New book provides encyclopedic and ecumenical treatment of deification

The Oxford Handbook of Deification, states the publisher, “provides the first treatment of deification that is truly encyclopedic in scope.” With three co-editors, forty-six contributors, and forty-four chapters, the 738-page-long volume is an impressive and thorough volume on a subject that has drawn much attention in recent years, not just from Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, but also from various Protestant theologians. In 2016, for example, I co-edited and contributed to Called to Be the Children of God: The Catholic Theology of Human Deification, published by Ignatius Press, which included a chapter on deification in the Dominican tradition, written by Fr. Andrew Hofer, O.P.

Fr. Hofer, a professor at the Pontifical Faculty of the Dominican House of Studies in DC and the editor of The Thomist, is one of the three co-editors of The Oxford Handbook of Deification. Noted Orthodox theologian and author Dr. Paul L. Gavrilyuk, who holds the Aquinas Chair in Theology and Philosophy in the Theology Department of the University of St. Thomas (St. Paul, MN), is another. Catholic theologian Dr. Matthew Levering, who has written and edited books on a wide range of topics and holds the James N. Jr. and Mary D. Perry Chair of Theology at Mundelein Seminary, is the third.

I recently interviewed the three men by email, asking them about how the book came about, the theological importance and ecumenical significance of the book, misunderstandings about deification, and how readers can benefit from the book.

CWR: The idea for this impressive work goes back about five years. What is the genesis of the book, and how did the three of you connect?

Matthew Levering: It began with an outreach from Fr. Andrew Hofer to me. He wanted to organize an Oxford Handbook that would make a difference in the Church and the world. When asked what topic would be his “dream topic,” he answered “deification.”

It was clear to both of us that no major project on deification could go forward without Paul Gavrilyuk leading it. Fortunately, Paul was a longtime friend, having participated for many years in the Chicago Theological Initiative conferences. … Paul’s work on deification goes back many years and includes published work on Russian Orthodox rediscovery of the doctrine of deification in the early twentieth century.

As Paul shows, the liberal Protestant church historian Adolf von Harnack’s attack on the doctrine of deification provided a major stimulus, providentially, to the ecumenical retrieval of the doctrine of deification. Paul, therefore, from the outset recognized deification as an ecumenically inviting doctrine, rather than one separating Christians from each other. Once Paul was on board, getting an all-star cast of contributors became the priority.

We met at St. Dominic’s Priory in Washington, D.C., and conceived an outline for the Handbook, along with names to invite for each chapter. Paul’s influence upon major scholars proved pivotal for the Handbook, since people did not want to say “no” to Paul, given the respect in which he is held. Not long after the project took shape, however, Russia invaded Ukraine, Paul’s home country. This terrible, ongoing disaster did not slow down the Handbook, but it did require some serious multitasking on Paul’s part while he founded the non-profit organization Rebuild Ukraine, which has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in support of saving lives on the battlefield. It was a reminder that the doctrine of deification is not some sort of panacea, as in utopian or otherworldly visions.

Paul Gavrilyuk: Matthew is very kind and modest in his assessment of his and Fr. Andrew’s contribution. The truth is that we worked on everything together. This volume would not have been possible without Fr Andrew taking the lead on the time-consuming and painstaking editing of each chapter. This volume would also be only half as good without Matthew’s and Fr Andrew’s judicious choice of stellar contributors, especially those covering the chapters on the deification in the Christian West, as well as many biblical and systematics chapters.

Fr. Andrew Hofer, O.P.: I have been in continuous contact with Matthew since 2002 or 2003 when he generously responded to a question I had about his Christ’s Fulfillment of Torah and Temple: Salvation according to Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002). Matthew has made the most impressive contribution to the renewal of Catholic theology in the past quarter century, not only in his own prodigious labor but also in supporting so many others. I cannot imagine my theological work without his leadership.

