00. Theosis and Sanctification: John Wesley's Reformulation of a Patristic Doctrine

00. Theosis and Sanctification: John Wesley’s Reformulation of a Patristic Doctrine Michael J. Christensen I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High..." (Ps. 82:6) Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?" (Jn. 10:34)

Entire Sanctification (holiness, perfection), as understood in the Wesleyan tradition, refers to John Wesley’s doctrine of spiritual transformation. It is understood as an experience of grace, subsequent to salvation, with the effect that the Holy Spirit takes full possession of the soul, sanctifies the heart, and empowers the will so that one can love God and others blamelessly in this life. One is justified and then sanctified-understood as communing with God with the result that the holiness of God is actually imparted, not just imputed on the basis of what Christ accomplished on the cross. The power of sin in the believer’s life is either eradicated or rendered inoperative as one participates in the higher life of the divine. [1]

Theosis (lit. "ingodded," "becoming god," deification) in the Eastern Orthodox tradition is a vision of human potential for perfection, anticipated in ancient Greece, witnessed to in both the Old and New Testaments, and developed by Patristic Christian theologians of the first five centuries after Christ. This vision survived the fourth-century purges of heresy and persists yet today in Eastern Christianity as a challenge to Western theology. According to Vladimir Lossky, we are nothing less than "creatures called to gods" (The Vision of God). In the words of Irenaeus (120-202): "If the Word was made man, it is that men might become gods" (Against Heresies, Bk. V. Pref. col. 1035). Or as Athanasius (293-373) said of the Incarnation of Christ: "God became man so that man might become God" (On the Incarnation of the Word, Bk. IV. par 65). [2] The idea of theosis is that God and humanity progressively achieve a union in Christ which in the end both blurs and preserves the distinction between Creator and creation, as in a mirror perfectly reflecting the source of its image. [3]