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The character and aim of Eastern Orthodox spirituality is summed up in the patristic formula: "God became human (without ceasing to be God) that humanity might become God (without ceasing to be human)."1 The first half of the patristic formula signifies the incarnation: the mystery of the divine Logos, through whom all things came to be and in whom all things exist (John 1:3-10), becoming flesh and dwelling among us (John 1:14). The term theosis or deification summarizes the second half of the formula to signify the soteriological consequence of the incarnation for humanity and the world: This is the possibility to attain union with God. "That they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they, too, might be in us" (John 17:21).
Union with God is the goal of theosis and the content of salvation. It is attained as one learns how to die in the mystery of Christ in order to be raised up in newness of life:
If anyone wishes to follow after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his soul will lose it; but whoever loses his soul for my sake and the gospel's will save it" (Mark 8:34-35).
The path to theosis is the way of the cross, a journey of the soul into the mystery of Christ's death. There, a deeper mystery of resurrection and eternal life through union with God is discovered. This is the divine life of the Spirit. In theosis, "it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20).
The concept of theosis roots the understanding of salvation in an earlier Old Testament meaning of "justification" or "being made righteous." In the context of the Abrahamic covenant, to be made righteous or to be justified means to be made "prosperous," or to be "blessed" with abundance of life, the substance of which in the ancient Near East is given in land and in many descendants.2 In early Jewish Christianity, calling Jesus the Seed of Abraham means that he is the one to whom the promise of the covenant-viz. land and many descendants, taken as symbols of life in the Spirit...