1

Reclaiming Deification in the Latin West

In his treatise on the Incarnation, Saint Athanasius writes, [ The Word of God] assumed humanity that we might be made God.1 By the time of Nominalism in the West the relationship between Thy will be done and authentic human becoming was lost and the centrality of the doctrine of deification begins to evaporate in the Western Church. Since then, many Christians more concerned with avoiding sin than living the life of God2 - look upon Athanasius statement as something that needs to be watered-down instead of shouted from the roof tops, but, in our reaction to the New Age we are failing to present the authentic Christian view of deification.

Athanasius understanding of deification can be recovered through St. Gregory of Nyssas presentation of the Lords Prayer when he presents Thy Kingdom come as Thy Spirit come.3 Read in light of Saint Pauls Second Letter to the Corinthians, Moses Sinai experience was seen as an expression of Eden and what humans were originally called toto be made God by participatory entrance into the true Holy of Holies. For this reason Saint John of Damascus expresses the Eucharist as accomplishing the forgiveness of sins4 through deification. Thy will be done is restored to mans progress in love; becoming like God who is love (1 Jn 4:16).

This essay will take two detours before addressing how a proper Eucharistic centered spirituality can be accomplished through renewed emphasis on the doctrine of deification and a renewed patristic stress on as in The Lords Prayer.5 In our

first detour, we will briefly look at how Nominalism obfuscated the Thomistic

2 understanding of deification in Thomas synthesis of the Fathers and which leads to todays modern misunderstanding of freedom in the West and Gods will as a hindrance to rightful autonomy. In our second detour, we will briefly look at how Pope John Paul the Great reinserts the mystery of the Transfiguration into weekly Latin spirituality and inspires Catholics to contemplate the mystery between the Kingdom and the Eucharist. This will launch us into our last and main point of the importance of Nyssas and Maximus emphasis on Thy Spirit Come in order to overcome false New Age doctrines of Gods immanence. Along with the Irenaean and Athanasian kerygma (that God became man so that we might become God), focus on Moses Sinai experience will help draw this last and main point together.

Part I: The First Detour, Nominalism

It is certainly a bold claim to discuss Aquinas and deification in a setting where many Orthodox may still hold Aquinas as the point where the Latins shifted from relationality to substantiality6 and abandoned a true patristic understanding of deification. The alarm may resound amongst some Catholic theologians if they were to hear that Gregory Palamas is not so distant from Aquinas and that Palamas has been just as misrepresented in the West as Aquinas has in the East. Nevertheless, the work of the Cambridge patristic scholar Anna Williams bridges the divide. In The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas, she demonstrates a substantial consonance between Aquinas and Palamas7 in which there is not a categorical opposition8 when they are interpreted according to their own systems.

Aquinas did not slavishly follow Aristotle. Faith came first for Aquinas. For instance, Williams writes: "Not surprisingly, Thomas chose to preserve divine uniqueness, taking Aristotle head on in I.3,5, where he bluntly denies God is contained in a genus[Aquinas] not so much rejects Aristotle as bends the Philosophers thought to his own end."9 We know a tree by its fruits. How did students of St. Thomas read mans calling here and now? Trained10 in theology through study of Scripture, the Fathers and St. Thomas we find Saint John of the Cross writing:

for to love is to labor to divest and deprive oneself for God of all that is not God. When this is done the soul will be illumined by and transformed in God. And God will so communicate his supernatural being to the soul that it will appear to be God himself and will possess what God himself possesses.

When God grants this supernatural favor to the soul, so great a union is caused that all the things of both God and the soul become one in participant transformation, and the soul appears to be God more than a soul. Indeed it is God by participation. Yet truly, its being (even though transformed) is naturally as distinct from Gods as it was before, just as the window, although illumined by the ray, has being distinct from the rays.11

It is hard to miss in this student of Aquinas: love, illumination, transformation, one or union, participation, becoming God without being absorbed or violating

4 Gods transcendence; all key features of deification (theosis) found in the Fathers.12 Throughout St. John of the Cross we find a culmination of the spirit13 of Damascene and Aquinas just before the full impact of Nominalism and the Churchs response at Trent and the manualist tradition that followed. That manualist tradition for training future priests - until the time of Ressourcement and Vatican II disregarded the question of our last end and beatitude, seeing in it no relevance for fundamental moral theology.14

Many of the Fathers were at one and the same time bishops, preachers, pastors of souls, theologians and spiritual leaders, to say nothing of mystics.15 To them, the above manualist separations were unthinkable. Conforming himself to the spirit of the Fathers, Saint Thomas was himself a mystic and his Summa Theologiae was not made to be read as a manual but as an architectonic whole revealing mans call to participate in Gods own beatitude.

