Lossky,
2Lossky,
The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 222. Cf. Habra, La signification
de la transfiguration dans la thologie byzantine, Collectanea Cisterciensia 25 (1963):
136-37. Habras list of Greek patristic texts in support of the Palamite doctrine of the
transfiguration includes only one instance from Athanasius (no textual reference is
given), one from Basil (Sur le Psaume 44), and two from Gregory Nazianzen (On
Baptism; Epist. to Cledonios), none of which treat either the language or the doctrine of
human participation in the divine nature.
3Ibid.,
220-21, citing Palamas, Contra Akindynum, PG 150:823.
4Romanides,

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supra-conceptual and supra-rational knowledge of God. 1 In the course of his sweeping

condemnation of scholastic theology, Yannaras also proposes that its attempted
explanation of revealed truth through the power of the intellect, and the rigorous
use of reason withing the framework of revealed truth, emphatically set a
boundary between man and God, between the syllogistic capacity of the subject
and the incomprehensible reality of God. In the end the boundary is set between
the divine and the human nature, a consequence which neglects the unity of the
two natures in one person, that is to say, the possibility of personal participation
in, and not merely logical clarification of, the divine truth concerning God.2
Ivnka, however, objects to what he believes is a naive, simplistic characterization
of the West as purely cataphatic and rationalistic, citing the maior dissimilitudo of the
Fourth Lateran Councils (1215) strict limitation on the scope of analogical predication of
God.3 Western theology, he protests, has never attempted to express the how of the
participation of the creature in God--the essence of divinization, which lies in the
impartation of grace--by conceptual means.4 More recently, A. N. Williams exposed the
frequent errors in modern Palamisms portrayal of Aquinas and high scholasticism,
particularly regarding their claim that Aquinas reduces human knowledge of God to
created, analogical concepts, without any direct intuition.5
Also from a Western perspective, Le Guillou acknowledges the beauty and
traditional patrimony of the Palamite language of transfiguration by divine light. Among
1Ibid.,
9:260. Cf. Ibid., 6:201: The vision of the Old and New Testament glory of God
is for Barlaam, as for the Latin West generally, a creature which symbolizes a truth
being revealed and is inferior to the revelation of truth which comes directly to the
intellect.
2Yannaras,
Orthodoxy and the West, 287, emphasis his.
3See
Henricus Denzinger and Adolfus Schnmetzer, eds, Enchiridion Symbolorum:

definitionum et declarationem de rebus fidei et morum, 33d ed. (Fribourg: Herder, 1965),
p. 262, nos. 806; 432: inter creatorem et creaturam non potest tanta similitudo notari,
quin inter eos maior sit dissimilitudo notanda.
4Ivnka,
5A.
Palamismus und Vtertradition, 43.
N. Williams, The Ground of Union, 24-5.

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its many advantages, he notes its internal coherence, its emphasis on the already
component of Christian eschatology, its according the human body a full place in the
sanctification of the faithful, and the evocative power of the biblical themes it employs.
Yet, Le Guillou also admonishes that this vocabulary is not without its disadvantages.1
Chief among them is that the language of light and radiance is especially vulnerable to
contamination by the Neoplatonic concept of penetration and emanation. In order to
avoid these threatening pitfalls, he advises, the language of light needs to be tempered
with the language of personal love, such as employed by Maximus the Confessor, who
focuses on orientation, disposition (hexeis, habitus), virtue, and more precisely
still, a vocabulary of intentionality.2 Congar and de Halleux also find room for
differentiated complementarity between the Christian East and West in regard to their
respective conceptions of final beatitude.3
Andr de Halleux, Palamisme et
scolastique, 412-13, acknowledges a clear difference between Eastern apophatic

theology, which disallows absolutely any knowledge of or encounter with the essence of
God, and Western analogical theology, which protects Gods transcendence with the
maior dissimilitudo of the Fourth Lateran Council. Yet, he believes that the fundamental
difference between the Christian East and the Christian West is situated in divergent
conceptions of the beatific vision and mysticism. Both are agreed that mans supreme
end lies in the beatific knowledge of God. The Augustinian view is that once the veil of
our fallen flesh is removed, God will be known and contemplated totum, etsi non
1Le
Guillou, Lumire et charit dans la doctrine palamite de la divinisation, 331.
2Ibid.,
333-34, citing Maximus, Centuries 2.48, SC 9:108-9; 3.98, SC 9:150; and also
Pseudo-Dionysius, De eccles. hier, 2.1, PG 3:392a.
3Congar,
"La dification dans la tradition spirituelle de l'Orient," 93-94: the Western

proposal of an "intuitive vision of God as the end of the supernatural life and as the
beatifying act of the divinized soul," is no more vulnerable to the dangers of
immanentism and pantheism than is the Easts essence/energies distinction.
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totaliter, which means that everything belonging to God will be known and seen because
God is simple in Himself, but because He is infinite and transcendent, He will be known
and seen inexhaustibly and therefore incomprehensibly. The Eastern view, by contrast, is
that both now in the flesh as well as in the next life, God can be known and experienced
fully in His energies or operations, but remains forever inaccessible in His essence.
Flogaus, moreover, demonstrates that there is no necessary opposition between
Augustines formae corporales through which God revealed Himself to the bodily eye in
biblical theophanies, yet without revealing His substance or nature, and similar notions
evident in Basil, Chrysostom and even Palamas himself, who interpreted the dove which
appeared at Christs baptism in a such a fashion. 1
Not only is all true knowledge of God limited to an immediate, mystical

encounter with Gods uncreated glory, as the neo-Palamite school would have it, but so
also is all divinizing grace limited by them to what is perceptible. Grace cannot remain
hidden or unnoticed, Lossky declares; for this reason, the spirituality of the Orthodox
Church regards the dark night of the soul of Western, Carmelite spirituality to be nothing
other than acedia or ennui, which is a sin or a temptation against which one ought to
struggle.2 Authentic Christian union with God, according to Lossky, is always
1Flogaus,
Palamas and Barlaam Revisited, 14. For Augustines teaching on the

revelatory bodily forms, see De trin. 2.5.10; 2.6.11; 2.9.16; 2.13.23; 2.14.24; 2.15.25-27;
2.17.32; 2.18.35; 3.11.27. For his disallowance of the direct vision of Gods nature in
this life, see De trin. 2.14.24; 2.15.25; 3.11.27. Compare this to Basil, AE 1.14, SC
299:222; and Chrysostom, De incomp. Dei natura 3.3; 4.3, SC 28b:200, 246. Regarding
the dove, compare Palamas, Contra Acind. 7.14.57 with Augustine, De trin. 2.6.11.
2Lossky,
In the Image and Likeness of God, 59. Cf. The Mystical Theology of the
Eastern Church, 225: the dark night of the soul does not have the same meaning in
the spirituality of the Eastern Church as it does in the West, for in the East such an
experience means either that the individual has sinned or that God is testing him to
increase his ardor. In either case, spiritual aridity is never a necessary and normal stage
in the way of union for the East.
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characterized by the ability of the faithful to perceive the presence or grace of God
dwelling within them, an ability he calls variously knowledge (gnsis) and awareness
of the object of union. Accordingly, absence of the quality of awareness . . . is a mark
of sin and, pushed to its furthest limits, would be nothing other that hell. 1 There are
no unwitting recipients of divine grace: We are incapable of not being aware of God, if
our nature is in proper spiritual health. . . . Grace will make itself known as joy, peace,
inner warmth and light.2 In somewhat softer tones, Krivosheine writes that the East
insists more on the felt, conscious and even visible side of grace, whereas the juristic
consciousness of the West inclines more to the idea of grace as the condition of
justification not necessarily producing any real or felt result in the consciousness of the
one who is saved.3 Faith is an act of vision, not an act of understanding or an act of
obedient trust, as Meyendorff interprets Palamas: faith is the supernatural faculty
possessed by all Christians to know God.4 In light of Meyendorffs repeated insistence
that there is no created supernatural, we may reasonably conclude that he is here
suggesting that the faith of which St. Paul writes is an uncreated faculty, a divine energy,
rather than a supernatural human faculty infused by the operation of God and received
with the cooperation of the subject.
PALAMISM: CONCLUSION
The neo-Palamite school, in summary, proposes that a mode of the divine
nature, the energeiai or activities, God-for-us (understood generally as Gods indwelling,
but also variously identified with the light of biblical and hesychast theophanies, with
1Lossky,
2Ibid.,
The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 217-18.
225.
3B.
Krivosheine, The Ascetic and Theological Teaching of St. Gregory Palamas,

Eastern Churches Quarterly 3 (1938-39): 211, n.57.
4A Study

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Gods attributes or perfections, His peri auton, His will, and with the exemplary ideas by
which He accomplished creation), is compound, changing, temporally sequential, and
therefore communicable and knowable, whereas another mode, the ousia or essence,
God-in-Himself, is simple and immutable, subject to internal necessity, transcending time
and space, and therefore eternally inaccessible, imparticipable, and unknowable. These
are not understood as two ways of experiencing or characterizing the altogether simple,
immutable, asequential Triune God, but as two uncreated realities, since Palamite logic
requires that God be more than His essence if He is to be both communicable and
transcendent. Such a logical requirement, I have attempted to show, arises from the neoPalamite exclusion of causality from their understanding of sanctifying participation in
God, or divinization. To participate in the divine nature, as they interpret the traditional
doctrine, is not to possess supernatural, created effectsimages or likenessesof their
divine, indwelling, and exemplary cause. It is not for the will and mind of the creature to
be configured more closely to the will and mind of God as disclosed in Jesus Christ.
Instead, it is to possess uncreated gifts, faculties, and charisms. It is to become
uncreated by grace.
The questions to which we need now turn our attention is whether or not the anteNicene fathers of the Christian East evince an understanding of human participation in
the divine nature similar to that of the neo-Palamite school and, secondly, whether or not
they sought to establish the possibility of such participation upon an intra-divine essence
\energies distinction similar to that of the neo-Palamites. Prior to looking at these themes
in the literature of Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Athanasius, we will trace
the history of the concepts of participation and divinization in the pre-Christian and early
Christian writings upon which our principal subjects were in varying degrees dependent.
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II. GREEK ANTIQUITY
A. HELLENISTIC RELIGION
The epic poems of Homer are the first instance of a commonly received Greek
notion of the possibility for humans to share in divine life. 1 That which constitutes
divinity for Homer, as well as for Hellenistic religion generally, is, above all,
immortality.2 Although Homer affirmed the universal paternity of Zeus, father of both
gods and humans, he also was careful to emphasize the disjunction between the race of
the gods and that of humanity, insisting that it is among the most temerarious of human
ambitions to aspire to be of equal stature to the gods. 3
1Jules
Gross, La Divinisation du chrtien d'aprs les pres grecs (Paris: Librairie

Lecoffre, 1938), 5-6.
2O.
Faller, "Griechische Vergottung und christliche Vergottlichung," Gregorianum 6

(1925): 409. Cf. Ill. 1.503; Od. 1.31, cited by Gross, La Divinisation du chrtien, 6, who
opines that for Homer, "the terms theos and athanatos are synonyms." See also E. Rohde,
Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, trans. from the
eighth ed. by W. B. Hillis (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1925), 60; and
W.K.C. Guthrie, The Greeks and Their Gods (Boston: Beacon Press, 1951), 115-16, both
of whom claim that it is immortality alone which differentiates the gods from humans.
Dissenting from Guthrie and Rhode is E. Ehnmark, The Idea of God in Homer (Uppsala:
Almquist & Wiksell, 1935), chpt. 1, who argues that the defining property of the Greek
gods was not immortality but power.
3Ill.
5.440-42, cited by douard des Places, "Divinisation," in Dictionnaire de spiritualit,

asctique et mystique (Paris: Beauchesne, 1954), 3:1371.
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In fact, throughout Hellenistic religious literature, two fundamentally opposed ideas of

the divine-human relation competed for public allegiance, "the one emphasizing the gulf
between human and divine, mortal and immortal, and the other teaching that the aim of
the religious life was to exchange mortality for immortality, to become god from man."1
Homeric religion and the subsequent tragedies of Hesiod, Pindar, Herodotus, and
Euripedes were clearly more deeply imbued with the former.
Nevertheless, in the myth of the Elysian fields some form of divinization does
seem to be indicated. Only a select few among the mortals, chosen by family ties, are
granted freedom from bodily death and an inheritance of immortal happiness among the
gods, whereas most mortals are consigned to die, with their disembodied souls spending
the afterlife in Hades among the shadows. Gross calls it "accidental divinization: a
deification, moreover, which is entirely extrinsic, without relation to morality and, as
such, conforms to the essential Homeric concept of divinity as happy immortality."2
If the idea of human assimilation to the divine met with some resistance from
Homer and his literary progeny, such was not the case for the Hellenistic mystery
religions. True though it may be "that a great deal in later Greek religion is only a
development of Homeric ideas," 3 the mystery cults of Dionysus, Orpheus, and Mithras,
1Guthrie,
The Greeks and Their Gods, 179. Earlier (p. 113), he had defined the central
problem in Greek religion as whether or not the "Greeks think it possible or desirable for
man to emulate the gods." Cf. A. J. Festugire, "La divinisation du Chrtien," La Vie
Spirituelle 59 (1939): 90; and des Places, "Divinisation," 3:1371-72, who cautions: "One
cannot establish a rigorous demarcation between these two currents" and adds the caveat
that Euripedes actually writes of a "more interior piety," one in which "the primitive
kinship between God and man, syngeneia, is realized."
2Gross,
La Divinisation du chrtien, 8, citing in evidence Od. 15.249-52; Il. 5.265-66;

20.232-35. Cf. Faller, "Griechische Vergottung und christliche Vergottlichung," 407.
Rohde, Psyche, 253, however, contends that divinization is incompatible with Homeric
proscriptions against aspiring to live like the gods.
3Guthrie,
The Greeks and Their Gods, 117. Cf. Gross, La Divinisation du chrtien, 9,
who suggests that this influence is largely limited to a belief in a generic afterlife.
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as well as the tractates of Hermetic gnosticism, nevertheless departed from the poets and
tragedians in so far as "the goal of Greek (orientally conditioned) piety, as has been ever
more clearly shown, is deification: In the sacred devotion the man dies and the new god
is born."1
The first appearance of a developed notion of divinization in Greek mystery
religion arrives not with Eleusis,2 but the with the cult of Dionysus. Its practitioners
believed themselves to have been united with their god as a result of consuming the
divinely inhabited sacrificed meat of a bull, frequently while in a state of mystical ecstacy
(or drunken orgy, as Bouyer prefers).3 In this sense, and in contrast to the mysteries of
Eleusis, the cult of Dionysus offered a personalistic communion with the deity, one in
which the worshipers were asked to follow a psychological trajectory out of themselves
and to be united with the god with whom they believed themselves to posses an innate
kinship.4
1Wilhelm
Bousset, Kyrios Christos, trans. John E. Steely (Nashville: Abington Press,

1970), 164. Bousset's concern in this portion of his text is to compare and contrast the
Greek mysteries with St. Paul's Christ mysticism. According to him, the great difference
between the two is that "This Greek mystery piety does not so much concern a life in the
deity, with the deity, but rather a mystical identity with the deity" in which (citing the cult
of Isis) "the initiate serves as the incarnate deity of the mystery" (p. 164-65). This is all
unadulterated pantheism, as Bousset reads it. In contrast, Bousset notes that while Paul
frequently uses the formula "en Christ," he scrupulously avoids identifying the believer
with Christ purely and simply, or numerically. Christ remains ever the transcendent Lord
and human assimilation to him remains strictly analogical (p. 166).
2Louis
Bouyer, The Christian Mystery: From Pagan Myth to Christian Mysticism, trans.
Illtyd Trethowan (Petersham, Mass.: Saint Bede's Publications, 1989), 35. Bouyer claims
here that, while extending the hope of immortality, the mysteries of Eleusis provided only
"a certain association of the mystics with the divinities in question," but not a genuine
assimilation or incorporation. Cf. Faller, 413.
3Ibid.,
60.
4Gross,
La Divinisation du chrtien, 21.

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Emerging from the cult of Dionysus was a stream of cultic religious practices
based on this same general paradigm, that of union with God. The mystery cults of such
Dionysian parentage all fall under the rubric of Orphism, although there is still some
debate about whether or not the specific society with the legendary Orpheus as its
founder ever existed and, if it did, whether it hailed from the fifth or the seventh century
B. C. and, moreover, whether or not it was historically connected with the cult of
Dionysus.1
The teaching of Orphism, however, is better known than its origins. Like the cult
of Dionysus, it observed ascetic practices and offered a sacrificial meal for the purpose of
the purification of the believer. Unlike the other mystery religions, however, Orphism
practiced "sacred discourse" and attempted to wed strictly religious observances with a
speculative philosophy. The latter held that humanity was "made to live with the gods,"
possesses a native kinship with them, which was frustrated by the corporeal
imprisonment of their souls as a result of some unspecified prior transgression, and may
return to their originally intended divine life by means of the aforementioned purifying
measures, both ritual and ascetic.2 "In Orphism there appears, therefore, for the first
time, the specific idea that all souls are of a divine origin and nature and, consequently,
are essentially immortal, deity being for the Greeks synonymous with immortality."3
1Bouyer,
Christian Mystery, 63, sketches the lines of debate between M. J. Lagrange,

L'Orphism (Paris, 1937), 7ff, who insists that Orphism was an historically significant
religious phenomenon, and A. Festugire, Les Mystres de Dionysos (Paris, 1935), 192ff,
366ff, who denies that it ever existed.
2Gross,
La Divinisation du chrtien, 23. Cf. des Places, "Divinisation," 3:1372: "The

ancient Orphism seems to have placed among its essential doctrines the divine origin of
the soul; and the goal of the 'Orphic life' is that the divine element in man, born of the
ashes of the Titans, . . might overcome his titanic element." He cautions, however,
against exaggerating the spirituality of the mystery religions or "attributing to them the
idea of a rebirth to divine filiation." See also Bouyer, Christian Mystery, 67, who
characterizes the spiritual quality of the Orphic rites as "dubious" and "relative."
3Ibid.,
24.
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"To find in a mystery religion of ancient paganism something more than the
automatic effect of ritual . . . we must go to the mysteries of Mythras."1 The Persian cult
of the sun god Mithras, which was never fully accepted by the mainstream of Hellenistic
culture inasmuch as the latter generally held an aversion to all things Persian, is
characterized by fuller attention to the moral dimension of the journey of the
disembodied soul to the habitation of the gods. Above all else, it is the acquisition of
courage, truthfulness, mastery of self, and other personal virtues which was believed by
the devotees of Mythras to assimilate them most readily to the divine immortality.2
Gnostic Hermeticism, which is essentially a soteriology from which an ancillary
cosmogony and anthropogeny were derived, is more explicit than any of its religious
precursors in the teaching of the divinization of the human soul.3 Having posited a
radical dualism between the darkened material world and the archetypal ideal realm of
intelligible light,4 the Corpus Hermeticum offers an entirely noetic means by which its
practitioners can be delivered from the corporeal darkness into which their pre-existent
divine souls had fallen. When the human nous comes to know itself, that is, to recognize
its own primordial divine nature, and subsequently freely chooses to live according to the
same by allowing itself to be governed by its intellect rather than by the passions of the
body in which it is trapped, it is said to escape the grip of fate (heimarmen) to which the
body is subject, to be liberated from the twelve evil powers or vices of the Zodiac by the
regenerating inhabitation of ten divine powers or virtues, and thereby to acquire the
1Bouyer,
2Gross,
3A.
Christian Mystery, 68.
J. Festugire, L'Hermtisme (Lund: C W K Gleerup, 1948), 22.
4Corpus
Hermeticum 1.4-6.
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vision (thea) of unchanging truth. 1 Divinization is here not a consequence of the vision
of God, but rather a precondition for it, inasmuch as the material embodiment of the soul
is preclusive to its knowledge of divine reality. Tat, the character who represents all of
humanity in Tractate XIII of the Corpus Hermeticum, "needs to become the divine so that
he can know the divine."2 Whereas the mystery cults "establish only a moral union
between the initiated and the divinity, a relationship of belonging and protection," Gross
concludes, Hermetic gnosticism "establishes between the mystics and their god a direct
and immediate contact, to the point of identification . . . by way of reabsorption in the
divine One, from which it has come."3
It has been suggested that the significance of Greek religions as a propadeutic for
the Christian doctrine of divinization lies not only in the substantive hopes of assimilation
to God and attainment of immortality to which they aspired, but more determinatively in
"their inability to produce even an earnest of fulfilling them."4 Although the same may
1Ibid.,
12.5-9; 13.12, cited by Festugire, L'Hermtisme, 34. On account of the

antinomianism which necessarily follows from the dualistic idea that the crimes
committed by individuals do not redound to their true divine selves, but only to their
lower natures, Festugire regards hermetic morality to be "as far as possible from
Christianity." Yet, he finds close parallels between the two religions with respect to the
role and operation of free will.
2William
C. Grese, Corpus Hermeticum XIII and Early Christian Literature, Studia ad

Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti, vol. 5 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1979), 198. Grese
tends to view Tractate XIII in literary isolation from the rest of the Corpus Hermeticum,
denying, for instance, that the former conceives of the soul as pre-existent and immortal.
The central theme of Tractate XIII, which Festugire (L'Hermtisme, 8, 23) identifies as
the palmary text of Hermetic divinization, is, according to Grese, "an explanation of the
'sacred law' with which it begins: 'no one is able to be saved before regeneration.'"
3Gross,
La Divinisation du chrtien, 38. Cf. A. J. Festugire, "La divinisation du

Chrtien," 96, who concludes that the two governing texts of the Corpus Hermeticum
with respect to the nature of the image and likeness are 1.12 and 12.14, both of which
indicate that the human nous is related to God by emanation, or a connaturality of
essence, whether directly or indirectly. In either case, "it amounts to explicit pantheism."
4Bouyer,
Christian Mystery, 73.

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be said of the Greek philosophical tradition, it will provide both a much more formidable
alternative and, paradoxically, a more winsomely assimilable metaphysical vocabulary to
the Christian authors, as we shall see.
B. GREEK PHILOSOPHY
The language of participation which would be used by the Christian tradition to
express the dependence of supernatural human virtue upon Gods gratuitous selfcommunication was first devised by Plato to characterize the relation between sensible
particulars and the intelligible, universal ideas (ideai) or forms (eid) they share in
common, typically goodness, truth, and beauty.1 Beauty, for instance, subsists of itself
and by itself in an eternal oneness, while every beautiful thing partakes (metechonta) of it
in such sort that, however much the parts may wax and wane, it will be neither more nor
less, but still the same inviolable whole.2 Because Plato believed that the visible,
transient world arose when matter was formed by the Demiurge to reflect or copy the
ideal world, he frequently employed the language of participation (methexis)
1David
Bals, Metousia Theou: Man's Participation in God's Perfections According to

Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Studia Anselmiana 50 (Rome: Herder, 1966), 2: Plato
introduces the term methexis primarily to express the relationship of the many individual
and sensible instances to the one idea or form. Together with its synonyms (metoch,
metalpsis the corresponding verbs being metechein and metalambanein) or near
synonyms (koinnia, verb koinnein) and other related expressions, the term methexis
seems to suggest rather the immanence of the idea in the particulars, an immanence
which is at the same time clearly distinguished from identity. In Platos later dialogues,
the terms for likeness (homoima) and imitation (mimsis), suggesting the transcendence
of the ideas as models, recur more frequently, but the language of participation remains
common.
2Symposium
211b. All translations of Plato are from Edith Hamilton and Huntington
Cairnes, eds., The Collected Dialogues of Plato, trans. Lane Cooper, F. M. Cornford, et
al., Bollingen Series, LXXI (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1961; reprint, 1989).
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interchangeably with that of imitation (mimsis). 1 Although "participation sounds as if it

might represent a more interior relation than imitation denotes," i.e., "that forms are
immanent within things,"2 Plato was in fact often more concerned to assert the
transcendence of the forms and to describe the relation of sensible phenomena to them as
copies to models3 or images to the original4 or shadows to substance.5
The relative transcendence/immanence of Platos forms or essences to particulars
is a matter of long standing debate and well beyond the scope of this study, but one
formulation he gives to the transcendence of the form of the good (which he identified in
the Republic as the unifying principle of all essential forms) is especially noteworthy for
its future adoption by early Christian authors to express the Trinitys transcendence: like
the sun, which both furnishes to visibles the power of visibility and gives them growth,
so also the objects of knowledge not only receive from the presence of the good their
being known, but their very existence and essence is derived to them from it, though the
good itself is not essence but still transcends essence (epekeina ts ousias) in dignity and
surpassing power.6 The question that will be of greatest significance to us is whether the
application of this phrase by Christians was intended to mean that God is more than His
own divine essence, as the Palamite school maintains, or that God transcends all created
essence.
1Bouyer,
Cosmos: The World and the Glory of God, trans. Pierre de Fontnouvelle
(Petersham, MA: St. Bedes Publications, 1982), 78.
2Cuthbert
Rutenber, The Doctrine of the Imitation of God in Plato (New York: Kings
Crown Press, 1946), 21.
3Timaeus
37c.
4Phaedrus
250d.
5Republic
7.
6Ibid.,
509b.
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Correlating Platos concept of participation with what the Christian fathers called
divinization is rendered most problematic, however, by the pervasive, graduated divinity
of his universe: "instead of asking, what is the divine for Plato, we might better ask what
is not the divine for Plato: everything for him is divine."1 In Platos univocal continuum
of being, only the divine world of the necessary, immutable, and intelligible is fully real,
whereas everything else exists precisely to the extent that it can claim these three
qualities.2 On this basis, douard des Places contends that the Eastern patristic doctrine
of divinization, which taught that the image (eikn) imprinted upon us by the Creator is
to reappear through an effort toward likeness, homoisis, cannot be attributed to Plato
because his cosmology portrays the entire visible world, not just man, as the image of the
celestial paradeigma after which it was formed. 3
Yet, within Plato's dualism between the intelligible and the visible, being and
becoming, between immutable exemplars and transitory particulars, the human person is,
uniquely among all mortals, capable of attaining a progressive assimilation to God, whom
1Culbert
Rutenber, The Doctrine of the Imitation of God in Plato (New York: Kings
Crown Press, 1946), 4.
2Normann,
Teilhabe, 39-43: Platos use of methexis contains an inherent bias against the
particular and the earthly, which only has a share or a part of the actual and the fully real
Idea. The term serves to guard against both a presocratic monism in which everything is
reduces to the Monad and against a dualism in which the material world is simply
regarded as evil itself and is opposed to the world of Ideas. Methexis may correctly be
translated with mutuality (Gemeinsamkeit), Normann proposes. He also suggests that
koinnia was the special word used by Plato to designate the Verbundenheit or
solidarity between the Idea and the particular.
3des
Places, "Divinisation," 3:1373, citing Timaeus 29 b.

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Plato variously identifies as the good, 1 the idea of beauty,2 the One,3 or subject to the
forms.4 This unique capacity comes by virtue of the highest part of the human soul, the
nous, which Plato understood to be "most like that which is divine, immortal, intelligible,
uniform, indissoluble, and ever self-consistent and invariable."5 Although it is now
imprisoned in an earthly body and subjected by it to the force of passion, which in turn
precludes the nous from apprehending fully the ideal world of the good, the true, and the
beautiful,6 it remains wholly immutable, immortal, and uncreated: And we should
consider that God gave the sovereign part of the human soul to be the divinity of each
1According
to Gilson and Bouyer, nothing more closely resembles the Christian God in
Platos cosmos than the form of the good, given that it is defined in Republic 517c as the
cause for all things of all that is right and beautiful, giving birth in the visible world to
light, and the author of light and itself in the intelligible world being the authentic source
of truth and reason. The form of the good is the one or the unifying principle of
everything because all that exists is good by virtue of its existence. Therefore, it is the
most divine of all that which is divine. (A. J. Festugire, L'idal religieux des Grecs et
l'vangile, 44, quoted by Gilson, God and Philosophy [New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1941], 26, n. 23. Bouyer, The Christian Mystery, 191, concurs.) Gilson also sternly
warns against drawing a precipitous correlation between the Form of the Good and the
God of Judaism and Christianity.
2Symposium
211a.
3Parmenides
134-166. See Bernard McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to

the Fifth Century (New York: Crossroad, 1991), 33: Among Platos eight hypotheses
regarding the existence of the One in Parmenides 137c-166b, the first hypothesis,
requiring that if the One exists nothing affirmative can be predicated of it (142a), lies at
the root of all apophaticism.
4John
M. Rist, Eros and Psyche: Studies in Plato, Plotinus, and Origen (Toronto: Univ. of
Toronto Press, 1964), 164, believes that Plato's God is subordinate to the Forms inasmuch
as He is made divine by intuitive knowledge of the Forms. Rutenber, The Doctrine of the
Imitation of God in Plato, 4-17, concludes that Plato's thought is so conflicted as to made
the question of the identity of his theos virtually insoluble.
5Phaedo
80b. Cf. Soph. 255e; 259a; Normann, Teilhabe, 45.
6Ibid.,
62b; Gorgias 493a; Phaedrus 250d. See Bouyer, Cosmos, 77: we are a divine
spark encased in an earthen shell. This is the principle of the entire Platonic
anthropology.
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one, being that part which, as we say, dwells at the top of the body, and inasmuch as we
are a plant not of an earthly but of a heavenly growth, raises us from earth to our kindred
who are in heaven.1 Rist calls this passage Plato's "clearest statement of man's innate
kinship with God."2 It might also be called the founding text of neo-Palamite
anthropology, if Lot-Borodine and Romanides are to be taken as representative of the
latter.
The soul may fulfill its destiny to return to the immutable home from which it
descended by overcoming the hegemonic distractions of the body in so far as possible
through ascetic practices 3 and by devoting its innately deiform noetic faculty to the
contemplation of immortal and divine realities; in contrast to the one who is occupied
with the cravings of desire and ambition, which make ones thoughts mortal,
he who has been earnest in the love of knowledge and of true wisdom, and has
exercised his intellect more than any other part of him, must have thoughts
immortal and divine, if he attain truth, and in so far as human nature is capable
(kath' hoson endechetai) of sharing in immortality, he must altogether be
immortal, and since he is ever cherishing the divine power and has the divinity
within him in perfect order, he will be singularly happy.4
Because the good life requires that we give to each the food and motion which are
natural to it, and because the motions which are naturally akin to the divine principle
within us are the thoughts and revolutions of the universe, therefore, Plato reasons,
by learning the harmonies and revolutions of the universe, (we) should correct the
courses of the head which were corrupted at our birth, and should assimilate the
thinking being to the thought, renewing his original nature, so that having
assimilated them he may attain to that best life which the gods have set before
mankind, both for the present and the future.5
1Timaeus
2Rist,
Eros and Psyche: Studies in Plato, Plotinus, and Origen, 17.
3Phaedo
66ab; 67d. See Gross, La Divinisation du chrtien, 44-45.
4Timaeus
5Ibid.,
90a. Cf. Phaedo 248c; Phaedrus 245d.
90bc.
90d.
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Because evil is so thoroughly bound up with vicissitude and mortality:

That is why we should make all speed to take flight from this world to the other,
and that means becoming like the divine so far as we can (homoios the kata ton
dynaton), and that again is to become righteous with the help of wisdom . . . and
nothing is more like the divine than any one of us who becomes as righteous as
possible.1
The true philosopher, then, fixes his gaze upon the things of the eternal and unchanging
order and will endeavor to imitate them and, as far as may be, to fashion himself in
their likeness and assimilate himself to them; therefore, he will himself become orderly
and divine in the measure permitted to man. 2
This last phrase, "in the measure permitted to man," along with the kata ton
dynaton of Theaetetus 176bc and the kath' hoson endechetai of Timaeus 90c, begs the
central question of the current study. Where, precisely, for Platos nous, does its
humanity end and its divinity begin? However frequently and clearly Plato affirmed the
preexistent divinity of the human soul, each of these qualifying phrases seems to indicate
that his eschatological homoisis the was understood to entail something less than the
simple identification of the nous with absolute being or a (re)absorption at the end of its
reditus.
It is possible, as Gilson suggests, that the key to understanding the divine end
Plato anticipated for philosophers lies in the implicit distinction he drew between the
gods (a title he gave to the sun, the planets, and every other body which evinced a soul by
spontaneous or self-generated movement, including humans) and the absolute being of
impersonal divine ideas, none of which he ever calls a god: a Platonic god is a living
individual endowed with all the fundamental attributes of an Idea, i.e., it is intelligible,
1Theaetetus
2Republic
176bc.
500cd.
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immutable, necessary, and eternal, but it is inferior to the idea.1 Because the nous of the
philosopher already possesses these qualities by nature, then, when he reaches the
intelligible world, he does not, strictly speaking, divinize his soul: his soul is a god in its
own right. . . . A philosopher is a human soul which remembers its own divinity and
behaves as becomes a god.2 Such an interpretation of Platos teleology is supported by a
passage from the Phaedrus, where he reasons that because the vision of the unity of the
forms is a recollection of those things which our souls beheld aforetime as they
journeyed with their god, therefore is it meet and right that the soul of the philosopher
alone should recover her wings, for she, so far as may be (kata dynamin), is ever near in
memory to those things a gods nearness whereunto makes him truly god. 3 Rist,
however, finds a principle of differentiation between the philosopher and the gods in the
Sophist, where, in response to Socrates playful suspicion that Theodorus friend might be
some god, Theodorus responds: I should not call him a god (theos) by any means, but
a divine man (theios anr). I would say that of any philosopher.4
1Gilson,
God and Philosophy, 27-28. Gilson also notes that Plato regarded the Olympians
and the gods of the state even higher than the human soul. Although the gods are
subordinate to the Ideas in terms of the grade or degree of divinity, the gods alone are
personal.
2Ibid.,
29. See also McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism, 33, who writes that
although Thaeatetus 176b clearly indicates that divinization then is the goal of Platos
philosophy: the philosopher gains immortality by being assimilated to God, Platos
teaching that the soul is naturally divine and not just divinizable separates his doctrine
decisively from Christianity.
3Phaedrus
249c
4Sophist
216c. CDP translation: there is something divine about him instead of a

divine man. Rist, Eros and Psyche, 17-18, contends that theios anr alone is applicable to
the person who has acquired while still in the body a vision of the form of the good. He
also argues that the qualifying phrase here, kata dynamin, is not as delimiting as the other
restrictions in Theaetetus, Timaeus, and Republic. Rather, as evinced by the once mortal
Guardians who have attained full divinity, kata dynamin here implies that the
philosopher's deification is contingent not upon any limitations inherent to the nature of
the human nous itself, but only upon his powers of anamnsis.
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The failure of Parmenides and Socrates, however, to come to a satisfactory

resolution of the problem of how the many can participate in the One without either
atomizing the One or annihilating the many reveals how malleable, imprecise, and finally
inadequate was Platos doctrine of participation.1 Indeed, due to its broad range of
applications and polyvalent usage, his idea of participation almost defies definition,
according to H. R. Schlette, who further warns that Plato's idealism and antidualistic
metaphysical monism make the idea of analogical participation vulnerable to collapse,
in as much as "the autonomy of the world and of the person . . . is not sufficiently
guaranteed." 2 As George also observes in this connection, although Plato seemed to
recognize an ethical or virtuous dimension of human assimilation to God, whereby the
person comes to possess a reflection or imitation of Gods attributes, he clearly privileged
the purely spiritual way through which the human nous flees from its corporeal prison to
the changeless world of the Ideas whence it came. Consequently, there is no
authentically human or creaturely way to be divinized for Plato. One must cease to be a
human being in order to attain the homoisis the of which he writes; the nous simply
recognizes its native connaturality with God and begins to act accordingly once it is
delivered from the deceptive world of change. Herein, he suggests, lies the definitive
difference between the Platonic and Christian doctrines.3
However ambiguous and inadequate may have been Plato's understanding of the
participatory mechanism through which it is possible for a human soul to achieve
perfection, it is clear that he successfully effected an enduring transposition of the idea of
divinization from the mythical/cultic ecstacy of the mystery religions to a gnoseological
and moral assimilation to God my means of the acquisition of a vision of ultimate reality
1Parmenides
127a - 136c.
2H.
R. Schlette, "Participation," in Encyclopdie de la Foi (Paris: Les ditions du Cerf,

1966), 3:314.
3George,
Vergttlichung des Menschen, 125-27.

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unclouded by the downward pull of the senses.1 For Plato, "to imitate God, to do one's
best to be like Him, such is the end of the moral life."2 Here he is far from the timid
warnings of Hesiod.
Whereas moral virtue and knowledge of the good are coextensive in Plato's view,
such that, like God Himself, anyone who attains a deifying knowledge of the form of the
good is bound to act in accordance with it, Aristotle introduced a clear separation
between the vocation of the philosopher, who is concerned with the contemplation of
knowledge itself as an end in itself, and that of the statesman, who is concerned with the
life of virtue as lived in the world. Such a distinction emerges from Aristotle's
understanding of God as the one who is pure intelligence, above virtue, and essentially
extrinsic to the myriad of disparate prudential judgments which together comprise the
good life.3
The great difference between Plato and Aristotle regarding their respective
understandings of divinization consists in that the latter located human beatitude not in an
eschatological union with the world of transcendent ideas, the very existence of which he
denied, but in the perfection of knowledge and virtue in this life. Although Aristotle did
not entirely abandon the doctrine of participation with his rejection of Platos doctrine of
transcendent forms, he employed metechein primarily to denote the possession to a
greater or lesser degree of virtuous qualities or perfections.4 The closest he comes to the
1Gross,
2des
La Divinisation du chrtien, 48-49.
Places, "Divinisation," 3:1374.
3Rist,
Eros and Psyche, 158, citing Nicomachean Ethics 1178b and adding that both
1134b27 and 1179a25ff throw some ambiguity into the question. Nevertheless, if Plato's
God is (almost) identical with the Good, "for Aristotle, the God has no moral attributes;
he is purely intellectual."
4Philippe,
M. D. La participation dans la philosophie dAristote. Revue Thomiste 49

(1949): 254-77.
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idea of divinization is to affirm that the individual can attain its own perfection through
contemplation (theria) of reality. However, since his cosmos contains no single form of
absolute being, much less a personal or hypostasized God from whom all virtue derives,
Aristotles conception can hardly be called a theory of participation in divine life.1
Among the very few occasions on which he writes of homoisis the, it is clear that it is
only the pure philosopher who may aspire to such a rarefied end, inasmuch as acting in
conformity with the nous, which, like Plato, he understood to be the most fully divine
aspect of the human person,2 requires a life of contemplation abstracted from the political
world of change and motion:
If then nous [mind in its highest manifestation] is divine in comparison with the
human being, the life of nous must be divine in comparison with human life. But
we must not follow the advice of those who tell us to 'think human thoughts being
human,' or mortal thoughts because we are mortal. No, let us be immortal as far
as we can and do everything possible to live according to the highest that is in us.3
Although Aristotle conceived of God in predominantly impersonal terms and is
generally regarded to have denied any real existence of the individual soul after death,
and although, by positing an amoral God who is entirely separated from and essentially
unrelated to the good, he has effectively attenuated the divine moral imperative
developed by Plato and constructed a scenario in which virtuous action serves only as a
sometimes dispensable instrument for human happiness, Gross is still bold to conclude
1Normann,
Teilhabe, 46, citing Nicom. Ethics 1174B21; 1178B5,7; 1178B25.
2Gross,
La Divinisation du chrtien, 53, citing Nicomachean Ethics 1177a-b. Cf. Faller,

"Griechische Vergottung und christliche Vergottlichung," 416.
3Nichomachean
Ethics 1177b30, quoted by Guthrie, The Greeks and Their Gods, 367,
who comments: "Pure reason is the only characteristic that can be ascribed to God, and it
may be said therefore that the highest and best part of man's nature is identical with the
nature of God."
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that "Aristotle recaptured Plato's conception, according to which humanity's true

beatitude consists in its assimilation to God, in its divinization." 1
Neither did the Stoics hope for assimilation or acquired likeness to a transcendent
God, but believed that if they came to rule completely over their passions, to allow their
souls to conquer their bodies and thereby to achieve perfect apatheia, they would come to
sit at the table with the gods and to rule with them, to whom their souls already possessed
a full connaturality. 2 Due to the jaundiced view most Stoics took toward pure theria,
Aristotle's dichotomy between knowledge and virtue would disappear altogether, so that
philosophy became virtually identical to ethics,3 yet an ethic in which the moral good was
reducible to the practice of asceticism grounded in a body-soul dualism, thus having
nothing in common with the ideal of self-giving charity upon which Christian morality
rests, nor even with the Platonic aspiration to righteousness.4
Stoicism's anthropogeny, according to which the human soul was understood to be
an emanation (or to contain a spark, a logos spermatikos) from the rational principle of
the cosmos, along with their characteristic identification of God with the latter, meant that
the attainment of homoisis the, which remained a central motif for the later Stoics,5
would be defined in such a way that "man should live homologoumens t phusei, in
1Gross,
2George,
Vergttlichung des Menschen, 128-9, citing Epictetus, Diss 1.12.5-16;

2.8.9-11; 2.18.28; Ench 15.
3Rist,
Eros and Psyche, 160, citing Seneca, Ep. 71.6.
4George,
Vergttlichung des Menschen, 128.
5H.
Merki, Homoisis The: Von der platonischen Angleichung an Gott zur

Gotthnlichkeit bei Gregor von Nyssa, Beitrage zur Geschichte der altchristlichen
Literatur und Theologie 7 (Frieburg: Paulusverlag, 1952), 7, notes that it is virtually
absent from early Stoicism.
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keeping with his best nature, which is like the Nature of God itself."1 Accordingly, then,
the final end of this sort of assimilation is nothing at all like an interpersonal communion
with the infinite God whose finite image and likeness has been recovered or perfected.
Instead, "the fiery god and nature are fused in a pantheism in which the human person
must finally be lost."2 This is how Aratos could say of God in his Phaenomena (5.5), "we
are of his race," (quoted by St. Paul in Acts 17:28), intending to reduce the divine to the
secular rather than to elevate the latter to the former.3 In contrast to Platos careful
attention to the limits of noetic assimilation to the ever greater form of the good, Seneca
captured the Stoic view of the matter with his coarse declaration: Homo dei pars est.4
The influence of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics on most of the Christian fathers
would not be direct, however, but would be mediated largely through the syncretistic
work of the Middle Platonists and Neoplatonists, among whom Plotinus is perhaps the
most influential. The most significant contribution of the Middle Platonists to what
became the philosophical language of the Christian tradition was to posit a supremely
transcendent First Principle whose only contact with the world could be through
hypostasized intermediaries, preeminently the Logos. 5 Transcendence and immanence,
according to their conception, become two ontologically distinct modes or levels of the
1Rist,
2des
Eros and Psyche, 162.
Places, "Divinisation," 3:1375. Cf. Gross, La Divinisation du chrtien, 56.
3Ibid.,
3:1374. He also notes that while Epictetus personalized the universal law by
identifying it with Zeus and wrote of a sort of divine filiation which would come from
man's submission to the divine will, this was held in clear distinction from man's equally
constitutive filiation to the earth which passes away (Disc. 1.3.1-3). Cf. Gross, La
Divinisation du chrtien, 34; Faller, "Griechische Vergottung und christliche
Vergottlichung," 417.
4Epist.
5John
92.30, quoted in Normann, Teilhabe, 62, n. 6.
Dillon, The Middle Platonists (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 51.
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divine nature;1 Albinus, for instance, taught that the human assimilation to God of which
Plato writes in Theaetetus 176b is an acquired likeness strictly to the third divine
hypostasis, or World Soul, but most certainly not to the fully transcendent Supreme God,
who remains inaccessible and therefore inimitable to mortals.2
Begun by the Middle Platonists, this drawing of real or ontological boundaries
within the divine realm was absolutized by Plotinus and by later Neoplatonists such as
Porphyry, Proclus,3 and Iamblichus. 4 The ambiguity and indecisiveness evinced in
Platos Parmenides dialogue on the participability and knowability of absolute being
troubled Plotinus, who resolved the dilemma by reifying and hypostasizing the various
hypotheses of the Parmenides in such a way that the first hypothesis (137c-42a) becomes
the absolutely simple Monad or One which, in order to fulfill its role as the transcendent
source of all things, he believed had to remain free from all plurality and limitation,
beyond all attribution or predication (not even being can be predicated of the One), 5
1Ibid.,
282 (Albinus), 368 (Numenius).
2Wallis,
Neoplatonism (New York: Scribners, 1972), 31.
3The
more intentionally pagan Athenian school of Neoplatonism, represented typically by

Proclus, further widened the gap between the Transcendent One and the diverse world of
particulars. With Proclus, the imparticipable One produces coessential Henads which
constitute the Participated intermediaries linking lower realities to the One, all of which
strikes Wallis as similar to what he calls the Eastern Orthodox Churchs teaching that
man can be deified by divine grace. (Neoplatonism, 147-48)
4Whereas
Plato offered some rather imprecise indications that the Forms were
transcendent of both the immanent universal and the particular (Timaeus 52a),
Iamblichus further radicalized the transcendence of Plotinus intelligible realm by
developing a clearly delineated schematic wherein there are three levels of reality,
Transcendent Form, immanent universal and material particular, terms which he entitled
respectively Unparticipated, Participated and Participant. (Wallis, Neoplatonism, 126)
According to this conception, the participated is now the manifold, immanent agency of
the more simple unparticipated.
5Enn.
5.3.10; 5.5.13.
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imparticipable (inimitable), and utterly unknowable: 1 "Existing beyond and above Being,
it must be beyond and above Act and beyond and above the Intellectual-Principle and all
Intellection." 2 The One is the Good in the sense that it is the self-sufficient origin of all
things and final end of all things,3 but Plotinus insisted that it is also at the same time
even above goodness4 because perfect goodness entails the very absence of all delimiting
attributes.5 The second hypothesis of Parmenides (142b-55e) Plotinus transformed into
the ontologically distinct second Hypostasis or Nous which the Monad generates as a
necessary, disinterested, and automatic consequence of its self-contemplative nature,6
similar in this respect to Aristotle's self-thinking Thought.7 Like Philo and the Middle
Platonists before him,8 Plotinus also relocated the entirety of Platos Ideal Forms to this
eminently knowable Nous,9 through participation in which the multifarious world of
1As
Plotinus understood the logical requirements of transcendence and provenance, in

order for the One to be the source of Form, Measure, and Limit, the One must itself be
Formless, Unmeasured, and Infinite. (Wallis, Neoplatonism, 57, citing Enn. 5.5.4;
6.7.17.)
2Enneads
1.7.1. This and all quoted translations of Plotinus are from Plotinus, The
Enneads, translated by Stephen MacKenna, revised by B. S. Page, 3d ed. (London: Faber
and Faber, 1962).
3Ibid.,
6.7.24; 6.9.6.
4Ibid.,
5.3.17; 6.9.6.
5Ibid.,
5.3.11.
6Wallis,
Neoplatonism, 20-21.
7Paul
Henry, "The Place of Plotinus in the History of Thought," in Plotinus, The Enneads,
trans. Stephen MacKenna, 3d ed., revised by B. S. Page, xxxv-lxx (London: Faber and
Faber, 1962), lv.
8Dillon,
Middle Platonism, 45.
9Wallis,
Neoplatonism, 54.
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becoming retains its constitutive connection to the divine.1 The Nous is even further
ontologically differentiated by Plotinus from the fully immanent agency of the third
divine hypostasis or World Soul, which corresponds with the hypothesis set forth in
Parmenides 155e-57b.
As the amphibious intermediary between the sensible and intelligible worlds, 2 the
lower human soul or psych has allowed the purely intelligible higher soul or nous, which
Plotinus thought to be a divine being . . . a god, a later phase of the divine (theos ousa ho
hysteros),3 to become preoccupied with the enticements of its corporeal encasement and,
in the Plotinian idiom, has therefore fallen or descended by failing to accomplish its
proper end, which was to perfuse the sensible world with intelligibility by means of
uninterrupted contemplation of the Forms. 4 The soul may return to the celestial patria
from which it descended not by looking outside or above itself for a savior, but by turning
1Normann,
Teilhabe, 48. Normann cautions that because the Nous plays a unifying roll in
Plotinus cosmology like fire did for Heraclitus and water for Thales, participation in the
Ideas which collectively constitute the Nous can easily be misconstrued as identification.
He further surmises that a progressive spiritualization (Vergeistigung) can be observed
from the pre-Socratics through Neoplatonism, with the Enneads as a significant
milestone, citing Enn. 1.2.3; 1.2.6; and 6.7.35 as particularly nettlesome examples of
Plotinus tendency to confuse the creature with the divine in an annihilating union. (p. 49)
Because of the absolute ontological discontinuity it postulates between the One which is
above being and the creaturely particulars which enjoy various degrees of being,
Neoplatonism offers no metaphysic whereby the creature can be divinized by
participation in God without at once being absorbed and thus destroyed.
2Enn.
3Ibid.,
4.8.4.
4.8.5. Cf. Enn. 2.3.9; 3.1.8; 4.3.15.
4Ibid.,
4.3.12-18. See also George, Vergttlichung des Menschen, 129-30; A. H.

Armstrong, The Architecture of the Intelligible Universe in the Philosophy of Plotinus
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940), 91.
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in upon itself in order to be illuminated1 by the vision of incorporeal light,2 which is itself
an Act or energeia of the soul,3 and thereby to recognize its own innately divine
identity.4 Once it does, it can choose 5 to act exclusively in accordance with the
intelligible nature which constitutes its true character in order to acquire homoisin pros
theon,6 which amounts to little more that purity from sensual passion and is only a
requisite prelude to its final ecstatic, self-annihilating union with the Nous or the One.7
Consequently, moral virtue for Plotinus and Porphyry is largely reducible to an asceticism
which aims not at self-giving charity, but only at the souls freedom from bodily
attachments. Their soteriology corresponds in turn to their Neoplatonic understanding
that the most distinctive characteristic of the God from whom the nous emanated and to
which it must be assimilated and united is apatheia, rather than the radiant splendor of
love.8
1Ibid.,
6.9.7; 6.5.8-12. The metaphor of illumination from which Augustine will borrow
so liberally means nothing else for Plotinus than the participation of the individual soul in
the archetypal Ideas which are identical with the Nous and which inform all matter.
Within the texts cited here, the two concepts, participation and illumination, are
employed interchangeably. See Normann, Teilhabe, 48-51, and Gross, La Divinisation
du chrtien, 64, who cites further Enneads 1.6.9; 5.3.17.
2For
the incorporeality and pure intelligibility of light, see Enn. 1.6.3; 2.1.7; 4.5.6.
3Armstrong, Architecture,
4Enneads
54.
1.2.6; 6.9.7.
5 Against
the Stoics, Plotinus was adamant in defense of the freedom of the human will.
See Enneads 3.3.4.
6Enneads
1.2.3.
7Rist,
Eros and Psyche, 216; Merki, Homoisis The, 131. On the question of whether
the soul's union is finally with the Nous or with the One, Plotinus' thought is rather
confused and contradictory, as Armstrong demonstrates in Architecture, 35f.
8George,

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The Plotinian idea to which the Christian fathers would object most consistently is
this inherent divinity or immortality of the soul and its attendant denial of the necessity of
divine assistance or grace in attaining union with God. In two passages of the Enneads
especially, Plotinus writes of the nous as an unfallen part of the human soul which
remains immune to the deceitful delights of the sensible order and continues in
uninterrupted contemplation of the intelligible world:
(E)ven our human soul has not sunk entire; something of it is continuously in the
Intellectual Realm, though if that part, which is in this sphere of sense, hold the
mastery, or rather be mastered here and troubled, it keeps us blind to what the
upper phase holds in contemplation. 1
It is entirely on the autonomous strength of this essentially divine higher soul that the
lower soul can undergo purifications from its attachments to sensible reality and return to
the One, whence it came. The only assistance or grace required is that of the ers
which is indelibly inherent in the soul by virtue of its emanation from the One, which, in
turn, is eternally possessed of the very same ers by which it loves (desires and
contemplates) only itself. 2 "The latent actuality of salvation and the cold transcendence
of God make it impossible, in terms of Plotinian Socraticism, to conceive of any genuine
doctrine of grace."3 This, along with its failure to produce a doctrine of creation, appears
to be the element that separates Hellenistic soteriology most decisively from that of
Christianity. George, for instance, identifies four ways or methodologies observable in
the Platonic and Neoplatonic teachings on deification: the ethical way, or the practice
of virtues, which gives a certain likeness to God but is incapable of leading to
incorruptibility and immortality; the purely mental (geistige) way, or the contemplation
of unchanging reality by means of the nous which is connatural to it; the ascetical way,
1Enneads
4.8.8. Cf. Enneads 5.1.10.
2Ibid.,
6.7.31. See R. Arnou, Le dsir de Dieu dans la philosophie de Plotin, 2d ed.

(Rome: Presses de l'Universit Gregorienne, 1967), 59-111.
3Paul
Henry, "The Place of Plotinus in the History of Thought," xlvii.

