ROMANIDES, DEIFICATION AND THE IMAGE OF GOD
Written by Vladimir Moss
ROMANIDES, DEIFICATION AND THE IMAGE OF GOD
Salvation, writes the new calendarist theologian Fr. John Romanides, lies in deification – or theosis, as he prefers to call it, using the Greek word. We have no quarrel with this; it is the teaching of the Holy Fathers. “God became man, in order that man should become god” – and the process of becoming god is what we call deification. However, Romanides links this uncontroversial teaching with another, much more dubious one: that there is no likeness whatsoever between God and His creation, including man. And this is true, he asserts, not only in relation to the absolutely unknowable essence of God, but also in relation to His energies. “No similarity whatsoever exists between the uncreated and the created, or between God and creation. This also means that no analogy, correlation, or comparison can be made between them. This implies that we cannot use created things as a means for knowing the uncreated God or His energy.”[1]But this immediately raises the objection: if there is no similarity whatsoever between God and His creation, why, when He created man, did He create Him in His “image and likeness”? And again: is not this likeness between God and man precisely the basis which makes possible the union between God and man, and man’s deification?
In order to answer these questions, we need, first, to examine what the Holy Fathers understood by the image and likeness of God in man:-
1. The Image as Dominion.This is the interpretation that follows most directly from Genesis 1: “Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” (v. 26). As God has dominion over the whole universe, so He has given to man to be master of everything on earth. Thus St. John Chrysostom writes: “God says ‘image’ by way of dominion, not in any other way… Nothing on earth is greater than [man], but all things are subject to his authority.”[2]Blessed Theodoret of Cyr writes: “Some have said that man was made in accordance with God’s image with respect to dominion; and they have made use of a very clear proof, the fact that the Creator added, ‘And let them have dominion…’ For just as He holds absolute sway over the whole universe, so He has given to man to have authority over the irrational animals.”[3]Man, according to St. Cyril of
2. The Image as Rationality.St. Basil the Great writes: “The passions have not been included in the image of God, but reason, which is master of the passions”.[7]St. Cyril of
3. The Image as Freedom. Theophilus of Antioch writes: “God made man free, and with a free will”.[12]Dominion and rationality necessarily presuppose freedom.[13]Moreover, freedom is a necessary condition of morality, as St. Irenaeus explains: “If it was by nature that some men are good and others bad, the good would not be praiseworthy for their goodness, which would be their natural equipment, nor would the bad be responsible, having been so created. But in fact everyone has the same nature, with the power of accepting and achieving good, and the power likewise of spurning it and failing to achieve it… Therefore it is just that among men in a well-ordered community the good are praised… and the evil called to account; and this is all the more true in respect of God’s dealing with me… If it were not in our power to do, or refrain from doing, why did the Apostle, and – what is more important – why did the Lord Himself, advise that some things be done and others not be done? But since man has from the first been endowed with free choice, and God, in Whose likeness he was made is also free, man is advised to lay hold of the good, which is achieved in fullness as a result of obedience to God.”[14]St. Gregory of Nyssa writes: “That man was made in the image of God… is equivalent to saying… that he is freed from necessity, and not subject to the dominion of nature, but able freely to follow his own judgement. For virtue is independent and her own mistress.”[15]
4. The Image as Conscience. The freedom to make a rational choice between right and wrong entails the possession of an internal criterion distinguishing between right and wrong. This is the conscience, which a Russian saying calls “the eye of God in the soul of man”. St. Dorotheus of
5. The Image as Holiness.
6. The Image as Eternity. Solomon writes: “God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of His own Eternity. Nevertheless, through envy of the devil came death into the world” (Wisdom of Solomon 2.23-24). And St. Athanasius the Great writes: “God made man by nature sinless and free in will, imperishable and eternally in His image”.[21]St. Columbanus of Luxeuil writes: “God bestowed upon man the image of His Eternity, and the likeness of His Character.”[22]
7. The Image as Love. “We know that when He appears we shall be like Him,” Who is love (I John 3.2, 4.8).
The above quotations are sufficient to make the point that man as he was originally created, and as he is recreated in Christ, is like God. In fact, becoming like Him to the supreme degree is the same as being deified. For, as St. Dionysius the Areopagite writes, “the aim of Hierarchy is the greatest possible assimilation to, and union with, God, and by taking Him as leader in all holy wisdom, to become like Him, so far as is permitted, by contemplating intently His most Divine Beauty.”[26]
This point receives confirmation from a consideration of the subject of the Divine Names. In his treatise with this title, St. Dionysius teaches us that each of the names we ascribe to God are taken from created human experience and then applied to an Uncreated Energy of God which bears a resemblance to that human experience. Thus we call God “love” from our experience of human love and of God’s love towards us. This is not to say that God’s love is not infinitely purer and greater than human love. Nevertheless, if there were absolutely no similarity between our experience of created human love and God’s uncreated love for us, there would be absolutely no reason to call Him “love”.
God reveals Himself to us in many ways, and our names for Him are correspondingly many. Thus “He is many-named,” writes St. Dionysius, “because this is how they represent Him speaking: ‘I am He Who is, I am Life, Light, God, Truth’. And the wise in God praise God Himself, Creator of all, by many names gathered from created things, such as Good, Beautiful, Wise, Beloved…”[27]
These are names gathered from created things, but applied to the Uncreated God. So unless we are to deny that God can meaningfully be called Good, Beautiful or Wise, Life, Light or Love, we must conclude that Romanides is wrong in asserting that there is no similarity whatsoever between God and man. The fact that we can, however approximately, give names to God shows that there is some interface between the Creator and His creation. However transcendent and unknowable God is in His essence, He still makes Himself known in His energies; and we can know Him and name Him in His energies because we are made in His image and likeness and because He has become man for us, and revealed Himself in that very human nature that He assumed for our sake. It is on this basis that “we know that, when He is revealed [at the Second Coming], we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (I John 3.2).
Vladimir Moss.
May 2/15, 2009.
St. Athanasius the Great.
[1]Romanides, Patristic Theology, Dalles,
[2]
[3] Blessed Theodoret, Questions on Genesis, 20; P.G. 80, 105.
[4]St. Cyril of
[5]St. Cyril of
[6] Ambrosiaster, Questions on the Old and the New Testament, 127, 106, 17.
[7] St. Basil the Great, On the Six Days of Creation, X, 8.
[8]St. Cyril of
[9] The Venerable Bede, On Genesis, 1.26.
[10]Clement of
[11] St. Athanasius the Great, On the Incarnation of the Word, 11; P.G. 25, 113-116.
[12]Theophilus of
[13] For, as Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky writes, “Man’s reason makes his will conscious and authentically free, because it can choose that which corresponds to man’s highest dignity rather than to that which his lower nature inclines him.” (Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Platina, Ca.: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1984, p. 137).
[14] St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, IV, 37.
[15] St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man, XVI.
[16]
[17]St. Dorotheus of
[18] St. Gregory the Theologian, Sermon 38, 11; P.G. 36.317.
[19] The Venerable Bede, On Genesis, 1.26.
[20]St. Cyril of
[21] St. Athanasius the Great, Against Apollinarius, 1.15.
[22] St. Columbanus, Instructions.
[23]
[24] St. Maximus, To Thalassius, 61; P.G. 90, 628B.
[25] St. Diadochus, On Spiritual Knowledge, 89; The Philokalia, volume 1, p. 288.
[26] St. Dionysius, The Celestial Hierarchies, III.
[27] St. Dionysius, The Divine Names, I, 6.