This past Sunday afternoon I re-read Jonathan Jacob’s thoughtful paper “An Eastern Orthodox conception of theosis and human nature.” In his paper Jacobs advances the thesis that “God is—or, properly speaking, the divine energies are—metaphysically built into the structure of true human nature.” Jacobs understands this thesis as a metaphysical or ontological claim. “Just as the body is literally a metaphysical component of a fully human person,” he writes, “so too those who accept the Eastern conception of theosis outlined above should think that the divine energies are literally a metaphysical component of a fully human person.”
Maybe it’s just me, but I find this a provocative thesis. It just doesn’t feel like this is the best way to put formulate theosis, but heck if I can explain why. I think my unease has something to do with the idea of God as being a “component” of anything he has made ex nihilo. If God (or if one prefers, the divine energies) are constitutive of human nature, then does that mean that when I attempt to offer a definition of human nature, I need to include God within it? This sounds to me like a confusion of nature and grace.
But it simply may be that the Orthodox conception of deification resists all theological formulations (as all divine mysteries do). When I speak of theosis, I use phrases like “maximal union of the divine and human” and “the interpenetration of divinity and humanity,” neither of which illuminates much of anything, I suppose.
This is all quite minor, perhaps even trivial; but it’s needling at me. Can anyone help me out there?
Eclectic Orthodoxy 
This does seem problematic, though compelling. Perhaps the problem is confusing telos and essence. It is our proper end to partake of the divine nature through the divine energies, but that does not make the latter a constituent part of our nature.
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Well, I haven’t read the paper and I am at work, so I can’t look at it now. I will just offer a quick thought based on the blog post. First, tangentially, I have read various different views of the divine energies from Orthodox thinkers. They don’t all seem to agree and I do not have an entirely clear sense of the teaching.
Regardless, it seems to me there is some ambiguity in “metaphysically built into the structure of human nature.” Maybe the article clarifies this. Jacob’s assertion reminds me of the thought of Henri de Lubac. De Lubac initially got into a lot of trouble when he published Surnaturel. His central claim in that work was that human beings have a single, interior telos directed towards a supernatural end. While outside the natural powers of will and intellect, human nature can only fulfill itself and flourish by union with God.
I personally accept de Lubac’s view. Luigi Guissani has outlined similar ideas in his book, The Religious Sense. In this understanding, Jesus Christ shows us what a human being is. We are all imperfect anticipations of human nature, rather than exemplars. So, is the essence what we experience now or what we are eschatologically called to be? If the former, one would have to semantically stress telos, though if one considers the matter in light of eternal realities, one may very well be able to use essence.
From my reading of patristics and modern exponents like Bulgakov, Balthasar, and others, I don’t think this is a particularly eccentric view, though it was often lost in modernity and is coming back in some “post-modern” theologies.
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Thanks for mentioning DeLubac, for I immediately thought of him when I read Jacob’s article (though all I know about DeLubac is what I have read about him). I know that the book you cited generated great theological debate in RC theological circles.
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While I haven’t thought about this along the lines of the Jacobs article, I didn’t have the same qualm. While it would be problematic (at best) to say that the God’s essence is a component of a human being, I don’t find the idea of his energies being a constituent element of human being problematic. Is this fundamentally all that different from Rahner’s notion of the supernatural existential, the idea that God’s grace (we would say energies) has become a constituitive pat of the human person?
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You seem to be assuming I believe a number of things that I don’t believe and didn’t say! Humans are created, but the Genesis account distinguishes humans from the rest of creation. Unlike the latter, which are simply called into being, God has created us in his image, and is said to have breathed into us something of his own breath (Gen 2.7). I understand the patristic teaching to be that human nature is “itself an energy (energeia) that [was] sent out by God for the purpose of lifting the very nature of mankind into a transcendence of itself in communion with the deity.” We were created for theosis; it is not an afterthought.
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Than what did you tought under:
I understood that you dont have problems with implication that Divine energies are being constituent element of Human nature. If you did not claim so, my sincere apologies, but you had to admit you did not pick right words. If my reading is correct… its precisely what I commented. Divine energies are not created, so they cant be constituent element of human nature. Human person is ataining theosis not human nature. But not even human Person coud not participate in Divine Nature. It could being exposed to manfestation of Divine, ie Energy.
Two quick notions.
1) Human nature is creation. Divine energies are not created. Wording “Energy sent by God” suggest Divine energy. Anyway in Theological Grammar of Capadocian fathers, as fr Aidan love to call it, nature and energy are distinct terms.