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or the separation of the soul from the passion of the body to the extent possible; and the
mystical way, or the union of the soul with the One.1 Although each of these
spiritualities has an analogue in the Christian tradition, they all assume that the human
nous is a fully self-sufficient agent, needing no assistance from the God or First Principle
from which it emanated. For similar reasons, Louis Bouyer insists that the idea of a
divinization of religious people is purely Christian and has no real antecedent in early
Greek writing; Neoplatonic hensis is nothing more than the souls recovered awareness
of its divine nature, while the language of theopoisis in pagan Greek thought referred
only to the making of idols, or, later on, the apotheosis (a purely legal and ceremonial
affair) of the last Roman Emperors, and the term thesis was coined and used
exclusively by Christians.2
Even more than for Plato, the differentiation or individuation of Plotinus'
participant in absolute being threatens to dissolve. Whereas both Plato and Aristotle
normally qualified their hopes for assimilation to God with kata ton dynaton and
equivalent expressions, as we have seen, Plotinus evinces no such restraint. Indeed, on a
number of occasions he carefully omits the kata ton dynaton phrase when quoting Platos
Theaetetus 176 passage.3 Plotinus is not content to become like God, to participate
analogically in the virtues and goodness of God, but appears to believe that the telos of
the soul's journey is to become God.4 Some of this crucial difference may be attributable
to his full appropriation of Aristotle's epistemological axiom that one necessarily
1George,
Vergttlichung des Menschen, 133.
2Bouyer,
The Christian Mystery, 227.
3Enneads
1.2.1; 1.2.3; 1.6.6.
4Gross,
La Divinisation du chrtien, 65, citing Enneads 6.7.34; 6.9.9. Cf. Merki,

Homoisis The, 20. Rist (Eros and Psyche, 89, n. 134) thinks that this common view
of Plotinus doctrine of deification is something of an exaggeration and that the truly
significant point is that Plotinus failed to distinguish at all between the Nous and the
archetypal Forms.
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becomes what knows, i.e., that object and subject are identified in the act of mental
appropriation.1 At the end of the day, however, it seems that one cannot sustain the
difference between participation and identity (unit) without a specific doctrine of
creation.2
A doctrine of creation is, indeed, what most distinguishes the Neoplatonists from
Hellenistic Judaism.3 Philo, whom I am treating out of chronological sequence by way of
making the transition to biblical exegetes, bears great significance for this study in his
position as the first thinker to have attempted a comprehensive interpretation of the
Hebrew Scripture through the lens of Greek philosophy. Although the extent of his
influence on the Middle Platonists and Neoplatonists is still an unresolved matter of
debate,4 the two ideas which govern his allegorical exegesis also came to preoccupy
Platonic philosophers: "the divine transcendence and the necessity of intermediary
beings between God and the world."5 Philo's first concern was to establish the
ineffability, transcendence, radical otherness, and incomprehensibility of the divine ousia,
a task which he attempted to accomplish primarily on the basis of biblical data.6 Philo
anticipated the Neoplatonists in calling God the One or Monad 7 and in applying to Him
1A.
H. Armstrong, Architecture, 39, citing De anima 3.4.429a. Cf. Rist, Eros and Psyche,
191; and Paul Henry, "The Place of Plotinus in the History of Thought," xlviii.
2Schlette,
Participation, 315.
3In
view of the conclusion of Gross, La Divinisation du chrtien, 82-83, that Palestinian

Judaism never developed to any significant degree an understanding of salvation as
participation in God, I will confine my remarks here to the most prolific and influential
representative of the school of Alexandrian Judaism.
4Arnou,
Le dsir de Dieu, 260-65. See also Gross, La Divinisation du chrtien, 94; Rist,
Eros and Psyche, 188-89; Armstrong, Architecture, 107-108.
5Gross,
6Jean
Danilou, Philon D'Alexandrie (Paris: Librairie Artheme Fayard, 1958), 144-46,

citing De congressu eruditionis gratia 133-34; Legum allegoriae 2.1; De somniis 1.184.
7Quod
Deus sit immutabilis 11, Quis rerum divinarum heres sit 187.
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the apophatic modifiers unnameable (akatonomastos) and unutterable (arrhtos),1 but

there is no textual evidence that Philo is responsible for introducing the notion of an
unknowable God into Greek thought.2 The incomprehensibility of God was not
understood by Philo, as it would be by Plotinus, to follow from the idea that God was
above being or intrinsically above predication, but rather from His infinity, from His
transcendence of space and time which makes Him radically dissimilar to creatures. The
divine ousia is, therefore, not absolutely unknowable, that is, not inapprehensible, but
rather inexhaustible and immeasurable. The vision of God always involves an ever
deepening awareness of the darkness in which He is clothed and, moreover, comes to the
knowing subject as a purely gratuitous gift of God rather than by virtue of the soul's
nature.3 This last principle marked a sea change in the history of the idea of noetic
assimilation to God, one that would be adopted and pursued, as we shall see, by the
Christian authors to follow. Indeed, Normann claims that it was Philos primary
contribution to the Christian theology of participation in God to inveigh against pagan
Hellenism that man cannot obtain a participation in God on the strength of his own
natural powers, but God must grant it to him by drawing man to Himself.4
1De
somniis 1.67.
2Dillon,
The Middle Platonists, 155. Dillon does find in Philo, however, a tendency
towards the extreme transcendentalizing of God, placing him above all attributes or
functions. (Ibid., 162, citing De Abrahamo 120ff.)
3De
posteritate Caini 13-15. See Danilou, Philon, 148, who cites further H. A. Wolfson,
Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, 2 vols.
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1947), 2:94, 110, 148.
4Teilhabe,
63, citing Leg. all., 1.38. See also Lot-Borodine, La dification de l'homme,
23. She accepts Philos principle that one must be God in order to comprehend God,
but places Philo at the head of the Christian doctrine that the ontological and (therefore)
epistemological gulf between the Creator and the created is infranchissable except in
gratuitous events of mystical ecstacy: Already the gratuitous character of this ecstacy
appears with the Jewish precursor of Christian mysticism.
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On the basis of his exegesis of Exodus 33:20-33, in which God will allow Moses
to see only His back and not His face, Philo draws a distinction between God's essence
(ousia) and God's operations (dynameis) in the world.1 It is only by coming to a
cataphatic or positive knowledge of the dynameis, to which Philo assigns five distinct
identities and at the summit of which sits the Logos, 2 that the soul can progress to an
apophatic or negative apprehension of the divine ousia.3 Yet, this distinction seems to
hold no promise for explaining how the perfections of Philo's irreducibly transcendent
God are at the same time communicable; Philo speaks of the dynameis sometimes as
attributes or virtues of God which are just as transcendent as the divine ousia, 4 and
sometimes as created entities which serve as the intelligible archetypes of the created
order.5 For this reason, both Danilou and Wolfson deny that Philos distinction between
the divine ousia and dynameis bespeaks something similar to what Gregory Palamas
would much later do with the essence and uncreated energies of God.6
As for his anthropology, Philo understood the two biblical creation accounts,
those of Genesis 1:26 and 2:7, to refer to two entirely separate events. To the first, he
1Normann,
Teilhabe, 3, n. 4, observes in this connection that the couplet from 2 Peter 1:3,
divine power (theias dynames), occurs even more frequently among Greek thinkers
than does the phrase divine nature (theia physis) from 2 Peter 1:4. He cites Plato, Laws
3.691; Aristotle, Politica 714; Josephus, Ant Proom 2, 9.4, 8.6; Justin, Apol. 32.9; and
Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 1.98.4, 7.37.4.
2De
fuga et inventione 95, 100, 104. The function of the Logos as the repository of
Plato's ideal Forms and the exemplary archetype of all things created and as the Stoic
world Soul which pervades and animates the cosmos (Legum allegoriae 1.19; 3.96; Quis
rerum divinarum heres sit 230-31; Wolfson, Philo, vol. 1, p. 253-82) is much clearer than
is its ontological status. Danilou (Philon, 154-57) provides a summary of the debate
over whether Philo understood the Logos to be a creature or a divine emanation.
3De
posteritate Caini 166-69.
4Quod
5Quis
Deus sit immutabilis 83; De fuga et inventione 101; De mutatione nominum 15.
rerum divinarum heres sit 205-06; De sacrificiis Abelis et Caini 65.
6Danilou,
Philon, 153.
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ascribes only the creation of the celestial human: naturally immortal, incorporeal,
without gender, and a pure image of God.1 It was to this ideal celestial human nous,
which Philo also identified with God's breath of Genesis 2:7, that God added a sma,
thereby forming the earthly human.2 Yet, in contrast to the way in which Origen will
employ this same exegetical maneuver in order to argue for the pre-existence of souls,
Philo understood the celestial human to (pre)exist only as an archetypal idea in the
Logos, but never to have enjoyed any concrete existence in time. Indeed, for Philo even
the celestial human's creation was ordered to the vocation of the earthly human, viz., the
nous (in which Philo located, without remainder, the image of God3) might penetrate and
govern the sma in much the same way that the Logos does the cosmos.4 It is in relation
to this that Philos ontology of participation bears most fully upon our question. In
contrast to Platos naturalism, Philos created world of becoming derives its existence
only by having a gratuitous share in the divine world of Being, freely bestowed upon it
by God: The Father and Maker of all is good; and because of this He grudged not a
share (charin) in his own excellent nature (physes) to an existence (ousia) which has of
itself nothing fair and lovely, while it is capable of becoming all things.5 Also, Platos
conflation of Being and the Good becomes more differentiated with Philos conception,
according to which man is something of an amphibious creature, with the possibility of
participating either in the shadowy world of becoming or in the goodness of Being:
Among existence (ontn) some partake (metechei) neither of virtue nor of vice. . . .
1De
opificio mundi 134-35.
2Legum
allegoriae 1.31-32; 2.24. Perhaps the clearest statement of humanity's initial

participation in God via the image-nous is found in Quod deterius potiori insidiari soleat
86-87, where Philo writes that God has breathed into humanity his own divinity.
3De
opificio mundi 69.
4De
mutatione nominum 10; Legum allegoriae 1.91; De opificio mundi 145-46. See
Gross, La Divinisation du chrtien, 89-90; Danilou, Philon, 173-74.
5De
opificio mundi 5 (Loeb, 1:19).

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Others again have partnership (kekoinnken) with virtue only, and have no part
(ametocha) or lot in vice. . . . Others are of mixed nature, as man, who is liable to
contraries. 1 Again, it may with propriety be said that man is the borderland between
mortal and immortal nature, partaking (metechonta) of each so far as is needful. 2
The human abjuration of this lofty calling was effected by an uncreaturely attempt
at self-divinization, since the mind (nous) shows itself to be without God and full of
self-love (philautos) when it deems itself as on a par (isos) with God and, whereas
passivity is its true part, looks on itself as an agent.3 The hubris of this act resulted,
according to Philo, in a situation in which the nous must be purified from its attachment
to self by a progressively fuller knowledge of God in order to recover its original likeness
to God.4 Despite his insistence on the complete gratuity of both creation and salvation,
however, Philo is sufficiently Hellenistic to believe that only an elite few may attain to
such a blessed end. These elect are exemplified by the Hebrew prophets, whom he
regards in like manner to the Platonic philosopher or the Stoic wise man and of whom he
writes: "But he who is resolved into the nature of unity is said to come near God in a
kind of family relation, for having given up and left behind all mortal kinds, he is
changed into the divine, so that such men become kin to God and truly divine."5 Moses
is, for Philo, the quintessential exemplar of this prophetic-ecstatic mystical union. His
ascent on Mt. Sinai was regarded as a prototype of the soul's divinizing ascent to God
1Ibid.,
24 (Loeb, 1:59).
2Ibid.,
46 (Loeb, 1:107).
3Legum
allegoria 1.49 (Loeb, 1:177).
4Merki,
Homoisis The, 36ff.
5Quaestiones
in Exodum 2.29, quoted in C. H. Holladay, Theios Aner in Hellenistic

Judaism: A Critique of the Use of this Category in New Testament Christology. SBL
Dissertation Series, 40 (Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1977), 156. Cf. De virtutibus
177.
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which made of him a divine man (theios anr),1 like Platos description of the lover of
wisdom in Sophist 216c. Yet, although Philo refers to Moses as divine and as theos on
several occasions, most notably in his extended commentary on Exodus 7:1 (And the
Lord said to Moses, See, I make you as God to Pharaoh [LXX: legn idou dedka se
theon phara]),2 it is not always clear that these titles denote the divine indwelling, 3
nor that they make Moses entirely prototypical. For instance, even the ecstasy of the
prophets to which Philo sometimes compares the transfiguration of Moses on Mt. Sinai
frequently appears not to be a union with God or a human participation in divine
perfections, but rather a sort of daemonic possession in which the human nous is
temporarily displaced by the divine: "The mind in us is banished from its house upon the
1De
vita Mosis 2.51.288; De sacrificiis 3.8-10. See Gross, La Divinisation du chrtien,

91. Holladay, Theios Aner, 15-45, 103-99, offers a thorough summary of the state of the
research as of 1977 into the question of the technical meaning of the term theios anr in
Hellenistic sources and its transmission to the Judao-Christian tradition. His primary
concern is to argue partially in accord with Ludwig Bieler, Theos Anr: Das Bild des
"gttlichen Menschen" in Sptantike und Frhchristentum, 2 vols (Vienna, 1935-36;
reprinted Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1976) and against Richard
Reitzenstein (Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen, 3d ed. [Leipzig and Berlin: B. G.
Teubner, 1927]) and Hans Windisch, (Paulus und Christus: Ein
biblischreligionsgeschichtlicher Vergleich [Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1934]) that Philo
never applied theios anr, in its particular Hellenistic sense as the itinerant, miracleworking god-man, to Moses or to any other Hebrew prophet and that Philo is not,
therefore, a source for the use of this figure in the development of New Testament
Christology.
2De
sacrificiis Abelis et Caini 9. Cf. De posteritate Caini 28; De gigantibus 47ff; Quod
Deus sit immutabilis 23. See E. R. Goodenough, By Light, Light: the Mystic Gospel of
Hellenistic Judaism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1935), 223-34.
3See
W. Meeks, The Prophet-King: Moses Traditions and the Johannine Christology

(Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1967), 105, who observes that elsewhere (Quod deterius potiori
insidiari soleat 161-62), Philo insists that Moses is called "God" in Exodus 7:1 only in the
most figurative sense that a righteous man serves as God's proxy in relation to a sinner
like Pharaoh.
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coming of the divine spirit, and upon its withdrawal is again restored; for mortal and
immortal may not share the same house." 1
Gross finds here a carefully nuanced dialectic whereby Philo is able to posit a true
participation in the dynameis of God without compromising the unity of the divine
ousia.2 This assessment seems overly charitable; while Philo may have gone a long way
toward preparing for the Christian gospel by confronting and opposing the Greeks'
emanationist anthropogeny, which tended toward a pantheistic eschatology in which the
human nous is in some sense reabsorbed or fused with the divine Nous, and by
successfully reducing the intelligible-sensible dualism of his pagan forebears to a
Creator-creature dualism more amenable to biblical cosmology, the confused and often
contradictory manner in which he conceives of the nature and function of God's dynameis
in the ecstatic journey of the soul to its primordial and eschatological divine likeness
exposes a dilemma that will have to await the Christian doctrine of the incarnation for
fuller resolution.
1Quis
rerum divinarum heres sit 264, quoted in E. R. Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an
Age of Anxiety (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 71. Cf. Rist, Eros and
Psyche, 188; Faller, 417-18.
2Gross,
La Divinisation du chrtien, 93, citing De sacrificiis Abelis et Caini 5-8, in which

Philo suggests that mystical ecstasy involves becoming a dynameis of God.
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III. THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS AND APOLOGISTS

Among the apostolic fathers, all except Ignatius of Antioch put forth a soteriology
in greater accordance with the synoptic Gospels than with the Pauline or Johannine
literature and, consequently, have relatively little to say about participation in God,
divinization, adoptive filiation, or mystical union with Christ.1
According to the Didache, the redemption accomplished by Christ on the cross
provides the baptized believer with a saving gnsis of God2 and a share in the
immortality of the Redeemer,3 but the author makes no reference to the renewal or
perfection of the image\likeness nor to adoptive filiation nor to incorporation into the
mystical body of Christ.
1Gross,
116, 144. It is noteworthy, in this connection, that J. Bellamy, "Adoption

surnaturelle de l'homme par Dieu dans la justification," in Dictionnaire de thologie
catholique, vol. 1, col. 425-37 (Paris: Letuzey et Ane, 1903); V. Ermoni, "La dification
de l'homme chez les Pres de l'glise," Revue du Clerg Franais 11 (1897): 509-19; O.
Faller, "Griechische Vergottung und christliche Vergottlichung;" and Theodorou, Die
Lehre von der Vergottung des Menschen bei den griechischen Kirchenvtern, ignore the
apostolic fathers in each of their treatments of the historical development of the doctrine
of divinization. The same is true for each of the Palamite authors I have considered in the
first chapter.
2Didache
9.3.
3Ibid.,
4.8: You shall not turn away from him who is in want . . . for if you are partakers
in that which is immortal, how much more in things which are mortal? Cf. 16.6-8. All
quoted translations of the Didache are taken from ANF 7:377-82.
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While including the fundamental hope of sharing the divine immortality in its
soteriology,1 the Epistle of Barnabas contributes a somewhat richer understanding of the
indwelling of God in the temple of the believer's body2 and of the renovation and
regeneration of the individual through baptism. 3 Adoptive divine filiation is brought into
play on one occasion, but is used only as a goad to morally upright behavior.4
The Shepherd of Hermas, in its exposition of the parable of the vineyard, does
seem to indicate a sort of divinization by divine filiation as a result of meritorious union
with the Holy Spirit, but it does so at the expense of an semi-adoptionist Christology. 5 In
any event, the human nature assumed by the Logos is raised to a share of divine life
which remains inaccessible to the rest of humanity.6
The First Epistle of Clement introduces to the post-apostolic Christian literature a
tentative identification of the image and likeness of God with the rational faculty of the
first Adam.7 It is also this early with Clement that we find the idea of salvation as
illumination of the darkened soul, imparting an immortal knowledge (athanatou
gnses) of God.8 Yet, according to I Clement, salvation is not to be found in mystical,
1Barn.
8.5; 11.11.
2Ibid.,
16.7. Emile Mersch, Le corps mystique du Christ, 2d ed., 2 vols. (Paris: Descle
de Brouwer, 1936), 1:309, finds in Barnabas the origin of the exegetical principle
(developed later by Tyconius and adopted by Augustine) that whenever Christ is
prefigured typologically in the Old Testament, the Church (Head and members together)
should be understood.
3Ibid.,
6.11.
4Ibid.,
4.9.
5See Adolph
von Harnack, History of Dogma, trans. from the 3d. German edition (1894)
by Neil Buchanan (New York: Dover, 1961), 1:191 n. 1.
6Shepherd
7I
of Hermas 5.2-6. See Gross, 125-27.
Clem. 33.4-5.
8Ibid.,
36.2. See Gross, 120.

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sacramental, or even moral union with the theandric person of Christ, but is conferred by
God as a reward for adhering to the teaching and example of Christ.1 Clement does
employ the language of adoptive divine sonship and its kindred theme of the mystical
unity of both the individual believer and the entire Church with Christ, but his notion of
this union is predominantly if not entirely mimetic. Christ as the head of the body is, for
Clement, the source and principle of the Church's visible unity only in so far as its
members are united in common obedience to him, but not necessarily in a way that
involves a communication of divine life. 2
Far different will be the case with Ignatius of Antioch. The single idea which
governs the soteriology of Ignatius is that of union (hensis) or unity (henots).3 His
vigilant concern for securing the visible, concrete unity of the churches to which he wrote
was justified and defended in his epistles not on the basis of pastoral or sociopolitical
expediency, but on the divinely revealed data of the unity of the triune God and the union
of the human race with Him through the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Son.
As the incarnate Son is related to the Father by hensis,4 so also are the faithful united to
the Father by incorporation to the Son, who is now and forever inseparably joined both to
the flesh he assumed at the incarnation and to the Church which is his body: "The head,
1See
T. F. Torrance, The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers (Edinburgh and

London: Oliver and Ward, 1948), 46-55.
2Mersch,
Le corps mystique, 1:291. Cf. Gross, 120-21.
3In
Phil. 8.1, Ignatius describes himself as "a man set on union." See Torrance, The
Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers, 57; and Mersch, Le corps mystique, 1:296,
who adds: "Ignatius is obsessed by this desire for union."
4Magn.
1.2. See Magn. 13.2 and Smyrn. 8.1, where Ignatius indicates that the Son is
differentiated from the Father by his relation of obedience.
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then, cannot be born apart without the members, since God promises union, which is
himself."1
These various dimensions of communion which pervade the seven epistles of
Ignatius--the union of Father and Son, the union of flesh and spirit in Christ,2 and the
union of Head and members who together form the Pauline "new man (kainos
anthrpos)"3--constitute not only the great indicative wherein the Church finds its own
1Trall.
11.2, from William R. Schoedel, trans., Ignatius of Antioch: A Commentary on the

Letters of Ignatius of Antioch (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), 152. Schoedel
suggests that just as likely a translation would be "The head, then, cannot exist apart. . ."
on the grounds that gennthnai may have been mistakenly transcribed for genthnai. H.
Schlier, Religiongeschichtliche Untersuchungen zu den Ignatius-briefen (Giessen: Alfred
Topelmann, 1929), 90, claims that this passage is evidence that Ignatius had come under
Gnostic influences in his reading of St. Paul's body imagery for the Church, on the basis
that his simple identification of God with hensis recalls the Gnostic plrma. Torrance,
73, concurs with Schlier, adding that "this is to place Christ in a relation to the Church
that does not exist in the New Testament at all." Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 157,
disagrees and proposes instead that Ignatius was indicating a causal relationship between
divine action and the unity of the Church rather than a "consubstantiality between Christ
and his people." In view of the anti-docetic edge in evidence throughout the epistles of
Ignatius, however, one could hardly conclude that he had adopted the substance of the
thoroughly dualistic Gnosticism whose language he may have employed. More likely is
the conclusion of Simon Tugwell, The Apostolic Fathers (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse,
1989), 106, that Ignatius and Valentinian Gnostics shared a common lexical source.
2Magn.
1.2; Smyrn. 12.2.
3Eph.
20.1. Cf. St. Paul to the Ephesians 2:14-15: "For he is our peace, who has made us
both one . . . that he might create in himself one new man (kainon anthrpon) in place of
the two, so making peace." Cf. also Ephesians 4:13, in which Paul writes of the end of
the "building up of the body of Christ" as "mature manhood (andra teleion)" and "the
measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ (plrmatos tou Christou)." See Torrance,
The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers, 73: citing Schlier (p. 88), Torrance
complains here that Ignatius has seriously misinterpreted the New Testament by
substituting the Church for the Holy Spirit as the agent of union between the believer and
God, as he had earlier (p. 72) cautioned that Ignatius was "traveling in the direction of the
view which thinks of the Church as an organism whose principle of life is infused grace,
such that only by becoming members of this organism can we participate in the life of
God." Note how this criticism anticipates Wilson-Kastner's similar charge against
Augustine.
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internal cohesion, but also the basis of a great imperative, inasmuch as it is only by
persevering in unity with the visible Church that the faithful may finally acquire a share
of God: "It is profitable, then, for you to be in blameless unity that you may always
participate in God (theou pantote metechete)."1 The ecclesial unity of which Ignatius
writes here as a precondition for sharing in the divine union is not to be understood in a
reductively spiritual manner as entailing only the proper interior disposition toward other
persons, but also requires obedience to the bishops and presbyters who represent God
concretely to the faithful.2 Writing against the dualistic errors of unnamed docetists,
Ignatius would countenance no intractable separation between the celestial body of Christ
into which the baptized are incorporated and the enfleshed Church which Ignatius was
the first to call katholik,3 or, to state it differently, between soteriology and ecclesiology:
"Be subject to the bishops and to each other as Jesus Christ was subject to the Father and
the apostles to Christ, that there may be a union (hensis) both fleshly and spiritual."4
If we can call Ignatius' soteriology ecclesiocentric (or, perhaps better, ecclesioChristocentric), this does not necessarily mean that it was ecclesio-monistic. Far from
being swallowed up in an undifferentiated collectivity, individual believers are referenced
by Ignatius as "God-bearers (theophoroi), temple-bearers, Christ-bearers (Christophoroi),
1Ibid.,
4.2, from Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 51. Ignatius uses the language of
participation frequently (Eph. 10.1; 11.2; Smyrn. pref.2; 11.3; Magn. 1.3; Polyc. 4.3), but
nowhere is he any more specific regarding the concomitants of participation in God than
he is in the above quoted passage. See Torrance, The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic
Fathers, 58 n. 6.
2Magn.
6.1: "Be eager to do all things in godly concord, with the bishop set over you in
the place of God and the presbyters in the place of the council of the apostles," from
Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 112. Cf. Trall. 3.1; Smyrn. 8.1.
3Smyrn.
4Magn.
8.2. See Torrance, The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers, 89 n. 1.
13.2, from Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 128. Cf. Magn. 2; 6.2-7.1; Trall. 7.2.
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bearers of holiness,"1 as "full of God (theou gemete)," 2 and as those who bear "the
imprint of God the Father through Jesus Christ in love: through whom unless we freely
choose to die unto his suffering, his life is not in us."3 Also, echoing St Paul,4 Ignatius
often writes of his own personal identification with Christ in bracingly realistic language,
as though there were a certain measure of intersubjectivity between the two: "My
brethren, I am greatly enlarged in loving you. . . . Yet, it is not I, but Jesus Christ." 5 He is
also insistent that simple membership in the Church is not of itself sufficient to effect the
individual's participation in divine life, but must be accompanied by personal faith and
love,6 by the imitation of the suffering of Christ,7 and by faithful reception of the
sacraments. Although baptism is mentioned only once in the seven letters of Ignatius,8
1Eph.
9.2 (ANF 1:53). See Irne H. Dalmais, Divinisation, in Dictionnaire de

spiritualit, asctique et mystique, vol. 3, col. 1376-89 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1954), 1376,
who finds in these expressions the strongest evidence that Ignatius possessed a nascent
doctrine of divinization. See also Gross, 123.
2Magn.
3Ibid.,
14.1. See Gross, 123; Dalmais, Divinisation, 1376.
5.2, from Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 108.
4Gal.
2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ. It is not longer I who live, but Christ who
lives in me."
5Philad.
5 (ANF 1:82). On the basis of this text, Gross, 124-25, proposes that Ignatius'
view of union with God is not primarily mimetic or moral, but interpersonal. J. N. D.
Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 5th ed. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978), 164,
writes: For Ignatius, with his intense Christ-mysticism, the essence of salvation seems to
consist in union with Christ, through Whom new life and immortality flow into us.
6Eph.
9.1; 14.1; 20.1; Philad. 5.1; Trall. 2. See Torrance, The Doctrine of Grace in the
Apostolic Fathers, 67-70.
7Magn.
5.2, quoted above, n. 3. Ignatius is clear that he understands his own imminent
martyrdom to be a sharing in the cross of Christ: "I am the wheat of God, and let me be
ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ. . . .
Entreat Christ for me, that by these instruments I may be found a sacrifice to
God." (Rom. 4.1, ANF 1:75) And later in the same letter he pleads: "Permit me to be an
imitator of the passion of my God." (Rom. 6.3, ANF 1:76).
8Polyc.
6.1.
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and then not in relation to the believer's participation in the death of Christ, the
immortalizing effect of the Eucharist receives fuller attention. He anathematizes those
who deny "that the Eucharist is the flesh of our savior Jesus Christ,"1 proclaims his
insatiable desire to "drink of God, namely His blood, which is incorruptible love (agap
aphthartos) and eternal life,"2 and refers to the Eucharist as "the medicine of immortality
(pharmakon athanasias), and the antidote to prevent us from dying, but which causes that
we should live forever in Jesus Christ." 3 Even though the language of participation does
not accompany Ignatius references to the Eucharist here, Normann finds in them a point
of departure for much of what the Fathers of later times have to say regarding the
participation of man in God. 4
Among the Greek Apologists, none of whom figure prominently in the

development of what will eventually come to be regarded as the characteristically Eastern
doctrine of deification, 5 Justin Martyr alone uses the language of participation with
significant frequency.6 Justins God, whom he characterizes in terms redolent of Platos
being (although manifestly not beyond being, as Republic 509b and Plotinus would
have it), alone is unbegotten and impassible (agennt kai apathei),7 immutable and
1Smyrn.
2Rom.
7.1, from Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, 238.
7.3 (ANF 1:77).
3Eph.
20.2 (ANF 1:58). See Harnack, History of Dogma, 4:286, where he complains that
Ignatius has here anticipated the fully developed fourth century Greek doctrine of the
Eucharist: The whole transaction, which is based on the Incarnation, is thus beyond a
doubt itself the mystery of deification.
4Teilhabe,
5Mersch,
6David
80.
Le corps mystique, 1:309. Cf. Gross, 143.
L. Bals, Metousia Theou, 8. See also Normann, Teilhabe, 83-90.
7I Apol.
25, PG 6:365.
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eternal (atrepton kai aei onta). 1 God alone is the self-subsisting, unchanging cause of all
existence: that which always maintains the same nature and in the same manner and is
the cause of all other things--that, indeed, is God.2 In contradistinction to the aseity of
the one true God, all of creation exists only by participation. The human soul, for
instance, lives not as being life, but as the partaker (metalambanousa) of life; but that
which partakes (metechon) of anything is different from that of which it partakes
(metechei). Now the soul partakes (metechei) of life, since God wills it to live.3 It is
upon this fundamental distinction between the self-subsisting, uncreated nature of God
and analogous, creaturely participation 4 that Justin establishes his distinctively Christian
answer to the pagan Greek conflation of noetic humanity and divinity: "For the seed and
imitation imparted according to capacity is one thing, and quite another is the thing itself,
of which there is the participation and imitation (metousia kai mimsis) according to the
grace which is from Him."5 In consequence of his primary interest in expounding and
defending the Christian faith within the milieu of adherents to Greek philosophy,6 then,
Justin carefully and emphatically denied the Platonic notions that the soul is unbegotten
and immortal and that it can attain to the vision of God on the strength of its own inherent
1Ibid.,
13, PG 6:348.
2Dial.
3 (ANF 1:196), PG 6:481.
3Ibid.,
6 (ANF 1:198), PG 6:489.
4Normann,
Teilhabe, 87-88, argues that Justin used the concept of participation primarily
to answer the Stoics, whose monistic, undifferentiated doctrine of being required that
God be a continuous part of the cosmos. If the infinite being of the Creator is
discontinuous from and transcendent of the finite being of creation, however, as Justin
held, then there remains the possibility of an analogical participation--image or likeness-between the two.
5II Apol.
13 (ANF 1:193). See Bals, Metousia Theou, 8, and Dalmais, Divinisation,

1376. Cf. I Apol. 10.
6Henry
Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition (Oxford: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1966), 10.
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powers.1 Instead, divine reality can be seen "only by the man to whom God and His
Christ have imparted wisdom." 2 Yet, the gratuitous divine action which alone can make
persons "partakers" of the Logos extends not only to baptized, professing Christians, but
to all who "lived reasonably (meta logou)."3 Among pre-Christian thinkers, Justin singles
out Plato and the Stoics for the exemplary fashion in which they "spoke well in
proportion to the share (they) had of the spermatic word (logos spermatikos)."4 Palamas
would contest the validity of Barlaams appeal to this very concept of the natural
participation of all rational creatures in Gods rationality as a basis for his use of Greek
philosophy during the fourteenth century hesychast controversy.5
As concerns more strictly soteriological matters, Justin has nothing of historic
significance to say regarding image and likeness or the believer's incorporation into
Christ. He is, however, the first in a long line of Christian authors to correlate the text of
Psalm 82(81):6-76 to the Christian doctrine of divinization by adoptive divine filiation. 7
In the course of responding to anticipated or actual Jewish objections to the divinity of
Christ, Justin appeals to this text as evidence that divine sonship can belong properly to
Christ because, among other reasons, it was predicated of Adam and Eve before their
disobedience and, consequently, of their human progeny:
1Dial.
4-5. See Rist, Eros and Psyche, 178, and Gross, 134.
2Ibid.,
7 (ANF 1:198).
3I Apol.
46 (ANF 1:178).
4II Apol.
13 (ANF 1:193).
5Barlaam,
Epist. 1; Palamas, Triads 2.1.7, cited in Flogaus, Palamas and Barlaam

Revisited, 9.
6"I
say, 'You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like
men, and fall like any prince.'"
7Faller,
"Griechische Vergottung und christliche Vergottlichung," 426; G. Philips,

Lunion personnelle avec le Dieu vivant, 18.
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(T)he Holy Ghost reproaches men because they were made like God, free from
suffering and death, provided that they kept His commandments, and were
deemed deserving of the name of His sons, and yet they, becoming like Adam and
Eve, work out death for themselves; . . . thereby it is demonstrated that all men are
deemed worthy of becoming 'gods' and of having power to become sons of the
Highest.1
Elsewhere, Justin implies that the descending participation of God in human suffering
effected a therapeutic participation in Himself: "He (the Logos) became man for our
sakes, that, becoming a partaker (summetochos) of our sufferings, He might also bring us
healing."2
If Justin conceives a mode of participation proximate to the economy of salvation
which surpasses that basic, ontological participation of all things according to the
economy of creation, it is most clearly evident in his description of the second century
Christian Eucharist. Following St. Pauls use of koinnia and metechomen in the
eucharistic teaching of I Cor. 10:16-17, Justin writes that at the Churchs Eucharist there
is a distribution to each and a participation (metalpsis) of that over which thanks has been
given.3 Lest this language be misconstrued as referring to a more or less profane sharing
in an ordinary meal, Justin compares the believers participation in the eucharistic Christ
to that admirabile commercium of the incarnation itself when he admonishes:
no one is allowed to partake (metaschein) but the man who believes that the
things which we teach are true and who has been washed with the washing that is
for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has
enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but
in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word
of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise we have been
taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which
1Dial.
124 (ANF 1:262).
2II Apol.
3I Apol.
13 (ANF 1:193).
67 (ANF 1:186), PG 6:429.

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!138
our blood and flesh by transmutation (metaboln) are nourished, is the flesh and
blood of that Jesus Christ who was made flesh. 1
Yet, Justin remains silent regarding the precise manner in which human persons
can receive a share in the sonship of Christ or in the divinity of the Logos. Moreover, he
seems not to have predicated anything beyond knowledge and immortality on
participation in the Logos, even when he exhorts his readers to imitate the virtues of
God.2
Tatian's most distinctive and influential contribution lay in his identification of the
image and likeness of God in the human person not with the rational faculty (nous), but
with the infused divine Spirit, or the Logos, which he understood to have been
superadded to the lower soul (psych), or animating agent of the body.3 The inhabitation
of the Logos was lost as a result of sin, excepting only a spark (enausma) which enabled
fallen humans to fly upward to God and thereby to "enter into union with the Divine
Spirit" 4 and to regain their "image of immortality (eikon ts athanasias)."5
Athenagoras contributed nothing of significance beyond the thought of Justin and
Tatian except for his insistence that the determinative watershed between the nature of
God and that of the human soul lay not in the former's immortality (the soul also,
according to Athenagoras, was accorded a natural immortality from God at its creation), 6
1Ibid.,
66 (ANF 1:185), PG 6:428.
2Ibid.,
10.
3Oratio
12. Cf. Ibid., 13; 20. See Gross, 136, n.6, who opines that Tatian's psych was
"conceived in a Stoic manner."
4Ibid.,
13 (ANF 2:70). See Rist, Eros and Psyche, 179, who suggests that Tatian took
recourse to the gnostic "divine spark" anthropogeny because he could not see any other
way in which the human soul would be capable of assimilation to God.
5Ibid.,
7 (ANF 2:68). See Dalmais, Divinisation, 1376; Gross, 138. Cf. Oratio 15:
"But further, it becomes us now to seek for what we once had, but have lost, to unite the
soul with the Holy Spirit, and to strive after union with God." (ANF 2:71).
6De
res. 16.
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!139
but in the fact that God alone is uncreated (agenton).1 Participation in God is still,
however, for Athenagoras, strictly a share in His immortality and incorruptibility. 2
Theophilus of Antioch reiterated Justin's and Tatian's denial of the natural
immortality of Adam's soul, on the grounds that "if (God) had made him immortal from
the beginning, He would have made him God." 3 Neither, however, did God create the
first human to be mortal, for in that case "God would seem to be the cause of his death."4
Rather, Theophilus proposed that God created humanity with the potential to attain
immortality by the exercise of the free will, so that if he should incline to the things of
immortality, keeping the commandment of God, he should receive as a reward from Him
immortality, and should become God. 5 Lest this rather bracing expression be
understood to refer to the melding of creature and Creator, however, Theophilus
immediately uses procure for himself life everlasting and inherit incorruption as
equivalent turns of phrase to become God.
For most of the apostolic fathers and Apologists, then, salvific participation in
God through Christ entails little more than a share in His immortality and incorruptibility.
Ignatius of Antioch also portrayed the unity of the visible church as a participation in or
reflection of the union of Head and body in Jesus Christ as well as the relation of
obedience of the incarnate Son to the Father, while Justine Martyr further predicates
natural human existence, rationality, and supernatural adoptive sonship upon participation
in God.6 The significant point for our consideration is that none of these authors ever
1Leg.
4.
2Ibid.,
31; De res. 12. See Gross, 139-40.
3Ad Autolycus
2.27 (ANF 2:105). See Dalmais, Divinisation, 1377.
4Ibid.
5Ibid.
6G.
W. Butterworth, "The Deification of Man in Clement of Alexandria." Journal of

Theological Studies 17 (1916): 162.
!139
!140
displays a desire or need to distinguish a communicable aspect or mode of Gods nature

from an incommunicable or inaccessible one. All assume that the one God has been
disclosed to the world through His incarnate Son. Neither do they say or imply that the
human person becomes uncreated through grace or in any other manner ceases to be a
finite creature. While most of them clearly affirm that baptism confers the dwelling of
God in the believer, each one characterizes this divine inhabitation primarily in terms of
its (re)created effects, namely immortality, incorruptibility, charity, unity, and the
knowledge of God.
Sketchy and preliminary though these earliest formulations may have been, "they
draw all of their importance from the fact that they will be the point of departure for a
considerable development inaugurated by Saint Irenaeus."1
1Gross,
143.
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!141
!141
!142
IV. IRENAEUS
In accordance with his position as the first great post-apostolic theologian of the
Christian faith, Irenaeus not only made a significant advance beyond the Apostolic
Fathers and Apologists with respect to the Christian doctrine of divinization, but also
provided the fundamental structure to the perennial cur Deus homo question for several
succeeding generations. Although he never employed the language of theopoisis or
thesis, 1
1Gustaf
Wingren, Man and the Incarnation: A Study in the Biblical Theology of Irenaeus,
trans. Ross Mackenzie (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1959), 209 n. 78, notes that
Irenaeus never uses the term theopoisis or its equivalent, but he insists that Irenaeus
taught a doctrine of divinization which Wingren defines as "man's realized likeness to
God."
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!143
already present in the theology of Irenaeus are all the essential elements of what will
come to be regarded as the characteristically patristic understanding of sanctification as
divinization: restoration of prelapsarian likeness to God and incorruptibility, effected
proleptically by the union of human nature with divine nature through the incarnation,
life, death, and resurrection of the Eternal Son, appropriated existentially as adoptive
divine filiation by the insufflation of the Holy Spirit, and finally perfected eternally
through the face to face vision of God. The kernel of the full doctrine is neatly
epitomized in his acclamation of "our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His
transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is
Himself." 1
Harnack and Bousset, among others, find in this conception the Hellenistic
subversion and corruption of the Gospel.2
Bousset, Kyrios Christos, 432, also locates
the sources for Irenaeus soteriology of divinization entirely within the world of Greek
1Adversus
Haeresis (hereafter AH) 5.pref. (All translations, unless otherwise noted, are
taken from ANF 1. Greek and Latin texts of AH are from PG 7 and that of Epidexis is
from SC 406.). Of this dictum, Hastings Rashdall, The Idea of the Atonement in
Christian Theology (London: MacMillan, 1925), 240, writes: Here we have the
characteristic thought of almost all subsequent Greek theology. See also Azkoul, 252, n.
11, who relies on this passage among others to support his contention that the universal
teaching of the Fathers is that created grace cannot deify.
2Harnack,
History of Dogma, 2:10-11, writes of Irenaeus and Hippolytus: "In them a

religious and realistic idea takes the place of the moralism of the Apologists, namely, the
deifying of the human race through the incarnation of the Son of God. The apotheosis
of the Greek mystery religions is here adopted as a Christian one, supported by Pauline
theology. . . . What the heathen faintly hoped for as a possibility was here announced as
certain, and indeed as having already taken place. . . . This conception was to become the
central Christian idea of the future." Cf. Ibid., 2:240: whereas for the apologists the
why of cur Deus homo was answered by referring to prophecy and the necessity of
divine teaching, it was made by Irenaeus the central point, in that with him is found
the idea that Christianity is a real redemption, i.e., that the highest blessing bestowed in
Christianity is the deification of human nature through the gift of immortality, and that
this deification includes the full knowledge and enjoying of God (visio Dei).
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mystery religions and Hermetic Gnosticism. He laments that by placing deification

through the vision of God and the incarnation "in the center of his interpretation of
Christianity," Irenaeus gave the Christian faith "the form in which it would permanently
be understood within this milieu." Cf. Ibid., 222-24, where he charges the author of I
John 3:2 with the same error. George, however, while acknowledging that formulations
such as this one can bear a rhetorical similarity to the apotheosis of pagan antiquity,
believes it more reasonable to conclude that the idea of Christian divinization implicit in
this passage from Irenaeus is more appropriately and accurately attributed to several
distinctively biblical themes, to wit, the creation of the human race in the image and
likeness of God (Gen. 1:26f), which he calls an ideal starting point for the Platonic
conception of assimilation to God; the doctrine of adoption to divine sonship through
the rebirth of baptism (Gal. 3:26, 4:5ff; rom 8:15; John 1:12f; I John 3:1f); the vocation
of the Christian to perfection by imitating the perfections of God revealed in Christ (Matt.
5:44-48; Phil. 2:5-11); and the promise of an immediate vision of God in the future life (I
Cor. 13:12; I John 3:2) in which the resurrected will be made incorruptible (I Cor. 15:52f)
and will be transformed by the glory of God (II Cor. 3:18):1 The originality of the
Church fathers consists in that they have so wedded these biblical expressions to the ideas
of antiquity that they can speak explicitly of a Christian divinization which contains in
itself the chief element of the ancient concept. 2
ANTHROPOLOGY
Given that Irenaeus "organized his synthesis around the theme of the image and
likeness," 3 it is significant that he was somewhat conflicted on what, precisely,
constituted the original image and likeness of God in Adam and on whether or not there
1George,
2Ibid.,
137.
3Dalmais,
Divinisation, 1377.
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!145
was a meaningful distinction between the two.1 On a number of occasions, Irenaeus

seems to presuppose a perfect synonymity between image and likeness. When St. Paul
exhorts, for instance, put ye on the new man, that which is renewed in knowledge after
the image of Him who created him, (Col. 3:10) Irenaeus understands the renewal of the
image of God to mean the recapitulation of the same man who was at the beginning
made after the likeness of God.2 And on more than one occasion, he states flatly that
what we lost in Adam and recovered in Christ was to be according to the image and
likeness of God,3 thereby implicitly equating the two. Frequently, however, when
writing of the redemptive recovery of the image and likeness, Irenaeus implies that
Adams likeness alone was lost as a result of sin with the departure of the indwelling
Spirit. Because the true, eternal Image of God after whom or according to whom Adam
was created was not yet available to human vision, Irenaeus proposes, Adam did easily
lose the similitude. Through His incarnation, however, He both showed forth the
image truly, since He became Himself what was His image; and He re-established the
similitude after a sure manner, by assimilating (consimilem faciens = synexomoisas)
man to the invisible Father through means of the visible Word.4 In another context,
Irenaeus contends against the reductively pneumatic soteriology of the Gnostics that the
human body and soul inseparably together constitute the image of God (the earthen man
of Genesis 2:7),5 whereas the infused Spirit establishes the likeness:
1Jacques
Fantino, Lhomme, image de Dieu, chez saint Irne de Lyon (Paris: Cerf,
1986), 106.
2AH
5.12.4.
3Ibid.
3.18.1. Cf. AH 3.21.10; 4.pref.4; 4.20.1; 5.1.1.
4Ibid.
5.16.2.
5Lossky,
The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 116, claims that in Irenaeus,
Gregory of Nyssa, and Palamas alone among the fathers, also the body of man shares in
the character of the image. He cites in evidence only Palamas, Capita, 38-39.
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!146
For by the hands of the Father, that is, by the Son and the Holy Spirit, man, and
not merely a part of man, was made in the likeness of God. Now the soul and the
spirit are certainly a part of the man, but certainly not the man; for the perfect man
consists in the commingling and the union (commistio et adunitio) of the soul
receiving the Spirit of the Father and the admixture of that fleshly nature which
was molded after the image of God.1
The ersatz pneumatichoi, he continues, are not fully human at all, for a purely spiritual
person is merely the spirit of a man, or the Spirit of God.2 However, even at the risk of
conceding ground to the very docetists he is here attempting to correct, Irenaeus
concludes this movement of his discourse with the admonition that although the flesh and
soul are indeed integral to the human quality of having been created in the image of God,
it is nevertheless true that if the Spirit be wanting to the soul, he who is such is indeed of
an animal nature . . . possessing indeed the image of God in his formation, but not
receiving the similitude through the Spirit; and thus is this being imperfect.3
On the basis of these last two texts primarily (AH 5.6.1; 5.16.2), it has become
something of a scholarly convention to assume that Irenaeus clearly distinguished
1AH
5.6.1. See George, Vergttlichung des Menschen, 146-7, who opines: This
patristic description of what happens at baptism is profoundly different from the Platonic
conception of deification through the human nous.
2Ibid.
The awkwardness of this phrase, wherein Irenaeus doesnt seem to know whether
hes referring to the third person of the Trinity or to a human faculty, betrays his own
confusion on what it means within the Christian lexicon for a person to be spiritual.
3Ibid.
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!147
between the image and likeness of God in the human person.1 Yet, both his commonly
interchangeable use of image and likeness as well as his conception that the only true and
full Image of God is the Son, after whose image man was made, 2 would seem to weigh
against finding in Irenaeus any decisive differentiation between a natural image and a
superior or supernatural likeness. In either case, the important truth to glean from
Irenaeus image and likeness anthropology is that he understood salvific human
participation in God to involve the teleological perfection of our having been created
according to the image and likeness of God. Thus, it was not in Adam's aspiring to live a
divine life, to be God-like, that he sinned, but in his succumbing to the temptation of
egoism, that is, in attempting to acquire the glory of immortality and incorruptibility as
his own autonomous possession rather than as a gift received from Another.3 The
divinely imposed sentence of death, Irenaeus avers, was a remedial rather than retributive
punishment, intended so that the opportunity for sin would die with the body; God set a
1See
E. Klebba, Die Anthropologie des hl. Irenaeus (Munster-en-Westphalie, 1894), 34ff;

John Lawson, The Biblical Theology of St. Irenaeus (London: Epworth Press, 1948),
209ff. G. B. Ladner, The Idea of Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press, 1959),
83-84, deplores Irenaeus adoption of what he regards to be a Valentinian distinction
between homoisis and eikn, which, he hypothesizes, is further rooted in the
unfortunate Septuagint choice of homoisis rather than homoima to translate Genesis
1:26; unlike the latter, the former "connotes an element of action which allows, if it does
not require, the signification of 'assimilation' alongside that of 'likeness' or resemblance."
He also suspects that Irenaeus adopted uncritically the Gnostics identification of image
with the quasi-materiality of the human body and the superior likeness with the human
"psychical" faculties.
2Epid.
22 (trans. J. A. Robinson in St. Irenaeus [London: SPCK, 1920], 89-90): "For He

made man the image of God; and the image of God is the Son, after whose image man
was made. This distinction between the Image Himself and those rational creatures who
have been created only according to the Image (kat eikona) will be utterly crucial in the
christology and soteriology of Athanasius, but is not of great moment for Irenaeus.
3AH
3.23.1. See M. Aubineau, "Incorruptibilit et divinisation selon Irne," Recherches

de Science Religieuse 44 (1956): 37.
!147
!148
bound to his state of sin by interposing death, and thus causing sin to cease, putting an
end to it by the dissolution of the flesh.1
A closely related ambiguity in Irenaeus theological anthropology pertains to
whether he understood the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit Himself to be the third
component of the fully human person or whether he understood humans to be in
possession of their own created spirit. Gustaf Wingren, in fact, considers this very
question to be the "central point at issue" with respect to whether or not Irenaeus had
adopted a Hellenistic (interior divine spark) view of deification. He argues that within
Irenaeus' tripartite anthropology of body, soul, and spirit, "the Spirit throughout is God's
own Spirit, not some kind of 'gift' of the Spirit, but the Spirit itself, i.e. God or Christ
Himself." 2 The human person is constituted as human by possession of and communion
with the indwelling Holy Spirit, as Wingren reads Irenaeus. Hence, if the Spirit departs,
as He did as a consequence of the fall, "man's 'manliness' is thereby incomplete."3 The
acquisition of the Spirit in the Christian economy, then, does not make the redeemed
other than human or supra-human, but truly and fully human, because "it is part of man's
nature to be divine, and also little by little to become that which he rightly is, namely,
1Ibid.
3.23.6.
2Man
and the Incarnation, 208.
3Ibid.
Cf. Lot-Borodine, La dification de l'homme, 41: beginning with Saint Irenaeus,

all the Greek theologians from the second through the fourteenth centuries have related
and repeated a common understanding that the supernatural had been the true nature of
man in the earthly paradise. This man, created free and immortal, possessed a
progressive and dynamic perfection. . . . He was the center of the universe, a microcosm,
and by his very composition belonged simultaneously to the intelligible and sensible
worlds. Moreover, Adam was primordially endowed with a divine vocation to
accomplish what Irenaeus called the assumption of the flesh by the spirit. Man was
the link between the Logos (the perfect image of the Father) and the material world; the
principle of communion between the two was man himself.
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God." 1 The sole text upon which Wingren founds his thesis is one in which Irenaeus
expands on his rather enigmatic assertion that the innate capacity of human flesh for
incorruption is given by the Spirit, whereas its equal capacity for death and corruption
is given by the breath.
For the breath of life, which also rendered man an animated being, is one thing,
and the vivifying Spirit another, which also caused him to become Spiritual. . . .
telling us that breath is indeed given in common to all people upon earth, but that
the Spirit is theirs alone who tread down earthly desires. . . . Thus does he2
attribute the Spirit as peculiar to God, which in the last times He pours forth upon
the human race by the adoption of sons; but he shows that breath was common
throughout the creation, and points it out as something created.3
Klebba4 and Meyendorff5 also understand Irenaeus to have thought the indwelling
Holy Spirit a natural component, as it were, of the first humans. Gross, on the other
hand, points to a number of passages in which Irenaeus seems to have in mind a created
human spirit which, once purified by its participation in the Holy Spirit, renders the
person spiritual. For example, contra the Gnostic doctrine of the transmigration of souls,
Irenaeus writes of the resurrected as "having their own bodies and having also their own
1Ibid.,
209. On p. 211, he contrasts Irenaeus soteriological humanism to the idea of

deification found in Methodius and Athanasius. The latter, he claims, by holding out
virginity to be the "highest expression of the Christian life," have sounded the
characteristically Hellenistic note on deification by implying that participation in the
divine annihilates what is most truly human.
2Isaiah
3AH
57:16: "For the Spirit shall go forth from Me, and I have made every breath."
5.12.2.
4Die Anthropologie
des hl. Irenaeus, 181ff.
5Meyendorff,
Byzantine Theology, 138.: Irenaeus taught that man is composed of three

elements: body, soul, and Holy Spirit. He cites AH 5.6.1.
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souls and their own spirits."1 On the basis of this text and others, Gross concludes that
Irenaeus has anticipated the much later Scholastic distinction between uncreated and
created grace by finding in our prelapsarian archetypes a 'spirit of man,' which is to say a
spiritual gift, distinct from the divine Holy Spirit, but produced by Him and inseparable
from Him." 2 Similarly, Garrigues maintains that St. Maximus the Confessor could
organize his doctrine of divinization around the created habitus of charity at least in part
because Irenaeus had already established the created nature of the fruits of the Spirit:
When man is grafted in by faith and receives the Spirit of God, he certainly does not
lose the substance of flesh, but changes the quality of the fruit of his works, and receives
another name, showing that he has become changed for the better, being now not mere
flesh and blood, but a spiritual man.3
Created, ordered, and equipped though they were to be sons of God, participants
in the divine nature, and temples of the Holy Spirit, the creatureliness of the first humans
already connoted an inherent weakness to Irenaeus and meant that they were necessarily
in possession of only a dependent, relative, and dynamic perfection. Following his most
sustained discussion of free will, which he vigorously affirms against the Gnostics
determinism as one sequela of Adams having been created after the image and likeness
1AH
2.33.5. See also AH 3.17.3; 4.39.2; 5.6.1.
2Divinisation,
156.
3AH
5.10.2, cited by J.-M. Garrigues, L'nergie divine et la grce chez Maxime le

Confesseur, 294: St. Maximus did not impoverish the realism of divinization; volitional
being is no less real than entitative being, but simply constitutes the mode of participation
proper to the freedom of a person. Already Irenaeus had described the divinization which
begins in this life as a grafting of the Spirit into man in a way which does not alter his
substance, but equips his personal liberty to produce new fruits.
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of God,1 and upon which anthropological datum he endeavors to exculpate the Creator
for the sin and disorder of the world, Irenaeus anticipates another Gnostic assault on the
goodness and competence of the Creator when he asks rhetorically: "What, then? Could
not God have exhibited man as perfect from the beginning?"2 His answer is an
unequivocal no. Yet, the impossibility of the creature to possess an initially immutable
perfection arises not from any weakness, aloofness, or selfishness attributable to the
Creator, but from the finitude of creatures who "must be inferior to Him who created
them, from the very fact of their later origin."3 As a mother is prudent not to make full
use of her power to give solid food to her infant and as St. Paul demurred from feeding
"meat" to his spiritual children in Corinth (I Cor. 3:12), "so, in like manner, God had
power at the beginning to grant perfection to man; but as the latter was only recently
created, he could not possibly have received it."4 The instability which permitted Adam
to sin, then, is not due to any deficit in the Creators beneficence, but attaches
endemically to the dynamism of the finite creature, whose nature was aboriginally
1Ibid.
4.37.4: man is possessed of free will from the beginning, and God is possessed of
free will, in whose likeness man was created. Cf. AH 4.4.4; 4.38.4. See also Bousset,
Kyrios Christos, 442, who finds an incipient doctrine of evolution in Irenaeus' argument
that the first Adam was created with the potential to attain perfect sonship to God by the
exercise of his free will.
2Ibid.
4.38.1. Irenaeus' central concern in this whole line of argumentation seems to be a

defense of the goodness and wisdom of the Creator God against His Gnostic detractors,
as evinced by his conclusion: "There was nothing, therefore, impossible to and deficient
in God, [implied in the fact] that man was not an uncreated being." (AH 4.38.2).
3Ibid.
Irenaeus continues: But inasmuch as they are not uncreated, for this very reason
do they come short of the perfect. Because, as these things are of later date, so are they
infantile; so are they unaccustomed to, and unexercised in, perfect discipline.
4Ibid.
Cf. AH 4.39.2, PG 7:1110: How, then, shall he be a god, who has not as yet been
made a man?. . . For it must be that thou, at the outset, should hold the rank of man and
then afterwards partake (participari) of the glory of God. For thou dost not make God,
but God thee.
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endowed with the capacity for change, improvement, and promotion to adopted divine
sonship.
DOCTRINE OF GOD
Although Irenaeus understood the human person to have been ordered by the
economy of creation toward sharing Gods own life and to have been endowed with the
created capacity to do so, he was careful to insist at the same time against the connatural
theological anthropology of his Valentinian Gnostic nemesis that "man should never . . .
suppose that the incorruptibility which belongs to him is his own naturally and by thus
not holding the truth, should boast with empty superciliousness, as if he were naturally
like to God."1 Of those who maintain the eternity and immortality of the soul, Irenaeus
admonishes:
let them learn that God alone, who is Lord of all, is without beginning and
without end, being truly and forever the same and always remaining the same
unchangeable Being (vere et semper idem et eodem modo se habens). But all
things which proceed from Him, whatsoever have been made, and are made, do
indeed receive their own beginning of generation, and on this account are inferior
to Him who formed them, inasmuch as they are not unbegotten.2
So Irenaeus bold and almost extravagant affirmations of the heights to which
Christian salvation transports the human person must be read in light of his frequent
reminders that there always remains a much more foundational, unbreachable,
ontological gulf between the Creator and His creatures. In response to someone who had
1AH
3.20.1. Cf. AH 5.3.1. See Aubineau, "Incorruptibilit et divinisation selon Irne,"

28, who reminds us that Irenaeus cannot be understood without reference to the
Valentinian Gnostics against whom AH was directed. It was not simply in the bare
interest of expounding the gospel as he understood it, but is was more precisely against
the Gnostic belief in the natural or innate incorruptibility of the divine seed within the
human soul which had emanated from the "pleroma of incorruptibility" (AH 2.17.3) and,
more pointedly, against the gnostic belief in this seed's final incompatibility with the
material body in which in was encased, that Irenaeus proposed the divinization of the
whole person, body and soul, through the incarnation.
2Ibid.
2.34.2.
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proposed that Christs admonition against attempting to serve both God and mammon
(Matt. 6:24) was a tacit acknowledgment of the existence of another creator god by the
name of Mammon, Irenaeus leapt on the opportunity once more to draw a bright line
between the Creator and everything outside Him:
But the things established are distinct from Him who has established them and
what have been made from Him who has made them. For He is Himself
uncreated, both without beginning and end and lacking nothing. He is Himself
sufficient for Himself. . . . But whatever things had a beginning and are liable to
dissolution and are subject to and stand in need of Him who made them, must
necessarily in all respects have a different term applied to them . . . so that He
indeed who made all things can alone, together with His Word, properly be
termed God and Lord; but the things which have been made cannot have this term
applied to them.1
As an alternative to the uncompromising spirit-matter dualism of the Gnostics,
therefore, Irenaeus advanced a Creator-creature duality. God alone, he repeats frequently,
is uncreated (agentos), incomprehensible (achortos, akatalptos), invisible (aoratos),
eternal (aedios), unbegotten (agenntos), inscrutable (anexgtos), ineffable
(anexichniastos), perfect (teleios), and incorruptible (aphthartos) of His very nature,
which seems to be a circuitous way of saying that God alone is infinite. 2 The Gnostic
theory of emanations from the unknowable One, Irenaeus complains, is logically
nonsensical at least in part because, in their solicitude to guard against attributing want
of power to Him by protecting Him from involvement with the created (dis)order, they
have constructed an anthropomorphized God whose multiplicity, mutability, affections
and passion, are the distinctive earmarks of creatureliness. If they had only consulted
1Ibid.
3.8.3.
2Ibid.
2.24.2; 2.34.2; 3.8.3; 4.38.3. See Aubineau, "Incorruptibilit et divinisation selon

Irne," 32-33; Gross, 157; Dalmais, Divinisation, 1377.
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the Scriptures, they would have learned that God is not as men are; and that His
thoughts are not like the thoughts of men. For the Father of all is at a vast difference
from those affections and passions which operate among men.1 God alone is known to
be the immutable ground of the entire world of becoming not merely in spite of His
involvement with it, however, but precisely because He is its eternal Creator: And in
this respect God differs from man, that God indeed makes, but man is made; and truly, He
who makes is always the same; but that which is made must receive both beginning, and
middle, and addition and increase.2
I used the phrase "Creator-creature duality" above advisedly, however, for
Irenaeus would not have the Uncreated as ineluctably opposed to the created as the
corporeal is to the spiritual or as the unknowable Pleroma is to the Demiurge in the strict
dualism of the Gnostics. What Irenaeus adds to the litany of apophatic modifiers he
largely adopts from the Valentinian Bythos and applies to God3 is a keen sense of the
Fathers equally constitutive self-donating love. And that love is expressed by Irenaeus
in terms of gratuitous human participation in the God who is by nature radically other and
inaccessible. Ysabel de Andia goes so far as to suggest that what separates the Christian
soteriology of Irenaeus most clearly and decisively from that of the Gnostics is Irenaeus
constant affirmation that salvation entails the creatures participation in God.4 The
metaphysics of the Gnostics, wherein the only relation which can exist between
substances or natures is a relation of consubstantiality,5 foreclosed the possibility of the
1Ibid.
2.13.3.
2Ibid.
4.11.2.
3Compare
his account of Bythos in AH 1.1-2 with the Christian apophaticism as

described above.
4Ysabel
de Andia, Homo vivens: Incorruptibilit et divinisation de l'homme selon Irne

de Lyon (Paris: tudes Augustiniennes, 1986), 325.
5Ibid.,
169. Cf. Ibid., p. 223.

