I never aspired to higher learning. Four years of college definitely felt like enough. Yet when I heard about the masters program at St. Stephens University, studying with Dean Dr. Bradley Jersak and an amazing faculty, I felt compelled. The program seemed tailor-made for my journey as I’ve been renewing and re-forming my faith. I’m finishing the second of four modules, and to say it’s been transformative, stretching, grounding, and soul restoring would not be to understate the impact.
A few friends have asked me to share what I’ve been learning. Then a professor suggested publishing my work. So over time, I’ll be sharing my papers with you. Be forewarned. This is academic writing. You’ll find a bibliography, footnotes, the whole deal. But I also hope you’ll find help in your own journey. This first paper describes the theological underpinnings of what we see in the transformational, face to face ministry of Roots&Branches all the time. I’m not sure whether to say “buckle up” or “enjoy,” so maybe I’ll say both.
Unveiling an Emerging Theology of Theosis through 2 Corinthians 3:12-18
with Paul and the Cappadocian Fathers and Mothers
by Susan Carson
December 19, 2022
for
Dr. Bradley Jersak
Pauline Themes in the Early Church
St. Stephens University, Masters Program
Winter 2022
In his second letter to the Corinthian church, the Apostle Paul develops themes central to his theology of theosis. “In the letters of Paul, in particular,” writes Stephen Finlan, “[theosis] means being transformed into the likeness of Christ, who is the embodiment of God. Believers are ‘conformed to’ and ‘transformed into’ the image of Christ (Rom 8:29; 2 Cor 3:18; Phil 3:21), even having the ‘mind of Christ’ (Phil 2:5; 1 Cor 2:16)...Theosis is central to the theology of Paul throughout.”[1] Michael Gorman cites 2 Corinthians 3:18 as perhaps the most "theotic" passage in Paul.[2]
Paul wrote 2 Corinthians in 56 or 57 AD[3] with a pastor’s heart, intent on the transformation of a newly formed, highly diverse church in a largely pagan, thriving urban center. To this church, Paul writes to address the issues in their midst and to reaffirm his apostleship and leadership. His theology is expressed (perhaps even developed) in this context.
In this paper, I will explore the theme of theosis focusing on II Corinthians 3:12-18. I will demonstrate that Paul is articulating his understanding of theosis, expressing how Holy Spirit works to restore the image of God in humanity. To do that, I will focus on key words and themes in the scripture itself, as well as how early Church Fathers and Mothers understood and developed these same themes. I’ll focus particularly on the theology of theosis refined by the Cappadocians, and propose that Christ restores the image of God in us, in the Church and in the world as we live beholding the cruciform image of Christ.
This passage comes to us in the context of Paul’s defense of his apostleship. In verses 12 to 18, Paul answers the question posed in verses 7 and 8: “Now if the ministry of death, chiseled in letters on stone tablets, came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses’s face because of the glory of his face, a glory now set aside, how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory?”[4] In these verses Paul places us in the context of Exodus 34:29-35 to contrast the ministry of the old (Mosaic law) and new (Spirit) covenants. Both come with glory, but the new is more glorious in that it vindicates rather than condemns (verse 9), Is enduring rather than fading (verse 13), and transforms and liberates rather than brings death (verses 7, 17 and 18).