2) Human nature cant reach transcedence of God. Theosis is about human person living in manner of Uncreated, despite being created by nature. Its about overcoming restrictions of nature.
Of course, it is patristic teaching that we created for theosis.
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I also have not read the article (I’m about to, and may comment further once I have), but here is my initial response:
That view sure would clear up the Chalcedonian/miaphysite disagreement in a hurry, and in full compliance with Nicea.
It would also explain the pronoun shift in Gen. 1:27. “God created The Man in His own image. In the image of God created He HIM; male and female created He THEM.” (Emphasis mine) The “him” here would refer to “The Man, Christ Jesus”.
Granted, this would give Arius some extra ammunition at first, but nothing that couldn’t be thoroughly integrated into (or rather shown to already be integrated into) the Orthodox Christology, by the understanding that the human nature of Christ was indeed a created nature.
God transcends even His own uncreatedness.
Just my very impromptu, potentially heretical (and so not held very tightly at all) thoughts. Lord, forgive me and instruct me.
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Let me throw into the mix this quote from St Maximus: “The grace of theosis finds no faculty or capacity within nature that could receive it, for if it did it would no longer be grace” (Amb. 20).
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To me, This is easily understood (to me) in the hand/glove analogy. The glove has no faculty or capacity on it’s own. It is limp, and lifeless. But it is still precisely designed to receive the hand, and is not considered anything unless the hand fills it and uses it. In fact, even then it is not considered anything, but is given the name of the Hand — or rather, of the Person whose hand it is (here’s where the analogy begins to break down, as all analogies do; but I think the point is clear).
We do not say “the glove picked up the golf ball”, but rather, “Steve” (who happens to be wearing a golf glove) picked up the golf ball. And so it one Person, with two natures: human and glove.
Granted, things get a little more complicated when you give the glove a will, cognition, etc. of it’s own. But it’s an analogy, y’all.
What do you think?
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Further thoughts…
If He is “the exact imprint [Gr. “χαρακτὴρ” — that is, the inverted space left after a seal is placed in wax or some other substance] of His [the Father’s] person [hypostasis]”, then it’s actually quite easy to understand. Human nature is, apparently, expressly designed as the “imprint” of the divine nature, to fit like a glove over the hand of the divine nature. These two natures are united in each Person.
We say Christ is “God by nature” BECAUSE He started out as a Person (a localization of the divine nature in communion), and united human nature to Himself.
Whereas we say we become “gods by grace” BECAUSE we start out as potential (but not yet) Persons with a human nature (that is, as concrete and discreet biological expressions of the human nature, but not yet in communion with each other or the divine), and unite ourselves (or rather, allow ourselves to be united) to the divine nature, thus _becoming_ Persons.
The divine energies are the divine nature in action toward/within creation, and so, because we are created, this is called “grace”. Even in Jesus Christ, it is referred to, from His human perspective, as “grace” in several places, and it is by this same grace — that is, by this same participation in the divine nature — that we are saved. Just as “the child grew, and waxed strong in Spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.”
The reason we do not say that Jesus was “saved” is precisely this: that he never turned away from His telos. He never sinned, and thus never needed to be saved. Rather, because He started out as the divine Word, it is He who BRINGS the grace, and “of His grace we have received”, and so He saves us, because we HAD fallen away.
We are not really Men without the participation in the divine nature. This is why He prayed,
“That they all may be one; as You, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us….And the glory which you gave me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and You in me, that they may be made perfect [that is, complete, finished] in one;”
Until then, we are children. And if we turn away, we cease being men and become beasts or demons (depending on the particulars of our individual sins), and either fade away are are no more (as the beasts), or are thrown in the hellfire prepared for the demons.
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Hello, Fr Aidin,
Jacob’s claim that inherent (natural?) theosis became impossible because sin entered the human realm (p.8) is troubling. It does not readily align with the mission of Christ as “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8).
I think of theosis as Spirit-perfected communion/togetherness with God in Christ. Theosis is the love-filled, divine deliverable in God’s “project plan” of gifting salvation in Christ through the Spirit. The freeing, enabling Holy Spirit:
• bonds believers to belong to the Lord Jesus and his oneness with the Father
• births believers into the new-covenant people of God, equipping his adoptive children with resurrection life
• bestows holiness to the new covenant people as the extended, living temple of God
• bends/conforms/transforms believers to the image of God in Christ
• bequeaths perfecting, imperishable participation/togetherness/sobornost with God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
Any ontological change from mortal human beings to immortal children of God derives from belonging to the Lord Jesus Christ as the pioneer/bringer of salvation.