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participation of our own created, corporeal nature in the uncreated, incorporeal or

spiritual nature of God; because they understood the spiritual to be the one and only
salutary nature, the Gnostics also thought salvation to require that all psychic and
corporeal natures be vanquished and supplanted. For Irenaeus, however, the alienation
and corruption of fallen creatures is resolved neither by annihilation nor by pantheistic
absorption, but by assimilation and participation.
For instance, in an analogy redolent of the Johannine eternal life motif, Irenaeus
reasons that just as the human body is differentiated from and dependant upon the soul
because it has fellowship (participatur) with the soul as long as God pleases, so also
the soul herself is not life, but partakes in that life bestowed on her by God (participatur
autem a Deo sibi praestitam vitam). 1 In addition to this Johannine theme of divine life
or eternal life, 2 Irenaeus also customarily uses incorruptibility (aphtharsia) as shorthand
for the whole gamut of divine virtues or perfections which creatures may possess by
gratuitous participation. Butterworths protestations notwithstanding, at least aphtharsia
certainly means much more to Irenaeus than mere survival of the soul after death.3
Indeed, Irenaeus affirmed in opposition to the Gnostic doctrine of the transmigration of
souls that the soul of the rich man who had neglected the beggar Lazarus retained its
individuation in "the form of a man" after the death of his body, but was not among the
redeemed and did not, therefore, enjoy a share in the divine aphtharsia.4
How, if at all, did Irenaeus understand Gods life and incorruptibility to be
participable by creatures while at the same time remaining singularly His own? Are they
1AH
2.34.4, PG 7:837.
2See
also AH 1.10.1; 5.3.3; 5.12.6; 5.13.3. See Aubineau, "Incorruptibilit et divinisation

selon Irne," 50.
3G.
W. Butterworth, "The Deification of Man in Clement of Alexandria," 162: neither

Irenaeus nor Hippolytus understand deification to be anything but another and rather
more forcible expression for the immortalizing of Christians after death.
4Luke
16:19f; AH 2.34.1.
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somehow external to His essence? Such a solution is insupportable from the textual
evidence, at least in part because Irenaeus writes just as readily of human participation in
God Himself1 and in the Holy Spirit2 and in the Son3 as he does of human participation in
Gods perfections, such as incorruptibility 4, freedom 5, light 6, glory7, life8, salvation9, and
wisdom.10 As appears to be the case with St. Paul,11 Irenaeus understood what de Andia
identifies as Gods five divine attributes: power, life, eternity, light, glory, along with
each of His other virtues, to be perfections of the divine essence;12 the Basilidean
Gnostics were wrong, for instance, to conceptualize life (Zoe) as an emanation
subsequent to or derivative of the divine essence, among other reasons, because
God is life and incorruption and truth. And these and such like attributes have not
been produced according to a gradual scale of descent, but they are names of
those perfections (virtutum) which always exist in God. . . . For with the name of
1e.g.: AH
2AH
4.28.2, participes Dei; AH 4.20.5, tou Theou metechontes.
5.7.1.
3Ibid.
3.17.2.
4Ibid.
3.18.7; 3.19.1; 5.3.3; 5.7.2; Epid. 31, 40.
5Ibid.
3.19.1; 4.18.2; 4.34.1.
6Ibid.
4.14.1.
7Ibid.
4.14.1; 4.16.4; 4.39.2.
8Ibid.
3.2.1; 4.18.5; 4.20.5; 5.3.2; 5.4.2; 5.5.1.
9Ibid.
3.18.2; 4.33.5; 5.6.2; 5.14.1; 5.19.2.
10Ibid.
5.3.2. See de Andia, Homo vivens, 169-70.
11See
I Tim. 6:16, where he writes that God alone has immortality (monos echn
athanasian). Cf. Rom. 1:23; I Cor. 15.
12Homo
vivens, 29.
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God the following words will harmonize: intelligence, word, life, incorruption,
truth, wisdom, goodness, and such like.1
Unlike the Nous, Aletheia, Ennoea, and the other hypostasized properties of the Gnostic
Bythos which lie outside the latters reductively transcendent essence, the Father of Jesus
Christ, according to Irenaeus,
is a simple uncompounded Being, without diverse members, and altogether like
and equal to Himself, since He is wholly understanding, and wholly spirit, and
wholly thought, and wholly intelligence, and wholly reason, and wholly hearing,
and wholly seeing, and wholly light, and the whole source of all that is good. 2
Irenaeus God is the source of all goodness, truth, and beauty not because His essence lies
in protected bliss above goodness, truth, and beauty, but because He is Himself the
immutable, essential fullness of the good, the true, and the beautiful, being truly perfect
in all things, Himself equal and similar to Himself, as He is all light, and all mind, and all
substance, and the fount of all good; but man receives advancement and increase toward
God.3 It is only proper of the human creature, who is a compound being (compositum
animal), to speak of an interval between mind and thought, or intention and word, or
between being and acting. But since God is all mind, all reason, all active spirit, all
1AH
2.13.9, emphasis added. Cf. 2.34.2.
2Ibid.
2.13.3: et simplex, et non compositus, et similimembrius, et totus ipse sibimetipsi

similis, et aequalis est; totus cum sit sensus et totus spiritus et totus sensuabilitas et totus
ennoea et totus ratio et totus auditus et totus oculus et totus lumen et totus fons omnium
bonorum.
3Ibid.
4.11.2: totus cum sit lumen, et totus mens et totus substantia, et fons omnium
bonorum; homo vero profectum percipiens et augmentum ad Deum.
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light, and always exists one and the same . . . such feelings and divisions cannot fittingly
be ascribed to Him.1
The importance of this teaching for our evaluation of Palamism would seem to be
that Irenaeus rather forcefully denies that Gods activities, perfections, or attributes are
external to His essence and therefore somehow more communicable or participable to
creatures than is God Himself in His essence. God doesnt merely possess His virtue;
He is his virtue. God is what He has. Therefore, as Irenaeus understands salvific human
participation in God, the life and light and aphtharsia which are internal to the divine
Being must be differentiated clearly from those corresponding or analogous perfections
which are the gifts of God to His creatures, as de Andia contends: The terms
immortality and eternity, like incorruptibility, in so far as they are the gifts of God,
designate human participation in divine life, eternity, and incorruptibility, but not the
divine eternity or incorruptibility as such. 2
Yet it is clear that Irenaeus believed those essentially divine virtues of which z
and aphtharsia are frequently emblematic in his lexicon truly to be communicated
through the self-donating generosity with which God grants His adopted children a
created share in His own uncreated virtues, for, as he says, it is not possible to live apart
from life, and the means of life is found in participation in God; but to participate in God
is to know God and to enjoy His goodness.3(= metochs) evenit; participatio autem Dei
(= metoch de Theou) est videre Deum et frui benignitate eius. Because God created us
1Ibid.
2.28.4: totus mens, totus ratio et totus spiritus operans et totus lux et semper idem
et similiter exsistens. . . . Cf. AH 1.12.2: God, as soon as He thinks also performs what
He has willed; and as soon as He wills also thinks that which He has willed . . . since He
is all thought, all eye, all ear, the one entire fountain of all good things (cum sit totus
cogitatus et totus sensus et totus oculus, et totus auditus et totus fons omnium bonorum).
2Homo
3AH
vivens, 30.
4.20.5: Subsistentia autem vitae de Dei participatione

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not as if He stood in need of man, but that He might have someone upon whom to
confer His benefits and because He commands obedience not because His vanity needs
to be fed by our subservience, but because man stands in need of communion with God
(homo indiget Dei communione), therefore His purpose for sending the Son was that
His disciples should share in His glory (participent gloriae eius). 1 For God is the
glory of man; and man is the receptacle of His operations and of all His wisdom and
power. Just as the physician is proved by his patients, so is God also revealed through
men.2
Indeed, Irenaeus warns that it is distinctively characteristic of the Gnostics to
believe in a God who withheld part of Himself aloof from the created order, who did not
give Himself fully to be participated and known and loved. They
blaspheme the Creator . . . imagining that they have discovered another god
beyond God, or another Pleroma, or another dispensation. Wherefore also the
light which is from God does not illumine them, because they have dishonored
and despised God, holding Him of small account, because, through His love and
infinite benignity, He has come within reach of human knowledge (knowledge,
however, not with regard to His greatness, or with regard to His essence [non
secundum magnitudinem nec secundum substantiam eius]--for that has no man
measured [mensus est] or handled [palpavit]--but after this sort: that we should
know that He who made, and formed, and breathed in them the breath of life, and
nourishes us by means of the creation, establishing all things by His Word, and
binding them together by His Wisdom--this is He who is the only true God); but
they dream of a non-existent being above Him, that they may be regarded as
having found out the great God, whom nobody (they hold) can recognize as
1Ibid.
4.14.1.
2Ibid.
3.20.2. Gloria enim hominis Deus; operationes vero Dei, et omnis sapientiae eius,
er virtutis receptaculum, homo. See also AH 4.20.7: the glory of God is a living man.
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holding communications with the human race, or as directing mundane matters:

that is to say, they find out the god of Epicurus, who does nothing either for
himself or others; that is, he exercises no providence at all.1
Here Irenaeus has turned Hellenistic emanationism on its head by insisting on the
immediacy of Gods presence to His creation, even though His is an immediacy that does
not render Him comprehensible or vulnerable to be measure or handled, which seems
to be the point of his foreclosing the possibility of human knowledge with regard to His
greatness, or with regard to His essence. In other words, it does not appear that Irenaeus
was here suggesting that God has withheld a distinct mode of Himself--His essence--from
His otherwise immediate presence and generous self-disclosure to the world. 2 Rather, his
point seems to be that there is no need to look for a first principle beyond the Creator
because the infinite Creators involvement with the limited world of creation does not
thereby render Him measurable or comprehensible to the finitude of the creature. It is
precisely the Christian Gods ubiquitous presence to and active providence over the world
which themselves demonstrate and prove His transcendence.
The reading of Irenaeus suggested here finds further support in a sustained
discourse from the fourth book of Adversus Haeresis, where Irenaeus addresses the
Gnostic notion that just as the elements of the Hebrew dispensation of Gods economy
were merely typical of celestial realities, so also the Father of Jesus Christ is the image
of another Father.3 After noting that such an uncompromising apophaticism is
ultimately vacuous because it necessarily leads to an infinite regress of supertranscendent beings, Irenaeus turns to propose in the alternative the Christian mystery of
1Ibid.
3.24.2.
2It
is instructive that Lossky, in the course of making his case for the patristic basis of an
essence-energies distinction (The Vision of God, 36-44), never discusses any of the AH
texts in which Irenaeus denies that Gods essence can be known, nor does he claim that
the Palamite distinction finds a precursor in Adversus Haeresis.
3AH
4.19.1.
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a fully transcendent God who really gives Himself to the world in a gratuitous act of selfdisclosure while remaining at the same time perfectly free from His creatures and
invulnerable to their noetic or optic control:
As regards His greatness (secundum magnitudinem), therefore, it is not possible to
know God, for it is impossible that the Father can be measured (mensurari); but
as regards His love (secundum autem dilectionem eius)--for this it is which leads
us to God by His Word--when we obey Him we do always learn that there is so
great a God.1
What does Irenaeus here mean by magnitudinem, which, as we saw above, he elsewhere
equates with substantiam? Is it a distinct portion or mode of God which remains forever
inaccessible or intrinsically unknowable even after the creature has encountered His ad
extra operations? This does not at all seem to be what Irenaeus had in mind. Both the
immediate context and an examination of the preceding paragraph reveals that for
Irenaeus to say that it is not possible to know God secundum magnitudinem eius is
tantamount to saying that it is impossible that the Father can be measured or that God
cannot be measured in the heart and incomprehensible is He in the mind.2 Further along
in the same discourse, Irenaeus again clarifies his meaning when he writes that the
Creator God,
as regards His greatness (secundum magnitudinem), is indeed unknown to all who
have been made by Him, for no man has searched out His height (investigavit
altitudinem) . . . but as regards His love (secundum dilectionem), He is always
known through Him by whose means He ordained all things. Now this is His
Word, our Lord Jesus Christ.3
1Ibid.
4.20.1. See also AH 2.6.1, where Irenaeus replies to the gnostic denial that even
the angels possessed a knowledge of God by discerning that although God very well may
have been invisible to them on account of His superiority (propter eminentiam), He
was certainly known on account of His providence (propter providentiam). . . . For since
His invisible essence is mighty, it confers on all a profound mental intuition and
perception of His most powerful, omnipotent greatness.
2Ibid.
4.19.2.
3Ibid.
4.20.4.
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Here again Irenaeus refuses to designate a distinct part or mode of God as intrinsically,
eternally unknowable, for God is unknowable only in so far as no man has searched out
His height. His point seems to be that the God who has given Himself in an act of love
to be known and participated, because He is infinite, cannot be participated exhaustively
nor known comprehensively. The God who has revealed Himself in Christ remains
unknowable logically after His self-disclosure, then, only in the specific sense that He
can never be measured, fathomed, circumscribed, or encapsulated; God alone is He who
contains all things and is Himself contained by no one. 1 The Gnostic error which
Irenaeus was addressing in all this, as he sees it, was to have thought the Creator, by
virtue of His involvement with the material world of change, to have been entirely
immanent and comprehensible, from which misconception they made the further mistake
of imagining a reductively transcendent and intrinsically unknowable Pleroma beyond the
Creator.2 Such a bifurcated view of God is incompatible with the Christian faith because
it wants to collapse the uniquely Christian theandric mystery into transcendent and
immanent components. In other words, the Gnostic solution is unacceptable to Irenaeus
because it attempts to ground the transcendence/immanence dialectic in a real,
ontological distinction or differentiation within the divine realm rather than strictly in the
eternal difference between the immeasurable Uncreated and finite creatures.
According to Irenaeus, therefore, the opposition between Exodus 33:20 (no man
shall see God and live) and Matthew 5:8 (Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall
see God) is not resolvable by attributing the former reference to Gods eternally
invisible essence and the latter to His visible energies. Instead, Irenaeus attempts to
reconcile this apparent contradiction by making appeal to Luke 18:27: For those things
that are impossible with men are possible with God.3 Framing the question in this
1Ibid.
2Ibid.
4.19.3.
3Ibid.
4.20.5.
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manner is Irenaeus way of reaffirming the Christian mystery with which he began this
lengthy chapter, namely, that for humans it is impossible to see God secundum
magnitudinem eius, but for God it is not impossible that He be seen by humans secundum
dilectionem eius. There is nothing more metaphysically subtle here than an affirmation
of the utter gratuity of the vision of God, as Irenaeus makes clear in the remark with
which he concludes his consideration of these apparently conflicting biblical texts: For
man does not see God by his own powers; but when He pleases He is seen by men, by
whom He wills, and when He wills, and as He wills.1
Moses makes an appearance again near the end of Irenaeus long discourse on the
vision of God, when Irenaeus makes what seems at first to be an almost parenthetical
allusion to his vision of Gods back as recorded in Exodus 33:20-22. Irenaeus draws a
twofold conclusion from this encounter between God and Moses: that it is impossible
for man to see God; and that, through the Wisdom of God, man shall see Him in the last
times in the depth of a rock, that is, in His coming as a man. And for this reason did He
confer with him face to face on the top of a mountain . . . thus making good in the end the
ancient promise. 2 Here again we find the familiar pattern of Irenaeus announcing the
actualization through grace of what was and remains impossible and inaccessible to
human nature alone. Since Irenaeus commonly identifies the Wisdom of God with the
person of the Holy Spirit,3 when he writes that the vision of God prefigured on Mt. Sinai
was fulfilled in the person of Christ on Mt. Tabor through the Wisdom of God, it is not
unreasonable to conclude that Irenaeus believed the radiance of Christ at his
transfiguration to have been the Holy Spirit Himself, much like he had implied earlier in
1Ibid.
5.20.5.
2Ibid.
4.20.9. See Emmanuel Lanne, La vision de Dieu dans loeuvre de saint Irne,
Irnikon 33 (1960): 318, who calls this text very important.
3Ibid.
2.30.9; 3.24.2; 4.7.4.

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AH 4.20.2 that the paternal light with which the redeemed will be invested from the
flesh of Christ is nothing less than the indwelling of God the Father.1
Of the very little attention devoted to evaluating these possible anticipations of
Palamism in Adversus Haeresis among students of Irenaeus, Emmanuel Lanne believes
that the magnitudinem/dilectionem distinction and others like it can indeed be expressed
in modern language by that of essence and divine energies,2 but only in the sense that
these terms, as Lanne understands them, purport simply to express the mystery at the
center of the gospel that the God who is inaccessible and unknowable by nature, i.e., to
human agency alone, has nevertheless made Himself accessible, communicable,
participable, and knowable strictly and specifically to the extent that He has acted toward
the human race through His two divine Hands, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Thierry
Scherrer also believes Irenaeus to have taught that creatures participate only in the
operations (energemata) of God and not in the divine Essence, but he bases this
judgment primarily on Irenaeus use of I Corinthians 12:6 to explain how the invisible
God has made Himself visible and knowable in the world: and there are a diversity of
operations, but it is the same God who works all in all. 3 According to Scherrer, this
means that the glory promised to humanity
1Lossky,
The Vision of God, 42, assumes that Irenaeus was referring to the transfiguration
of Christ on Mt. Tabor with this allusion to paternal light coming to us through the flesh
of Christ, even though there is no indication that Irenaeus had the transfiguration in mind.
Instead, it appears that Irenaeus was attempting to demonstrate the full divinity of Christ
by arguing from Matt. 11:27 (All things are delivered to me by my Father) that all
things include the Father himself. Nevertheless, on p. 165 of the same book, Lossky
contends that it is this very Irenaean conception of the meaning of paternal light as the
supra-rational glory or effluence of the uncreated operations of God in the world which
Palamas and others will recover in the fourteenth century.
2Lanne,
La vision de Dieu, 319. He further notes that Gods communicability Irenaeus

expresses in terms of providence, love, economy, light, incorruptibility, and life.
3AH
4.20.6.
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is not a direct participation of man in the divine essence--Irenaeus has sufficiently

insisted that God is characteristically inaccessible and unknowable (insaisissable)
in Himself--but a participation in that which the Father communicates of Himself
by His Son and His Spirit, for such is the sense which Paul attaches to the notion
of divine operations.1
Both Lanne and Scherrer, however, seem to be doing little more than acknowledging that
Irenaeus believed human creatures to have had the capacity to receive God only as He
gives Himself to be received through His ad extra self-disclosure toward and in the
world. Neither of them gives any critical consideration to the question of whether what
Palamas meant by Gods essence and what Irenaeus meant by Gods essence (or
magnitudinem) are the same thing, nor to whether Irenaeus believed God to have given
only an ontologically distinct mode of Himself through the sending of the Son and Holy
Spirit.
The inadequacy of the Palamite essence-energy differentiation as a hermeneutical
key to Irenaeus understanding of human participation in God can be seen most clearly,
however, only when the question of Gods communicability is viewed christologically.
Irenaeus warns that when Jesus said No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; nor the
Father, save the Son, and those to whomsoever the Son shall reveal [Him]2 (Matt.
11:27), he did not mean to suggest that there remains something of the Father which the
Son may or may not reveal, as apparently was held by those so-called Gnostics who
have the daring to preach an unknown God. 3 Quite to the contrary, Irenaeus retorts,
For the manifestation of the Son is the knowledge of the Father,4 and, again more
1Thierry
Scherrer, La gloire de Dieu dans loeuvre de saint Irne (Rome: Gregorian

University Press, 1997), 277-78.
2AH
4.6.3.
3Ibid.
4.6.4.
4Ibid.
4.6.3.
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tersely, the Son is the knowledge of the Father.1 Of Christs reported declaration that
all things are delivered to Me by My Father, Irenaeus insists that in all things
nothing has been held back.2 Though, in Himself, the Father is invulnerable to the
investigative initiatives of human agency and though He is indeed possessed of virtually
all the apophatic modifiers the Gnostics ascribe to their Pleroma, He has nevertheless
truly given Himself to be known and participated through the sending of the Son by the
Holy Spirit.
It is apparent, therefore, that Irenaeus can be said to have grounded the Christian
mystery of created union with the uncreated God in a differentiation between Gods
incommunicable, eternally unknowable essence and His communicable, knowable
operations or energies, only if the divine essence is narrowly understood to refer to the
full measure of the infinite God or to what God is in Himself logically prior to His selfdisclosure and, secondly, only if His operations or energies are understood to refer to
those temporal events by which the otherwise imparticipable God has given Himself to
be known and communicated in the world through His two divine Hands, the Son and the
Holy Spirit.
It would seem more accurate, or at least less vulnerable to a Neoplatonic/Gnostic
misinterpretation, to say that Irenaeus established the metaphysical possibility of human
participation in an ever transcendent God on the christological distinction or
differentiation between the uncreated, infinite, eternal Son and the created humanity to
which He was united by the Holy Spirit through the flesh assumed at the incarnation.3
1Ibid.
4.6.7. Similarly in AH 4.6.6: for the Father is the invisible of the Son, but the Son
is the visible of the Father.
2Ibid.
4.20.2.
3See
de Andia, 164-68. Although she never addresses the problematic posed by the
Palamite school, by insisting that this is the sole basis on which Irenaeus establishes the
possibility of human union with God, she seems tacitly to exclude an essence-energies
differentiation of the Palamite type in Irenaeus.
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Jesus Christ is at once Himself the union between God and creation and also our own
way to union with God; the union of God and man in the divine person of the Son,
although unrepeatable as such, doesnt end with Himself, but is also in some sense
archetypal and paradigmatic for His followers as well, for He it is who leads man into
communion and union (communionem et unitatem=koinnia kai hensis) with God.1
What distinguishes the New Covenant from the Old, therefore, is not a different, now
immanent God, as the Gnostics want to believe, but a different kind of human relation to
God, one in which the faith of men in God has been increased, receiving in addition the
Son of God, that man too might be a partaker of God (homo fieret particeps Dei).2
As will be the case for Athanasius and Augustine, then, Irenaeus' christocentric
doctrine of divinization is virtually coextensive with his understanding of adoptive divine
filiation.3 And the grace of receiving through the Son that adoption which is by
Himself is equivalent in Irenaeus mind to receiving from Him the greater glory of
promotion (provectus) . . . that He might call man forth into His own likeness, assigning
him as imitator to God and imposing on him His Fathers law, in order that he may see
God, and granting him power to receive the Father (capere Patrem).4 To be made a
participant in the divine nature is to be united to the Father by configuration to the created
1AH
4.13.1.
2Ibid.
4.28.2.
3Bousset,
Kyrios Christos, 423: "deification and sonship to God are for Irenaeus
synonymous concepts," citing AH 3.6.1; 3.19.1; 4.38.4. And, 423 n. 11: "Just as for
Irenaeus the Son of God is God, so also are the sons of God gods." Lawson (The Biblical
Theology of St. Irenaeus, 158-59, citing AH 4.33.4) writes "'Regeneratio' and 'adoptio'
are here equivalent terms, representing divinization." Cf. Wingren, Man and the
Incarnation, 161. See also Harnack, History of Dogma, 2:241, who writes that Irenaeus
thought the Logos to have been united with human nature "in order to deify it by
'adoption,' such is the technical term of Irenaeus." And further (2:273 n. 1) he writes of
AH 4.14.1: "This statement, which, like the numerous others where Irenaeus speaks of
the adoptio, is opposed to moralism, reminds us of Augustine."
4AH
3.20.2.
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humanity which His divine Son assumed from the Virgin, took to the cross, raised from
the dead, glorified in Heaven, and now feeds to His disciples. Already implicit in
Irenaeus' ubiquitous correlation of adoptive sonship with participation in divine
incorruptibility is the trinitarian dimension of human salvation: "this Word was
manifested when the Word of God was made man, assimilating Himself to man
(sibimetipsi assimilans), and man to Himself, so that by means of his resemblance to the
Son, man might become precious to the Father."1
CHRISTOLOGY
As I have begun to show above, the principal redemptive-economic act by which
Irenaeus understood our primordial likeness to God and native capacity for sharing His
life to have been restored was the incarnation of the Logos, in which a "communion of
union (communionem concordiae)"2 was forged between God and the human race.
Perhaps the basic structure of this conception is best captured in the sentence with which
Irenaeus concludes Adversus Haeresis and which Normann calls a synopsis
(Zusammenfassung) of Irenaeus theology.3 Therein, Irenaeus writes of the Fathers will
that His offspring, the First-begotten Word, should descend to the creature
(facturam), that is, to what had been molded (plasma), and that it should be
contained (capiatur) by Him; and, on the other hand, the creature should contain
1Ibid.
5.16.2, PG 7:1167.
2See
Epid. 31 (Robinson, 97-98), SC 406:126: "So then He united man with God and
established a communion of union between God and man; since we could not in any
other way participate (metech) in incorruption, save by his coming among us." Cf.
Epid. 6; AH 4.34.4. Torrance, The Doctrine of Grace in the Apostolic Fathers, 76 n. 4,
suggests that this phrase recalls Ignatius of Antioch.
3Teilhabe,
95.
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(capiat) the Word, and ascend to Him, passing beyond the angels, and be made
after the image and likeness of God. 1
The pattern which Normann finds instructive here is descendat--capiatur--capiat-ascendat. It is within this descending and ascending movement that the participatory
exchange between God and man is perfected, but in such a way that man may only
receive (capere) what he cannot take to himself at his own initiative nor under his own
strength.
Rather more explicitly, in the concluding paragraph of his most vigorous
refutation of the Gnostics' docetic denial of the incarnation, Irenaeus proffers a nascent
two-natures Christology by way of attempting to ground his commercium soteriology
entirely in the freedom and mercy of God:
Therefore, as I have already said, He caused human nature to cleave to and to
become one with God (haerere itaque fecit et adunivit . . . hominem Deo). . . .
And again, unless it had been God who had freely given salvation, we could never
have possessed it securely. And unless man had been joined (coniunctus) to God,
he never could have become a partaker of incorruptibility (particeps
incorruptibilitatis = metaschein ts aphtharsias). For it was incumbent upon the
Mediator between God and men, by His relationship to both, to bring both to
friendship and concord, and present man to God, while He revealed God to man.
For in what way could we be partakers of the adoption of sons (filiorum
adoptionis eius participes), unless we had received from Him through the Son
that fellowship (communionem) which refers to Himself, unless His word, having
been made flesh, had entered into communion with us?2
1AH
5.36.3.
2Ibid.
3.18.7, PG 7:937. See Gross, 151.

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Against those proto-Arians (Ebionites) who, on the other hand, "assert that He
was simply a mere man, begotten by Joseph,"1 Irenaeus marshals the text of Psalms
82(83):6-7 (I said, You are all the sons of the Highest, and gods; but you shall die like
men.), claiming that when Jesus quotes it to those who accused him of blasphemy, as
recorded in John 10:34, he
speaks undoubtedly these words to those who have not received the gift of
adoption, but who despise the incarnation of the pure generation of the Word of
God (and) defraud human nature of promotion (ascensione) into God. . . . For it
was for this end that the Word of God was made man, and He who was the Son of
God became the Son of man, that man, having been taken into the Word
(commistus Verbo = ton Logon chrsas), and receiving the adoption, might
become the son of God. For by no other means could we have attained to
incorruptibility and immortality, unless we had been united (adunati) to
incorruptibility and immortality. But how could we be joined to incorruptibility
and immortality unless, first, incorruptibility and immortality had become that
which we also are, so that the corruptible might be swallowed up by
incorruptibility and the mortal by immortality, that we might receive the adoption
of sons?2
It is worth noting at this juncture that in both of these lengthy quotations, long before
Arius appeared on the scene to propose a created savior, it is evident that Irenaeus has
already seen and identified the exigency which both Athanasius and the Cappadocians
will exploit in developing their cases against Arius and Eunomius respectively, to wit,
that for the final beatitude of human salvation to be secure eternally (unlike Adams
infantile and capricious possession of the same), it must involve a participation in or
1Ibid.
3.19.1.
2Ibid.,
PG 7:939. Cf. AH 3.6.1, where Irenaeus attempts to demonstrate with Ps. 82:1
that the Psalmist refers to the Son as well as to the Father as God: "'God stood in the
congregation of the gods, He judges among the gods.' He here refers to the Father and the
Son, and those who have received the adoption; but these are the Church. . . . But of
what gods does he speak? Of those to whom He says, 'I have said, Ye are gods and all
sons of the Most High.' To those, no doubt, who have received the grace of the adoption,
by which we cry Abba Father."
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union with the immutable, eternal God. Again in response to the Ebionites, Irenaeus asks
rhetorically:
Or how shall man pass into God (transiet in Deum = chrsei eis Theon) unless
God has first passed (echrth) into man? And how shall he escape from the
generation subject to death if not by means of a new generation. . . . Or how shall
they receive adoption from God if they remain in this kind of generation which is
naturally possessed by man in this world? 1
Irenaeus does not specify how human nature has been united with the divine
nature of the Logos in the person of Jesus Christ, nor does he address the manner in
which the hypostatic divinization of Christ's human nature is extended to humanity as a
whole,2 except to say that the Logos "commenced afresh (in seipso recapitulavit) the long
line of human beings, and furnished us, in a brief, comprehensive manner, with salvation;
so that what we had lost in Adam--namely, to be according to the image and likeness of
God--we might recover in Christ Jesus." 3 Correlated with the recapitulation concept, but,
alas, not much more enlightening as to the precise mode of divine-human union Irenaeus
had envisioned, is his often repeated idea in Adversus Haeresis that the purpose and effect
of the incarnation was at least in part to habituate human nature for supernatural
1Ibid.
4.33.4.
2Mersch,
Le corps mystique, 1:340, finds the most vulnerable weakness of Irenaeus'

theory of recapitulation in its failure to distinguish "what pertains to the humanity of
Christ and what is proper to His divinity in the work of our incorporation in Him." He
sometimes places the human body of Christ at the hinge of the world's regathering, but
sometimes does the same with the divine nature of Christ in such a way that implies a
certain subordinate quality to His divinity. Bousset, Kyrios Christos, 433-34, also opines
that "Irenaeus did not reflect upon the way in which the human nature has been united
with the divine." Rather, he relied on his Johannine bald affirmations: verbum dei patris
filius hominis factus (AH 3.18.6). Bousset continues (435) by suggesting that Irenaeus'
Christology was developed entirely in service to his soteriology. There was a functional
modalism in so far as Christ was more often than not simply regarded by Irenaeus as the
manifested God (epiphans Theos) who made immortality visible so that the human race
could share in it.
3AH
3.18.1.
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participation in God. The eternal Logos dwelt in man and became the Son of man that
He might accustom (assuesceret) man to receive God, and God to dwell in man,
according to the good pleasure of the Father.1 The Holy Spirit descended on the man
Jesus for the purpose of becoming accustomed (assuescens) in fellowship with Him to
dwell in the human race, to rest with human beings, and to dwell in the workmanship of
God.2 So also in baptism "we do now receive a certain portion of His Spirit, tending
towards perfection, and preparing us for incorruption, being little by little accustomed
(assuescentes) to receive and bear God."3
Bousset only slightly overstates the case when he writes that "the whole doctrine
of recapitulation in Irenaeus is thoroughly anti-Gnostic in orientation."4 Against the
Gnostic despisers of the material order, Irenaeus repeatedly returns to the affirmation that
the God of creation and the God of redemption are one and the same; Christ is able to
effect the anakephalaisis, that is, to recreate a human nature which was corrupted and
disordered by sin, only because it was he who created all things in the first place.5
Similarly, a constant theme running throughout the work of Irenaeus is that the end
(redemption) is like the beginning (creation); the Word of God "was made a man among
men that He might join the end to the beginning, that is, man to God."6 As Adam came
from the virgin earth, so did Christ come from the virgin Mary; 7 as sin was wrought by a
tree, so also redemption;8 as the devil defeated Adam, so did Christ assume Adam's
1Ibid.
3.20.2.
2Ibid.
3.17.1.
3Ibid.
5.8.1.
4Bousset,
5AH
3.16.6; 3.18.1; 4.6.2.
6Ibid.
4.20.4.
7Epid.
8AH
Kyrios Christos, 437.
32, 33; AH 3.22.4.
5.16.3; Epid. 34.

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particular body1 (which, it is implied, contained the whole of the human race) 2 in order to
defeat Satan.3 Although Irenaeus first makes allusion to recapitulation with reference to
Eph. 1:10, writing that Christ will return at the end of history "to gather all things in one
(ad recapitulanda universa = anakephalaisasthai ta panta),"4 more often than not he
places the event of recapitulation not at the parousia, but at the incarnation, wherein the
Logos
took up man into Himself (semetipsum recapitulans), the invisible becoming
visible, the incomprehensible being made comprehensible, the impassible
becoming capable of suffering, and the Word being made man, thus summing up
all things in Himself (semetipsum recapitulans); so that as in super-celestial,
spiritual, and invisible things, the Word of God is supreme, so also in things
visible and corporeal He might possess the supremacy.5
Harnack found in these and numerous other similar passages in Irenaeus a
physical or mechanical doctrine of deification, which he regards as the apogee of the
Hellenization of the eschatological Gospel of Jesus.6 Lawson also notes that sometimes
1Ibid.
5.1.3, PG 7:1123: As it was in the beginning with Adam, "so also, in the end, the
Word of the Father and the Spirit of God, having become united with the ancient
substance of Adam's formation (plasmationis Adae), rendered man living and perfect . . .
in order that Adam might be created again after the image and likeness of God."
2See
Harnack, History of Dogma, 2:273, commenting on AH 3.18.6: "Adam, however, is

humanity; in other words, as all humanity is united and renewed through Christ so also it
was already summarized in Adam."
3AH
3.18.6; 3.23.3; 5.21.1; Epid. 31. Methodius (Symp. 3.4) also holds the first Adam to
have been assumed by the Logos at the incarnation.
4Ibid.
1.10.1.
5Ibid.
3.16.6, PG 7:925. See also AH 4.6.2; 4.38.1; 5.19.1.
6History
of Dogma, 2:318: "But when the Christian religion was represented as the belief
in the incarnation of God and as the sure hope of the deification of man, a speculation
that had originally never got beyond the fringe of religious knowledge was made the
central point of the system and the simple content of the Gospel was obscured." Harnack
attributes the general acceptance and ascendancy of Irenaeus deification soteriology over
"the religious hope which looked forward to an earthly kingdom of Christ" to "men's
increasing indifference to daily life." (2:317) Cf. Dodds, Pagan and Christian, 74-75.
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in Irenaeus, "the process of divinization may also be spoken of . . . as though it were a

sort of spiritual inoculation," as though mere contact of the human nature with divine
nature suffices to assimilate the former.1 Gross further observes: "In these texts, we see
specified for the first time a physical or mystical conception of deification. According to
this theory, . . . human nature is immortalized, therefore divinized, by the mere fact of
intimate contact which the Incarnation established between humanity and the divine
nature of the Word."2 Bousset, writing out of the same Religionsgeschichte school as did
Harnack, is especially acrimonious in his assault on Irenaeus' location of the incarnation
at the center of salvation history: "All special theology of the cross is completely
overshadowed by . . . the union of divine and human nature. . . . Sin, guilt, forgiveness of
sin and guilt, all retreat into the background for him, as they do in the Johannine
writings."3
J. N. D. Kelly, however, justifiably calls this sort of characterization a dangerous
half-truth4 because, as suggested by a number of the recapitulation passages cited above
(AH 5.16.3-17.2; 5.19.1), Irenaeus thought of both the obedience of Christ during his
earthly life as well as his death and resurrection as integrally, if not equally, causative of
humanity's divinization. Mere contact with the divine nature at the event of the
incarnation did not suffice to effect the admirabile commercium Irenaeus had in mind, for
it was necessary that He passed through every stage of life, restoring to all communion
1The
Biblical Theology of St. Irenaeus, 156.
2Divinisation,
151.
3Kyrios
Christos, 425-26. See also Rashdall, The Idea of the Atonement on Christian
Theology, 290. Regarding the affirmation of Hippolytus (Phil. 10.34) that the hope of
salvation entails being made a god, which is equivalent to having become immortal,
Rashdall objects: There is simply no allusion at all to any special efficacy of Christs
death and the forgiveness of sins is conceived not as coming from the Father through the
sacrifice of the cross, but as simply the act of the Logos.
4Kelly,
Early Christian Doctrines, 173-74.

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with God.1 Commenting on the same text (AH 2.20.3) upon which Bousset based his
criticism outlined above, Gross observes that the passion of Christ on the cross is being
opposed by Irenaeus to the passion of the Gnostic Aeon inasmuch as the latter was
destroyed by his suffering whereas Christ destroyed death itself and thereby restored
humanity to immortality and incorruption. Gross does acknowledge, however, that
"Irenaeus never shows how the redemptive sacrifice of Christ is harmonized with the
efficacy which he elsewhere attributes to the Incarnation as such."2 In direct response to
Harnack, Aubineau adduces the argument of Gustaf Auln, according to which Irenaeus
uses the incarnation as "an abbreviation, pars pro toto" for the entire redemptive life,
death, and resurrection of Christ.3 Lawson, in this connection, objects to Bousset's
reduction of Irenaeus' soteriology to that of St. John as over against St. Paul and suggests
that such a dichotomy is simplistic, failing to account both for the salient role played by
the event of the cross in the Johannine texts and for the extensive use Irenaeus makes of
the Pauline second Adam christology.4
PNEUMATOLOGY AND ECCLESIOLOGY

The role of the Paschal mystery is brought to bear by Irenaeus most directly on
the divinization of humanity, perhaps, in the context of his allusions to the Eucharist.
Christ "has redeemed us through his own blood, giving his soul for our souls, and His
1AH
3.18.7.
2Divinisation,
152.
3Aubineau,
"Incorruptibilit et divinisation selon Irne," 39. See Gustaf Auln, Christus

Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement, trans.
A. G. Herbert (New York: Macmillan, 1969), 16-35, where he argues that the "classical"
doctrine of the atonement, of which Irenaeus is the first and archetypal representative,
refuses to separate the incarnation from the cross like Protestant theologians, following
Anselm and the properly "Latin" view of the atonement, are want to do. Herein, he
suggests, lies the problem with Harnack's and Bousset's analyses.
4The
Biblical Theology of St. Irenaeus, 160 n. 6.

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flesh for our flesh." 1 Irenaeus implicitly locates the font of the Churchs divinizing
sacraments in the mixture of water and blood flowing from the side of the crucified
Savior when he explains that because the Ebionites do not receive by faith into their soul
the union (unitionem) of God and man, therefore do these men reject the commixture
(commistionem) of the heavenly wine, and wish it to be water of the world only, not
receiving God so as to have union (commistionem) with Him. 2 The Son graciously
poured (effuderit) Himself out, that He might gather us into the bosom of the Father.3 If
the human body is not salvageable, "then neither did the Lord redeem us with His blood,
nor is the cup of the Eucharist the communion of His blood."4 Yet even here, Irenaeus
comments on the Eucharist are frequently more evocative of the hypostatic union than
they are of the crucifixion, as for instance when he writes that just as the consecrated
Host is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly
1AH
5.1.1. See Aubineau, "Incorruptibilit et divinisation selon Irne," 40.
2Ibid.
5.1.3.
3Ibid.
5.2.1.
4Ibid.
5.2.2. See Rashdall, The Idea of the Atonement on Christian Theology, 240-41,
who notes that it is not entirely clear whether Irenaeus understood the marvelous
exchange of the incarnation to be extended to believers by the moral influence of
Christs character, (citing in evidence AH 3.21.2) which he calls the germ of all
reasonable teaching on the subject, or, on the other hand, by a sort of metaphysical or
almost physical effect upon humanity, (citing AH 5.2.2, quoted here) which he
associated primarily with the immortalizing effects of the Eucharist and locates in the
region of pure myth . . . from the corrupt following of Plato.
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and heavenly; so also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are not longer
corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity."1
Although the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of the Son is the lynchpin
of human salvation, however, this great redemptive exchange was at once the work of the
whole Trinity:
Since the Lord thus has redeemed us through His own blood, giving His soul for
our souls, and His flesh for our flesh, and has also poured out the Spirit of the
Father for the union and communion (adunitionem et communionem) of God and
man, imparting indeed God to men by means of the Spirit, and, on the other hand,
attaching man to God by His own incarnation, and bestowing upon us at His
coming immortality durably and truly, by means of communion with God, all the
doctrines of the heretics fall to ruin. 2
The christological or incarnational basis Irenaeus finds for human participation in God,
therefore, is at once pneumatological. The redeemed are incorporated into the Son's
economic relation to the Father only through the Son's economic relation to the Holy
1Ibid.
4.18.5. See Lawson, The Biblical Theology of St. Irenaeus, 267: "In the
consecration of the Eucharist, the Logos unites Himself with the elements, and as it were
becomes incarnate again." He also observes that Irenaeus' choice of the phrase antidotum
vitae (AH 3.19.1) recalls Ignatius' pharmakon athanasias (Eph. 20), with the significant
difference that Irenaeus is writing of the incarnate Logos Himself, whereas Ignatius was
clearly referring to the sacrament of the Eucharist. Bousset, Kyrios Christos, 429, opines
that Irenaeus did not develop the Eucharistic dimensions of deification as extensively as
did Ignatius primarily because it did not need to be said in the context of second century
Christianity, but was "for him already self-evident, like the air which one breathes."
2AH
5.1.1. Who were the heretics Irenaeus had in mind here? The first sentences of the
subsequent four paragraphs, respectively, seem to provide a usefully succinct answer to
this question: first those who allege that He appeared in mere seeming; secondly the
Ebionites, who . . . do not choose to understand that the Holy Ghost came upon Mary . . .
wherefore also what was generated is a holy thing, and the Son of the Most High God the
Father of all; thirdly those who say that God came to those things which did not belong
to Him, as if covetous of anothers property; in order that He might deliver up that man
who had been created by another, to that God who had neither made nor formed
anything; and finally they who despise the entire dispensation of God, and disallow the
salvation of the flesh, and treat with contempt its regeneration, maintaining that it is not
capable of incorruption.
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Spirit. However ambiguous may be Irenaeus' pneumatological Adamic anthropology, he

clearly sees human assimilation to and participation in God, or the recovery and
perfection of that divine image and likeness according to which we were created, to be
effected primarily by the infused presence of the Holy Spirit, which is both
contemporaneous to and dependent upon our union with the God-man: Christ
recapitulated everything in Himself; uniting man to the Spirit and causing the Spirit to
dwell in man, He is Himself made the head of the Spirit, and gives the Spirit to be the
head of man, for it is by the Spirit that we see, hear, and speak.1
If the basis for our participation in God does not lie in a partitioning of God, it can
be found in the bodily consubstantiality of Christ with humanity2 largely because his
flesh, which Irenaeus insists is not different from ours or from another substance than
our own,3 was perfused by the Holy Spirit. The flesh of Christ is the means by which
the divine life is given to man precisely because the divinization of man begins with the
glorification of the flesh of Christ.4 The central question of Irenaeus soteriology, as de
Andia reads it, is if incorruptibility is above all a divine attribute . . . how man may
become incorruptible by participation in the incorruptible life of God.5 In contrast to the
Gnostic false alternative between connaturality and annihilation, Irenaeus proposed a
relationship of communion between the flesh and the Spirit of God, a relationship in
which they are united while remaining distinct from one another, yet united effectively
and securely enough so that the flesh comes to possess created attributes which are
1Ibid.
5.20.2. See J.-M. Garrigues, L'nergie divine et la grce chez Maxime le

Confesseur, 288, who finds here in Irenaeus a precursor to Maximus doctrine of the
created habitus or hexis of grace; Christ gives us the uncreated Spirit only through his
own created humanity, Garrigues emphasizes.
2de Andia,
3AH
336.
5.14.3.
4de Andia,
5Ibid.,
336.
334.
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essential to the uncreated God, typically incorruption: For what other visible fruit is
there of the invisible Spirit than the rendering of the flesh mature and capable of
incorruption?1 The promise of the gospel as expressed by St. Paul, therefore, that we
shall also bear the image of Him who is from heaven (1 Cor. 15:49), Irenaeus
understands to consist of configuration to the Son by the operation of the indwelling Holy
Spirit, consequent upon the Spirits operation in the incarnate body of the Word: But
where the Spirit of the Father is, there is a living man (homo vivens) . . . there is the flesh
possessed by the Spirit, forgetful indeed of what belongs to it, and adopting the quality of
the Spirit, being made conformable to the Word of God.2
The Holy Spirit did not descend de novo on the divine person of the Son at Jesus
Christs baptism in the Jordan, but only inasmuch as the Word of God was man from the
root of Jesse, and son of Abraham, in this respect did the Spirit of God rest upon him . . .
so that we, receiving from the abundance of His unction, might be saved.3 The Holy
Spirit descended upon the incarnate Son at his baptism in order to dwell in the
workmanship of God, working the will of the Father in them, and renewing them from
their old habits into the newness of Christ. 4 The economy of the Spirit is here viewed by
Irenaeus as entirely bound up with the economy of the Son, not only in the latters
temporal baptism, but proceeding from that moment forth throughout the remainder of
salvation history by means of the incarnational principle: 5 The Lord, receiving this as a
gift from His Father, does Himself also confer it upon those who are partakers
(participantur) of Himself, sending the Holy Spirit upon all the earth.6
1AH
5.12.4.
2Ibid.
5.9.3.
3Ibid.
3.9.3.
4Ibid.
3.17.1.
5Normann,
6AH
Teilhabe, 100.
3.17.2.
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One of the biblical texts most at issue in Irenaeus' dispute with the Gnostics'
eschatology was I Corinthians 15:50: "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of
God." 1 To the Gnostic claim that Paul was here foretelling the inexorable incompatibility
of the material body with the divine realm, Irenaeus counters that it is flesh and blood
alone, absent the assimilating presence and work of the Spirit, to which Paul was
referring: "Those, then, who as many as they be, who have not that which saves and
forms us into life eternal, shall be, and shall be called, mere flesh and blood; for these are
they who have not the Spirit of God in themselves."2 Perhaps Irenaeus had the bodys
pneumatological teleology in mind when he wrote that "as the flesh is capable of
corruption, so is it also of incorruption (capax corruptelae et incorruptelae)."3 In any
event, it is not the mere contact of the indwelling Holy Spirit with human flesh that
renders the latter incorruptible, as though the Spirit were some sort of cosmic talisman,
but here as in all things the salvation and divinization of fallen creatures turns finally on
their relationship with the Father by incorporation into the God-man through the Holy
Spirit:
And for this reason the baptism of our regeneration proceeds through these three
points: God the Father bestowing on us regeneration through His Son by the Holy
Spirit. For as many as carry in them the Spirit of God are led to the Word, that is
to the Son; and the Son brings them to the Father; and the Father causes them to
possess incorruption.4
Irenaeus soteriology is not reducible to the mechanical or physical conception of
redemption also because of the salient role the vision and knowledge of God plays in his
1de Andia,
Homo vivens, 18f, provides a lexicographal study of Irenaeus' use of

aphtharsia in correlation with I Corinthians 15:50-55.
2AH
5.9.1. Cf. AH 4.20.4-6; 5.8.1; 5.10.1; 5.12.2. See Gross, 153.
3Ibid.
5.12.1. Cf. AH 5.2.2, where Irenaeus anathematizes those who "disallow the
salvation of the flesh, and treat with contempt its regeneration, maintaining that it is not
capable of incorruption (capax incorruptelae)."
4Epid.
7 (Robinson, 75-76).
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understanding of what it means to be made a created participant in divine life. Certainly

he is no less convinced that the vision of God is powerful in itself to produce in the
beholder a certain likeness to the Beheld than he is that the assumption and glorification
of human nature through the incarnation of the Logos itself assimilated the human race to
its Creator. Likewise, however, Irenaeus is no more forthcoming about the precise means
by which the vision of the Image of God produces an image of the Image than he is about
the precise means by which the incarnation accomplished what he is certain it did.
Earlier we saw that Irenaeus went so far as to suggest that if Adam had been blessed with
a vision of the true Image of God he would not have lost so easily his similitude to
God,1 a speculation which further demonstrates how inseparably joined in Irenaeus mind
are the economies of creation and redemption; salvific human assimilation to the Father
through the making visible of His only true Image was already an integral component of
the plan of creation even prior to and logically apart from the disordering of the human
fall into sin.2 Among other reasons, therefore, it was in order to exhibit the similitude
which He alone possessed in its fulness that the Son of God was made man, assuming
the ancient production of His hands into His own nature.3
We have already given some attention to Irenaeus two most important and typical
discourses on the vision of God as found in AH 4.20.1-9 and 4.38.3, the first treating the
question of the naturally invisible Gods gratuitous visibility and the second
demonstrating how God has destined human persons from within their own created
1AH
5.16.2.
2Normann,
Teilhabe, 103.
3AH
4.33.4. See also Epid. 31, where Irenaeus writes that it is because immortality bas
become visible in the person of Christ that we may share in it. On the basis of this and
related texts, Bousset (Kyrios Christos, 427-28) finds a certain measure of rationalism in
Irenaeus' concept of the vision of God; the visibility of the Son serves a mystagogical and
didactic purpose as much as anything.
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natures toward sharing His life in the fulness of the Kingdom.1 The very long twentieth
chapter of book four of Adversus Haeresis reveals that in keeping with the uniformly
realistic epistemology of late antiquity, Irenaeus understood the knowledge and vision of
God to involve a noetic or optic participation in God, most typically expressed in terms of
a creaturely partaking of divine light: God gave power over all things to the incarnate
Savior that the paternal light (lux paterna = phs patrikon) might meet with and rest
upon the flesh of our Lord, and come to us from His resplendent flesh, and that thus man
might attain to immortality, having been invested with the paternal light.2 The
Valentinians, of course, had equated the spiritual with light purely and simply3 and had
regarded the pneumatichoi themselves to be the lumen mundi4 and the lumen paternum.5
In contrast to them, Irenaeus reserves to God alone the titles lumen 6, aeternum lumen7,
totus lumen8, and totus lux9, warning that although He may most properly be termed
Light, God is nevertheless nothing like that light with which we are acquainted.10
Since he also consistently maintains that the light of God, like each of His other
attributes, is essential to Him or internal to His Being, it would appear that Irenaeus has
1de Andia,
321.
2AH
4.20.2. Cf. AH 4.14.1: "For to follow the Savior is to be a partaker (participare) of

salvation, and to follow light is to receive (percipere) light. But those who are in light do
not themselves illumine the light, but are illumined and revealed by it."
3Ibid.
1.4.1-1.4.5; 1.8.2.
4Ibid.
1.6.1.
5Ibid.
2.4.3; 2.8.2; 2.17.5; 2.19.4.
6Ibid.
2.18.4.
7Ibid.
4.39.4.
8Ibid.
2.13.3; 4.11.2.
9Ibid.
2.88.4.
10Ibid.
2.13.4.
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in mind that light which is nothing less than God Himself when he writes that the one
God who has already been seen prophetically through the Spirit in the economy of the
old covenant and is now visible adoptively through the Son
shall also be seen paternally in the kingdom of heaven, the Spirit truly preparing
man in the Son of God, and the Son leading him to the Father, while the Father,
too, confers upon him incorruption for eternal life, which comes to everyone from
the fact of his seeing God. For as those who see the light are within the light, and
partake of its brilliancy (claritatem eius percipiunt = lamprottos autou
metechousin); even so, those who see God are in God, and receive (percipientes =
metechontes) of His splendor. But His splendor vivifies them; those, therefore,
who see God, do receive (percipiunt = methexousin) life. . . . Men, therefore,
shall see God that they may live, being made immortal by that sight and attaining
even unto God (pertingentes usque in Deum).1
It would be a mistake to find in this or other similar passages a Platonic
understanding of illumination. Irenaeus is not proposing a constructive epistemology of
any sort,2 but is simply expounding the Bible as he reads it in view of the Gnostic
challenges with which he was faced.3 Indeed, Harnack acknowledges that Irenaeus
always "managed to keep his language essentially within the limits of the Biblical" and
complains that therein lies the subversive power of the Irenaean conception of salvation
as divinization to become eventually the dogma of the Catholic Church.4
A glance back at Irenaeus attempted demonstration of the merely relative or
dynamic perfection given to human nature by God through the economy of creation
reveals that he understood this face-to-face vision of God whereby the redeemed are
made participants in His life, incorruptibility, and immortality to have been fully
1AH
4.20.5-6, PG 7:1035.
2de Andia
(Homo vivens, 324, n. 12) claims that, in contrast to Nyssa, Irenaeus concept
of the vision of God is unrelated to the philosophical problematic posed by
Neoplatonism.
3Matthew
5:8 in relation to Exodus 33:20 here, although it is noteworthy that in none of

these passages does Irenaeus quote or paraphrase I John 3:2, which is arguably the most
explicit biblical teaching on the assimilating power of the beatific vision.
4History
of Dogma, 2:244.
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attainable, even logically apart from the drama of sin and redemption, only after the death
and glorification of the body in the afterlife. Just as Adam was not in possession of a
static or fixed perfection, so also the redeemed in this life progress only gradually toward
the fullness of likeness to God: "But we do now receive a certain portion of His Spirit,
tending towards perfection, and preparing us for incorruption . . . which also the apostle
terms an earnest."1 Gods super-eminent kindness is revealed in His chosen destiny
for His creatures to reflect the glory of the uncreated One, of that God who bestows
what is good ungrudgingly, for even though they are now and will forever remain mere
creatures, they shall receive a faculty of the Uncreated (virtutem infecti = dynamin
agentou), through the gratuitous bestowal of eternal existence upon them by God. 2 It
was necessary that the human race pass through the stages of creation, growth,
strengthening, and healing whereby it is rendered after the image and likeness of the
uncreated God 3 in the course of ascending towards the perfect, that is, approximating to
the uncreated One (proximum infecto fieri = plsion tou agenntou ginomenou),4 toward
the final end that they should be glorified; and being glorified, should see his Lord. For
God is He who is yet to be seen, and the beholding of God is productive of immortality
(efficax incorruptelae), but immortality renders one nigh unto God."5
1AH
5.8.1, quoting Ephesians 1:13.
2Ibid.
4.38.3, PG 7:1107.
3Ibid.
4Ibid.
5Ibid.
Cf. AH 4.14.1: The high priestly prayer of Jesus to the Father for his disciples
that where I am there they also may be that they may behold My glory (John 17:24)
which he offered in the expectation that His disciples should share in His glory
(participent gloriae eius), Irenaeus believes will be finally accomplished only at the
consummation of history: we do participate (participantes) in the glory of the Lord, who
has both formed us and prepared us for this, that, when we are with Him, we may partake
(participemus) of His glory.
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It is evident, therefore, that the writings of Irenaeus cannot be marshaled to

support the neo-Palamite position that the fathers of the Church grounded the possibility
of sanctifying participation in God upon a real distinction between an intrinsically
incommunicable divine essence and Gods communicable energies. Irenaeus assumes
and implies, we have seen, that the divine persons of the Holy Spirit and the Son are no
less communicable than are the divine perfections which Irenaeus clearly locates within
what he repeatedly insists is Gods entirely simple essence. The divine essence is
unknowable, according to Irenaeus, only in the specific sense that the fulness of who and
what God is remains incomprehensible, inexhaustible, and immeasurable. To participate
in the divine nature, as he understood and employed the concept, is to receive adoptive
sonship to God the Father, which is to be assimilated to God the Son through
incorporation to the humanity He assumed, recapitulated, sanctified, and suffused with
the Holy Spirit at the incarnation. It is to attain ones divinely ordained created perfection
through the noetic and obediential reception of Gods uncreated self-gift.
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V. CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
Clement of Alexandria was much less scrupulous than was Irenaeus about
restricting his language to that of the Bible. Indeed, he was the first Christian author to
employ the terminology of theopoisis to designate the fulness of Christian salvation:1
By his heavenly doctrine, (Christ) deifies man (ourani didaskalia theopoin
anthrpon). 2 Although such a declaration could be interpreted in a way that supports the
Palamite position, i.e., that Christ fills the mind with uncreated light, thereby making the
person uncreated through grace, this is clearly not what Clement intended. Nor do any of
the Palamite authors I have considered cite Clement for patristic support of their doctrine.
It would be more accurate to say that Clement believed the deifying work of Christ to be
the presence of an exemplary cause in its effect. Clements theopoisis is configuration to
Christ.
1Dalmais,
Divinisation, 1378. Dalmais here suggests that Clements attachment to the

language of Greek philosophy meant that his conception of deification would take on an
exaggerated intellectual and speculative hue.
2Paed.
1.12, PG 8:368ab; quoted by Gross, 163.