The Greek word used by Paul for glory, doxa, is translated consistently as splendor or brightness “because the thought is especially of the relative brilliance with which the ministries of the old and new covenants are endowed.”[5] Michael Gorman adds that the "glory" of God “refers to the eternal splendor and honor that God has and that God deserves simply by virtue of being God.”[6]
Paul speaks about the glory and the veiling more specifically as he continues in 2 Corinthians 4:4-6. His gospel is the “glory of Christ” (4:5), the light that shines in our hearts (4:6) and the revelation that comes as we encounter God’s glory in the face of Christ (4:6). “God has shined into our hearts,” writes Gordon Fee, “so that through the ‘light’ we might see his glory, which is located ‘in the face of Jesus Christ.’”[7] For Paul, the image and glory of Christ, and therefore theosis, is cruciform and kenotic. “Christ crucified is the image and glory of God,” writes Gorman. “For Paul, it is precisely as the crucified one that Christ is ‘the Lord of glory.’”[8]
With the veil removed, the glory of Christ now shines on us, and we mirror this same cruciform glory as we’re transformed into the same cruciform image (3:17-18). Calling Corinth’s unsurpassed, brilliant bronze mirrors to mind, [9] perhaps as well as the statues and images of gods all around the city, Paul emphasizes the likeness of the image of Christ in believers. Believers are now eikona (3:18), image bearers. “The word eikon,” writes Francois du Toit, “translates as exact resemblance, image and likeness; eikon always assumes a prototype, that which it not merely resembles, but from that which it is drawn.”[10]
The unveiling and transformation are all by Spirit says Paul (verses 17-18). “Those who believe do see, unveiled, the glory of God in the face of Christ who is the likeness of God, made experiential by Spirit,” writes Fee.[11] “The Spirit…is the key to our experience of the presence of God.”[12]
Two words are key here: katoptrizomai and metamorphe. From the commentary of the Mirror Bible, “The word katoptrizomai means to gaze into a reflection, to mirror oneself….Now, with unveiled faces, we are gazing at the glory of the Lord as in a mirror and metamorhe happens–image and likeness awakens with us!”[13] With the removal of the veil, we gain freedom, “access to God’s presence so as to behold the ‘glory’ which is the glory of the Lord; through beholding, God’s people are transformed into the same likeness, from glory to glory.”[14] This glory is progressing from now to not yet, to be brought to fullness at the Parousia.[15]
In this ongoing, progressive transformation by Spirit, from glory to glory, face-to-face with the cruciform Christ, we find Paul’s theology of theosis. While the concept of theosis or deification is evident in Hellenistic and Jewish thinking, this distinctive Pauline view holds that “the believer’s transformation into a new being is both present and future, conformed into the image of God in Christ, sharing in Christ’s sufferings and becoming like him in his death (Phil 3:10) by being crucified with him (Rom 6:6).”[16]
“Amazingly,” writes David Litwa, “Paul teaches that believers are being transformed into one image which Christ is. This image is the whole Christ—his humanity and his deity. The divine existence of Christ…is the absolute humility and obedience to God—unto death. And this death does not separate redeemed humanity from God; rather it makes them divine righteousness, enabling them too to be (in the present partially, the future fully) transformed, justified, glorified, and thus, even ‘divine.’”[17]
The Cappadocians, under the influence of Origen, Plato, Hebrew Scriptures, Irenaeus and friend Athanasius, as well as Paul,[18] would do perhaps the most significant work of the Patristics in developing the themes of 2 Corinthians 3 and Paul’s conception of theosis. Together, this holy family full of saints would give us a Trinitarian, embodied and participatory theology of theosis. The Cappadocians owe to Athanasius “an understanding that the power to deify comes from the divinity of the Spirit” and that “the incarnation makes the deification of human nature possible.”[19] This, then, is their starting point.
