Deification in Traditional Catholic Teaching?

[Kmon23]

As someone who comes from a theological tradition teaching the essence-energies distinction, the real deification and participation of humanity in God is explained by it while maintaining God’s transcendence.

However in all my studies of Catholicism, I’ve never known how traditional Catholic theology deals with this question. I know there is the teaching of sanctifying grace but also the (absolute) Divine Simplicity of God where God is identical with His attributes.

Since traditional Latin Catholic theology doesn’t use the Palamite distinction, what theological paradigm/system/etc does traditional Catholic teaching use to explain humanity’s real participation in the Divine while affirming God’s divine simplicity without humanity being subsumed into the Godhead or the annihilation of deified persons?

** And while on the topic of divine simplicity, does Divine Simplicity support or contradict God’s creative act being done freely or out of necessity?

 

[End_Timer]

Mary is closer to God by love than any created person & seems to be
doing quite well. Also, Creator gotta create & has done so !

 

[fhansen]

As someone who comes from a theological tradition teaching the essence-energies distinction, the real deification and participation of humanity in God is explained by it while maintaining God’s transcendence.

However in all my studies of Catholicism, I’ve never known how traditional Catholic theology deals with this question. I know there is the teaching of sanctifying grace but also the (absolute) Divine Simplicity of God where God is identical with His attributes.

Since traditional Latin Catholic theology doesn’t use the Palamite distinction, what theological paradigm/system/etc does traditional Catholic teaching use to explain humanity’s real participation in the Divine while affirming God’s divine simplicity without humanity being subsumed into the Godhead or the annihilation of deified persons?

** And while on the topic of divine simplicity, does Divine Simplicity support or contradict God’s creative act being done freely or out of necessity?

The whole lesson for man in the creation/Fall teachings involve 1) man failing to recognize his status as a creature, and 2) God’s will to “divinize” man from the beginning. This involves a process, where man comes to recognize his absolute need for God and begins to will rightly, in alignment with God’s will, entering communion with Him (‘Apart from whom we can do nothing.’ John 15:5) and remaining in loving subjugation to Him. We’re in this process now. From the Catechism:

398 In that sin man preferred himself to God and by that very act scorned him. He chose himself over and against God, against the requirements of his creaturely status and therefore against his own good. Constituted in a state of holiness, man was destined to be fully “divinized” by God in glory. Seduced by the devil, he wanted to “be like God”, but “without God, before God, and not in accordance with God”.279

 

[hicetnunc]

Thomas Aquinas has one of the most detailed and sustained treatments on the nature of divine participation. Have you come across this?

There’s a good article on this by Joseph Koterski, here

 

[Kmon23]

That’s definitely a good start, thanks for the article.
Just to ask you directly, would you say Latin Catholic (opposed to Eastern) conception of sanctification of a subject is one of divine participation or something else (for example, to say that the way a creature is “righteous” is not the same kind of righteousness God is righteous, thus implying there is no true divine participation in a person’s ontology).

 

[hicetnunc]

It’s a great question, and has been the subject of much debate in the western Church (Pseudo-Dionysius, Augustine, Aquinas and Henri de Lubac come to mind). In fact, I had a debate/discussion with a friend recently over whether or not participation is something ontological or not. Rudi te Velde, a Thomist from the Netherlands, argues that divine participation (or, to borrow the term from the Eastern Church, “theosis”) must be ontological, whereas Ralph McIneny favoured a more relational or metaphorical in the sense that a relationship just not change us ontologically (for example, going from being a single man to a married man is a significant change in relationship, but without changing the essence). Te Velde and the like argue that gracee ontologically changes essentially.

What’s your view?

 

[Kmon23]

I definitely take the view as espoused by Gregory Palamas’ that we participate in the energies of God in theosis. In a general sense I would say we do participate and have a real communion with God, since I think that’s the most faithful way to understand how Athanasius says God became man so we can become god.

The view Ralph Mclneny has, would he reject the idea that we truly participate in the Divine life of God? It seems to say a metaphorical change, even if sign ificant, is just a change in our relationship with God but not necessary being in communion with God.