To some degree a misinformed response against Aquinas, the Nominalists - juxtaposing nature against freedom - denied the existence of natures altogether in a further attempt to defend Gods freedom against a perceived Aristotelian necessitarianism in natures. 16 Such a move tore teleology from formal considerations. No real forms, no real ends revealed through natures. A patristic and Thomistic imago Dei realized through the graced development of the virtues17 would become incoherent18 amongst Western thinkers. Dumitru Staniloae, in his synthesis of Orthodox theology, reminds us: t he Fathers, from the beginning right down to St. Gregory Palamas, have all stressed the fact

5 that image develops into likeness, and this particularly by means of the virtues which are in a special way the work of the will helped by grace.19

Mixed with a misrepresented Augustinian anthropology, Nominalism ends in fideism: Gods will is totally free and not bound in any way by the expression of His goodness; study of nature cannot reveal Gods will since God could just as easily have willed the opposite; Gods commands are morality; we can only know Gods will through revelation; natural philosophy is useless and so is analogy. Having eliminated the possibility of ethics based on the exploration of human nature, the Nominalists began to develop a deontological, voluntaristic, legal theory of morality.20 The relationship of nature to grace began its great malformation. The legal theory of morality led Nominalists to:

think of grace not in ontological terms as a transformation of the human person elevating that person from the natural order to a share in the supernatural life of God, or as a restoration of the divine image, but as an extrinsic, legal (forensic) relation between God and man.21

Caught within legalistic extrinsic relationships, participation in God becomes foreign; deification fades. Morality is separated from spirituality. Western Christian civilization moves towards legalism and minimalism in morality22; more concerned with avoiding sin than living the life of God.23 The Irenean and Athanasian summary is suffocated.

6 Amongst Enlightenment thinkers Nominalism becomes Empiricism as faith is suspended; replaced instead by scientific positivism and governments gradually separating themselves from theism just as man separates himself from participation in Gods divinity. Freedom is no longer recognized as freedom for24 excellence and becoming25. With the advent of the scientific revolution freedom becomes the conquest over our inclinations and design:

the body as furnishing a teleological basis for ethical norms dwindles, and the natural world is viewed more and more objectively as a collection of things to be used for their utility rather than to be contemplated as a mirror of the Creator.26

Faith and reason part company. Reason becomes a tool for overcoming creation instead of a gift enabling man to enter into relationship with God on behalf of creation. Man made to the image and likeness of God and so ordered to relationship with God becomes less rational and begins to worship the creature rather than the Creator (cf. Rom 1:25). Freedom becomes primarily freedom from coercion as opposed to freedom for truth, goodness, and fulfillment. Jesus told us he came that we may have life and have it more abundantly (Jn 10:10). He told us he would set-us free, but this freedom was always freedom for something. It was not freedom to remain as we are, but freedom to become sons of God.

After the very passage when Jesus tells us the truth will set us free, Jesus tells us: A slave does not remain in the household forever, but a son always remains. So if a son

7 frees you, then you will truly be free (cf. Jn 8:33-37). What is this talk of a son and his household? During the Institution of the Eucharist, Christ will tell us: In my Fathers house there are many dwelling placesI go to prepare a place for you (Jn 14:2 -3). Commenting on this passage, St. John of the Cross tells us it is about sharing in Gods divinity and progressing in this participation until the soul appears to be God.27

Jesus does not just free us from sin by calling us to repentance and helping us overcome internal coercion, Jesus frees us from sin in the process of making us children of God through a share in his divinity. He becomes for us the strong man who enters our house (soul) (cf. Mt 12:29; Lk 22) by grace to deliver us from sin and enable us to receive that for which we were madefreedom for becoming partakers in the Divine Nature (2 Pet 1:4); the freedom of the sons of God (Rom. 8:21).

