Deification in the early church

Becoming divine or gods by grace; participation in the divine nature. Part of Salvation.

Dialogue with Trypho 124.4Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Humans were made capable of becoming “gods” and sons of the Most High, but fall like Adam and Eve.
To Autolycus 2.24Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Paradise was a real place on earth, in the east; the first human was made neither mortal nor immortal but capable of either, and was placed there to grow toward perfection and even divinity by keeping God's command.
The Instructor 1.12.98Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Jesus, who formed, regenerated, and instructs the human being, shows us the true life; imitating him, we are transformed toward God's image and likeness and learn a simple, self-sufficient life.
The Instructor 3.1.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Knowing oneself leads to knowing and becoming like God; desire, shape-shifting like Proteus, degrades the human being, but the one in whom the Word dwells has true beauty and is made like God.
The Instructor 3.1.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · One who wills what God wills becomes god: God in man and man god, through the Word, the Mediator; the flesh is a servant and should not be adorned like a procuress.
Exhortation to the Greeks 12.120Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The true mysteries: the Lord initiates, illumines, and seals the believer; Jesus, the eternal High Priest, calls all humankind to incorruption and to his easy yoke.
Exhortation to the Greeks 12.123Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · God adopts believers as sons and calls them “gods”; the Christian's intentions, words, deeds, and life agree. Clement ends by setting before his hearers the choice between judgment and grace.
Against Heresies 3.6.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Scripture calls only the true God, the Father and the Son, God and Lord in the proper sense; others called gods are the adopted children.
Against Heresies 3.20.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · God allowed man’s fall so that man, delivered by experience, might be grateful, know his weakness and God’s power, and grow into the likeness of Christ, who accustomed God and man to each other.
Against Heresies 4.33.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Ebionites cannot be saved, for unless God became man through the virgin birth, man could not pass into God or be freed from the strong one.
Against Heresies 4.38.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Those who resent not being made gods from the start are ungrateful; God made men first, to make them gods in time, overcoming mortality by immortality.
Against Heresies 5 pref.Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · In the preface to Book 5 Irenaeus reviews the first four books and announces proofs from the Lord’s teaching and Paul’s letters, ending with the Word who became what we are to make us what he is.
Miscellanies 4.23.152Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Christ removed anger with desire; the one deified into freedom from passion becomes one; like sailors pulling on an anchor who draw themselves to it, those who seek God are drawn to him; serving God is caring for oneself, and purity makes one like God.
Miscellanies 5.10.63Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Barnabas reads the promise of a land flowing with milk and honey as a hidden teaching about Christ in the flesh; the Lord keeps his mystery for the sons of his house, and knowing the Father is eternal life.
Miscellanies 7.10.56Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Knowledge, given to those prepared for it, leads beyond the discipline that purifies us of sin to a final restoration in which the pure in heart contemplate God forever and are called gods, enthroned beneath the Savior.
On the Holy Theophany 6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–235 · Christ's baptism opened heaven and reconciled earth with heaven; the Father's voice and the dove reveal the Son, and through water and Spirit man is regenerated to immortality as co-heir with Christ.
Against Hermogenes 5Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Against the reply that matter shares only some of God's attributes, Tertullian argues that whatever is God's belongs to God alone, and that believers become “gods” only by God's grace, not by any property of their own.
On First Principles 3.6.1Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The end of all things is likeness to God: the image given at creation is to be completed as likeness through our own efforts, and Christ prays that the saints may be one with the Father and the Son.
PG 12:1165 (Ps 4 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · The soul that shares in God’s light, like Moses, must veil itself for the many; the “sign” of God’s light preserves the saints in judgment, as in Psalm 59 (LXX) and Ezekiel 9; the gladness of Ps 4:7 is the mind’s joy in contemplating God, not the flesh’s.
PG 12:1169 (Ps 5 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · On Ps 5:3–7: God does not let the lawless remain before him, as a physician does not leave the sick uncured; he hates sinners and will destroy heretics; the house of God is the virtuous soul and the church, entered only by his mercy.
PG 12:1649 (Ps 135 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Psalm 136:2–16 (LXX 135): God of gods by love and by creation, the Saviour God by essence and not by participation, the wonders of goodness, and the psalm read as the soul's journey from Egypt to knowledge.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.33.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · God made the human being from all the elements to rule creation; he made a man, not a god, but one who obeys him may become a god and be entrusted with greater things.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.34.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus says the believer will be made divine, born immortal; truly knowing oneself means knowing one's Maker and being known by him.
Refutation of All Heresies 10.34.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus closes: Christ, the God over all, washes away sin and renews humanity; whoever obeys and imitates him will be made like him, a god by grace for his glory.
Commentary on John 2.17Origen · ca. 230–248 · The Father alone is God in himself; the Son is God by being with him and shares divinity with other beings made divine.
