. . . I am going to do some praying on this, I don’t want to be led astray by the weakness of mortal man, just because some Jew doesn’t believe it. I mean that’s why they kill Christ, Because he claimed to be the Son, but are we not his son also. IT’S Scripture, so it’s true. My eyes have been opened to them, and darkness is in the unbelief. I know how we feel about the Mormons, but this doctrine, is heavy. This doctrine is beyond Man only God can teach me this.
The fable of Hercules is not a pattern from which a Christian of any sort would draw upon for spiritual insight. Further, it is not to the teaching of Mormonism - which is FAR from “heavy” and truly man made! - regarding becoming “gods” that any Christian would go, but rather to the teaching re deification (
theosis) as presented by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. We are not natural children of God, as Christ is, but we have been “partakers of [his] divine nature” by virtue of our being baptized into His Death and Resurrection and living in fidelity to our adopted sonship. IOW, we are created in our mother’s wombs, not spiritually born in heaven then sent to earth having to earn back eternity through the “mysteries” of Mormonism.
Divinization or
theosis is the process of growing into our identity in Christ bestowed upon us in Baptism. We do not remain mere creatures; we are elevated by grace to the status of sons and daughters. Through baptism into Christ there is an ontological change in our identity. It doesn’t prepare us (
contra Mormonism) to become gods in our own right, but to participate by grace in the life of the Most Holy Trinity, to prepare us to enter into the Beatific Vision.
The temptation of Adam and Eve’s was to “become gods” without conformity to God; that has been turned on its head in Christ Who now offers us, through our obedience, not to become “gods” on our own, but to participate in His own Divine Nature that IS His has by Nature. He invites us to participate in that Nature by grace; He wants us to be even more closely united to Him than as Creator and creature. He wants to relate to us as Father to child. The possibility for this deeper relationship is founded first in the creation of the first Man and Woman who walked in friendship with God, but then lost all that would have been theirs through that sin of disobedience; the second, New and ultimate foundation now is the re-creation of Man in the Life, Death and Resurrection of His Incarnate Son, Jesus Christ.
“Divinization” expresses the absolute transformation of oneself through the soul’s participation in God’s Divine Nature. This is not something we of ourselves have, but can only receive by grace initiated in Baptism and grown through fidelity to the sacramental life of the Church. We have become, as St. Peter writes, “partakers of the divine nature;” we become truly united by grace to the Divine Life which the Divine Persons alone have by their Nature.
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
1726 The Beatitudes teach us the final end to which God calls us: the Kingdom, the vision of God, participation in the divine nature, eternal life, filiation, rest in God.
1812 The human virtues are rooted in the theological virtues, which adapt man’s faculties for participation in the divine nature: for the theological virtues relate directly to God. They dispose Christians to live in a relationship with the Holy Trinity. They have the One and Triune God for their origin, motive, and object.
1988 Through the power of the Holy Spirit we take part in Christ’s Passion by dying to sin, and in his Resurrection by being born to a new life; we are members of his Body which is the Church, branches grafted onto the vine which is himself: [God] gave himself to us through his Spirit. By the participation of the Spirit, we become communicants in the divine nature. . . . For this reason, those in whom the Spirit dwells are divinized.
continued. . .