Part II: Second Detour: Towards Re-establishing Contemplation of the Transfiguration

The Second Vatican Council wasted no time in announcing the same freedom for in its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium. Immediately after introducing the document, the Council Fathers wrote: The eternal Fatherchose to raise up men to share in his own divine life.28 This is the immediate announcement of the Dogmatic Constitution On Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, as well: In His goodness and wisdom God chose to reveal Himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of His will (see Eph. 1:9) by which through Christ, the Word made flesh, man might in the Holy Spirit

8 have access to the Father and come to share in the divine nature (see Eph. 2:18; 2 Peter 1:4).29 The only two dogmatic constitutions of the council both begin with the same announcement: man has a purpose; he was created for eternal life. Freedom exists for that participation.

It should not be surprising that both of these dogmatic constitutions begin with the same proclamation. Lumen Gentium and Dei Verbum30 were both assisted in their drafting by the same peritus, Henri De Lubac, a leader in the Ressourcement project; a project whose scholars believed that it was necessary to recover the wisdom of the patristics in order to deal with the intellectual challenges posed by the culture of modernity. 31 In the Catechism which followed the Council we find the wisdom of the Fathers repeated. On the question of the purpose of the Incarnation, Irenaeus and Athanasius are emphasized: God became man so that we might become God.32

As the authentic interpreter of Vatican II, Pope John Paul the Great placed emphasis on spiritual renewal and a continuation of the Ressourcement projects of Conciliar periti such as Cardinal Henri de Lubac.33 He continually proposed Article 22 of Gaudium et Spes as the interpretive key of the document - another segment of a constitution De Lubac was known to have inspired and even collaborated on with Wojtyla 34 - and which, according to Joseph Ratzinger commenting in 1968, culminates in Christ who is now presented as the true answer to the question of every human beingArticle 22 thus returns to the starting-point, Article 12, and presents Christ as the eschatological Adam to whom the first Adam already

9 pointed; as the true image of God which transforms man once more into likeness to GodFor the first time in an official document of the magisterium, a new type of completely christocentric theology appears. On the basis of Christ this dares to present theology as anthropology [for the modern world].35

Ratzinger is in union with the Fathers (which should come as no surprise with his Augustinian background). His comment bears resemblance to prayers from the Feast of the Transfiguration in Byzantine Daily Worship: Through your Transfiguration, You returned Adams nature to its original splendor, restoring its very element to the glory and brilliance of your divinity.36 It is especially at Tabor where quoting Gaudium et Spes 22 Christ the Lord, Christ the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling. John Paul the Greats emphasis on Article 22 has special relevance to East and West relations because it is at Tabor where Christ especially brings to light mans most high calling to become a sharer in the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4) through participation (deification); the same most high calling referred to in the opening paragraphs of Dei Verbum and Lumen Gentium.

Coming from Poland - the land uniting East and West - John Paul the Great walked in both traditions always praying for their reunion. Towards the end of his Papacy, struck by a gap in the meditations of the life of Christ in his favoured devotion, he instituted the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary.37 In effect, this means he restored weekly

contemplation of the Transfiguration (Thursdays)38 to Western Catholic spirituality less

10 than three years ago; impacting millions who pray the Rosary daily. Orthodox and Eastern Catholic spirituality always gave special emphasis to the mystery amongst the Twelve Great Feasts. Pope John Paul was asking Latins that they frequently contemplate the Transfiguration for their spiritual formation:39 To look upon the face of Christ [in the Transfiguration], to recognize its mystery amid the daily events and the sufferings of his human life, and then to grasp the divine splendour definitively revealed in the Risen Lord, seated in glory at the right hand of the Father: this is the task of every follower of Christ and therefore the task of each one of us. In contemplating Christs face we become open to receiving the mystery of Trinitarian life, experiencing ever anew the love of the Father and delighting in the joy of the Holy Spirit. Saint Pauls words can then be applied to us: Beholding the glory of the Lord, we are being changed into his likeness, from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit (2 Cor 3:18).40

This provides the perfect opportunity for East to assist West to meditate again on so central a mystery of Christianity, a meditation which requires the help of our common heritage - the Fathers - and the rediscovery of deification in Western spirituality. How are people to understand what Christ meant when just before the Transfiguration - he announced: Amen I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom (Mt 16:28) if they have not heard Nyssas or Maximus commentary on the Lords Prayer? And how are they to

11 place emphasis on the Eucharist within their spirituality without Nyssa and Damascene helping us understand Holy Communion through Moses?

