Can someone explain the deiafaction?

[jpk1313]

I’ve come accross in my reading this idea of deiafaction (I aplogize for my poor spelling by the way I’m a child of public education ) but it is never really defined. Is it like learning to think like god or is it like the mormon thing where people will become gods and create their own world? Any help in understanding this would be great, thanks.

 

[seagal]

It would help if you could give an example of how you saw the word used. The dictionary (www.merriam-webster.com) defines deify as
1 a : to make a god of b : to take as an object of worship
2 : to glorify as of supreme worth

In other words, to treat something or someone as a god.

 

[jimmy]

I’ve come accross in my reading this idea of deiafaction (I aplogize for my poor spelling by the way I’m a child of public education ) but it is never really defined. Is it like learning to think like god or is it like the mormon thing where people will become gods and create their own world? Any help in understanding this would be great, thanks.

It is completely different than the Mormon concept of deification. Mormons start from the view that men and God are kin. We are actually sons of God and God was once like us. We will be identical in all ways to God and we will be able to start our own planets and become the god of that planet.

The eastern concept of deification/theosis is more related to who Christ was. Christ is God and He became man. By becoming man Christ made it possible for man to become divine by Grace. We do not become divine in the same way that Christ is divine, but rather by Grace. It implies a union with God through which you are made more and more like Him and consequently you know Him more and more.

 

[twf]

Deification is an important part of the Latin tradition as well. It is not simply an Eastern concept. In the mass the priest prays: ‘By the mingling of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ as he humbled himself to share in our humanity.’ In Sacred Scripture St Peter speaks of us becoming ‘partakers of the divine nature.’ The Church teaches that through the Incarnation, PAssion and resurrection of Christ, men, in baptism are adopted as sons and daughters of God. In Christ we are given a share in the divine life of the Trinity. Through prayer and good works, and particularly through the Eucharist in which we receive Our Lord, God forms us into the image of His Son. We will never become God, for God is infinite and we are finite, but we reflect and share in His glory. The old saying goes - you are what you eat. Well we Catholics are given the honor of eating God in Holy Communion. Our Blessed Lady Mary reflects and shares in the divine nature more perfectly than any other creature, hence why we honor her so highly.
It bugs me that some are under the impression that deification is particular to the East. As I have pointed out, it is in the Latin mass…and I as a Latin have heard a number of homilies on deification. In the East it’s called theosis. In the West it is often called divinization.

 

[Leo_The_Great]

Just as the blacksmith takes iron and throws it into the forge and superheats it to the point where the iron takes on the nature of fire while remaining iron, in a similar way, we are taken into God by deification/ theosis.

AS we become holy, we become more and more aflame. And each supernaturally good work we do by the power of the Holy Spirit is the bellows of grace blowing on those embers…

Until we become partakers of the Divine nature by grace.