“HOW HIGH OF A CHRISTIAN LIFE?”
A. B. SIMPSON AND THE CLASSIC DOCTRINE OF THEOSIS
by
Bernie A. Van De Walle, Ph.D.
In Scripture, the idiomatic phrase “as far as the East is from the West” (Ps. 103) is used to communicate the idea of insurmountable distances. The East is understood as one extreme and the West the other—extremes that, by their very definition may never be brought together. In Christian history, East and West are also invoked as two Christian traditions which have very different histories, practices, and doctrines—perhaps differences beyond reconciliation. While each is still broadly labeled “Christian,” it is understood that foundational and significant differences exist between the two—including their respective understandings of the cardinal Christian doctrines of soteriology and teleology.[1]
Perhaps the greatest of these doctrinal differences between East and West may be found in the Eastern doctrine of humanity’s ultimate and ideal destiny. For the Orthodox East, the goal of human existence and, therefore, of salvation is nothing less than the divinization of humanity or theosis. The theological and practical connotations of such a doctrine ring strangely in Western ears. Yet, theosis is not an obscure or marginalized doctrine within Eastern Orthodoxy. Rather, the deification of humanity is the major theme, the “golden thread.” Deification may rightly be identified as nothing less than the “religious ideal,”[2] the very “aim of the Christian life,”[3] and “the very essence of [Orthodox] Christianity.”[4] Deification is the telos, the goal and purpose of human life[5] and the final goal at which every Christian must aim. For Orthodoxy, “final salvation and sanctification mean. . .deification.”[6]
For Protestant Evangelicals, such a theological assertion rings not only oddly, but smacks of heresy. That which is “so characteristic of Orthodoxy”[7] sounds alien, at best, to Evangelicals. Daniel Clendenin has identified the cause of this dissonance as rooted in the disparity of ruling theological metaphors. For the West, especially for the influential Protestant Reformers, forensic metaphors of sin and salvation rule theological understanding. Such is not the case, however, for the East where the ruling soteriological metaphor is that of separation and “mystical union.”[8]
Historically, the West has focused its soteriology on issues of guilt and punishment. The East, however, has focused more on the themes of alienation and death. For the Orthodox, what humanity has gained from Adam is more than simply guilt and a sinful nature. More importantly, it has also inherited a condition of corruption and death. The goal of salvation, then, is not just justification but vitality—the communication of life. Rather than the pronouncement of divine pardon, the imparting of life—the divine life—is the ultimate and final triumph over death.[9]
The Eastern and Western dichotomies on the issue of soteriology are not as precise and final as they may appear at first glance.[10] Each tradition must deal with the variety of soteriological metaphors used in Scripture—both juridical and biological. Consequently, Eastern theologians and writers are not immune from using Western juridical language. And, despite its tendency to sound heretical in Western ears, Catholic, Protestant, and Evangelical theologians are not, and have not been, totally immune from speaking of salvation in terms of theosis and deification.[11] In fact, some from the Western theological tradition have a soteriology that bears many similarities to an Eastern doctrine of theosis. This is not limited to those Westerners who come from the more liturgical or mystical of the Western traditions. Albert Benjamin Simpson, a typically mainstream, late-nineteenth century, and influential Evangelical, while trained wholly and thoroughly in the Western Protestant Calvinist theological tradition, developed a soteriology that bears more similarities than dissimilarities to a carefully defined Eastern Orthodox doctrine of theosis.
Defining the Eastern Orthodox Doctrine of Theosis
Too often, western critiques of theosis are ill-founded, based upon assumption and conjecture rather than a thoughtful response to a well-researched understanding. Evangelicals have joined this straw-man attack by assuming that an Eastern doctrine of theosis asserts either far more or something far different than it actually does. If, then, we are going to try to compare Simpson’s soteriology to an Orthodox doctrine of theosis, it is necessary to begin by outlining an accurate and fair definition of theosis, carefully avoiding caricature and “straw men.” In this effort to define theosis from an Eastern perspective and to resist caricature, I have turned only to Eastern and pro-Eastern sources in initially outlining the doctrine.