–John
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Maybe bit of Orthodox Scholastic could help. 🙂 I am aware of irony in using scholastic approach about teaching on Divine energies. Valaam was Scholastic, Saint Gregory Palamas not. 🙂
If we put it scholastically, Theosis is about “men becoming gods”, to paraphrase Saint Athanasius of Alexandria. We could become gods only by Divine Grace (Greek: χάρισμα). Any kind of transformation which include ontological change of our Nature is unthinkable in Patristic thought. So, put simply Jacobs missed about everything. According to Palamas we are having Communion with Divine nature, through uncreated Divine energies, (for Aquinas tough, God is Actus Purus, this implies energy=essence, since Greek ἐνέργεια correspond to Latin actus). There is unbridgeable ontological gap between creation and Creator.
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Another quote to throw into the mix, from Cyril of Alexandria’s commentary on John:
“The Son, by his authority, gives what belongs to him alone by nature and sets it forth as a common possession…. We who bore the image of the earthly man could not escape corruption unless the call to sonship placed in us the splendour of the image of the heavenly man. We became participants in him through the Spirit. We were sealed into his likeness…. Once we recover the ancient beauty of our nature in this way and are refashioned in relation to the divine nature, we will be superior to the evils that befell us because of transgression. Therefore we rise up to an honour that is above our nature because of Christ. However, we will not be sons of God unchangeably like he is, but we will be sons of God in relation to him by the grace of imitation. He is the true Son existing from the Father, but we are adopted because of his love for humanity, and we receive as a share in grace the words, ‘I said, You are gods, and you are all sons of the Most High’…. Being something by nature is different from being something by adoption, and being something truly is different from being something by imitation. We are called sons by adoption and by imitation.”
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Eh, I misspelled here. I wanted to say having “communion with Divine nature”-
I think it could be helpfull to add few reflections.
Communion of Divine nature paraphrase on 2Pet 1:4. “ἵνα διὰ τούτων γένησθε θείας κοινωνοὶ φύσεως” -“that through these you may be partakers (literary communicants) of the Divine Nature. But, according to Apostle Paul, God is unaproachable
1Tim 6:16:
“ὁ μόνος ἔχων ἀθανασίαν, φῶς οἰκῶν ἀπρόσιτον,” -“Who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light,”
So how to reconcile this two? Answer is in distinction ofdistinction of Energies and Essence. We cannot become participants of Divine Nature, which is impossible in Biblical terms. But God is manifested to world through His actions. Hesychasts were seeing Tabor light, after their prayers, and we believe, they here saw Divine Energies.
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I re-read Jacob’s article. Although he is citing Orthodox theologians, and even tough he is making statements which should prevent troubling implications.
Cf: “If human nature were literally changed, it would no longer be human nature”.
There are other which do provoke problematic implications Cf: ” The transformation of each of our own natures is accomplished in the sacrament of baptism…” There are other such examples. Basic logic would suggest he has proper understanding of Orthodox theology, but here and there he use unfortunate analogies and formulas.
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You (ddpbf) speak of human “nature” as if there was a human “nature” out there bereft of God’s grace, that is completely foreign to God’s grace. But the patristic witness is that, despite the difference between the Creator and creature, there is also a fundamental commonality. As Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev writes, “Although a material or earthly being, Adam received a divine principle, a pledge of his communion with the Godhead…. Human beings partake of the divine nature by the very act of creation and we are thereby utterly different from other living beings…” (The Mystery of Christ). He goes on to cite Archimandrite Sophrony, “Between God and man there must be commensurability in spite of all that is non-commensurable….” And St Gregory the Theologian when he says that each of us is “a created God.” St Gregory says elsewhere, “As a creature of earth I am attached to earthly life, but being also a particle of the divine, I bear in my heart the desire the life to come.” So human nature, from the beginning, has a divine element. That becomes even more the case with the Incarnation, by which Christ changed our human nature by uniting it for all time to our human nature. That nature is further changed, indeed regenerated, by the Mystery of Baptism. And, of course, our theosis is a change in our nature, as our participation in God is ontological. So I cannot understand how you can claim that an ontological change in human nature is unthinkable in patristic thought!