Part III: Understanding Holy Communion Through Moses

Kingdom and Spirit

Modern day loss of the authentic interpretation of the phrase "the kingdom" in Matthew 16:28 has contributed to some wild ideas about what Jesus meant41; especially in the West where positivism42 strongly effects historical critical analysis of the Scriptures.43 It may even be the loss of the core Christian belief in deification that even led to the possibility of such interpretations. Jesus knew very well what he meant concerning "the kingdom," and by Pentecost, so did his Apostles. In fact, three of the Apostles new exactly what he meant within days of the claim. Jesus was referring to the mystery of God sharing his own life and power in our souls; making us divine (the righteousness of God).

The passage that always follows Jesus promise of seeing the kingdom (Mt 16:28) is the account of the Transfiguration (Fourth Luminous Mystery of the Rosary) when some of those standing there for the announcement of the coming kingdom got to see Jesus come in his Fathers glory (Mt 16:27)...the kingdom. The kingdom is the power and the glory that emanate from Jesus at the Transfiguration. Through Jesus, and by the indwelling activity of the Holy Spirit, God can create in us a share in this kingdom. This

12 is the great mystery hidden from generations pastChrist in you, the hope for glory (Col. 1:26-27). This is the reason the Word assumed flesh; that we may have life and have it more abundantly.

When Nyssa tells us in his commentary on the Lords Prayer But The Kingdom is the Holy Spirit44 and replaces it with Your Holy Spirit come upon us and purify us, 45 we are brought into the spirituality of praying to be made sharers in the Kingdom of the Son who showed the Kingdoms meaning by His Transfigurationreal union between God and man without destruction to either nature. Christians are praying daily for an intrinsic justification of infusion of the Holy Spirit46, not an extrinsic legal declaration; not for a future kingdom with no connection to the here and now. What becomes all the more convincing is the implicit connection of this with Thy will be done and Moses in Nyssas Life of Moses and homily on the Song of Songs.

The earlier mentioned Byzantine prayer for the Feast of the Transfiguration47 is almost word for word Nyssas meditation on the meaning of Moses Sinai experience when Moses came down from Sinai with the Ten Commandments (cf. Ex 34:29-35): Moses was transformed to such a degree of glory that the mortal eye could not behold him. Certainly he who has been instructed in the divine mystery of our faith knows how the contemplation of the spiritual sense agrees with the literal account. For when the restorer of our broken nature (you no doubt perceive in him the one who healed our brokenness) had restored the broken table of our nature to its original beauty doing this by the finger of God [finger is the

13 Holy Spirit], as I said the eyes of the unworthy could no longer behold him. [emphasis mine]48

Nyssa assumes the reader no doubt perceives the full significance.

He was not

considering the state of biblical studies in the Anglo-phone West or Europe which en masse questions the agreement of the spiritual and literal. We will take Nyssa on his terms. What was he trying to tell us?

Beyond any doubt he was telling us this was a type of the Transfiguration, but he maneuvers us back to Eden by mention of restoration of our nature to its original beauty. The selection of readings49 in Byzantine Daily Worship on the Feast of the Transfiguration raise an interesting question: Where was Moses in Exodus 33:11, where The Lord used to speak to Moses face to face?

The column of cloud (Ex 33:9) two verses earlier gives it away. God had reopened Eden to Moses at the meeting tent. Moses has entrance to the true holy of holies; what Nyssa called: the inner sanctuary of the tabernacle not made with hands. 50 The mountain itself has the very designs of Eden when diagramed from an aerial view and the meeting tent is based on the same design (cf. Ez 28:13-14). Liturgy and Holy Communion are based on the same design (see attached illustrations). The column of cloud that stood at the tent entrance was an angel (cf. Ex 13:22; Ex 14:19 -20) and probably the same angel from Eden where God stationed the cherubim and the fiery revolving sword, to guard the way to the tree of life (Gen 3:24; Ex 40:36-38). By an