Daniel Clendenin, a noted evangelical scholar of Orthodoxy, has noted that, when one inquires into the doctrine of theosis, Eastern or otherwise, two cautions must be presented. The first is a caution related to human ability. In any investigation into the doctrine of theosis, humanity must be sure not to delve beyond what it is able to perceive or comprehend. This also means that humanity must be careful not to seek an understanding of that which is beyond what has been revealed.[12] Humanity must humbly realize its own cognitive limitations and respect the transcendence and ineffability of God. When one investigates the doctrine of theosis, one must remember that the topic “is ultimately a mystery,”[13] beyond both human comprehension and expression.[14]
The second caution that Clendenin asserts is that any accurate understanding of the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of theosis must maintain the eternal, ontological distinction between the Creator and the creation. Rightly defined and rightly understood, an Eastern doctrine of theosis never dissolves into something that should be confused with pantheism. Orthodox theologians assert the maintenance of this distinction by arguing that in theosis, while there is a real union of the divine with the human, the union is not of the divine essence or nature. Rather, the union is with the divine energies. This is not to say that the nature of God is divine while the energies of God are not. While the divine energies are not the divine essence, neither are they less than divine. The divine energies are “God Himself.”[15]
Bishop Kallistos (Timothy) Ware writes, “When a man knows or participates in the divine energies, he truly knows or participates in God himself, so far as this is possible for a created being.”[16] Ware goes on to note that this moment of both intimacy and distinction is not wholly different from the perichoretic nature of the triune God. While one, real distinctions remain. Even so, while one so deified remains distinct from God, the union is nonetheless very real.[17] This distinction between the divine energies and the divine nature keeps from blurring the ontological distinction. The exact nature of the distinction between the divine essence and the divine energies is not defined clearly by the Orthodox, relegating it to the category of “philosophical antinomy.”[18]
In addition to maintaining the divine/human distinction, the Orthodox assert, “Whatever it means to ‘become god,’ the essence of human nature is not lost.”[19] Divinized humans remain essentially human. “[Humanity] becomes god by grace, but not God in essence.”[20] Humanity, in union with God, remains fully human and “is not swallowed up or annihilated.”[21] Human it is and human it will remain. Furthermore, it does not become a tertium quid—something, in essence, different from what it was before. In a genuine Orthodox understanding of theosis, “[there] is union, [but] not fusion or confusion.”[22] The divine and human are brought together, but the union does not result in a synthesis. Human nature is changed, surely, but not to what it was not essentially. What occurs, then, is not a change in essence but a change in quality—a relative change.[23] Humanity, while not other than what it was before this union, certainly is more than it was before. Given the union with the divine energies, a human resides on a higher plane of existence, not contradictory to human nature, yet not something within its own ability to grasp. Theosis results in “the elevation of the human being to the divine sphere, to the atmosphere of God.”[24]
Once one has grasped these key cautions (the realization that theosis is mystery and that the ontological distinction is not compromised, humanity remains essentially human), there are a number of other key themes that constitute the Orthodox understanding of divinization.
First, the doctrine of theosis is essentially Christocentric. While theosis occurs through the agency of the Spirit, it is complementary to the work of the Incarnation and results from union with Christ. For the Orthodox, divinization is understood to be intimately related to the doctrine of the Incarnation, as its reciprocal or complement. That is, what occurs in the elevating action of theosis inversely reflects the descent of the divine in the Incarnation. In the Incarnation, we see the humbling of God as the Eternal Son takes on, in a very real way, human nature. Christ humbled himself in the Incarnation. Conversely, in divinization humanity is exalted. Thus, theosis is analogous to the Incarnation. “As God was incarnated, man was endivinized.”[25] Theosis reflects the Incarnation not only through the union of the two natures, however. The union and filling of the Christian with the divine energies is an inversion of the kenosis or the laying aside undertaken by Christ.[26]
In addition, Eastern Orthodox theology will note that theosis is the result of union with God in Christ. As the divine Christ profoundly and intimately indwells humanity, humanity is consequently lifted up by the divine life that indwells it.[27] The notion of theosis “implies our being intertwined with Christ, an influx of the divine, or the attainment of similitude with God.”[28] For the Orthodox, theosis is not simply divinization. Theosis is more particular than just that. While theosis is union with the divine, it is not with a faceless, impersonal divine. Jesus Christ is the content of theosis in that it is the indwelling of Christ through the agency of the Holy Spirit that results in the communication of the divine energies. “It is through Jesus, the God-man, that [humanity is] ‘ingodded’, ‘divinized’, [and] made ‘sharers in the divine nature.’”[29] “To be deified is, more specifically, to be ‘christified.’”[30] Divinization is the communication of not just the divine, but the Divine One, in the particular person of Jesus Christ.