Saints Basil, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory Nazianzen, strongly influenced by their sisters, St. Gorgonia and St. Macrina, develop the same themes as Paul as they’re developing their theology of the Trinity, centered in our participation in Christ.[20] On 2 Corinthians 3:18, Nyssen writes
The Logos shows that it would be a disadvantage for us not to be able to make a change for the better, as a kind of wing of flight to greater things. Therefore, let no one be grieved if he sees in his nature a penchant for change. Changing in everything for the better, let him exchange “glory for glory, becoming greater through daily increase, every perfecting himself and never arriving too quickly at the limit of perfection. For this is truly perfection: never to stop growing toward what is better and never placing any limit on perfection.[21]
Paul’s themes of image, light, glory, mirror, beholding the face of God, and transformation from 2 Corinthians 3, would be repeated in the life and works of the Cappadocians. From Gregory of Nyssa in the Homilies on the Beatitudes:
You have in you the ability to see God. He who formed you put in your being an immense power. When God created you he enclosed in you the image of his perfection, as the mark of a seal is impressed on wax. But your straying has obscured God’s image….So when people look at themselves they will see the One they are seeking. And this is the joy that will fill their purified hearts. They are looking at their own translucency and finding the model in the image. When the sun is looked at in a mirror even without any raising of the eyes to heaven, the sun’s brightness is seen in the mirror exactly as if the sun’s disc itself were being looked at. You cannot contemplate the reality of the light; but if you rediscover the beauty of the image that was put in you at the beginning, you will obtain within yourself the goal of your desires…The divine image will shine brightly in us in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory throughout all ages.[22]
From his Second Homily on the Song of Songs, Nyseen writes:
You alone have been made the image of the reality that transcends all understanding, the likeness of imperishable beauty, the imprint of true divinity, the recipient of beatitude, the seal of true light. When you turn to him you become that which he is himself…And although he is so great and holds all creation in the palm of his hand, you are able to hold him, he dwells in you and moves within you without constraint, for he has said, “I will live and move among them.”[23]
This theology of image, light, beauty and transformation is lived experience for the Cappadocians as they witness this shining as the embodied experience of the women in the family. From Gregory of Nazianzen, writing about his sister Gorgonia’s life: “Their nobility consists in preserving his image and keeping one’s likeness to the archetype; there reason and virtue and pure desire, and the gift of knowing whence and who we are and where we are heading, all bring the image to full reality, as they continue to form, on God’s own pattern, genuine initiates in the sublime mysteries.”[24] Through their virtue, their lives of piety and pure desire of God, these women are “bringing the image to full reality.” Nyssen’s De Vita Macrinae paints his sister Macrina as a living example of a human being in the image of God.[25] From Jessica Williams:
St. Nyssen’s On the Soul and the Resurrection details a thorough critique of the nature of the soul in which St. Macrina’s voice gives clarity. Turning to scripture, she explains that ‘we should consider nothing peculiar to the soul which is not also proper to the divine nature.’ Macrina insists that everything that is not the image and likeness of God in us is not who we truly are. Therefore, every unhealthy attachment, impurity and imperfection we find in ourselves is considered to the false self. The true self is the pure likeness of God.[26]
At the end of Macrina’s life, Nyssen writes, “It was as if an angel had providentially assumed human form, an angel in whom there was no affinity for, nor attachment to, the life of the flesh. . .”[27] In Macrina, 2 Corinthians 3:17-18 had been progressively realized in life and would be completed in death. This healing of her humanity, her deification, is the complete restoration of her true self. Macrina has become, in Nyssan’s words from On Perfection, “the Image by true imitation of the beauty of the Archetype, as Paul did, who by his virtuous life became an imitator of Christ.”[28]
Nazianzen, in light (literally) of the embodied theology experienced by the Cappadocians, develops his theology of theosis or deification prominently in his writings. For Gregory, this deification is the realization of our union in Christ. With the veil lifted, as we contemplate face-to-face the Light and glory of our cruciform Christ, we become divine. Progressively through participation in kenotic love, we become One in Christ as divisions and distinctions cease. From Oration 21, On Athanasius of Alexandria:
Whoever was permitted to escape by reason and contemplation from matter and this fleshly cloud or veil (whichever it should be called) and to hold communion with God, and be associated, as far as man’s nature can attain, with the purest Light, blessed is he, both from his ascent from hence, and for his deification there, which is conferred by true philosophy, and by rising superior to the dualism of matter, through the unity which is perceived in the Trinity.”[29]
And from his Oration 7, Panegyric on His Brother S. Cesarius
This is the intent of God, who for our sake was made man and became poor, in order to raise our flesh and restore His image and remake man, that we might all become one in Christ, who was perfectly become in all of us all that He is Himself, that we might no longer be male or female, barbarian, Scythian, slave or freeman, the distinctions of the flesh, but might bear in ourselves only the stamp of God by whom and for whom we were made, so far formed and modelled by Him as to be recognized by it alone.[30]
This, in a nutshell, is the superiority of Paul’s ministry to the tablets of stone. With the veil removed, we now see the cruciform image of God in Christ and we have access by Spirit to this presence. In this place, beholding face-to-face, we are transformed. “Believers now gaze on the image of God manifested in the exalted Christ,” writes Gorman, “who remains forever the crucified one, their ongoing metamorphosis into the image of God or the image of the Son (2 Cor 3:18), is a participation in his cruciform narrative identity and a transformation into his cruciform image.”[31]
Paul is telling us what the Desert Fathers and mystics through the ages have known by the experience of Spirit. Commenting on 2 Corinthians 3:17-18, Greg Boyd writes, “It is what we see, not how hard we strive, that determines what we become.”[32] In small ways on good days in the Roots&Branches prayer room, we see this face-to-face seeing of Jesus changing and healing lives. As people experience the loving presence of God with them, as they encounter the embodied love of God in Jesus, they are becoming who they already are from glory to glory.