I believe that Prof. Jacobs can say, as I did earlier, that God’s energies are part of what makes us human, without entailing any of the false conclusions you inferred. It is a way of articulating the element of the divine within us, God’s energies by which we were created. This was my point in referencing Rahner’s notion of the supernatural existential — our capacity for God, our orientation to God, our design as creatures meant to become gods, is built into human nature (what he meant by ‘existential’). But this is itself a gift of God, which is what Rahner meant by the qualifier ‘supernatural.’
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Eh? First nature can not be thinked about without person bearing it. That’s patrisitic.
Second, I am troubled by line from Jacobs’ essey, fr Aidan underlined. I did read entire essay, and generaly speaking, Jacobs do present Orthodox position, but I find that on few places there are statements which sound wierd. Of course this could be me readign them out of context.
Anyway, yes there is commonality, as you call it. There is patristic teaching about man being created “in image and likeness of God” This “in likeness” is understood as potency, what man could become by developing his image. Saint Maximus wrote in his responses to Thalassios:
“In image of God in begining, man was created, so that in his free spirit by everything he would become and recieved likeness by upholding Divine commandment given to him, so that very man as creation of God by creation, in spirit would become son of God and God by grace” (Peri diaphoron aporion PG, 91 1345 D). Sorry for my bad translation.
Theosis is, by teaching of Saint Maximus, in domain of likeness, not in domain of our nature. Its something potentialy given to humankind. “Image of God” is given in nature, “in likeness” is soemthing we should fulify. Jacobs do not mention this fine disctinction, despite being inspired by Maximus, as somebody noticed earlier. Saint Maximus was quite cnsistent and resolute in underlineing this difference.
I dont think he said so.
Anyway, Divine energies are how God is manfisted to world. Again by Saint Maximus, all created beings are cmmuning with Divine energies, and thus recieving existance. It’s interaction of Creator and creation. In vocabulary of Dogmatic, what makes us human is human nature, which is created. Finding uncreated Dvine energies as constituent part of human nature is problematic. Entire theosis is about overcoming of restrictions, borders of Human nature, and becoming god by Grace (and grace is Divine energy).
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PS,
fr Lev, I do not imply what are you believing, I am just concerned over implications of your words. You are probably, aware of fact that dogmatic constitutions of Ecumenical councils were called oros (border) of faith. Just bear in mind problem of schism between Eastern Orthodoxy and Pre-Chacedonian Churches, which largely arose of semantics. As theologians, we are called to be precise in ur definitions. Jacobs is philosopher, not theologian and could be excused. But you and me are not. 🙂
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I think Jacobs can be understood the way Fr. Lev is explaining above, and I hope that is what Jacobs is intending to say. But I also think Jacobs’ choice of words opens the way for misinterpretation and are therefore somewhat unfortunate, so ddpbf’s concerns (and Fr. Aidan’s) merit our attention. There are maybe dozens of passages in St. Maximus’ writings that can be brought to bear on these questions, but I hope nobody will mind my quoting a couple of them here. I think they speak to this quite well:
Just as it is impossible for the eye to perceive sensible objects without the light of the sun, so the human intellect cannot engage in spiritual contemplation without the light of the Spirit. For physical light naturally illuminates the senses so that they may perceive physical bodies; while spiritual light illumines the intellect so that it can engage in contemplation and thus grasp what lies beyond the senses.
The faculties which search out divine realities were implanted by the Creator in the essence of human nature at its very entrance into being; but divine realities themselves are revealed to man through grace by the power of the Holy Spirit descending upon him. When, as a result of the fall, the devil had riveted the attention of these faculties to visible things, nobody understood or sought out God, because in all who participated in human nature intellect and intelligence were confined to the superficial aspects of sensible things, and so they acquired no understanding of what lies beyond the senses. But then, in those who had not of their own free will become inwardly subject to deceit, the grace of the Holy Spirit broke the attachment of these faculties to material things and thus restored them to their original state. On receiving them back thus purified, men again sought out divine realities, and they have continued to search them out through the same grace of the Holy Spirit.
