In Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic theology, theosis, meaning divinization (or deification or, to become God), is the call to man to become holy and seek union with God, beginning in this life.

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Theosis comprehends salvation from sin, is premised upon apostolic and early Christian understanding of the life of faith, and is conceptually foundational in both the East and the West.

Eastern Orthodox theology

The statement by St. Athanasius of Alexandria, "The Son of God became man, that we might become God", indicates the concept beautifully. What would otherwise seem absurd, that fallen, sinful man may become holy as God is holy, has been made possible through Jesus, who is God incarnate.

Naturally, the crucial Christian assertion, that God is One, sets an absolute limit on the meaning of theosis - it is not possible for any created being to become, ontologically (a part of), God or even another god.

Through theoria, the knowledge of God in Jesus, human beings come to know and experience what it means to be fully human (the created image of God); through their communion with Jesus, God shares Himself with the human race, in order to conform them to all that God is in knowledge, righteousness and holiness.

Theosis also asserts the complete restoration of all people (and of the entire creation), in principle. This is built upon the understanding of the atonement put forward by Irenaeus, called "recapitulation".

For many fathers, theosis goes beyond simply restoring people to their state before the Fall of Adam and Eve, teaching that because Christ united the human and divine natures in his person, it is now possible for someone to experience closer fellowship with God than Adam and Eve initially experienced in the Garden of Eden, and that people can become more like God than Adam and Eve were at that time.

Some Orthodox theologians go so far as to say that Jesus would have become incarnate for this reason alone, even if Adam and Eve had never sinned.

All of humanity is fully restored to the full potential of humanity because the Son of God took to Himself a human nature to be born of a woman, and takes to Himself also the sufferings of sin (yet is not Himself a sinful man, and is God unchanged in His being).

In Christ, the two natures of God and human are not two persons but one; thus, a union is effected in Christ, between all of humanity and God. So, the holy God and sinful humanity are reconciled in principle, in the one sinless man, Jesus Christ. (See Jesus's prayer as recorded in John 17.)

This reconciliation is made actual through the struggle to conform to the image of Christ. Without the struggle, the praxis, there is no real faith; faith leads to action, without which it is dead.

One must unite will, thought and deed to God's will, His thoughts and His actions. A person must fashion his life to be a mirror, a true likeness of God.

More than that, since God and humanity are more than a similarity in Christ but rather a true union, Christians' lives are more than mere imitation and are rather a union with the life of God Himself: so that, the one who is working out salvation, is united with God working within the penitent both to will and to do that which pleases God.

The journey towards theosis includes many forms of praxis. Living in a community of the faithful and partaking regularly of the sacraments, and especially the Eucharist.

Also important is cultivating "prayer of the heart", and prayer that never ceases, as Paul exhorts the Thessalonians (1 and 2). This unceasing prayer of the heart is a dominant theme in the writings of the Fathers, especially in those collected in the Philokalia.

Union with God in Catholic traditions East and West

In western Catholic theology, theosis refers to a specific and rather advanced phase of contemplation of God. The process of arriving to such a state, or moving toward it (as arrival there is not necessary for salvation), involves different types of prayer which are recognized as beneficial.

Various stages of prayer life are recognized as being likely to occur should a person respond to faith by moving along the purgative, illuminative, and unitive ways.

It is common to find western writings that flatteringly suggest that eastern spirituality uniquely manifests theosis, and that by implication their own tradition never attained to the idea. This may be a case of rhetoric obscuring fact.

Under different terminology the western spiritual traditions, which also reach to the origins of Christianity (in the East), share the objective of sharing in the life of God. Some Catholic writers consider it lamentable that the term theosis is not used more extensively in western theology.

It is, therefore, misleading to attribute to Eastern Orthodoxy a special insight into the possibility of union with God: from a western point of view, the theological difference between east and west is rhetorical. Whether or not eastern liturgies are more conducive to theosis is another matter.

Protestant use of the term "theosis"

Early during the Reformation, thought was given to the concept of union with Christ (unio cum Christo) as the precursor to the entire process of salvation and sanctification.

This was especially so in the thought of John Calvin. Theosis as a concept is used among Methodists, and elsewhere in the pietist movement which reawakened Protestant interest in the asceticism of the early church, and some of the mystical traditions of the West.

Distinctively, in Protestantism theosis sometimes implies the doctrine of entire sanctification which teaches, in summary, that it is the Christian's goal, in principle possible to achieve, to live without any sin (Christian perfection).

In 1311 the Council of Vienne declared this notion, "that man in this present life can acquire so great and such a degree of perfection that he will be rendered inwardly sinless, and that he will not be able to advance farther in grace" (Denziger §471), to be a heresy; which sets that Protestant version apart from the Eastern Orthodox teaching.

Because Protestants cannot be immersed in Holy Tradition, without ceasing to be Protestant, their concepts of praxis, phronema, ascetical theology, and sacraments are inherently different from both, Catholic and Orthodox understandings. However, when they are attracted to, and imitate the idea of theosis, it may illustrate a commonality of objective or hope.

In Moses 1:39 God tells Moses, "this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man."

God shows Moses a vision depicting some of His vast creations including a vast number of worlds created for other people —a
sampling of what God created in the past and what he will continue to do forever. Each world was prepared and peopled by God for the purpose of bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of humankind.

Eternal life here refers to becoming like God both in terms of holiness or godliness and sharing in God's glory. It is commonly believed that, as God's children, mankind may grow through the Nazarene's teachings, to become one with the Heavenly Father.

The eternities will be spent in a process of eternal experience and progression, becoming holy like Jesus and the Father; even to the extent of creating additional realms in an endless process of exalting humankind.

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