For the Orthodox, theosis is the intent of God for all of humanity. By divine design, deification is not relegated to being the destiny of an elect or select few. Rather, the divine intent of theosis is for the whole of humanity. As the call of salvation is offered to the whole race, so too, the call to pursue theosis is genuinely and sincerely addressed to all humanity.[31] It is the normative telos of the Christian life, not the exclusive attainment of a few. As such, theosis is not an elective addendum to salvation which humanity is free to take up or not. Ultimately, salvation is theosis and theosis is salvation. To understand otherwise is to truncate and ultimately destroy the purpose of salvation.[32]
While certainly a mystical doctrine of the Eastern church, it should not be assumed that this doctrine is relegated to the spiritual realm alone. In Orthodox teaching, which possesses “a highly developed theology of the body,”[33] divinization touches, renews, and raises the whole of human existence, body and soul, to a higher plane of existence.[34] The Eastern doctrine of theosis believes that, as the spirit is supernaturally charged and improved, the physical aspect of humanity, too, is invigorated.[35] The human body, in its interaction with the indwelling Christ, tastes of its eschatological hope in the present. In theosis, the body becomes the “firstfruits of [the] visible and bodily glorification.”[36]
This does not mean that the Eastern Church possesses an over-realized eschatology. While the Christian may experience earnests of the coming kingdom in the present day, divinization only finds its fullness in the eschaton and the final transformation and glorification of humanity—the “third birth.”[37] This change in nature inaugurates at regeneration, but also, and especially, engages more intently at a point subsequent to conversion. This event is identified by John Meyendorff as “the unction of the Spirit”[38]—a point where the practical work of deification is undertaken with a higher level of intensity.
For the Orthodox, the central doctrine of theosis, while fundamental to its soteriology, remains mysterium. At the same time, it is relatively definable. The work of deification is clearly Christocentric, finding its source in the overflowing life of the Christ who indwells the Christian. It is the complement to both the Incarnation of Christ and the kenosis. This salvific act has universal intent. It is to be the destiny of all Christians and is to affect the whole of human nature—spiritual and material, body and soul. Finally, theosis, while finding its full realization only in the eschaton, begins to some degree at conversion, although it finds its greatest impact and progression in a distinct work of God at some point subsequent to it.
Simpson’s Mystical Doctrine of Sanctification
The Rev. Albert Benjamin (hereafter A. B.) Simpson (1843-1919) was an evangelical noted for a number of achievements and contributions to the content and mood of the evangelicalism of his time. Simpson is best known for having founded The Christian and Missionary Alliance, originally a para-church organization, the purpose of which was to promote and achieve two related pursuits: the deeper Christian life and the task of world evangelization. This organization was centered around and sought to inculcate Simpson’s message of “The Fourfold Gospel—Jesus, Our Saviour, Our Sanctifier, Our Healer, and Our Coming King.” The Fourfold Gospel encapsulates both the central themes of late-nineteenth century evangelicalism and Simpson’s observation of the greatest needs of the church of his day. Donald Dayton, and a myriad of other scholars, rightly point to Simpson and his Fourfold Gospel as providing the theological and, to a lesser degree, the material background for the Pentecostal Revival that would occur near the end of Simpson’s life.[39]
Simpson came from staunch Scottish, Calvinist, Covenanter stock and, in his Canadian birth and upbringing, was early trained in the Westminster Confession and its attendant Calvinist doctrinal assumptions and standards. In preparation for Presbyterian ministry, Simpson attended and excelled at Knox College in Toronto, Ontario, the school of nineteenth-century Canadian Presbyterianism. Following graduation, Simpson served prestigious Presbyterian congregations in Hamilton, Ontario, Louisville, Kentucky, and finally in New York City. During these pastorates, Simpson began to move theologically from his Presbyterian training to such a degree that both he and the synod agreed that a parting of the ways would be best. Because of this separation, and in part the cause of it, Simpson formed a small congregation organized under the name the Gospel Tabernacle whose goal was to reach the growing, poor, immigrant, and non-Christian population of New York City. This group, in turn, gave birth to a number of other ministries, not the least of which would include The Christian and Missionary Alliance.
Theologically, at least early on, Simpson was trained in a thorough-going and staunch Western Calvinism. Yet, this was not Simpson’s only theological influence. He dove deeply into the theology, mood, and practices of late-nineteenth-century evangelicalism that flowed from and was deeply influenced by the theology and methods of the nineteenth-century revivalism, particularly the Second Great Awakening. Evangelicalism of Simpson’s day was one that was deeply touched, in theology and practice, by a growing emphasis on the voluntary nature and personal intimacy of one’s relationship to God. Perhaps consequently, there arose during the nineteenth century a movement whose particular emphasis was the exploration of the Christian doctrine of sanctification, its nature and means. This Deeper Life Movement, despite its many shades and forms, was not satisfied with cognitive mastery of this doctrine. Its greater goal was the retrieval of a fuller-orbed understanding of the extent of salvation. Simpson was both deeply influenced by and a teacher within both movements.
