GREEK ORTHODOX THEOLOGICAL REVIEW Volume 32, No.

3, 1987

Arian Transcendence and the Notion of Theosis

in Saint Athanasios

GREGORY TELEPNEFFÍAND JAMES THORNTON]

"GOD BECAME MAN, THAT MAN MIGHT BECOME DIVINE."

This frequently cited aphorismatic phrase, here presented in the terse
style of Saint Athanasios, the great fourth-century church Father, cap-
tures the very heart of Eastern Orthodox theology. If, as it has been
said, the Prayer of Jesus is a Gospel in miniature, this formula con-
stitutes a veritable compendium of the theology, anthropology, and
soteriology of the Eastern Fathers.1 As such, we often miss the theo-
logical fulcrum that this formula gives us in leveling objections against
violations of the Christian faith. So it is, we would like to propose,
in general considerations of the struggle between the Orthodox
Christology of Saint Athanasios and the Christological errors of Arios.
The latter, we wish to argue, can be most precisely understood and
pinpointed vis-à-vis the focal point of the foregoing aphorism. Let
us , therefore, examine the Arian controversy from the viewpoint of
this theological fulcrum.
It is perhaps risking a truism to say that it was in the course of the
fourth-century Arian controversy that the Church, more resolutely than
ever before, reaffirmed the full divinity of Jesus Christ. Very little
attention, however, has been directed to the soteriological implica-
tions of both this reaffirmation and the distorted Christology of the
Arians. Indeed, the orthodoxy of Saint Athanasios and other right be-
lievers and the heresy of Arios represent not only two distinct Christo-
logies, but two divergent soteriologies — two different doctrines

!
Cf. Georges Florovsky, Vostochnye Ottsy 4-go Veka (Paris, 1931).

271
272 Gregory Telepneff and James Thornton

of salvation. The crux of these differences is contained in the latter

half of Saint Athanasios' assertion that God became man for the pur­
pose of making man divine. The nature and efficacy of grace in Saint
Athanasios and the Orthodox camp, focused as they are on the even­
tual divinization of man — theosis — sharply differ from the charac­
teristics of grace in the Arian schema. Salvation is, indeed, two dif­
ferent things in the two theologies.
That these profound differences manifested themselves in a
Christological disputation is not at all unusual. These differing doc­
trines of grace, based on divergent views of God's relation to crea­
tion, follow rather consistently the Christologies of their respective
systems. The possibility of communion between man and the trans­
cendent God (theosis) in ontological reality is logically implied by
the Athanasian doctrine of the union of the transcendent divine na­
ture with human nature in Christ.2 Conversely, one of the rudimen­
tary presuppositions of the Arian system is that the transcendent di­
vine nature of God the Father cannot directly relate to creation.
Whereas for Saint Athanasios and the Greek patristic tradition
salvation as theosis signifies a mystical, albeit real, participation
(metoche) in the Divine, for Arios divine grace does not effect such
participation in, or real communion with, God the radically transcen­
dent Father.3 Nor, given the presuppositions of Arianism, is such
participation ever possible. Grace in the Arian system merely exer­
cises an external and created agency over fallen man. Man therefore
comes to re-direct his will, by virtue of effectual grace, to conform,
in a purely external way, to the laws of God. In a recent book that
has had a profound impact in some areas of patristic scholarship,
this aspect of Arian soteriology has been amply, if not convincingly,
4
demonstrated. It was such a notion of salvation — one which
understood Christ's redemptive work as an advancement iprokope)
toward ethical perfection, serving as a paradigm for man's own growth

2
1. Papov, "Ideia obozheniia ν drevne-vostochnoi tserkvi," Voprosy Filo­
sofi i Psikhologii, 97 (1909) 165-66, 212-13.
3
See a brilliant discussion of some of the common misapprehensions in
Arianism and related heresies in John Romanides, "Highlights in the Debate
over Theodore of Mopsuestia's Christology . . . , " The Greek Orthodox
Theological Review, 5 (1959) 157ff.
4
R. Gregg and D. Groh, Early Arianism: A View of Salvation (Philadel­
phia, 1981).
 Arian Transcendence and Theosis in Athanasios 273

in perfection — that a not-fully-divine Arian Christ, a "mutable"

