8.
Theosis is Possible Through the Uncreated Energies of God
According to the teachings of the Holy Bible and the Fathers of
the Church, man is able to achieve Theosis because within the Orthodox
Church of
Christ the Grace of God is uncreated. God is not only essence, as the
West thinks; He is also energy. If God was only essence, we could not
unite with Him, could not commune with Him, because the essence of
God is awesome and unapproachable for man, as was written [RA1]
: ‘Never
will man see My face and live’ (Exod. 33:20).
Let us give a relevant example from things human. If we grasp a bare electric
wire, we will die. However, if we connect a lamp to the same wire, we are
illuminated. We see, enjoy, and are assisted by, the energy of electric
current, but we are not able to grasp its essence. Let us say that something
similar happens with the uncreated energy of God.
If we were able to unite with the essence of God, we would become gods
in essence. Then everything would become a god, and there would be confusion
so that, essentially, nothing would be a god. In a few words, this is what
they believe in the Oriental religions, e.g. in Hinduism, where the god
is not a personal existence but an indistinct power dispersed through all
the world, in men, in animals, and in objects (Pantheism).
Again, if God had only the divine essence – of which we cannot partake – and
did not have His energies, He would remain a self-sufficient god, closed
within himself and unable to communicate with his creatures.
God, according to the Orthodox theological view, is One in a Trinity and
a Trinity in One. As St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Dionysius the Areopagite,
and other holy Fathers repeatedly say, God is filled with a divine eros,
a divine love for His creatures. Because of this infinite and ecstatic
love of His, He comes out of Himself and seeks to unite with them. This
is expressed and realised as His energy, or better, His energies.
With these, His uncreated energies, God created the world and continues
to preserve it. He gives essence and substance to our world through His
essence-creating energies. He is present in nature and preserves the universe
with His preserving energies; He illuminates man with His illuminating
energies; He sanctifies him with His sanctifying energies. Finally, He
deifies him with His deifying energies. Thus, through his uncreated energies,
holy God enters nature, the world, history, and human life.
The energies of God are divine energies. They too are God, but without
being His essence. They are God, and therefore they can deify man. If the
energies of God were not divine and uncreated, they would not be God and
so they would be unable to deify us, to unite us with God. There would
be an unbridgeable distance between God and men. But as God has the divine
energies, and unites with us by these energies, we are able to commune
with Him and to unite with His Grace without becoming identical with God,
as would happen if we united with His essence.
So we unite with God through His uncreated energies, and not through His
essence. This is the mystery of our Orthodox faith and life.
Western heretics cannot accept this. Being rationalist, they do not discern
between the essence and the energy of God, so they say that they cannot
speak about man's Theosis because God is only essence, for on this basis,
how can man be deified when they do not accept that the divine energies
are uncreated, but regard them as created? How can something created deify
man, i.e. how can something outside God deify man?
In order not to fall into pantheism, they do not talk about Theosis at
all. What then, according to them, remains as the purpose of human life?
Simply moral improvement. If man cannot be deified with divine Grace and
divine energies, what purpose does his life have? Only that he becomes
morally better. But moral perfection is not enough for man. It is not enough
for us simply to become better than before, simply to perform moral deeds.
We have as our final aim to unite with holy God Himself. This is the purpose
of the creation of the universe. This is what we desire. This is our joy,
our happiness, and our fulfillment.
The psyche of man, who is created in the image and likeness of God, yearns
for God and desires union with Him. No matter how moral, how good man may
be, no matter how many good deeds he may perform, if he does not find God,
if he does not unite with Him, he finds no rest. For holy God placed within
him this holy thirst, the divine eros, the desire for union with Him, for
Theosis, so he has in himself the erotic power, which he receives from
his Creator, in order to love truly, strongly, selflessly ... just as his
holy Creator falls in love with His world, with His creatures. This is
so that with this holy erotic impetus and loving power, he falls in love
with God. If man did not have the image of God in himself, he would not
be able to seek its prototype. Each of us is an image of God, and God is
our prototype. The image seeks the prototype, and only when it finds it
does it find rest.
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