Simpson was not alone among his peers in addressing these doctrines, but he did go beyond his most of his evangelical contemporaries and a strict Calvinism in his assertion of the nature and the telos of salvation. For Simpson, the goal of the work of God in salvation was not merely some type of objective holiness, but a change in the very nature of the believer. The change that would occur was clearly a divinization, a deification, or a theosis, of sorts.
For Simpson, the change that occurs within humanity in salvation is obviously profound. This alteration, however, is not merely quantitative. It is neither the enhancement of the human constitution nor the amplification of an inherent, yet dormant human capacity or potentiality. “It is not the old life improved.”[40] “[It] is not the improvement of our natural character, not even the cleansing of our own spirit.”[41] It is far more than a return to or renovation of some Edenic, pre-fall innocence. This work of God offers “something infinitely higher than mere human perfection.”[42] It is, rather, a change that results in a new estate, a new nature,[43] and so thorough going as to truly result in a “new life.”[44]
The change is something far beyond simply that of a fully-realized natural human capacity. Simpson wrote that this work of God “is not a degree of progress on the old plane [of human existence], but it puts us entirely upon a new plane, and we pass out of the human into the divine, and henceforth it is not the best that man can be and do.”[45] Those who are so affected “have risen to an entirely different sphere,”[46] to live in an entirely new “atmosphere”[47] of existence. “[This] life is not self-improving . . ., it is wholly supernatural and divine.”[48] This new life is an eternal life. It is eternal, not only because it has “neither beginning nor ending, but [because] it lifts us into a higher sphere of life. It is a kind of life that belongs to a loftier plane than the things that are seen and temporal. It is a life as infinite in its scope as it is enduring in its length, a great unfathomable ocean of boundless fullness and glorious all-sufficiency.”[49]
Simpson likens the difference of this change to the remodeling of a shack, which God would not be interested in pursuing. Instead, God seeks to build something completely new, a mansion, where the shack once stood.[50] God is not involved in a work of renovation but of reconstruction. This new life is something beyond merely human nature supercharged by divine impulse. It is a new structure altogether. So intense and far-reaching is this change that the one so changed is no longer the same person.[51] For Simpson, this change “is the entrance into a sinful heart of a new life which excludes the old and takes its place. It is not the cleansing of the flesh or the improving of the life of the self; but it is the imparting to us of a new life. . ., even the holy life of God.”[52]
This supra-human condition is due to the arrival and infusion of another element.[53] The arrival of this new element results in a “translation” of what existed previously into something new. It is now a “higher and loftier scale of being.”[54] Following this reception, humanity is no longer what it once was. It has been foundationally and essentially changed and affected by the infusion of this new element. That which results is such that the former ceases to exist per se. The old is supplanted, removed, and replaced by the new. So great is this change that Simpson hyperbolically asserted that the new being has nothing in common with the previous, sinful nature. What now exists is not simply the superlative of the old. It is something new. It is something of “divine nature.”[55] It is something greater than humanity could ever have achieved on its own. Those who have been so blessed have “received a nature as much above the intellectual and the moral as God! (1 Jn. 3:1)”[56] It is “the very nature of God [which] passes into us.”[57] For Simpson, the new life is “a higher mode of being—that of God Himself.”[58] Humanity is clearly, in Simpson’s opinion, divinized.
Simpson, like his Presbyterian forebears, held to a soteriology that was firmly grounded Christologically. For Simpson, however, this Christological foundation was not merely associative. That is, the Christian’s salvation is not tied merely to an association or a relationship with Christ. The connection is more profound. It is not based on mere association but on intimate identification, in the strongest sense of the latter word. That is, for Simpson, salvation is based on the integration of the life of the divine Christ into and as the very life of the Christian. It is not simply an objective reckoning or forensic declaration on God’s part that revitalizes the believer. Rather, it is Christ Himself living in, with, and through the Christian that results in salvation and newness of life. It is “the incarnation of Jesus Himself into [the human] life.”[59] It is not merely impersonal, divine energy or the radiance of some kind of divine influence. Rather, it is “[Christ who] becomes the Course and Strength of our very life.”[60] It is not just life from Christ, but the life of Christ—Christ Himself—that the Christian receives.[61] In this act of personal indwelling, Christ imparts to humans his “very nature” and makes it their “second nature.”[62] This new life, which Simpson regularly identified as The Christ Life, is “a vital and divine experience through the union of the soul with the living Christ Himself.”[63]
Ultimately, for Simpson, what occurs in this indwelling is not a matter of forensics but is more foundationally a matter of new life. The key metaphor for Simpson is biological rather than juridical. It is not simply a “divine reckoning” as those tied to a strictly forensic paradigm may assert. For Simpson, what occurs is not merely a case of judicial bookkeeping and a change of standing. It is an actual change of nature, an impartation of life. While there are certainly forensic consequences to the metamorphosis that occurs, the heart of the matter is one more vital and biological than forensic. It is not that forensic categories do not apply. Certainly, Simpson understood the legal implications of the change. They are not, however, the heart of the issue, but consequential to it. Ultimately, the issue of salvation is contained neither by the issue of freedom from guilt nor in a penal-substitutionary understanding of the atonement. Rather, the result of this encounter is the arrival of life. More pointedly, it is the reception and engagement of divine life. It is this new life, in turn, which results in freedom from condemnation and death.
