"Let books be your dining table, / And you shall be full of delights. / Let them be your
mattress,/
And you shall sleep restful nights" (St. Ephraim the Syrian).


Monday, December 12, 2011

Theosis

Based on the locus classicus of II Peter 1:4, and the almost equally famous saying of the great Athanasius of Alexandria ("God became man so that man might become God"), the topic of theosis or deification/divinization has attracted an enormous amount of attention if the number of publications in English in just the last five years is anything to go by. Over the years we have reviewed in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies almost all of the following:


Also that year we had Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition.

In 2007 we had two more books: Nancy J. Hudson, Becoming God: the Doctrine of Theosis in Nicholas of Cusa. Daniel Keating published a study of theosis that explicitly sought to situate it within modern Roman Catholic theology and demonstrate its acceptability to that tradition: Deification and Grace.

In 2008, we had a welcome ecumenical collection of scholars, from Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox traditions discussing theosis in Michael Christensen and Jeffrey Wittung, Partakers of the Divine Nature: the History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions.



In 2009, Russell returned with a second book: Fellow Workers with God: Orthodox Thinkers on Theosis.


This year, Kharlamov returned again with the second volume to his 2006 volume: Theosis: Deification in Christian Theology.


About this book, the publisher tells us:

Deified Person: A Study of Deification in Relation to Person and Christian Becoming focuses on a theological exploration of “person” through the notion of deification and is placed within a Christian Orthodox–Byzantine context. The book offers new interpretations of person in relation to Christian becoming while at the same time exploring some of the difficult avenues of Christian theological developments. Nicholas Bamford encourages theological inquiry, and the book will appeal to those who wish to challenge ideas and push the boundaries forward.

1 comment:

  1. If I was going to read just one of these books on theosis, which one should I read?

    ReplyDelete

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