Deification (Spiritual Ascent)
The lifelong climb toward God's likeness, through prayer, virtue, and grace
Here deification is viewed as a lived spiritual ascent: the gradual transformation of a person into God's likeness through grace, the practice of virtue, and union with him. Drawing on Maximus the Confessor and the Philokalia, it frames the same reality as the doctrine of theosis but in experiential terms, as the goal of the spiritual life. It is central to Eastern Christian spirituality, where traditions place differing emphasis on it.
How it traveled
- Internal ConsolationZwolle · c. 1471 CEexplains
- Seventeen Occasional SermonsNorthampton, Massachusetts · c. 1758 CEexplains
- Five Sermons. On Different OccasionsNorthampton, Massachusetts · c. 1758 CEexplains
Key passages(20)
Each passage is tagged by what it does with the idea: explains it, applies it in practice, redefines it with a new meaning, or challenges it. Relevance shows how directly the passage is about this idea.
Five Sermons. On Different Occasions · Jonathan Edwards
III. The souls of true saints, when absent from the body go to be with Jesus Christ, as they are brought into a most perfect conformity to and union with him. Their spiritual conformity is begun while
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Seventeen Occasional Sermons · Jonathan Edwards
2. They have a foundation of unspeakable comfort and joy, because of their riches. They have true and infinite riches. They are the possessors and heirs of something real and substantial, and that is
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An Invitation to Holy Communion · Thomas à Kempis
O MOST kind, most loving Lord, Whom I now desire to receive with devotion, You know the weakness and the necessity which I suffer, in what great evils and vices I am involved, how often I am depressed
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[741] Happiness of heaven. There is scarce any thing that can be conceived of or expressed, about the degree of the happiness of the saints in heaven, the degree of intimacy, of union, and communion w
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Seven Sermons. On Important Subjects · Jonathan Edwards
2. A godly man prefers God before any thing else that might be in heaven. Not only is there nothing actually in heaven, which is in his esteem equal with God; but neither is there any of which he can
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Seventeen Occasional Sermons · Jonathan Edwards
We never can find any thing here below that shall make us so happy, but that we shall have grief and pleasure mixed together. This world, let us make the best of it, will be spotted with black and whi
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Homilies on Second Corinthians · John Chrysostom
[There are various methods of supplying a nominative to the verb “turn” in this sentence. Calvin makes Moses the subject, as representing the law which when it is directed to Christ causes the veil to
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Internal Consolation · Thomas à Kempis
MY CHILD, when you feel the desire for everlasting happiness poured out upon you from above, and when you long to depart out of the tabernacle of the body that you may contemplate My glory without thr
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On the Soul and the Resurrection · Gregory of Nyssa
There is an anacoluthon here, for τῷ ἀγάθῳ κόλπῳ follows ᾧ above; designed no doubt to bring the things compared more closely together. Oehler, however, would join ἀγάθῳ with the relative, and transla
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Select Orations of Saint Gregory Nazianzen · Gregory of Nazianzus
Oration III. To Those Who Had Invited Him, and Not Come to Receive Him. (About Easter a.d. 362.) I. How slow you are, my friends and brethren, to come to listen to my words, though you were so swif
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The Letters · Basil of Caesarea
Letter CCCLXVI. Introduced by the Ben. with the following preface: “En magni Basilii epistolam, ex prisco codicelxi. f. 324, a me exscriptam quæ olim clarissimis quoque viris Marcianæ bibliothecæ des
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The Twelve Books on the Institutes of the Cœnobia, and the Remedies for the Eight Principal Faults · John Cassian
Ps. ci. (cii.) 7, 8. Is. xxxvii. 25. S. Matt. xxvi. 53. How we too may overcome pride. And so we can escape the snare of this most evil spirit, if in the case of every virtue in which we feel that
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City of God · Augustine of Hippo
Chapter 2.—The Opinion of Plotinus the Platonist Regarding Enlightenment from Above. But with these more estimable philosophers we have no dispute in this matter. For they perceived, and in various f
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Five Sermons. On Different Occasions · Jonathan Edwards
In his diary he writes thus: “September 7, 1747. When I was in great distress of body, my soul desired that God should be glorified. I saw there was no heaven but this. I could not but speak to the by
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Internal Consolation · Thomas à Kempis
NOW again I will speak, Lord, and will not be silent. I will speak to the hearing of my God, my Lord, and my King Who is in heaven. How great, O Lord, is the multitude of Your mercies which You have s
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Narrative of Surprising Conversions · Jonathan Edwards
Many have spoken much of their hearts being drawn out in love to God and Christ; and of their minds being wrapt up in delightful contemplation of the glory and wonderful grace of God, the excellency a
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Narrative of Surprising Conversions · Jonathan Edwards
She often expressed a sense of the glory of God appearing in the trees, the growth of the fields, and other works of God’s hands. She told her sister who lived near the heart of the town, that she onc
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On the Making of Man · Gregory of Nyssa
26. So too one might suppose of the heart, that it is itself like some safe house fitted with the most solid defences, fortified by the enclosing walls of the bones round about; for in rear there is t
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On the Morals of the Catholic Church · Augustine of Hippo
Chapter 22.—Fortitude Comes from the Love of God. 40. On fortitude we must be brief. The love, then, of which we speak, which ought with all sanctity to burn in desire for God, is called temperance,
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The Conferences of John Cassian. Part I. Containing Conferences I-X · John Cassian
Cf. S. Luke vii. 47. Of the kinds of prayer to which we ought to direct ourselves. Yet we ought by advancing in life and attaining to virtue to aim rather at those kinds of prayer which are poured f
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