14 angel standing guard at the tent entrance and the glory of God manifesting in the tent (cf. Ex 40:34), Moses was showing us that the way to Eden and sharing in God's divinity had been reopened for him. This is why Moses could walk-out clothed in light (cf. Ex 34:3435). Nyssa did not miss this. Saint Gregory is undoubtedly commenting on Exodus 33:11 when he states: Nevertheless, this man who had experienced such things, this very Moses who through such attainments had been elevated to divinity, still was not satisfied. He besought God to see him face to face, although Scripture had already testified that he was counted worthy of speaking with God face to face.51

The first three chapters of Genesis are inseparable from the heart of the whole Exodus account; once again demonstrating why the Church supported the view that Moses is the substantial author of Genesis and Exodus. In fact, the initial chapters of Genesis might well be nothing less than a God-breathed theological reflection by Moses and the elders on their Sinai experienceedited mostly by the very people who knew Moses and beheld Gods glory at Sinai (i.e. Joshua and the priests).

To somehow miss that Moses in glory points back to Adam and Eve in glory is to miss the whole key in understanding the salvation Jesus wrought and what Moses supposes his readers understood when he wrote about Adam and Eve. Moses assumed his readers and hearers would interpret the events in the Garden of Eden in light of what happened with him at Sinai. After all, his first audience had witnessed the Sinai events. Filled with the Spirit of God, the great prophet Ezekiel interpreted Moses this way when

15 he wrote: In Eden, the garden of Godyou were on the holy mountain of God, walking among the fiery stones (cf. Ez 28:13-14). Eden unmistakably is made to sound like Sinai, a mountain top experience where fire came down to earth and clothed everything in light.

Saint Pauls whole theology as found in his letters backs such an interpretation and is the reason he calls Jesus the [New] Adam (Rom 5:17-19; 1 Cor 15:45-49). It is also no accident that Saint Pauls Second Letter to the Corinthians constantly speaks of transformation to glory (2 Cor.3:18) and the need to be further clothed that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life (2 Cor 5:4)with constant allusions to the Garden of Eden (2 Cor 5:3;11:3) and Moses in glory (2 Cor 3:7,12,15). Immersed in the

Scriptures, Saint Gregory would not have missed this as his allusion to divinity and Exodus 33:11 demonstrates.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven

Notice what Moses received and held close to his heart before Gods glory shone from him. In his hands were the Ten Commandments, the Will (Wisdom) of God. Moses not only entered Gods presence in the cloud, but God could enter him because Moses had fixed his heart to Gods will. Just as the Luminous Mystery of the Transfiguration follows the Luminous Mystery of the Proclamation of the Kingdom and Call to

16 Repentance, so Moses gave himself over to the Ten Commandments and the glory of the Lord shone from him.

The connection between the Kingdom and the Spirit becomes all the more clear since in the Lords prayer Thy Kingdom come is explained through the next phrase: Thy Will be done. If we wish to receive the Spirit, then we must surrender to the Spirit. Gods Will is life in the Spirit; the Spirit who comes and purifies us and raises us (adopts) to share in the divine nature.52 It is this connection between the Spirit and Thy will be done which will counter false New Age doctrines of discovering the god or goddess within.

Humans are not gods by nature, but rather only through adoption and participation in the only eternal and transcendent God. Divinity can only be bestowed from above by adoption in the Spirit to whom we plead with Nyssa, Spirit come upon us and purify us. It is not within man's own power to clothe himself in immortality (divinity). Rather, God must clothe him (cf. 2 Cor 5:4 to Gen 3:21).53 Nor is divinity something to be grasped at through New Age methods of "self-awareness." In fact, replacing authentic Christian worship with self-awareness rituals is the very trap about which Jesus warned when he said, "He who seeks to find himself will be lost, but he who loses himself for my sake will be found" (Matthew 10:39). The answer to who we are is found in our relationship with the God who made us, not in our relationship with ourselves. We are called to follow Christ if we wish not to get lost. In Nyssas words: Do not face your guide,54 follow Him.

17

Give us this day our daily bread

Where are we further purified and enlivened in the Spirit now and made sharers in the divine nature? Where do we enter Eden and have access to the Tree of Life? The phrase that follows Thy will be done in the Lords Prayer is: Give us this day our daily bread. The Kingdom, Gods Will, and the Bread from Heaven are three in one and participate in one another. We find our entrance back into union with God through Christ the living bread that comes down from heaven (John 6:51). Christ is the gate (Jn 10:8) to the Holy of Holies.