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It is also the teleological fulfilment of that image and likeness of God with which
the first humans were endowed from their creation. Like Irenaeus, Clement held that the
image of God in the human person is more precisely the image of the Image: For the
image of God is the divine and royal Word, the impassible man; and the image of the
image is the human mind (nous).1 Clement parts company with Irenaeus, however, in
identifying the image of God in man with the mind and in specifying that the body is
excluded from both image and likeness: "For conformity with the image and likeness is
not meant of the body (for it were wrong for what is mortal to be made like what is
immortal), but in mind (nous) and reason, on which fitly the Lord impresses the seal of
likeness." 2 Like Philo, to whom he is indebted for a wide range of ideas, Clement also
drew a distinction between image and likeness as they are employed in the Genesis
creation narrative; although Adam was perfect insofar as there was no defect in his
humanity as such, that is, no proclivity to evil,3 he was only adapted to the reception of
virtue . . . not so as to be possessed of it from birth, but so as to be adapted for acquiring
it.4 It is this acquisition of virtue which Clement understood to be the deifying likeness
foretold by Gen. 1:26: "For is it not thus that some of our writers have understood that
1Strom.
5.14. All translations of Clements Paedagogus (Paed.), Protrepticos (Prot.), and

Stromateis (Strom.), unless otherwise noted, are from ANF 2. Greek and Latin are from
PG 8, 9. See Ladner, The Idea of Reform, 85, who further notes that Clements
identification of the image of God with the human mind would be followed by virtually
all of the Fathers, both East and West. G. W. Butterworth, "The Deification of Man in
Clement of Alexandria," 157, begins his sweeping rejection of the patristic doctrine of
deification with the claim that the anthropological basis upon which deification is
possible according to Clement is that man contains within himself a spark of the divine
nature, namely, the nous which Clement identifies as the locus of the image and likeness
of God.
2Strom.
2.19, PG 8:1048b.
3Ibid.
4.22.
4Ibid.
6.11-12. See Gross, 161.

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man straightway on his creation received what is 'according to the image,' but that what is
according 'to the likeness' he will receive afterwards on his perfection?"1
In distinction from the image of the Image which is the human nous, if you wish
to apprehend the likeness by another name, you will find it named in Moses, a divine
correspondence. For he says Walk after the Lord your God, and keep His
commandments. And I reckon all the virtuous, servants and followers of God.2 As was
the case with Philo, so also for Clement is Moses the pre-Christian prototype of the
perfect man, the true gnostic whose mind has been completely perfused with intellectual
radiance, like the solar ray, as a visible sign of righteousness, uniting the soul with light,
through unbroken love, which is God-bearing (theophorousa) and God-borne. As a
result of righteous conduct and uninterrupted intercourse with God in the tradition of
Moses, assimilation (exomoisis) to God the Savior arises to the Gnostic, as far as
permitted to human nature, he being made perfect as the Father who is in heaven (Matt.
5:48).3 Clement drew this particular understanding of the meaning of assimilation to
God partly from Platos Theatetus 176b, which he quotes liberally in the second book of
his Stromateis. Plato calls happiness "the highest perfection in accordance with virtue;
and this he places in the knowledge of the Good, and in likeness to God, demonstrating
likeness to be justice and holiness with wisdom." 4 Clement believes this providential,
1Ibid.
2.22.
2Strom.
5.14.
3Ibid.
6.12.96, PG 9:324-25. Analogues of this phrase, as far as permitted to human

nature, which Clement adopts from Theatetus 176b, will recur throughout his writings
and serves to protect him from the charge of latent pantheism.
4Ibid.
2.22, PG 8:1084. See George, Vergttlichung des Menschen, 117, who cites this
text among many others (Strom. 2.136.6, GCS 15:188; Strom. 2.131.5, GCS 15:185;
Strom. 2.133.3, GCS 15:186; Prot. 122.4, GCS 12:86) as evidence that Platos Theaetetus
176b provided the early Christians with a readily usable vocabulary to the teach that the
goal of human existence is assimilation to God, which entails becoming righteous and
wise.
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though pagan, aspiration to have been realized in the grace of adoptive sonship through
Jesus Christ:
But on us it is incumbent to reach the unaccomplished end, obeying the
commands--that is, God--and living according to them, irreproachably and
intelligently, through knowledge of the divine will; and assimilation (exomoisis) as far
as possible in accordance with right reason (logos orthos) is the end and
restoration to
perfect adoption by the Son. 1

Divine adoption, in Clements view, is nothing other than the accomplishment of the
purpose for which God created the human race in His own image:
The view I take is that He Himself formed man of the dust and regenerated him
by water; and made him grow by his Spirit; and trained him by His word to
adoption and salvation, directing him by sacred precepts; in order that,
transforming earth-born man into a holy and heavenly being by His advent, He might
fulfill to the utmost that divine utterance, 'Let Us make man in Our own image and
likeness.'2
The incarnation of the Eternal Son is the decisive event by which humanitys
recovery of its native capacity for growing in likeness to God has been effected, yet not
by quasi-mechanical or physical incorporation into the human nature assumed and
repristinated by the Logos, 3 nor predominantly by the offering of the Son to the Father in
penal satisfaction for the guilt of sin. Rather, Clement views Christ above all as the
divine pedagogue, deifying (theopoin) man by heavenly teaching, 4 whose instruction
1Strom.
2.22, PG 8:1084-85. See S. Lilla, Clement of Alexandria: A Study in Christian

Platonism and Gnosticism (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971), 106-07, who suggests that
as was the case for both Philo (De opificio mundi 143) and Plotinus (Enn. 1.2.7),
homoisis the supercedes the Stoic ideal of living according to nature (akolouths t
phusei zn) in much the same way that the perfection of apatheia will supercede the
moderation of passion (metriopatheia) in Clements ethics. See also Merki, Homoisis
The, 57-60.
2Paed.
1.12, PG 8:368ab. Further on in this same passage, Clement characterizes

Christian salvation as being assimilated to God by a participation in moral excellence.
See W. Volker, Der wahre Gnostiker nach Clemens Alexandrinus (Berlin, 1952), 112,
532.
3Emile
Mersch, Le corps mystique, 1:350: Origen and Clement have contributed little to
the doctrine of the Mystical Body.
4Prot.
11. See Dalmais, Divinisation, 1378.

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and exemplary human life show the way for his disciples to live and act as God does:
The word of God became man, that you may learn from man how man may become a
god (anthrpos gentai theos). 1 Just as those who devote themselves to Homer become
poets, and to Aristotle naturalists and to Plato philosophers, etc., so, Clement reasons, he
who listens to the Lord, and follows the prophecy given by Him, will be formed perfectly
in the likeness of the teacher--made a god going about in flesh.2 Clements readers are
urged to take on the impress of the truly saving life of our Savior, meditating on the
heavenly mode of life according to which we have been deified (ektheoumetha), . . .
having a clear example of immortality in the walk and conversation of the Lord.3 From
St. Pauls exhortation to the Corinthians (I Corinthians 11:1) to be imitators of me as I
am of Christ, Clement concludes: Assimilation to God, then, so that as far as possible
a man becomes righteous and holy with wisdom, (St. Paul) lays down as the aim of
faith.4 To be deified, as Clement conceived it, is to be assimilated to God by following
Christ in practicing charity and doing good. For the law calls assimilation following;
and such a following to the utmost of its power assimilates. Be, says the Lord,
merciful and pitiful as your heavenly Father is merciful.5
In an effort to explain how Scripture can impute pity and mercy to God, which the
Gnostics regarded to be creaturely affections or passions unworthy of attribution to God,
Clement repeatedly and emphatically asserts the ontological separation that necessarily
and eternally obtains between God and His rational creatures, images and likenesses
though they may be. God has no natural relation to us, as the authors of the heresies will
have it.6 Whereas Justin had predominantly set out to demonstrate how the human soul,
as a mere participant in life, differed from Life itself, the question which interested
1Ibid.
1.8, PG 8:64d. Ive altered the ANF translation, which reads become God.
Cuthbert Lattey, "The Deification of Man in Clement of Alexandria: Some Further
Notes," Journal of Theological Studies 17 (1916): 261-62, speculates that the Hellenistic
practice of royal apotheosis, epitomized by the cult of the Ptolemies, was certainly in
Clements mind when he refers to the redeemed as gods. Rather than assimilating the
Faith to his Hellenistic milieu, however, Clement was making the sublimity of Christian
salvation intelligible to his pagan audience by employing familiar concepts (denuded of
their original meaning) and was inveighing against Emporer worship by opposing to it
the true Christian elevation to divine life as the authentic article, of which Hellenistic
apotheosis was but an illusory precursor. See also Dalmais, Divinisation, 1378.
2Strom.
3Paed.
7.16, PG 9:940b.
1.12, PG 8:368ab.
4Strom.
2.22, PG 8:1084-85.
5Ibid.
2.22, quoting Luke 6:36.
6Ibid.
2.16.
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Clement the most was whether and how God is participable (teil-bar).1 He is usually
content merely to affirm the Christian mystery that the perfectly transcendent, infinite
God who has freely communicated Himself to the world is indivisibly divided to all who
are sanctified by faith 2 and that when He pours out His Spirit on all flesh, as Joel
prophesied (2:28), it is not as a portion of God that the Spirit is in each of us. 3 In one
of his most sustained treatments of this question, Clement reasons that if we creatures
could dare to say that we are a part of Him and of the same essence as God, then God
Himself would be complicit in our sin; Gods pity and mercy, however, unlike our own
toward each other, arises not by compulsion of the natural, erotic attraction between
kindred beings, but strictly in a self-moved fashion from the pure goodness of His own
nature and will: But God, being by nature rich in pity, in consequence of His own
goodness, cares for us, though (we are) neither portions of Himself, nor by nature His
children. And this is the greatest proof of the goodness of God; that such being our
relation to Him, and being by nature wholly estranged, He nevertheless cares for us. 4
Whereas the affection in animals to their progeny is natural, and human communion
also is a sequela of our mutual connaturality, the mercy of God is rich toward us who are
in no respect related to Him; I say either in our essence or nature, or in the peculiar
energy of our essence, but only in our being the work of His will.5 Despite these and
similar strict delimitations, Lossky contends that Clements doctrine affirms the conaturality of the intellect and the divine. 6
In addition to mercy and kindness, one of the most salient attributes of the those
who have embarked on Clements way of deification is apatheia. 7 Christ is the teacher
1Normann,
Teilhabe, 142.
2Strom.
6.16.
3Strom.
5.13.
4Ibid.
2.16.
5Ibid.
2.16. The creature who agrees to live in conformity to this divine will, then, He
calls to adoption, which is the greatest advancement of all.
6Lossky,
The Vision of God, 167.
7Strom.
2.103.1; 4.138.1; 7.13.3. George, Vergttlichung des Menschen, 140, identifies

this, the ascetical way, as the third of the four ways of divinization in Greek
philosophy. The purification of the soul from its sinful attachment to bodily passions is
both a prerequisite to Gods divinizing presence as well as a constitutive element of the
grace of divinization, with Clement going so far (too far, by most accounts) as virtually to
identify apatheia with thesis. See also Lilla, Clement of Alexandria, 110.
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and exemplar of apatheia1 and it is by imitating Christ that the believer can make
progress from the inferior ethical stage of metriopatheia to the Godlike perfection of
apatheia, assimilating as far as possible the moderation which, arising from practice,
tends to impassibility, to Him who by nature possesses impassibility.2 Clements
understanding of apatheia is also closely related to the Christians participation in the
kingship of Christ, largely derived from Hellenistic model of the philosopher king, which
Clement believed Plato had received from God;3 those who rule over their passions are
rightly called kings in the same way that Christ is King of the created order. 4
Clement was generally less concerned with immortality and incorruptibility as
predicates of the beatific life than were his predecessors, both pagan and Christian.
Rather, the undoing of selfish attachment to sensual pleasure through ascetical practices
leading to apatheia and the consequent procurement of unitive agap come to the fore in
Clements exposition.5 Although he followed Philo, Plotinus and Porphyry6
Porphyry: Sent. 22; De abst. 2.43. in attributing pure apatheia to God Himself 7 (an
accretion from Hellenism which makes him vulnerable to the allegation that his doctrine
of deification is poisoned from the outset with a view of God which is incompatible with
1See
Strom. 6.11, where Clement flirts with docetic Christology by suggesting that the
incarnate Christ made use of his bodily faculties not because he needed to do so, but only
in order to avoid giving the impression that his body was but a phantasm. But he was
entirely impassible (apaths), inaccessible to any movement of feeling--either pleasure or
pain.
2Strom.
3Ibid.
7.3. See Lilla, Clement of Alexandria, 111, and Merki, Homoisis The, 57-60.
1.25.
4Ibid.
1.24; 2.4. See Ladner, The Idea of Reform, 112-14; E. Kantorowicz, Deus per
naturam, deus per gratiam, Harvard Theological Review 45 (1952): 253-57.
5Dalmais,
6Philo:
Divinisation, 1379.
De opificio mundi 8; Leg. alleg. 3.2; 3.81.

Plotinus: Enn. 1.2.3; 1.2.6.
7Lilla,
Clement of Alexandria, 110, citing Strom. 2.40.1; 2.72.2; 4.151.1; 5.24.2. See also
Merki, Homoisis The, 48-52.
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the pathos of the cross1), the shining image of incorruptibility, which is Clements
characterization of the Christian who has attained the liberty of apatheia, marks no
physical or mystical understanding of divinization, but an ethical one, for it is the
possession of this essential component of self-forgetful charity more than anything else
which gives the human person a supernatural likeness to God.2
If detachment from the world and charity toward ones neighbor arise from the
saving knowledge of Christ, so also are these moral virtues reciprocally conceived by
Clement as required for the noetic assimilation to God of gnsis:3 Moral perfection is
for Clement the necessary condition which man must satisfy if he wants to possess
gnsis.4 The knowledge of God which Clement designates as gnsis is not separate
from the proper object of Christian faith, i.e., Christ himself and the teaching he
transmitted to the world through the apostles, but surpasses and perfects faith. Yet, it
1See
Butterworth, "The Deification of Man in Clement of Alexandria," 157-58:

Clements idea of the divine life is negative rather than positive; for he thinks of it
chiefly as an absence of all human activities and corporeal limitations. In Clements
treatment of Ps. 82:6, divine sonship is an approach to the passionless life of God, rather
than as an unceasing activity for good. Harnack, History of Dogma, 2:337, concurs:
The isolated and self-sufficient sage is pretty much the opposite of the poor soul that
hungers after righteousness. Ladner, The Idea of Reform, 160, observes that Augustine
(De civ Dei 14.8-9) would oppose the Greek elevation of apatheia on the grounds that it
contributes to Pelagian tendencies and turns attention away from the more important
matter of charity.
2George,
Vergttlichung des Menschen, 148, quoting Paed. 1.98.3 and citing Strom.
2.136.5 and Strom. 4.135.1-4.
3See
Rashdall, The Idea of the Atonement on Christian Theology, 228, n. 1. With

Clement, he writes, moral purity and intellectual insight are so closely connected that
the one is unattainable without the other. Thus, the commercium effected by Christ is
not a physical or mechanical deification, but a deification through moral progress: it
practically means the attainment of moral perfection . . . but it is not (as with later Greek
theologians) a metaphysical process of acquiring incorruptibility. Furthermore,
Rashdall objects that Harnacks conceptual opposition between the Latin soteriology of
forgiveness and the Greek soteriology of deification has no ground, at least as regards
the earlier Greek theologians because Irenaeus and Clement always held contemplation
and moral purity together.
4Lilla,
Clement of Alexandria, 117. This is what distinguishes Clement most sharply

from Neoplatonism and Middle Platonism, in Lillas view.
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does so in an apophatic way.1 Clements gnsis differs from the theoria of the Greeks
primarily in that he did not understand such supernatural knowledge to be within the
grasp of human effort alone, but insisted that it comes only as a grace from God through
His Son.2
After quoting Platos Theaetetus with approval (the man who devotes himself to
the contemplation of ideas will live as a god among men; now the mind [nous] is the
place of idea, and God is mind [nous]3), Clement explains that the Christian who lives
such a life will be with Christ, being rapt in contemplation, ever keeping in view the will
of God.4 It is this focused direction of the mind toward Christ, who is wisdom and
knowledge and truth and all else that has affinity thereto,5 which seems to be for
Clement the key element. Outside of Christ, God remains inaccessible to the direct
apprehension of creatures, but all the powers of the Spirit, becoming collectively one
thing, terminate in the same point--that is, in the Son. . . . And the Son is neither simply
one thing as one thing, nor many things as parts, but one thing as all things (all hs
panta hen).6 Because the Logos has become flesh without at all ceasing to be God,
knowledge of the divine Savior is at the same time a mental participation in the union of
heaven and earth which constitutes His theandric being: Wherefore also to believe in
Him, and by Him, is to become a unit (monadikos), being indissolubly united in Him.7
1Lot-Borodine,
La dification de l'homme, 26, identifies Clement as the first Christian

writer to recognize clearly that we may know God only in that which he is not and
thus established the very principle of the apophatic doctrine on which all Greek
mysticism is suspended, as on a golden thread. Any knowledge of divine reality, she
insists, cannot be rational . . . but can only be obtained by a charismatic illumination.
Without citing any particular text from Clement, she claims that he held God to be
unknowable in se, rather than because of any imperfection in the human subject.
2Dalmais,
Divinisation, 1378, quoting Strom. 5.11. See also Gross, 169: "Being a
divine grace is a specific characteristic which distinguishes the gnosis of Clement . . .
from the vision of the ideas dear to Plato. . . . To this first difference is added another still
more important: the gnosis of the Alexandrian doctor is at least as moral as it is
intellectual."
3Strom.
4.25. See Lattey, "The Deification of Man in Clement of Alexandria: Some

Further Notes," 259.
4Ibid.
5Ibid.
6Ibid.
7Ibid.
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Given that Clement frequently refers to God by the Pythagorean term monas,1
monadikos seems to be practically equivalent to divine. 2 The Person of the Son is the
fulness of both the virtue and the knowledge which characterize the partaker of divine
life: Our gnsis and our spiritual garden is our Saviour Himself. . . . Therefore the
Lord, into whom we are transplanted, is the true Light and the true gnsis. 3 This also
means that deifying knowledge of God is always an obediential knowledge, entraining
the will in its path:
He is the Gnostic, who is after the image and likeness of God, who imitates God
as far as possible, deficient in none of the things which contribute to the likeness
as far as compatible, practicing self-restraint and endurance, living righteously,
reigning over the passions, bestowing of what he has as far as possible, and doing
good both by word and deed.4
In spite of this and many other similar statements, Lossky and Festugire regard Clement
and Origen to be responsible for a certain paganization of Christian spirituality, one in
which perfection is equated to contemplation and which leaves no room at all for
action inspired by love.5
Clements realized eschatology, which was more fully developed than for any of
his Christian forebears, comes by way of opposition to the Gnostic idea that some
1Butterworth,
"The Deification of Man in Clement of Alexandria," 158, n. 6, citing

Strom. 1.65(72), Stahlins edition.
2Lattey,
"The Deification of Man in Clement of Alexandria: Some Further Notes," 259.
3Strom.
6.1, quoted by Mersch, Le corps mystique, 1:352-53. However, on pp. 355ff,

Mersch claims that both Clement and Origen have departed from the common Christian
tradition by considering Christ to be the Head of the body with respect to His divinity
rather than to His sacred humanity, that is, as the Logos who imparts eternal wisdom,
order, and harmony, similar in this respect to the Stoic World Soul.
4Ibid.
2.19. See Ladner, The Idea of Reform, 85.
5Lossky,
The Vision of God, 47, quoting Festugire, The Child of Agrigento (Paris,
1941): 138-39. Lossky seems at least tacitly to agree with Festugire when he later (p.
53) characterizes Clements soteriology in much the same way: this contemplation
seems to involve mans intellectual faculty almost exclusively. Knowledge is beatitude.
It would seem that we are very far here from Irenaeus eschatological vision of God and
that a rift has been made within the idea of beatitude itself.
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persons are innately and immutably pneumatic while others are possessed of an equally
determinative psychic or worldly nature. All baptized believers, Clement objects, are
gods going about in the flesh only inasmuch as they are possessed of a dynamic
perfection, having received through the grace of baptism all the divine assistance
necessary to attain filiation:
Straightway, on our regeneration, we attained that perfection after which we
aspired. For we were illumined, which is to know God. He is not then imperfect
who knows what is perfect. . . . Being baptized, we are illuminated; illuminated
(phtizometha), we become sons; being made sons (huiopoioumetha), we are
made perfect; being made perfect, we are made immortal. . . . This work is
variously called grace, and illumination, and perfection, and washing. . . . Now
we call that perfect which wants nothing. For what is yet wanting to him who
knows God?1
Clements eschatology is not fully realized, of course. Although he anticipates
observable progress toward divine similitude for the true gnostic in this life, only Christ
himself has perfectly accomplished it.2 For everyone else, the fulness of deifying sonship
is reserved for heaven. 3 Clement considered the highest goal of human existence to be
the charismatic purification (Verklrung) and illumination (Erleuchtung), the eternal
vision of divine light in the womb of the Holy Trinity.4 To those who hang on the Lord
by faith, by knowledge, by love, and ascend along with Him to where the God and guard
of our faith and love is, and have been purified by the discipline of ascetic struggle,
there awaits them restoration to everlasting contemplation; and they are called by the
appellation of gods, being destined to sit on thrones with other gods that have been first
1Paed.
1.6.
2Strom.
3Paed.
4.21.
1.6. See Gross, 170.
4Theodorou,
Die Lehre von der Vergottung des Menschen bei den griechischen
Kirchenvtern, 303, citing Clement of Alexandria, PG 8:997b, 1361a, 1372c-73a; PG
9:293b, 517a.
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put in their places by the Saviour.1 They are called gods not because they have become
uncreated, but because their acquired likeness to God has adapted them for life in heaven:
And the latter (gnsis) terminating in love, thereafter gives the loving to the loved, that
which knows to that which is known. And, perchance, such an one has already attained
the condition of being equal to the angels.(Luke 20:36) 2 The Christian gnostic,
advancing by love, comes to a perfect man, to the measure of full stature, (Eph. 4:13)
by being assimilated to God, and by becoming truly angelic.3
Does Clement finally succeed in proposing for the Christian a sanctifying

participation in the divine sonship of the Logos while at the same time maintaining the
irreducible transcendence of the divine nature? Some of his severest critics believe that
he does, insofar as Clement departs from Hellenic pantheism by making a clear
distinction between the uncreated ho Theos and those created gods by adoption who have
been given a supernatural likeness to the one God by virtue of cooperating with His
gratuitous self-communication to them through the incarnation of the Word and the
sending of the Holy Spirit.4 Clements theopoisis is no monistic absorption into the god
1Strom.
7.10, PG 9:481a.
2Ibid.
From the frequency of Clements appeal to Luke 20:36 as the basis upon which to
correlate adoptive divine sonship with angelic life, Butterworth, "The Deification of Man
in Clement of Alexandria," 167, concludes that Clement accepts uncritically the pagan
Greek notion of angels as subsidiary gods.
3Ibid.
7.14. Cf. George, Vergttlichung des Menschen, 141-42, who finds a mystical
way of more perfect union with God in the teaching of Clement, Origen, and Nyssa
especially, one which surpasses gnsis in an ecstatic embrace of love, yet which is not
defined much more specifically than that. He cites Clement, Strom. 5.13.2; 7.57.2;
Origen, In Ioan. 19.4; Nyssa, De virg. 10.
4Harnack,
History of Dogma 2:338, n. 1, citing Strom. 7.15. See also Butterworth, "The
Deification of Man in Clement of Alexandria,"161: The title god is therefore never
applied by (Clement) to angels or men in the same sense as to Christ. Concurring are
Faller, Griechische Vergottung und christliche Vergottlichung, 427-28, and Gross,
173-74.
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of Gnostic hermeticism nor an accession to the heights of pagan antiquitys

anthropomorphized gods; the redeemed forever remain infinitely inferior to and
dependant upon the God from whom they have acquired a derivative and analogical
holiness: For we do not say, as the Stoics do most impiously, that virtue in man and God
is the same. . . . For it is utterly impossible for anyone to become perfect as God is. 1
Neither did Clement attempt to establish Gods infinite transcendence of the deified
Christian upon an essence-energies distinction, nor upon any other kind of differentiation
within God between an imparticipable and a participable. Indeed, far from finding a
proto-Palamite distinction in Clement, Lossky claims to have discovered precisely the
opposite: If he does not explicitly formulate the doctrine of the vision of the essence of
God, it is because this term (ousia) has not yet been used to designate the one nature of
three persons. But all the doctrinal elements are present in the thought of Clement of
Alexandria to support the affirmation that gnostics contemplate the essence of God.2
1Strom.
7.14.
2Lossky,
The Vision of God, 54. In his The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 34,
however, he writes that Clement held that we can attain to God not in that which He is,
but in that which He is not, citing Strom. 5.2; 5.12-13.
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VI. ORIGEN
Origen's view of deification is similar to Clements, except that it is worked out in
the context of Origen's doctrine of the preexistence of rational souls, their being clothed
with material bodies as a result of their sin, their exile to the world as a place of
purification1 in which they may regain the ardor or heat they lost when they turned from
the love of God,2 and their ultimate restoration at the apokatastasis, when God will be
all in all (panta en pasin), 3 to the spiritualized corporeality which they enjoyed before
the fall.4
1De
principiis 2.2.2; 3.5.4; In Jerem. 2.1; In Ioan. 19.5. See Gross, 175. Unless
otherwise noted, translations of De principiis (DP) and Contra Celsum (CC) are from
ANF 4; translations of his Commentary on John (In Ioan.) are from ANF 10.
2See
DP 2.8.3, SC 252:342-44, where Origen speculates that because God is called a fire
in Scripture (Deut. 4:24, inter alia) and believers are expected to be ardent (Rom. 12:11),
therefore the Greek word for soul (psych) was likely derived from the Greek word for
cold (psychos), thus indicating the souls primordial cooling from a better and more
divine condition.
31
Cor. 15:28.
4DP
1.6.
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Origens cosmogony and anthropogeny are fundamental to and inseparable from

his doctrine of divinization not only because he regarded the divinization of the redeemed
to be the eschatological telos of their having been created according to the image and
likeness of God, as did all the fathers, but also because he found within the Christian
Scriptures a rough parallel to the Hellenistic, semi-cyclical view of history expressed by
his oft repeated maxim, the end is always like the beginning.1 Thus, what he wrote of
the prelapsarian condition of rational creatures, we shall see, can just as well be said of
their final beatitude:
there was no goodness in them by essential being (substantialiter), as in God and
His Christ, and in the Holy Spirit. For in the Trinity alone, which is the author of
all things, does goodness exist in virtue of essential being (substantialiter); while
others possess it as an accidental and perishable quality (accidentem eam ac
decidentem habent), and only then enjoy blessedness, when they participate
(participant) in holiness and wisdom, and in divinity (deitate) itself. But if they
neglect and despise such participation, then is each one, by fault of his own
slothfulness . . . the cause of his own downfall.2
As indicated here, the language and concept of participation functions in Origens
thought as a means of relating and ordering what Bals calls the dynamic hierarchy of
being in the context of which Origen read and interpreted Sacred Scripture. 3 Origens
hierarchy of being, however, is not a univocal, monistic continuum of being from the
imparticipable One which is above being, to the Nous which is the fullness of being,
down to matter, which is the least of all the entia. Rather, Origen understood his
1In
Ioan. 13.37. Cf. DP 1.6.2; 2.1.1; CC 8.72. Ladner, The Idea of Reform, 73, laments
that this is evidence that Origen could not shake off completely the ideology of cyclical
return. He also (p. 72, n. 39) contrasts this view with Augustines emphatic rejection of a
cyclical cosmology in De civ. Dei 12.14.
2DP
1.6.2, SC 252:198. All translations of DP, unless otherwise noted, are from ANF 4.
3David
Bals, The Idea of Participation in the Structure of Origens Thought: Christian

Transposition of a Theme of the Platonic Tradition, in Origeniana, International
Colloquium for Origen Studies, 12:257-75 (Bari: Istituto di Letteratura Cristiana Antica,
Universita di Bari, 1975), 259.
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hierarchy to be composed of two separate divisions, differentiated from one another by

their respective essences or quiddity: Gods uncreated, incorporeal, simple, infinite being
on the one hand and the embodied, composite, finite being of His creatures on the other
hand.1 It is more accurate to say that Origen believed in two hierarchies of being: that
within the Godhead and that within the world of rational and irrational creatures. So,
although Origens subordinationism would allow him to say that the Son derives his
divinity (theottos) from participation (metoch) in the Father2 and that the Holy Spirit
seems to have need of the Son to minister to Him His essence, so as to enable Him not
only to exist, but to be wise and reasonable (logikon) and just, and all that we must think
of Him as being, by participation (kata metochn) in the attributes of Christ,3 it is
nevertheless clear that the triune Gods being alone is unbegun, incorporeal, simple,
infinite, and eternal, whereas all created being is temporal, embodied, compound, and
finite, according to Origens doctrine. 4 Therefore, Platos expression from the Republic
509b, above being (epekeina ousias), is applicable to the God of Jesus Christ only in
the specific sense that He is the ever transcendent source of all created being. 5
1Ibid.,
2In
260.
Ioan. 2.2.17-18; CC 5.39.
3Ibid.
2.6.75-76 All translations of In Ioan., unless otherwise noted, are from ANF 10.
Cf. DP pref.4.
4DP
1.1.6; CC 7.38.
5Confronted
with Celsus allegation that the Christian God is crudely anthropomorphic,

Origen replies in CC 6.64: A discussion about substance would be protracted and
difficult and especially if it were a question whether that which is permanent and
immaterial be substance properly so called, so that it would be found that God is beyond
substance (epekeina ousias), communicating of His substance by means of office and
power (presbeia kai dynamei) to those to whom He communicates Himself by His Word,
as He does to the Word Himself. This last phrase, as He does to the Word Himself, is
exemplary of the way in which Origen frequently obscures his otherwise clear distinction
between the coessential Son and creatures. See also CC 7.38. All translations of CC,
unless otherwise noted, are from ANF 10.
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As some of these suggest, there is in Origens doctrine a natural or strictly

ontological participation of all creatures in God which is both logically and morally prior
to their salvific perfection--logically prior because finite creatures must first exist before
they can have beatitude and morally prior because they must possess reason before they
can be culpable, responsible agents of virtue. That the Father and the Son are participable
not only to those being saved from sin and death, but indeed to all creatures, is deducible,
according to Origen, from what he regards to be the self-evident truths that all who are
rational beings are partakers of the word, i.e., of reason (verbi Dei, id est rationis,
participes sunt) and that in the one who alone can say I am who I am, (Exodus 3:14)
all things, whatsoever they are, participate (participium trahunt), which participation in
God the Father is shared both by just men and sinners, by rational and irrational beings. 1
Furthermore, always solicitous of biblical evidence to bolster his arguments, Origen
believes that St. Pauls doctrine which declares that the word is close to you, even in
your mouth and in your heart, (Rom. 10:6f) means that Christ is in the heart of all, in
respect of His being the word or reason, by participation in which they are rational beings
(cuius participatio rationabiles sunt), as also both the teaching of Jesus recorded in
Luke 17:20f that the kingdom of God is within you and the anthropogeny of Genesis
2:7 according to which God breathed into his face the breath of life and man became a
living soul together indicate that all men have a share in God (omnes homines habent
participium Dei).2 Origen helpfully summarizes his otherwise serpentine line of
argumentation for a hierarchy within the realm of created being as follows:
God the Father bestows upon all existence; and participation in Christ, in respect
of His being the word of reason, renders them rational beings. From which it
follows that they are deserving either of praise or blame, because capable of virtue
1DP
1.3.6.
2Ibid.
1.3.6. He also here paraphrases Rom. 1 (men have no excuse for their sin) and
quotes James 4:17 (For to him who knows to do good, and does it not, to him it is sin)
in order to establish that it is only by participating in the word or reason, men are said to
have sinned.
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and vice. On this account, therefore, is the grace of the Holy Spirit present, that
those beings which are not holy in their essence may be rendered holy by
participating in it.1
The ontological and salvific (or natural and supernatural) aspects of human
participation in God seem to be fully united and indistinguishable only for the created,
preexistent human soul of Christ which elected to love (diligere) righteousness, so that
in proportion to the immensity of its love it clung to it unchangeably and inseparably . . .
(and) destroyed all susceptibility for alteration and change; and that which formerly
depended upon the will was changed by the power of long custom into nature. 2
Uniquely among all divinized creatures, the preexistent human soul of Christ is fully
assimilated to the Logos: In this way, then, that soul which, like an iron in the fire, has
been perpetually placed in the Word and perpetually in the Wisdom and perpetually in
God, is God in all that it does, feels, and understands . . . inasmuch as, being incessantly
heated, it possessed immutability from its union with the Word of God.3 Consequently,
Origen will coin the christological designation theanthrpos, 4 but reserve its application
strictly to Christ himself, never to created participants in God through him.
Yet, these implicit distinctions between the ontological participation of all things
in the Father and the rational participation of human and angelic persons in the Logos and
the salvific participation of the redeemed in the Holy Spirit are not maintained by Origen
with any significance consistency; frequently he also writes of the ontological or natural
participation of all things in the Holy Spirit 5 and of the uniquely salvific participation of
1DP
1.3.8. Even more briefly in the same paragraph: firstly, they derive their existence
from God the Father, secondly their rational nature from the Word, thirdly their holiness
from the Holy Spirit.
2Ibid.
2.6.5.
3Ibid.
2.6.6.
4Hom
in Ez. 3.3.
5DP
1.3.4; 2.7.2; Bals, The Idea of Participation, 265.

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the redeemed in the Father and the Son without reference to the Holy Spirit. 1 Moreover,
Origen also teaches that there is a more decisive sense in which only the redeemed are
truly and fully reasonable (logikoi)2 and wise 3 and alive,4 even to the degree that Origen
will say that only the redeemed truly and fully exist, whereas sinners must be regarded as
non-existent (ouk ontes). 5
Origens attempt at demonstrating how two substantially distinct divisions of
being, uncreated and created, are nevertheless wedded or related by the purpose and will
of God became an occasion of scandal at the hands of his Christian interpreters. St.
Jerome, for instance, apparently misunderstood Origens effort to establish both the
connaturality of all created substances and the created, derivative, accidental immortality
of rational creatures with the following doctrine of participation: Everyone who
participates (participat) in anything, is unquestionably of one essence and nature (unius
substantiae est uniusque naturae) with him who is partaker of the same thing. For
example, as all eyes participate in the light, so accordingly all eyes which partake of the
light are of one nature.6 Just as not all eyes participate equally in corporeal light,
however, as is evident from the varying degrees of clarity with which humans see the
sensible world, the same made be said of the spiritual and noetic dimension, thereby
introducing a certain hierarchy of being, which is at once a hierarchy of knowledge and
of virtue, within the created order:
1In
Ioan. 2.98; 2.114.
2Ibid.
2.14.
3Ibid.
1.245-46.
4Ibid.
1.188; 2.115.
5Ibid.
2.98; Bals, The Idea of Participation, 269. Crouzel, Thologie de l'image de

Dieu chez Origne (Paris: Aubier, 1956), 165, notes that the distinction between nature
and the supernatural was foreign to Origen, who, moreover, did not evince a clear
understanding of an autonomous human nature apart from its participation in God.
6DP
4.4.9.
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Every mind which partakes (participat) of the intellectual light ought undoubtedly
to be of one nature with every mind which partakes in a similar manner of
intellectual light. If the heavenly virtues, then, partake of intellectual light, i.e., of
the divine nature, because they participate in wisdom and holiness, and if human
souls have partaken of the same light and wisdom, and thus are mutually of one
nature and of one essence--then, since heavenly virtues are incorruptible and
immortal, the essence of the human soul will also be immortal and incorruptible.
And not only so, but because the nature of Father and Son and Holy Spirit, of
whose intellectual light alone all created things have a share (participium trahit),
is incorruptible and eternal, it is altogether consistent and necessary that every
substance which partakes of that eternal nature should last forever and be
incorruptible and eternal, so that the eternity of divine goodness may be
understood also in this respect, that they who obtain its benefits are also eternal.
But as, in the instances referred to, a diversity in the participation of the light was
observed, when the glance of the beholder was described as being duller or more
acute, so also a diversity is to be noted in the participation of the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, varying with the degree of zeal or capacity of the mind.1
To return more directly to the point for which he began this paragraph, which was to
prove the immortality of rational creatures, Origen next reasons that it would seem to
be an act of impiety to say that the mind which is capable of God (mens quae Dei capax
est) should admit of a destruction of its essence, as if the very fact that it is able to feel
and understand God could not suffice for its perpetual existence, especially in light of
the Pauline doctrine that the human nous contains within it certain seeds of restoration
and renewal to a better understanding, seeing the inner, which is also called the
rational man is renewed after the image and likeness of God, who created him.2
From this argument for the intramundane consubstantiality of creatures and their
analogous, accidental, participated immortality, however, St. Jerome fueled the fires of
the Origenist controversy when he wrongly inferred Origen to have held the pantheistic
view that common participants are also consubstantial with the participated, that is, with
God, whereas it is clear that at least one of Origens purposes in this passage was to
1DP
4.4.9.
2Ibid.
4.4.9.
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distinguish the relation of participation, wherein a lower being receives what it is and
what it has from a higher being, from that of consubstantiality, which obtains only within
the created order and within the Godhead, but never between the two.1 The Trinity alone,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit alike, according to Origen, is absolutely incorporeal.2 Lest
its importance be overlooked, Widdicombe is at great pains to demonstrate how Gods
incorporeality is vitally important to Origens soteriology because it is this uniquely
divine quality which enables God to dwell within the redeemed and give them a
participation in His perfections without diminishing His ontological integrity and
transcendence.3 God alone is an uncompounded intellectual nature (intellectualis natura
simplex), admitting within Himself no addition of any kind, so that He cannot be believed
to have within Him a greater and a less, but is such that He is in all parts monas and, so to
speak, henas;4 all rational creatures, on the other hand, though possessing immortal
souls, are necessarily embodied and therefore eternally external to and substantially
differentiated from the triune God. Whatever therefore is proper to bodies must not be
believed either of the Father or of the Son; the relations between them are such as pertain
to the nature of deity. 5 The doctrine of the Gnostics that the Pleroma is divisible into
transcendent and immanent components Origen calls a tenet which leads to the most
1Jerome,
Epist. 124.10-14. See Crouzel, Thologie de l'image de Dieu chez Origne, 101,
106.
2DP
1.6.4: it is an attribute of the divine nature alone--i.e., of the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit--to exist without any material substance and without partaking in any degree of
bodily adjunct. See also DP 1.1.3; 2.2.2; 4.3.15; 4.4.8; Crouzel, Origen, trans. A. S.
Worrall (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989), 183.
3Peter
Widdicombe, The Fatherhood of God from Origen to Athanasius (Oxford:

Clarendon, 1994), 20.
4DP
1.1.6. Further in the same chapter, Origen calls God that simple and wholly
intellectual nature (natura illa simplex et tota mens) which can admit of no delay or
hesitation in its movements or operations, lest the simplicity of the divine nature should
appear to be circumscribed or in some degree hampered by such adjuncts.
5Ibid.
1.1.8.
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impious opinions, namely, to suppose that he is divisible, material, corruptible. For every
body is divisible, material, corruptible. 1 To the allegations of Celsus that Christians
believe their God to partake of motion and to sleep and to be subject to anger and other
anthropomorphic attributes, Origen responds: But God does not partake even of
substance (ousia metechei). For He is partaken by others rather than Himself partaking
of them (metechetai gar mallon metechei) and He is partaken (metechetai) by those who
have the Spirit of God.2 In similar fashion, because He is coessential with the Father,
our Savior, also, does not partake of righteousness (ou metechei men dikaiosuns), but
being Himself righteousness, He is partaken (metechetai) by the righteous. 3 Thus, even
though Origen admitted the relation of participation into the Trinity, the participation of
the Son and the Holy Spirit in the Father is eternal, plenary, perfect, and therefore utterly
sui generis; each Person of the Godhead, because uncreated, is essentially and
immutably good and virtuous, whereas creatures may become only derivatively,
accidentally, analogically, and temporally good and virtuous.4
In addition to St. Jerome, it would appear that St. Methodius also inaugurated a
now long standing tradition of misinterpreting Origen, in this case with regard to the
perennial question of how Gods co-eternal, co-immutable Son can also be the agent of a
temporal creation and the firstborn of many brethren. By way of expounding and
applying to this question the sophiology of the deuterocanonical Wisdom of Solomon
7:25 (Wisdom is the purest efflux of the glory of the Almighty), Origen reasons that
because God is immutable, He cannot be omnipotent unless He is eternally omnipotent,
nor can He be eternally omnipotent absent eternal subjects upon whom to exercise His
omnipotence: As no one can be a father without having a son, nor a master without
1On
Prayer 22.3, quoted in Widdicombe, 16.
2CC
6.64.
3Ibid.
4DP
1.2.4; 1.2.10; 1.2.13; 1.8.3; In Ioan. 2.124-25.

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possessing a servant, so even God cannot be called omnipotent unless there exist those
over whom He may exercise His power; and therefore, that God may be shown to be
almighty, it is necessary that all things should exist. 1 If Gods power to create and to
rule were not always actualized, Origen continues, we would be led to the impious
opinion that God created the universe for erotic or self-aggrandizing reasons, for, in the
case of a merely potential divine omnipotence, He will appear to have received a certain
increase and to have risen from a lower to a higher condition, since there can be no doubt
that it is better for Him to be omnipotent than not to be so.2 Consequently, Origen is
driven to conclude that if there never was a time when He was not omnipotent, of
necessity those things by which He receives that title must also exist; and He must always
have had those over whom He exercised power. 3
From this brief line of reasoning, both Methodius in the fourth century and
Florovsky, Lossy,4 and Meyendorff5 in the twentieth century, among others, came to
believe that Origen taught the eternity of creation, Florovsky adding the admonition that a
Palamite distinction between Gods essence and His ad extra operations would have
saved Origen from this error, while speculating that Origen was led astray in the first
1DP
1.2.10.
2Ibid.
3Ibid.
4Lossky,
The Vision of God, 58-59, citing DP 2.6.3; 2.8.3, contends that there is no
difference between preexistence and eternal creation in Origens cosmogony, for his
rational creatures are nothing less than degraded (embodied) members of the eternal
Logos. Moreover, he argues that Origens Christ is not the Logos Himself without
remainder, but is merely an unfallen nous which freely entered time and history for our
salvation. Yet, later, on p. 63, Lossky shows that Origen identifies Christ with the
coessential Son.
5Meyendorff,
Byzantine Theology, 128-36; Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, 52: Not

only did Origen teach the eternity of an immaterial, purely rational creation, but his static
doctrine of creation and the controversy it generated was the font of a centuries long
process which would culminate eventually in the fourteenth century Palamite definition.
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place at least in part because he was working with the language of the Septuagint, which
used pantocratr instead of omnipotens, thereby implying a fully actualized power to
create. 1
Crouzel, however, shows convincingly that Methodius and his anti-Origenist
followers have confused Origens doctrine of the pre-existence of rational souls with his
doctrine of the eternity of their ideal archetypes in the Wisdom or Logos of God.2 The
above quoted passage from DP 1.2.10, then, must be read in the light of Origens
previous, more foundational definition of eternal Wisdoms relation to the created order:
And therefore we must believe that Wisdom was generated before any beginning
that can be either comprehended or expressed. And since all the creative power of
the coming creation (omnis virtus ac deformatio futurae creaturae) was included
(inerat) in this very existence of Wisdom (whether of those things which have an
original or of those which have a derived existence), having been formed
beforehand and arranged by the power of foreknowledge (virtute praescientiae);
on account of these very creatures which had been described, as it were, and
prefigured in Wisdom herself, does Wisdom say, in the words of Solomon (Prov.
8:22), that she was created the beginning of the ways of God, inasmuch as she
contained withing herself either the beginnings (archai = initia) or forms (logoi =
rationes) or species (eid = species) of all creation.3
Scripture correctly speaks of the second person of the Godhead as created only in the
specific and limited sense that the ideal principles (archai, logoi, eid) of the multifarious
1Florovsky,
The Concept of Creation in Saint Athanasius, Studia Patristica 6 (1962):

39. Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, 26, concurs that Origen taught the eternity of the
intelligible creation.
2Crouzel,
Origne et la Connaissance Mystique (Paris: Descle de Brouwer, 1961),
51-60.
3DP
1.2.2. That there may be no doubt that Origen understood Wisdom to be but a title or
epinoia of the fully divine eternal Logos, he continues in DP 1.2.3: Now in the same
way in which we have understood that Wisdom was the beginning of the ways of God
and is said to be created, forming beforehand and containing within herself the species
and beginnings of all creatures, must we understand her to be the Word of God, because
of her disclosing to all other beings, i.e., to universal creation, the nature of the mysteries
and secrets which are contained withing the divine wisdom.
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coming creation were fully and eternally contained in the praescientia of the Logos or
Wisdom of the one true God.1 It is the world of ideas, Crouzel clarifies, which was
created from all eternity in the generation of the Son.2 Origen believed that rational
creatures must be pre-existent to the creation of the rest of the universe not on the basis of
divine immutability or divine simplicity, but primarily as a consequence of his
understanding of the inner requirements of Gods justice and goodness, with which (in
response to Celsus contempt for the Creator) he was unable to reconcile the inequities of
the given world without recourse to a pre-existent life wherein creatures merited their
respective earthly conditions.3 That they are not coeternal with God, however, Origen
repeats frequently and makes unmistakably clear in a later book of De principibus: But
since those rational natures, which we have said above were made in the beginning, were
created when they did not previously exist, in consequence of this very fact of their nonexistence and commencement of being, are they necessarily changeable and mutable.4
Florovsky, alas, remains unconvinced that Origens doctrine of the divine foreknowledge
of creation as archetypal forms in the Logos does anything to resolve the dilemma
presented by his refusal to admit any pure potentiality in God. 5
Like Clement, Origen distinguished between that in the human person which is
after the image of God and that which is after His likeness, locating the former strictly in
1See
also In Ioan. 1.39.243ff, where Origen further addresses at length the eternity of the
ideal forms in the Logos in relation to Proverbs 8:22.
2Crouzel,
3DP
Origne et la Connaissance Mystique, 55, n. 6.
2.9.4-8; See Crouzel, Origen, 205-18.
4Ibid.
2.9.2.
5Florovsky,
"The Concept of Creation in St. Athanasius, 41-42.

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the rational soul, the nous,1 whereby rational creatures are capable of knowing God,2 with
the potentiality for likeness to God, given at creation, yet to be actualized by the imitation
of God's virtues.3 Origen believes Plato to have derived his understanding that the
highest good . . . is to become as like to God (similem fieri Deo) as possible from Moses,
on the grounds that likeness is not coupled with image in Gen. 1:27, thereby implying
that man received the dignity of Gods image at his first creation; but that the
perfection of his likeness has been reserved for the consummation--namely, that
he might acquire it for himself by the exercise of his own diligence in the
imitation of God, the possibility of attaining to perfection being granted him at the
beginning through the dignity of the divine image, and the perfect realization of
the divine likeness being reached in the end by the fulfilment of the necessary
works (in fine demum per operum expletionem perfectam sibi ipse similitudinem
consummaret).4
If Celsus had known the difference between man being created in the image of God
and after His likeness, Origen speculates, he would not have represented us as saying
that we are altogether like Him.5
Also in accordance with his Alexandrian mentor and with Irenaeus, Origen held
that the Logos himself is uniquely the image of God, whereas humans have been created
1In
Gen. 1.13; CC 4.83,85. Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, 141-42, argues that Origen
believed the eternal human nous to have become embodied only as a result of the fall,
whereas the Eastern fathers taught that the human person is always composed of mind,
soul, and body, citing Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua 7; Palamas, Homily 11. The
openness of man to God, Meyendorff writes, means that the nous is not so much a part
of man as the ability which man possesses to transcend himself in order to participate in
God.
2CC
7.38: Since we hold that the great God is in essence simple, invisible, and
incorporeal, Himself pure intelligence (noun), or something transcending intelligence and
existence (epekeina nou kai ousias), we can never say that God is apprehended by any
other means than through the intelligence which is formed in His image.
3Gross,
177: "The homoisis to the does not consist at all in extraordinary gifts of the
original state.
4DP
3.6.1, SC 268:236. See Ladner, The Idea of Reform, 87-88.
5CC
4.30, SC 136:254.
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after the image. As the Father is the arch of the image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15),
so also is Christ the arch of men, and men are made, not according to that of which he is
the image, but according to the image (genomenn ou kata to ou estin eikn, alla kata tn
eikona).1 Celsus made the further mistake of believing that the first-born of every
creature is the image of God because he fails to observe the difference between after
the image of God and Gods image.2 Origen would depart from the Irenaean view,
however, in holding that Jesus Christ is the image of God only with respect to His
divinity. The Logos is more precisely the invisible image of the invisible God, an
image which contains the unity of nature and substance belonging to the Father and the
Son.3 Soteriologically, this means that Origen understood our acquired likeness to be to
the divine Person of the Son, as well as to his assumed humanity: The saints, therefore,
being an image of an image (that image being the Son), acquire an impression of
sonship (apomattontai hiotta), becoming conformed (symmorphoi) not only to the body
of glory of Christ, but also to him who is in the body. They become conformed
(symmorphoi) to him who is in the body of the glory as they are transformed by the
renewing of the mind.4
It is upon this fundamental distinction between the immutable, uncreated,
singularly perfect Image of God, who is the eternal Logos, and those temporal creatures
who have been created only kat eikona Theou that Origen builds his understanding of
adoptive divine filiation as assimilating, divinizing participation in God. In a passage
remarkable within early Alexandrian Christian literature for the forthrightness with which
this question of the differential relationship between essential Sonship and adoptive
sonship to God is addressed, Origen plays on St. Johns variant use of the definite article
1In
Ioan. 1.19.
2CC
6.63.
3DP
1.2.6, SC 252:120-22, emphasis mine. See Crouzel, Thologie de limage, 106.
4On
Prayer 22.4, quoted in Widdicombe, 109-110. Cf. Phil. 3:2, Rom. 12:2.
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with the name of God in the prologue to his gospel by way of responding to those who
are tempted either to modalistic monarchianism (Sabellius), whereby the personhood of
the eternal Son is swallowed up and annihilated by the Godhead He shares with the
Father, or to deny the divinity of the Son out of fear that they may be proclaiming two
Gods: To such persons we have to say that God on the one hand is Very God
(autotheos) . . . but that all beyond the Very God is made God by participation in His
divinity (metoch ts ekeinou theottos theopoioumenon), and is not to be called simply God
(ho theos), but rather a god (theos). 1 Here at the intersection of his two hierarchies of
being, Origen attempts to explain how the Logos, who is the first to be with God and
the first-born of all creation, is also of more exalted rank than all subsequent
participants in the divinity of the autotheos:
It was by the offices of the first-born that they became gods (theopoithnai), for He
drew from God in generous measure that they should be made gods, and He
communicated it to them according to His own bounty. The true God, then, is ho
theos and those who are formed after Him are gods, images, as it were, of Him the
prototype. But the archetypal image, again, of all these images is the Word of
God, who was in the beginning and who by being with God is at all times God,
not possessing that of Himself, but by His being with the Father.2
Origen then anticipates objections to what he has just set forth from those whom he
expects to disapprove his admitting other beings besides the true God, who have become
gods by participating in God (then pleionn t metoch tou Theou ginomenn) and from
those who may fear that the glory of Him who surpasses all creation may be lowered to
1In
Ioan. 2.2.17-18, SC 120:216-18, Origen citing John 17:3, wherein Jesus is reported to
have prayed that they may know Thee the only true God.
2Ibid.
See G. W. Butterworth, The Deification of Man in Clement of Alexandria, 168,

who claims that Origen is more restrained than Clement in the use of deification
terminology and speculates that this may be due to the likelihood that references to
redeemed persons simply as gods would be misunderstood by the widely pagan
audience of the third century, more specifically by those to whom he wrote his defense of
the faith against Celsus.
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the level of those other beings called gods.1 We drew this distinction between Him and
them, he explains, in that we showed God the Word to be to all the other gods the
minister of their divinity (diakonon einai ts theottos). 2 Similarly, Origen elsewhere
inveighs against Celsus that Christ must be distinguished far and wide above every man
who is called, on account of his virtue, a son of God, seeing as He is, as it were, a kind of
source and arch of all such. 3 Thus, by accepting it as a self-evident principle that any
agent (namely, the Son or the Holy Spirit) who can be a source of participated divinity to
others must be Himself divine by nature, Origen here establishes a precedent upon which
Athanasius will build his whole case against the created Redeemer of Arius, although
Athanasius will take the immeasurably important further step of disallowing entirely any
relation of participation within the Triune God, thereby securing the unbridgeable
difference between the Fathers coessential Son and His adopted children, a
differentiation which Origens hierarchy of being within God left still hazy and
vulnerable to collapse.4
Origens christological and pneumatological subordinationism, however, whereby
the Logos is called a second god (deuteros theos)5 and the Holy Spirit ranked
subordinate to the Father and the Son,6 does not reduce the Son to the level of an exalted
1In
Ioan. 2.3.19, SC 120:218-20.
2Ibid.
Gross, 181-82, thinks this parallelism between the participated divinity of the
Logos and that of mere creatures is difficult to defend from the orthodox point of view,
but concludes that the strictly moral union as outlined in the last chapters of De principiis
is finally controlling in Origens thought.
3CC
1.57, SC 132:230. Cf. In Rom. 7.1; Frag in Is., PG 13:217a; Frag in Ioan., PG
17:580b; DP 4.4.5.
4See
infra.
5CC
5.39; In Ioan. 6.39.
6DP
pref.4; In Ioan. 13.25.