I knew Paul’s brilliant theological scholarship, such as his deeply insightful The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) and his article that proved to be life-changing for me: “The Retrieval of Deification: How a Once Despised Archaism Became an Ecumenical Desideratum,” Modern Theology 25, no. 4 (2009): 647-59. Paul is the founding president of the International Orthodox Theological Association (IOTA), founded in 2017. In 2018 I asked him to contribute to a book symposium of essays by Catholic and Orthodox theologians for Fr. Brian Daley’s God Visible: Patristic Christology Reconsidered in the journal Pro Ecclesia, and he accepted.

It was a dream come true for me to work with Matthew and Paul on The Oxford Handbook of Deification. With their indefatigable energies driving the Handbook’s production, I went along for the ride, and it has been some ride!

CWR: What are the focus and goals of the project?

Matthew Levering: Part of the purpose was to ground contemporary ecumenical discussions of deification and contemporary striving to be deified (through the virtues, the liturgy, configuration to Christ, and so on) in the history of the doctrine. So, the Handbook has chapters that investigate the doctrine’s roots in Scripture and that examine particular theologies of deification from the Greek and Latin Church Fathers onward to the present day.

For the centuries after the Reformation, the Handbook takes care to treat Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant perspectives, so we hope that this will be fruitful for a wide array of readers. The Handbook also has an important section in which contemporary theologians explore the relationship of deification to other Christian doctrines: for example, Gilles Emery has a chapter on deification and the Trinity, and there are a number of other similar chapters.

The Handbook is focused on the Christian doctrine of deification, although there is some comparative work as well in Thomas Cattoi’s and Rita George-Tvrtkovic’s chapters on connections with Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist traditions.

CWR: There is a significant ecumenical character to this Handbook, with Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant contributors. There are also essays engaging with non-Christian religions. How important is that to you, as editors, and what do you think it brings to the discussion?

Paul Gavrilyuk: It is common knowledge among contemporary scholars that deification is an important theme in the Greek Church Fathers and Eastern Orthodoxy. Does this mean that Eastern Orthodoxy has a copyright on the doctrine? There is a growing scholarly literature that suggests that the theme of deification is a part of our shared heritage in the East and West. Our goal as editors was to produce the most comprehensive study of deification available.

In order to achieve this goal, the best scholars representing a broad range of Christian traditions were selected. The handbook has established the theological credentials of deification in Western Christianity, including Latin Church Fathers, medieval scholastics and mystics, Protestant Reformers, and modern Catholic, Protestant, and Anglican theologians. One of the main insights of the volume is that deification comes in different shapes and forms, with different metaphysical, anthropological, and ecclesiological assumptions. Some forms of the doctrine depend on participation metaphysics; other forms do not. Some forms of deification are backed by a sacramental view of church life and the cosmos; other deification theories do not depend on such a view overtly.

We hope that the volume will stimulate a rich ecumenical discussion. Is the doctrine of deification something that all Christians could agree on? Would it be possible to produce a joint Orthodox-Catholic-Protestant-Anglican-Charismatic, etc. declaration on deification, on the model of the joint Catholic-Lutheran declaration on justification, promulgated in 1999? We believe that the handbook has laid down the groundwork for such a declaration. The rest should be left to ecumenical goodwill and divine providence.

CWR: What are some of the more common misunderstandings you see regarding deification/theosis? How will this book help correct misunderstandings and bring more precision to the discussion?

Paul Gavrilyuk: One common misunderstanding is to think that deification amounts to a claim that humans can become (or are) God by nature or essence. Such a claim may plausibly describe forms of Gnostic and esoteric Christianity, non-Christian Platonism, and pantheistic tendencies in German Idealism, especially Fichte and Hegel.

However, the Handbook demonstrates that in orthodox Christianity the doctrine of deification intends nothing of the sort. Humans participate in divine life; they become gods by grace, not by nature. In other words, we do not become the additional persons of the Trinity. To clarify and emphasize this point, in the introduction, we provide a comprehensive definition of deification, which includes the following sentence: “Deification is a process and goal by which the human being or church or in some way the whole creation come to participate in God, Christ, divine life, divine attributes, divine energies, or divine glory by growing into the likeness of God, while remaining a creature ontologically distinct from the Creator.”

Note the last clause: we do not become uncreated. The Creator/creature distinction is not violated in the process of deification. Deification is the realization of our creaturely character as images of God and of our baptismal vocation to grow into the likeness of God, so far as is humanly possible. Deification is not an invitation to pantheism or idolatry.