We are invited, by Paul and the Cappadocians, in the words of Nazianzen, to “recognize that you have become a son of God, fellow heir with Christ, if I may be so bold, even very god.”[33] We’re invited to live our true lives as our most real selves through a life of beholding increasingly shaped by cruciformity (modeled by the Cappadocians in their practice of virtue and asceticism). As we empty all that is false, dying in Christ, the kenotic love of God works in us by Spirit to unveil God in us. Removing everything not of God, not of love, we begin to exist in love as love. Love rather than law works in us by Spirit to reveal (unveil) the true self, our authentic, created form, our true humanity in spirit and body. This metamorphosis happens progressively over time and ultimately as God becomes all in all. Removing the false—the sin, shame[34] and trauma that distort us and our seeing—we become, individually and together, the body and life of Jesus in the world. One body. One life. Our fragmented selves and Church fully united, becoming the embodied righteousness and justice of God on earth, healing the world.
I’m left to wonder if we (if I) believe it’s possible, this life of kenotic love that makes us gods. This life of participation—of beholding and emptying—is so counter to our highly individualized, Westernized gospel that seems only to fragment us more and more. Our comfort, prosperity and privilege seem to be baked into our image of God. And yet, Kharlamov gives me hope for the healing of our image of God and the possibility of living fully human:
The Christian tradition is thus full of an affirmation of God’s nearness to humankind, and of our unrealized potential for God. The basic affirmations that Jesus is Lord, Jesus is the Christ, are affirmations about the possibility of [hu]man, about the intimacy of relationships between human and divine, no less than about the mystery of God…They open up the full meaning of our calling to become partakers of the divine nature, to become sons in the one Son, to be filled with the Holy Spirit. They speak of deification.[35]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Catena Bible. “2 Corinthians 3.” Accessed December 16, 2022. https://catenabible.com/2cor/3.
“2 Corinthians 3 NRSVUE.” Accessed December 14, 2022. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Corinthians%203&version=NRSVUE.
Boyd, Gregory A. Seeing Is Believing: Experience Jesus through Imaginative Prayer. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2004.
Clement, Olivier. The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary. 2nd ed. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press of the Focolare, 1993.
New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia. “Corinth.” Accessed December 13, 2022. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04363b.htm.
Fee, Gordon D. God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 1994.
Furnish, Victor Paul. The Anchor Bible, II Corinthians. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1984.
Gorman, Michael J. Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2009.
———. “Romans: The First Christian Treatise on Theosis.” Journal of Theological Interpretation 5, no. 1 (Spring 2011): 13–34.
Guthrie, George H. 2 Corinthians: Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2015.
Kharlamov, Vladimir, ed. Theosis: Deification in Christian Theology. Vol. 2. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011.
Kharlamov, Vladimir, and Stephen Finlan, eds. Theosis: Deification in Christan Theology. Vol. One. Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2006.
Litwa, David. “2 Corinthians 3:18 and Its Implications for Theosis.” Journal of Theological Interpretation 2, no. 1 (2008): 117–33.
Sunberg, Carla D. The Cappadocian Mothers: Deification Exemplified in the Writings of Basil, Gregory, and Gregory. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2017.
Toit, Francois du. Mirror Study Bible: The Romance of the Ages. Vol. 2020. South Africa: Mirror Word Publishing, 2012.
Williams, Jessica. “Kenotic Love and the Soul’s Transformation: A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of Theology and Culture St. Stephen’s University.” St. Stephens University, 2021.