The soul’s salvation is the consummation of faith. This consummation is the revelation of what has been believed. Revelation is the inexpressible interpenetration of the believer with the object of belief and takes place according to each believer’s degree of faith. Through that interpenetration the believer finally returns to his origin. This return is the fulfillment of desire. Fulfillment of desire is ever-active repose in the object of desire. Such repose is eternal uninterrupted enjoyment of this object. Enjoyment of this kind entails participation in supra natural divine realities. This participation consists in the participant becoming like that in which he participates. Such likeness involves, so far as this is possible, an identity with respect to energy between the participant and that in which he participates by virtue of the likeness. This identity with respect to energy constitutes the deification of the saints. Deification, briefly, is the encompassing and fulfillment of all times and ages, and of all that exists in either. This encompassing and fulfillment is the union in the person granted salvation, of his real authentic origin with his real authentic consummation. This union presupposes a transcending of all that by nature is essentially limited by an origin and a consummation. Such transcendence is effected by the almighty and more than powerful energy of God, acting in a direct an infinite manner in the person found worthy of this transcendence. The action of this divine energy bestows a more than ineffable pleasure and joy on him in whom the unutterable and unfathomable union with the divine is accomplished. This, in the nature of things, cannot be perceived, conceived or expressed.
Nature does not contain the inner principles of what is beyond nature any more than it contains the laws of what is contrary to nature. By what is beyond nature I mean the divine and inconceivable pleasure which God naturally produces in those found worthy of being united with Him through grace. By what is contrary to nature I mean the indescribable pain brought about by the privation of such pleasure. This pain God naturally produces in the unworthy when He is united to them in a manner contrary to grace. For God is united with all men according to the underlying quality of their inner state; and, at the creation of each person, He provides each person with the capacity to perceive and sense Him when He is united in one way or another with all men at the end of the ages.
Philokalia, Fourth Century of Various Texts, 17-20
The principle of active accomplishment is one thing and of passive suffering is another. The principle of active accomplishment signifies the natural capacity for actualizing the virtues. The principle of passive suffering signifies experiencing either the grace of what is beyond nature or the occurrence of what is contrary to nature. For just as we do not have a natural capacity for what is above being, so we do not by nature have a capacity for what lacks being. Thus we passively experience deification by grace as something which is above nature, but we do not actively accomplish it; for by nature we do not have the capacity to attain deification. Again, we suffer evil as something contrary to nature which occurs in the will; for we do not have a natural capacity for generating evil. Thus while we are in our present state we can actively accomplish the virtues by nature, since we have a natural capacity for accomplishing them. But, when raised to a higher level, we experience deification passively, receiving this experience as a free gift of grace.
We accomplish things actively in so far as our intelligence, whose natural task is to accomplish the virtues, is active within us, and in so far as there is also active within us our intellect, which is capable of receiving unconditionally all spiritual knowledge, of transcending the entire nature of created beings and all that is known, and of leaving all ages behind it. We experience things passively when, having completely transcended the inner essences of create beings, we com in a manner which is beyond conception to the Cause itself f created beings, and there suspend the activity of our powers, together with all that is by nature finite.Then we become something that is in no sense an achievement of our natural capacities, since nature does not possess the power to grasp what transcends nature. For created things are not by nature able to accomplish deification since they cannot grasp God. To bestow a consonant measure of deification on created beings is within the power of divine grace alone. Grace irradiates nature with a supra-natural light and by the transcendence of its glory raises nature above its natural limits.
Philokalia, First Century of Various Texts, 75-76
For it is the most perfect work of love and the goal of its activity, to contrive through the mutual exchange of what is related that the names and properties of those that have been united through love should be fitting to each other. So the human being is made God, and God is called and appears as human, because of the one and undeviating wish (in accordance with the will) and movement of both, as we find in the case of Abraham and the other saints. And this is perhaps what is meant when it is said in the person of God, “I have been likened in the hands of the prophets” (Hos. 11 LXX): God takes form in each, through his great love for humankind, out of the virtue that is present in each through the ascetic struggle. For the “hand” of each just man; that is his ascetic struggle in accordance with virtue, in which and through which God receives his likeness to human beings.
Letter 2 (On Love)
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Oops. There are a few typos in those quotes, one of which is worth correcting. Where it says: “Thus we passively experience deification by grace as something which is able nature …” It should say “above nature.”
I think the simplest way to put things here is to say that human beings were created to be united with the Holy Spirit and share in the divine energies, but that this union, this “acquisition of the Holy Spirit” is not exactly “constitutive” of man but it is man’s “natural” mode of being.
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I don’t find anything particularly novel about Jacobs thesis. It looks like Maximus to me. What he describes is what my understanding of theosis within Orthodox has always been. The ‘logoi’ of created beings are ‘uncreated’.
