Do the Oriental Orthodox believe in Deification? Partaking in the Divine Nature in the Eucharist?

[TheLostCoin]

Saint Athanasius has a famous quote attributed to him:
"For the Son of God became man so that we might become God."

However, there was a famous controversy between Fr. Matthew the Poor and Pope Shenouda III, the lattermost who not only was opposed to the idea of Deification, but even went so far to say that those who take part in the Eucharist do not take part of the Divine Nature.

This book was published by Pope Shenouda III:
https://www.stgr.org/share/Pope_Shenouda_Books/English/Man Deification V1.pdf

There does seem to be some level of misunderstanding with HH - he seems to believe "Deification" means taking on the Divine Essence of God (literally, to become God Himself), but even then, he goes really far I think in condemning Deification to the point that he says things like this:

"The Lord Christ says, “Who eats My flesh and drinks My blood (Jn 6: 56). He did not say: who eats and drinks My Godhead ..."

Which, in the fullest sense of irony, seems to me to be very blatant Nestorianism and contradicts the entire purpose of the Theology of "One Incarnate Nature of the Word."

Now, I know that, Ecclesiology wise, the Pope is not...well...the Pope (the Pontifex Maximus and the source of tradition), and people make mistakes, but considering that many Copts really do view Pope Shenouda III as a very Holy Man (I have great respect for him for just trying to be a moral Christian leader in Egypt) and many do have an extremely high view of the authority of the Pope for the Copts, what does this say about the Theology of Deification and Eucharistic Theology?

 

[anna ~ grace]

*waits for Dzheremi*

 

[dzheremi]

I feel like I've addressed this many times before. Yes, we do believe in it (though see everything that follows). As far as I have personally witnessed, my own bishop has spoken with approval about it in the past, as has the priest who received me. What HH was responding to is not deification as properly understood by both OO and EO. You will note, for instance, that in that booklet HH repeatedly says that it is wrong to consider that man may become "a God". Well that's good, as I've never heard that definition of Theosis before. It's usually about the synergy of man with God (so obviously the two remain separate!), not some sort of strange idea that each of us may become an almighty God. And there are other parts of HH Pope Shenouda III's own corpus (such as in his "Many Years With the Problems of People" series; I've referenced the exact pages in an earlier reply on this topic, but I cannot find it right now; I'll keep looking, if it is important enough to you) where he writes about our cooperation with God in ways that mirror the correct thought, albeit without the language characteristic of the EO way of writing about this topic, since we're not EO to begin with. This leads me to believe that this probably is a translation issue more than anything -- not of HH's own books (I believe this one was translated properly, unfortunately), but of the materials from which he learned of the concept. For instance, there was apparently for a time some controversy with Arabic materials that made Theosis sound like we "ate" the divinity, which is not something that any of us believe in.

It should probably be said here that elsewhere, completely outside of HH's book or what anyone may think of him, there are apparently still some problems with the term as a term and some of the related theology in the minds of some in the Coptic Orthodox Church, which has led some to suggest that other terms would better express our actual theology. See, for instance, this paper by Fr. Athanasius Iskander on Theosis and Theopoiesis (Fr. Athanasius prefers the latter, which I honestly hadn't heard before I came across this paper some time ago). It is important to note that Fr. Athanasius writes about Theopoiesis in terms familiar to anyone who has heard the Orthodox understanding of Theosis, whether from EO or OO, saying after providing an example of it at work as found in St. Clement that "This is the synergy between the grace of God and the free will of man" (p. 8). What is Theosis but this? That's how I have heard it explained by EO, such as Fr. Andrew Damick in his "Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy" podcast on AFR.

The other side of the paper (starting on p. 21) is a critique of Theosis, which I am less inclined to get into (I don't mean to present this paper as what all OO believe anyway, only to show that this is what some within our Church say would be more correct, just as some within our Church think HH Pope Shenouda III was correct in his criticisms of Theosis -- I am personally not one of those people). I'm not going to pretend to really understand all of Fr. Athansius' points (I'm pretty uncomfortable with criticism of the Cappadocian fathers, for instance, but I will also admit to not having studied them to the degree that he probably has), but I think the overall idea is that we become gods rather than God, and not by nature but by the 'adoption' granted to us through Christ's incarnation whereby He Who is by nature divine took on the corruptible. Thus it is right what HH St. Athanasius the Apostolic said, and probably anything that goes beyond that (as Fr. Athansius argues that St. Gregory does, on the strength his interpretation of words from HG Bishop Alfayev of the Russian Orthodox Church) will not be accepted, or at least ought not be accepted uncritically.

