Perhaps the one thing that differentiates Eastern Spirituality from the all others is its concept of Theosis. I have, over that past several years, written much about this idea. However, no matter how much I write and read about it the more I discover. I would like, over the next several weeks, to reintroduce the topic and have us look at it and think about it again.

Eastern theology calls the potential for which God created us Theosis. It’s really a very simple concept, namely the core of the Good News. It means strengthening and increasing God’s likeness in us. It understands that God came in the Person of Jesus, the Christ, to show us how to live so that the reality of God’s Spirit within us might truly direct our lives and become evident to us.

Theosis is, in truth, the positive aspect of salvation, which deals with the personal transformation that earthly life is designed to promote and support. St. Gregory of Nazianzus, one of the great Cappadocian Fathers, defines a human being as “a being in the process of being deified”. Man alone, out of all of God’s creations, was created in such a way that the task of existence is to spiritually grow and to actualize the potential of becoming like God. Our calling to become partakers of the divine nature, is what sets us apart from the rest of creation. Created in the image of the Triune God, we find our true self in the image of the Triune God, in the God-Man, Jesus Christ.

To be perfect as God, is impossible for us. But to keep moving toward perfection is always within our possibility with the help of God. In Eastern spirituality, salvation is not a state of being; it is the motion toward Theosis, toward becoming like God, toward union with God, which can never be fully achieved here on earth. It is growth toward perfection. It is moving from self-centeredness to Christ, from slavery to freedom, from darkness to light, from falsehood to truth, from despair to hope, from death to life.

Theosis is coming to a true understanding of who we are in God’s creation!