His body and blood are the gate or veil pre-figured by Moses who enters the tent and glory-cloud and emerges elevated to divinity55 from being in the True Presence. Through the new veils (Heb 10:19) of Christs body and blood, we enter the true tent (Jesus himself (Jn 1:14)) and continue to be restored to the dignity that was lost in Eden. It is no accident that we meet the Lamb who John the Baptist pointed-out just before Cana at the other great wedding feast in the Book of Revelation (Rev 22:1) and this Lamb admits those who wash their robes [Baptism] that they may have the right to the tree of life [eternal life] and that they may enter the city by the gates [Holy Communion] (Rev 22:14).56 In Revelation, as at Eden (Gen. 3:24) and as at Moses tent (Ex 33:9 -10), there are angels guarding the entrances, stationed (Rev 21:12) at the gates.

18 It is at the altar of Christ the gate made possible through the Apostolic57 succession (cf. Rev 12:14) -where we follow Christ (even pledging unto death to follow him) as we give our will through Him with Him and in Him to the Father58, so that in dying with Christ we might also be raised with Christ. Having given our will over to God and having beseeched Thy Spirit Come, Saint John of Damascus tells us Jesus comes to us as the burning coal pre-figured in Isaiah for the sake of our deification:

Let us draw near to it with an ardent desire, and with our hands held in the form of the cross let us receive the body of the Crucified One: and let us apply our eyes and lips and brows and partake of the divine coal, in order that the fire of the longing, that is in us, with the additional heat derived from the coal may utterly consume our sins and illumine our hearts, and that we may be inflamed and deified by the participation in the divine fire.59

Conclusion

The Latin liturgy today still prepares the laity for this truth when the priest prepares the gifts placing a few drops of water into the wine - and prays: Through the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity. When this is prayed, Athanasius is in some fashion re-echoed: God became man that we might become God. Yet, in some fashion this needs to become more audible. Athanasius synthesis of the faith does not need to be watered or

19 toned down60. It needs to be shouted from the roof tops. Few and often missed allusions to the centrality of the doctrine of deification are insufficient.

The Greek Church Fathers took the doctrine of deification seriously and so should all Christians. On a humorous note, Germain Grisez notes: Some of them argue that the Word and the Spirit are divine a fortiori, because these divine persons cause the divinization of human persons, which would be impossible were they not divine themselves.61 In other words, some Fathers took deification so seriously they first argued that since humans are deified, the Word and Spirit must be divine. Now that is emphasis and clarity.

Perhaps not as forceful, but beneficial nevertheless, the work of Ressourcement has helped the Latin Church reclaim the Tradition as evidenced in the documents of Vatican II: Though not opposed to the Thomist tradition per se, [Ressourcement theologians] believed that the scholasticism dominant in seminaries of the pre-Conciliar era was on its own, an inadequate weapon for dealing with the intellectual complexities of modern atheism, and that in some instances it represented a seventeenth century distortion of the classical Thomist account of the relationship between nature and grace;62

a relationship distorted through Nominalist underpinnings which separate morality from spirituality.

20

John Paul the Great has managed to refocus the Latin Church on the mystery of the Transfiguration through the addition of the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary. Throughout his papacy, he stressed that the key to understanding the documents of Vatican II was to read them through the lens of Gaudium et Spes 22 where Christ reveals man to himself. Clearly it is at the Transfiguration where Christ reveals mans destiny. As the convening of the Council was announced at the close of the week dedicated to Christian unity, John Paul the Great can rest assured that stressing the Transfiguration will go a long way during this Year of the Eucharist to helping unite East and West in the their patristic heritage: God became man that we might be made God and this is accomplished through the Eucharist where we become like God who is love (1 Jn 4:16).