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creature (for He is eternally generated,1 without beginning,2 and homoousios with the
Father3), but makes of Him a fully and singularly consubstantial divine intermediary
between the simple, incorporeal God and the diversified, embodied cosmos. 4 Though
Nicene orthodoxy would eventually judge his christology inadequate to the task of
securing the Saviors transcendent divine identity, Origen is consistently adamant that
divinized creatures who become sons of God by grace forever remain qualitatively
distinct from the one who is the eternal Son of God by nature. It is, Crouzel writes, a
difference not of degree, but of nature.5 The uniqueness of Christ arises not only from
his functional role as mediator of divinizing virtue to the saints, but more constitutively
from his eternal, uncreated nature: There are many sons of God according to Scripture:
I have said, you are all gods and sons of the Most High; (Ps. 82:6) but only one is a son
by nature (natura Filius), the Only-begotten of the Father, and through him all the others
receive the name of sons.6 Commenting on John 1:12 (he gave power to become
children of God), Origen admonishes that these words do not mean that Christ elevates
us to the nature (physin) of God, but that he communicates to us His grace and confers on
1Ibid.
1.2.4; In Jer. 9.4.
2Ibid.
1.2.9; 4.4.1; In Rom. 1.5. In each of these three instances, Origen affirms of the
Son what would become the most pithy expression of Nicene orthodoxy against
Arianism: There was not when He was not (ouk estin hote ouk n).
3Frag.
in Heb. 24.359. See Quasten, Patrology, 2:78.
4See
Benjamin Drewery, Origen and the Doctrine of Grace (London: Epworth, 1960),
200-201. Drewery paints Origens implicit subordinationism and his doctrine of
deification with the same jaundiced brush. Of the two, he opines, deification is the most
serious aberration to be found not only in Origen but in the whole tradition to which he
contributed and adds that here lies the disastrous flaw in Greek Christian thought. This
sweeping condemnation is offered without explanation or qualification.
5Crouzel,
Thologie de limage, 109, n. 186, citing In Matt. 16.16; Hom in Ex. 3.1; Hom
in Ez. 9.3; In Ioan. 2.11.17.
6Com.
in Rom. 7.1, PG 14:1103c.

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us His own dignity (axima).1 Adopted sons are not born of the same birth as that of
the only-begotten Son, but their relation to the Father is merely analogous
(paraplsion) to His.2 So also, if you possess the spirit of adoption, God generates you
continually in the Savior by each of your deeds and each of your thoughts. Thus
generated, you become a son of God continually begotten in Christ Jesus.3 With respect
to Exodus 15:11 (Who is like thee, O Lord, among the gods?), Origen insists that the
author is not speaking of the images of the Gentiles, but of those gods who by grace
and participation in God are called gods (per gratiam et participationem Dei dii
appellantur).4 Correlating this text to Ps. 82:6, Origen warns although these are
capable of God (capaces sint Dei) and appear to be given this name by grace,
nevertheless no one is found like God (similis Deo) in either power (potentia) or nature
(natura).5 Referring, then, to I John 3:2 (we know that when he appears we shall be
like him), he adds nevertheless this likeness (similitudo) is applied not to nature but to
beauty (gratiam) and compares the assimilated creature to the likeness of a subject as
expressed in the image of a painting wherein the two maintain a greater dissimilarity with
regard to substance. No one, therefore, among the gods is like the Lord, for no one is
invisible, no one incorporeal, no one immutable, no one without beginning and end, no
one creator of all, except the Father with the Son and the Holy Spirit.6
1Frag.
in Luc. 73, SC 87:524.
2Frag.
in Ioan. 109, GCS 4:563, quoted by Crouzel, Thologie de limage, 167.
3Hom.
in Jer. 9.4, SC 232:392-94. See Mersch, Le corps mystique, 1:365.
4Hom.
in Ex. 6.5 (FC 71:291), GCS 6:196-97. A close parallel to this construction can be
found in Augustine, En. in Ps. 49.2.
5Ibid.
6Ibid.
Cf. Hom. in Ex. 8.2. See Ladner, The Idea of Reform, 89.
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!219
The Logos, then, is the the maker of gods (theopoios), 1 according to Origen, in
the specific sense that it is the divinely ordained destiny of the human person to acquire a
certain, dynamic likeness to God the Father through the immanent agency of the Son,
conforming them more fully to Himself who is the perfect Image after whom they were
created. But if he is God who once was man and if it is necessary for you to be made
like him (illi similem fieri), since we will become like him and see him as he is, (1 John
3:2) you also must be made a god (deum fieri) in Christ Jesus.2 For Christ is found in
every saint, and so from the one Christ there come to be many Christs, imitators of Him
and formed after Him who is the Image of God. 3
Although Origens soteriology includes what Gustaf Auln calls the classic
theory of atonement, wherein Christ has ransomed humanity from the devil and from
eternal death by offering his innocent body and blood to the Father on the cross,4 it does
not figure prominently in Origens doctrine of salvific human participation in God, or
divinization. Unlike the tradition to which Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Augustine belong,
neither does the exchange effected by the divine Sons assumption of our humanity
through his incarnation serve as the primary economic basis of our salvific union with
God, even though Origen will pay the traditional formula its due in one passage:
But both Jesus Himself and His disciples desired that His followers should believe
not merely in His Godhead and miracles, as if He had not also been a partaker of
human nature (ou koinnsantos t anthrpin physei) . . . but they saw also that the
power which had descended into human nature, and into the midst of human
1Sel.
in Ez. 1.3, PG 13:769b. Cf. Frag. in Is., PG 13:217a
2Hom.
3In
in Luc. 29.7, SC 87:366-68.
Ioan. 6.3.
4In
Matt. 16.8; In Rom. 2.13; 3.8; In Num. 24.1. See Gustaf Auln, Christus Victor, 38,
49, 51; J. Riviere, Le dogme de la Rdemption. tude thologique, 3d ed. (Paris, 1931),
165-212.
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miseries, and which had assumed a human soul and body, contributed through
faith, along with its divine elements, to the salvation of believers, when they see
that from Him there began the union (synuphainesthai) of the divine with the
human nature, in order that the human, by communion with the divine, might rise
to be divine (t pros to theoteron koinnia gentai theia), not just in Jesus alone, but
in all those who not only believe, but enter upon the life which Jesus taught, and
which elevates to friendship (philia) with God and communion (koinnian) with
Him everyone who lives according to the precepts of Jesus.1
As the qualification that we enter upon the life which Jesus taught here
intimates, the proleptic elevation of human nature by its union with the divine at the
incarnation is not extended to the whole race automatically, mechanically, or by mere
physical contact, as was the case for the soteriology which Harnack et al. found in
Irenaeus, 2 but must be appropriated to each individual by the exercise of faith and by the
imitation of God through the imitation of His Image, which is perfected in the love of
enemies.3 Instead of the whole human personbody, mind, and soultaken from the
Virgin Mary, it is the preexistent and uniquely meritorious created soul to which the
eternal Son was united prior to the incarnation, according to Origen, in which the
predominantly pedagogical significance of the mission of Christ resides:
For on this account is Christ proposed as an example to all believers, because as
He always, even before he knew evil at all, selected the good, and loved
righteousness; . . . so also ought each one . . . enter upon the steep way of virtue,
1CC
3.28, SC 136:68.
2Gross,
179, however, does finds an echo of the physical theory of divinization here.
3In
Ioan. 20.15.17; 20.27.33; Frag. in Matt. 109; De orat. 22.4. See Crouzel, Thologie
de limage, 222-32.
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that so perchance by this means, as far as possible we may, by imitating Him, be

made partakers of the divine nature (particeps efficiamur divinae naturae).1
Origen calls Christ the embodiment of every virtue, according to George, because it
was true of the patristic soteriology in general that Christians are divinized not only
through striving after apatheia and through quiet contemplation of the transcendent God,
but also and above all through the active imitation of Christ.2
The acquisition of virtue by the imitation of God is necessarily divinizing to
Origens mind because he regarded true virtue as something proprietary to God Himself,
the Logos being the repository of both Platos formal Ideas and all the virtues, indeed,
even the hypostasis of virtue itself.3 The Logos is holy and true not by participation
(metousia), but by essence (ousia). 4 He is faithful and true not because He participates
(metechein) in faith and truth, but because He is faith and truth essentially and
immutably. 5 Therefore, it is only by participation in the Son of God, who is Himself the
absolute fulness of truth,6 life, 7 power,8 wisdom,9 justice,10 redemption,11 holiness,12
1DP
4.4.4(31), SC 268:412.
2George,
Vergttlichung des Menschen, 148, quoting Origen, In Matt 12.14.
3DP
1.2.2; In Ioan. 1.34.39; 2.12.28; 5.5; CC. 5.39; 6.64. See Crouzel, Thologie de
limage, 123, 230ff; Mersch, Le corps mystique, 1:352.
4xx
in Apoc. 3.7, quoted by Crouzel, Thologie de limage, 110.
5xxii
6In
in Apoc. 3.14, quoted by Crouzel, Thologie de limage, 110.
Ioan. 20.28.246; 6.38 (autoaltheia).
7Ibid.
2.6.53; 2.24.156; In Matt. 12.9 (autoz).
8Ibid.
1.33.242 (autodunamis).
9Ibid.
1.34.246; 32.347 (autosophia).
10Ibid.
2.51 (autodikaiosun).
11Ibid.
1.59 (autoapolytrsis)
12Frag.
in Ioan. 10; In Ioan. 1.59 (autoagiasmos).

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light,1 and God,2 that the redeemed may become true, living, empowered, wise, justified,
redeemed, sanctified, and illuminated.3 Accordingly, traces of the divine Image are
found in human persons not only with respect to their rational or noetic faculties, but also
by mental wisdom, by justice, moderation, virtue, wisdom, discipline; in fine, by the
whole band of virtues which are innate in the essence of God (in Deo insint per
substantiam), and which may enter into man by diligence and imitation of God.4
Christs admonitions to his disciples that they are to be merciful as the Father is merciful
(Luke 6:36) and to be perfect as the Father is perfect (Matt. 5:48) Origen cites as
evidence that all these virtues are perpetually in God, and that they can never approach
to or depart from Him, whereas by men they are acquired only slowly, and one by one.5
Yet, it must be noted here that apart from the fact that God possesses them fully,
essentially and immutably, Origen seems not to have differentiated adequately Gods own
uncreated virtues from their created, human analogues, as for instance when he writes, in
direct contradiction to his mentor, Clement,6 that we are taught to become perfect as our
Father in Heaven is perfect because the same virtue (aut aret) belongs to all the blessed
(makarin pantn), so that the virtue of man and of God is identical (h aut aret
1In
Ioan. 2.25.158.
2Ibid.
19.25.
3See
Cecile Blanc, ed., SC 120:217, n. 3, who writes that for Origen participation
expresses the existential relation between two living persons, one of whom is the source
(pg) of the other. See also Bals, The Idea of Participation, 263.
4DP
4.4.10(37), SC 268:426. Cf. Hom. in Jer. 15.6, to which Rashdall (The Idea of the
Atonement, 287) gives the title: Deification explained ethically.
5Ibid.
Cf. In Ioan. 20.20.
6Strom.
7.14, quoted above.

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anthrpou kai Theou).1 Thus, from Ps. 115:2 (every man is a liar), Origen could
come to the astonishing conclusion that if someone is no longer a liar, or has stood in the
truth, such a one is not a man, and, consequently, God may say to him and those like him,
I said you are gods and are all sons of the Most High. 2
It is not only as the fullness, epitome, and source of moral perfection that the
eternal Son sanctifies rational creatures for Origen, but perhaps preeminently as the
revelation of the Father, whom Origen thought to be God in the fullest, most proper
sense. To ask Origen the question whether blessedness is knowledge or love would be
for him a nonsense, Crouzel writes, for knowledge is love. 3 Gnoseology and
soteriology are inextricably bound together in Origens thought. To know God is to be
assimilated and united to God. Consequently, Christs agency in the adoption and
divinization of the saints involves much more to Origen than simply his being the
imitable exemplar of divine life; Christ is also and above all the teacher of divine
mysteries (didaskalos thein mystrin).4 Although the Father, who is
incomprehensible and incapable of being measured,5 is not unknowable in se,
inasmuch as the Son knows the Father,6 embodied creatures cannot arrive an immediate
knowledge of the invisible God because, unlike them, He is an uncompounded
1CC
4.29, SC 136:254. Marcel Borret (SC 136:254, n. 1) shows that Origen took this
formula directly from the Stoics, as evinced by Themestius, Or. 2.27c (einai tn autn
aretn kai altheian andros kai Theou.) and Cicero, De leg. 1.8.25 (Iam vero virtus
eadem in homine ac deo est.).
2In
Ioan. 20.22.27 (FC 89:257), GCS 4:364.
3Henri
Crouzel, Origen, 99.
4CC
3.62, SC 136:142. Gross, 178, writes: The pedagogical action of the Logos seems
to be, for our doctor, the principle part of the redemptive work of Christ.
5DP
1.1.5.
6Frag.
in Ioan. 13. See Crouzel, Origen, 103.

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intellectual nature (intellectualis natura simplex), a monad, and a unity (henas).1

Instead, Origen instructs, he who has beheld the Word of God beholds God by ascending
from the Word to God.2 Only through knowledge of the incarnate Son, who is the
express figure of the substance or subsistence of God (figura expressa substantiae vel
subsistentiae Dei),3 as though through the outer courts of the temple into the Holy of
Holies, one may come to behold the essence (ousia), or the power (dynamei) and nature
(physei) of God beyond the essence.4 As is the case generally with Origens christology,
the divine Logos takes precedence over His assumed sacred humanity in this pedagogical
or gnoseological capacity.5 The Son of God is properly called the Word of God, the
Logos, because He takes away from us all that is irrational and makes us truly
reasonable (altheian logikous kataskeuazon). . . . For if, by having part in Him, we are
raised up and enlightened (metechontes autou anistametha kai phtizometha), . . . then it
is clear that we become in a divine manner reasonable (enthes logikoi ginometha).6 If
Gods essence is intellectual light, Origen reasons, then His coessential Son is, much like
Palamisms description of the energeia, the glory of this light, proceeding inseparably
from God Himself, as brightness does from light, and illuminating the whole of
1DP
1.1.6, SC 252:100.
2In
Ioan. 19.1.4 (FC 89:175): It is impossible, however, to behold God apart from the
Word.
3DP
4In
1.2.8, SC 252:126.
Ioan. 19.1.4 (FC 89:176), PG 14:536.
5See
Mersch, Le corps mystique, 1:358, who believes that the greatest deficiency in both
Clements and Origens doctrine of grace is that both evince an excessively didactic,
exemplarist, and extrinsic view of the influence of Christ on the believer. The Mystical
Body is finally, for Origen, a reality of an intellectual and ascetical order; it is not a
body at all, but a kind of spiritual environment, a vital atmosphere consisting in a
particular manner of thinking and of willing; in short, it is a gnosis.
6In
Ioan. 1.42, PG 14:96-97.

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of creation.1 Hence, the Son is a sort of mediator between men and the light because
it is by His effusive radiance in the world that the saints are rendered capable of
enduring the splendor of the light. 2
Thus, it is not true that Origen taught Gods essence to be unknowable only due to
the materializing effects of human sin, as the Palamite school commonly claims. Gods
essence is directly inaccessible to creatures because it is infinitely simple, therefore
radically unlike them and accessible only through the Logos, the speech or glory of God,
who contains within himself the likenesses of rational creatures as foreknown ideal
forms. Lot-Borodine3 and Lossky believe that Origens heresy is located right here, in
the insufficiency of his apophaticism, specifically in his cataphatic affirmation that God is
a simple intellectual nature, a monad and a unity (henas).4 Would it not be more
accurate, however, to say that Origens failure of apophaticism, if any, lay in his
insistence on explaining with his formally composite Logos, much like Palamism
attempts to do with its essence/energies distinction, how it is possible that God can be
both absolutely simple in His being yet predicable of various attributes and both
immutable yet also active ad extra within space and time?
This pedagogical or gnoseological dimension of Origens soteriology is of such
central importance to his understanding of divinization because he worked from the wellknown Middle Platonic axiom, ultimately derived from Aristotle, that all true knowledge
entails the union of the knower with the known.5 In the course of attempting to
1DP
1.2.7, SC 252:124.
2Ibid.
3Lot-Borodine,
La dification de l'homme, 27: Origen is the one who paved the broad
way to the positive theology of the future in retaining the hope of attaining the essence
of the simple Monad.
4Lossky,
5Gross,
182.
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differentiate this more unitive act of knowledge from that of its propadeutic, faith, 1
Origen appeals to the nuptial mystery of redemption as set forth in Eph. 5:32; Scripture
speaks of Adam knowing Eve as marital union (Gen. 4:1) and of the man who has known
a prostitute as becoming one with her (I Cor. 6:16-17), in Origens view, because to know
(ginskein) means to be made one with and united with (anakekrasthai kai hnsthai).2
Hence, from St. Pauls declarations to the Galatians (4:9) that they have come to know
God, or rather be known by God and to Timothy (2 Tim. 2:19) that The Lord knows
those who are his, Origen concludes that the Lord has known those who are his because
he has been made one with them (anakratheis autois) and has given them a share of his
own divinity (metadedks autois ts eautou theiottos).3 His appeal to marriage as the
paradigm for noetic union with God is further evidence that Origen understood human
participation in the divine nature to be a matter of assimilation and growing familiarity
with Gods ways, rather than a fusion or confusion between the created and the uncreated.
As the Logos himself is essentially divine by remaining always in uninterrupted
contemplation (thea) of the depths of the Father,4 so also the images of Him who is the
full and perfect Image are made accidental participants in the Fathers divine perfection
primarily through contemplation, yet a contemplation for which practicing the moral
virtues through the imitation of God is both a requirement and an effect.5 In an extended
1In
Ioan. 19.1.3.
2Ibid.
19.1.4 (FC 89:172), PG 14:529c.
3Ibid.
(FC 89:173), PG 14:532.
4In
Ioan. 2.2, PG 14:109. Gross, 181, n. 4, relates this to Platos notion that the
philosopher is assimilated to God primarily by contemplating the Form of the Good and
to Plotinus derivative understanding that the Nous is constituted by contemplating the
One.
5CC
8.18. See Crouzel, Thologie de limage, 232-36, who demonstrates how the
contemplative and moral dimensions of Origens spirituality are inextricably interrelated.
He believes that this feature is what most clearly sets him apart from Plotinus.
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commentary on John 13:31-32 (Jesus said, Now is the Son of man glorified and God is
glorified in him; if God be glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and he
will glorify him immediately),1 Origen considers at length the meaning of the word
glory (doxa), in contradistinction to the Stoic view of the same as public reputation.
Correlating the transfiguration of Moses on Mt. Sinai and the transfiguration of our Lord
on Mt. Tabor with a litany of New Testament texts, including the Pauline promises of 2
Cor. 3:9,2 3:18,3 and 4:6,4 he concludes that the mind (nous) that has been purified and
has ascended above all material things, that it may scrupulously contemplate God (hina
akribs tn therian tou Theou), is made divine by what it contemplates (en hois theria
theopoieitai).5 Thus, the figurative (tropiks) meaning of the glorification of Moses
face is that his mind was deified (theopoithentos aut tou nou). 6
It is not clear from the immediate context exactly what Origen meant here by
theopoieitai and theopoithentos. Meyendorff alleges that he was teaching the
reabsorption of the nous into the intellectual essence of God after having been liberated
1In
Ioan. 32.17 (FC 89:402ff).
2Ibid.
(FC 89:405): For if there is glory in the ministration of condemnation, much

more the ministration of justice abounds in glory.
3Ibid.
(FC 89:405-406): But we all, beholding the glory of the Lord with unveiled face,
are transformed into the same image from glory to glory.
4Ibid.
(FC 89:406): For it is the God who said, Let light shine out of darkness, who
has shone in our hearts for a light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of
Jesus Christ.
5In
Ioan. 32.17.26 (FC 89:406), PG 14:816d-17a.
6Ibid.
The FC translation of theopoithentos is made godlike.

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from its material imprisonment. 1 It seems more likely from the perspective of the
broader context of Origens gnoseology, however, that he believed the mind to be deified
only in the sense that its thoughts and consciousness are occupied with God alone, as
Lossky suggests.2 In any case, Origen does seem to have believed that the opaque world
of visible matter is an obstacle, not a potential vehicle, to the saving, deifying knowledge
of God. Although he already tried to go beyond the dogma of the pure apatheia of God
when, in the presence of the Son suffering on the cross, he believed he had to say,
perhaps the Father too is not without pathos,3 and although he would write elsewhere
that, in view of His love for fallen humanity, the Father himself is not impassible,4 and
although Origen withdrew decisively from Clements ethical lionization of apatheia in
favor of the metriopatheia of the philosophers,5 he nevertheless also frequently taught
that because Gods nature is purely intelligible, the soul must be purified from its
1Meyendorff,
Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, 121-22. He also objects that both for
Origen and for Evagrius Ponticus, full participation in divine life necessarily involves the
dematerialization of the human person, since both regarded the psych to be a passionbound deformation of the nous, which is otherwise connatural with the purely intellectual
essence of God Himself. For Origen and Evagrius, then, God does not transcend the
intellect; once purified, detached from matter and simple in its contemplation, the
intellect sees God as he is, in his essence.
2See,
e.g., DP 3.6.3, quoted below. Of this passage and Origens doctrine of deification
through contemplation generally, Lossky, The Vision of God, 57, writes: God becomes
all, in such a way that the human mind no longer knows anything other than Him. If the
human mind is made one mind with God, according the word of St. Paul . . . it is
because in the totality of consciousness the mind comprehends God, who becomes its
sole content. Lossky also applies this meaning to Origens use of theopoiesis.
3Hans
Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter, trans. Aidan
Nichols (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 36, quoting In Matt. 17.17.
4Hom
in Ez. 6.6; see Crouzel, Origen, 106.
5Crouzel,
Origen, 52.
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!229
attachment to the sensible world in order to see Him directly; the unveiled face of 2
Cor. 3:18, therefore, refers to the nous unimpeded by a passion-bound psych.1
At the apokatastasis, when evil (which Origen regards to be a privation of both
goodness and being2) is forever vanquished, and the redeemed are fully incorporated into
the Logos, who is the plrma of the logika,3 the active life gives way to pure
contemplation:
For then but one activity will be left for those who have come to God on account
of His word which is with Him, that, namely, of knowing (katanoein) God, so
that, being found by the knowledge of the Father, they may all be exactly His Son
(pantes akribs Huios), as now no one but the Son knows the Father. . . . No one,
no apostle even, and no prophet had known the Father, unless he became one with
Him (genntai hen) as the Son and the Father are one (hs ho Huios kai ho Patr
hen eisin).4
The promise of the gospel as recorded in I John 3:2 that we shall be like Him along
with Christs high priestly prayer to the Father that His followers may be one in Us
together indicate, as Origen sees it, that the divine likeness acquired here and now by the
operation of God on the noetic soul is destined to culminate in eschatological union,
from being merely similar to being made one (ex simili unum fieri) because undoubtedly
in the consummation or end God is all in all (I Cor. 15:28).5 Almost parenthetically,
then, Origen here anticipates the objection that corporeal, finite creatures could never
1Frag
in Ioan. 13.
2In
Ioan. 2.7: sin is the nothing which was made without the Logos, according to John
1:3. Cf. In Ioan. 2.7.13; Frag. in Rom. 4.15-17; Hom in Ps. 36.5.5; Crouzel, Thologie de
limage, 162.
3Frag.
4In
In Eph. 9, quoted by Crouzel, Thologie de limage, 254, n. 57. Cf. Eph. 1:20-23.
Ioan 1.16.92 (ANF 10:305-306), SC 120:108. See Gross, 183.
5DP
3.6.1.
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attain either a likeness to or union with the absolutely incorporeal, infinite God, but
neglects to answer it directly.
It is also here that Origen becomes most vulnerable to the allegations of
eschatological pantheism leveled by St. Jerome.1 This is one of four occasions in De
principiis when Origen entertains the possibility that the final state of the redeemed is one
of incorporeality, which would necessarily involve undifferentiated union with God.2
Such speculation provokes Meyendorff to call Origens spirituality a purely intellectual
mysticism which faithfully reflects Neo-Platonic spirituality with hardly any
corrective3 and Lossky to conclude that the Hellenistic world enters the Church with
Clement and Origen, bringing with it elements alien to the Christian tradition--elements
of religious speculation and intellectualistic spirituality belonging to a world altogether
different from that of the Gospel.4 Crouzel, on the other hand, believes that Origen
finally dismissed this possibility of eschatological incorporeality (unclear though it may
be from Rufinus translation of De principiis) and opted instead for an ethereal but
nonetheless finite embodiment of the glorified.5 Certainly in his polemics against Celsus,
1Jerome,
2DP
Epist. 124.10-14.
1.6.4; 2.1-3; 3.6.; 4.4.8.
3A Study
of Gregory Palamas, 135. Barlaam was even more indebted to this

discarnating, Platonizing tendency, according to Meyendorff, in that his primary
argument with hesychasm was that it involved the body in prayer at all.
4Lossky,
The Vision of God, 67. The only alternative he offers to Alexandrian

intellectualism, however, is the use of the body as a receptacle of uncreated light, rather
than as an instrument of charity toward God and neighbor: We are a long way here from
the eschatological vision of St. Irenaeus, where the eternal light of the Father appears in
the glorious body of the Son in order to confer on resurrected men the incorruptibility of
eternal life and participation in the divine life. (Ibid., 64) Lossky also makes much of the
fact that the mystical Neoplatonism of Plotinus arose within the same schools, within the
same city and within the same religious and philosophical milieu as did the mysticism of
Clement and Origen.
5Crouzel,
Thologie de limage, 247; Idem, Origen, 248-60. Gross, 184, makes the same
argument, citing DP pref.5; 3.6.6; CC 5.17.
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Origen displays little patience with the Stoic expectation of the creatures reabsorption
into the conflagration whence they came.1 In any event, Origens distinction between the
saints temporal, pre-resurrection likeness to God and their final, eschatological union
with God, when they will know Him from within the Logos because they will all be
exactly His Son, (Cf. St. Pauls andra teleion of Eph. 4:13) is not as monistic or
pantheistic as it might seem at first blush; God will be all in all, Origen explains, when
He fills the consciousness of every creature to the exclusion of all else, when all which
any rational understanding, cleansed from the dregs of every sort of vice, and with every
cloud of wickedness completely swept away, can either feel, or understand, or think, will
be wholly God; and when it will no longer behold or retain anything else than God.2
If anything, then, Origen has at least intensified (if not absolutized) the noetic or
mental dimension of divinization already accentuated by Clement, 3 although, as we have
seen, neither of them did or would countenance the rationalistic, Cartesian separation of
knowledge from virtue which has become characteristic of post-Enlightenment
modernity. Despite the christological subordinationism and anthropological dualism born
of Origens lingering attachment to the cosmological exigencies of Greek philosophy, it
seems fair to say that he at least attempted to maintain a firm distinction between God
and the deified creature4 and to draw his portrait of the latter almost entirely from the
data of Sacred Scripture. In conclusion, we can agree with Henri Crouzel that, for
Origen, participation in God constitutes an equivalent of our theology of sanctifying
grace.5 Laden with the much maligned baggage of what came to be condemned as
Origenism, however, Origens far-reaching influence would have to be mediated to his
1CC
6.71-72; 8.72.
2DP
3.6.3.
3Gross,
185; Dalmais, Divinisation, 1379.
4Ibid.
5Crouzel,
Thologie de limage, 172.

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orthodox posterity through the more trusted judgments of Athanasius and the
Cappadocians.1
1See
Rashdall, The Idea of the Atonement in Christian Theology, 288, who claims that
Origen marks the end of the creative period of Greek soteriology. All subsequent Greek
authors will simply develop the theory of atonement already fully conceived up through
him. In many ways, he admonishes, the latter Greek fathers marked a degeneration of
Origens high ethical idealism: The notion of an ethical restoration of humanity through
the influence of Christ to that divine ideal which it was originally intended to realize was
degraded into the notion of a metaphysical, or almost physical, transmutation of the
human body from a corruptible into an incorruptible body. . . . And the channel of this
regenerating influence is chiefly the sacraments, thought of in a more mechanical or, at
all events, thaumaturgic and less ethical sense than was the case with Origen. On
Athanasius profound indebtedness to Origen, see Regis Bernard, Limage de Dieu
daprs saint Athanase (Paris: Aubier, 1952), 12.
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VII. ATHANASIUS
Athanasius marks a watershed in the development of the doctrine of divinization
because, as Gross could say with the prohibitive weight of scholarly consensus in his
corner, "for the Alexandrian doctor, the divinization of the Christian is not just a more or
less secondary or casual element, as it was for most of the Fathers before him, but is the
central idea of his theology."1 A lonely dissenting voice on this matter of the importance
of divinization to Athanasius comes from Hamilton Hess, who insists that Gross and the
others are mistaken because divinization is merely but one theme in a cluster of eight
closely related motifs (recreation, divinization [theopoie], participation [metousia],
union [synapt], adoptive sonship, exaltation, sanctification, and perfection) which
shade into one another and are fundamentally expressive of the restoration of the image
of the Logos on the one hand and of immortality and incorruptibility on the other.2
1Gross,
202. For concurring views, see I. H. Dalmais, Divinisation, 1380; A. G.

Hamman, Lhomme image de Dieu (Paris, 1987), 153; Keith Edward Norman,
"Deification: The Content of Athanasian Soteriology," 77ff; Basil Studer, Gott und unsere
Erlosung im Glauben des Alten Kirche (Dusseldorf, 1985), 147-48.
2Hamilton
Hess, The Place of Divinization in Athanasian Soteriology, Studia Patristica

26 (1993): 371.
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!235
Hess contribution, however, turns out to be little more than a lexicographal gloss on the
relative frequency with which variants of theopoisis appear in Athanasius writing. By
arguing that divinization is closely synonymous with human participation in God,
which Hess does acknowledge to be the governing concept of Athanasius soteriology, he
unwittingly secures the point made by those more conventional scholars he set out to
correct.1
The divinization of the Christian is the central idea of his theology largely because
Athanasius founded his argument against the Arians for the fully divine identity of Jesus
Christ on the soteriological grounds that the redeemed cannot be made participants in the
divine life of the Holy Trinity through incorporation into the Son if the Son himself had
been divine only by gratuitous participation:
And again, if, as we have said before, the Son is not such by participation (ek
metousias), but, while all things originated have by participation (ek metousias)
the grace of God, He is the Fathers Wisdom and Word of which all things partake
(metechei), it follows that He, being the deifying and enlightening power of the
Father, in which all things are deified and quickened (n to theopoion kai
phtistikon tou Patros en h ta panta theopoieitai kai zopoieitai), is not alien
(allotrioousios) in essence from the Father, but coessential (homoousios). For by
partaking of Him, we partake of the Father (toutou gar metalambanontes, tou
Patros metechomen); because that the Word is the Fathers own. Whence, if He
was Himself too from participation (ek metousias), and not from the Father His
essential Godhead and Image, He would not deify (etheopoise), being deified
Himself (theopoioumenos). For it is not possible that He, who merely possesses
from participation (ek metousias), should impart of that partaking to others, since
what He has is not His own, but the Givers.2
A similar line of reasoning is found as the prelude to his most explicit statement
on the deifying effect of the incarnation in his Orationes contra Arianos: Again, if the
Son were a creature, man had remained mortal as before, not being joined to God
1Ibid.,
373.
2De
synod. 51, PG 26:784b. All quoted translations of the writings of Athanasius are
taken from NPNF 4, unless otherwise indicated.
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!236
(synaptomenos t The); for a creature had not joined (synpte) creatures to God, as
seeking itself one to join (synaptonta) it; nor would a portion of the creation have been
the creations salvation, as needing salvation itself.1 Lest it be thought that the principle
articulated above was just an opportunistic or expedient conceptual weapon invented
specifically for the purpose of quashing the Arian movement, one should take note that
Athanasius employed an analogous rationale much earlier in his life, long before he had
engaged the Arian controversy in earnest,2 to condemn the Roman and Egyptian cults of
the gods: it is futile for the Roman Senate to designate the emperor as a god and decree
that he be worshiped, for if they are to make gods, they ought to be themselves gods; for
that which makes must needs be better than that which it makes. . . . If then they decree
whomsoever they please to be gods, they ought first to be gods themselves. 3 Yet
because Athanasius developed and refined his doctrine of human participation in God
primarily within the context of the Arian controversy, it is important to consider first what
Arius and his followers believed and taught with regard to this matter.
Athanasius himself provides various speculative answers to the question of what
really lay behind the Arian movement: Arians are fleshly Ebionites, akin to the Jews who
1Contra Arianos
(CA) 2.69, PG 26:293.
2Although
Charles Kannengieser challenged the conventional ante-Arian dating of Contra

Gentes (CG) and De Incarnatione (DI) in La date de lapologie dAthanase Contre les
Paens et sur lincarnation, Recherches de Science Religieuse 58 (1970): 383-428, his
argument has not prevailed, as van Winden, Petterson, Meijering, and Barnes
demonstrate: J.C.M. van Winden, On the date of Athanasius apologetical treatises,
Vigilae Christianae 29 (1975): 291-95; A. Petterson, A Reconsideration of the Date of
the Contra Gentes--De Incarnatione of Athanasius of Alexandria, Studia Patristica 18
(1982): 135-38; E. P. Meijering, Athanasius: Contra Gentes. Introduction, Translation,
and Commentary (Leiden: E.J. Brill: 1984), 4; T. Barnes, Athanasius and Contantius:
Theology and Politics in the Constantinian Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1993), 13.
3CG
9, PG 25:21a.
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!237
were indignant at Christs claim to divine sonship1 or they were adoptionists associated
with the christology of Paul of Samosata; 2 he also suspects a certain sort of egalitarian
ideology behind the Arian denial of Christs divinity,3 one which possesses an estimate
far too rosy of the capacity of human nature left to its own devices4 and is born of rank
arrogance.5
The recent spate of literature generated on Athanasius in the last couple of
decades has served up a redoubtable challenge to the erstwhile convention that Arius and
his followers were primarily thinking and acting in servitude to the categorical exigencies
of Greek philosophy. If Dalmais and Kannengiesser are correct to opine that the
divinization of the Christian seems to (Athanasius) to be an incontestible truth, an axiom
upon which it is possible to build an argument,6 and that that which is first in
(Athanasius) exposition of the Christian faith is not God as such, nor the universe in its
divine origin, but the historical event of salvation accomplished in Christ, 7 then some of
1De
decretis 5, 10, 24; Ep. fest. 10.9. This speculative etymology of Arianism is probably
historically inaccurate, but it does find some support from Eusebius of Caesaria, who
writes in his HE 3.27.1-2 that the Ebionites held Christ to be a plain and ordinary man
who had achieved righteousness merely by the progress of his character (kata prokopn
thous). The quotation is from Robert C. Gregg and Dennis E. Groh, Early Arianism: A
View of Salvation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), 165.
2CA 2.13.
3Ibid.
1.4.
4Ibid.
1.18.
5Ibid.
3.17: The Arian aspiration to a divine sonship identical to that possessed by the
Savior, which is either to make him a creature or to demand for oneself to be in the Father
by nature as the Son is in the Father by nature, is precisely the kind of arrogance which
led to the fall of their father the devil. Cf. Irenaeus, AH 3.20.1.
6Dalmais,
Divinisation, 1380.
7Kannengiesser,
Athanasius of Alexandria and the Foundation of Traditional

Christology, Theological Studies 34 (1973): 112. Cf. H. E. W. Turner, The Patristic
Doctrine of Redemption (London, 1952), 17.
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!238
the most recent Athanasian scholarship proposes that the same can be said of early
Arianism. Even a figure as early as Eusebius of Emesa (d. circa 359) could recognize, as
he wrote, that Arians claimed to take thesis no less seriously than Nicenes.1 Being
the great polemicist he was, Arius would not flatly deny that the redeemed were divinized
through Christ, but would argue instead that the Son was himself divinized like all other
sons: Christ is not very God, but He, as others, was made God (etheopoith) by
participation (metoch). 2 In specific terms, this means that like all those other sons who
were to follow in his wake, Christ has not exact knowledge of the Father, nor does the
Word see the Father perfectly and that he is in name only called Word and Wisdom and
is called by grace Son and Power and, more directly to the central point of contention,
that Christ is not unalterable (atreptos) as the Father is, but alterable in nature as the
creatures. 3 In fact, the only occasion on which Athanasius uses the controversial term
homoousios in his Orationes contra Arianos is in response to the Arian claim that their
own doctrine of salvation was also a form of divinization; the gods of Ps. 82:6,
Athanasius argues, possess only a created reflection of divine virtue and are therefore
qualitatively unlike the Eternal Son of God because they are not of the divine ousia.4
Thus, we can say with confidence that Athanasius vigorous disputation of the Arian
claim that Christ himself was a deified creature is grounded at least partially in what both
he and the Arians regarded to be a universally accepted Christian truth that salvation is a
kind of divinization.5
1Theodoret,
Eranistes 3, PG 83:312-17, quoted by Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy and

Tradition (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1987), 241.
2CA 1.9.
3Ibid.
4CA 1.9.
See Gregg and Groh, Early Arianism: A View of Salvation, 66.
5See
Mersch, Le corps mystique, 1:382: The doctrine of the Arians, for St. Athanasius, is
above all a theory of divinization.
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!239
The limitations of this study do not permit an exhaustive analysis of the status
quaestionis on the true origins and agenda of early Arianism 1, but because the fruits of
the last thirty years of research on this issue serve to bring Athanasius dispute with
Arianism into the orbit of Palamisms argument with the West, some attention is required.
Maurice Wiles was the first modern scholars to challenge the once prevailing conclusions
of J. H. Newman, H. M. Gwatkin, A. von Harnack, T. E. Pollard, J. N. D. Kelly and
others,2 whose mutual condemnation of Arianism is perhaps best captured by Gwatkins
characterization of the heresy as a clear step back to heathenism3 and as the
unspiritual, amoral triumph of philosophy over revelation, 4 along with Pollards
allegation that Arius has exchanged the Living God of the Bible for the Absolute of
1For
a good summary of the whole debate, see R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the
Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318-381 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark,
1988), 84ff.
2The
first instance of the cosmological interpretation of Arianism which until recently had
prevailed virtually unchallenged among scholars in the field may have been William
Caves 1683 work, Ecclesiastici, or the History of the Lives, Acts, Death and Writings of
the Most Eminent Fathers of the Church. J. H. Newman, Arians of the Fourth Century,
5th ed. (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1888), 1-24, 113f, 219f, located the origins of
Arianism in literalist exegesis and a positivistic concept of reality. See also H. M.
Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1882); idem,
The Arian Controversy, 1908; A. von Harnack, History of Dogma, 4:39-44; T. E.
Pollard, The Origins of Arianism, Journal of Theological Studies 9 (1958): 103-11;
idem, Logos and Son in Origen, Arius, and Athanasius, Studia Patristica 2 (Texte und
Untersuchungen 64, 19): 282-87; J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine, 230f. For
additional, more contemporary arguments from the school of thought which views
Arianism primarily as the triumph of Greek philosophy over Christian dogma, see E.
Boularand, LHrsie dArius et la foi de Nice (Paris: Latouzey & Ane, 1972); Manlio
Simonetti, La crisi ariana nel IV secolo, Studia ephemeridas Augustinianum 11 (Rome:
Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1975), 46ff; Rowan Williams, The Logic of
Arianism, Journal of Theological Studies 34 (1983): 56-81; idem, Arius: Heresy and
Tradition (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1987).
3Studies
of Arianism, 2
4The Arian
Controversy, 9.
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!240
the philosophical schools.1 In a 1962 article, Wiles attempted to rehabilitate Arius in the
eyes of the Christian world by opposing Pollards recently published reiteration and
expansion of Gwatkins claim that the philosophical character of Arianism consists in its
preferential option for cosmology over soteriology.2 First, he endeavors to refute
Pollards theory that Arianism was entirely of Antiochian parentage through the influence
of Lucian by demonstrating that all three of the earmarks of Arian theology--literal
exegesis of Scripture, Christological subordinationism, and theological monism--are put
in evidence by Origen, either through explicit affirmation, as in the latter two, or through
his polemical treatment of the first, thus bearing witness to its currency in Alexandria.3
Next, Wiles gets to the heart of his thesis when he turns to argue that Athanasius failed to
devise a soteriology any more faithful to Scripture, tradition, and reason than that of
Arius. He quotes at length from De Synod. 51 (By partaking of him, we partake of the
Father, etc.) and suggests that the principle here implicit that one can only
communicate to others that which is in the fullest sense ones own is not self-evidently
true.4 Moreover, Wiles objects, the Athanasian argument against Arius presupposes an
understanding of salvation as deification and therefore loses something of its force if
once that understanding is abandoned. Even if the soteriology of divinization is granted,
however, Wiles doesnt see any logical necessity to Athanasius contention that a Son
1"The
Origins of Arianism, 104.
2M.
F. Wiles, In Defense of Arius, Journal of Theological Studies 13 (1962): 339-47,

opposing Pollards The Origins of Arianism and Logos and Son in Origen, Arius, and
Athanasius. For more modest critique of the Gwatkin-Pollard camp, see G. C. Stead,
The Platonism of Arius. Journal of Theological Studies 15 (1964): 16-31; idem, Was
Arius a Neoplatonist? Studia Patristica 32 (1997):39-52;
3G.
C. Stead, The Platonism of Arius, 21, concurs with Wiles on this point.
4In
Defense of Arius, 346.

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!241
Son who is merely theos kata charin cannot bring His fellow creatures to be what He is
Himself.1
More recently, in a reprise of his 1962 apologia for Arius, Wiles again attempts to
show how early Arianism was based not on an uncritical appropriation of pagan
philosophical principles, nor on the syllogistic rationalism of Aristotelian logic, but upon
rather conventional usage of Scripture, tradition, and reason. 2 Yet the egalitarian
ideological commitments which evidently inform his reading of the Arian controversy are
here openly displayed in a triumphant heralding of the death of that picture of the
gradual flowering of a single, consistent vision of Christian truth, developing only in the
sense of receiving an increasing precision of expression, which he believes must now
yield to a view wherein the Fathers and heresiarchs (Athanasius and Arius respectively, in
this case) are equally reliable partners in dialogue, each refracting only particular facets
of the pure light which come from what Wiles wistfully calls primitive Christianity.3
G. C. Stead quickly joined Wiles in attempting to relocate Arius solidly within the
broad stream of the early Christian tradition when he attempted to trace the Arian position
that the Son is merely a perfect instance of those virtues, perfections, or attributes of
1Ibid.
See C. R. Strange, Athanasius on Divinization, Studia Patristica 16 (1985):

342-46. In direct response to this particular point made by Wiles, Strange asks whether,
for Athanasius, the doctrine of divinization was really the result of belief in Christs full
divinity and not rather the cause for establishing it and whether it induced him to affirm
the full divinity of Christ in a way that was not required. (p. 343) Strange believes that
in attempting to reduce christology to soteriology, Wiles has overlooked and
underestimated the properly theological importance to Athanasius of the distinction he
drew between Gods ad intra Being and His ad extra action, or between generation and
creation.
2M.
F. Wiles, Archetypal Heresy: Arianism through the Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon,

1996), 10-26.
3Ibid.,
2. Lest any doubt remain as to his present doctrinal mission, Wiles also made the
Preface of Archetypal Heresy a gushing encomium to the eighteenth century, antiquarian,
neo-Arian William Whiston, for whom the archetypal heresy was Athanasian
orthodoxy. (p. 5)
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!242
which the Father is the perfect prototype not directly back to the Neoplatonic Monad
and Nous, but more likely to the distinction Origen found between ho Theos and theos or
between autoagathon and agathon.1 From this, Stead concludes: Arius draws upon a
Platonic tradition evolving within the Church, rather than representing a violent incursion
of alien philosophy.2
Kolp also deplores the conventional identification of Arianism with a rationalistic
subservience of the gospel to Aristotelian logic, but sans the ideological edge evinced by
Wiles. 3 He proposes in the alternative that Arius and Athanasius held their respective
visions as a consequence of divergent lived experiences of the Christian faith, primarily
with respect to the liturgy. Herein lies the great significance of Athanasius theology of
participation, in Kolps view. Far from being simply an uncritical accretion from
Neoplatonism, the historically imprecise and fungible language of methexis4 served him
as a means to articulate the manner by which the Christian shares in the sacramental life
of the body of Christ as well as the manner in which Christ himself made such a sharing
possible by his kenotic participation in human nature.5
In general agreement with the theses of Wiles and Stead, Robert Gregg and
Dennis Groh have proffered what almost all are agreed is the most extensive, formidable,
and well-documented attempt to demonstrate that the battle between Athanasius and the
1G.
C. Stead, The Platonism of Arius, 22.
2Ibid.,
30.
3Kolp,
"Participation: A Unifying Concept in the Theology of Athanasius" (Ph.D. diss.,

Harvard University, 1976), 14, contra T. E. Pollard, Johannine Christology and the Early
Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 192.
4See
G. C. Stead, The Platonism of Arius, 22. Although methexis is not a technical

term, as Stead argues, neither, Kolp counters, is it thereby rendered devoid of particular
significance for Athanasius, especially when read in the light of his pointed controversy
with Arianism.
5Kolp,
Participation, 18-19.
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!243
Arians was really fought over the manner of human divinization through Christ. They
summarize their thesis as follows: Salvation, for orthodoxy, is effected by the Sons
essential identity with the Father--that which links God and Christ to creation is the
divine natures assumption of flesh. Salvation for Arianism is effected by the Sons
identity with the creatures--that which links Christ and creatures to God is conformity of
will.1 In opposition to Gwatkin, Pollard, Williams, and others who saw Arius as
beholden primarily to Platonic and\or Aristotelian notions of divine unbegottenness,
aseity, impassibility, and simplicity, Gregg and Groh want to locate his philosophical
sources more fully in the Stoic conception of the relationship between free-will and
virtue,2 which in turn serves what they believe to be the cardinal principle of Arianism,
viz., that Christ was a representative creature whose divine sonship differs in degree
but not in kind from that of his disciples.3 As Gregg and Groh see it, the Arian
controversy has less to do with the question of how an absolutely simple and immutable
God can be related to and involved with the world of multiplicity and becoming than it
does with the question of how sinners are saved: the central point in the Arian system is
that Christ gains and holds his sonship in the same way as other creatures. 4 Because
Arius understood eternal salvation to have been an extrinsic reward conferred by God for
meritorious behavior, the Arian soteriology required the savior, that he might be
imitable, to be related to the Father on the same terms as other finite beings.5 Thus, in
order for Christ to be a true exemplar, he had to have been united to the Father strictly by
1Robert
C. Gregg and Dennis E. Groh, The Centrality of Soteriology in Early Arianism,

Anglican Theological Review 59 (1977): 262.
2Early Arianism,
15-19.
3Ibid.,
30, emphasis theirs. They continue: therefore the Christ was representative Son,
but by no means only possible Son.
4Ibid.,
50.
5Ibid.,
63.
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!244
the voluntaristic relation of command and obedience, which in turn required that he had
to have had a perfectly free will, unencumbered by any essential or otherwise ontological
union with the Father. It is the contention of Gregg and Groh, briefly, that Arians are
arguing not for the stratification of the universe but for the dynamics of redemption
whereby creatures, in emulation of the creature of perfect discipline, may be themselves
begotten as equals to the Son.1 Arius deepest conviction, as they see it, is that in order
for morally free and mutable creatures to be saved, the Savior himself must have been
equally morally free and mutable.
Rowan Williams, who, like Wiles, is not without a contemporary theological
program of his own2, also asks what philosophical assumptions might lie behind the
Arian denial that the Son is ek ts ousias tou Patros. Yet, initially and in a rather facile
manner he dismisses out of hand the possibilities that Arius purpose was impiously and
selfishly to degrade the Son, as Gwatkin and Pollard had alleged, or to defend a
distinctive soteriology with particular Christological emphases, as Gregg and Groh
had proposed.3 The most philosophically revealing feature Williams sees in Arius
position is this: although Arius objects to what he saw as the latent Sabellianism or
modalism inherent in the substantial language Bishop Alexander was using for the
relationship between the Father and the Son, he more frequently expresses precisely the
1Ibid.,
113.
2See
Postscript (Theological) in Arius: Heresy and Tradition, 233-56, 238 in particular:

Both Athanasius and Barth insist that there is no gap conceivable between God as he
acts towards us--as the Father of Jesus Christ--and that activity in and by which God is
eternally what he is. . . . God is knowable solely because he is active; what can be said
of him can be said because he utters himself as Word or Son. God is trustworthy in the
covenants He has initiated because he acts consistently; and since nothing beyond him
can determine his action, what he does cannot be other than the enactment of what he
is.
3"The
Logic of Arianism, 56-57.

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opposite critique, namely that Alexander was teaching the existence of two agennta.1
So Alexanders substantialist christology resulted either in a Son who had no independent
existence at all or in two gods, as Arius understood it.
What was the particular understanding of ousia and of substantial participation
with led Arius to this false alternative? Among other factors2, Williams endeavors to
show that it was Arius lingering Neoplatonic understanding of the meaning of
participation (metoch) that led him to interpret the Nicene position as teaching either two
agennta or that God is the name of a substance participated equally by the Father and
the Son.3 Whereas Plato had used participation to indicate that the particular is an
image or reflection of the form as paradigm, Williams explains, Aristotle and his late
antique commentators upon whom he believes Arius was dependent, such as Alexander
of Aphrodisias and Porphyry, would reject this Platonic metaphysic, proposing instead
that the common form by which two particulars are analogous is purely metaphorical and
has no real existence prior to or beyond the particulars.4 They thereby foreclosed the
possibility of a vertical sense of participation, the sharing of lower beings in higher,
1Ibid.,
57.
2First,
Williams surmises that Arius rejected the Alexandrian-Athanasian formula which

describes the Son as proper to the Fathers substance (ts tou patros ousias idios)
because Arius was laboring under the Aristotelian-Porphyrian illusion that idios could
only be used to denote the impersonal property of a substance, but never something
which is a substance in its own right. (The Logic of Arianism, 60) Therefore, to call
the Son proper to the Father is to make of him a mere attribute of Gods essence and
therefore to deny the Sons independent or hypostatic existence. Secondly, Williams
hypothesizes that Arius rejection of the christological designation consubstantial
portion (meros homoousion) of the Father on the grounds that it carries Manichaean
implications of materiality and multiplicity in God is at least partially attributable to the
influence of the Neoplatonist Iamblichus, who uses homoousios to describe the resulting
product when different elements combine to produce a unified reality. (The Logic of
Arianism, 64, citing De mysteriis 3.21.150.9.)
3"The
Logic of Arianism, 67.
4Williams, Arius,
217, citing Aristotle, Metaphysics 1.9; Porphyry, Eisagog 22.9-10.

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although both Porphyry and Plotinus supplanted this function with that of procession,
whereby the lower reality does not reproduce the essence of the higher.1 Among
Neoplatonists, then, the language of participation came to denote the relation between
substances which are formally identical--the relation expressed in synonymy, which in
turn meant that the Neoplatonic participated and participant have identity and similarity
in essence, genus, and species, koinnia kat ousian.2 According to Williams, Porphyry
assumes that there is metoch between two substances if they have identical constitutive
attributes (not if they only have identical inseparable but non-constitutive accidents).3
These Neoplatonic thinkers of the third century therefore understood metoch in only a
lateral or horizontal sense, according to which ousia is not transmitted from higher to
lower and things are not constituted the kind of things they are by the causal agency of a
paradigmatic individual substance in the transcendent intelligible order. 4 Under this
conception, then, consubstantiality would necessarily involve two things sharing a (prior)
common genus and would therefore be excluded as a candidate for denoting the Christian
doctrine of the relation between the Father and the Son. Finally, their Neoplatonic denial
of paradigmatic causality led later Arians like Aetius and Eunomius to reject even the
homoiousios proposal, for Arius nominalism, if applied consistently, would mean that
nothing whatsoever of the agen(n)tons substance or constitutive attributes could be
communicated, not even analogically. For a moderate realist like Eusebius of Caesarea,
homoiousios is still both possible and meaningful inasmuch as the prototypes relation to
its image is a causal one, and the mimetic quality of the inferior subsistent constitutes its
participation in the prior and superior.5
1Ibid.,
220.
2"The
3Ibid.
4Ibid.
5Ibid.,
71.
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Stead, however, believes that Williams is wrong at virtually every turn in his
hypothesis on the philosophical origins of Arianism. Arius stated objections to the
phrase ts tou patros ousias idios in his letter to Bishop Alexander are precisely the
opposite of what Williams has suggested, according to Stead; Arius wont accept idios
because it would unduly elevate the Son to essential equality with the Father. 1 Of most
potential relevance to the current study, Stead believes Williams reading of Porphyrys
usage of metechein and related words to be based on a sheer mistranslation. What
Porphyry actually said is that if A and B participate in a third thing, C, then they
participate equally if C is a species or a genus, but may participate unequally if C is an
accident.2 Stead flatly denies that either Iamblichus or Porphyry used metechein to
denote only lateral or horizontal participation. He also claims that both Alexander of
Aphrodisias and Porphyry explicitly distinguish between substantial participation and
accidental participation, whereas Athanasius only uses the term in its latter sense;
Athanasius assumes that participation indicates an unstable and impermanent relation;
thus metousia is regularly contrasted with ousia. 3 Although there is some scattered
evidence that the language of participation was used to denote symmetrical relations,
Stead maintains that the accidental sense of participation seems to be taken for granted
by Christian authors of the fourth century. 4 Origen was the Neoplatonist, Stead
concludes, not Arius. It was Origen who accepted the Aristotelian-Neoplatonic doctrine
of the eternity of the world. Arius did nothing more than give voice to that legitimate,
more fully biblical tradition within mainstream Christianity which tended to radicalize
the yet inchoate Alexandrian distinction between the generation of the Son and the
creation of the world.
1Stead,
Was Arius a Neoplatonist?, 42.
2Was Arius
a Neoplatonist?, 47, emphasis his, citing Isagoge, p. 17.6.
3Ibid.,
50 n. 26.
4Ibid.,
50.
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!248
Whether right or wrong about Arianism having its origin in the Neoplatonism of
the late second and early third centuries, however, Williams finally agrees with Gregg
and Groh that the charge that Arianism was a purely cosmological phenomenon with no
real soteriology is a false and misleading one. Arius did indeed teach that the Redeemer
Son possesses His participated divine perfections such as logos and sophia in as
contingent and mutable a manner as do the redeemed. Consequently, Williams believes
the Arian soteriology to have been limited to the transmission of gnsis through the
didactic and purely metaphorical (katachrstiks)1 reflection of what Arius thought to be
Gods intrinsically unknowable essence in His created Son, who was nevertheless as
virtuous and as fully like to God as any creature could possibly be. A soteriology which
involves more than this, however, which interprets sonship more fundamentally in terms
of love, communion, and mutuality, for which grace is a more pervasive transfiguration
of the human condition--this may, as in Athanasius himself, press toward some
modification of the insistence on Gods imparticipability.2 Thus, Williams concludes,
Athanasius chief complaint that Arian christology was defective primarily because it did
not allow for a created participation in God through union with the consubstantial Son
may yet have weight.3
Hanson calls the soteriocentric interpretation of Arius proposed by Wiles, Gregg
and Groh welcome and timely, inasmuch as he finds it very unlikely that a movement
as broad and popularly effectual as Arianism was always a matter of speculative
philosophy only, with no readily applicable relevance to the more practical concerns of
ordinary believers.4 Yet, he also observes that their thesis fails to show how a preexistent created Son who is already perfect before the beginning of time (as Arius clearly
1See
De decret. 6.1-2.
2"The
3Ibid.,
81.
4The
Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 96.