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Fr Aidan: If God (or if one prefers, the divine energies) are constitutive of human nature, then does that mean that when I attempt to offer a definition of human nature, I need to include God within it? This sounds to me like a confusion of nature and grace.
Tom: What I think it means is that until you’ve said what God is doing (as present: creating, sustaining, drawing, defining, etc.) in human nature (or any created entity for that matter), you haven’t ‘defined’ human nature (i.e., stated what the truth of our being/existence is). If our ‘definition’ is the whole truth about us, then God can’t be excluded from the definition of anything (though this does not mean created realities exhaust all that God is of course).
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My hesitation is my own present struggles with the concept of divine energies. I was listening to a David Hart lecture and during the question & answer time afterwards one question evoked this response on his part:
“It’s Pseudo-Dionysius and not Thomas who first speaks of ‘analogy’ as being the proper form [of discourse about God]. It’s not until the late medieval…not even Palamas…because I don’t think he knew what he was talking about. To be honest, he was not a metaphysical thinker. When he talks about this distinction between energies and essence I just think it falls apart again and again. It’s the 20th century interpreters like Lossky who have turned it into something closer to Neo-Platonism in its unchristianized form. In Palamas you have this phrase, ‘There are in God three things—the essence, the persons and the energies’. That sounds awfully like the One, the Nous and Psyche to me [i.e., Plotinus]. I generally think that whole [Palamite] tradition is very confused; not genuine apophaticism. I think it’s nonsense.”
Ouch.
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One last thought, Fr Aidan. As I understand Jacob, his argument describes precisely what it is about us (i.e. God truly and inseparably present with/in us) that explain what I tried earlier to describe as the reason why our ultimate ruination via irrevocable solidification into evil is metaphysically impossible. The Meyendorff quote at the bottom of p. 12 expresses it. Human nature is irrevocably–Jacob would add “defintiionally”–“open” to God from the inside, not in spite of what it is, but by virtue of what it is.
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Hart’s analysis there seems awfully cavalier and, while I think he’s a brilliant thinker, it almost appears that other theological preoccupations may have gotten in the way of him giving Palamas his due. I wonder if he winces during the services for the second Sunday of Lent.
But I think Palamas clarifies along the way that the essence-energy distinction is more a conceptual one than an absolute (it seems that a lot of people seem to think of the distinction in quasi-physical ways), almost to the point of saying that they are indistinct in reality but that we must make the distinction because of the names we give to what God does but we acknowledge that none of those names are the essence. If I have not mangled Palamas’ thought too much with my oversimplification, then I don’t see how Hart’s contention that it is not true apophaticism can be accurate.
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Looking for something else in Palamas, I found this, which perhaps responds to something other than what Jacobs is saying, but which nevertheless is interesting for this thread:
“You claim that the grace of deification is a natural state, that is , the activity and manifestation of a natural power. Without realizing it, you are falling into the error of the Messalians, for the deified man would necessarily be God by nature, if deification depended on our natural powers, and was included among the laws of nature! … But know that the face of deification transcends every natural relationship and there does not exist in nature ‘any faculty capable of receiving it.’
“For if it were no longer a grace, but a manifestation of the energy which appertaining to natural power, there would be nothing absurd in holding hat deification occurred according to the measure of the receptive power of nature. Deification would then be a work of nature, not a gift of God, and the deified man would be god by nature and receive the name of ‘God’ in the proper sense. For the natural power of each thing is simply the continuous activation of nature. But in that case, I cannot understand why deification should cause a man to go out from himself, if it is subject to the laws of nature.
“The grace of deification thus transcends nature, virtue and knowledge, and (as St. Maximus says) ‘all these things are inferior to it’. Every virtue and imitation of God on our part indeed prepares those who practice them for divine union, but the mysterious union itself is effected by grace. It is through grace that ‘the entire Divinity comes to dwell in fulness in those deemed worthy’, and all the saints in their entire being dwell in God, receiving God in His wholeness, and gaining no other reward for their ascent to Him than God Himself. ‘He is conjoined to them as a soul is to its body, to its own limbs’; judging it right to dwell in believers by the authentic adoption, according to the gift and grace of the Holy Spirit. So, when you hear that God dwells in us through the virtues, or that by means of the memory He comes to be established in us, do not imagine that deification is simply he possession of the virtues; but rather that it resides in he radiance and grace of God, which really comes to us through the virtues. …
Triads III:26-37
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A quotation from John Meyendorff: “In virtue of the simplicity of His being, God is wholly and entirely present both in His essence and in His energies” (St Gregory Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality, p. 122)
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Another citation from Palamas:
“Goodness is not one part of God, Wisdom another, and Majesty or Providence still another; God is wholly Goodness, wholly Wisdom, wholly Providence and wholly Majesty; for He is one, without any division into parts, but, possessing in Himself each of these energies, He reveals Himself wholly in each by His presence and His action in a unified, simple and undivided fashion” (Dialogue of an Orthodox and a Barlaamite” [quoted by Meyendorff].