For Simpson, this regeneration is truly a rebirth. While Simpson does not overlook the biblical assertion that membership in the family of God is based, at some level, on the legal concept of adoption, the concept does not exhaust the profoundness of the reality of the Christian’s new standing.[64] Here, too, the ruling metaphor is biological rather than juridical. This new standing in the family of God is not based merely on the legal designation of adoption. It is more foundationally based on the reality that one is a son of God by “actual birth.”[65] Christians become the children of God, not just “legally” as in adoption, but “actually” as they become the “[children] of God by receiving the life and nature of God.”[66] As one is regenerated in this invasive work of God, one is born of God. It is the bestowal of this new nature and new life that results in “introducing [the soul] into the family of God himself.”[67] But, again, the Christian is not merely born of God instrumentally, but born of God by nature.[68] That is, the Christian is born of God not only in the sense that the regeneration is an act of the Holy Spirit. The Christian is also born of God in the sense that the Christian’s life is divine life from the very nature of the Divine One.[69] Christians are sons and daughters genetically through their inheritance of the nature of the Father. They are truly offspring. Simpson wrote, “[Christ’s] own being is imparted to us, and [therefore] we share His actual relation to the Father.”[70] The Father, then, is Father, by nature and not merely by assertion.
It is true that, for Simpson, this work of theosis begins, to some degree, at conversion. Yet, there is an equally strong sense in which it begins in its greatest intensity in the life of the Christian in a moment distinct from and subsequent to the conversion moment—for Simpson, the crisis of sanctification. It is at this point where the practical work of theosis and the manifestation thereof begins in earnest.[71] Simpson asserted that this change in nature is also progressive. While there is a real divinization that occurs at regeneration, this change in nature may and should be progressive in the life of the Christian. While one is divinized really and to some degree at the “crisis” of regeneration, the depth and maturity of this divinization is liable to increase[72] until, one day, the Christian “shall be the Pearl of great price, the most glorious object in the universe of God.”[73] The key point of this maturing process is the second work of grace—sanctification—where the divinization that began at regeneration is effected in a new way and taken to new and greater heights.[74] Simpson wrote that while “Christ is completely formed within us [at regeneration]…. He is the infant Christ, and grows up to the maturity of the perfect man in us just as He did in His earthly life.”[75]
The divinization of humanity is also of practical necessity in Simpson’s soteriology. If God created humanity to be in communion with Himself, and if God seeks to make good on that original telos, the spiritual death that has resulted from the Fall must be overcome. Simpson asserted that it was spiritual death, more than spiritual separation, which has left humanity incapable of relationship with God.[76] Again, while the forensic categories of guilt and penalty serve as significant hurdles to this divine-human relationship, they are not the heart of the problem for Simpson. The ruling metaphor again is more foundationally biological than juridical. Rather, the difficulty lies in the spiritual deadness of humanity. The dead cannot commune with the One who is, by very nature, life.[77] Therefore, if communion is to happen, regeneration must occur. One must be reborn. One must receive a new life. Moreover, Simpson asserted that full communion can only happen between parties who share a common life, a common nature. That is why Simpson wrote, “You must have another nature before you can enter the kingdom of heaven.”[78] If humanity is to fulfill its divine purpose of operating within the divine sphere and fulfill its purpose—communion with God—it must possess a divine nature.
Furthermore, not only does this sort of rebirth allow communion with God, it expands the connection with Christ that was initiated in the Incarnation. In an effort to relate to humanity, God, the Son, humbled himself and took the form of a servant. That is, the eternal and divine Son took on human nature in the Incarnation. Simpson noted that it is through the work of divinization that the identification with Christ, who is both fully God and fully human, is more fully developed. Those who are, by birth, human in nature are made, by rebirth, divine as well. As such, they reflect both natures of Christ. “Not only [did Christ] come down into our humanity, but he also [took] us up into His Divinity; for we are, indeed, through Him, ‘partakers of the Divine Nature.’”[79] Our connection with Christ, then, is not based solely on his humanity. For the converted, the human identification with Christ is further entrenched by our very real participation in his divine nature.
