Deus Fit Homo Ut Homo Fieret Deus

The Transfiguration of Jesus Christ

And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.  

2 Corinthians 3:18

Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature. 

2 Peter 1:4  

Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. 

1 John 3:2 

One of the doctrines of the Early Church is also one not commonly addressed or adhered to in contemporary Western Christianity. It is, however still part of Catholic and Orthodox teaching. The Eastern Churches calls it "Theosis", while the West calls it "Deification", and Aquinas uses the term "becoming Deiform."

Ranking among the greatest of all Christian mysteries is the idea that God descended from His heavenly throne to become one of us, taking the form of a lowly servant. Or, as it's commonly stated: God became man. If this mystery is true, there's a flip-side to it, which is seldom contemplated in mainstream Christianity: if God became man, then man also became God.

This is truly significant. Jesus says "no one has seen the Father except the One who is truly from him." (John 6:46). Moses, a human being, could not look upon the face of God, and yet Jesus, also a human being, could, on account of his simultaneously being divine. Jesus later says "anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." (John 14:6) Jesus thus offers himself as the means for man to finally see God. He gives man an ability that innately only belongs to the Trinity: the ability to look upon the Face of God. Being the mediator between God and man (2 Tm. 1:5), he thus bridges the two parties, and allows both to assume each other's inner experience.

How does this apply to us? God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying "Abba, Father!" In other words, we call out to God as Father just as Christ calls out to God as Father, for it is His Spirit within us. We are, not figuratively, but literally, adopted into the Divine Family! We are, by sharing in Christ's eternal sonship, participating in the inner life of God. If we are truly sons via adoption, then we are truly heirs as well (cf. Rm 8:15), meaning what the Father has is being passed on to us.

Hence, here lies the explanation for the verses up above. By being made "partakers in the divine nature", it entails a host of things: it enables us to share in God's holiness, which sanctifies us and makes us holy; to experience His internal life, which is everlasting, and it will culmination to actually being able (to some extent) to look upon the face of our Creator. Therefore, "when he is revealed, we shall be like him, for we will see him as he is." It says "we will be like him!" It says we are progressing "from glory unto glory," reflecting God's glory as in a mirror.

It could be summed up in a simple sentence: Deus fit homo it homo fieret deus. God became man that man might become God.

This is not to be understood that we become who God is, nor is it to be understood in a Mormon-esque way and believing ourselves to become our own gods -- God alone is God, and He is one. We are not, and shall never be, gods unto ourselves. Yet, this is to be understood as more than just being made righteous and even more than just living forever in and of themselves. Essentially, it means that we will experience in our lives certain qualities that by their very nature only belong to God: perfect sanctity, everlasting life, consummate happiness. Thus, we experience God's own life, partaking in the divine nature.

Through the loving Grace which God offers us through his Son, Jesus' command "be ye therefore perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" should no longer be seen as an impossible achievement -- for what is impossible for man is possible for God, and He has made it that our humanities may have true union with His divinity. This is ultimately what the life of Christ accomplished for us. As active Christians, we are literally becoming the righteousness of God (2 Cr. 5:21), being conformed to the image of His Son (Rm. 8:29).

And this concept of theosis, of "Deus fit homo it homo fieret deus", is the consistent testimony of the ancient church, as is demonstrated from these ancient voices:

"The Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself."
- Irenaeus of Lyon (130-202), Against Heresies, preface to book 5

"If he [man] should incline to the things of immortality, keeping the commandment of God, he should receive as reward from Him immortality, and should become God..."
- Theophilus of Antioch (d. 183), to Autolycus, book II, 27

"The Word of God became man, that you may learn from man how man may become God"
 - Clement of Alexandria (150-215), Exhortations to the Heathen 1

"The Father of immortality sent the immortal Son and Word into the world, ...begetting us again to incorruption of soul and body, breathed into us the breath (spirit) of life, and endued us with an incorruptible panoply. If, therefore, man has become immortal, he will also be God."
- Hippolytus of Rome (170-235), discourse on the Holy Theophany 8

"Certainly He is not man only who gives immortality, which if He were only man He could not give; but by giving divinity by immortality, He proves Himself to be God by offering divinity, which if He were not God He could not give."
- Novatian (200-258), treatise on the Trinity 15

"This is our God, this is Christ, who, as the mediator of the two, puts on man that He may lead them to the Father. What man is, Christ was willing to be, that man may be what Christ is."
- Cyprian of Carthage (200-258), Treatises 6:11

"For He was made man that we might be made God ; and He manifested Himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father; and He endured the insolence of men that we might inherit immortality."
- Athanasius of Alexandria (297-373), On the Incarnation 54

"But the Incarnation is summed up in this, that the whole Son, that is, His manhood as well as His divinity, was permitted by the Father's gracious favour to continue in the unity of the Father's nature, and retained not only the powers of the divine nature, but also that nature's self. For the object to be gained was that man might become God."
- Hilary of Poitiers (310-367), On the Trinity 9:38

"Since the God who was manifested infused Himself into perishable humanity for this purpose, viz. that by this communion with Deity mankind might at the same time be defied."
- Gregory of Nyssa (335-395), Great Catechism 38

"While His inferior Nature, the Humanity, became God, because it was united to God, and became One Person because the Higher Nature prevailed ... in order that I too might be made God so far as He is made Man."
- Gregory Nazianzen (329-390), The Third Theological Oration 29:19

"Today Godhead sealed itself upon Manhood, that so with the Godhead’s stamp Manhood might be adorned."
- Ephraim the Syrian (306-376), Hymns on the Nativity 1

"He therefore descended that we might ascend, and, while remaining in His own nature, became a sharer in our nature, so that we, while remaining in our own nature, might become sharers in His nature; but not in the same way, for He did not become worse by sharing in our nature, but we become better by sharing in His"
- Augustine of Hippo (354-430), Letters 140:4