Status Updates From Theosis: The True Purpose o...

Enlightening.

"Our holy God has molded us for Theosis, so if we are not deified, our whole life is failure."

The holy Fathers certainly say that within the Church we can attain Theosis. But at the same time they say Theosis is a gift from God, it is not something we can attain on our own. Of course, we must desire, struggle, and prepare ourselves so that we are worthy, capable, and receptive enough to accept and guard this great gift from God,[...] but at the same time, Theosis is a gift of God.

God is not only essence, as the West thinks: He is also energy. If God was only essence, we could not unite with Him, as was written: Never will man see My face and live (Exodus 33:20).

If we grasp a bare electric wire, we will die. However, if we connect a lamp to the same wire, we are illuminated. We see, enjoy, and are assisted by, the energy of electric current, but we are not able to grasp its essence.

"Everything in the Church leads to Theosis [...] Only within the Church can man become a god, and nowhere else: not in universities; not in social services; not in any of the fine and good things that the world has. None of these are able to offer what the Church offers, however good they may be."

With the incarnation of the Logos, a second communion between God and humanity is realised. The first communion was in Paradise. This was broken. Man was separated from God. The all-good God then provided for another, a second communion which can no longer be severed, a union of God and men. This second communion of God and men happens in the person of Christ

Having been endowed "in His image," man is called upon to be completed "in His likeness." This is Theosis. The Creator, God by nature, calls man to become a god by Grace.

"Our life's purpose is declared in the first chapter of the loly Bible, when the Holy author tells us that God created man "in His image and likeness." From this we discover the reat love the Triune God has for man: He does not wish hin simply to be a being with certain gifts, certain qualities, a certain superiority over the rest of creation, He wishes him to
be a god [as in becoming completely like God] by Grace."