The heart of The Fourfold Gospel and the expressed aim of Simpson’s organization, The Christian and Missionary Alliance, was the inculcation and practice of the doctrine of the deeper Christian life. It is this topic and its pursuit that absorbed the greatest share of Simpson’s time and effort. According to Simpson, it is the divine nature which is the necessary condition of achieving sanctification. Simpson asserted that it could not be otherwise because, “It requires a divine Force to live the divine life.”[80] It is the divine nature that alone enables humanity to live to holiness and the example of Christ.[81] It is only in this way that one can hope to be free from the power of sin.[82] It is not that the new nature aids the Christian in the struggle to live the sanctified life. Rather, it is the divine life by itself that “expels all evil and continually renews and refreshes our entire being, keeping us ever clean and pure.”[83] For all intents and purposes, it is, then, not only the necessary condition but the sufficient condition as well. For Simpson, the divine life of the Christian does not make sanctification merely possible. Its residence makes it actual, “so filling us that we become like him.”[84]
Furthermore, for Simpson, it is only divinization that makes God’s call to holiness a legitimate one.[85] The holiness to which God calls humanity is more than just innocence. It is holiness analogous to that of God himself and properly attributed to the divine alone. The holy life is impossible even for pristine humanity. Yet, it is the call of God. It would be unjust and illegitimate of God to require of humanity that which, by its nature, it is unable to achieve. That is, of course, unless God also provides another way to do so. Humanity is only able to achieve this holiness through divine intervention, by partaking of the divine nature itself.
Simpson’s soteriology is not limited to the spiritual or moral realm. The indwelling of Christ and the change in nature affects the whole of the human constitution—the spiritual and the physical. Simpson asserted that the indwelling divine life could not help but bring about real change in the physical nature of humanity. He wrote, “We can often see in the lower world how a piece of clay can be so filled with a higher principle as to be transformed and to be endued with higher properties than its own nature was capable of expressing.”[86] Such is the case for the human condition. The divine life enhances physical existence. It is this divine life that “will carry us above our physical infirmities on the high tide of a supernatural vitality which is not dependent upon our organic conditions.”[87] Not only do we gain the vitality of the divine life for our bodies as a result of divinization, we also gain the mind of the divine. Simpson noted that, as a result of the indwelling divine nature, “We have the mind of Christ. Into this weak and erring brain can come the very understanding of our blessed Master, so that, as John Kepler, we may say, ‘I am thinking God’s thoughts after God.’”[88]
Conclusion
Simpson’s own theology is similar to the Eastern doctrine of deification in several ways. For both, the work of divinization remains ultimately ineffable. Each agrees that there is no earthly parallel or analogy that accurately comprehends this mysterium.[89] Further, each would argue that, despite this work, the ultimate ontological distinction between the Creator and the creature remains. For Simpson, while the human participation in the divine nature is real and profound, at no point does humanity ever, of itself, achieve, obtain, or maintain its “divine nature.” It is, rather, only possessed by a state of constant dependence[90] and “abiding in Christ,” a constant mutual interpenetration of Christ and the Christian. Like the Orthodox, Simpson argues that humanity is only, in any sense, divine by grace. Yet, for Simpson, the antinomy remains. One remains human in nature while at the same time being lifted to the divine realm of being.
The greatest and, perhaps, the key similarity between the two theologies is the primary role of biological metaphors. The hurdle that salvation seeks to overcome is that of death more than that of guilt. Second, both Simpson and the Orthodox are radically Christocentric in their teleology, soteriology, and theology. For both, Christ is both the means and the content of divinization. Divinization is the result of union with Christ. When one is divinized, one may be understood more particularly to be “christified.” For both, the work of divinization is complementary and reciprocal to the Incarnation. Third, both assert universal dimensions to soteriology and theosis. For neither is deification to be the exclusive attainment of the “spiritual elite.” It is by design and intent the goal for all. Neither is deification something particularly spiritual. It is intended to affect the whole person—body and soul. Furthermore, both the Orthodox and Simpson understand this work to find its genesis in regeneration, but it is especially enhanced by a post-conversion work of God. Both agree that this work of God is progressive in nature. While it begins in a moment in time and has a particular completeness of its own, it is, still, a progressive and maturing work.
