DESCRIPTIONS

'Deification' refers to the transformation of believers into the likeness of God. Of course, Christian monotheism goes against any literal 'god making' of believers. Rather, the New Testament speaks of a transformation of mind, a metamorphosis of character, a redefinition of selfhood, and an imitation of God. Most of these passages are tantalizingly brief, and none spells out the concept in detail. Deification was an important idea in the early church, though it took a long time for one term to emerge as the standard label for the process. That term was theosis, coined by the great fourth-century theologian, Gregory of Nazianzus. Theologians now use theosis to designate all instances where any idea of taking on God's character or being divinized (made divine) occurs, even when the term theosis is not used. And of course, different Christian authors understood deification differently. While some articles in this collection discuss pre-Christian antecedents of theosis, Greek and Jewish, most focus on particular Christian understandings. The article by Gregory Glazov examines Old Testament covenant theology, with an emphasis on divine adoption, and on bearing the fruit of knowledge or attaining the stature of a tree of righteousness in Proverbs, Isaiah, and Sirach. The article by Stephen Finlan on 2 Pet 1:4 ('You may become participants of the divine nature') examines the epistle's apparent borrowings from Middle Platonic spirituality, Stoic ethics, and Jewish apocalyptic expectation. The epistle stresses 'knowledge of Christ,' which means cultivation of godly character and growing up into Christ. - from the Introduction Table of Contents Introduction; Stephen Finlan and Vladimir Kharlamov; Defining the Term; Terminology of Theosis; History of Scholarship; A Renewed Discussion; Theosis, Judaism, and Old Testament Anthropology; Gregory Glazov; Theosis and Old Testament Biblical Theology; Theosis and Old Testament Covenantal Anthropology; Theo4sis and Old Testament Sapiential Anthropology; Second Peter's Notion of Divine Participation; Stephen Finlan; Middle-Platonic Background; Stoic Growth in Virtue; Apocalyptic Judaism; Pauline Parallels; Petrine Disputes; Knowledge of Christ; Emergence of the Deification Theme in the Apostolic Fathers; Vladimir Kharlamov; Didache; The Epistle of Barnabas; Clement of Rome (First Clement); Second Clement; Ignatius of Antioch; Polycarp of Smyrna; Conclusion; Deification in the Apologists of the Second Century; Vladimir Kharlamov; Justin Martyr; Tatian; Theophilus of Antioch; Athenagoras; Epistle to Diognetus; Conclusion; Irenaeus on the Christological Basis of Human Divinization; Jeffrey Finch; Theological Anthropology: Image and Likeness Recapitulated; God Partakable; Christ the Head; Athanasius on the Deifying Work of the Redeemer; Jeffrey Finch Introduction; The One and the Many; Human Cooperation and Appropriation; By the Incarnation Alone?; Augustine's Conception of Deification, Revisited; Robert Puchniak; The Principal Passages; Augustinian Polemic; Infrequency of Deification Imagery; Divinization and Spiritual Progress in Maximus the Confessor; Elena Vishnevskaya; The Fundamentals of Divinization; Ascetic Practice and Contemplation; Purification in Love; Reforming Theosis; Myk Habets; Worlds Apart; Theosis and the West; T. F. Torrance: A Case Study; Imago Dei; Creator-Creature Distinction; Reconciling Exchange; Conclusion; The Comedy of Divinization in Soloviev; Stephen Finlan; Divinization and Comedy; Trinitarianism; Sophiology; Following the Christ Pattern; Anti-Gnostic Triumph; List of Contributors.