Cf. Saint Athanasius, On the Incarnation, para.54, trans. CSMV (Crestwood: St. Vladimirs Orthodox

Seminary, 1953).
2

Cf. Germain Grisez, Beyond the New Theism (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), 383-384:

Christians in the beginning had high hopes, not merely great expectations. But as the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation were hammered out, the Christian doctrine of life everlasting was allowed to atrophy. Partaking of divine life, being one with the persons of the Trinity as they are with each other, being adopted into the divine family, and knowing God even as one is known concepts all found in the New Testament became for many Christians little more than metaphors. Christian life became more a matter of avoiding sin than of living the life of God.
3

See: Nyssas commentary on the Lords Prayer PG 44: 1158C: s s s. Cf. In Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings, trans

21

George Berthold (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 106, we find in Saint Maximuss Commentary on the Lords Prayer the statement: what Matthew here calls kingdom another evangelist calls Holy Spirit: May your Holy Spirit come and purify us. Footnote 44 on page 122 tells us: There is indeed a very rare manuscript that has this variant of Lk 11:2 but Maximus undoubtedly got this reading from Gregory of Nyssa, The Lords Prayer 3(PG 44, 1157C and 1160).
4

Sin is being used in this context as venial. See: Nyssas commentary on the Lords Prayer in PG 44:1158C: . Cf. Dumitru Staniloae, Image likeness, and deification in the human person, trans. from Orthodoxe

Dogmatik in Communio 13 (Spring 1986), 64-83, at 71. After praising Palamas, Staniloae quotes Paul Evdokimov: Above all, we must eliminate any substantialist conception of the image.
7

Anna Williams, Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas (Oxford University Press, 1999),

172.
8

Williams, Ground of Union, 172. Ibid., 41. See: Biographical Sketch, in The Collected Works of Saint John of the Cross, Revised Edition, trans.

10

Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1991), 12, (hereafter all works of St. John of the Cross cited by his work and page number in this edition).
11

St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mt. Carmel, Book 2.5.7, 165. Cf. Williams, Ground of Union, 32, especially: Where we find the idea of participation in divine life,

12

union with God and humanity portrayed as human destiny, and a mode of articulating divine transcendence in this context, we can say we are dealing with a doctrine of deification.
13

Cf. St. John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love, 1.16, 646-647: transformation of loveresembles

glowing embersso hot they shoot forth a living flameunion comparable to the fire of God which Isaiah says is in Zion. Compare with St. John of Damascus on the Eucharist as the coal creating a fire of union between God and man (PG 1149B): s s s

22

s and Aquinas reiteration (STh. III, q.79, a.8): Sed contra est quod Damascenus dicitet illuminet corda nostra, ut participatione divini ignis ingniamur et deficemur.
14

Cf. Servais Pinckaers, Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. Sr. Mary Thomas Noble (Wash., D.C.: Catholic

University of America Press, 1995), 263.

15

Pinckaers, Sources of Christian Ethics, 258. Cf. Ernest L. Fortin, Natural Law and Social Justice, American Journal of Jurisprudence, 30 (1985), 1-

16

20, at 10-11.
17

See: Augustine Di Noia, Image Dei-Imago Christi: The Theological Foundations of Christian

Humanism, Nova et Vetera, English Edition, 2:2 (2004), 267-78. See also: Daniel Keating Justification, Sanctification and Divinization in Thomas Weinandy, OFM et al (eds), Aquinas on Doctrine (London: T&T Clarke, 2004), 139-158, at 155.
18

Cf. Alasdair MacIntryre, After Virtue (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 57. Staniloae, Image, likeness and deification, 73. Benedict Ashley, Theologies of the Body: Humanist and Christian (Braintree: The Pope John Center,

19

20

1985), 162.
21

Ashley, Theologies of the Body, 163. Pinckaers, Sources of Christian Ethics, 270. Cf. Grisez, Beyond the New Theism, 383-84. Whole quote in Footnote 2. Ibid. The notions of freedom from and for are inspired by Servais Pinckaers discussion of freedom

22

23

24

of indifference and freedom for excellence pp. 328-378.

25

Saint Irenaeus, Against Heresies, in The Faith of the Early Fathers, Vol. I, trans. William Jurgens.

(Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1970), 84-104, (para 229) at 94: God differs from man in this, that God makes, but man is made. Surely that which makes is always the same; but that which is made must receive a beginning, a middle, addition and increase.
26

Cf. Ashley, Theologies of the Body, 164. See also: John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor #48. St. John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love, 1.13, 645. Lumen Gentium #2 Dei Verbum #2

27

28

29

23

30

Cf. Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, Henri de Lubac: Reader of Dei Verbum, Communio 28 (Winter 2001),

669-694 at 669-671.
31

Tracey Rowland, Reclaiming the Tradition: John Paul II as the Authentic Interpreter of Vatican II, in

William Oddie (ed.), John Paul the Great (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2003), 27 48 at 31.
32

Holy See, Catechism of the Catholic Church, para. 460 (Liguori: Liguori Publications, 1994), 116. Rowland, Reclaiming the Tradition, 31. David L. Schindler, Christology and the Imago-Dei: Interpreting Gaudium et Spes in Communio 23

33

34

(Spring 1996), 168, Footnote 21.

35

Schindler, Christology and the Imago-Dei, 168. Byzantine Daily Worship (Alleluia Press, 1995), 748. John Paul II, Apostolic Letter: Rosarium Virginis Mariae, 16 October 2002. John Paul II, Rosarium Virginis Mariae #38. Cf. Rosarium Virginis Mariae #3: It offers a fruitful spiritualformation of the people of God. Rosarium Virginis Mariae #9. Heterodox opinions such as: Jesus mistakenly believed he would usher in paradise for his followers

36

37

38

39

40

41

within the lifetime of his hearers.

42

Cf: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On the Question of the Foundations and

Approaches of Exegesis Today, Lecture delivered on 27 January 1988 at Saint Peter's Church in New York, New York and carried with special permission of the Sacred Congregation on www.tcrnews2.com, 19 April 2004.
43

See: George Kelly, The New Biblical Theorists (Michigan: Servant Books, 1983) The Lords Prayer 3 (PG 1157,C): Ibid.: s . s. See earlier Footnote 3.

44

45

46

Cf. Aidan Nichols, Discovering Aquinas (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, ), 106: The upshot is

justification, the victorious grace of the Spirit setting us right with God: forgiveness of sins, union with the Father. Subjectively, this appears as faith working through love; objectively, it is God converting us to himself. The transformation is instantaneous, no longer how long prepared. In this moment we become

24

adopted sons to whom the inheritance of heaven belongs by right. It is meant to be an abiding possession of the Christian, qualifying indeed, transfiguring the soul that receives it.
47

Byzantine Daily Worship, 748: Through your Transfiguration, You returned Adams nature to its

original splendor, restoring its very element to the glory and brilliance of your divinity.
48

Saint Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, trans.Abraham Malherbe and Everett Ferguson (New York:

Paulist Press, 1978), para. 217, 111.

49

Byzantine Daily Worship, 747. Nyssa, The Life of Moses, para. 229, 114. Saint Gregory of Nyssas Homily 12 on the Canticle of Canticles. Taken from the Introduction to The

50

51

Life of Moses, 21-22. See: PG 44, 1025C-D.

52

cf. Nichols, Discovering Aquinas, 106. Nyssa reveals the mind of St. Paul about being clothed when in the Life of Moses he writes: Envy

53

walled us off from the tree of life, divested us of holy garments para. 256, 120.
54

Nyssa, Life of Moses, para. 253, 120. Nyssa, Life of Moses, 21 (see previous notes on this quote). I am indebted to Dr. Scott Hahns influence in reading Revelation as the Divine Liturgy according to his

55

56

study of the Fathers and popular talks.

57

In Rev 12:14 the twelve apostles of the Lamb as the citys foundation make possible the entrance

way into the city which is the Holy of Holies as only they and their successors can confect the sacred mysteries.
58

Cf. Matthew Tsakanikas, Understanding Marriage Through Holy Communion: Rediscovering the

Essential Meaning of Sexual Love, Logos 7:2 (Spring 2004), 118-136, at 131-132. Cf. Lumen Gentium #11: Taking part in the eucharistic sacrifice, the source and summit of the Christian life, they offer the divine victim to God and themselves along with it.
59

Saint John of Damascus, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book IV, Chapter 13, in Nicene and Post-

Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 9, W. Sanday (ed.) (Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), 1101, at 83.
60

Cf. Grisez, Beyond the New Theism, 383-384.

25

61

Ibid., 407, Footnote 6. Rowland, Reclaiming the Tradition, 31.

62