Is the Deification of Man an Unchristian, Unbiblical Doctrine?
Research by Kerry A. Shirts
This paper will explore the idea using Biblical and extra-biblical materials showing how new research from the Dead Sea Scrolls as well as from the Syriac Christian perspective has opened the field into interesting possibilities not thought feasible by many in Western Christianity until now.
Crispin H.T. Fletcher-Louis has noted that the Qumran writings held a belief in an angelmorphic or divine humanity, which is rooted "in the prelapsarian identity of Adam, which is then recovered by Israel, her patriarchal heroes, her lawgiver, mediatorial figures such as the priest, king and prophet and specific communities such as those behind the Dead Sea Scrolls and Therapeutae… it has long been recognized that the Dead Sea Scrolls community believed that it shared its life with the angels. It is now evident that the Engelgemeinschaft entailed transformation." ("Heavenly Ascent and Incarnational Presence: A Revisionist Reading of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, p. 4)
This transformation is what Paul had in mind as well. The transformation of the human to the divine. 2 Corinthians 3:18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
The Greek word for "changed" is "metamorphoo" which is a transfiguring, a change such as Jesus underwent on the Mount of Transfiguration. The "Doxa Kuriou" the Glory of the Lord is what man is changed into, following Paul’s understanding wherein he notes "auton eikona metamorphoumetha" which is changed from glory to glory into the same image.
This is why in the Qumran writings the hosts and servants, the inner community of the holy ones are the angels of His glory. All community members are called holy ones, which reflects the priestly angelmorphism. Moses is understood to have been deified while he was on mount Sinai. In a fragmentary text, Aaron is described as "you will be God and an Angel of God you will be called." (Fletcher-Louis, p. 7)
The true divinity of humanity is reflected also in the Dead Sea Scrolls Words of the Heavenly Lights which are liturgies of prayers for the seven days of the week, (4Q504, 4Q506). The formation of man in God’s image (Genesis 1:26) is here interpreted through the language of Ezekiel 1:28 as the creation of man as the embodiment of God’s theophanic Glory: Adam is created "in the likeness of [Your] Glory (4Q504.8 4). Fletcher-Louis notes bluntly that "…where the Songs use peculiar language for angels – language normally used of humans – this is because it is describing divine humans." (p. 7). In several passages of the Dead Sea Scrolls, (4Q491, 4Q427 7 ii 16-18, 4Q400 1 I 8, 17, 19) it has been noted that they express "the transferral of the community member from the sphere of dust to a life in the heavenly community: the sectarian is no longer a man of flesh, he is now angelmorphic or divine."(Fletcher-Louis, p. 13)
In all three texts the Songs of the Sage, IQSb, Sabbath Songs, we discover an inner self-understanding in which mortality has been thoroughly transcended in the direction of divinity or angelmorphism…from the outset the Songs presume the corporate transformation of the human participants in the liturgy such that language which has hitherto been thought to described suprahuman angels must now be taken to refer to angelized and divinized sectarians." (Fletcher-Louis, p. 19).
Alexander Golitzin has noted that the Glory of Adam which was given to him is the very glory of the image of God, i.e., Adam is a divine being, who was supposed to be worshipped actually! The first humans were superior even to the angels. (Golitzin, "Recovering the ‘Glory of Adam’: ‘Divine Light’ Traditions in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Ascetical Literature of Fourth Century Syro-Mesopotamia," in the International Conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls, St. Andrews, Scotland, June 28, 2001: 2)
In the Christian Syrian homilies of Marcarius, Adam’s glory was originally with him in the Garden of Eden, but on falling, he lost that original image of light from God, and became naked, subject to mortal pains and temptations. He was "stripped" of the divine glory which imbued his body, but this is precisely the glory which Christ restores to mankind, Adam being the primordial man and image for all mankind. Adam’s restored glory to mankind is the "deiform and living image of God in man. (Golitzin, p. 3). When restored, man will also wear robes and crowns of light in the heavenly realms, signifying he is now a glorified being of God. These are the rewards of those who walk in the Spirit. In fact, the robe is identified with the Holy Spirit. It is specifically the Father of Christ who is identified as the giver of the robes and crowns to the believers soul, not his body. I.e., it becomes the believer, or rather, the believer becomes part of the Glory of God the Father, which is signified by the believer wearing the appropriate apparel. (p. 4)
Light and glory are equivalent according to Marcarius’ understanding, with streams of fire coming from the heavenly realm of God, which is manifest also in the Dead Sea Scrolls descriptions of the Glory of God. It is a divine product. When the soul is filled with God’s glory (i.e., divinized), it will shine brighter than the sun itself. Paul himself features the visio dei luminis/gloriae, e.g., his conversion by heavenly light in Acts 9 and 22, the glory in 2 Corinthians 2:18 and 4:6; the image of the heavenly man of 1 Corinthians 15:49 and the body of his [Christ’s] glory of Phil 3:21. As in Merkavah mysticism stemming from Ezekiel’s chariot, it is the soul of man which is the throne, and the temple and the dwelling place of God. (Golitzin, p. 7)
Enoch is called the Lesser YHWH, becoming a God bearing the image of God. He declares that he has been enlarged in stature and holiness because he has received the Glory of God. In the Syriac-Christian poem, The Hymn of the Pearl, we read that at the climax the recipient encounters a robe of light bearing the divine image and woven for him in heaven. This is the speakers heavenly double. The speaker clothes himself with the robe and ascends to heaven to meet Christ, the radiance of the Father, at the gate of greeting. This is the language, as Golitzin clearly points out, of transformation and divination which is in common in all the texts of Aphrahat, the Qumran texts, the rabbinic era-Merkavah literature and the Acta Thomae. (Golitzin, p. 10).