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I think the talking past each other is mostly due to equivocation over the term ‘nature.’ I take the following propositions to be uncontroversial, and to be perfectly Orthodox.
(1) Orthodoxy does not believe in a ‘pure’ human nature. Such a nature is a purely theoretical construct, as we were created in the beginning through the divine energies and have thus always had an element of the divine in us. There has never been a human being created apart from God’s energies, so no human being has ever been ‘purely’ human or had a human nature without a constituent element of divinity. As the old saying goes, “Homo non proprie humanum, sed superhumanum est.” From the beginning, by God’s energies, we have been more than simply human.
(2) Our theosis is always at God’s initiative, and cannot be accomplished by our own efforts. So even though we have this divine element in us from creation, it is insufficient to achieve theosis.
(3) This graced nature undergoes a change when, in the Incarnation, Christ united our already graced nature permanently to his divine nature.
(4) This graced nature that has been united to Christ’s divine nature undergoes a change when it undergoes the Mysteries of Christian initiation (baptism, chrismation, and communion).
(5) By the grace of God and our cooperation with it, our graced nature that has been united to Christ in the Incarnation, that has become a part of his Body through baptism, that received the Holy Spirit through chrismation, and that has received and continues to receive the Mystery of Christ’s Body and Blood, will be thoroughly divinized.
What Jacobs does in his article is to make (1) more explicit by saying
(6) The divine element that is a constituent element of our graced nature is nothing other than divine energy.
It seems to me that an Orthodox Christian ought not to reject (6), as said rejection entails either
(7) The divine element of our graced nature is divine essence.
or
(8) There is no divine element in our nature.
As I understand the Church Fathers I cited earlier, they, the Orthodox Church, Jacobs and I, all reject both (7) and (8).
Professor Jacobs is a careful philosopher, and an Orthodox one at that. He has nonetheless been misunderstood, as have I. So if this thread is to continue, it would be good to know precisely which numbered proposition above is being disputed.
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Hello, Fr Lev,
I fully agree with your propositions (1) and (2).
Given that there is no pure human nature apart from what takes particular expression in each person, I would appreciate your elaborating on proposition (3) in respect to “already graced nature” and the Incarnation.
Are you saying some universal change occurred to (graced) human nature beyond what Irenaeus taught: “Lord Jesus Christ . . . became what we are, so that he might bring us to be even what he is in himself”?
To help you frame a response to me, may I say that I prefer (over graced nature) the particularization of ego replacement that the Apostle Paul expressed in Galatians 2:19b–20, which is co-crucifixion and co-resurrection with Christ:
• Christ absorbed Paul’s “no longer I” (self-serving ego) into his self-giving atoning death on the cross (see also Romans 6:6)
• The “now living I” is the resurrection life believers share with the risen Christ (see also Romans 6:8, 11; Galatians 3:27; Colossians 3:10)
I am not suggesting that graced nature lacks teaching value. My concern is that it lingers on an anthropological plane. Those who are becoming molded through the Spirit into the image of God are putting on a new self—taking on the identity of the crucified-risen-and-exalted Lord Jesus Christ.
Theosis is grounded upon the reality of our new life in Christ through the Spirit rather than human nature itself. You might appreciate John Barclay’s recent (2013) comment:
“[T]his new life is not in the first place an anthropological phenomenon: it is experienced by human beings only inasmuch as they share in, and draw from, a life whose source lies outside of themselves, the life of the risen Christ. Their identity is re-centered, since their life is now wholly dependent on the life of Another, the One who is risen from the dead.”
Thank you for helping me understand proposition (3) more completely.
–John
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Just few reflections. Please, this was not meant as questionin yours, or professor Jackob’s Orthodoxy. 🙂 Again I apologize if my previous comments gave such impression.