Christ liable to sin, could adequately accomodate.
A necessary corollary of the Arian view of salvation is an Arian
anthropology which does not fully grasp the catastrophic dimensions
and ramifications of the fall of Adam. Man for the Arian is lapsable,
but certainly he is not in need of deliverance from some state of onto-
logica! corruption, as orthodox Christian doctrine would posit. Nor
is deliverance, for the Arian, beyond man's own "natural" restorative
powers.5 Rather, the Arian man merely requires a re-direction of his
will and a clear moral paradigm to emulate — Christ — in order to
achieve salvation.
The Arian model that we have put forth is not exhaustive in the
sense of representing all those who might have, for diverse reasons,
embraced the Arian cause.6 Moreover, the primary textual data for
the Arian posture are fragmented. However, our model does repre-
sent the "pure position" of Arianism, especially as it stands in con-
trast to the soteriological scheme of Saint Athanasios. It is thus suf-
ficient for our purposes here.
Let us examine more closely the sources of this Athanasian-Arian
contrast. Already in his nascent theological writings — before the
Arian confrontation — Saint Athanasios had clearly come to under-
stand that it is not sufficient for the will of man to be simply re-directed
through repentance. What is needed is a radical renewal of the en-
tire ontological condition of fallen man, now living in a state of corrup-
tion, by the One who created him in the first place.7 Thus it is God
himself who must take on flesh, so that man can be saved. The main
lines of this argument were not new to Saint Athanasios; already more
than a century before they had been expounded with precision by Saint
Irenaios. But Saint Athanasios integrated these elements into his expan-
pansive cosmological design. His soteriology, therefore, takes on both a
dimension unparalleled in Arian thought and an exactness not present —

5
That the major effects of the Fall are ontological corruption and death
is a theme very carefully set forth by John Romanides, "Original Sin ac-
cording to St. Paul," St. Vladimir's Seminary Quarterly 4 (1955-56) 5-28.
6
Although the only significant Arian protagonist to deviate from the
general Arian theological scheme is, to the best of our knowledge, Asterios
the Sophist. Consult M. Wiles in Arianism: Historical and Theological Re-
assessments (Philadelphia, 1985), pp. 11 Iff.
7
On the Incarnation, 7.
274 Gregory Telepneff and James Thornton

at least to such a degree — in earlier Christian expositions.

The late Protopresbyter Georges Florovsky8 has established that
for Saint Athanasios there exists a mystical and ontologically real
distinction between the essence (ousia) or nature iphysis) of God, com-
mon to the three Persons of the Holy Trinity, and God's trinitarian
will ad extra, through which God relates to his creation. Thus Atha-
nasios writes:

Other things, according to the nature of things originate, are with-

out likeness according to essence (kat9 ousian) with the Creator,
and are external to him (exothen autou), coming to be by the
grace (chariti) and will (boulesei) of the Word.9

The ultimate division in reality, then, is contained in the gap between

the uncreated and created natures, one aspect never in any way abro-
gated or compromised by the other (even in theosis), such as to occa-
sion a co-mingling or confusion of these natures. The very nature
of the religious experience — indeed, of any soteriological schema —
rests on the extent to which, and the manner in which, this division
or separation (chorismos) can be (and is) bridged — that is, the degree
to which created man's communion with the transcendent and un-
created Trinity is possible and can be realized.
According to Saint Athanasios, from its very inception creation
is by nature subject to corruption and change, being kept from such
corruption and decay by participation in the grace and energies of
the Word of God.10 This Logos is the source and ground of both be-
ing and "well-being." Indeed, though men may be by nature "sub-
ject to corruption," "the grace of their union with the Word [enables]
them to escape the natural law [of corruption]."11 Yet, the Word of
God remains outside created nature according to "essence," even
though creation actually participates in the Word's "powers": Ciektos
men esti tou pantos kat9 ousian, en pasi de esti tais eautou

8
G. Florovsky, "The Concept of Creation in St. Athanasius,"Studia
Patristica, 6 (1962) 36-57. Reprinted in idem, Aspects of Church History
(Belmont, MA, 1975). Citations to the reprinted edition.
9
Against the Arians, 1,20.
10
Cf. Saint Athanasios, On the Incarnation, 2,3,5. Also G. Florovsky,
"Concept of Creation," p. 50.
11
On the Incarnation, 7.
 Arian Transcendence and Theosis in Athanasios 275

dynamesi"12 It was the fall of Adam which broke this natural par-
ticipation in the Divine, nature thus falling subject to the laws of
corruption.
The restoration of communion with and participation in the Divine —
which were ruptured by the Fall — lies in the salvific work of Christ.
It is this work which Arios denies in his contention that only God
the Father possesses a transcendent nature, thus proscribing partici-
pation in the Divine through the soteriological efficacy of God the
Son, Jesus Christ. This proscription Saint Athanasios attributes thusly
to Arios' diminution of Christ:

But let us for the moment suppose that the other creatures could
not endure to be created by the absolute hand of the Unoriginate
[i.e., the Father], and therefore the Son alone was brought into
being by the Father alone, and other things by the Son as . . .
an assistant, for this is what . . . Arios has transcribed.13

