I ended the last installment of this article with the thoughts of the Greek Fathers of the Church on the true destiny of humankind. They asserted that the goal of human existence is participation in God – deification. Maximus describes deification as a participation of the whole man in the whole God. He wrote:

In the same way in which the soul and the body are united, God should become accessible for participation by the soul and, through the soul’s intermediary, by the body, immortality; and finally that the whole man should become God deified by the grace of God-become-man, becoming whole man, soul and body, by nature, and becoming whole God, soul and body, by grace.

Thus for Maximus the doctrinal basis of man’s deification is clearly to be found in hypostatic unity between the divine and the human nature in Christ. Christ, as God’s revelation, can be considered the archetype of human beings.

Maximos the Confessor

The man Jesus is God hypostatically, and, therefore, in Him there is a communication of the energies divine and human. This communication also reaches those who are in Christ. But they, of course, are human hypostases, and are united to God not hypostatically but only by grace or by energy. A man who becomes obedient to God in all things hears God saying:  said: you are gods’; he then is God and is called God not by nature or by relation but by divine decree and grace. It is not through his own activity or energy that man can be deified but by divine energy, to which his human activity is obedient.

This, I know, is dense – difficult to understand. If, however, we keep in the forefront of our minds that the destiny of all humans is union with God in some real way, this begins to make more sense.

The Greek Fathers, you can tell, drew upon philosophy to find the words to describe what the relationship is between God and humankind. It all goes back to a core truth first revealed in the Old Testament: man was made in the image and the likeness of God. This is what we must struggle to understand. When we can come to an understanding of this real description of who we are in God’s creation, then we begin to see the real reason for us to do all within our power to imitate Christ.

So ask yourself: What does it mean that I am made in the image and likeness of God? The answer to this very important question is the beginning of Eastern Spirituality. If I am made in His image and likeness, it means that the whole purpose of this earthly existence is to discover the real meaning of this and to then do all in my power to make this really true in my life. God became man so that man might become God.