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!249
taught) can make progress in virtue and thereby serve as an example to woefully
imperfect creatures.1 Hansons own theory is that the soteriological rationale which lay
behind the created savior of Arius emerged from his belief (widespread at the time2) that
the Logos assumed human flesh only, sans mind and soul, and was therefore himself the
sole subject of Christs utterances, consciousness, and sufferings. But this christological
axiom common to the entire Arian movement was, Hanson argues, necessitated by their
logically prior twin convictions that God is unbegotten, immutable, and impassible
(which is the idea to which Gwatkin et alia want to reduce Arianism) and that the biblical
account of redemption requires a God who truly suffers everything humans suffer, not
merely a God who is somehow mysteriously united to a human who suffered.3 Their
elaborate theology of the relation of the Son to the Father which so much preoccupied
their opponents was devised in order to find a way of envisaging a Christian doctrine of
God which would make it possible to be faithful to the Biblical witness to a God who
suffers.4 There is thus no opposition between Arian ontology and soteriology, Hanson
believes, but both were devised to fit together.5
The fruit of this most recent trajectory in Athanasian studies is to demonstrate that
Arianism presented the Church as much with a competing soteriology as it did with a
competing ontology, even if Wiles, Gregg, and Groh cannot carry the day with their
theory of the relative priority of the former over the latter. The Arian denial of Christs
eternal, essential divine sonship was derived not only from a perceived need to protect
the absolute aseity and simplicity of God, but at least also, if not primarily, in pursuit of
an exemplarist, extrinsic, transactional, moralistic, and voluntarist soteriology, one which
1Ibid.,
97.
2See
Simonetti, Crisi, 51.
3The
Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 99-122.
4Ibid.,
121.
5Ibid.,
122.
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Wiles and Gregg and Groh clearly believe to be the correct Christian soteriology, or at
least more correct than the putative essentialism of Athanasius. Roldanus captured the
matter well, I think, when he wrote that the conflict between Athanasius and Arius, at the
end of the day, goes to the question of whether the divinization of man is the
development of his own capacity and the crowing of a personal effort, or rather a
communicated grace and a re-creation in the true sense of the term.1
THEOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY:
Even more than for Irenaeus, Athanasius theological anthropology is important to
his understanding of our final divinization because he thought of the latter as both
including and surpassing a restoration to the state of the first humans in paradise, wherein
they lived a life in correspondence with God (kata theon). 2
Athanasius did not follow Clement and Origen in drawing a distinction between
the image and likeness of God in man from Gen. 1:26, but thought of the two as
coterminous with the indwelling presence of the Logos,3 who is uniquely the true and
perfect Image of God, after whose pattern humans were created. Yet, Athanasius did
follow Clement and Origen in excluding the body from that which in humans was created
1J.
Roldanus, Le Christ et lhomme dans la thologie dAthanase dAlexandrie (Leiden:

E. J. Brill, 1968), 275-76.
2DI
5. See Gross, 202: Athanasius pays so much attention to the original condition of
Adam because "more clearly than anyone before him, Athanasius conceived Redemption
and deification as a restoration of the primitive state of Adam."
3CG
2. See R. Bernard, Limage de Dieu, 27ff; Merki, Homoisis The, 141; Ladner,
Idea of Reform, 89. Gross (pp. 204-205) epitomizes the scholarly consensus on this point
when he writes that because the Arian controversy forced Athanasius to draw a bright line
between nature and grace, he does not recognize in the natural gift of the soul an initial
likeness to God, namely, that of the image or eikon, nor does he distinguish from it a
superior divine likeness or homoisis. He knows, therefore, only one divine likeness in
humanity: that which results from the inhabitation of the Logos in us and which he calls
'grace.'" Gross cites in evidence CA 1.37; 3.10; CG 41; DI 11-13.
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according to the image of God; 1 it was not the incarnate Christ according to whom Adam
was created, as Athanasius understands it, but the eternal Logos.
The greatest significance of Athanasius locating both image and likeness in the
one true only-begotten Image of God, however, only comes to light in the context of his
dispute with the Arians. In agreement with Irenaeus, Clement, and Origen, but more
emphatically than they, Athanasius insisted that humans were created only according to
the image and likeness of God (kat eikona gar Theou pepoitai, kai kath homoisin
gegonen)2 and not as other complete images and\or likenesses of God, this with a view
toward confounding the Arian claim that an image is necessarily subordinate to and
inferior to its archetype. If, in the case of Christ, the image was an essential replica, an
effluence of the Fathers ousia, then humanity cannot be such as that, but may only
participate alterably and partially in the one Image of God. Athanasius had already seen
this exigency, however, well before he engaged in debate with the Arians: The Word of
God came in his own person so that, as He was the Image of the Father, he might be able
to create afresh man who was after the Image (kat eikona). 3
On the anthropological level, apart from the strictly theological matters which we
will consider momentarily, the significance of the human person being created kat
eikona, but never to be identified with the eikn Himself, is that humanitys entire
created being, even prior to the recreation of redemption, is purely a consequence of
grace. Indeed, the expression kateikona serves Athanasius as a perfect equivalent to
both grace and participation.4 A true and whole image, Athanasius insists, is not merely a
product of the will only (as the Arians had claimed), but also an extension of the essence.
In this connection, it is important for us to note here that Athanasius takes it as axiomatic
1Merki,
2CG
3DI
Homoisis The, 27.
34. Cf. DI 3, 6, 11, 13, 14, 20; Bernard, Limage de Dieu, 22ff.
13.
4Bernard,
Limage de Dieu, 37.

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that if God is fruitfully creative ad extra, as the Arians confess Him to be and as
Athanasius own kat eikona anthropology declares, there must, then, be a corresponding
fruitfulness interior to God: But if He frames things that are external to Him and before
were not, by willing them to be, and becomes their Maker, much more will He first be
Father of an Offspring from His proper Essence. For if they attribute to God the willing
about things which are not, why recognize they not that in God which lies above the
will?1 Florovsky observes in this regard that Athanasius whole refutation of Arianism
depended ultimately upon this basic distinction between essence and will, which alone
could establish clearly the real difference in kind between generation and creation.2
Whether or not there remains an ontological inner unity between the two, such that the
latter always reveals the former, goes straight to the heart of the question of whether
Palamisms denial of the knowability of Gods essence can find support in Athanasius.
In his earlier works, Contra gentes and De incarnatione verbi, Athanasius writes
of Adam in rather Neoplatonic tones as the ideal gnostic who enjoys unimpeded
contemplation of the Logos and is thereby deified.3 What he wrote in Contra gentes
could just as well have been said by Philo, interpreting Matt. 5:8 (Blessed are the pure of
heart, for they shall see God) according to the Platonic ideal of purity from the sensible
and corporeal world; Adam, who had his mind (noun) God-ward,
is awe-struck as he contemplates that Providence which through the Word extends
to the universe, being raised above the things of sense and every bodily
appearance, but cleaving to the divine and thought-perceived things in the
heavens by the power of his mind (dynamei tou nou). For when the mind (nous)
of men does not hold converse with bodies, nor has mingled with it from without
1CA 2.
2Florovsky,
The Concept of Creation, 49.
3Dalmais,
Divinisation, 1380. Cf. Kannengiesser, Athanasius of Alexandria, 108. I

will dwell on Athanasius early works in expounding his anthropology primarily because
Athanasius himself pays very little attention to the beatitude of the pre-lapsarian humans
in his later, more polemical works, largely as a result of his then controlling interest in the
christological foundation of soteriology.
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(exthen) aught of their lust, but is wholly above them, dwelling with itself as it
was made to begin with, then, transcending the things of sense and all things
human, it is raised up on high.1
Also in accordance with Platonic and generally late antique convention, Athanasius
believed and taught the human soul to be immortal. Rather, one should say that he bore
witness to and provided a rationale for what he understood to be the Churchs doctrine on
the immortality of the soul: But that the soul is made immortal is a further point in the
Churchs teaching which you must know.2 Yet, unlike his Hellenic counterparts,
Athanasius was also careful to specify that the soul possesses only a created and therefore
finite, gratuitous, and alterable immortality, which enables Athanasius to say at the same
time that man is by nature mortal, inasmuch as he is made out of what is not.3
Nevertheless, as created gift, its immortality is its own and renders the soul uniquely
equipped for intercourse with all things immortal:
For ideas and thoughts (ennoiai kai theriai) about immortality never desert the
soul, but abide in it and are, as it were, the fuel which ensures its immortality.
This, then, is why the soul has the capacity for beholding God and is its own way
thereto, receiving not from without but from herself the knowledge and
apprehension of the Word of God.4
This passage betrays another anthropological dimension of the paradox
Athanasius finds and maintains in the mystery of salvation and anticipates the ascetical
method he will later recommend for the souls postlapsarian return to its celestial patria;
it is only by directing their gaze within themselves that sinners can truly be transported
outside themselves in an ecstatic embrace of the eternal Logos, whereas the soul which
only appears to be turning outside itself (toward the world of sensual delights) is in
truth becoming enslaved to the downward gravitational pull of its basest desires. As
1CG
2.
2Ibid.
3DI
33.
4.
4CG
33.
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Athanasius favorite exemplar of the sinner in the throes of divinization, Antonys

conversion to the God who is radically Other began when he communed with himself
(synagn eautou tn dianoian)1 and by taking heed to himself (prosechn eaut)2 and
by considering the spirituality of the soul (noeron ts phychs logizomenos).3 The
teaching of Christ, therefore, that the kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17:12)
means to Athanasius that the human person was created with and still retains the way to
the knowledge of God in the nous: And if one were to ask, what road is this? I say that
it is the soul (phychn) of each one of us, and the intelligence (noun) which resides there.
For by it alone can God be contemplated and perceived.4
Although Athanasius does not write explicitly of a higher soul and a lower soul,
such as most Platonists and Gnostics conceived, he does characterize the nous as the
created faculty of the soul by which it is related to (knows and loves) God5 and the psych
as that aspect of the soul whereby it is related to the body.6 Decisively unlike his pagan
interlocutors, however, Athanasius clearly believed and taught that all three elements-mind, soul, and body--are good in themselves and constitutive of the whole redeemed
person,7 provided that the nous continues to fulfill its self-transcending, theocentric,
contemplative vocation.
If the beatitude of the first humans consisted in the vision they enjoyed of God,
then their fall into sin, for Athanasius, consisted in their turn toward the self and the
1VA 2.
2Ibid.
3.
3Ibid.
5. Cf. VA 20: For rectitude of soul consists in its having its spiritual part in its
natural state (to kata physin noeron) as created.
4CG
30.
5See
Kannengiesser, ed., SChr 199:74-77.
6CG
5, 32, 33.
7See A.
Petterson, Athanasius and the Human Body (Bristol: The Bristol Press, 1990).
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sensually delightful; holding to the body and the other things of sense and deceived as it
were in their own surroundings, they fell into lust of themselves, preferring what was
their own to the contemplation of what belonged to God (ta theia therias).1 Adam,
having despised and rejected the contemplation of God therefore came under the
condemnation of death, the most serious consequence of which was the forfeiture of his
participation in divine life, for even though man is by nature mortal, inasmuch as he is
made out of what is not, it was nevertheless true that
by reason of his likeness (homoiotta) to Him that is (and if he still preserved this
likeness by keeping Him in his knowledge) he would stay his natural corruption
(phthoran), and remain incorrupt . . . but being incorrupt, he would live
henceforth as a god (hs theos), to which I suppose the divine Scripture refers
when it says I have said ye are gods and all sons of the most High. 2
This turn from the contemplation of God was tantamount to idolatry in Athanasius mind,
for having both their being and their blessedness entirely from participation in the
uncreated Word, the first humans sought it elsewhere, in the passions of their bodies.
Thus, having lost their reason, and plunged into the lusts and imaginations of carnal
things and forgotten the knowledge and glory of God, their reasoning being dull
(amudros), or rather following unreason, made gods for themselves of things seen,
glorifying the creature rather than the Creator, and deifying the works rather than the
Master, God, their Cause and Artificer.3 It is upon this definition of sin as the turn away
from the Uncreated to the created that Athanasius would attempt later to hang the Arians
as clever, sophisticated idolaters.
1CG
2DI
3.
4, PG 25:104.
3CG
8, PG 25:17. On the meaning of the technical Platonic term amudros, see E. P.

Meijering, Orthodoxy and Platonism in Athanasius: Synthesis or Antithesis? (Leiden: E.
J. Brill, 1974), 19f.
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Athanasius was imprecise on what, exactly, happened to the kateikona aspect of

human nature as a consequence of its fall. 1 On the one hand he claims that because of
sin, humanity was deprived of the grace which they had, being in the image of God.2
More commonly, however, he seems not to think the imprint of the image utterly
destroyed, as for instance when taught that our first parents retained the capacity to
ascend with the intelligence of their soul (t n ts psychs) and turn back to God again.3
It seems clear at least that Athanasius believed the human souls participation in the
Logos, which rendered it logikos and thus able to receive God, 4 was sufficiently obscured
or weakened so as require the divine grace of recreation when
turning away and forgetting that she was in the image of the good God, she no
longer by the power which is in her (en aut dynames), sees God the Word after
whose likeness she is made (kath hon kai gegonen); but having departed from
herself (ex de eauts genomen), imagines and feigns what is not. For hiding, by
the complications of bodily lust, the mirror (katoptron) which, as it were, is in her,
by which alone she had the power of seeing the Image of the Father, she no longer
sees what a soul ought to behold.5
Although Athanasius clearly thought that the freedom of the human will remained
at least partially intact after the fall into sin, 6 he was much less insistent upon the value
and full power of free will than many of his fellow Easterners would be, primarily
because of his eventual need to emphasize, against the voluntarism of the Arians, the
1Bernard,
2DI
Limage de Dieu, 51.
7. See also CA 1.51.
3CG
34. Cf. CG 33. See Roldanus, 82ff.; Gross, 205.
4DI
2, 3, 6, 11. See Bernard, Limage de Dieu, 47: logikos is, for (Athanasius), identical
to the knowledge of God. See also Roldanus, 46-65.
5CG
8. See also DI 12: The first sinner were overcome by the pleasures of the moment .
. . so as no longer to seem rational (logikous), but from their ways to be reckoned void of
reason (alogous), on which account the law and the prophets became necessary.
6Ibid.
34; CA 1.37.
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necessarily mutable and arbitrary character of the will when it is divorced from nature;1
the Father doesn't generate the Son by the will only, considered independently from the
divine nature, for if the Son is to be regarded as a fully reliable Image of the Father, his
generation must be immutable, hence both willful and essential. 2
As with Irenaeus before him, the ultimate duality in the universe for Athanasius
was that between the created and the Uncreated. In fact, the two realms are so
fundamentally and constitutively different from one another that Athanasius seems
inclined on several occasions to lay partial responsibility for Adams fall into sin on the
fact of his having been a creature. At the root of this fall is the fact that man is genetic,
that is, he was created ex nihilo. 3 Although, strictly speaking, it was by the exercise of
their divinely bequeathed faculty of free will that they sinned, Athanasius cannot resists
the temptation to lay some of the responsibility for the fall on the creatures endemic
capacity to change with which they were also endowed by the Creator: For
transgression of the commandment was turning them back to their natural state, so that
just as they have had their being out of nothing, so also, as might be expected, they might
look for corruption into nothing in the course of time. . . . For man is by nature mortal,
inasmuch as he is made out of what is not. 4 If Lot-Borodine and Norman are correct in
claiming that the nothingness from which Adam was created connoted deficiency and
estrangement for Augustine5 and that this deficiency is already a predisposition to
1CA 1.37; Ad Afros

2Meijering,
3Kolp,
4DI
7.
Orthodoxy and Platonism, 75ff.
Participation, 243.
4, PG 25:104.
5Keith
Edward Norman, "Deification: The Content of Athanasian Soteriology" (Ph.D.

diss., Duke Univ., 1980), 242. Norman is clearly wrong to identify this notion as one
which sets Augustine in opposition to the Eastern fathers.
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imperfection, if not to sin, 1 then precisely the same can be said of Athanasius. In fact, it
has been said by the renowned Eastern theologian Georges Florovsky, who wrote of the
Athanasian view: Since the whole Creation had once begun, by the will and pleasure of
God, out of nothing, an ultimate meconic tendency was inherent in the very nature of
all creaturely things. By their own nature, all created things were intrinsically unstable,
fluid, impotent, mortal, liable to dissolution. 2 Kolp agrees and adds that the abiding
characteristic of the created order, to Athanasius, is its dependency.3
It is because the universe was created from nothing that it is inexorably inferior to
and dependent upon its Creator. Jesus Christ, for instance, cannot be a creature,
according to Athanasius, because he is said to be the same yesterday, today, and forever
and because the Psalmist writes that the heavens and earth shall perish, but Thou
remainest. . . . And as a vesture shalt Thou fold them up, and they shall be changed, but
Thou art the same. 4 This Psalm teaches
that the nature of all things originate and created is alterable and changeable. . . .
For things originate (to genta), being from nothing, and not being before their
origination, because, in truth, they come to be after not being, have a nature which
is changeable (alloioumenn); but the Son, being from the Father, and proper to
His essence (ts ousias autou idios), is unchangeable (analloitos) and unalterable
(atreptos) as the Father Himself.5
If Jesus Christ, he continues, be the Truth and Wisdom in such a fashion that he remains
the absolutely reliable standard against which all claims to the truth of the human person
are measured, then he must, mutatis mutandis, be unalterable. For what alters and
1Lot-Borodine,
2Florovsky,
3Kolp,
La dification de l'homme, 39.
Participation, 225.
4CA 1.36,
PG 26:88, quoting Psalm 102:26-28.
5Ibid.
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changes (trepomenon kai alloioumenon), and has no stay in one and the same condition,
how can that be true?1 What Irenaeus called a graft, Garrigues observes, Athanasius
here calls a habitus, when he contrasts the Logos, who possesses his divine Sonship in an
unalterable way, to humans in whom a certain grace and habit (charin kai hexin) of
virtue exists accidentally.2
Athanasius also believes that what unites the created to the Uncreated is precisely
the very thing that eternally separates the two, namely, the formers utterly dependent
participation in the latter. Prior to the soteriological participation of the redeemed in
divine life, then, which we are considering here under the rubric of deification and which
is, as Bernard writes, of an entirely different intensity and power than the participation
of the cosmos in the Logos,3 Athanasius understood all creatures to have been in
possession of what Kolp calls an ontological participation in God: Just as the original
creation was described in terms of participation (ontologically men have their being from
God by participation), so also the renewal of creation will be cast in participation
terminology.4 The bare fact of having been created according to the image of God was a
certain participation in the image of God, as Athanasius understood it: God made them
after His own image (kat eikona), giving them a portion (metadous) even of the power
(dunames) of His own Word; so that having as it were a kind of reflection (skias) of the
Word, and being made rational (logikoi), they might be able to abide (diamenein) ever in
blessedness.5 Moreover, the first humans were destined, by the grace following from
1Ibid.
2Ibid.,
cited by J.-M. Garrigues, L'nergie divine et la grce chez Maxime le

Confesseur, 294.
3Bernard,
LImage de Dieu, 45. Cf. Kolp, Participation, 254-55, who writes of salvific
participation having a religious value far exceeding the mere ontological explanation of
mans existence.
4Kolp,
5DI
Participation, 258.
3, PG 25:101.
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partaking of the Word (chariti de ts tou Logou metousias), to have escaped their natural
state (tou kata physin ekphugovtes), had they remained good. For because the Word
dwelling with them, even their natural corruption (phthora) did not come near them.1
The most serious consequence of the fall, then, was the loss of participation in the Word.2
As it is, because the boundaries between Creator and creature can never be effaced or
crossed, participation (in God) is mans only hope to escape the destructive forces of his
nature.3
The nature which Athanasius distinguishes from grace, then, or, rather, the created
from the uncreated, 4 is defined by the quality of being fleeting and subject to
dissolution unless it partakes (metalambanousa) of the Word Who derives true
existence from the Father and is helped by Him so as to exist, lest that should come to it
which would have come but for the maintenance of it by the Word--namely, dissolution. 5
Kolp finds in this passage the most representative statement of what he called the strictly
ontological function of participation in Athanasius thought.6 Bernard also writes, in this
connection, that although Athanasius maintains that the whole of creation participates in
the Word to some degree, it is a passive participation, so to speak, which consists in
Words sustenance of the worlds existence and order, so that there can be found therein a
1Ibid.
2See
5, PG 25:105.
DI 6, 11, 13; Roldanus, 47.
3Roldanus,
60.
4Bernard,
LImage de Dieu, 61, clarifies: The opposition between charis and physis does
not correspond to our notion of the natural and the supernatural, but rather to the
transcendence of the divine Uncreated over corruptible creation.
5CG
41, PG 25:81, citing Col. 1:15-18: through Him and in Him all things consist. . . .
Cf. DI 11-13 and Plato, Politicus 272d-73d.
6"Participation,
233.
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certain reflection of Himself. This is not, however, a participation which one could call
active, that is, a cognitive power of the spiritual order. 1
CHRISTOLOGY AND SONSHIP

Athanasius christology is foundational to the understanding of his doctrine of
divinization because, "more clearly than the Fathers before him, Saint Athanasius
identified divinization and divine filiation.2 If his anthropology turned on the distinction
between the one unique eikn of God and those creatures who have been created only
kateikona, then his soteriology will similarly turn on another christological distinction,
that between the essential divine sonship of the eternal Logos and the adoptive divine
sonship of the redeemed. Indeed, it is precisely this question of the differential
relationship between these two realities which finally and most decisively separated
Athanasius and Nicene orthodoxy from Arius and his theological progeny. The Maginot
line, as it were, between their two competing approaches to salvation through Christ was
in turn drawn by their respective applications of the language of participation, which, as
will be shown, is tantamount to grace in the Athanasian lexicon.
In order to discuss the concept of adoptive divine sonship as participation in God,
we must first consider what Athanasius understood about the divine nature in which the
redeemed are made participants. The Godhead, which he frequently identifies with the
Father, is agen(n)tos, 3 immaterial (aulos) and incorporeal (asmatos),4 simple (aploun),5
1Limage
de Dieu, 62.
2Gross,
215: Athanasius employs the terms theopoiein and huiopoiein as synonyms

which express the assimilation and the intimate union of the Christian to God due to the
presence in him of the Logos and His Spirit."
3De
decretis 8.
4Ibid.
10.
5Ibid.
22.
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incorruptible (aphthartos) and immortal (athanatos), 1 invisible (aoratos) and

incomprehensible (akatalptos),2 among other apophatic modifiers. The Arians too had
affirmed the Fathers essentially unoriginate, good, true, wise, and eternal nature3, but
Athanasius attributes the most insidious motives to their doing so, namely, not as caring
for Gods honor, but from malevolence towards the Saviour . . . for in calling God
unoriginated (agenton), they are . . . calling Him from things which came to be
(genomenn), and as a Maker only, that so they may imply the Word to be a work after
their own pleasure.4 Both parties to the discussion, Arian and Nicene, agreed on the
impossibility of there being two agen(n)ta.5 Positing two agen(n)ta would be a verbal
contradiction, since the agen(n)ta is by definition the one subsistent, the first cause, to
which everything else is indebted for its being or existence; if there were two of them,
then one would need reference to a third, logically prior agency to explain the difference
between the two. 6 Much of this christological dispute may be attributable to the fourth
century authors linguistic inability to affirm that the Son is uncreated (agentos) but not
unbegotten (agenntos).7
1CG
22.
2Ibid.
35.
3The Arian
doctrine of God is summarized in his letter to Bishop Alexander, as recorded

by Athanasius in De synodis 16: We acknowledge one God (hena Theon), alone
ingenerate (monon agennton), alone everlasting (aidion), alone unbegun (anarchon),
alone true (althinon), alone having immortality (athanasian echonta), alone wise
(sophia), alone good (agathon), alone sovereign (dunastn).
4De
decretis 30, PG 25:472-73. Cf. his virtually identical remark in CA 1.33.
5See
G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London: SPCK, 1936), 37-54.
6Williams,
The Logic of Arianism, 69.
7See
Kolp, Participation, 158-64, for a summary of the scholarship on this thorny

question. He concludes (164) that Athanasius turned to the language of participation
largely in order to escape what was otherwise a quagmire of misunderstanding.
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Athanasius is also in essential agreement with the Arians that all created existence
is external to the Creators essence and is the mutable, purely gratuitous product of His
will: For other things, according to the nature of things created (to genta), are without
likeness in essence (ouden homoion kat ousian) with the Maker; but are external
(exthen) to Him, made by the word at His grace and will (chariti kai boulsei), and thus
admit of ceasing to be.1 Both recognized that in order for the creation to be seen as a
perfectly free act of the divine will, hence as a work of disinterested love or grace, it must
also been seen as fully outside of Gods essence, therefore invulnerable to necessity. Yet
the Arians, according to Athanasius, in the interest of securing the gratuity of creation,
had so thoroughly reduced the being of God to an act of His absolutely uncircumscribed
will that they were unable to see anything in God prior to or outside His will.2 This, in
turn, led them to posit an irresolvable antinomy between nature (necessity) and will
(freedom), as Athanasius bemoans:
And who is it then who imposes necessity on Him . . . ? For what is contrary to
will (boulsei) they see; but what is greater and transcends (hyperkeimenon) it has
escaped their perception. For as what is beside purpose is contrary to will, so
what is according to nature transcends and precedes counseling. . . . As far then
as the Son transcends the creature, by so much does what is by nature (kata
physin) transcend the will (boulses). And they, on hearing of Him, ought not to
measure by will what is by nature; forgetting however that they are hearing about
Gods Son, they dare to apply human contrarieties in the instance of God,
necessity (anagkn) and beside purpose (para gnmn), to be able thereby to
deny that there is a true Son of God. 3
1CA 1.20.
Athanasius frequently considers it sufficient to demonstrate that neither the

Son nor the Holy Spirit are creatures in order to clinch the argument that they are of the
essence proper to the Father, as for example in De synod. 45 and Ad Serap. 1.17, 21.
2See
Rowan Williams, Arius, 230-31, where he recalls our attention, previously raised by
Gwatkin, to the radical voluntarism and the core of Arian theology, one which renders
Arius unable to say anything about the subject of willing beyond the mere assertion that
it wills.
3CA 3.62,
PG 26:453.
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Was the response which Athanasius offered to the Arians on this point to posit a
real, ontological distinction in God between His essence and energies or substance and
operations or being and acting in such a way that God is knowable and participable to
creatures only in the latter but not in the former? Florovsky represents a school of
thought which thinks it was exactly that, calling it Athanasius major and decisive
contribution to trinitarian theology and adding that it left him free to define the concept
of Creation properly. . . . Gods Being has an absolute ontological priority over Gods
action and will. 1 The ground for the Arian conflation of being and acting in God,
Florovsky goes on to explain, was unwittingly laid by the Apologists and especially by
Origen who, in an effort to guard the divine immutability, insisted that the being of God
is eternally and fully actualized. Thus, according to them, there can be nothing in God
which is only potentially creative. In particular, Florovsky contrasts Athanasius alleged
differentiation between the being and acting of God with Origens identification of the
two in De princ. 1.2.10, where Origen reasons that because God is immutable, He cannot
be omnipotent unless He is eternally omnipotent and He cannot be eternally omnipotent
absent eternal creatures upon whom to exercise His omnipotence: But if there never
was a time when He was not omnipotent, of necessity those things by which He receives
that title must also exist; and He must always have had those over whom He exercised
power.2 Furthermore, by placing the foreknowledge (praescientiae) of creation in the
Being of the Wisdom of God3 and by attributing the generation of the Son to the will of
the Father, Florovsky believes Origen to have foreclosed the possibility of differentiating
between the divine acts of ad intra generation and ad extra creation. The Son is born of
1Florovsky,
2De
princ. 1.2.10; Florovsky, The Concept of Creation, 39-41.
3Ibid.
1.2.2: all the creative power of the coming creation was included in this very
existence of Wisdom (whether of those things which have an original or of those which
have a derived existence), having been formed beforehand and arranged by the power of
foreknowledge.
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the Father, Origen writes, like an act of His will proceeding from the mind. And I am
therefore of opinion that the will of the Father ought alone to be sufficient for the
existence of that which He wishes to exist.1 As Florovsky sees the matter, therefore, the
assumption shared by both Origen and Arius was that the immutable creator God must
always have been creator; Origen concluded from this assumption that the created order
must be eternal, whereas Arius drew the same principle to the only other reasonably
alternative conclusion that the agent of creation, the Logos, was himself created.
Secondly, Florovsky adduces a passage from DI 17, wherein Athanasius addresses
the question of how the Logos could remain the Lord of the universe while circumscribed
in his incarnate body:
while present in the whole of Creation, He is at once distinct in being from the
universe (ektos men esti tou pantos kat ousian), and present in all things by His
own power (en pasi de esti tais heautou dunamesi), giving order to all things, and
over all and in all revealing His own providence, and giving life to each thing and
all things, including (periechn) the whole without being included (m
periechomenos), but being in His own Father alone wholly and in every respect. 2
Florovsky finds in this passage another proto-Palamite ontological distinction between
the divine essence and energies which, although found previously in Philo and Plotinus,
he believes takes on an entirely new connotation with Athanasius. This distinction, he
claims, is never applied to the relationship between God and Logos, but now serves to
discriminate strictly between the inner Being of God and His creative and providential
manifestation ad extra.3
1De
princ. 1.2.6. Origen continues: And thus also the existence (subsistentia) of the Son
is generated by Him. . . . And we must be careful not to fall into the absurdities of those
who picture to themselves certain emanations, so as to divide the divine nature into
parts.
2DI
17, SC 18:324.
3Florovsky,

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Closely related to the DI 17 passage cited above is a passage from De decretis in

which Athanasius, with his usual view toward confounding the Arian claim that the
Logos and the redeemed are equally sons of God, asks whether Gods being is as mans
being. Perish the thought, he replies, for
men, being incapable of self-existence, are enclosed in place, and consist
(synesttes) in the Word of God; but God is self-existent, enclosing all things and
enclosed by none (periechn ta panta kai hyp oudenos periechomenos); within
all according to His own goodness and power, yet without all in His proper nature
(en pasi men esti kata tn eauton agathotta kai dynamin, ech de tn pantn palin
esti kata tn idian physin).1
Of this text, Florovsky writes: Already in Athanasius we find a clear distinction
between Gods very essence and His powers and bounty. 2
Thirdly in service to his neo-Palamite thesis, Florovsky points to CA 2.2, where,
in the course of arguing that the Son must be an offspring of the Fathers essence,
Athanasius calls the Son an essential energy (enousios energeia) of the Father. 3 Here
Athanasius adopts Origens argument that if the Son were not generated by the Father
there would be nothing in God essentially (kat ousian) which corresponds to His activity
as Creator of all things. The two Alexandrians part company, however, according to
Florovksy, in that Athanasius noticeably refused to follow Origen in the latters alleged
confusion between generation and creation or between the being of God and the work of
God.4 Furthermore, Florovsky suggests, Athanasius alone among the two attempted to
refute the Arian claim that the Son had been begotten solely by the will and pleasure
1De
decretis 11.
2Florovsky,
St. Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers, 128.
3CA 2.2.
4Florovsky,
"The Concept of Creation, 50, citing De princ. 3.5.2.

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(boulsei kai thelsei)1 of the Father because he saw the necessity of drawing this careful
distinction between the being of God, which is not a changeable product of His willful
deliberation, and the activity or energy of God, which is just that. Athanasius, in his
refutation of Arianism, formally stressed the ultimate difference between ousia (or
physis), on the one hand, and the Boulsis, on the other, inasmuch as Gods will is
eminently free, whereas there is a certain necessity in the Divine Being.2 Florovsky
concludes with the following Athanasian vindication of Palamas :
Now the question arises: Is the distinction between Being and Acting in God,
or, in other terms, between the Divine Essence and Energy, a genuine and
ontological distinction--in re ipsa; or is it merely a mental or logical distinction,
as it were, kat epinoian, which should not be interpreted objectively, lest the
Simplicity of the Divine Being is compromised. There cannot be the slightest
doubt that for St. Athanasius it was a real and ontological difference. . . . Not only
do we distinguish between Being and Will; but it is not the same thing, even
for God, to be and to act. This was the deepest conviction of St. Athanasius.3
Lossky also contends that because the generation of the Son and procession of the Spirit
within the Godhead are kata physin, then they are not also by the will of the Father,
1CA 3.59.
See Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 301ff: the doctrine
that the Father did not beget the Son by His will and good pleasure, which Athanasius
affirms repeatedly, was condemned by a group of Eastern bishops who met together in
Philippopolis in 342 instead of attending the council Constans had called in Sardica the
same year, a council which these Eastern bishops has suspected was rigged in favor of
what they regarded to be the Sabellian or modalistic doctrine of both the Westerners and
Athanasius.
2Florovsky,
St. Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers, 130, citing CA
3.64-66. Cyril was simply repeating St. Athanasius, Florovsky explains in connection
with a quotation from Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus 18, PG 75:312c, offered by
Gregory Palamas, Capita 96: For this reason the divine Cyril pointed out the distinction
between the substance and energy of God when he said that begetting belongs to the
divine nature but creating to his divine energy, adding the wise statement, Nature and
energy are not identical.
3Florovsky,
"Concept of Creation, 56-57.

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according to Athanasius. One precludes the other.1 Meyendorff goes so far as to argue
that will is ontologically distinct from nature in the Athanasian doctrine of God;
creation and adoption are acts of Gods will only and are not expressive of Gods nature,
but the generation of the Son is an act of the nature or essence of the Father alone, such
that Meyendorff is prepared to deny that the Fathers will is involved in the generation of
the Son.2
Perhaps the most redoubtable alternative to this Palamite analysis of what
Athanasius was doing with Arianism comes from Rowan Williams,3 who proposes that in
the passage to which Florovsky devoted most of his attention (CA 3.58-67), where
Athanasius was addressing the question of whether the Father begets the Son by will
(freely) or by nature (necessarily), the response which Athanasius offered was that only
from an unacceptably anthropomorphized view of God can such a question arise, for the
act of purposive deliberation requires a creaturely interval between being and acting.4
Against those Arians who dare to apply human contrarities in the instance of God, 5
Athanasius here simply asserts the irreducible mystery that the God who transcends all
temporality acts at once with absolute freedom and in perfect accordance with His own
nature. God wills to be what He is essentially and immutably, without any possibility
that He could be otherwise, namely, generative, good, and merciful.6 In the face of the
1Lossky,
The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 45, citing CA 1.18.
2Meyendorff,
3Arius:
Byzantine Theology, 129-30.
Heresy and Tradition (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1986), 215-29.
4See
CA 2.57: And there is this difference [from the Son], that the creatures are made
upon the beginning, and have a beginning of existence connected with an interval
(diastmatik arch). Cf. CA 3.66; CG 42.3. Gregg and Groh, Early Arianism: A View of
Salvation, 172, n. 67, also insist that Athanasius claims no interval (diastma) between the
divine will and the divine nature.
5CA 3.62.
6Ibid.
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governing Arian concern to define and protect the self-determination or aseity of God by
protecting Him from the world of contingency in which the incarnate Son is involved,
Athanasius poses the following question, as paraphrased by Williams: if everything is
made to depend on the Fathers totally undetermined will, does that will express the
divine nature or not?1 If it does, the Nicenes have a nose under the tent; if it does not,
we end up with an arbitrary God. In view of this gauntlet, Athanasius offered the solution
that there is no true antinomy between the divine nature and the divine will, or, in other
words, between the being and acting of God; the Father is always generative by
nature2 in the same way that He is always good by nature.
The apophatic theology, then, according to Williams, which led Arius to posit a
dualism between an intrinsically unknowable, absolutely simple God and His knowable,
participable second principle was transformed by Athanasius and the Nicenes into an
apophatic theology in which only a Creator-creature duality remains. God Himself is an
eternal relationship without remainder, that is, with no inaccessible divine hinterland or
abyss of potentiality behind the relations of the Trinity. As Williams reads Athanasius,
there is no overplus of unengaged and inexpressible reality, nothing that is not realized
in and as relationship, in God. 3 The simplicity of God, then, belongs to His trinitarian
life as viewed over against the multiplicity of creation. This is why Athanasius, along
with all the fathers of both East and West following Him, would insist that the work of
God ad extra is the work of the entire Trinity. 4 It further means that the divine nature
1Williams, Arius,
229.
2CA 3.66.
3Rowan
Williams, Arius, 242. Cf. John Milbank, The Second Difference: For a
Trinitarianism Without Reserve, Modern Theology 2 (1986): 213-34.
4Athanasius,
CA 2.41-42; Ad Serap. 2.19, 3.6; Basil, De Spir. Sanct. 37, 38, 52, 56-60;
Gregory Naz., Orat. 34.14; Cyril of Alex., In Ioan. 4.3, 10.2; Augustine, De Trin. 1.4.7,
5.8; In Ioan ev. 20; Serm. 213.6, inter alia. Cited by Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit,
2:85, n. 24.
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cannot be abstracted from Gods active relationship with the world. 1 The negativity or
apophaticism which remains is precisely the inexhaustibility and inscrutability of the
Trinity itself. What is inaccessible to the human mind (inapprehensible, that is; all are
agreed that the infinity of God is incomprehensible to finite creatures) is the very identity
of being and acting or substance and operation or essence and energy in the life of God,
rather than the being or substance or essence behind the acting or operation or energy;
the inscrutable mystery of God is how immutable simplicity can be coextensive with
interactive plurality. Moreover, because Gods own immanent life involves a
differentiated plurality of persons--a Giver, a Gifted, and a Gift, or an act of initiation and
response--then created response is not necessarily external to God but somehow capable
of being attuned to and caught up in Gods own movement in and to Himself.2 Indeed,
it is precisely and only because of this divine reality that transforming union or
indwelling can be conceived without the utter dissolution of the limits of creatureliness.3
To this genre of apophaticism, Williams contends, Athanasius, the Cappadocians, and
Augustine equally belong.
Meijering also seems to concur with Williams against Florovsky et al., although it
must be said here that none of these authors address each others work directly. He
observes that the Athanasian claims in CG 2 that God has His being beyond all
substance and human discovery (hyperekeina pass ousias kai anthrpins epinoias
hyparchn) 4 and in CG 35 that He has his being beyond all created existence (epekeina
pass genets ousias huparchn) and in CG 40 that God is above all created existence
(huperepekeina pass genets epinoia), which look at first glance like they was taken
directly out of Platos Republic, where he also defines the form of the Good as epekeina
1Rowan
2Ibid,
243.
3Ibid.,
4PG
Williams, Arius, 242.
244.
25:5.
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ts ousias, serve Athanasius purposes only to distinguish Gods infinite being from the
finitude of creation ex nihilo, but not to suggest a super-transcendent, intrinsically
unknowable component of God Himself.1 He argues for this interpretation on the
grounds that Athanasius frequently in his early works uses ousia not to designate Being
itself, but created substance,2 (as the CG 35 and CG 40 passages make explicit) and
because Athanasius usually identifies God with true Being3 and because epinoia is used
more commonly by Athanasius to describe the idolatrous imagination of pagans than
anything related to the salvific knowledge of God.4 Moreover, Athanasius seems to
Meijering less influenced by the Neoplatonists, for whom the One was indeed epekeina ts
ousias in the sense that Palamas intends, than by the Middle Platonists who led both
Irenaeus and Justin to employ similar expressions strictly for the transcendence of God
over creation.5 The above quoted phrase from Contra gentes, then, should not be
interpreted in a Neo-Platonic way, meaning that God transcends Being and Thinking, but
as a polemical remark against idolatry: the true God is above every creature and above
the perverted imagination of men, whilst the gods of the Pagans are not more than
creatures, deified by the perverted imagination of men.6
Several additional considerations appear to support the Williams/Meijering
reading. First and most briefly, to the contention of Williams, Gregg and Groh that
Athanasius takes it as axiomatic that Gods being and acting are characteristically and
necessarily connected, in the sense that they are reflective and therefore revelatory of
each other, could be added the further evidence that Athanasius attempts to indict the
1Republic
6.509b. Cf. Parm. 141e; Origen, Con. Cels. 7.42; De princ. 1.1.
2Orthodoxy
and Platonism, 6-7.
3Ibid.,
6, 66.
4Ibid.,
7.
5Irenaeus,
Epid. 3; Justin, Dial. 4.1.
6Meijering,
Orthodoxy and Platonism, 7.

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pagans ersatz gods by applying this very same principle in an effort to demonstrate their
unworthy nature from the folly of their works: For their deeds (praxeis) must
correspond to their natures (ousiais), so that at once the actor (praxas) may be made
known by his act (energeias) and the action (praxis) may be ascertainable from his nature
(ousias).1
Secondly, with regard to the De decretis 11 passage in which Athanasius writes
that God is within all according to His own goodness and power, yet without all in His
proper nature, William Schoedel traces the history of this phrase enclosing all things
and enclosed by none to which the above quoted formula is Athanasius explanatory
comment.2 He concludes that both the phrase itself as well as the monistic concept of
divine infinity it expresses is of Eleatic origin, but was adopted by what Schoedel calls
orthodox Gnosticism (orthodox, that is, in the Christian sense), in order to separate
itself from the clearly heretical school of dualistic Gnosticism. The Athanasian reference
to Gods power and nature Schoedel believes to have originated with Philo, especially
since the latter also uses it in conjunction with the formula enclosing/not enclosed.
Biblical language that has to do with Gods movement up or down (e.g. Deut. 4:39) does
not describe Gods being; for it is to be solemnly affirmed that Being encloses and is
not enclosed. Biblical references to Gods movements are said to have to do with Gods
power by which he ordered all things.3 The Gnostic Teaching of Silvanus also avers
that God fills all places in respect to his power but in his Godhead nothing contains
him.4 Neither of these references, however, shed light on how Athanasius might have
1CG
16.
2William
R. Schoedel, Topological Theology and Some Monistic Tendencies in

Gnosticism, in Essays on the Nag Hammadi: Texts in Honor of Alexander Bohlig, ed.
Martin Krause (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972), 88-108.
3Ibid.,
95, citing Mig. Abrah. 182 and Conf. Ling. 136.
4Ibid.
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thought Gods perfections to be at once communicable and incommunicable. Rather,

they are offered strictly by way of answering the topological question, namely, how the
transcendent Creator of heaven and earth could be present at every location (topos) in His
creation while remaining distinct from it, uncircumscribed by it, and independent of it. It
is one thing for God to be different in essence from creatures (which these formula
clearly affirm) and quite another thing for God to be essentially absent from or essentially
unknowable to creatures, which these formula do not so much as suggest. To the
contrary, by purporting to say something true about Gods essence--that it is without
all--Athanasius seems implicitly to assume that it is also susceptible of predication.
Thirdly, the neo-Palamite interpretation of Athanasius is further weakened when
one gives careful consideration to the polemical context in which Athanasius calls the
Son the essential energy (enousios energeia) of the Father.1 Arius and his followers
also commonly called Christ a power (dynamis) of God, 2 but specifically denied that he
was an essential power. 3 Asterius, for instance, had taught that the Pauline reference in I
Corinthians 1:24 to Christ as Gods power (dynamin) and wisdom does not denote the
power proper to God himself, but another (alln) Power and Wisdom of God, namely,
that which is revealed through Christ.4 Eusebius also regarded the Son to have a perfect
likeness to the Father in disposition or virtue (diathesis) and power (dynames), but they
remain created virtues and created powers, hence derivative and lesser.5 When
understood against this backdrop, it becomes evident that Athanasius point in calling the
Son an essential energy of the Father is not to establish that the divine person of the
1CA 2.2.
2De
decret. 5.20; De synod. 15.
3CA 3.26.
4Asterius,
See Williams, The Logic of Arianism, 59.

Frag. I, quoted by Gregg and Groh, Early Arianism: A View of Salvation, 103f.
5Eusebius,
Ep. ad Paulin, cited by Gregg and Groh, Early Arianism: A View of Salvation,
100f.
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Logos is somehow intrinsically more knowable and communicable to creatures than is

either the divine person or the essence of the Father. Rather, by adding the adjective
enousios to a designation for Christ which had already become an Arian commonplace,
Athanasius reveals his intention to demonstrate to the Arians that the will or work of God
cannot rightly be opposed to His nature or essence. The Son is neither simply a work of
the Father like the created order, nor, as it were, a natural (necessary) effluence of the
Fathers essence independent of His will. Rather, the Son is both the offspring (hence
work) of the Fathers will and at the same time an expression or utterance of the Fathers
ousia. The Son is the living Will (zsa boul) of the Father.1 Athanasius calls the Son
the essential energy of God, then, not by way of distinguishing between the uncreated
essence and uncreated energy proper to God, but in order to distinguish between the one,
singularly essential power of God and all the other powers of God which are not essential
(hence, not uncreated), but have become powers of God through participation in the Son.
In other words, Athanasius was attempting to refute the Arian argument that
there are many powers (dynameis), one of which is Gods own by nature (Theou
idia physei) and eternal, but that Christ on the other hand, is not the true power of
God (althin dynamis tou Theou); but, as others, one of the so-called powers, one
of which, namely, the locust and the caterpillar (Joel 2:25), is called in Scripture,
not merely the power, but the great power. The others are many and are like the
Son, and of them David speaks in the Psalms, when he says, The Lord of hosts
or powers. (Ps. 24:10)2
Athanasius was presented with a perfect opportunity at this precise juncture in his
exposition of the Thalias doctrine of divine powers to delineate a proto-Palamite
differentiation between Gods incommunicable essence and His communicable energies
or powers. The fact that he does no such thing is revealing.
1CA 2.31.
2CA 1.5.
Cf. CA 3.26.
Cf. De decretis 16
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Finally, with regard to the Origenist problematic advanced by Florovsky as

recounted above, Athanasius explicitly addresses this issue when he quotes his opponents
as asking: if God is eternally Creator, does it follow then, that because He is Framer of
all, therefore His works also are eternal, and is it wicked to say of them too, that they
were not before origination? 1 His first response is to repeat once again the constant
refrain of the Orations: by the very nature of things, a work is external (exthen) to the
Maker, but a son is the proper offspring of the essence (idion ts ousias gennma).2 Here
again, the basis for the eternal difference between the essential Son and adopted (created)
sons does not reside in a differentiation or ontological distinction within God between
His being and His acting, but rather in the inviolable ontological distinction between
everything which is coessential with God (namely, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and their
common will) and everything which is not. In direct response to those who inquire why
Gods essential, eternal power to make does not require equally eternal acts of that
power, Athanasius, after scolding the hypothetical inquisitor for the rationalistic
presumption inherent in such a question, replies somewhat tautologically: although God
always had the power to make (dynamenos poiein), yet the things originated had not the
power of being eternal. In other words, the creature is by definition from nothing.
Radically unlike the divine Sonship of the Logos, the finitude of the creature redounds
not to the demerit of the Creator, as though there were something lacking to Him prior to
the created orders existence, but belongs necessarily and by definition to what it means
not to be God: And that creatures should not be in existence, does not disparage the
Maker; for He has the power of framing them, when He wills; but for the offspring
(gennma) not to be always with the Father is a disparagement of the perfection of His
essence (teleiottos ts ousias). 3 The relationship between God and creation, then, as
1Ibid.
1.29.
2Ibid.
3Ibid.
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Athanasius conceives it, is already eternally perfected in Gods constitutive, essential

relationship between the Father and the Son. The Son is at once the Fathers power to
create and adopt and also an eternally actualized power, rather than some sort of raw
potentiality which must await the beginning of created time in order to be fulfilled. The
eternal sonship of the Logos to the Father is the fully enacted antecedent possibility for
creations gratuitous adoptive sonship to the Father.
Athanasius concern in all of this, then, is not to effect a separation between the
divine theology and economy or between Gods essence and activity, but to establish the
constitutive priority of the former over the latter. In order to accomplish this, he
emphatically denies the very separation which Arius insisted must obtain between the
two; yet another reason, for instance, Athanasius gives that the Son is not foreign
(allotrion) but proper (idion) to the Fathers essence is drawn from his exegesis of
Proverbs 8:30 (I was by Him, daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him) which
he quotes by way of demonstrating the biblical grounds for his assertion that the whole
earth is filled with the knowledge of Him; for the knowledge (gnsis) of Father through
the Son and of the Son from Father is one and the same.1 The Fathers eternally
immutable (fully actualized) perfection is not compromised or in any way diminished by
His taking delight in His creation because this delight in adopted sons is but an extension
into time and space of His eternal delight in the Eternal Son, by incorporation into whom
they were made sons: For even thus he had delight, not because joy was added to Him,
but again on seeing the works made after His own Image; so that even this rejoicing of
God is on account of His Image.2
If Williams and Meijering are indeed right in holding that Athanasius was
concerned primarily to confound the Arians radical voluntarism wherein the absolute
indeterminacy of the divine will must be protected by a refusal to predicate anything at
1CA 2.82.
2Ibid.
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all of the divine essence, then, far from seeking to establish the difference between God
and man or between begetting and adopting or between generation and creation by
positing a real distinction within God between His unknowable\incommunicable essence
or being and His knowable\communicable energies or acting, Athanasius largely
grounded his argument against the Arians in a deliberate refusal to predicate
communicability upon one but not upon the other. The sending of the Son is a revelation
and communication not merely of the Fathers will and work, but also of His very Being,
as Athanasius makes explicit frequently: For the Son is the Fathers all (panta gar estin
ho Huios tou Patros);1 beholding the Son, we see (ormen) the Father, for the thought
and comprehension (ennoia kai katalpsis) of the Son is knowledge concerning the Father,
because He is the proper offspring from His essence (ek ts ousias autou idion einai
gennma).2 He who is the deifying and enlightening power of the Father must be
coessential with the Father because by partaking of Him we partake of the Father,
this on the grounds that it is not possible that He, who merely possesses from
participation, should impart of that partaking to others, since what He has is not His own,
but the Givers.3 By way of explaining to anonymous detractors of the Nicene
homoousios definition what is meant by the sayings attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of
John, I and the Father are One, and he that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father,
Athanasius insists that if the unity of the Father and Son were based simply on volitional
cooperation, then the Son would be indistinguishable from the created order: how must
we understand these words? Or how shall we so explain them as to preserve the oneness
of the Father and the Son? Now as to its consisting in agreement (symphonia) of
doctrines, and in the Sons not disagreeing with the Father, as the Arians say, such an
interpretation is a sorry one; for both the Saints and still more Angels and Archangels
1CA 3.67.
2Ibid.
3De
1.16, PG 26:45.
synodis 51.
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have such an agreement (symphnian) with God. 1 Lest this be thought to apply only
imminently to the eternal Logos and not economically to the incarnate Christ, however,
Athanasius elsewhere asks, in reference to the same passage of the Gospel of John: But
what can that be which is proper to the Fathers essence, and an offspring from it, or what
name can we give it save coessential (homoousion)? For that which a man sees in the
Father, that sees he also in the Son; and that not by participation (metousia), but
essentially (kat ousian).2 If only something external to the essence of God (His
energies, for instance) could be partaken by creatures, then why insist that the Son
through whom this extra-essential divinity is partaken is Himself coessential? It wasnt
Athanasius, but the Arians who had attempted to make the Son an intermediary between
the creature and the imparticipable, supertranscendent divine Essence, inasmuch as their
response to Nicene orthodoxy was to say that the Son of God has a prerogative over
others and is called Only-Begotten because He alone partakes the Father (metechei tou
Patros), and all other things partake the Son (tou Huiou metechei).3 As an alternative to
the Arian conception, Athanasius emphasizes that the presence of the Son ensures the
Fathers essential immediacy:
And the Word, as being not separate (kechrismenos) from the Father, nor unlike
and foreign (anomooios kai zenos) to the Fathers Essence, what He works
(ergazetai), those are the Fathers works (erga), and His framing of all things is
one with His; and what the Son gives, that is the Fathers gift. And he who hath
seen the Son knows that in seeing Him he has seen not Angel, nor one merely
greater than Angels, nor in short any creature, but the Father Himself.4
On the basis of this utterly pervasive leitmotif in the writings of Athanasius, we can
conclude with Meijering that in the Athanasian understanding of the sending of the Son
1De
synod. 48, PG 26:779-80.
2Ad Afros
3De
8, PG 26:1044.
decretis 9.
4CA 3.14.
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who is from the Father by nature and proper to His essence (ek tou Patros einai physei
kai idion autou ts ousias)1 and whom he calls the image of the Fathers essence (eikn
ts tou Patros ousias),2 God reveals nothing less than Himself and not something of
Himself, let alone something less than Himself. 3
Rather than grounding the communicability of the ever transcendent triune God in
an ontological differentiation between His essence and His energies, then, the conceptual
device Athanasius chose to distinguish between the unrepeatable divine generation of the
essential Son and the created adoptive filiation of those to whom He united Himself
through the incarnation, or, in other words, between the immanent and economic life of
the Holy Trinity, is that of the relation of participation (metousia-methexis). The
difference between the adoptive sonship of the redeemed (along with all the virtues or
perfections attendant upon it, like incorruptibility and love) and the essential sonship of
the Logos lies in the manner of their provenance and in their respective modes of
possession. The Son is the infinite, essential, immutable perfection of what creatures can
only possess partially, accidentally and contingently, or, in other words, by participation.
As with his christology, the centrality of the concept of human participation in
God for Athanasius soteriology is clearest when viewed against the backdrop of his
dispute with the Arians. Little doubt remains as to the tenuous, derivative, gratuitous, and
mutable meaning both Athanasius and Arius attached to possession by metousia/methexis.
Both parties to the controversy want to embrace participation and charis as synonyms. 4
Likewise, both Arius and Athanasius perceived the concept of participation to function
as a link between the agenetic and genetic realms.5 Athanasius writes of his dispute with
1Ibid.
2.70.
2Ibid.
2.67.
3Athanasius
4Bernard,
5Kolp,
on the Father and the Son, 102, emphasis his.
Limage de Dieu, 117-18.
Participation, 192.
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Arius that the whole case on both sides may be determined by the answer to the
question of whether Christ is the Son of God according to essence or by adoption
(thesei) and from participation (metoch) and in idea (kat epinoian),1 a comment
especially instructive on his understanding of the meaning of participation, inasmuch as
the other two accompanying modifiers are obviously contextually equivalent to metoch.
To the Thalias claim that Christ is not very God, but He, as others, was made God by
participation (kata metochn), Athanasius opposes: He is very God, existing one in
essence (homoousios) with the very Father; while other beings, to whom he said I said
ye are gods, had this grace from the Father only by participation of the Word through the
Spirit (metoch tou Logou dia tou Pneumatos).2
Herein lies the relevance of Arian soteriology as defined and proposed by Gregg
and Groh, even if the more traditional scholars are granted their claims about the priority
of Greek metaphysics for Arius. According to Gregg and Groh, the Arians had been
working on the assumption that there is just one kind of sonship to the Father; the
redeemed may possess it, therefore, only in the same manner and by the same method
with which the redeemer came to possess it, namely, by earning it through conformity to
the will of the Father. Whether accurate or not, Athanasius is quite clear in expressing his
own understanding of the Arian position that the Son is what he is by participation in the
1CA 1.9,
PG 26:29.
2Ibid.
Cf. CA 3.15. See Kolp, Partakers of the Divine Nature. The Use of II Peter 1:4
by Athanasius, Studia Patristica 17 (1982): 1021. He sees this quotation as the initial
salvo in a continuous argument which culminates in CA 1:16, where Athanasius quotes II
Peter 1:4.
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Father1 and even that he is deified by grace.2 Just like us, the Redeemer Son by
participation of the Spirit and improvement of conduct (metoch tou pneumatos kai
beltisei praxes) came to be Himself also in the Father. 3 As evidence that a created
sonship to be acquired by obedience and the practice of virtue is the only possible mode
of divine sonship, the Arians had appealed to Proverbs 8:22, where the Logos says in the
person of Wisdom The Lord created me, and to Deuteronomy 32:6, where Moses asks
the people of Israel Is not He thy Father that bought thee? Did He not make thee and
create thee?4 In reply to this, Athanasius attempts to sharpen and accentuate the
difference between adoptive and natural sonship. The God who is our Maker
according to essence becomes our Father according to grace only when we receive 'the
Spirit of His Son, crying Abba Father' (Gal. 4:6) and acquire power from Him to
become sons of god; for they could not become sons, being by nature creatures, otherwise
than by receiving (hypodexontai) the Spirit of the natural and true Son."5 Redeemed
creatures, insofar as they are adopted sons, are first created out of nothing and only
subsequently given an analogical divine birth or divine begottenness by the inhabitation
of the Logos. Their begottenness, then, is not essentially theirs, but properly belongs to
1CA 1.5;
1.6; 1.9; 1.15-16; 2.37-38; 3.15; 3.24. Gregg and Groh take Athanasius
reporting of the Arian position in this regard to be reliable and accurate (see Chpt. 1 of
Early Arianism: A View of Salvation), whereas Williams (The Logic of Arianism,
74-75) remains suspicious that it is just a convenient accusation for Athanasius polemical
purposes and proposes that if Arius did use such language, it was probably a strategic
appeal to tradition. Williams gives no evidence, however, for his rather cavalier
dismissal of Athanasius reporting of the Arian doctrine of the Sons divinization by
grace, even though he acknowledges that the thesis capably advanced by Gregg and Groh
largely hangs on whether or not Arius attributed salvific participation in God to the Son.
(Early Arianism: A View of Salvation, 75, n. 97)
2Ibid.
1.9.
3Ibid.
3.24.
4CA 2.58.
5Ibid.
2.59, PG 26:273.
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the essence of the God who inhabits them. Consequently, the likeness to God acquired
through participation in the Son by the reception of the Holy Spirit still fails to buffer or
attenuate the still more fundamental ontological dissimilarity between the uncreated,
coessential Son and His finite, created co-heirs: for what is the likeness (emphereia) of
what is out of nothing to Him who brought what was nothing into being? Or how can
that which is not be like (homoion) Him that is, being short of Him in once not being, and
in its having its place among things originate?1 The natural and true Son, conversely, is
first begotten eternally from the Fathers essence and then created strictly with respect to
the flesh--our flesh--he assumed at His incarnation.
What lies behind this contentious dispute is not a strictly academic philosophical
disparity between the two camps on whether or not it is metaphysically possible for God
to have an uncreated Son, but also divergent notions of what it means to be saved.
Athanasius argument in CA 2.58ff, as elsewhere, is meant to wreck an Arian
proposition possessing affirmative soteriological content,2 that content being the
requirement that creatures earn the Fathers grace and favor as a reward for obedience to
His will, just like the Son earned it. The redeemer, as Arius would have it, is primus inter
parem. Granted that he is the first and that God cannot create a son more excellent or
superior or greater, it is still true, according to the Athanasian reading of Arius, that one
equal to the Son the Superior is able to beget.3 The Arians believe, as Athanasius sees it,
1CA 1.21.
2Gregg
3De
Cf. CA 2.42; Ad Serap. 1.9, 30.
and Groh, Early Arianism: A View of Salvation, 56.
synodis 15.
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that they can have an almost identical relationship to the Father as that of the redeemer
Son and that such a relationship is accessible to them through willful obedience.1
Because of this tenuous, accidental, and partial form of possession Athanasius
associated with metoch, the Arian doctrine that the Word is what He is only by
participation in God would have to mean that there is another Word in God beside the
Son, and that the Son again, as partaking (metechonta) of it, is named Word and Son
according to grace (kata charin).2 Still more gravely to the possibility of our being
united to God through incorporation into the Son, it would mean that the Savior is not
very God, but by participation of grace (metoch charitos), He, as others, is God only in
name.3
Thus, it was only with awkward reluctance and rather confusedly that Athanasius
on one occasion--and on one occasion alone--attributed participation to the Logos; even
here, it came by way of speculating that if the Son were to participate in God at all, it
would have to be in the Father.4 Bernard remarks of what he calls this dense and
complex text that it is difficult to translate and comprehend with precision.5 Bals6
1This
is the cumulative force of Athanasius argument in CA 3.10-19. In this connection,

the criticism to which Gregg and Groh are most vulnerable is that they fail to take full
accounting of the great difference between the Logos and other sons in Arian doctrine,
namely that the Word was begotten before all ages and that He alone among all creatures
was created directly by the Father without mediation, as set forth in De decretis 8. See
also CA 2.19: according to Athanasius, Arius wrote that the Logos is a creature, but not
as one of the creatures; a work, but not as one of the works; an offspring, but not as one
of the offsprings.
2CA 1.5.
3Ibid.
1.6.
4Ibid.
1.15.
5Limage
de Dieu dapres saint Athanase, 119.
6Metousia
Theou, 12
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and Kolp1 also note the incongruity of this singular concession of Athanasius to the
Arians with his otherwise consistent reservation of the language of metousia/methexis to
denote a created reflection of divine attributes or perfections. The anomalous statement
in question arose in response to the Arian claim that the Son is from nothing and was
not before His generation. Athanasius replied that if this were indeed the case, He
must, then, be called Son and God and Wisdom only by participation (metousian), for
thus all other creatures consist and by sanctification are glorified. 2 Clearly the purpose
of this initial rejoinder is to reiterate Athanasius definition of participation as a
distinctive earmark of creatureliness. The confusion arises when Athanasius presses the
point by demanding to know from the Arians whereof the Son partakes. It cannot be the
Spirit, he retorts, for rather the Spirit Himself receives (lambanei) from the Son, as He
Himself says. . . . Therefore it is the Father that He partakes (metechei).3 But what of
the Father does the Son partake? If it is something external (exthen) to the Father,
Athanasius reasons, then the Son would neither be a true partaker of the Father Himself,
nor would He be the first begotten, but this something external to the Father of which the
Son partakes would be the first begotten. If, then, Matt. 3:17 (This is My Beloved Son)
and other instances in which Jesus speaks of God as his own Father indicate, as the
Arians want to say, that Jesus Christ derives his divine sonship by participation in the
Father, then it follows from the above rationale that what is partaken (metechomenon) is
not external (exthen), but from the essence (ek ts ousias) of the Father.4 That ek ts
ousias, in turn, which Athanasius further defines as proper (idion) to the Father, makes
even this highly qualified participation of the Son in the Father utterly sui generis in the
1"Participation,
2CA 1.15,
184.
PG 26:44.
3Ibid.
I have altered the NPNF translation of lambanei here from partakes to

receives for obvious reasons.
4Ibid.
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context of Athanasius usage, for it is all one to say that God is wholly participated
(hols metechesthai) and that He begets (genna). 1 Furthermore, because it is true that
of the Son Himself all things partake (metechei ta panta) according to the grace of the
Spirit coming from Him, it can additionally be said, in accordance with the consistent
Athanasian principle that what one has by participation cannot itself be communicated to
others, that the Son himself partakes of nothing, but what is partaken of the Father is the
Son (to de ek tou Patros metechomenon, touto estin ho Uios).2 This being the case, then,
although redeemed creatures cannot properly be said to have been begotten of the Father,
since to be begotten is to be an offspring of His essence, they are nevertheless truly
divinized inasmuch as partaking (metechontes) of the Son Himself, we are said to
partake (metechein) of God; and this is what Peter said, that ye may be partakers
(koinnoi) in a divine nature, as says too the Apostle, Do you not know that you are a
temple of God?3
Apart from this one, anomalous passage, then, Athanasius frequently, explicitly,
and often adamantly excluded the relation of participation entirely from the inner life of
the Trinity, which is united instead by virtue of a common ousia.4 The great significance
of this move for Athanasius understanding of divinization, according to Kolp, is that it
located metousia-methexis entirely in the creaturely realm and made it virtually
tantamount to grace: Thus nature-participation emerges as a primary means of talking
about the divine and created realms. . . . One could also educe other characteristic pairs
such as essence and will, nature and grace, and the normal agen(n)etic and gen(n)etic
1CA 1.16,
PG 26:44-45.
2Ibid.
3Ibid.,
citing also 1Cor. 3:16 (ye are a temple of God.) and 2 Cor. 6:16 (We are the
temple of the living God.).
4CA 1.9;
1.37; 2.37; 3.1; CG 46; Ad Serap. 22; De synod. 53; De decret. 9.

