Theosis

Divinization, also known as theosis (from the Greek θέωσις), is the idea that human beings are called to participate in the life of God and to be united with him in a full way. In Eastern Christianity it is one of the central notions of theology and of spiritual life, and it does not mean that a person becomes God by nature, but rather a sense of participation and likeness.

The term has roots in the tradition of the Greek Fathers, who drew it from biblical passages such as the statement that believers are "partakers of the divine nature." Maximus the Confessor placed it at the centre of his view of salvation: the ultimate end of humanity is to be fully united with God, and this is possible only because God had first united himself with humanity through the Incarnation. On this reading, the Incarnation is not an isolated episode but the foundation that makes the transformation of the human person possible.

In the twentieth century, Orthodox theologians such as Georgi Florovsky and Vladimir Lossky restated the notion. Florovsky linked it to sanctification and transfiguration, which find their full realisation in the Church, while Lossky presented it as the very meaning of the Christian life, understood as union with God. Both stress that divinization does not erase the difference between Creator and creature, but transforms it from within through grace.

The concept also appears in other traditions with different nuances. In Mormonism, for instance, exaltation is understood as a way of becoming god within a conception of divinity very different from classical Christian theology, which does not share it. The contexts should therefore be kept distinct when using the term.

Today the debate centres on whether divinization is a central or marginal doctrine of Christianity, and on how to reconcile it with the Western idea of justification by faith. Its relevance for thinking about ethics, spiritual life and the relationship between humanity and nature is also discussed.