Reviews for Partakers of the Divine Nature The History and Development of Deification in the Christian T...

The average rating for Partakers of the Divine Nature The History and Development of Deification in the Christian T... based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-08-04 00:00:00 June Herron Not all essays are created equal, and it's certainly true here. Still, some good stuff. I'm focusing mainly on the Eastern guys at the moment. One essay is dealing with the neo-Palamism of Vladimir Lossky. Lossky is taking Gregory Palamas's essence/energy distinction and offering a new and more thorough critique of Thomism and Augustinianism. While the author disagrees with Lossky, I commend him for recognizing what is at stake in this debate. He goes after the strongest opponent of his position and gives his best argument. Let's look at it. Lossky argues that Augustine's view of Absolute Divine Simplicity, making God's attributes identical with his essence, ultimately means that one either, when given the promise of 2 Peter 1:4, becomes part of God's essence (which means one becomes *the* unknowable essence of God), or one participates in God via created intermediaries (the sacraments, habitus grace, the created grace of Reformed imputationism). So, Lossky puts the dilemma: if you don't accept essence/energies distinction, you either say you become part of God himself (like his arm, I guess), or you never actually commune with God at all. This is a devastating argument if true. Our author in this book goes to great pains to show it false. First he says Lossky has set up a false dilemma. More on this later. Then he points out areas where Lossky has taken his neo-Palamism to an almost overreactionary mania (there might be some truth here). Third, he notes where Palamism mirrors medieval Judaism in hypostasizing the divine attributes in the world (this may be true on one level, but I think there are responses to this). Fourthly, he notes that Thomism and Augustinianism posit different ways of participating in God (in other words, they deny that God is simply some glob of essence). While I disagree with this author, it is a very fine chapter. Now, a response. Per points (2) and (3), I agree. I doweq54n't know enough about point (1) to speak authoritatively. As to (4) So what gives? Well, what he says about (4) might be true. I have rhetorical problems with Augustine calling the Holy Spirit "the grace inside an individual." This relieves the Augustinian from the problem of "created grace" (!!!), but there's just something wrong-sounding about this. Another problem is while they don't like the neo-Palamites saying the Augustinian-Thomists believe God is a big glob of essence, a lot of Augustine's statements sound exactly like that! Let's look at what Augustine actually says. He is called in respect to Himself both God, and great, and good, and just, and anything else of the kind; and just as to Him to be is the same as to be God, or as to be great, or as to be good, so it is the same thing to Him to be as to be a person. St Augustine, On the Trinity, 7.6.11 Augustine says the Godhead is absolutely simple essence, and the same thing to be is to be wise (idem, 7.1.2). more quotations are found here . The point is that Augustine (even if only on the level of rhetoric) believed that God's attributes, since God was simple, are interchangeable with each other. Then add in that God's essence was identified with his attributes, and Lossky's critique seems unavoidable. The rest of the book is quite interesting. Andrew Louth gives a very brief summary of deification in Orthodox theology, heavily relying on Bulgakov(!). There are good essays explicating deification in the Cappadocians and St Maximus. My particular favorite was the essay dealing with the lyrical poetry of St Ephrem the Syrian. Simply beautiful. Boris Jakim gives us an interesting take on Bulgakov's Russian theosis. There are also token essays by Lutherans, Methodists, and Calvinists that will interest adherents of those respective denominations.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-07-25 00:00:00 Kenneth Saito This volume is a fairly good place to begin if one wants a good overview of the scholarly state of things on this topic from a fairly wide variety of viewpoints. Some reviews are, however, definitely better than others Personally, I found the first two sections, on the context of Theosis in Christianity, and in Classical and Late Antiquity, to be especially valuable. Christensen's essay on Wesley and Theosis is a revision of an earlier published essay, and was tweaked just slightly, but fruitfully. The rest of the essays are rather a mixed bag.