I am sure that my readers, if they have followed this particular article, have come to realize that the “call to holiness” is, in fact, a call for us to realize the potential for which God created us, that is for union with Him and for allowing His Spirit, planted within us, to be the guide of our lives. It is a call to Theosis. This is a very simple concept. The core of the Good News of the Gospel is that we are called to share in the very life of God. Salvation is much more positive than it is negative. It means “actualizing” God’s image in us – helping us to truly become more like Jesus Christ, the human likeness of God. Christ helps us to fulfill our potential, which is to become like God in Christ and to share in His life.

St. Gregory of Nazianzus defines the human being as “an animal in the process of being deified – in Green zoon theoumenon. This is what sets us apart from the rest of creation, that is, our calling to become “partakers of divine nature”, gods by grace, partakers of God’s glory. This is what defines an authentically human life. Created in the image of the Triune God, we find our true selves in the image of the Triune God. Some have rejected this ancient Christian doctrine of theosis as unscriptural and a product of pagan Hellenic influence. Modern research has shown, however, that despite a Hellenic precursor, theosis in the thought and teaching of the Greek Fathers is thoroughly Christian and scripturally highly defensible and sound Christian thought.

Several scholars have written that it is easy to confuse Christian theosis with some of the very pagan notions that preceded it, such as apotheosis, and to therefore dismiss the former because of the undesirable nature of the latter. But the Fathers of the early Church were not so easily confused, probably because they were close to the sources of confusion and were therefore forced to clearly enunciate the differences.