Commentary on John 20.242Origen · ca. 230–248 · One who stands in the truth is more than man, one of those God calls “gods.”
Commentary on John 20.266Origen · ca. 230–248 · We must strive to rise above being mere “men,” who are liars, and become “gods.”
Commentary on John 32.338Origen · ca. 230–248 · Literally, glory was a divine manifestation; spiritually, it is the knowledge of God seen by a purified mind, which is deified in contemplation.
Commentary on John 32.339Origen · ca. 230–248 · Moses' shining face figuratively means his mind deified by the vision of God.
Commentary on John 32.340Origen · ca. 230–248 · Paul says the same of believers transformed by beholding the Lord's glory.
Homily on Luke 29Origen · ca. 233–250 · Jesus was full of the Spirit beyond all others; the devil’s stone offered as bread stands for heretical doctrine; and Christ, tempted as man, now no longer subject to death, is God, and believers who become like him will become divine.
Address of Thanksgiving 11Gregory Thaumaturgus · ca. 238–245 · Origen led Gregory to live the virtues: justice as attending to one's own soul, prudence as self-knowledge, temperance as preserving it, courage as perseverance.
Address of Thanksgiving 12Gregory Thaumaturgus · ca. 238–245 · Origen has not yet made Gregory virtuous, but has made him a lover of the virtues, above all of piety, whose end is to be made like God and abide in him.
Homilies on Ezekiel 1.9Origen · ca. 238–250 (Jerome's translation in the 380s) · The word of God that came to Ezekiel makes believers “gods” (Ps 82:6), and only sin makes them die like men.
Homilies on Ezekiel 4.5Origen · ca. 238–250 (Jerome's translation in the 380s) · Daniel, a eunuch, had sons only in a spiritual sense; so too believers become sons of the saints, of Christ, and of the Father by imitating their virtues.
Homilies on Leviticus 4.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Partnership is spiritually our fellowship with the Father, Son, Spirit, and the saints, denied by sin; 'robbery' is seizing the church's deeper mysteries before being purified.
Homilies on Leviticus 9.11Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · 'There shall be no man' in the tabernacle means that those who follow Christ into heaven become like angels; the soul is mortal or immortal according to whether it shares in death or in life.
Homilies on Psalms 36-38 7.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The righteous man, cursed or slandered, acts deaf and mute, leaving vengeance to God; if we heard God as we should, he would hear us as he heard Elijah and Samuel, and we would be “gods” and sons of God.
Homilies on Jeremiah 15.6Origen · ca. 240 · “Cursed is he who hopes in man” condemns those who hold that Christ was a mere man; Christians hope in him as God's Wisdom and Word, and must not put their trust in bodily strength or influential friends.
Against Celsus 3.28Origen · ca. 248 · Origen contrasts the pointless marvels of Aristeas with the saving purpose of Jesus' miracles, foretold by the prophets, and explains that in Christ divine and human nature began to be woven together so that believers too might become divine.
Against Celsus 4.29Origen · ca. 248 · Christians know that angels and heavenly powers surpass humans, though the righteous hope to become like angels and like God; if anyone says “after God come we,” it can only mean rational and virtuous beings.
Commentary on Matthew 16.29Origen · ca. 246–248 · Mark’s “it was not the season for figs” teaches that Christ seeks the fruits of the Spirit even out of season—love for enemies, joy in suffering—since God calls believers to be “gods” and more than human; we must ask for great and heavenly things.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.19.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato: the philosopher becomes divine by communion with the divine.
Demonstration of the Gospel 7.3.13Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · God's oath “by his holy one” is an oath by the Word, who assumed and deified the man from David's seed.
On the Incarnation 4.6Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Humans are mortal by nature, but by keeping God's likeness they would have remained incorrupt and lived as gods.
On the Incarnation 54.3Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The Word became man that we might be made god, revealed the invisible Father, and suffered so that we might inherit incorruption.
On Ecclesiastical Theology 3.15.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · The saints, subjected to the Son, will share his life, wisdom, holiness, and even divinity.
On Ecclesiastical Theology 3.18.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Perfected by Christ, the saints become lights and sons of God by sharing his divinity.
Oration I Against the Arians 16Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius concludes that the Son is not a participant in God but is himself what is participated from the Father's substance, begotten without passion or division.
Oration I Against the Arians 38Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius argues that if Christ became Son and was exalted only as man, he would have been improved by the flesh, contrary to Scripture's witness to his glory and worship before the incarnation.
Oration I Against the Arians 39Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius concludes that the Son was God and became man to deify us, and that all who are called sons and gods are so through him.
Oration I Against the Arians 42Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Athanasius explains that Christ “received” the name as man, so that the grace given might pass to us and we might be brought, in him, into the heavenly realms.