This is interesting to me because of course St. Gregory is a huge saint in the Coptic Orthodox tradition. We credit him with the liturgy of St. Gregory which is one of the three liturgies used in our Church, so you practically can't get any bigger than that. So I'm not entirely sure what to make of this criticism beyond the obvious rejection of "Theosis" as a philosophical term, as stated in p. 23 and following, since Theopoiesis was supposedly not used with philosophical meanings.

It wouldn't be the first time that EO and OO disagreed on philosophy, though as far as I know this is the first time that OO have openly disagreed philosophically with one of our own saints. I will give Fr. Athanasius this, however: you will not find the same sort of attention given to the nous in OO writings as you do in EO writings. This concept, which I understand is at the heart of EO collections like the Philokalia, is absent -- at least in the EO way of speaking about it -- from OO writings such as the original content of the Agpeya (the litanies, the Thanksgiving Prayer, etc.), the writings of Abba Shenouda (the father of theology in the Coptic language), his student St. Besa, and the other sources that we can consult from before the schism, as well as (as far as I know) those from 'during' it and after it. While I am less familiar with them as a whole, I have not found it in any of the Syriac Orthodox saints I have read, either, like Mor Jacob of Serugh, Mor Philoxenos of Mabbug (you'd think it would be in his ascetic homilies, at least), Mor Gregorios Bar Hebraeus, etc. If I had to guess, then, I would say that this is possibly one of those things where we (the communions that would become EO and OO) were already diverging philosophically before the schism, and as a result our different traditions kept some of the same saints but developed different understandings of them/different traditions about them, or took their ideas to different conclusions. For another less controversial example, I have writings on St. Ephrem the Syrian from both EO and OO sources, and while they share quite a bit in common, there is stuff in the Russian source that is absent from the Syriac sources. It doesn't mean that we don't share him, but what we recognize of him is certainly different insofar as we have some different traditions built around him.

 

[Pavel Mosko]

*waits for Dzheremi*

This sort of question should be an obvious slam dunk if you have any small amount of knowledge or common sense on the issue. The OO has plenty of official saints just like Catholics and the EO and in order to have that you have to have some kind of concept of Theosis/Deification and naturally the Eucharist is one of the main ways how and why we have saints (Why people stand out as holy that is, not how they got that status.)

 

[TheLostCoin]

This sort of question should be an obvious slam dunk if you have any small amount of knowledge or common sense on the issue.

Darn.

 

[TheLostCoin]

The OO has plenty of official saints just like Catholics and the EO and in order to have that you have to have some kind of concept of Theosis/Deification and naturally the Eucharist is one of the main ways how and why we have saints

That’s not necessarily true. While the Roman Catholic Church accepts the idea of Theosis as a legitimate interpretation (if St. John of the Cross is anything to go by), there is a profoundly different idea of “states” that is really prominent in Catholicism,which have origin in St. Anselm of Canterbury, where salvation is nothing more than being “sinless” enough such that you can be in a “state” to receive Communion, whereas those in a “state of Mortal Sin” are damned.

Certainly a concept of Sainthood does not require an understanding of Theosis, if Salvation is simply viewed as being in a certain state. Unless you dig past the surface level of Catholic theology, you will only understand Salvation as a state of being rather than an ongoing and infinite process towards the Divine and how people became Saints by being sinless enough.

 

[Pavel Mosko]

I guess I semi agree and disagree. The State thing is important, and probably does over shadow some discussions, but prior before that became big especially in the middle ages and on, divinization was a big topic and divinization is essentially the western equivalent of theosis and is still officially part of their theology and that is at the heart of sainthood etc. But even the western magisterial Protestants have some concept of divinization even though that theme is largely buried or overshadowed, and forgotten especially in the present time.


PS - I read the book "Aristotle East And West" over a decade ago. Much of the states thing you talk about comes from Catholics getting back some of the lost Aristotlean writings but those sources came through Islam being captured in the Crusades. When those works were translated into Arabic they were rendered in a passive voice/state (the conventions and rules of the language), rather than in an energetic eastern Greek way. At least that was what the author claims and we was much more an expert on languages and philosophy than I am.