Many in the West may feel that the Eastern doctrine of theosis is an esoteric doctrine that, while ancient, does not adhere to the heart of the Gospel. Certainly, Eastern theologians would argue that, for the East at least, this is simply not the case. It is not an obscure doctrine. Rather, it is central to Orthodox soteriology and the keystone of the whole of the Orthodox theology. Furthermore, theosis does not appear to be as foreign to Western soteriologies as one might think. It appeared in the theology and soteriology of A. B. Simpson. Certainly, there are some dissimilarities between Simpson’s view and those of the Orthodox church.[91] Nevertheless, divinization lies at the heart of both the means and the goal of The Fourfold Gospel—what appears to be and has been described by a number of scholars as a thorough-going and contextually developed Western theology. Perhaps, then, the East and West are not so far apart after all.
[1] Daniel Clendenin, Eastern Orthodox Christianity (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 2nd ed., 2003), 124.
[3] Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (London: Penguin Books, 1997), 231.
[4] Vladimir Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God (Crestwood, NY: St. Valdimir’s Seminary Press, 1974), 97. Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Greenwood, SC: The Attic Press, Inc., 1973), 9. Lossky will go further to argue that from an Eastern perspective it was the protection of the doctrine of theosis that lay at the heart of the Arian controversy, for if Christ is not of the same substance as the Father, then “our deification is impossible.” The same, he says, is true for the historic battles against Nestorianism, Apollonarianism, Monophysitism, and the Monothelites. Lossky, Mystical Theology, 10.
[5] Stavropoulos Christoforos, “Partakers of the Divine Nature,” in Daniel B. Clendenin, ed., Eastern Orthodox Theology: A Contemporary Reader (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 2nd ed., 2003), 184.
[6] T. Ware, Orthodox Church, 231.
[7] Christoforos, “Partakers,” 183.
[8] Clendenin, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, 122-123.
[9] Clendenin, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, 132-133.
[10] Clendenin, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, 124-125.
[11] Clendenin, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, 124.
[12] Clendenin, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, 129.
[13] Clendenin, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, 130.
[14] This will explain why much of Orthodox teaching in the area of the divinization of humanity, and many other mystical topics, is often approached apophatically. What may not be expressible and comprehendible in the positive may be affirmed in the negative. The very nature of theosis as mystery means that final definition is beyond human capacity.
[15] Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995), 232.
[16] K. Ware, The Orthodox Way, 22.
[17] T. Ware, The Orthodox Church, 232.
[18] John Meyendorf, The Orthodox Church: Its Past and Its Role in the World Today (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 4th rev. ed., 1996), 186.
[19] Clendenin, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, 130.
[20] K. Ware, The Orthodox Way, 125.
[21] K. Ware, The Orthodox Way, 23.
[22] K. Ware, The Orthodox Way, 22.
[23] Christoforos, “Partakers,” 184.
[24] Christoforos, “Partakers,” 184.
[25] Clendenin, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, 131.
[26] Lossky, Image and Likeness, 97. Daniel Clendenin, quoting Cyril of Alexandria, notes, however, that this comparison should not be pushed too far. While Christ is human and divine by nature, humanity is called to be divine merely by participation. Clendenin, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, 128.
[27] T. Ware will argue that this very idea of mutual inherence—Christ indwelling humanity and humanity living in God—is at the heart of John’s Gospel and at the heart of what the Apostle Paul refers to when he invokes the term “in Christ.” Ware, The Orthodox Church, 231.
[28] Clendenin, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, 131.
[29] K. Ware, Orthodox Way, 74.
[30] K. Ware, Orthodox Way, 74.
[31] Christoforos, “Partakers,” 184
[32] Vladimir Lossky has asserted that the reason that the idea of theosis may ring strangely in Western ears is that it has been disassociated from the doctrine and heart of soteriology. For Lossky, Anselm was one of the key culprits behind the separation of the doctrine of divinization from the larger doctrine of soteriology. Lossky, Image and Likeness, 99.
[33] T. Ware, The Orthodox Church, 231.
[34] Lossky, Mystical Theology, 155.
[35] T. Ware, The Orthodox Church, 231; Meyendorf, The Orthodox Church, 177.
[36] T. Ware, The Orthodox Church, 231.
[37] “The deification or ?????? of the creature will be realized in its fullness only in the age to come, after the resurrection of the dead.” Lossky, Mystical Theology, 155.
[38] Meyendorf, The Orthodox Church, 177.
[39] In addition, Simpson founded a vibrant publishing company, Christian Publications, which would churn out millions of pages of devotional and theological material authored by Simpson and others (including A. J. Gordon, George Palmer Pardington, and A. W. Tozer). Lastly, as a means of promulgating the Fourfold Gospel and bringing to a close the task of world evangelization, Simpson founded the Missionary Training Institute, now known as Nyack College, which has sent out thousands of graduates into both lay and clerical ministry.
[40] A. B. Simpson, Philippians, 99; cf. A. B. Simpson, Wholly Sanctified, 6.
[41] A. B. Simpson, Peter, John, 57.
