Economic Trinity With Respect to Deification

Great to see a copy of the Oxford Handbook of Deification (an excellent collection) in the hands of the Holy Father, presented by one of the editors, Paul Gavrilyuk. @OUPAcademic @OUPReligion @Pontifex @Pontifex_ln @OU_TheoReligion pic.twitter.com/rrwO7R4Kpr

— Andrew Davison (@AP_Davison) June 9, 2025

"We Dare to Say"

Daring To Say, “Our Father In Heaven”
Dare. Why is it a daring thing to say the Lord’s Prayer? Why is it daring to call God “Our Father in heaven”?https://t.co/c1WBJRLsvr pic.twitter.com/RNpNDaKBIQ

— Pravmir.com (@Pravmir_English) August 27, 2021

Garrigou-Lagrange Account of Deification

Garrigou on how, by revelation, man is conformed to God, not God to man. When revealing, God remains the origin, measure, and end of his revelation.

"God demands that we grow. When he reveals himself to us, he seeks, in a way, to divinize us and not to be annihilated within us."

— Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, OP (@FrAquinasOP) August 24, 2021

Theosis

The spiritual reality is that we become like what we worship. God detests idols and false gods because we were not made to be as lifeless as they are. So the Lord became like us, the Lover like His beloved, so we may become like Him, the lovers like the Beloved.

— fah’Tim (@FrGrumbach) July 22, 2021

Fr. Cyril Horovun on Theosis

I suggest a new take on the issue of theosis in Eastern Christianity - a logical and scholastic one.https://t.co/hQ52pPninu

— Cyril Hovorun (@cyril_hovorun) November 21, 2020

Reformation Day

Celebrate #ReformationDay by learning about the aim of spiritual life and the keys to attaining it. Follow the ancient path of Holy Orthodoxy and escape the apostasy of the West.

Theosis: The True Purpose of Human Life - Part I https://t.co/vNqi9GOCKr pic.twitter.com/0HXEcQE82L

— Timothy Honeycutt (@AudioScribeOW) October 31, 2020

Eastern Christian Books: Mystical Deification

Eastern Christian Books: Mystical Deification

Routledge: Mystical Doctrines of Deification: Case Studies in the Christian Tradition, eds., John Arblaster and Rob Faesen

Participation in God by Andrew Davison

Cambridge University Press

Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics sold out in a couple of months, and was out of print for two months. Happily, it's now available again. @CambridgeUP @CUPBookshop pic.twitter.com/PLihXduWiY

— Andrew Davison (@AP_Davison) December 14, 2019

A review by James Clark at FPR: Imagining Divine Participation

Related:
Church Times review by David Brown.

The CT review has this bit:

In a rare exception, Moltmann’s idea of God’s making space for the world is declared unchristian, whereas from that perspective it is surely Davison, not Moltmann, who radically diminishes the divine nature in not allowing that God could ever create anything radically different from his own nature. Equally, Moltmann would offer a quite different way of thinking about the inexplicable and evil.

What happened to God's being unable to create a square circle not contradicting his omnipotence?

Again, the doctrine of the Trinity is simply assumed throughout, and no attempt is made to engage with why Platonism might have thought its introduction unnecessarily complicating in the conception of everything as derived from one single source.

If course it is assumed, it's a book about Christian doctrine, and Davison would probably acknowledge that it is something that we cannot know or prove by reason alone but a truth that must be revealed to us by God Himself. One wonders about the author of the review...

Of course, Christianity had an answer in insisting on the introduction of the Trinity as revealed doctrine; but, again, except in his introductory section when discussing creation, Davison entirely fails to engage with the way in which our understanding of scripture has changed. St John’s Gospel is repeatedly quoted as though it gave us the historical mind of Jesus, but does it? And, if not, how easily can Aquinas’s account of the incarnate one survive? But what, even, of participation itself? It would seem odd to make the term foundational of all Christian thought if it is not found reflected somewhere in human experience. Yet Davison fails to discuss what might be meant by such experience.

The reviewer sounds like a liberal Protestant. What sort of Christian life is he living if he does not understand that Christians participate in the life of Christ?

Daria Spezzano, "The Burning Coal: Aquinas on the Eucharist, Eros, and Deification"

Image and Likeness?

Theosis

St. Gregory Palamas on Theosis

St. Gregory Deification (Theosis)

We Are Partakers of the Divine: Sermon on the Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas
The goal of the striving of fasting, the striving of all our struggles – of repentance, prayer, and our entreaties – is to aspire toward the unveiling in us of the image of God inscribed in our nature and essence by the hand of God the Creator Himself. It becomes easier to breathe, life becomes better, and we become purer when we see where we are going, why we are going, and what we should ask God for.
Archpriest Vsevolod Shpiller (+1984)

The Teaching of St Gregory Palamas: Theosis is Possible Through the Uncreated Energies Of God

St. Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers by Fr. George Florovsky

Eastern Christian Books: Deification Through the Cross

Eastern Christian Books: Deification Through the Cross

Eerdmans: Deification through the Cross: An Eastern Christian Theology of Salvation by Khaled Anatolios

Anatolios uses the phrase “doxological contrition” to suggest that the truth of salvation is found both in Jesus’s perfect glorification of God and in his representative repentance for humanity’s sinful rejection of its original calling to participate in the life of the Holy Trinity.

I personally don't see the need to combine Byzantine and Latin views of soteriology in this way but apparently Anatolios does.

Andrew Hofer, OP: St. Thomas Aquinas on Divinisation

Eastern Christian Books: Russian Thought on Deification

Eastern Christian Books: Russian Thought on Deification

OUP

Christ as First-Born

A Homily on the Transfiguration

A Latin Expression of Deification

Jared Ortiz on the Latin Tradition of Deification

Public Orthodoxy: How Catholics Have Always Believed and Taught Deification

EO/OO Dialogue

From 2016: A new book on the dialogue with the Oriental Orthodox Churches




From 2000: Beyond Dialogue: The Quest for Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Unity Today by Rev John H Erickson, Dean

From May 2019: Commission for Dialogue between Russian Orthodox Church and Coptic Church holds its 3rd session

Resources:
Orthodox Unity (Orthodox Joint Commission)
Various Documents Concerning Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Joint Commission and Unity