Oration II Against the Arians 47Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · As the Word “became flesh,” “a curse,” and “sin” without being changed into them, so he was “created” by taking a created body for our salvation and deification.
Oration II Against the Arians 59Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Human beings are made by nature and become sons by grace, through receiving the Spirit of the true Son; the Word became flesh so that humanity could receive Godhead.
Oration II Against the Arians 70Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Only if the Word is true God and his flesh truly human could humanity be freed and deified; Arians who deny the first are as wrong as Valentinians who deny the second.
Oration III Against the Arians 19Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Commands like “Be merciful as your Father” call for imitation, not equality; so too John 17 does not make us one with the Father as the Son is, since we are sons and “gods” by grace.
Oration III Against the Arians 23Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · As Christ was in the earth “as” Jonah was in the fish without being Jonah, so believers are one “as” the Father and Son without being equal to them; their perfection comes from the Word made flesh and the gift of the Spirit.
Oration III Against the Arians 33Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Because the Word made the flesh's weaknesses his own, they are destroyed in him; even holy people before Christ remained mortal, but now we are reborn in him and raised to incorruption.
Oration III Against the Arians 34Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Following 1 Pet 4:1, every human weakness of Christ—hunger, ignorance, fear, asking that the cup pass—is to be said of him “for us in the flesh,” while the Word remains impassible and frees our flesh from these passions.
Oration III Against the Arians 39Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · If the Word himself needed and received glory and authority, he would have been improved by the body and humanity would have no hope; he already had what he asked for, and received it as man for us.
Oration III Against the Arians 40Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Christ had authority over Satan, sin, and death before his resurrection; he says he “received” it in human fashion so that human beings, sharing in the divine nature, might have it through him.
Oration III Against the Arians 53Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · The “advance” was the growing manifestation of the Godhead in the body and the deification of the human nature; Luke says “Jesus,” the name of the incarnate Lord, not “the Word.”
Catechetical Lecture 22.3Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · In the figure of bread and wine the body and blood of Christ are given, so that the communicants become one body and blood with him and partakers of the divine nature.
On the Decrees of Nicaea 14Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · Prov 8:22 speaks of the Word as man, after he took flesh to free us from death and to make us divine, without ceasing to be God.
On the Trinity 1.11Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The Son shares the Father's eternity and nature, and became true flesh so that believers might become sons of God.
On the Trinity 9.4Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · God's being born as man, against nature, grounds the hope that man, whose nature tends to growth, may advance into God.
On the Trinity 9.38Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The incarnation changed the Son's condition, so the man he assumed had to be glorified into the unity of the Father's nature.
On the Trinity 11.49Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · God being all in all is the advance of the humanity Christ took up, and through it we are renewed as the image of our Creator (Col 3:9–10).
Letters to Serapion 1.22Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · The Spirit is from God, sanctifies, renews, and deifies, and is the image of the Son; so he cannot be a creature, and to call him one slanders the Son and the Father too.
On the Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia 51Athanasius of Alexandria · 359 (additions 361) · The Son deifies and gives light because he is the Father’s own Word, not a participant; and “of the same essence” does not imply a third essence prior to Father and Son.
Letter 293Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 360–390 · Gregory urges Eudoxius to choose God above all, since the prize of virtue is to become god and to be lit by the light of the Trinity.
Tractates on the Psalms 2.47Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Paul's pressing on to lay hold of what Christ laid hold of him for shows how discipline must be seized: God took our nature so that we may attain his.
Tractates on the Psalms 67.37Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God is wonderful in his saints, whom he will raise, conform to Christ’s glorious body, and bring into unity with the Father and eternal life.
Tractates on the Psalms 135.5Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God is God of the living, whom he makes 'gods' by transforming them into heavenly glory, out of his mercy, not his need.
Tractates on the Psalms 143.8Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Man, transient as a shadow, is unworthy, yet God made himself known by assuming man, so that man, 'reckoned' through that knowledge, may be conformed to God.
Oration 1.5Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Christ became what we are so that we might become what he is; the best offering in return is to give oneself to him.
Oration 2.22Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Unlike medicine, the cure of souls aims at deification, the goal of the law, the prophets, and the whole incarnation, from birth to resurrection.
Oration 7.20Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Death has freed Caesarius from life's troubles; Gregory looks to the resurrection, examines himself, and contemplates the destiny of man in Christ.
Oration 34.12Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory argues that if the Spirit were not God he could not deify the baptized, and that a baptism denying his Godhead would deceive and blacken those who receive it.
Oration 38.13Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · After many lesser remedies failed, the eternal Word himself became man, uniting flesh to himself through a rational soul, being born of the Virgin, so that he might save the image and make the flesh immortal.