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pair.1 It is against this backdrop that Athanasius outright rejection of the Arian
attribution of participation to the Son must be understood, for metoch is but the weakest
form of possession, one which excludes true propriety.2 Thus, if the Son were to possess
the divine perfections of goodness, truth, wisdom, etc., and even His sonship by
participation, Athanasius reasons, He would have them only notionally (kat epinoian)3
or in name (onomati)4 and they would not therefore be His to communicate to those
who have been incorporated into Him and made co-heirs with Him, which consequently
would mean that salvation through Christ could not be anything like a recreation or
rebirth from above. It also implies that participated perfections are not uncreated in the
participant, but analogical. As an alternative to the Arian view wherein we come to
acquire our virtue and divine sonship by earning them through our own agency in the
same voluntaristic, extrinsic fashion by which the Arian savior acquired them, Athanasius
proposes a soteriology in which we come to share in Gods perfections by receiving into
our persons--body, mind, and soul--the Son who is Himself the essential fulness of those
virtues and attributes we can only hope to possess in a creaturely manner. In the course
of commenting on John 14:10, for instance, Athanasius explains that the Father is in the
Son not in the same way that the Father by coming into the saints, strengthens them,
for Christ is Himself the Fathers Power and Wisdom, and by partaking (metoch) of
Him, things originate are sanctified in the Spirit; but the Son Himself is not Son by
participation (metousia), but is the Fathers own (idion) Offspring.5 And in a passage
especially redolent of Origen, Athanasius attributed the substance of all virtue itself to the
eternal Logos, who is
1Kolp,
Participation, 212.
2Williams, Arius,
3CA 2.37,
4Ibid.
220.
PG 26:225a.
1.9, PG 26:29c.
5CA 3.1,
PG 26:324. Cf. Ad Serap. 22-23.

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the Fathers Power (dynamis) and Wisdom and Word, not being so by
participation (metoch), nor as if these qualities were imparted to Him from
without (exthen), as they are to those who partake (metechontes) of Him and are
made wise by Him and receive power and reason in Him; but He is the very
Wisdom (auto sophia, etc.), very Word, and very own Power of the Father, very
Light, very Truth, very Righteousness, very Virtue and in truth His express Image,
and Brightness and Resemblance. And to sum all up, He is the wholly perfect
Fruit of the Father, and is alone the Son, and unchanging Image of the Father.1
To be divinized by participation in the Son, then, as Athanasius understands it, is
to be assimilated to God through the acquisition of a certain divine likeness on the order
of moral virtue or with respect to habits and perfections, a created similitude which
Athanasius distinguishes sharply from connaturality or consubstantiality by using the
language of metousia to discriminate between the gratuitous-mutable and the essentialimmutable:2
Like (homoion) is not predicated of essence (ousin), but of habits (schmatn)
and qualities (poiottn); for in the case of essences we speak, not of likeness
(homoiots), but of identity (tautots). Man, for instance, is said to be like
(homoios) man not in essence, but according to habit (schma) and character
(charaktra); for in essence men are of one nature (homophyseis). . . . Therefore,
in speaking of Like according to essence (homoion kat ousian), we mean like by
participation (homoion ek metousias)--for Likeness is a quality which may attach
to essence--and this would be proper to creatures, for they, by partaking, are made
like to God (ek metochs homoioutai t The). For when He shall appear, says
Scripture, we shall be like Him, (1 Jn. 3:2) like, that is, not in essence but in
sonship (ou t ousia, alla t huiotti), which we shall partake (metalambanonen)
from Him.3
If the Son were an image and likeness to the Father by means of emulation and
obedience alone, that is, merely by the union of their two wills, then the Son would not be
distinguishable from the rest of the redeemed, many of whom also made themselves
1CG
46, PG 25:93. See Bernard, Limage de Dieu, 32-34, who emphasized (wrongly, I
think) the discontinuity between Athanasius and Origen on this point. See also Bals,
Metousia Theou, 11.
2See
Dalmais, Divinisation, 1381: Athanasius is here drawing out the sequela of a

principle developed by Irenaeus (AH 5.9.1) and by Origen (De princ. 4.1.1).
3De
synod. 53, PG 26:788bc.

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martyrs and became merciful as the Father is merciful (Luke 6:36) and practiced to
walk in love (Eph. 5:1) and were imitators of God (1 Cor. 11:1). Only the essential
Son, however, could say without qualification I and the Father are one (John 10:30)
because He only is the Image true and natural of the Father. For though we have been
made after the Image (kat eikona) and called both image and glory of God, yet not on our
own account still, but for that Image and true Glory of God inhabiting (enoiksasan) us.1
Similarly, to the Arian assertion that the therefore of Phil. 2:9 (Therefore, God has
highly exalted him) and Ps. 45:7 (Therefore, God, your God, has anointed you)
indicate that Christ was rewarded with divine sonship as a mutable grace rather than
possessing it by nature, Athanasius replies that this is precisely the earmark of adopted
sons:
For what is from another by nature (kata physin), is a real offspring (gennma), as
Isaac was to Abraham and Joseph to Jacob, and the radiance to the sun. But the
so-called sons from virtue and grace have but in place of nature a grace by
acquisition (tn ek tou labein charin) and are something else besides the gift itself,
as the men who have received the Spirit by participation (kata metochn). . . . And
of course, since they were not sons by nature, therefore, when they altered, the
Spirit was taken away and they were disinherited; and again on their repentance
that God who thus at the beginning gave them grace will receive them and give
light and call them sons again.2
Along these same lines, the entire burden of Athanasius narrative in Contra
Arianos 3.19 on the meaning of Luke 6:36 (Be merciful, even as your Father is
merciful) and Matt. 5:48 (You, therefore, must be perfect as your heavenly Father is
perfect) is to define the limits of what can be achieved through creaturely imitation, to
which the Arians had largely reduced the gospel. He warns that Christ commanded these
practices not that we might become such as the Father (hs ho Patr); for to become as
1CA 3.10,
PG 26:334.
2CA 1.37,
PG 26:89.
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the Father is impossible for us creatures who have been brought to be out of nothing.
Rather, the purpose of the commandments is that
looking at His beneficent acts, what we do well, we might do not for mens sake,
but for His sake. . . . For as, although there be one Son by nature (huiou physei),
True and Only-begotten, we too become sons, not as (hs) He in nature (physei)
and truth, but according to the grace (kata charin) of Him that calleth, and though
we are men from the earth, are yet called gods (theoi), not as (hs) the true God
or His Word, but as has pleased God who has given us that grace, so also as (hs)
God do we become merciful, not by being made equal to God (exisoumenoi t
The) . . . but in order that what has accrued to us from God Himself by grace,
these things we may impart to others. 1
In a yet fuller treatment of the relationship between mimetic discipleship to Jesus
and the grace of adoptive divine sonship which Athanasius considers to be coterminous
with divinization, he explains that although the declaration of the gospel that to as
many as received Him, He gave power to become children of God (John 1:12) certainly
means that we are made sons (huiopoioumetha) through Him by adoption and grace
(thesei kai chariti), as partaking (metechontes) of His Spirit, it is not the case that the
redeemed are given a relation to the Father identical to that of the essential Son. Rather,
we by imitation (kata mimsin) become virtuous and sons--therefore not that we might
become such as (hs) He did He say that they may be one as We are, (John 17:22) but
that as He, being the Word, is in His own Father, so that we too, taking an exemplar
(typon) and looking at Him, might become one towards each other on concord and
oneness of spirit.2
1CA.
3.19, PG 26:361-64.
2Ibid.
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What follows, then, in chapters twenty through twenty-four of the third book of
Contra Arianos1 is an extended polemical exegesis of the high priestly prayer of Christ
for his disciples in which He asks the Father that they may be one even as we are
one (John 17:22). Athanasius uses this biblical passage to consider at length the
meaning of divine sonship, both natural and adoptive, vis-a-vis his perception of the
Arian claim that the redeemed are afforded a relation to the Father of the same kind as
that of the essential Son. The redeemed will be made as (kaths) sons, not as the Son,
as gods, not as He Himself.2 The relationship promised in this kaths, Athanasius is at
pains to clarify, signifies not identity (tautotta), but an image (eikona) and example
(paradeigma).3 We will become participants in the life of God not as the Father is by
nature in the Son and the Son in the Father, but according to our own nature (physes). . .
. For like things are naturally one with like; thus all flesh is ranked together in kind; but
the Word is unlike (anomoios) us and like the Father.4 Hence, the high priestly prayer
that they may be one as we are one does not mean that we will be connatural with the
Father, nor with the Son, but that we will be one with each other in like manner as the
Son is one with the Father, having as our copy the Sons natural unity with the Father,
1It
bears mention here that Charles Kannengiesser, Athanase dAlexandrie. vque et

crivain. Une lecture des traits contre les Ariens. Thologie historique 70 (Paris:
Beauschesne, 1983), 405-16, has called into question the relevancy of this whole line of
reasoning by arguing against Athanasian authorship of the third Oration of Contra
Arianos. G. C. Stead, review of Athanase dAlexandrie, by C. Kannengieser, in Journal
of Theological Studies 36 (1985): 227, however, responds to Kannengiessers hypothesis
by attributing the differences in style and approach in the third Oration to the fact that
Athanasius was writing some years later and under different circumstances.
2CA 3.20.
3Ibid.
3.21. See also 3.23, where he again admonishes that there is no identity (tautots)
or equality (isots) signified in the term as (kaths), after having in 3.22 reasoned that
by using the word as, (Christ) signifies those who become distantly as He is in the
Father; distantly not in place but in nature; for in place nothing is far from God, but in
nature only all things are far from Him.
4Ibid.
3.20.
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as though Christ were to pray that they learning from us of that indivisible Nature, may
preserve in like manner agreement one with another.1 If the redeemed were to be in the
Father as the Son is in the Father, Athanasius supposes, Christ would have prayed that
they may be in Thee as I am. As it is, however, by specifying in Us, Christ has
pointed out the distance (diastasin) and difference (diaphoran); that He indeed is alone in
the Father alone, as the only Word and Wisdom, but we are in the Son and through Him
in the Father.2 For creatures, it is given to imitate (mimeisthai) . . . (the Sons) true
identity of nature (tautotta ts physes) with the Father,3 which is made possible by the
Sons assumption of our human nature at the incarnation and our consequent
incorporation into His body, so that as if all were carried by Me, all may be one body
and one spirit and may grow up unto a perfect man (andra teleion [Eph. 4:13]). For we
all, partaking (metalambanontes) of the Same, become one body, having the one Lord in
ourselves.4 The analogous relationship of human unity with divine unity is further
comparable to the analogy the Lord himself drew between Jonahs sojourn in the belly of
a whale and his own death. For the Son, this unity he has by nature (physei), but for us,
to whom it is not natural, there is needed an image and example (eikonos kai
paradeigmatos).5
If Athanasius was often at pains to emphasize that the redeemed possess their
salvation only by a mutable, creaturely participation, however, then he was equally
adamant that because it is a participation in the divine nature, it can only be conferred by
and through God Himself. Those who are incorporated into the Son are full of God
1Ibid.
2Ibid.
3.21.
3Ibid.
3.22.
4Ibid.
5Ibid.
3.23.
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(theophoroumenous) and deified (theopoithentes).1 Because deification is really a recreation of the human race, Athanasius argues, only the creator Himself can effect such a
transformation, in as much as creation is always ex nihilo: the cosmos out of nothing and
eternal life out of the non-being of sin and death. 2 Only the true and perfect Image of
God can restore those who have been created according to the Image; only Life
Himself can make immortal. 3 If the Word is Himself created, how can he call into being
something that does not exist, unless all other creatures can do the same?4
As noted above, this question of the means and manner of salvific human
participation in God was the fundamental issue in contention between Athanasius and
Arius. The track which Arius proposed toward deification supposed that the agent of our
deification, the redeemer, must himself have been a passive recipient of the same:5 the
Son of God has a prerogative over others and is called Only-begotten because He alone
partakes the Father (metechei tou Patros), whereas all others partake the Son (tou Huiou
metechei).6 This mediatory subordinationism is unacceptable to Athanasius, however,
because, among other reasons, nowhere in Scripture are the redeemed called sons of the
Son. More frequently, however, he relies on the principle that what one possesses by
participation cannot itself be further communicated.
PNEUMATOLOGY:
1Ibid.
2Ibid.
2.19, 67-69, 72. See Williams, Arius, 240.
3Ibid.
2.20.
4Ibid.
2.21.
5Williams, Arius,
241, suggesting that Arius took this idea from Aristotles relation of
agent to patient as it arises in consequence of a temporal event, or begetting. He cites
Metaphysics 5.15; Alexander of Aphrodisias, In Arist. Met. 406.7-10.
6De
decret. 9.
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In his Letters to Serapion especially, but also in other works, Athanasius defends
the essential or natural divinity of the Holy Spirit against the pneumatomachians with the
same line of reasoning he elsewhere employed to argue for the essential divinity of the
Logos; since the redeemed partake of the divine nature by means of the presence and
action of the Holy Spirit, then the latter must be divine according to essence:
From what follows, also, we may see how the Holy Spirit is partaken (methekton)
and does not partake (metechon). . . . For, it is impossible, it says, for those
who were once enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made
partakers (metechous) of the Holy Spirit, and tasted the good Word of
God. . . .(Hebrews 6:4-5) The angels and the other creatures partake
(metechonta) of the Spirit himself; hence they can fall away from him whom they
partake (meteschon). But the Spirit is always the same; he does not belong to
those who partake (metechontn), but all things partake (metechei) of him. But if
he is always the same and always partaken (methekton); and if the creatures
partake (metechonta) of him--the Holy Spirit can neither be an angel nor a
creature of any kind, but proper (idion) to the Word. And being given by the
Word, he is partaken (metechetai) by the creatures. For they would have to say
that the Son is a creature, of whom we are all made partakers (metechoi) in the
Spirit.1
With respect to the Epistle to the Hebrews 6:4, where the author refers to those who
have become partakers (metochous) of the Holy Spirit, Athanasius asks rhetorically
how the one who is not sanctified by another, nor a partaker of sanctification (metechon
hagiasmou), but who is himself partaken (methekton) can be a creature: He that does
not partake of life (metechon zs), but who is himself partaken (metechomenon) and
quickens (zpoiona) the creatures, what kinship (syngeneian) can he have with things
originated?2
1Ad
Serap. 1.27 (The Letters of Saint Athanasius Concerning the Holy Spirit, trans. C. R.
B. Shapland [New York: The Philosophical Library, 1951], 132), PG 26:598. See his
virtually identical defense of the Sons essential divinity in Ad Afros 8 and De synod. 48.
2Ad
Serap. 1.23 (Shapland, 123). Shapland, 123, n. 1, cites Didymus, De trin. 2.529a for
a similar argument.
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Perhaps Ermoni overstates the case when he claims that the inhabitation of the
Holy Spirit in the believer exhausts Athanasius meaning of deification.1 Yet, Athanasius
does seem to aver that our saving participation in God arises only because the Holy Spirit
who first dwelt in the flesh of the incarnate Son has come also to dwell in us who have
become one flesh with Him: the very same Eternal Son who is the Giver of the Spirit
(tou Pneumatos dotr), himself needed recourse to the Spirit according to his humanity in
order to cast out demons (Matt. 12:28) and to be anointed for his messianic mission
(Matt. 11:5; Isaiah 61:1) specifically for the purpose that it might be shown in both these
particulars that we are they who need the Spirits grace in our sanctification, and again
who are unable to cast out demons without the Spirits power. 2 Indeed, because
incorporation into the created body of the uncreated Son is the only way to salvation, no
otherwise should we have partaken the Spirit (meteschomen tou Pneumatos) and been
sanctified, but that the Giver (dotr) of the Spirit, the Word himself, had spoken of
Himself as anointed (chriesthai) with the Spirit for us. 3 1 John 4:13 (By this we know
that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his own Spirit.) means that
apart from the indwelling Spirit, we are strange and distant (xenoi kai makran) from
God, and by the participation (metoch) of the Spirit we are knit into the Godhead
(synaptometha t theotti), so that our being in the Father is not ours, but is the Spirits
which is in us and abides in us.4 Christ took our flesh in order to make it capable of
bearing the Spirit.5 For so shall we remain partakers of Christ (particeps Christi) if we
1"La
dification de l'homme chez les Pres de l'glise," 517.
2CA 1.50.
Cf. Irenaeus, AH 3.9.3.
3Ibid.
4Ibid.
3.24.
5Lossky,
In the Image and Likeness of God, 103, n. 15, citing DI 8, where Athanasius
adds a pneumatological dimension to the admirabile commercium with his
complementary God bearing flesh and men bearing the Spirit.
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hold fast to the end the Spirit given at the beginning. 1 Athanasius also takes advantage
of the Pauline theme of the redeemed as temples of God (I Corinthians 3:16-17) to
conclude that
it is through the Spirit that we are all said to be partakers (metechoi) of God. . . .
If the Holy Spirit were a creature, we should have no participation (metousia) of
God in him. If indeed we were joined to a creature, we should be strangers to the
divine nature (allotrioi ts theias physes) inasmuch as we did not partake
(metechontes) therein. But, as it is, the fact of our being called partakers
(metechoi) of Christ and partakers (metechoi) of God shows that the unction and
seal that is in us belongs, not to the nature of things orginate (gentn physes),
but to the nature of the Son who, through the Spirit who is in him, joins
(synaprontos) us to the Father. . . . But if, by participation (metousia) in the
Spirit, we are made sharers (koinnoi) in the divine nature (physes), (2 Peter
1:4) we should be mad to say that the Spirit has a created nature and not the
nature of God. For it is on this account that those in whom he is are made divine
(theopoiountai). If he makes men divine (theopoiei), it is not to be doubted that
his nature is of God.2
Although it would be anachronistic to expect Athanasius to have addressed the
question of the christological provenance of the Holy Spirit within the immanent Trinity,
it is noteworthy that he does not argue to the pneumatomachoi that the Holy Spirit must
be essentially divine because He is revealed in Sacred Scripture to be the Spirit of the
monarchial Father (who, as has been shown, Athanasius regarded to be the source of
Godhead), but rather because, in accordance with the economic activity of the Trinity, He
is revealed to be the Spirit of the Fathers consubstantial Son through whom the
redeemed are made participants in divine life by incorporation; we know that the Spirit is
proper to the Son, according to Athanasius, only because He is given by the Word
and because He is called in Scripture the Spirit of sonship and of wisdom and of truth. 3
Likewise, we are able to say with confidence that the Holy Spirit does not belong to
1Ep.
fest. 3.4.
2Ad
Serap. 1.23 (Shapland, 125-27). Cf. CA 1.46-47.
3Ibid.
1.25 (Shapland, 128-29), PG 26:589b.

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things originated but that He pertains to the Godhead of the Father and in him the Word
makes things originated divine (en h kai ta genta ho Logos theopoiei) only because it
is always in and through the economic life of the Spirit that the Word makes glorious the
creation, and, by bestowing upon it divine life and sonship (theopoin kai huiopoin),
draws it to the Father. 1 The Holy Spirit is called an unction (1 Jn. 2:27) and a seal (Eph.
1:13) because He is the unction and seal with which the Word anoints and seals all
things. Therefore, Athanasius reasons, He must be of the same nature as the Logos, for
the unction has the fragrance and odor of him who anoints and the seal has the form of
Christ who seals, and those who are sealed partake (metechousi) of it, being conformed
(morphoumenoi) to it. . . . Being thus sealed, we are duly made, as Peter put it, sharers
(koinnoi) in the divine nature; (2 Pet. 1:4) and thus all creation partakes of the Word in
the Spirit (metechei tou Logou en t Pneumati).2
Still more directly, Athanasius reasons from economy to theology when he writes
that the Spirits coming from the Son in the order of redemption bears an interior
correspondence to the Sons procession from the Father: As the Son is an only-begotten
Offspring, so also the Spirit is given and sent from the Son.3 Moreover, he continues,
the Holy Spirit is said to proceed from the Father, because (epeid) He shines forth
(eklampei) from the Logos who is confessed to be from the Father and is sent and given
by Him.4 Even the proto-Palamite Byzantine scholastics Nikephoros Blemmydes (d.
1272) and Gregory of Cyprus (d. 1290) had to concede in the heat of the filioque
controversy that Athanasius probably intended shines forth (eklampei) here to refer at
1Ibid.
Gross, 212, n. 1, writes of Athanasius use of theopoiesis and huiopoiesis: "These

two terms are here manifestly synonymous."
2Ad
Serap. 1.23 (Shapland, 124).
3Ibid.
1.20, quoted in Joost Van Rossum, Athanasius and the Filioque: Ad Serapionem I,
20 in Nikephorus Blemmydes and Gregory of Cyprus, Studia Patristica 32 (1997): 53.
4Ibid.
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once to the eternal being of the Holy Spirit and to His sending into the world or, in other
words, to His essence and operation, without discriminating between the two.1 In this
connection, Lebon, Shapland, and Quasten all believe that a positive basis for the
doctrine of the filioque can be found in the writings of Athanasius, 2 as, for example,
where he reasons rather explicitly from the datum of the Sons economic, ad extra
sending of the Spirit to the Spirits immanent, essential relation to the Son:
Not then as the Son in the Father, so also we become in the Father; for the Son
does not merely partake (metechn) the Spirit, that therefore He too may be in the
Father; nor does He receive (lambann) the Spirit, but rather He supplies
(chorgei) It Himself to all; and the Spirit does not unite (synaptei) the Word to
the Father, but rather the Spirit receives (lambanei) from the Word. . . . For He, as
has been said, gives to the Spirit (t Pneumati didsi), and whatever the Spirit
has, He has from the Word.3
1Van
Rossum, 56-58. Van Rossum characterizes Gregorys argument this way: If one
reduces the Holy Spirit to gift or energy only, it is implied that the very hypostatical
essence (enupostatos ousia) of the Paraclete is merely gift and energy. This would mean,
says Gregory, that we who are able to participate in this Gift, are also able to participate
in the very Essence of God, and this would contradict the patristic tradition. . . . Thus the
patristic teaching of mans participation in God, or thesis, implies the necessity for
theology to distinguish between the Hypostasis or Person of the Holy Spirit and His Gifts
or Energies, and also between the Essence of God and His Energies. (p. 56-57) This
seems like a false alternative. Who argues that God is reducible to His ad extra life?
That was not the Latin contention at all. Rather, the filioquists insist that Gods selfdisclosure to the world really discloses Himself. Because God is infinite, His being is not
and cannot be known exhaustively, and so is never simply reducible to His action in the
world, but it is nevertheless truly revealed. Furthermore, the notion of participation
implied in the above Byzantine rationale is much more realistic than that used by
Athanasius, who understood metousia and methexis to entail the participants created
reflection of the Participated.
2Lebon,
Lettres a Serapion (SC 15, Paris: Cerf, 1947), 76f; Shapland, 40ff; Quasten,
Patrology 3:77, who calls the filioque a necessary corollary of (Athanasius) whole
argument.
3CA 3.24.
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In this instance at least, it is evident that Athanasius believes the operation or energy of
the Triune God to bear a true correspondence to and to be revelatory of His inner life or
essence.
Finally, Athanasius also argues for the role of the Holy Spirit in our divinization
from the trinitarian principle that the grace of God is not given differently and separately
by each Person, but what is given is given in the Triad, and all are from the one God.1
Coining a trinitarian formula that would become de rigueur within the world of Greek
speaking Christians, he proposes that there is but one sanctification, which is derived
from the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit (ek Patros di Huiou en Pneumati),2
as he later reiterates in one of his most cohesive trinitarian confessions:
There is, then, a Triad, holy and complete, confessed to be God in Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit, having nothing foreign (allotrion) or external (exthen) mixed
with it, not composed of one that creates and one that is originated, but all
creative; and it is consistent and in nature indivisible (adiairetos), and its activity
is one. The Father does all things through the Word in the Holy Spirit. 3
ECONOMY OF SALVATION
Above all, according to Athanasius, it was through the admirabile commercium of
the incarnation of the Logos that the divinizing participation in God which the first
humans lost as a result of their sin was restored to the race,4 as is already implied in the
maxim most commonly quoted to epitomize the patristic understanding of deification:
For he was made man (ennthrpsen) that we might be made divine (theopoithmen).5
1Ad
Serap. 1.31 (Shapland, 142).
2Ibid.
1.20 (Shapland, 116). See Gross, 211, n. 3.
3Ibid.
1.28 (Shapland, 134-35), PG 26:596.
4See
Kolp, Participation, 252: It is really in his incarnational theology that Athanasius

roams far beyond the ontological function of participation.
5DI
54, SC 199:458. Azkoul, 252, n. 11, cites Athanasius here to support his contention
that the universal teaching of the Fathers is that created grace cannot deify.
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The Logos became incarnate, taking on Himself what is ours, that we, as incorporated
(syssymoi) and compacted (synarmologoumenoi) and bound together (syndethentes) in
Him through the likeness of the flesh (homoises ts sarkos), may attain unto a perfect
man (andra teleion) and abide immortal and incorruptible.1 In a classic example of
what we have seen Harnack, Tixeront and others call the physical theory of
redemption,2 Athanasius argues against the Arians that the union of God and man in the
person of Jesus Christ itself, prior to and logically apart from the self-oblation of the
cross, effected a restoration of our prelapsarian likeness to God and, indeed, the
deification of human nature.
For therefore did He assume the body originate and human, that having renewed it
as its Framer, he might deify it in Himself (en eaut theopois) and thus might
introduce us all into the kingdom of heaven after His likeness (kath homoiotta
ekeinou). For man had not been deified if joined to a creature (ouk an de palin
etheopoith ktismati synaphtheis), or unless the Son were very God, nor had man
been brought into the Fathers presence unless He had been His natural and true
Word who had put on the body. And as we had not been delivered from sin and
the curse, unless it had been by nature human flesh, which the Word put on (for
we should have had nothing common with what was foreign), so also the man had
not been deified (etheopoith), unless the Word who became flesh had been by
nature from the Father and true and proper (idios) to Him. For therefore the union
(synaph) was of this kind, that He might unite (synaps) what is man by nature to
Him who is in the nature of the Godhead (kata physin ts theottos), and his
salvation and deification (theopoisis) might be sure.3
1CA 2.74.
2J.
Tixeront, History of Dogma, 3 vols. (St. Louis and Freiburg: B. Herder, 1910-16),
2:148; A. Harnack, History of Dogma, 3:165; Grillmeier, 313-14. With this rather
contemptuous phrase, they intend to represent the common notion of the fathers that by
the bald event of its union with the Logos at the incarnation, the human flesh which had
become enslaved to corruption and death through sin was healed and immortalized.
When considering the validity of this critique, it must be remembered that Athanasius did
not predicate immortality alone upon our deification, but also the restoration of our being
created after the image of God and the whole life of virtue entailed by the latter.
3CA 2.70,
PG 26:296ab. See J. Riviere, Le dogme de la Rdemption, 147.

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The fact that the works of the devil were finally and decisively destroyed from
the flesh which the Word assumed, because it was our own flesh, means that we too are
liberated by the kinship of the flesh (syngeneian ts sarkos) and joined . . . to the Word
(synaphthmen . . . t Log) and joined to God (synaphthentes t The).1
According to Meyendorff, the whole of his anti-Arian polemic rests on this fundamental
soteriological assertion.2 Christ is called the first-born of many brethren (Col. 1:18)
not because He is an exemplary or archetypal creature, like the Arians believe, but
because His flesh before all others was saved and liberated, as being the Words body;
and henceforth we, becoming incorporate (syssmoi) with It, are saved after Its
pattern.3 The Savior could not have been a creature, among other reasons, because to be
saved means not merely to be rewarded by God for meritorious conduct, nor simply to be
forgiven for offenses committed against God, but to be united to God: For if, being a
creature, He had become man, man had remained just what he was, not joined to God (ou
synaptheis t the); for how had a work been joined (synkteto) to the Creator by a
work?4 Whereas the fall into sin made humanity corruptible and liable to the affections
proper to their nature, the assumption of this nature by the Logos has, by virtue of his
divine indwelling of our humanity, broken the hegemony of the flesh: For if the works
of the Words Godhead (ts theottos tou Logou erga) had not taken place through the body,
man had not been deified (etheopoith). . . . But now the Word having become man and
having appropriated (idiopoioumenou) what pertains to the flesh, no longer do these
things touch the body, because of the Word who has come in it. 5 The Logos was born of
a human mother in order that He may transfer (metath) our origin into Himself. . . .
1Ibid.
2.69, citing John 14:30 and I John 3:8.
2Meyendorff,
3CA 2.61,
Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, 113.
PG 26:277b.
4CA 2.67.
5Ibid.
3.33, PG 26:383a. Cf. DI 44; CA 2.67; Ep ad Epict. 9; Gross, 208.

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Therefore in like manner not without reason has He transferred to Himself (eis eauton
metethken) the other affections of the body also; that we, no longer as being men, but as
proper (idioi) to the Word, may have share (metaschmen) in eternal life.1 The new
birth, then, while qualitatively different from the Fathers essential generation of His full
and perfect Image, is nevertheless a kind of divine birth; regenerated by water and the
Spirit, we are united to God in the person of the Son as He was united to our humanity,
the flesh being no longer earthly, but being henceforth made Word (logtheists)
by reason of Gods Word who for our sake became flesh. . . . For as the Lord,
putting on the body, became man, so we men are deified (theopoioumetha) by the
Word as being taken to Him (prolphthentes) through His flesh, and henceforward
inherit life everlasting.2
We are deified by incorporation into Christ, then, because Christ was himself
deified strictly with respect to his human nature; just as in his capacity as the Logos, He
gives from the Father, for all things which the Father does and gives, He does and gives
through Him, so also
as the Son of Man, He Himself is said after the manner of men to receive what
proceeds from Him because His Body is none other than His and is a natural (to
physin) recipient of grace, as has been said. For He received it as far as His
human nature (ton anthrpon) was exalted; which exaltation was its being deified
(theopoieisthai). But such an exaltation the Word Himself always had according
to the Fathers Godhead (theotti) and perfection (teleiotta), which was His.3
Similarly, Christ received additional powers after his resurrection only with respect to his
glorified humanity, for as the Logos he possessed them eternally and immutably.
Therefore, He is said humanly to have received so that, whereas the flesh received in
Him, henceforth from it the gift might abide surely for us.4 Drawing upon the vine and
1Ibid.
2Ibid.
3CA 1.45,
4Ibid.
PG 26:105.
2.40.
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the branches metaphor of John 15:1ff and upon the spiritual building metaphor of 1 Cor.
3:10f, Athanasius again carefully distinguishes that the redeemed are compacted
(synarmologoumenos) and incorporated or knit (synmma) specifically into the human
nature assumed by the Word of God, not according to the Essence of the Godhead (kata
tn ousian ts theottos), for this is surely impossible, but according to His manhood (kata to
anthrpinon), for the branches must be like the vine, since we are like (homoioi) him
according to the flesh.1
Although a constant theme throughout Athanasius anti-Arian writings is that
adopted sons, along with all of creation, remain external (exthen) to God, whereas the
Eternal Son is proper (idion) to Him, Athanasius performs a chiastic inversion of sorts
when he writes that the flesh assumed by the Logos was not external to Him, but was His
own. And the Word bore the infirmities of the flesh, as His own, for His was the flesh;
and the flesh ministered to the works of the Godhead, because the Godhead was in it, for
the body was Gods.2 The prophet Isaiah said that the Savior carried our infirmities
(Is. 53:4) rather than merely remedied them lest, as being external to the body, and
only healing it, as He as always done, He should leave men subject still to death. 3 Thus
it was that when the flesh suffered, the Word was not external (ektos) to it.4 The Logos
did not merely inhabit a human body, as though the incarnation were a benign form of
daemonic possession. Rather, the Eternal Son took (elaben) a body to Himself and
appropriated (idiopoisato) it as His own.5 What was by nature utterly incompatible-the infinite Being of the Creator and the finite, corruptible being of the creation--has been
joined together through the mercy of God in the person of the incarnate Son.
1Ibid.
2.74.
2CA 3.31.
3Ibid.
4Ibid.
5DI
3.32.
31.
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In order for the Creator of works external to Himself to become a Father of those
works, the Eternal Son who is proper to Him and of whom He is a Father by nature
becomes a creature and a work. Therein lies the internal logic to the great exchange of
the incarnation:
God, being first Creator, next, as has been said, becomes Father of men, because
of His Word dwelling (oikounta) in them. But in the case of the Word the reverse;
for God, being His Father by nature (physei), becomes afterwards both His
Creator and Maker, when the Word puts on that flesh which was created and
made, and becomes man. For, as men, receiving (lambanontes) the Spirit of the
Son, become children through Him, so the Word of God, when He Himself puts
on the flesh of man, then is said both to be created and to have been made. If then
we are by nature sons (kata physei huioi), then is He by nature (physei) creature
and work; but if we become sons by adoption and grace (thesei kai kata chariti
ginometha huioi), then has the Word also, when in grace towards us He became
man, said, The Lord created me.1
Each member of the exchange comes to possess the other by the initiative and action of
God while retaining his own essential identity according to nature. He remains the
essential Son of God who takes to Himself the nature of a creature in the womb of the
Virgin and they remain creatures who possess a share in Gods own life through union
with His essential Son by the insufflation of the Spirit of sonship. In the face of Arius
uncompromising either/or, Athanasius insists on affirming one without denying the other;
the Son calls the Father Lord (Matt.11:25) not by necessity, but gratuitously in his
assumed creatureliness, and this He has so done from love to man, that we too, being
servants by nature (kata physin), and receiving (dexamenoi) the Spirit of the Son, might
have confidence to call Him by grace (chariti) Father, who is by nature (physei) our
Lord.2
Yet, although Athanasius is bold to speak in terms of union between created
human nature and the consubstantial Son, he is also careful to pepper his discourse with
1CA 2.61.
2Ibid.
2.51.
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frequent reminders that the enduring transformation effected by this theandric synapsis
was entirely unilateral. The same Athanasius who declared that in order to make us sons
of the Father, the essential Son became by nature (physei) a creature and work1 also
insists that the Logos was not bound to his body, but rather was Himself wielding it and
did not suffer any change when born by the Virgin; for not even by being in the
universe does He share (metalambanei) in its nature, but all things, on the contrary, are
quickened and sustained (zogoneitai kai trephetai) by Him.2 This does not mean that
salvation is a merely extrinsic transaction, of course. Instead, his unilateral or
asymmetrical use of the language of participation when applied to the incarnation is the
primary way in which Athanasius affirms the great mystery or dialectic at the heart of the
Christian faith, viz., that the irreducibly transcendent Creator of all things has made
Himself present to all things without ceasing to be transcendent of them. Time and again,
in the face of rationalistic protestations, Athanasius doggedly maintains and asserts the
inevitable mystery of the incarnation: for as by receiving (dechomenos) our infirmities,
He is said to be infirm Himself, though not Himself infirm.3 The Word became flesh not
to make God like a creature, but unilaterally to transform human nature, not by reason of
an addition to the Godhead, but in order that the flesh may rise again.4 Because Gods
uncreated life was not more fully actuated or augmented through the Words assumption
of human nature, Athanasius saw no need to designate a mutable mode of the uncreated.
The incarnation did not diminish the divinity of Gods essential Son, but elevated and
sanctified our humanity:
For though the Word existing in the form of God took a servants form, yet the
assumption of the flesh (proslpsis ts sarkos) did not make a servant of the Word,
1CA 2.61.
2DI
17.
3CA 2.55.
4Ad
Epictetum 9.
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who was by nature Lord; but rather, not only was it that emancipation of all
humanity which takes place by the Word, but that very Word who was by nature
Lord, and was then made man, hath by means of a servants form been made Lord
of all and Christ, that is, in order to hallow all by the Spirit. 1
In this connection, much of what Athanasius had to say about the incarnation of
the Logos came by way of addressing the question of how the Logos did not cease to be
God during his sojourn on earth. In keeping with his proto-monophysite Alexandrian
heritage, Athanasius gave relatively little attention to what Augustine would regard as the
true marvel of the incarnation, namely, that the eternal Son of God humbled himself to
participate in the creaturely existence of the human race. Instead, Athanasius was
virtually always more concerned to emphasize that the Logos did not cease to be fully
God while in the form of a slave. The humanity assumed, according to Athanasius, was
entirely and unilaterally assimilated to the divinity: For the flesh did not diminish the
glory of the Word.2 The Logos became incarnate to heal and perfect in a human body
the work he had begun in the creation of the universe. Thus, it is no more difficult to
believe that the Eternal Son of God was present locally in a human body than it is to
believe that He is present ubiquitously in the whole of creation, yet without his ineffable
transcendence being compromised: For just as He is in creation, and yet does not
partake (metalambanei) of its nature in the least degree, but rather all things partake
(metechei) of His power; so while He used the body as His instrument He partook
(meteichen) of no corporeal property, but, on the contrary, Himself sanctified even the
body. 3 The immediate context of this remark makes it clear that Athanasius is not
resorting to a form of docetism, which Bernard alleges,4 but is attempting to resolve the
1CA 2.14.
2Ep.
3DI
ad Adelph. 4.
43, PG 25:172-73.
4LImage
de Dieu, 35.
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transcendence-immanence quandry by means of this notion of participation. By insisting

that the Logos did not participate in humanity, but humanity in the Logos, he further
established his own idiosyncratic usage of metechei whereby the participated remains
essentially unchanged by the participant who, in turn, is elevated and unilaterally
assimilated by the former. 1 Yet, it is difficult to dispute Kolps conclusion that
Athanasius never fully resolved the mystery revealed here, viz. that the Logos must not at
all be changed by the human nature He assumed if He is to remain God, but the humanity
He assumed could not have been saved and recreated if it had not been truly united to his
divine nature.2 Consequently for the soteriological question at hand, just as we, by
receiving (lambanontes) the Spirit, do not lose our own proper substance (ousian), but
through the partaking (metalabontes) of His Spirit might be deified (theopoithnai), so
also the Logos, by taking on our flesh, was no less God; for He was not lessened by the
envelopment of the body, but rather deified it (etheopoieito) and rendered it immortal.3
Those passages quoted above in which Athanasius speaks only of the flesh (sarx)
being deified by its association with the Logos as well as those instances in which he
characterizes the human body of Christ as an instrument (organon) of the Logos4 has
led some to wonder whether Athanasius understood the humanity of the incarnate Word
to include a human soul as well as a body and, moreover, what, if any, significance this
apparently incomplete christology has for his soteriology. Whereas T. E. Pollard wants to
read a fully intact God-man christology in Athanasius, 5 Grillmeier thinks Athanasius in
this regard a pure representative of the Logos-sarx school of christology (as opposed to
that of the Logos-man) in which the replacement of the human soul by the single
1Kolp,
Participation, 275.
2Ibid.,
281.
3De
decretis 14.
4DI
8, 17, 41, 42, 45, 54, 55; CA 3.31.
5Johannine
Christology and the Early Church, 236.

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subject of the Logos at least blurs, if it doesnt obliterate, the late Scholastic and
Protestant distinction between nature and grace.1 After considering and rejecting the idea
that Athanasius believed the Logos to have assumed the collective human race at the
incarnation--this on the grounds that Athanasius clearly taught that only baptized
believers are joined to God through Christ 2--P. Galtier goes on to argue that Athanasius
believed the humanity assumed by the Word to include a created soul, primarily on the
basis of one paragraph from Tomus ad Antiochenos, wherein Athanasius approvingly
cites those who confessed also that the Saviour had not a body without a soul
(apsychon), nor without sense (anaisthton) or intelligence (anoton), for it was not
possible that when the Lord had become man for us, that his body should be without
intelligence (anoton), nor was the salvation effected in the Word Himself (en aut t
Log) a salvation of body only, but of soul (phychs) also.3 Kolp suggests that although
Athanasius may not have taken full account of a human soul in the incarnate Christ, the
participation concept allows Athanasius to be Chalcedonic . . . because in the incarnated
God-man the Son participates totally in human nature.4 Hanson, however, goes so far as
to suggest that Athanasius relative silence regarding the human soul of Christ results in a
1Christ
in Christian Tradition, 1:217, 312.
2P.
Galtier, Saint Athanase et lme humaine du Christ, Gregorianum 36 (1955):

557-63.
3Tomus
as Antiochenos 7.
4"Participation,
386. Kolp also objects (p. 271) that Grillmeier is rather unfair to
Athanasius who was not addressing the Apollinarian question from which this distinction
would later become significant. Furthermore, Grillmeier fails to take into account the
many passages in which Athanasius seems to use the sarx assumed as shorthand for
physis.
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Space-suit Christology. 1 He concludes rather summarily that whatever else the Logos
incarnate is in Athanasius account of him, he is not a human being.2
As Kolp intimates, however, and Galtier argues at length, neither Grillmeier nor
Hanson seem to take full account of the critical importance to human salvation
Athanasius attaches to the Sons assumption and possession of whatever it is about
human nature that needs to be restored. Indeed, Athanasius seems to anticipate these very
objections when he explains the biblical predication of creaturely limitations on the Lord
with the following soteriological rationale:
and it became the Lord, in putting on human flesh, to put it on whole with the
affections proper to it (idin pathn); that, as we say that the body was His own
(idion), so also we may say that the affections of the body were proper to Him
alone (smatos path idia monon), though they did not touch Him according to
His Godhead . . . but if the flesh is the Words (for the Word became flesh), of
necessity then the affections also of the flesh are ascribed to Him, whose the flesh
is. . . . For this cause then, consistently and fittingly such affections (path) are
ascribed not to another, but to the Lord; that the grace also may be from Him.3
Just as the Son must be proper to the Father if the salvation he brings is to be a true union
with God, so also Athanasius assumed that the Son must be fully proper to humankind if
the infinite, incorruptible Godhead is to be made accessible to the finite likes of us.
Closely related to this question of the human agency of the Savior himself is the
more general matter of how a salvific union with God which depends upon the
responsiveness of our own notoriously capricious human will can be truly eternal and
immutable. Like Augustine after him, this was an issue of great moment to Athanasius,
who can frequently give the impression that he believed our salvation necessarily to
involve a union with the unchanging God primarily with a view toward establishing the
1The
2Ibid.,
451.
3CA 3.32.
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security or immutability of our salvation. We are saved only by being joined to Christ
because only in Him is the indwelling of the Spirit of God perfectly secure.
For though He had no need, nevertheless He is said to have received (eilphs)
what He received (elambanen) humanly, that on the other hand, inasmuch as the
Lord has received (labontos), and the grant is lodged with Him, the grace may
remain sure (bebaia h charis diamein). For while mere man receives
(lambann), he is liable to lose again (as was shown in the case of Adam, for he
received and he lost), but that the grace may be irrevocable, and may be kept sure
by men (bebaia phylachth tois anthrpois), therefore He Himself appropriates
(idiopoieitai) the gift.1
Here, Christ is said to have accomplished the whole of salvation for us--both the giving
of the Spirit as Logos and the immutable reception of the Spirit as man. Perhaps the
greatest significance to the current study of this question of whether Athanasius believed
Christ to have had a created soul is best expressed by Roldanus, who, while believing that
the question itself probably cannot be resolved definitively,2 concludes that the very
ambiguity with which Athanasius treats the human agency of the Redeemer betrays his
fundamental conviction that the salvation and divinization of man are entirely the work
of God and demonstrates that he regarded divinization, from beginning to end, as a
communication of grace and divine power. 3
If this sounds like anti-Pelagian rhetoric, it is because Arius seems to have been as
fully committed to a do-it-yourself soteriology as he was to the monistic ontology of
Greek philosophy. Athanasius difficulty with Arianism is well within the sphere of
Augustines dispute with the Pelagians, as noted by Gregg and Groh, who speculate that
the essentialist christology of Athanasius was a way of expressing the possibility of
Christian perseverance to the end, a problem that Augustine must wrestle with two
1CA 3.38.
2Le
Christ et lhomme dans la thologie dAthanase dAlexandrie, 252ff.
3Ibid,
275-76.
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generations later in the West.1 Although no one in the East would locate the gift of
perseverance in anything resembling Augustines late estimation of the irresistibility of
grace vis-a-vis the human will, Athanasius provided the very next best thing--an
unchangeable type of virtue and an irreversible grace in the order of things available to
human persons.2 Yet, far prior to this latest, rather novel interpretation of the dispute
between Athanasius and Arius, even as traditionalist a scholar as Gwatkin was able to see
the parallels between the Arian and the Pelagian controversies when he called
Pelagianism an essential element of the Arian system. 3 By making use of the language
of participation, both Athanasius and Augustine were insisting that salvation is, from
beginning to end, the work of God in recreating the human race.
The purpose of the incarnation of the essential Son of the Father, then--rather than
merely a theophany, for instance, or a new covenant brought via the same external, purely
didactic means as were the Abrahamic, Mosaic, and Davidic covenants--was to render the
mutable, unstable, hence lesser righteousness of Adam immutable and perfectly secure in
the sacred humanity of the immutable Son of God. Because of things originate the
nature is alterable (trept) and liable to hold its union with God capriciously, Athanasius
reasons, the human race stood in need of a savior whose justice was absolutely
inalienable so that men might have the immutability (ametablton) of the righteousness
of the Word as an image and type for virtue. . . . For since the first man Adam altered
(etrap) and through sin death came into the world, therefore it became the second Adam
to be unalterable (atrepton). For this reason, the Logos, who ever is in nature
unalterable (physei atreptos) . . . being and remaining (diamenn) the same, by taking
(labn) this alterable flesh, might condemn sin in it, and might secure its freedom and its
1Gregg
and Groh, Early Arianism, 181.
2Ibid.
3Studies
of Arianism, 25.
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ability henceforth to fulfil the righteousness of the law in itself.1 Before the fall, Adam
received grace from without (exthen) and not having it united (synrmosmenn) to the
body, because, Athanasius implies, his body was not possessed of corruption and not in
need of an internal grace. 2 Therefore, because after the fall, the corruption (phthora)
which had set in was not external (exthen) to the body, but had become attached to it, it
was required that, instead of corruption, life should cleave (sumplaknai) to it.3
Because the human fall into sin was not simply a matter of willful disobedience,
then, one which could be corrected by an equally willful act of repentance, but a matter of
the corruption of human nature or being, an equally ontological remedy would be
required.4 If, as Gregg and Groh hypothesize, Arius, Asterius, Eusebius of Nicomedia,
and other early Arians had reduced grace to the sending of the Son as a purely didactic
expression of the Fathers will whereby believers might also become sons of God through
extrinsic imitation of the prototypical Son, thereby further reducing grace to a
transactional or remunerative response on Gods part to prior, meritorious actions taken
by human aspirants to divine sonship, then grace for the Athanasian orthodox will be the
divine essence brought to human nature through the Christ. . . . Hence it is the Logos
uniting the divine charis to human flesh in a way that will ensure that grace will be
incorporated irrevocably.5 Athanasius is repeatedly insistent that the Son was not
1CA 1.51.
Gregg and Groh, Early Arianism: A View of Salvation, 179, write of the
Athanasian concept in such a way as to call to mind Augustines non posse peccare:
Adams nature was changeable, and Christ came to overcome and eliminate precisely
this changeability, thus giving the flesh freedom not to sin. The incarnation then,
brought to human nature a grace unlike Adams which was external. Christ has brought
a grace which is secure and irreversible.
2Ibid.
3DI
2.68.
44.4.
4Ibid.
7.4.
5Gregg
and Groh, Early Arianism, 29.