Golitzin’s next point is simply not to be missed! For Aphrahat as well as Marcarius and the other Syrians, the recovery of the Glory of Adam means first and foremost, being assimilated to Christ, becoming the throne of God themselves as Christ is, bearing and having the same glory as did Moses and the prophets. "Put another way, they all express, if in a different idiom, what Athanasius of Alexandria summed up as the Christian hope only a few years before Aphrahat wrote on the sage: God became man that we may be made God." (Golitzin, p. 11).
Golitzin has been actively researching and studying the early Syriac Christians and demonstrating that the idea of human deification is fundamental in Christianity. In his study of Dionysius the Areopagite, whose theology stems back into the vision tradition of Apocalyptic literature deriving from Early Christianity’s original matrix in Second Temple Judaism, notes that Dionysius, writing of his mentor Hierotheus, says "the final stage of our ascent is in fact to become vessels for God’s presence, to suffer divine things." (Golitzin, "’Suddenly’, Christ: The Place of Negative Theology in the Mystagogue of Dionysius Areopagites," Forthcoming in "Mystics: Presence and Aporia," ed., Michael Kessler and Christian Shepherd, Univ. of Chicago Press, p. 4)
Dionysius expression which had widespread current in Eastern Christian thought was the idea of humans being created as somehow being "capable of God," "homo capax dei," which is intended from Adam to be the receptacle and manifestation of the divine presence. "This is, in short, the famous deification, theosis, which has long been recognized as a key to Eastern Christian understanding of the salvation offered in Christ…" (Golitzin, p. 5) Dionysius, in fact, opens his first treatise by stating that "we gain access (prosagoge) to God through IC [Jesus Christ], the light of the Father." (Golitzin, p. 5). Deification is real the Areopagite argues, because God truly gives Himself. Yet, while He is Himself the ‘deifying gift’, "theopoion doron," He still transcends the relations He enters into… the source of the gift of deification is Christ." (Golitzin, p. 10)
"Christ is the sacrament, at once the source and terminus of the divine processions to us, both the vehicle and the goal of our return." (p. 11).
As Golitzin elsewhere noted, for the Areopagite, "it is Jesus who makes our life, disposition and activity something divine." (Golitzin, "Revisiting the ‘Sudden’: Epistle III in the Corpus Dionysiacum," p 485)
Further to the point, Golitzin in discussing the "Fides Adorans Mysterium" of Jacob of Serug, he notes that the imagery of "mingling" in the earliest texts of the Syriac-speaking Christians, "denotes that the Greek Fathers refer to as deification, theosis, the gift of participation of God’s uncreated glory…Paradise, Sinai, and Temple, heaven and the Church’s worship, are all of them joined in Christ, who thus is the bond between both the beginning and the end, and between those on high and those below." (Golitzin, "The Image and Glory of God in Jacob of Serug’s Homily, ‘On that Chariot that Ezekiel the Prophet Saw’", Based on a paper given at the North American Patristics Society Conference, May 1998, p. 18)
Alan Segal notes that when Paul uses the word "transformed" (Romans 12:2), it means much more than just a renewal. This is a transformation from one state to another, which suggests "a mystical reformulation and immortalization process, which was discussed in contemporary Jewish and apocalypticism and pagan spirituality." (Alan Segal, "Some Observations about Paul and Intermediaries," Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins, Feb. 4, 1988, p. 7) Segal further notes that the language Paul uses in Philippians 3:7-11 "is not merely that of analogy or imitation; it is that of transformation, metamorphosis, from one state of being to another, in which he has become the same substance as Christ through his death." (Segal, p. 8).
"The term transformation was available to the ancient world to designate the experience that we might call conversion, but they call transformation because it involved the gaining of immortality and changing one’s form." (Segal, p. 11). Philo demonstrates that Moses was deified, thus showing the possibility for humans who experience what Moses experienced, which is the essence of the idea of Jewish Mysticism and Ezekiel’s chariot throne- theophany revelation. (Segal, p. 15). In the book of 1 Enoch believers come to share the being of the Messiah. The Messiah not only saves but serves as the model for transformation of believers. (Segal, p. 17). Similar to Enoch, Paul understands that he was transformed into a more divine state. He is actually in Christ with his transformation. (Segal, p. 19).
In line with this thought of St. Paul’s in the New Testament, is that of Enoch, where, in reference to the Angels of the Presence, Enoch is installed as a visionary of Sar-ha-panim, which is an identity with his heavenly counterpart. "In 1 Enoch 71, Enoch is transformed and identified with the Son of Man in front of God’s Throne. In 2 Enoch 22:6-10, Enoch’s initiation into one of the Prince’s of the Presence also takes place in front of the fiery face of the Lord. This encounter transforms Enoch into a glorious being. It is important to note that after this procedure Enoch observes that he had become like one of the glorious ones, and there was no observable difference." (Andrei Orlov, "The Face of the Heavenly Counterpart of the Visionary in the Slavonic Ladder of Jacob," the extension of this paper will be published in Studies in the Scripture in Early Judaism and Christianity, ed., C. A. Evans, Sheffield Academic Press, 2001, p. 17)
Based on non-Canonical literature during the age of Early Christianity and Judaism, as well as on the meaning of the word "transformation" as Paul uses the term in the New Testament, the deification of man does not appear to be an aberrant doctrine. Rather it is fundamental to Paul’s theology in his own transformation, as well as many other biblical heroes who encountered the divine, recorded their encounters as proof that Christ, indeed will save us, and we can all become One with God in Christ, i.e. become Sons of God, divinized, as our true potential is indicated in the scriptures.