A related misunderstanding is to confuse the Christian understanding of deification with the apotheosis of the Roman Emperors. As we know, Christians were strongly opposed to the worship of the Roman Emperors as gods as the attendant practice of sacrificing to their statues and erecting temples in their honor. In fact, early Christian martyrs were prepared to face death rather than acknowledge Caesar as a divine lord, because such an acknowledgment was an act of idolatry.

Far from being derivative of the worship of the Roman Emperors, the Christian doctrine of deification, from the second-century bishop St. Irenaeus of Lyons, was intended precisely as an alternative to idolatry. The Christian doctrine of deification is about becoming adopted sons and daughters of God by accepting and growing into the grace of baptism. As such, this doctrine and practice have the merit and the potential of safeguarding us from idolizing charismatic political figures, pop stars, social media influencers, and so on.

Another misunderstanding is to treat deification as something exclusively esoteric and mystical. While the Christian mystical tradition has important things to say on the topic of the intimate union with God, the range of the doctrine of deification is much broader. In some theologians, such as Maximus the Confessor, the doctrine of deification functions as a framework connecting the doctrines of creation, incarnation, salvation, and eschatological consummation of all things.

CWR: You note, in the Introduction, that there has been a resurgence of interest in this topic in recent decades, after a long period in which it was often ignored or pushed to the sidelines. Why the change; how did that come about? And where you think this momentum of interest might lead in the coming years or decades?

Paul Gavrilyuk: Yes, there has been a veritable deification rage, with a book with “deification” in the title being published every six months or so.

The retrieval of deification in contemporary theology goes back to the long nineteenth century. This story has important twists and turns, with scholars like Albert Ritschl and Adolph von Harnack realizing the centrality of deification in the Christian tradition only to misunderstand and reject this doctrine, while others, like the Catholic theologian Matthias Scheeben and the Russian religious philosopher Vladimir Solovyov developing the theme of deification speculatively.

The first to produce a monographic study of deification was a Russian patristics scholar, Ivan Popov in the first decade of the 1900s. The theme was then picked up by such Orthodox theologians as Pavel Florensky and Sergius Bulgakov, and through the scholarship of the Russian emigration in France, especially through the work of Myrrha Lot-Borodine, made its way to the West. In the last forty years, deification has been moving from the periphery of theological discourse to its center, becoming an important point of ecumenical convergence.

We may only speculate as to the precise causes of this development. One possibility is the dissatisfaction with the narrowly juridical understandings of salvation, i.e. a tendency to reduce salvation to justification and an escape from hell and damnation. In contrast to such understandings, deification more holistically describes a process of participation in divine life. Deification language enriches the theological vocabulary of soteriology with the ontological category of participation, emphasizing the grounding character of the incarnation (God became man so that we may become gods) and the healing role of divine grace.

Deification is an integral part of Christianity’s sacramental vision of the world, offering a powerful alternative to naturalism and secularism.

CWR: You point out that “some Protestant scholars continue to question the biblical and theological credentials of deification…”. My conviction, as a former Evangelical Protestant, is that while many tensions (or even conflicts) between Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants understandably focus on authority (especially the papacy and the place of Scripture and Tradition), that grace, theosis, and soteriology are really central, ultimately, to these discussions. Would you agree with that? Why or why not?

Fr. Andrew Hofer, O.P.: The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed professes about the Only Begotten Son of God: “For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven.” Salvation is indeed central in our faith. But just because something is central does not mean that all would agree in its interpretation. For example, all Christians believe in Christ, but many heresies and misunderstandings have appeared over the two past two millennia.

While many chapters of our Handbook consider criticisms against deification, a prominent dissenting voice to deification among Protestants is considered at great length. Cambria Kaltwasser’s chapter deals with the twentieth-century Reformed theologian Karl Barth, who rejected deification. Interestingly, Kaltwasser highlights, “Barth rules out not merely deification, but its underlying presupposition that the Christian life necessarily yields visible transformation and growth into holiness” (p. 477).