[1] Vladimir Kharlamov and Stephen Finlan, eds., Theosis: Deification in Christan Theology, vol. One (Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2006), 4.
[2] Michael J. Gorman, “Romans: The First Christian Treatise on Theosis,” Journal of Theological Interpretation 5, no. 1 (Spring 2011): 14.
[3] “Corinth,” New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, accessed December 13, 2022, https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04363b.htm.
[4] “2 Corinthians 3 NRSVUE,” accessed December 14, 2022, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Corinthians%203&version=NRSVUE.
[5] Victor Paul Furnish, The Anchor Bible, II Corinthians (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1984), 203 Thayer’s Greek Lexicon expands this definition in reference to 2 Corinthians 3 to include “the absolutely perfect inward or personal excellence of Christ” and “condition begins to be enjoyed even now through the devout contemplation of the divine majesty of Christ, and its influence upon those who contemplate it.” See https://biblehub.com/greek/1391.htm. .
[6] Gorman, “Romans: The First Christian Treatise on Theosis,” 20.
[7] Gordon D. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., 1994), 317.
[8] Michael J. Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2009), 120.
[9] Furnish, The Anchor Bible, II Corinthians, 239.
[10] Francois du Toit, Mirror Study Bible: The Romance of the Ages, vol. 2020 (South Africa: Mirror Word Publishing, 2012), 406.
[11] Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul, 317.
[12] Fee, 319.
[13] du Toit, Mirror Study Bible: The Romance of the Ages, 2020:406.
[14] Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul, 309.
[15] George H. Guthrie, 2 Corinthians: Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2015), 229.
[16] Furnish, The Anchor Bible, II Corinthians, 240–41 Paul seems to be Christianizing Hellenistic and Jewish ideas. A “widespread idea in the Hellenistic age–for example, among the mystery religions” which held that the “beholding of a god or goddess could have a transformative effect on the worshipper.” Also in Judaism, referencing I Enoch, “the transformation of God’s elect, when, in the eschcatological day, the “light” and “glory” and “honour” of God will abide with them (50:1). See also Psalm 82:6.
[17] David Litwa, “2 Corinthians 3:18 and Its Implications for Theosis,” Journal of Theological Interpretation 2, no. 1 (2008): 133.
[18] Carla D. Sunberg, The Cappadocian Mothers: Deification Exemplified in the Writings of Basil, Gregory, and Gregory (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2017), 16, 29, 32–39.
[19] Sunberg, 44–45.
[20] Sunberg, 70–71.
[21] “2 Corinthians 3,” Catena Bible, accessed December 16, 2022, https://catenabible.com/2cor/3.
[22] Olivier Clement, The Roots of Christian Mysticism: Texts from the Patristic Era with Commentary, 2nd ed. (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press of the Focolare, 1993), 237.
[23] Clement, 79.
[24] Sunberg, The Cappadocian Mothers: Deification Exemplified in the Writings of Basil, Gregory, and Gregory, 119.
[25] Sunberg, 17.
[26] Jessica Williams, “Kenotic Love and the Soul’s Transformation: A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of Theology and Culture St. Stephen’s University” (St. Stephens, Canada, St. Stephens University, 2021), 5.
[27] Williams, 32.
[28] Sunberg, The Cappadocian Mothers: Deification Exemplified in the Writings of Basil, Gregory, and Gregory, 17.
[29] Sunberg, 45–46.
[30] Sunberg, 50.
[31] Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology, 92.
[32] Gregory A. Boyd, Seeing Is Believing: Experience Jesus through Imaginative Prayer (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2004), 87.
[33] Kharlamov, 2:118–19.
[34] “Nazianzen believed humanity was carrying about the shame which came from the transgressions of the first man and that humanity needed to be delivered from this shame so that the glory of the Lord could be seen ‘as though reflected in a mirror.’” Sunberg, The Cappadocian Mothers: Deification Exemplified in the Writings of Basil, Gregory, and Gregory, 60.
[35] Vladimir Kharlamov, ed., Theosis: Deification in Christian Theology, vol. 2 (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011), 1 Quoting A.M. Allchin.