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promoted to the glory and divinity He possesses, but has them immutably, essentially, and
necessarily in order to arrive eventually at the conclusion that therefore He did not
receive in reward the name of the Son and God, but rather He Himself has made us sons
(huiopoisen) of the Father and defied (ethopoise) men by becoming Himself man.
Therefore He was not man and then became God, but He was God and then became man,
and that to deify (theopois) us.1 As in this case, so also must Athanasius spurn the Arian
interpretation of Luke 2:52 wherein the pre-existent Logos advanced to sonship through
the incarnation, again because such a scenario would locate the source of human
salvation and perfection outside of God. If He advanced when He became man, it is
plain that before He became man He was imperfect; and rather the flesh became to Him a
cause of perfection, than He to the flesh. 2
As Augustine would also do, Athanasius rests this christocentric soteriology of his
on a double account (dipln epangelian)3 exegesis of the gospels, according to which
theory sacred Scripture speaks of the Son sometimes according to his divinity and
sometimes according to his humanity; what it predicates strictly on his humanity is
simultaneously predicable of us who have been united to his body and, as St. Paul says,
are in him. Whereas the Scripture has Jesus suffering, weeping and toiling and
testifies that Christ cried out in the anguish of his perceived abandonment from the cross,
Athanasius explains: these things are done and said as from a man, that He might
Himself lighten these very sufferings of the flesh (pathmata ts sarkos), and free
(eleutheran) it from them. 4 With regard to the Arian exegesis of Phil. 2:9 and Ps. 45:8,
wherein the Son is said to have received a name above all names and anointing
respectively, the unilaterally transformative character of the Words participation in
1CA 1.38-39.
2Ibid.
3.51.
3Ibid.
3.29.
4CA 3.56.
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human nature means, according to Athanasius, that God can receive nothing from the
creature, for the Word of God is without want and full.1 Yet, Christ clearly is
characterized in these and other biblical passages as having received various sorts of
grace and promotion. It is not the Word, considered as the Word, Athanasius
discriminates, who received this so great grace, but we. For because of our relationship
to His body we too have become Gods temple, and in consequence are made Gods
sons.2 Similarly, he relies on Hebrews 13:8 to secure the immutability of the Logos:
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and for ever, remaining unalterable
(atreptos), and at once gives and receives, giving (didous) as Gods Word, receiving
(lambann) as man. . . . For when He is now said to be anointed in a human respect, we
it is who in Him are anointed.3
In response to Tixeront and others who complain that much of the above is an
abuse of Platonic language, Gross proposes that Athanasius should be understood to
have conceived human nature as a concrete reality, as a kind of 'generic man'--to employ
an expression from Philo--in which every individual participates, but in a way in which
the accidental properties--'habits and qualities'4--play the role of that which we would call
the principle of individuation."5 Athanasius posits the consubstantiality of all humans
when he inveighs against those who say that the Son is a creature with the retort that
the sayings of Christ I and the Father are one (John 10:30) and he who has seen me
has seen the Father (John 14:9) would necessarily mean that the Father is a creature also,
according to the following rationale:
1Ibid.
1.43.
2Ibid.
3CA 1.48.
4De
synod. 53.
5Gross,
208-209.
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Those to whom we are alike (homoioi) and whose identical nature we share (tn
tautotta echomen toutn), with these we are one in essence (homoousioi). For
example, we men, because we are alike (homoioi) and share the same identical
nature (tautotta echontes), are one in essence (homoousioi) with each other. For it
belongs to us all to be mortal, corruptible, capable of change, originating from
nothing.1
Later in the same work, Athanasius will argue for the consubstantiality of the Son with
the Father on the analogical grounds that human fathers are not properly called creators
(poitas) but begetters (genntoras) because they beget sons who are consubstantial
(homoousiou) with themselves.2
Athanasius manifest fondness for Platonic categories has also given rise to the
already considered contention that his was a physical theory of redemption which
conferred salvation on the human race automatically or mechanically, as it were. Gross
tacitly joins Harnack in this critique when he opines that because Athanasius never drew
a fully adequate distinction between ousia and hypostasis, he was unable to see as clearly
as those who followed him that the divinization of human nature accomplished by the
incarnation does not automatically extend to that of human persons.3 George proposes
similarly that Athanasius failed to distinguish sufficiently between the two stages of
Christs adoption of our humanity, which also correspond to the difference between
physis and hypostasis. It wasnt until John of Damascus that the distinction was
explicated between the Sons adoption of our human nature considered as a whole at the
Annunciation and the adoption of individual persons or hypostases through baptism and
1Ad
Serap. 2.3 (Shapland, 154-55), PG 26:612b.
2Ad
Serap. 2.6. Cf. De Synod. 48, where Athanasius draws a parallel between human
consubstantiality and that of the three persons of the Trinity, which leads Gross (p. 210)
to conclude that Athanasius thinks of both parties in terms of a "numerical identity of
essence."
3Gross,
210.
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the cooperation of faith.1 Yet, George also believes that the most recent historical
research has revealed Harnacks critique to be a shortsighted narrowing or reduction
(Engfuhrung) of the patristic doctrine of divinization to the acquisition of
incorruptibility (aphtharsia) only. He further objects to the false dichotomy between the
ontological and the moral dimensions of salvation which Harnacks epithet physical
redemption assumes and implies, observing that Athanasius in particular, along with all
the Eastern fathers, refused to separate the two, but strove to include every aspect of the
human person in the transforming work of redemption, not only the will or behavior.2
Others are equally quick to Athanasius defense. Dietrich Ritschl maintains that
Athanasius theory of deification is not a Greek speculation, but the decisive element in
the salvific work of Christ, which, through his true humanity, is very different from a
mechanical restoration.3 Meijering appeals to Athanasius understanding that the
redeemed person may become a son of God only by participation, which implies that far
from being mechanical or automatic, the sonship of the redeemed is contingent and
mutable: From this it clearly appears that men can lose their sonship which they have
by participation, and what one can lose one cannot be by nature. 4 Kolp also takes
exception to what he views as a sloppy and misleading interpretation of Athanasius
realism: Because the Son was incarnate does not mean that each and every man
automatically is deified in due process. The link between the two concepts is much more
complex--and even ambiguous--than that.5 Along these lines, Dalmais notes that by
juxtaposing the admirabile commercium theme with that of revelation, Athanasius forges
1George,
Vergttlichung des Menschen, 145, citing John Damas., De fide orth. 61.3.17;
86.4.13.
2Ibid.,
119.
3Athanasius:
4Orthodoxy
5Kolp,
Versuch eine Interpretation (Zurich: EVZ, 1964), 43.
and Platonism, 144-45, citing De synod. 53.
Participation, 251.
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something of a middle way between Clements and Origens noetic emphasis and the
Irenaean preference for the physical theory; the divinization of the human race is brought
about both by a communion of natures in the divine person of the Logos and by His
revelation of the Father. 1 Norman gets even more textually specific;2 in one of the many
instances on which he quotes 2 Peter 1:4, Athanasius asserts: For he has become man
that He might deify (theopois) us in Himself, and He has been born of a woman and
begotten of a Virgin in order to transfer (metenegk) to Himself our erring generation, and
that we may become (genmetha) henceforth a holy race and partakers of the divine
nature (koinnoi theias physes). 3 By his use of the present middle subjunctive
(genmetha) in a purpose clause, Norman thinks that Athanasius betrays his tacit
understanding that the incarnation did not automatically or mechanically divinized the
human nature of which every individual is an instantiation, but gave to every member of
the human race only the potential to be divinized, as Athanasius more explicitly indicates
elsewhere when he writes that God prepared for the Logos a created body that in Him
we might be capable of being renewed and deified (hin en aut anakainisthna kai
theopoithnai dynthmen).4
Yet, it is when Athanasius speaks of divinization or human participation in God
outside the context of the incarnation that the imputations to him of a mechanical or
automatic conception of salvation fall most decisively short. The admirabile
commercium did not end simply with the hypostatic union of the God-man forged at the
1Dalmais,
Divinisation, 1381, citing the thought that follows immediately upon the
ennthrpsen/theopoithmen phrase from DI 54 quoted above: and He manifested
Himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father.
2Deification,
3Ep.
104.
ad Adelph. 4.
4CA 2.47.
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incarnation, but extended to the entirety of Christs life and, especially, to the events of
his cross and resurrection.
Hanson surely overstates the case when he writes that Athanasius doctrine of the
incarnation has almost swallowed up any doctrine of the Atonement and has rendered
him unable to explain why Christ should have died.1 Although Athanasius may not
have integrated the atoning death of Christ on the cross with his doctrine of divinization
as fully as he could have done, 2 he does repeatedly aver that the cross was both necessary
to fulfill the sentence of death imposed on humanity in the persons of Adam and Eve and
efficacious to deliver the whole of the human race from it.3 Because death and corruption
had gained a strangle hold on both the human race and the whole of creation through
Adams sin and because he was unable to bear that death should have the mastery--lest
the creature should perish and His Fathers handiwork in men be spent for nought,
Christ was not content merely to appear, but fashioned for himself a human body in the
virgin Mary and
makes it his own (idiopoioumenou) as an instrument (organon). . . . And thus
taking from our bodies one of like nature, because all were under penalty of the
corruption of death, He gave it over to death in the stead of all (anti pantn) and
offered it to the Father (prosge t Patri) . . . to the end that, firstly, all being held
to have died in Him, the law involving the ruin of men might be undone
(inasmuch as its power was fully spent in the Lords body, and had no longer
holding-ground against men, his peers), and that, secondly, whereas men had
turned toward corruption, He might turn them again toward incorruption and
quicken them from death by the appropriation of His body and by the grace of the
Resurrection.4
The cross was required for the salvation of the human race, Athanasius continues,
because no otherwise could the corruption of men be undone save by death as a
1The
2Gross,
3See
4DI
213.
J. Riviere, Le dogme de la Rdemption, 151.
8, PG 25:109. Cf. CA 3.33.

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necessary condition.1 So, in order to suffer the consequences intrinsic to Adams sin, the
Logos, who is by nature impassible and incorruptible, freely takes (lambanei) to Himself
a body capable of death, that it, by partaking (metalabon) of the Word Who is above all,
might be worthy to die in the stead of all (anti pant), and might, because of the Word
which was come to dwell in it, remain incorruptible. 2
The indispensability of the cross and resurrection to his soteriology of
divinization is made most explicit perhaps when Athanasius addresses the cur Deus homo
question forthrightly in De decretis, answering that the Word was made flesh in order to
offer up (prosenegk) this body for all and that we, partaking (metalabontes) of His Spirit,
might be deified (theopoithnai dunthmen), a gift which we could not otherwise have
gained than by His clothing Himself in our created body.3 The incarnation here doesnt
stand aloof as though everything else in the life, death, and resurrection of the incarnate
Word were a mere artifact of the initial act of redemption by hypostatic union, but is
internally ordered to self-oblation of the Son on the cross by virtue of the death-bound
condition of the flesh He took. 4
1Ibid.
9.
2Ibid.
Here, as whenever Athanasius discusses the incarnation, the word translated with
participation (metalabon) cannot have a merely analogical meaning; the human body
of Jesus could be rendered worthy to die in the stead of all only by becoming the body
of the Logos or, at the very least, by receiving the Logos into itself.
3De
decretis 14.
4See Auln,
Christus Victor, 43f, who notes that although Athanasius makes less
mention of the devil than almost any of the Fathers, and at times seems to downplay the
significance of sin (In DI 7, he suggests that if death and corruption had not been
consequent upon sin mere repentance would have sufficed to save humanity), the fact is
that in contrast to Anselms isolation of the death of Christ, Athanasius along with all
the fathers saw sin and death as an integrated whole, the power of which could be broken
only by both the incarnation and the sacrificial atonement together: The work of
Christ . . . is a victory over death because it is a victory over sin. See also Roldanus,
168ff;
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As with the whole of his soteriology, Athanasius theologia crucis turns on the
difference between the divine person of the Word of God and the humanity he assumed,
which is not other than our own. The exalted of Phil. 2:6, Athanasius inveighs against
the Arians, refers not to the person of the Logos, but to the resurrected human nature he
adopted and offered to the Father on the cross:
Since, then, the Word, being the Image of the Father and immortal, took the form
of the servant and as man underwent for us death in his flesh, that thereby He
might offer (prosenegk) Himself for us through death to the Father; therefore also
as man He is said because of us and for us to be highly exalted, that as by His
death we all died in Christ, so again in the Christ Himself we might be highly
exalted.1
Likewise, by way of reaffirming the irreducible mystery that the Word suffered in the
flesh and yet remained impassible, Athanasius does not take recourse to anything like a
distinction between the impassible essence and the passible hypostatic energies. Instead,
he writes:
For what the human body of the Word suffered, this the Word, dwelling in the
body, ascribed to Himself (synn aut), in order that we might be enabled to be
partakers of the Godhead of the Word (ts tou Logou theottos metaschein
dynthmen). And verily it is strange (paradoxon) that He it was Who suffered
and yet suffered not. . . . But this He did, and so it was, in order that Himself
taking (dechomenos) what was ours and offering it as a sacrifice (prosenegkn eis
thysian), He might do away with it, and conversely might invest us with what was
His.2
In these several representative passages,3 Athanasius quite clearly gives the very
explanation for which Hanson claims to be at a loss: the cross is a necessary and integral
part of the salvific commercium of the Word because the humanity he assumed at the
incarnation for the purpose of saving it by uniting it to himself was under the penalty of
the corruption of death. It was specifically and only because the human race had
1CA 1.41.
2Ad
3See
Epictetum 6, citing 1 Cor. 15:53.

also CA 1.43, 48, 51, 60; 2.7, 13, 65; 3.57-58.
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become wanting through the transgression and dead by sin that the perfect Word of
God puts around Him an imperfect body and is said to be created for the works, that,
paying the debt in our stead (opheiln apodidous), He might, by Himself, perfect what was
wanting to man.1 All of his treatises, even those in which his primary concern is to
define the essential divinity of the Son both prior to and after the incarnation, are imbued
with references to the substitutionary theory of the atonement, which Athanasius treats
with as much matter-of-fact, sanguine assurance as he does the principle that salvation
entails participation in Gods nature. For this reason, then, because the sacrifice of the
cross is an integral element in the salvific commercium of the Words mission, Athanasius
is able to call the death of Christ the first cause (aitia prt) of the Saviors being made
man2 and the sum (kephalion) of our faith.3
It is not only the incarnation and passion of the cross by which this marvelous
exchange has been effected, but also by the entire human life of Christ, most especially
by the essentially impassible Words adoption of human passion. Jesus underwent
anxiety and sorrow at the betrayal and death of his friends not because he was a mere
creature and was therefore necessarily subject to the vagaries of human emotion, but
that in the flesh He might suffer and thenceforth the flesh might be made impassible and
immortal (apaths kai athanatos).4 Athanasius understands 1 Pet. 4:1 (Since, therefore,
Christ suffered in the flesh) to apply to hunger, thirst, fear, exhaustion, and every other
properly human passion, as well as to the cross.
And while He Himself, being impassible in nature (apaths tn physin), remains as
He is, not harmed by these affections, but rather obliterating and destroying them,
men, their passions as if changed (metabantn) and abolished (apleimmenn) in
the Impassible, henceforth become themselves also impassible and free from them
1CA 2.66.
2DI
10, citing 2 Cor 5:14; Heb. 2:9, 14; Gal. 6:17; 1 Cor. 15:21; 1 Tim. 6:15.
3Ibid.
19.
4CA 3.58.
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forever. . . . For as the Lord, putting on the body, became man, so we men are
deified (theopoioumetha) by the Word as being taken to Him (proslphthentes)
through His flesh, and henceforth inherit life everlasting.1
Beyond what Christ accomplished for us and without us, Athanasius also finds an
exemplary and didactic dimension to the divinizing effects of the Words incarnation, one
which cannot be dismissively attributed to a naively realistic Platonism: by the works of
His body (smatos ergn) He teaches them who failed to learn of God from His
Providence and rule over all things.2 Here Athanasius reveals the works of the Words
body, which we might call Gods created energies, to be most decisive in reversing the
stultifying consequences of the sin of concupiscence by restoring the possibility of human
knowledge of God. Like a kind teacher who condescends to the epistemic level of his
students, the Logos, seeing that the human race were seeking for God in nature and in
the world of sense . . . takes to Himself (lambanei) a body so that they who think that
God is corporeal may from what the Lord effects by His body (ho Kyrios ergazetai dia
tn smatos ergn) perceive the truth, and through Him recognize the Father.3 Thus it
was primarily through the created works of the essential energy rather than through
manifold uncreated energies of God that He made Himself known in Christ: the Word
disguised Himself by appearing in a body, that He might . . . persuade them by the works
(ergn) He did that He is not Man only, but also God.4 The two works of love
accomplished by the incarnation were putting away death from us and renewing us
1Ibid.
3.34. Cf. CA 3.53, where Athanasius reasons that because it was the second Person
of the impassible Godhead who was raised from childhood as Jesus of Nazareth, he
advanced in the flesh strictly according to his manhood which was deified, that is,
progressively assimilated to the divine Person who inhabited it. This growth was
undertaken so that mans advance might abide and fail not, because of the Word which
is with it. See also Gross, 213.
2DI
14.
3Ibid.
15.
4Ibid.
16.
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again and secondly, being unseen and invisible, in manifesting and making Himself
known by His works (ergn) to be the Word of the Father.1 And immediately prior to
the very passage which Florovsky cites as an example of incipient Palamism, wherein
Athanasius declares that God is present to the universe by His power, while remaining
distinct from the universe in His essence, Athanasius also writes that one of the two
purposes of the incarnation (the first being putting away death from us and renewing us
again) consists in the unseen and invisible Logos manifesting and making Himself
known by His works (dia tn ergn), to be the Word of the Father , and the Ruler and
King of the universe. 2 Moreover, immediately following the DI 17 definition in
question, Athanasius returns to the principle theme of this particular movement of the
treatise and clarifies that the Logos is known from the body by His works, which the
context makes clear are the created works of the created flesh He assumed.3
Athanasius is not nakedly vulnerable to the aforementioned allegations that his
soteriology is another instance of the so-called physical theory of the atonement and is a
mechanical, magical, or automatic and passive process whereby mere contact with the
divine nature of the Logos suffices to divinize the whole of human nature also because he
insisted at every turn that the divine-human exchange of the incarnation must be
appropriated to each individual through the obedient imitation of Christ, ascetical
practices, and reception of the sacraments. 4
First of all, Athanasius clearly believes and teaches that the grace of divinization
must be acquired by an intentional human effort at reproducing the life and virtues of
God Himself through discipleship and imitation. We have seen above how central a role
the imitation of God played in Platos soteriology and in that of the Middle Platonists and
1Ibid.
2DI
16.
3Ibid.
17.
4Kolp,
Participation, 272-73. See also Gross, 213; CA 3.19-22.

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Neoplatonists who followed in his wake, as well as in the Greek mystery religions.
According to the Hellenistic philosophies, one author aptly summarizes, it was an act
of mans own virtue to become god-like and be the gods perfect imitator; it was an act of
purely human effort and human industry. 1 Although the same certainly cannot be said of
Athanasius, a firm resolve on the part of believers to live their lives after the pattern of
their theandric exemplar is essential if they are to have a share in the sonship He gained
for them. Above all, it is by the patient and merciful manner of His suffering that Christ
has provided a model for believers to follow in order to become virtuous with the virtue
which is Him: That not only should we bear His image, but should receive from Him an
example and pattern (formam exempluque) of heavenly living; that as He has begun, we
should go on, that suffering we should not threaten, being reviled, we should not revile
again. . . . For those who are thus disposed and fashion themselves according to the
Gospel, will be partakers of Christ (particeps Christi). 2 Whereas the essential Son
possesses these virtues from the Father kath ousian, the Fathers adopted sons must strive
to acquire them by co-operating with Gods operations through the exercise of the will;
the Sons likeness (homoisin) and unalterableness (atrepsion) was different from such
copy (mimsin) of the same as is ascribed to us, which we acquire from virtue on the
grounds of observance of the commandments. 3 From the Gospel parable of the talents
(Matt. 25:23) Athanasius draws the following conclusion: our will ought to keep pace
1Kantorowicz,
Deus per naturem, deus per gratiam, 276.
2Ep.
fest. 2.5. See also Ep. fest. 10.7: Thus even our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ
comes before us when He would show men how to suffer, Who when He was smitten
bore it patiently, being reviled He reviled not again . . . that we might behold in Him the
image of all that is virtuous (virtutum omnium imaginem) and immortal and that we,
conducting ourselves after these examples, might truly tread on serpents.
3De
decret. 20.
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with the grace of God, and not fall short; lest while our will remains idle, the grace given
us should begin to depart.1
Yet, it must be emphasized that Athanasius was not flirting with a latent form of
Pelagianism here. In the CA 3:19-23 discourse treated above and in similar passages
where Athanasius disputes the Arian account of how creatures may come to be merciful
like God,2 Athanasius is not attempting to prove that men can earn their condition as
sons, as Roldanus reads it, for adoption remains a grace, but, for man, faith and virtue
are the indispensable conditions for the continuation of the inhabitation of the Holy Spirit
in him.3 Indeed, much like Augustines dispute with the Pelagians, one of the central
issues in contention between Athanasius and Arius is whether or not the salvation and
deification of persons could be accomplished on the strength of obedience, imitation, and
willful effort alone. In the case of Antony, for example, Athanasius is at pains to
demonstrate that Antonys holiness is not achieved, it is received and that the monks
deeds are not, strictly speaking, his own.4 When Athanasius begins to speak of
Antonys first struggle against the devil, as though to forestall whatever Pelagian-like
conclusions the reader might be tempted to draw from the coming discourse on Antonys
ascetical heroism, he quickly adds or rather this victory was the Saviors work in
Antony. 5 Antony was able to overcome the temptations of the flesh only because the
Lord was working with (synrgei) Antony--the Lord who for our sake took flesh.6
1Ep.
fest. 3.3. See also Ep. fest. 10.4: For through virtue a man enters in unto God . . .
but through vice a man goes out from the presence of the Lord. Cf. Ep. fest. 13.2:
because God is good and philanthropic, He distributes to each a due reward according to
his actions.
2Ibid.
3Le
2.2; 10.7-8.
Christ et lhomme dans la thologie dAthanase dAlexandrie, 151.
4Gregg
and Groh, Early Arianism: A View of Salvation, 147-48.
5VA 7.
6Ibid.
5.
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In another context, Athanasius exhorts his flock to imitate the deeds of the
saints, but warns immediately thereafter that when we render a recompense to the Lord
to the utmost of our power . . . we give nothing of our own, but those things which we
have before received (accepimus) from Him, this being especially of His grace, that He
should require, as from us, His own gifts.1 What we have received by grace is necessary
for our salvation, but not is such a way as to obviate the equally critical necessity of
human response. Athanasius even views Christs exhortations to the imitation of God as
acts of grace themselves: For we too, albeit we cannot become like God in essence
(homoioi kat ousian), yet by progress in virtue imitate God (ex arets beltioumenoi
mimoumetha ton Theon), the Lord granting us this grace in the words Be ye merciful as
your Father is merciful and Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.2 Far
from being incorporated into the Logos automatically or mechanically, then, believers
must be vigilant over the conduct of their lives by cooperating with this didactic grace of
Christ if they hope to have a divinizing share in Him: Let us keep our whole mind from
guile . . . so that, being altogether pure, we may be able to partake of the Logos (possimus
fieri Verbi participes).3
Secondly, in addition to the obedient imitation of Christ, believers must cooperate
with the grace of divinization by mortifying their flesh through asceticism. The ascetical
practices which Athanasius enjoined for the purification of the soul from its aboriginal
idolatry of creation in Adam, although possibly still tainted with a certain measure of
Hellenistic spirit-matter dualism,4 are entirely ordered toward this end of preferring God
to all created things.5 Just as the first humans fell into sin by spurning their utter
1Ep.
fest. 5.4.
2Ad Afros
3Ep.
7.
fest. 5.5. Cf. CA 1.45; 2.70; 3.38; DI 57.
4Roldanus,
5Ibid.,
258.
300.
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dependency on participation in the uncreated Logos in favor of a virtual apotheosis of the

sensible, created world, so likewise our increase is no other than the renouncing things
sensible (aesthtn) and coming to the Word Himself.1 This ascetical elixir to the first
humans idolatrous turning away from the contemplation of God toward creatures as ends
in themselves is exemplified most fully in Antony, whose life Athanasius regards as
corresponding with and, in some sense, recapitulating that of the pre-lapsarian Adam. Far
from being elevated to some ethereal, supra-human mystical ecstasy, Antony was
altogether even as being guided by reason, and abiding in a natural state.2 Indeed,
Athanasius is obviously intent here upon emphasizing the genuinely human character of
true virtue:
But fear not to hear of virtue (aret), nor be astonished at the name. For it is not
far from us, nor is it without (exthen) ourselves, but it is within us and is easy if
only we are willing. . . . For the Lord said, The Kingdom of heaven is within
you. (Luke 17:21) Wherefore virtue has need at our hands of willingness (thelein)
alone, since it is in us and is formed from us. For when the soul (psychs) has its
spiritual faculty (noeron) in a natural state, virtue is formed. And it is in a natural
state when it remains as it came into existence.3
Yet, even in Vita Antoni, his most sustained treatment of the ascetical life, Athanasius is
careful to subsume all human striving under the omnipotent grace of God; at the end of
the day, Antony was enabled to defeat the wiles of the devil not on the strength of his
own powers of obedience, but only also because Christ took flesh and gave the body
victory over the devil, so that all who truly fight can say, not I but the grace of God
which was with me.4
Thirdly, salvific participation in Gods nature is appropriated to the individual by
the grace of God conferred through the sacraments, especially those of baptism and the
1CA 3.52,
2VA 14,
PG 26:432.
PG 26:865.
3Ibid.
20, PG 26:873. Cf. VA 34.
4Ibid.
5, quoting I Cor. 15:20.

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Eucharist. Baptism is regenerative and recreating for Athanasius because it is the

sacrament through which the indwelling Holy Spirit is initially given:1 For He has bid
us to be baptized . . . into the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for with such an
initiation we are made sons (huiopoioumetha) verily.2 By being regenerated from
above of water and the Spirit (anthen ex hydatos kai pneumatos anagennthentes), we
are made Word (logtheists).3 Recalling that the Son is invoked during the rite of
baptism, Athanasius argues against his Arian interlocutors that it would be futile for us to
be baptized into a creature, since the purpose of baptism is that we might be joined to
the Godhead (synaphthmen t theotti). The assistance of a created son would be
superfluous because God who made Him a Son is able to make us sons (huiopoisai)
also.4
The Eucharist receives far less attention from Athanasius than his so-called
physical theory of redemption might lead one to expect.5 Even in his Festal Letters,
Athanasius writes more often of the Eucharist as an earnest of that heavenly feast than
in accordance with the realistic tones of his Logos-sarx christology.6 Lest this language
of promise be interpreted in a strictly typological sense, however, he is careful to
admonish: we, my beloved, the shadow having received its fulfillment and the types
1Roldanus,
151. See also Gross, 214, who cites CA 1.34; 2.41; DI 14; and Ad Serap. 1.22
as instances in which Athanasius links baptism with divinization.
2De
decretis 31.
3CA 3.33,
PG 26:383.
4Ibid.
2.41. Cf. Ibid. 1.34, where Athanasius writes that through baptism in the name of
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we too, being numbered among works, are made sons.
5Harnack,
History of Dogma, 4:291. See also Gross, 214, n. 7: "Saint Athanasius seems
to have seen in the Eucharist a means for preserving and strengthening the grace of
deification. But, as the passages where he speaks of it are very obscure, it is preferable
not to rely on it."
6Ep.
fest. 6.1.
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being accomplished, should no longer consider the feast typical, for Christ was
changing the typical for the spiritual and therefore promised them that they should no
longer eat the flesh of a lamb, but His own, saying Take, eat and drink; this is My body
and My blood.1 In another Eucharistic allusion, Athanasius concludes one movement
of his argument for the divinity of Christ addressed to the philosopher Maximus by
stating: And we are deified not by partaking (metechontes) of the body of some man, but
by receiving (lambanontes) the Body of the Word Himself.2 It is through communion
with His sacramental body and blood, among the other means we have been discussing,
that the redeemed are able to partake of the Logos (fieri Verbi participes),3 but only on
the condition that they are prepared to draw near to the divine Lamb and to touch
heavenly food by the purification of their bodies and minds from lusts and false
doctrines.4 Hence, the Eucharist seems for Athanasius not to be a means by which our
participation in God is effected in the first place, but rather strengthened and made more
stable.5
Consistent with his anthropology, Athanasius holds that the final end of those who
have been divinized by grace surpasses the beatitude of the first humans primarily
because the incarnational internalization of what was only external to Adam will finally
render our possession of God immutable:6 "Mankind then is perfected in Him and
restored, as it was made at the beginning, nay, with greater grace. For, on rising from the
1Ibid.
4.4.
2Ad
Maximum 2, PG 26:1088.
3Ep.
fest. 5.5.
4Ibid.
5Norman,
Deification, 126.
6See
Bernard, LImage, 28: Because of the internalization of grace by the incarnation of

the Word, Redemption would not be seen (by Athanasius) as a restoration of the
primitive kat eikona.
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dead, we shall no longer fear death, but shall ever reign in Christ in the heavens."1 At the
resurrection, we will receive the same bodies we had on earth, 2 but transfigured as a
simple effect of the presence and knowledge of the Logos.3 The specific question of
whether the beatific vision will apprehend Gods essence or only His energies does not
occur to Athanasius and is not addressed even obliquely or implicitly.
CONCLUSION
At the end of this rather cursory survey of Athanasius contribution, we can reach
several tentative conclusions in the service of determining the extent to which, if at all,
his understanding of divinization as salvific human participation in God departed from
that of Augustine and the West.
First, with regard to the scenario painted by St. Gregory Palamas and his modern
advocates, wherein Gods manifold uncreated energies are alone participable and
knowable, while His essence remains ontologically or intrinsically imparticipable and
unknowable, there appears to be no clear basis in Athanasius writings to support such a
differentiation. Certainly Athanasius drew a clear distinction between the Fathers
generation of the Son and His adoption of creatures or, stated more generally, between
Gods inner, essential life and His economic, ad extra life. It is also certain that
Athanasius argued for the priority of the former over the latter, as virtually all parties to
this discussion agree. Yet, it appears equally evident that Athanasius found and taught an
1CA 2.67.
See Gross, 216, where he writes of Athanasius' view of the afterlife that man is
returned to a state of immortality "in a fashion more stable than at the beginning."
2VA 91.
3Gross,
217, who arrives at this judgment on the basis of Athanasius belief that Adam
would have remained incorruptible had he preserved his divine similitude by the
contemplation of God (citing DI 4) and because Athanasius also held that non-human
rational creatures possess incorruptibility by virtue of their knowledge of the Logos (DI
43).
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intrinsic correspondence between the two, such that Gods work in the world is the free,
gratuitous, temporal enactment toward creatures of His eternally perfected inner life,
which therefore reveals who He is in Himself, albeit never exhaustively or
comprehensively. Therefore, while at first blush it may seem that the Athanasian phrases
quoted by Florovsky to the effect that the Logos is in all things (en pasi) by his power but
external (ektos, ech) to creation kat ousian support the Palamite doctrine, Athanasius
more common and insistent affirmations that knowledge of the enousios energeia or
coessential Son is knowledge of the Father and his less frequent but no less revealing
arguments from the economy to the theology of the Holy Spirit lead inevitably to the
conclusion that Athanasius believed Gods operations in the world to be revelatory and
communicative of Gods inner life or essence.
However, even if one were to find a basis for the Palamite ontological distinction
in the writings of Athanasius on an epistemic or noetic level, that is, with respect to Gods
knowability, it is at least evident that he did not attempt to ground his doctrine of salvific
human participation in God, or divinization, in such a doctrine, but rather on the
inviolable distinction between our own created humanity and the Godhead to which it
was united through the incarnation of the essential Son and the descent of the Holy Spirit.
The ever transcendent God is participable not because He has made an ontologically
distinct portion or mode of Himself available to human partaking, but because to
participate in God, as Athanasius understood and employed the concept, is to acquire a
created reflection of or likeness to Gods essential attributes and virtues by the action of
His uncreated grace or divine indwelling in the human person, the ontological possibility
of which is our connaturality with the assumed humanity of the Logos, the Image of the
invisible God.
This understanding of the matter is reflected in Athanasius usage of the key
words and phrases we have been following throughout his writings, a brief summary of
which may now be helpful. Of the twenty-two times in which Athanasius uses a form of
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the word theopoisis, which is usually translated by deification or divinization, eleven

refer to the incarnate Sons flesh (and us in it) being divinized1 and eleven instances
occur in the course of his attempted demonstrations that the essential Son was not himself
made divine by participation in God, but is the essentially divine agent and source of our
divinization through participation in him.2 In every case, Athanasius associates and
implicitly equates theopoisis with participation in God. His use of the language and
concept of participation is much more variegated and complex, however. As one might
expect, Athanasius employs synapt and related verbs (synarmoz, synart, synde)
only to designate what has come to be known as uncreated grace, that is, the creatures
union with God by incorporation into the divinized, created humanity of Christ3 and by
the infusion and inhabitation of the Holy Spirit,4 but never in reference to a created
likeness to God. Metousia denotes the indwelling of God only once 5 and a created
likeness of divine virtue once,6 but otherwise is used in the service of arguing that the
Redeemer is the Son of God kat ousian and not ek metousias like us.7 Methexis, metoch,
and metalamban, all of which relate etymologically to the notion of possession or
reception, are the most versatile and commonly used words for participation in
Athanasius writings. They frequently refer to the inhabitation of God in the believer,8
but still more commonly, like metousia, are used by Athanasius to distinguish our own
derivative, gratuitous, partial and accidental possession of virtues, habits, and qualities
1CA 1.38,
2De
1.45, 2.47, 3.23, 3.33 (x2), 3.34; DI 54; De decretis 14 (x2); Ep. ad Adelph. 4.
synod. 51 (x4); CA 1.9, 2.70 (x2); Ad Serap. 1.23 (x2); 1.25 (x2).
3CA 2.61,
4CA 2.41
2.67 (x2), 2.68, 2.69 (x6), 2.70 (x3), 2.74 (x2).

(through baptism), 3.24; Ad Serap. 1.23.
5Ad
Serap. 1.23.
6De
synod. 53.
7CA 1.15,
8CA 1.9,
3.1; De synod. 51; Ad Afros 8.
1.37, 1.50, 3.19, 3.24 (x2); De decret. 14; Ad Serap. 1.23, 1.27 (x2).
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which the triune God alone possesses essentially, fully, and self-sufficiently.1 The same
idea is also expressed by Athanasius frequent declarations that the essential Son and
Holy Spirit partake of nothing, neither the creature nor the Father.2
Athanasius generally assumes that his readers know what he means by metousia
and methexis, but several passages come close to offering a definition of salvific human
participation in God. Anthropologically, human participation in the true, eternal Image of
God, a relationship or endowment which Athanasius expresses with the phrase kat
eikona, means that the human nous has a kind of reflection (skias) of the Word.3
Unlike the essential Son, the creature possesses agreement (symphnian) with the
Father only by influence and by participation and through the mind (kinsei kai metousia
kai n).4 If Christ were also logikos merely by participation, Athanasius writes, he
would be Gods Word and Wisdom only according to grace (kata charin)5 and in idea
(katepinoian) and by adoption (thesei),6 as if these qualities were imparted to Him
from without,7 which means that he would be alterable (trepton).8
Although, as we have seen, Athanasius does occasionally explicitly exclude the
divine essence from human participation, neither does he leave room for a Palamite
resolution to the mystery of Gods transcendent communicability. When he writes that
the biblical promise of I John 3:2 means that the redeemed shall be like the Redeemer
1DI
9; CG 41, 46; CA 1.9 (x2), 1.5, 1.6, 1.15, 1.16, 3.1, 3.22, 3.24; De synod. 53 (x2);
Ad Serap. 1.23.
2DI
17, 43; CA 1.9, 1.16; De decret. 9.
3DI
3.
4De
synodis 48.
5CA 1.5.
6Ibid.
7CG
1.9.
46.
8CA 1.9.
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not in essence but in sonship (ou t ousia, alla t huiotti),1 we can be sure that he doesnt
intend to suggest that the Words sonship is somehow external to the divine essence, for
Athanasius spent most of his adult life attempting to prove the very opposite. Whereas
Athanasius claims that we are not compacted (synarmologoumenos) or knit
(synmma) into God according to the Essence of the Godhead (kata tn ousian ts
theottos), the alternative he proposes is not that we are united to the divine energies of
the Godhead, but rather that we are joined to the Logos according to His manhood (kata
to anthrpinon),2 which remains a differentiation between the uncreated and the
created. Whereas Athanasius teaches that we cannot become like God in essence
(homoioi kat ousian) but only in virtue (ex arets),3 he also insists that the virtue or
attributes of God which we are able to imitate and reflect are essential to Him, 4 which
would seem to mean that human virtues and perfections are never instances of divine
virtues and perfections, but always only created, finite, therefore partial reflections or
images.
Perhaps one indication as to what Athanasius has in mind with these admonitions
that the creatures gratuitous, acquired similitude to God is not also a likeness according
to essence can be found in his given rationale for applying the term homoousios to the
Son: he explains to those more moderate Arians who prefer to say that the Son is like in
essence to the Father that essences are not the kind of things which admit of likeness to
one another, inasmuch as like (homoion) is not predicated of essence (ousin), but of
habits (schmatn) and qualities (poiottn), for in the case of essences we speak, not of
likeness (homoiots), but of identity (tautots).5 It is the creatures finite, meconic essence
1De
synod. 53.
2CA 2.74.
3Ad Afros
4CG
5De
7.
46.
synod. 53.
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which is intrinsically and forever destined to be unlike Gods essence in the specific sense
that things created (to genta) are without likeness in essence (ouden homoion kat
ousian) with the Creator1 because, as Athanasius asks rhetorically, how can that which
is not be like (homoion) Him that is, being short of Him in once not being, and in its
having its place among things created? 2 Yet, it becomes evident that Athanasius
believed it possible for creatures to come to possess virtues and attributes which are
reflective of Gods nature when he concludes his apology for the term homoousios with
the following clarification: in speaking of like according to essence (homoion kat
ousian), we mean like by participation (homoion ek metousias)--for likeness is a quality
which may attach to essence--and this would be proper to creatures, for they, by
partaking, are made like to God (ek metochs homoioutai t The),3 as he also elsewhere
does not demur from affirming that the redeemed can be partakers of the Godhead of the
Word (ts tou Logou theottos metaschein).4
Like Irenaeus, Clement and Origen, Athanasius did not need to and, in fact, did
not imply or assume a real distinction, in re ipsa, between the divine essence and the
divine energies (or operations or attributes or names) in order to secure the possibility of
human participation in God because he understood metousia Theou and equivalent terms
to refer to the acquisition of a sanctifying, created likeness to God effected by and
continually arising from the economic activity of the triune God on and in the world.
Gods homoessential, immutable, timeless trinitarian nature can be participated by
creatures because for God to be participated is not for His Being to be altered in any way
by those who are recipients of and respondents to His infinitely generous self-gift.
Rather, creatures are said by Athanasius to participate in the divine nature when, by the
1CA 1.20.
2Ibid.
1.21.
3De
synod. 53.
4Ad
Epictetum 6.
!334
!335
work of the very essence of God, the enousias energeias, through the incarnation, life,
substitutionary death, and resurrection of His perfectly coessential Image and through the
infusion of His equally coessential Holy Spirit, the redeemed creature is endowed
gratuitously with perfections or virtues which are analogous to and directly effected by
those perfections and virtues which are possessed essentially by God Himself, typically
(for Athanasius), wisdom, incorruptibility and mercy. To be divinized by grace, to
participate in the divine nature, as Athanasius understood and employed the concept--like
Irenaeus, Clement, and Origen before him--is to become like God in the limited sense I
have outlined above. It is not, as with the Stoics, to become a part of God. Therefore,
because divinization does not entail becoming a part of Gods uncreated nature, there is
no need for Athanasius or anyone else to designate which part or mode of the uncreated
can be partaken.
!335
!336
!336
!337
CONCLUSION
Our primary purpose in this study was not to argue that the Church fathers whose
thought we have considered held or taught a doctrine of divine simplicity akin to that of
Augustine, Aquinas, or other Western doctors of the Faith, nor to argue that God is in fact
perfectly simple and immutable in Himself, even though it would not be unreasonable to
reach either or both of these conclusions on the basis of the evidence we have seen.
Neither did it belong to any part of this studys purpose to contend or suggest that the
doctrine of divinization as taught by St. Gregory Palamas and the members of his school
is misguided or historically novel. We sought instead specifically to respond to neoPalamisms critique of Western theology by demonstrating that the writings of Irenaeus,
Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Athanasius evince an understanding of divinization
by grace, or sanctifying participation in the divine nature, fully consistent with a God
who is metaphysically simple, as taught by the Christian West, or, in language more
similar to that employed by the neo-Palamite school, with a God for whom nothing which
belongs to His uncreated being is posterior to, subsequent to, around, outside of, or
otherwise not internal to and disclosive of His simple, fully actuated, immutable essence.
!337
!338
The neo-Palamite challenge to Western theology hinges on two questions. The

first of these is of properly theological consequence: to what reality does the term divine
essence or ousia refer? Does it denote Gods triune quiddity? Is the divine ousia
nothing less than the full God-ness of God? Does it consist in everything that has not
been created? The school of thought to which our study responds answers with an
emphatic no to this question. Indeed, the idea that Gods uncreated being, existence, or
life is more than His essence and is partially external to His essence lies at the very heart
of the neo-Palamite proposal.
Although none of the fathers whose thought we examined provided a precise
definition of ousia as applicable to God, each of them implicitly identfied Gods essence
with the fulness of His being. All neo-Palamite critics of the West acknowledge that
Clement and Origen believed the triune Gods being to be entirely identical to His
essence. But Irenaeus and Athanasius employment of the language and concept of
essence, as we saw, also implies and assumes that Gods divinity is identical to His
essence and, moreover, that it is communicable, accessible, and knowable through His
essential operations, while remaining incomprehensible and infinitely transcendent.
Irenaeus, in fact, contended pointedly against the Basilidean Gnostics that the
biblical Gods uncreated life (z) is neither an emanation from nor external to His being
or essence. Instead, Gods life, incorruption, truth, intelligence, and will, like all other
divine properties, are identical to His altogether simple, uncompounded being. The
absolutely unique Creator God who has made Himself known to the world through the
Son and the Holy Spirit remains transcendent of the human mind not because a mode or
aspect of His nature remains undisclosed or intrinsically incommunicable, according to
Irenaeus, but because the immediacy of His infinite presence leaves Him forever
incomprehensible and immeasurable. In the course of making such an argument, as we
observed, Irenaeus repeatedly identifies the divine essence (substantia) with Gods full
measure (magnitudo). The God who is inaccessible and unknowable to human agency
!338
!339
alone has made Himself accessible, communicable, participable, and knowable strictly
and specifically to the extent that He has acted toward the human race through His two
divine Hands, the Son and the Holy Spirit. But the essence of the Father does not now
remain absolutely inaccessible and/or unknowable, Irenaeus insists, for the knowledge of
the Son is the knowledge of the Father. Indeed, Irenaeus speaks just as readily and
frequently of human participation in each of the divine persons as he does of human
participation in Gods perfections, such as incorruptibility, freedom, light, glory, life,
salvation, and wisdom. Irenaeus can be said to have grounded the Christian mystery of
created union with the uncreated God in a differentiation between Gods
incommunicable, eternally unknowable essence and His communicable, knowable
operations or energies, therefore, only if the divine essence is narrowly understood to
refer to the full measure of the infinite God, or to what God is in Himself logically prior
to His self-disclosure and, secondly, only if His operations or energies are understood to
refer to those temporal events by which the otherwise imparticipable God has given
Himself to be known and communicated in the world through the Son and the Holy
Spirit. The essence of the God who has revealed Himself in Christ remains unknowable
after His self-disclosure, then, only in the specific sense that God can never be measured,
fathomed, circumscribed, or encapsulated.
Athanasius also implies and assumes that Gods ousia refers to the entirety of His
uncreated being. The human person was created only after the image of God or kat
eikona, Athanasius maintains, because a true and perfect image is not only a product of
the will (as the Arians had claimed of Christ), but also an extension of the essence.
Precisely here, where Florovsky, Lossky, and Meyendorff want to find a proto-Palamite,
Athanasian distinction between the freedom of the divine will and the necessity of the
divine essence, Athanasius implies and assumes that there is no real difference within
God, for the essence of God was communicated to the world in the person of the Son,
whom he identifies both as the living will of the Father and as the image of the
!339
!340
Fathers essence or the proper offspring of the essence. The difference between the
only-begotten Son and created, adopted sons lies not in a real difference between the
divine essence and the divine will, Athanasius implies, but in the enduring, unbreachable
difference between the uncreated triune God and everything created by Him. Adopted
creatures remain external effects of Gods will, analogically disclosive of His nature,
whereas the Son from all eternity is an essential expression of the Fathers will, fully
identical to His nature. Therein lies the Athanasian basis for distinguishing essential
sonship from adoptive sonship, or generation from creation. By calling the coessential
Son the living will of the Father, Athanasius deliberately equates the divine essence and
the divine will, this in response to the Arian contention that the Son must be either an
expression of Gods free will or of Gods necessary essence, but cannot be both.
Similarly, in response to the Arian argument that Christ may have been an heteroessential power or energy of God in the world, but could not have been the immutable
God Himself, Athanasius again refused to distance Gods economic activity from His
essence when he responded by designating Christ the essential energy (enousios
energeia) of the Father. The incarnation of the Son is a revelation and communication
not merely of the Fathers will and work, but also of His very essence, For the Son is the
Fathers all, Athanasius maintains: beholding the Son, we see the Father, for the
thought and comprehension of the Son is knowledge concerning the Father, because He is
the proper offspring from His essence. The incarnate Christ could say he that has seen
me has seen the Father because that which a man sees in the Father, that sees he also in
the Son; and that not by participation, but essentially (kat ousian). As many of the
modern apologists for Arius bemoan, Athanasius believed that we are saved only because
the very essence of God assumed and healed our flesh in the person of the Son.
Palamisms real distinction cannot begin to find support in Athanasius, therefore, because
the latters entire argument against Arius created savior assumes and implies at every
!340
!341
turn that the Redeemers divinity consists wholly in the uncreated ousia to which he
joined our flesh at the incarnation.
The second of the two questions upon which the neo-Palamite challenge to the
West hinges is that of the specific nature of the relationship with God denoted by the
language of participation as employed by the fathers, especially in connection with the
grace of sanctification, or what most of them also knew as divinization or deification.
Gods uncreated activity in the world leaves His trihypostatic essence absolutely
inaccessible and imparticipable for all eternity, even to the glorified saints in heaven,
because, according to the neo-Palamite rationale, to participate in a metaphysically
simple God (as described by the West) would necessarily entail becoming coessential
with God, or a divine hypostasis. Such reasoning reveals what I have called an entitative
or distributive understanding of participation, one which introduces a division to the
participated, making the participated a component of the participant. Consistent with
such an understanding, the neo-Palamite school steadfastly denies that participation in the
divine nature entails any causality, as they also refuse to recognize any created,
analogical dimension to the grace of divinization. To participate in God, as they repeat
frequently, is to become uncreated through grace, that is, to become a repository or
instantiation of Gods uncreated energies. In opposition to the sanctifying habitus of St.
Thomas Aquinas and the West, the neo-Palamite school objects that grace and
participation, as conceived by the Eastern fathers, refer only to the uncreated operation/
indwelling of God, not to its created effects. Similarly, according to Lossky et al., true
knowledge of God is never conceptual, but is always immediate and intuitive, consisting
in a vision of the uncreated energies.
Each of the ante-Nicene fathers whose literature we have examined reveals the
descriptive inadequacy of this false, either/or alternative between the uncreated self-gift
of God and its re-creative, sanctifying effects, or, in other words, between the entitative
and analogical dimensions of participation.
!341
!342
Clement, who coined the language of divinization (theopoisis), also defined it as

created assimilation to God through baptismal regeneration, contemplative prayer and the
following of Christ. To participate in the divine nature or to be divinized, as he
characterized it, is to have ones mind filled with the knowledge of God through the
heavenly teaching of the divine pedagogue, Jesus Christ, and to be given that
supernatural likeness to God toward which our creation after the image was ordered and
destined. It is to be taught by the essential Son how to become an adopted son of the
Father, an alter Christus: The word of God became man, that you may learn from man
how man may become a god. His fellow Alexandrian, Origen, also conceived of
divinizing participation in God as the acquisition of a created, supernatural likeness to
God through Gods divine initiative and agency. As every creature derives its very being
from participation in the God who alone is the source of all being, according to Origen,
and as all rational creatures derive their rationality from participation in the Logos of
God, so do those who are reborn in baptism derive their wisdom, righteousness, holiness,
immortality, and every other supernatural virtue from participation in the God who is
immutably by nature the infinite perfection of all virtue. The relation of participation, as
Clement and Origen understood and applied it within the Christian context, denotes the
participants reception of what it is and what it has from the Participated. It clearly does
not denote connaturality. The adoptive sonship of the redeemed, as Origen specifies, is
only analogous (paraplsion) to the uncreated sonship of the perfect Image of the
Father, not an instance of it. Those who are divinized by Gods grace do not become
uncreated. Instead, they become images or likenesses of their divine, indwelling author.
But neither does the grace of created participation in the divine nature operate exactly as
in creation, as the neo-Palamite school alleges of its Western critics doctrine, for the
divinization of the Christian according to Clement and Origen presumes and requires the
active, free cooperation of the persons who were endowed with the dignity of a mind and
!342
!343
a will with which to do so. In this sense, the grace of divinization uniquely involves a
personal and intentional participation in Gods being.
It was to be expected that Clement and Origen would evince an understanding of
divinizing participation in God inconsistent with that of the Palamite school, since most
neo-Palamite authors cite them not as anticipations of Palamas, but as examples of what
can and must go wrong sans the essence-energies distinction. Irenaeus and Athanasius,
however, whom several neo-Palamites do claim as representatives of their theory, also
display an understanding of supernatural participation in God that implies analogical
causality and otherwise agrees with that of Clement and Origen.
Irenaeus, who never uses the language of theopoisis, speaks characteristically of
Jesus Christ becoming what we are that He might bring us to be even what He is
Himself. It is not the uncreated Son that Irenaeus hopes and believes we can become
through the marvelous exchange of the incarnation, of course, nor does he suggest that
the purpose of the incarnation was to fill our humanity with the uncreated energies of the
Son. Instead, the incarnation both showed forth the image truly, since He became
Himself what was His image; and He re-established the similitude after a sure manner, by
assimilating man to the invisible Father through means of the visible Word. The Word
became flesh, assimilating Himself to man and man to Himself, so that by means of his
resemblance to the Son, man might become precious to the Father." The purpose of the
Sons recapitulation of the human race, as Irenaeus saw it, was to restore and perfect the
image and likeness of God according to which it was created, so that what we had lost in
Adam--namely, to be according to the image and likeness of God--we might recover in
Christ Jesus." Consequently, the immortality and incorruptibility in which those who are
incorporated to Christ through the rebirth of baptism come to partake does not consist in
Gods uncreated immortality and incorruptibility, but in a created immortality and
incorruptibility analagous to and arising from Gods own life poured into our souls
through the Son and the Holy Spirit. The redeemed Christian is the receptacle of Gods
!343
!344
operations and of all His wisdom and power, according to Irenaeus, for to participate in
God is to know God and to enjoy His goodness. But the purpose or end of such
participation lies in what it effects, namely, the recreation of human persons and their
assimilation to God.
Athanasius, for whom theopoisis was arguably the central idea of his theology,
also located the purpose of mans reception of the uncreated, indwelling operation of God
primarily in its re-creative, perfecting, and immortalizing effects. Indeed, he carefully
excluded the relation of participation from within the Trinity precisely because it implied
paradigmatic causality. Like Origen, Athanasius spoke of the ontological or natural
participation of all created being in Gods uncreated being and of the participation of all
rational creatures in the Logos, each of which entails causality. Our supernatural
participation in God was initiated by the incarnation of the essential Son, the Image after
whom we were created, and consists summarily in adoptive sonship. Christs sonship to
the Father, like each of the divine perfections in which we are said to partake through
Him, is not uncreated in the human participant, but analogical. To participate in the
divine nature, to be deified, according to Athanasius, is to be assimilated to God through
the acquisition of a certain divine likeness on the order of moral virtue or with respect to
habits and perfections, a created similitude which Athanasius distinguishes sharply from
connaturality by using the language of metousia to discriminate between Gods virtue and
ours, for likeness is a quality which may attach to essenceand this would be proper to
creatures, for they, by partaking, are made like to God.
!344

Sanctity As Participation in The Divine Nature

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SANCTITY AS PARTICIPATION IN THE DIVINE NATURE

ACCORDING TO THE ANTE-NICENE EASTERN FATHERS,

A dissertation submitted to the Caspersen School of Graduate Studies

Committee chair: James H. Pain, D. Phil.

Jeffrey David Finch

4.2 (Schoedel, 51).

1.12, PG 8:368ab; quoted by Jules Gross, La Divinisation du chrtien d'aprs les

Ioan. 2.3.19, SC 120:218-20.

in Ez. 1.3, PG 13:769b.

synod. 51, PG 26:784b.

Bonner, "Augustine's Conception of Deification," Journal of Theological Studies

in Ps. 58.1.7, SL 39:734.

Staniloae, as paraphrased by Endre von Ivnka, Palamismus und Vtertradition, in

Lot-Borodine, La dification de l'homme (Paris: ditions du Cerf, 1970), 40.

I. PALAMISM AND DIVINIZATION

S. Romanides, Notes on the Palamite Controversy and Related Topics, Greek

Krivosheine, as quoted by E. von Ivnka, Palamismus und Vtertradition, in

THE DIVINE ENERGIES OR OPERATIONS

of Gregory Palamas, 173.

quoted by Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God, 58:

In the Image and Likeness of God, 58.

de Halleux, Palamisme et Tradition, Irnikon 48 (1975): 482.

Tome, in Philokalia 4:422.

Panagopoulos, Ontologie oder Theologie der Person? Die Relevanz der

regarding Gods perfections,1 Lossky boasts that Scriptures anthropomorphic

Palamas Grgoire, 1760. Specifically, he has in mind the doctrine of certain

The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 80.

of Gregory Palamas, 225, citing Against Gregoras 1, 2. Palamas

virtues He gives to rational creatures by grace? According to this conception, human

The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 80.

81. Lossky adds rather cryptically: The trinitarian psychologism of St.

citing Maximus the Confessor, De ambiguis, PG 91:1261-64, as an example of the

Edmund M. Hussey, The Palamite Trinitarian Model, St. Vladimirs Seminary

Byzantine Theology (New York: Fordham University Press, 1974.), 153,

3.6.1, quoted in Contos, The Essence-Energies Structure of St.

of Gregory Palamas, 95.

The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 158.

89-90, emphasis his.

95, citing no text from Augustine or Thomas.

Hexam., PG 44:69a; John of Damascus, De imaginibus 1.20; De fide orth. 2.2

divin. nom. 5.2, 5.8, PG 3:817, 824.

The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 97.

Lot-Borodine, La doctrine de la dification dans l'glise grecque jusqu'au XIe

of Gregory Palamas, 223-4, citing Capita 140; Against Akindynos 4.11-12;

THE DIVINE ESSENCE

presuppositions.1 The doctrine of divine simplicity as taught in Neoscholastic manuals

Byzantine Theology, 188.

The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 77-78, citing Sebastien

Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's

290. This distinctively Western ethos, he continues, is characterized by the

of Gregory Palamas, 213, quoting Palamas, Against Akindynos 2.10.

La dification de l'homme, 37, n. 17.

of Gregory Palamas, 210.

1.7, quoted in Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas, 219.

The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 86: Gods essence is by

quoting Aristotle, Categories 5.

Williams, The Philosophical Structures of Palamism, Eastern Churches

34, emphasis his.

alone is infinite, self-subsistent, and without composition. Unlike the theoretically

THE ESSENCE-ENERGIES DISTINCTION

Barrois, Palamism Revisited, St. Vladimirs Seminary Quarterly 19

of Maxime le Confesseur: essence et nergies de Dieu by Vasilios Karayiannis

The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 88.