In view of the attractiveness of eastern “spiritualities” that have radiated their appeal over the past 120 years anew across the Western European and North American religious landscape, it is no wonder that their Christian cousins in various forms of mysticism have commanded increasing attention once again in recent years. Against this background, debate over the place of the Eastern orthodox doctrine of theosis—divinization—in Western Christian thinking also seems a natural development in Western ecclesiastical cultures.
This volume arose out of the explorations of a group of doctoral students at Drew University who participated in a seminar on theosis. Now in teaching positions, and joined by a few others in producing this collection, they offer a historical survey that presents the reader with a panorama of eighteen studies that explicitly and implicitly pose questions for scholarly discussion.
At the same a strength and a weakness of the collection is its lack of a common working definition of its central concept. Several essays note explicitly the Platonic and Neo-Platonic roots of the concept, but most have a harder time coming to terms with the sharp contrast of presuppositions between these Greek ways of viewing reality and the Hebraic concept of a Creator God who speaks reality into existence and preserves it by his word. In his introductory essay J. Michael Christiansen asks: “Is there a divine promise of human deification implicit in the teachings of the Scriptures?” (24). He cites two passages often used as the basis for a biblical concept of divinization, 2 Peter 1:4 and Psalm 82:6, but neither he nor most others who dwell on the passages explore the hermeneutical questions posed by context and framework for the larger argument of the authors. One exception is the fine examination of 2 Peter 1:4 by James Starr (81–92). The helpful essay by John R. Lenz on “Deification of the Philosopher in Classical Greece” (47–67) offers a broad overview of its subject, but the constraints of space apparently prevented the kind of comparison with Hebraic notions of the Creator and his creation that could facilitate a penetrating discussion.
The concept of theosis developed in the Neo-Platonic thought-world in which the Greek patristic theologians lived and thought. Vladimir Kharlamov analyzes the “rhetorical application of theosis in Greek patristic theology” with methodological and theological insight. He points out that “we must be careful not to exaggerate the popularity of theosis. Outside of Alexandria and Cappadocia very few patristic writers used such terminology” (115). He carefully assesses how the concept functioned rhetorically in dialogue with pagan writers and with other Christians, particularly heretics, especially in the writings of Athanasius and Gregory of Nazianzus. Christiansen acknowledges that Maximus the Confessor held a view of theosis as perichoresis (skillfully analyzed by Elena Vishnevskaya, 132–45), which “moves from a spiritual relationship of communion in Christ to a mystical state of union,” “which in the end tends to blur, but not collapse, the essential distinction between Creator and creation” (27), a move made by none in the Hebrew tradition.
When the volume leaves the first Christian millennium and the East behind, it is hard to avoid the impression that a certain anachronistic forcing of texts from Luther, Calvin, and Wesley is necessary to produce the desired results. For instance, Jonathan Linman presents a good overview of essential ideas in the argument of Tuomo Mannermaa and Simo Peura that Luther's doctrine of justification held to a divinization through faith (189–99), but he fails to review rather harsh criticisms of this interpretation of the texts by historians and some systematicians.
Essays on theosis in the thought of Neo-Palamism, Sergei Bulgalov, and Karl Rahner bring the discussion into the twentieth century. Gösta Hallonsten of the University of Lund offers a concluding essay that raises key questions needing clarification in the discussion of theosis, engaging particularly the interpretations of Mannermaa and A. N. Williams (281–93). He then offers an agenda for further discussion based on the distinction between three different but related phenomena: the theme of theosis, the anthropology implied in theosis, and the doctrine of theosis as an explanation of the whole economy of salvation (287). The volume ends with an extensive, helpful bibliography by co-editor Jeffrey A. Whittung, whose tragic death in an automobile accident in early 2010 deprived the community of theologians in North America of a valuable editor and learned colleague.
Readers will profit from a critical engagement with these authors. Nonetheless, this reviewer would have liked a more critical assessment of the original sources at points. The absence of engagement with fundamental hermeneutical and presuppositional questions, such as the clash of the metaphysical premises between the definition of ultimate reality in the Neo-Platonism from which ideas of human divinization arise, makes the volume only a launching pad for further exploration of how the concept of theosis in Christian thought reflects and/or overcomes its alien presuppositions when introduced into the world of the patriarchs and prophets.
Finally, if it is true that “deification, then, is not a transcending of what it means to be human, but the fulfillment of what it is to be human,” (Andrew Louth, “The Place of Theosis in Orthodox Theology,” 39) one wonders why that is not called “humanization.” The absence of consideration of the biblical appreciation of creation as “good” (Genesis 1) enables the avoidance of such questions that exegetes might address if they came into the conversation as well. This collection nonetheless sends us on our way into a vital and critical exchange at the ecumenical table and in the cultural dialogue.