Our Handbook, as the most thorough volume on theologies of deification available, can be a springboard for ecumenical discussions. We have an exchange of gifts to bring us closer to Christ. Because of the many perspectives on deification represented in the Handbook, the volume can be a catalyst for conversion–a challenge to go deeper into the mystery of sanctification. Some readers will be surprised, for example, by the deification theologies present among certain Protestant Reformers.

Our Handbook gives evidence of new interest in what can be called theology’s subfield of Deification Studies. The term “deification” does not replace related terms such as salvation, holiness, grace, and glorification. Rather, it allows Christians from various perspectives to approach the basic mysteries with fresh eyes in seeing what is in Scripture about our transformation in Christ and what the Church has received and handed on through the centuries.

If someone objects that “deification” is not a literal scriptural term, we can recall that neither are the terms “Trinity” and “Incarnation.” Yet, what would we do without those terms in the Christian faith today? Just because there have been many misunderstandings about the Trinity and Incarnation, we do not abandon those terms that are so helpful in appreciating who God is and what God has done for us. Our Handbook shows how deification is central to the Christian faith.

CWR: Many Christians, including quite a few Catholics, tend to think of deification/theosis as “an Eastern thing”. Why is that? How has that perception changed? What does the West bring to the table, so to speak, that can be helpful to the East? And, vice-versa?

Fr. Andrew Hofer, O.P.: Let’s put this in perspective. We must admit that there’s a linguistic priority of Greek over Latin when we consider the New Testament era of our faith. The first significant Latin theologian was the North African Tertullian, who died around 240. Latin Christians must respect our Eastern origins, especially in Israel, the place to which Abraham was called and where Mary, a Jewish virgin, was chosen to be the Mother of God. When the Apostle Paul wrote to the Christians of Rome, he wrote to them in Greek.

Yet if we use the word theosis, a Greek term coined by St. Gregory of Nazianzus (who died around 390), the mystery of deification is going to sound peculiarly Eastern. The word theosis is helpful, but it did not exhaust St. Gregory of Nazianzus’s expressions for deification–and it need not govern all discussions of deification before or after St. Gregory.

Both the East and the West have many accounts of deification, and we can learn from each other. St. Thomas Aquinas is called the Common Doctor in the Catholic Church, and I think he provides a wonderful model for us to consider the Gospel’s universal scope. Aquinas learned from the holy doctors of both East and West in articulating his own theological account of how we become “partakers of divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Daria Spezzano provides an excellent chapter in our Handbook that pairs Aquinas and St. Bonaventure.

Our Handbook has 25 theses, and thesis 20 will be surprising for some readers about the variety of understanding deification within the East:

In Byzantine Orthodox theology, the ontological difference between the Creator and creatures in deification is captured by means of the essence-energies distinction associated with the theological legacy of Gregory Palamas. According to Palamas, deified humans participate in the uncreated divine energies, but not in the divine essence. Thus, creatures participate in God without becoming identical to the divine essence. Some elements of Palamas’s legacy are applicable to earlier patristic treatments of deification, while other elements are not. Some contemporary theologians take the fully developed Orthodox Christian doctrine of deification to be normatively defined by the essence-energies distinction. The advantage of this approach is that it gives greater clarity and distinctiveness to the understanding of deification in Orthodox theology. This approach is of lesser heuristic value for the discussion of pre-Palamite accounts of deification in which the essence-energies distinction does not feature significantly. The examples of such accounts include Athanasius of Alexandria, Cyril of Alexandria, Symeon the New Theologian, and many others.

CWR: This book is long and academic; do you envision it first and foremost as being for academics and students? How might ordinary non-specialists benefit from it?

Paul Gavrilyuk: Our introduction offers twenty-five theses on deification, which is significantly shorter than Luther’s 95 Theses, to make an allowance for the attention span of the contemporary readers. We tried to write an introduction as lucidly and accessible as we could. General educated readers may experience the volume a la carte, reading an introduction plus chapters of specific interest to them.

The volume is available in electronic format through academic libraries worldwide. The interest in the volume is growing and we are grateful to God for the opportunity to share the riches of the doctrine of deification with our international audience.

Catholic World Report