Theosis

I follow a blog by the Rev. Dr. Clayton Libolt, retired Christian Reformed Church minister.

He’s a pretty smart guy, as indicated by the name of the blog: The Peripatetic Pastor.

You probably don’t know what peripatetic means. I didn’t either. A Google search reveals that peripatetic refers to someone who travels from place to place or is constantly moving around; it can also relate to the philosophical school of Aristotle, where teaching was done while walking.

Libolt has a pretty refreshing view of the Bible and theology. He writes blogs with length and depth.

Yesterday he put out an Advent meditation on theosis. Theosis  is “participation in the divine nature.” Theosis is about salvation, Libolt writes.

“’Salvation’ has come to mean for many Christians what happens after death. It has little to do with life as we know it, which is why Christians can (and about 80% of evangelicals do) vote for policies that show little regard for the earth, for animals, or for the poor, contrary to what the Bible teaches. Their view of salvation is essentially getting out of here, here being life on earth. And making sure that no one gets in your way while you still are here. “Salvation” is in this way of thinking playing the pardon card. If God doesn’t care, why should I?

But what if God does care? And what if God cares not just about a few Christians in their churches but about all creation? What if God cares about lions and lambs, as Isaiah 11 has it, about cows and bears, about cobras and little children, about all creation? And what if salvation has to do not with getting out of here but learning how to live here in ways that are wise and loving and joyful? What would salvation look like then?

The answer would be theosis…

Creation itself is the product—the overflow—of (the) love of God. God calls, and creation answers—creation, fragile, contingent, time-bound, entropic. And we humans are part of that creation…

(But) we have become estranged from that which we most truly are. We have become estranged from that which makes us human. And sadly, the Christian movement has fed this estrangement, not assuaged it…

And now in Jesus we have been offered that relationship anew. We breathe the Spirit of Christ (see John 20:22), and in breathing Christ, we are awakened to a relationship with the eternal in which we are both fully human and, in that entirely new way, also divine. Theosis.

This is not salvation as an escape from the world, but a reestablishment of the relationship for which we were created. And in reestablishing this relationship, we become, in Paul’s phrase, the “first fruit of a new creation.” We begin anew to try to find the wisdom to live wisely with each other and with all the rest of creation. 

This is by no means easy. This is not a salvation that requires only that one say the right things in church. It’s salvation as a fundamental life orientation (or reorientation). What it requires above all is listening, listening for the voice of the one who calls us “out of darkness into light.” It requires humility, listening not only to our own voices but to the voices of the other, for in the other we hear the voice of God. Learning to listen together.

As I said in the beginning, theosis is not about getting the rules right for whatever theological grammar you learned. It’s about learning to live theotically, if I can coin a word. It’s a practice as much as a way of thinking. What matters are not the rules (Paul said this) but the life.”

Read the whole blogpost here.