[42] A. B. Simpson, Life More Abundantly, 31.
[43] A. B. Simpson, Walking in the Spirit, 7.
[44] A. B. Simpson, Peter, John, 57.
[45] A. B. Simpson, Peter, John, 58; A. B. Simpson, Salvation Sermons, 12.
[46] A. B. Simpson, Walking in the Spirit (Harrisburg, PA: Christian Publications, 193?), 6.
[47] A. B. Simpson, Walking in the Spirit, 8.
[48] A. B. Simpson, The Self Life and The Christ Life, 18; A. B. Simpson, Salvation Sermons, 12.
[49] A. B. Simpson, The Christ Life, 14-15.
[50] A. B. Simpson, The Christ Life, 56.
[51] A. B. Simpson, Wholly Sanctified, 27; A. B. Simpson, In Heavenly Places, 25.
[52] A. B. Simpson, Walking in the Spirit, 9.
[53] A. B. Simpson, The Christ Life, 19.
[54] A. B. Simpson, Walking in the Spirit, 7.
[55] A. B. Simpson, Peter, John, 58.
[56] A. B. Simpson, Walking in the Spirit, 6.
[57] A. B. Simpson, Peter, John, 58.
[58] A. B. Simpson, Walking in the Spirit, 10.
[59] A. B. Simpson, The Christ Life, 25; A. B. Simpson, Philippians, 99; A. B. Simpson, Walking in the Spirit, 8.
[60] A. B. Simpson, Philippians, 99.
[61] A. B. Simpson, Walking in the Spirit, 61.
[62] A. B. Simpson, The Christ Life, 31-32.
[63] A. B. Simpson, The Christ Life, 25.
[64] A. B. Simpson, The Christ Life, 112.
[65] A. B. Simpson, Walking in the Spirit, 7.
[66] A. B. Simpson, The Christ Life, 112.
[67] A. B. Simpson, Walking in the Spirit, 7. “Not by adoption merely are we thus admitted to the Father's house, but by actual birth; from the very bosom of the Holy Ghost, as from a heavenly mother, has our new spirit been born; just as literally as Jesus Christ Himself was born of the eternal Spirit in the bosom of Mary.”
[68] “We are not children of God by virtue of creation. . .but through the new birth, initially, which makes us partakers of the divine nature, and, still more, through our personal union with the Lord Jesus Christ, who so comes into us and dwells in us that we partake of his own relation to the Father, and are children of God, even as He is. This is especially true after we enter into the deeper life of abiding in Christ, and receiving the full baptism of the Holy Ghost.” A. B. Simpson, Wholly Sanctified, 100.
[69] A. B. Simpson, Walking in the Spirit, 7.
[70] A. B. Simpson, The Christ Life, 112.
[71] A. B. Simpson, Walking in the Spirit, 8.
[72] A. B. Simpson, Walking in the Spirit, 8.
[73] A. B. Simpson, Echoes of the New Creation, 39.
[74] A. B. Simpson, Wholly Sanctified, 100.
[75] A. B. Simpson, The Larger Christian Life, 53.
[76] A. B. Simpson, Wholly Sanctified, 39.
[77] A. B. Simpson, Salvation Sermons, 14.
[78] A. B. Simpson, Wholly Sanctified, 36.
[79] A. B. Simpson, The Christ Life, 112.
[80] A. B. Simpson, Life More Abundantly, 24.
[81] A. B. Simpson, The Christ Life, 19.
[82] A. B. Simpson, Walking in the Spirit, 8.
[83] A. B. Simpson, Wholly Sanctified, 81.
[84] A. B. Simpson, Echoes of the New Creation, 39.
[85] A. B. Simpson, Peter, John, 58.
[86] A. B. Simpson, Wholly Sanctified, 73.
[87] A. B. Simpson, Wholly Sanctified, 72.
[88] A. B. Simpson, Wholly Sanctified, 49.
[89] A. B. Simpson, The Present Truth, 51; A. B. Simpson, Echoes of the New Creation, 37. A. B. Simpson calls it a “stupendous mystery,” Walking in the Spirit, 7.
[90] “There is always a little danger of seeing our experience more than the source of that experience, the person and work of the Lord Jesus, we have ever been led to rise above all our experiences and recognize our new and resurrection life wholly in Him, not a fixed and crystallized state but an attitude of constant dependence and abiding so that our holiness is not self constituted but dependent every moment on our union and communion with Him.” A. B. Simpson, “Editorial,” Christian and Missionary Alliance Weekly (June 3, 1899), 8.
[91] For instance, Simpson has no role for sacraments per se in the process of divinization, while they are central in Orthodoxy.