Oration 43.47Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Valens' attack broke against Basil and Caesarea; Gregory recounts Basil's interview with the prefect Modestus, in which Basil refused to worship a creature, being himself bidden to become god.
Oration 45.3Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · God is eternal Being, “He who is”, an infinite sea of essence, partly grasped and partly beyond grasp, so that he draws us, purifies us and makes us godlike.
Against Eunomius 3.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil turns from the Spirit's names to his activities: the Spirit makes the heavenly powers firm, perfects human beings, sends the Lord, and fills all things.
Commentary on 2 Corinthians 8:9Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Christ became poor by becoming man to make humans sharers in divinity; so the Corinthians should complete their gift according to their means.
Letter to Adelphius 4Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 370 · Athanasius argues that creation itself worshiped its creator in the body, and that the incarnation brings no dishonor but our deification and freedom.
On the Holy Spirit 9.23Basil of Caesarea · ca. 374–375 · The Spirit draws near to a soul cleansed of passions, shows it the image of God, and makes it spiritual, even to the point of becoming god by grace.
On the Beatitudes 1249Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Since blessedness belongs to God and Scripture calls God merciful, Christ’s call to be merciful in a way deifies us; but we must judge rightly what mercy is, as people err about God himself, some worshipping the Trinity and others the creation.
On the Lord's Prayer 1137Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Unlike Moses at Sinai, Christ leads all believers up to heaven itself, makes them sharers in God, shows God’s glory to the pure in heart, and asks for purification not from marriage but from every passion.
Catechetical Oration 25Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · God is present in all things; in the incarnation he mingled with our nature so that it might become divine, freed from death and from the adversary.
Catechetical Oration 37Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · As the soul is united to Christ by faith, the body is united to him by the Eucharist: as bread became Christ's body by nourishment, the bread sanctified by the Word and prayer is changed into his body, making believers sharers in incorruption.
Letter 140.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Our sonship is by adoption: the Son of God became son of man so that we, remaining human, might share his nature and become sons of God.
Letter 140.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Christ, born under the law, redeemed those under the law so that we might receive adoption; the Word made flesh shows that humans can become children of God by sharing in the Word.
Homilies on Matthew 2.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The earthly birth of the Son of God from a virgin and from David and Abraham is a pledge that humans may become children of God; the double birth and the baptism join old and new; the name Jesus means Savior.
Sermon 81.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Every man is a liar as a son of men, but those made sons of God by grace are no longer bound to lying; Christ the God-man is the mediator through whom we ascend to God.
Sermon 166.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul rebuked the Corinthians for being “men,” and the Psalm calls believers “gods”; lying belongs to the old man, Adam, and truth to the new man, Christ, so putting off Adam reconciles the two texts.
Sermon 166.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Believers are called not to be mere men but sons of God, made gods by grace and adoption, not by nature; truthfulness is God's gift, and the whole person, deified, will cling to unchanging truth in the resurrection.
Sermon 192.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God became man to make men gods; the virgin birth shows his power, but his willingness to be born shows even greater mercy.
Sermon 194.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The riches hidden in Christ's poverty will be revealed when we see God; then we shall be like him and fully satisfied.
Sermon 265.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The angels foretold that Christ will return in the same form, as God and man, to judge; his death is to be marveled at, his resurrection praised, and his coming awaited with readiness.
Against Jovinianus 2.29Jerome · 393 · Jerome argues that the temple and body of Christ have many parts and degrees, and that believers are one with God by grace, not by nature, through the sacrament and the Spirit.
On the Trinity 4.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine explains that the Word became flesh to cleanse us for participation in him: the righteous God-man took our mortality to make us partakers of his divinity, and his single death fits our double death as one to two, like the octave in music.
The Harmony of the Gospels 2.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–400 · Even if Luke had said 'begot,' adoption can be called begetting, as believers are 'born of God' by adoption and grace, unlike the only-begotten Son.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 1.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · John could speak of Wisdom only because his heart rose above the merely human; God calls us to become 'gods', but only through first humbly acknowledging that we are men.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 21.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Augustine prays to understand truly, or at least not to err, and recalls that Christ, God hidden and man manifest, speaks as a little one to little ones.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 48.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · If men to whom God's word came are called gods, how much more is the Word himself God; the Father sanctified the Son by begetting him holy.
City of God 9.17Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine argues, citing Plotinus' 'flight to the fatherland' by likeness to God, that we need a mediator who is mortal with us yet just and divine — Christ, uncontaminated by the flesh he took.
The Conferences 10.7John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Perfection is the fulfilment of Christ’s prayer in John 17, when all a person’s love, thought, and life become God and the whole of life becomes one continual prayer, a foretaste of heaven.
Part 5, chapter 9Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The saints, beholding the Lord’s glory with unveiled face, will be transformed into his image, which the impious will not see.