What Is Theosis?

When I was writing a previous article for Ascension Press, I was thinking about how to counter the narrative that we see running through many "New Age-y" (yes, I added a "y" there) circles. That is, one is all and all is one. We are, and everything around us, in some way, is God. It's basically pantheism in a modern veneer. Well, as always, the Catholic Church and 2,000+ years of tradition has a better answer for us on how the universe works. I recently had the opportunity to write a little bit about what that tradition entails in my latest essay over on Ascension's blog.

Below, you'll find a snippet of the article. I was able to feature quite a few selections from the Catechism as well... that is, the Catechism of the Ukrainian-Greek Catholic Church. The Byzantine tradition of the Church has a lot of insight on what "theosis" or "divinization" is all about, and it's definitely not about what our New Age friends would have us believe:

The early Christians had a specific name for this process of becoming more like God. It was (and still is) called “theosis”. We sometimes see this rendered as “divinization” or “deification” in Western Christianity, but the three terms all describe the same thing. St. Athanasius puts it very succinctly: “God became man so that man might become God.” The Early Church Fathers found the roots of this concept of theosis in Sacred Scripture: 

“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature.” (2 Peter 1:3-4)

Follow the link to read the article in its entirety.

The Harrowing of Hell