IOTA Talk: What is Deification? | PAUL GAVRILYUK 

Rom 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Rom 8:30 Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. We who have been begotten again through the Spirit of God, are the blessed "brethren" of the "firstborn".

"God became Man that man would become God in life and nature, but not in Godhead"..Witness Lee

I think that for centuries now there has been an undercurrent in theological thought according to which humility entails debasing human creatures and indeed the world. This is wrong; ones doesn’t honour or raise or make more adorable the creator by belittling his creatures and his creation. So, I say, God is already our father; it's not only by deification that we become God's children as Paul Gavrilyuk suggests in this talk. After all Jesus in the gospels asks us to become as perfect as our father in heaven. He specifically speaks of our father, not his father. God is our father even now that we are imperfect. I did like how Dionysius Areopagite puts it: “Deification is the attainment of likeness to God and union with God so far as this is possible”. Surely that is true; God would not want anything less than create the greatest possible creatures having the greatest possible end. So what can we imagine as our greatest possible end? For me the greatest possible end of a creature is true union with her creator. Is this possible? Can the essentially limited become one with the essentially unlimited? Well, consider a drop of rain falling into the sea: it is no more a small drop of water but has truly become one with the vast sea. This too is how I imagine theosis: the human soul merging into the divine being. From the outside the human subject is no more, for there is no one anymore distinct or in any sense independent from God. But from the inside, experiencing theosis is the opening of one’s soul into the infinity of God’s trinitarian being. There is no creaturely subject anymore; but there is God who can now say “I was that creature”. Thereby mirroring his incarnation and making the dictum “God became human so that human might become God” concrete and not just metaphorical. This end is what I wish for myself.

Thank you for this meaningful talk 🙏

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