The God of Arios, God the Father alone, is so radically transcendent

that there exists no possibility for any real communion (other than
a created effect) between such a God and man. With such a radical
monotheism, Arios returns to an almost Judaic notion of God, though,
in the syncretism natural to Arianism, one might also sense a certain
Platonic demiurge in the Arian conceptualization of the person of
Christ. As we have noted, Arian soteriology, which places insufficient
stress on the consequences of the Fall, simply presents a scheme in
which man, following a moral example and pattern of growth in per-
fection, achieves salvation by his own acts. God's grace simply
"crowns" human effort. The incarnation of the Godhead is un-
necessary, since the transcendent Divine, even if it were to take flesh,
could not participate in humanity; by the same token, humanity, we
have noted, cannot take part in the Divine.
For Saint Athanasios, again, it is the transcendent divine nature
which is incarnate in Christ. Thus the divine nature is placed in in-
timate contact with humanity. Theosis, or participation in God, is
based in this contact — in the union of uncreated and created in
Christ. As Saint Athanasios says, man is even brought into the presence
of the transcendent Father: " . . . Man had not been deified . . . unless

l2
On the Incarnation, 5.
13
De Decretis, 8.
276 Gregory Telepneff and James Thornton

the Son were God; nor would man have been brought into the Father's
presence {pareste to patri) unless the Son were very God." 14 Saint
Athanasios' presuppositions strike at the very heart of Arianism. What
Arios — as also Nestorios a century later — could not accept was
precisely the idea that the transcendent divine nature can enter into
an ontologically real union with created humanity. This is obvious
in the Arian and Nestorian denial of a true union between God and
man in Jesus Christ. What is not so obvious is the consequence of
such a denial for man's spiritual life. Both of these heresies, in ob-
viating any possibility of an intimate relationship between man and
God, lack a definite doctrine of man's restitution, transformation,
and restoration in Christian life at a metaphysical and ontological
level.15 It is only through union with God, through theosis, accord-
ing to Orthodox patristic teaching, that an ontological renewal of man
is possible. Only in this way can man's original communion with God
be restored. In the Arian scheme, God is not actually present to the
human being in his spiritual ascent — if, indeed, one can even speak
of ascent to a god who is so transcendent as to be in no manner
knowable or present to man.
Let us take a summary look at the concept of participation in the
Divine which, in contradistinction to Arios, we have attributed to Saint
Athanasios and the Orthodox Fathers. Of theosis, Saint Athanasios
says the following in his Against the Arians.

Blessed [Apostle] John . . . will teach how we become in God and

God in us; and again how we become one in him, and how far
the Son differs in nature from us. . . . John, then, writes thus:
hereby we know that we dwell in him and he in us, because he
hath given us of his Spirit. Therefore because of the grace of
the Spirit which has been given to us, in him we come to be, and
he in us . . . We, apart from the Spirit, are strange and distant
from God (xenoi kai makron esmen tou Theou\ and by participa-
tion of the Spirit (tou pneumatos metoche) we are united to the
Divinity.16

Again, this ontologically real participation in the trinitarian life, which

H
Against the Arians, 2,70.
15
See Romanides, "Original Sin according to St. Paul."
16
Against the Arians, 3,24.
 Arian Transcendence and Theosis in Athanasios 2Π

is not possible for the Arian, is nothing less than the reality of the
Orthodox doctrine of salvation, the reality of theosis as an ontological
communion with God. "For as partaking of the Son himself, we are
17
said to partake of God," writes Athanasios. "He [Christ] only is
the Father's true Word, radiance, and wisdom, of which all things
originate partake (ta genetapanta metechei), being sanctified by him
18
in the Spirit," this great Father writes in yet another context.
In both Saint Athanasios and Arios, man relates not to the essence,
but to the will and grace (energies) of God. Only for Saint Athanasios,
however, does divine grace allow for a real participation in the Divine.
Though Saint Athanasios (and the Orthodox with him) understands
the radical nature of divine transcendence no less that Arios, in ac­
cepting an ontological distinction in God between essence and energies
19
(essence and will in the technical lexicon of Athanasios), Saint
Athanasios allows for a rationally paradoxical but ontologically real
participation in God — the will of God constituting a far more dynamic
concept in Saint Athanasios the Great than in Arios. The very possibil­
ity of man's communion with God in energy lifts the theology of Saint
Athanasios into a realm of vibrant soteriology that involves the trans­
formation of the entire person within God. In theosis the transcendence
of God becomes not an impediment to man's participation in the
Divine, but a dimension of the Divine grasped in man's own trans­
cendence of his fallen limitations.

17
Against the Arians, 1,16.
IS
Against the Arians, 1,46.
19
A clear understanding of the nature of theosis as a participation in the
Divine is rooted in the essence-energies distinction, a theological principle
carefully set forth in the fourteenth century by Saint Gregory Palamas. The
essence-will distinction utilized by Saint Athanasios is consistent with the
Palamite principle, though perhaps less refined in its philosophical concep­
tualization. The basic vision of theosis common to all Orthodox Fathers is
expressed in a consistent line of development tracing from Saint Athanasios
(and even earlier Fathers) through the Cappadocians and Saint Máximos
the Confessor to Saint Gregory Palamas. The essence-energies distinction
in particular is as ancient as the biblical affirmation of God's simultaneous
transcendence and immanence, accomodating man's communion with, but
not absorption into, the Godhead.
 ^ s
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