It is extremely daring for someone to talk about deification, without having witnessed it himself. Through the mercy of Almighty God, and our Savior Jesus Christ, we have dared that which is above our power.
We have to do this so as to make clear that the only Orthodox pastoral teaching is that of deification, not of man’s moral perfection, without God‘s Grace, according to Western standards.
We have to do this to make us all long for the best things, and thereby struggle for the noblest, capable of quenching the soul’s thirst for the Absolute, Triune God.
The question of our life’s destination is of prime importance, as it concerns the most important matter for man: the purpose of existence on earth. If man takes the correct stand on this issue, if he realizes his true destination, then he is capable of facing correctly, the minor and other daily affairs of his life, such as his relationship to his fellow men, his studies, his profession, his marriage, and the bearing and upbringing of his children. However, if he does not take the right stand on this basic issue, then he will fail in the other purposes of his life.
Endowed with “the image”, man has the full blessing of God to acquire “the likeness”, to attain deification. The Creator, God by nature causes men to become god by Grace. God, endowed man with the gifts, “according to his image”, so he may ascend very high, so he may acquire with them a likeness to his God and Maker: to have, not an external, moral relationship with him, but a personal union with his Creator. It is, perhaps, very audacious, even to say, and think that our life’s purpose is to become gods by Grace. However, the Holy Bible, and the Fathers of the Church did not conceal this from us.”
– “The Deification as the Purpose of Man’s Life”, Archimandrite George, Abbot of the Monastery of St Gregorios of the Holy Mountain
“Every Orthodox Christian is placed between two worlds: this fallen world where we try to work out our salvation, and the other world, heaven, the homeland towards which we are striving and which, if we are leading a true Christian life, gives us the inspiration to live from day to day in Christian virtue and love.
But the world is too much with us. We often, and in fact nowadays we usually forget the heavenly world. The pressure of worldliness is so strong today that we often lose track of what our life as a Christian is all about. Even if we may be attending church services frequently and consider ourselves “active” church members, how often our churchliness is only something external, bound up with beautiful services and the whole richness of our Orthodox tradition of worship, but lacking in real inner conviction that Orthodoxy is the faith that can save our soul for eternity, lacking in real love for and commitment to Christ, the incarnate God and Founder of our faith. How often our church life is just a matter of habit, something we go through outwardly but which does not change us inwardly, does not make us grow spiritually and lead us to eternal life in God.”
– Fr. Seraphim Rose
“Orthodox anthropology teaches that man is created to participate in the life of God. This is the essential meaning of the Scriptural account of the creation of man, “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness… So God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him…” (Gen. 1:26-7)
For Orthodox anthropology, the term “image” has a different meaning from the term “likeness”. “Image may be seen as the potential inherent in man for sanctification, while “likeness” refers to its perfection. When it is God’s good pleasure to unite with the human being, man perceives within himself the action of a Divine force which transfigures him and makes him no longer just potentially godlike—in the image of God—but actually godlike in likeness of being.
Man was not originally created in a state of completed perfection. He was, however, endowed with the unique freedom to choose either to live in pursuit of achieving his full potential, or else to digress toward the desecration and defacement of his true dignity as man. Only through the proper use of his God-given freedom can man cooperate with divine grace in restoring the image of God within him and attain to the likeness with God for which he was created.”
– Saint Silouan the Athonite
According to Orthodox teaching, sanctification, theosis or deification—is not to be understood as a static state, but is continuously refined, not only on earth, but also in the life to come.