True that pure human nature is theoretical construct. But Dogmatics are pure theory after all. 🙂 Yes Capadocians wrote about that. There is no naked essence without person who carry it. Hypostasis is in their vocabulary – (carier of) existance. Their revoulution in Theology and philosophy is in shifting discourse. Person is existance, being. Not nature. How something is, or mre precisely who is, is more importnant than how it is in itself. Also, if I remmber well, Saint Maximus wrote that all beings are communing with Divine energies not just God. I do not contradict 1) just i am bit troubled, about Ontological implications. And when professor Jacobs use adjective methapisical, he should bear in mind, many people, not just laics, but philsophers and theologians, do not hold metaphyisics and ontology as different fields. 🙂
I agree with this but in my understanding it is: Our graced nature is our created nature transformed on personal level trough communion with Life Giver. And I would absolutley and necessary avoid constituent. I think better way would be to say associate. God is source of our existance. He is manifiested to world, through Divine energies. Trough this manifestation we are drawing our existance from Him, source of Life. Yett, if we define nature man as, what is man by itself in itself, we ought to avoid constituent. Of course, its about implications of context. I dont think either you or professor Jacobs tought that Divine enrgies are constituent part of our Nature in latter sense (eg Divine energies being constutent part of what is man by defintion, in itself and by itself). Of course it could be my guilt, since I am trained on University, to whn I read nature I am immediatly thinking about nature as answer to question “what is something by itself in itself”.
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I would say that Orthodox dogmatic theology isn’t about “pure theory,” of course! And I have difficulty talking about human nature “by itself in itself” if by that one means to exclude anything divine. Such a human nature has never existed. Human beings would never have existed without the divine energies, much less the human nature we have that was created in the image of God, containing the Spirit of God. Neither the Church Fathers nor even the medieval scholastics ever imagined such a thing — it isn’t until the 15th century that some Western theologians start thinking that way.
Someone mentioned St Maximus the Confessor earlier. I ran across the following in the article “Hierarchic Anthro[pology of Saint Maximus the Confessor” by the hieromonks Kyrill and Methody Zinkovskiy.
“On its highest level the hierarchical nature of the human includes in itself the uncreated Divine energies. These hierarchically related divine logoi define the hierarchical organization of a human, support his existence on the level of the lowest nature (both of the soul and of the body). At the same time logoi enlighten the higher levels of the human – his mind and hypostasis (personality) and enrich them by the partaking of the uncreated divine energies which provide these higher parts with the power of hierarchical harmonic supremacy over the human nature.”
.
Click to access Hieromonks-Zinkovskiy-Hierarchic-Anthropology.pdf
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But father, just few lines before your quote, fathers Kyrill and Methody wrote:
“However, the highest part that doesn’t belong to the human, but that is vital for the harmony of his nature, is the gift of uncreated Divine energies.” 🙂
Why I am uncomfortable with speaking about Divine energies being talked as constituent part of our Nature is:
1) It implies Neo-Platonism
2) It implies pantheism.
I am not trying to correct you or dr Jacobs. Just there is language which makes me bit uncomfortable. It could be Zizoulas in me. (If I understood his dogmatic proeprly it is) 🙂
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Finish the paragraph you mention — “This can be seen as an additional aspect of the hierachical organization of the human as in this hierarchy one can see the supernatural part which is closely related through the perichoresis to the other parts of his nature.” It doesn’t “belong” to the human in the sense that it is the gift of God, but it is also part of his nature (as a gift), which is why they write it is related to the “other parts of his nature.”
This Orthodox view does not imply either Neo-Platonism or pantheism. I don’t think we are making any headway on this, so I will be happy to drop it.
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ddpbf,
When you say, “Our graced nature is our created nature transformed on personal level t[h]rough communion with Life Giver,” when does this transformation occur?
If I understand Paul correctly, divine transformation commences when a faithing person is co-crucified with Christ—becomes baptized into his death (Galatians 2:19; Romans 6:4).
“Living by the Spirit” (Romans 8:9) is another way of expressing the transfer from “vessels of wrath” to “vessels of mercy” (Romans 9:22–23).
If God in Christ has graced nature in an individual through the transforming agency of the Holy Spirit, would it not be more accurate to say that God has graced the particular person holistically rather than primarily her/his nature? Believers are persons in communion with God in Christ, not simply graced natures.
–John
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When we live in Church 🙂 We have trajectory man-man-God. Not “Christ as my personal Saviour”. That’s my understanding of Orthodox Theology.
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ddpbf,
When you say, “Our graced nature is our created nature transformed on personal level t[h]rough communion with Life Giver,” when does this transformation occur?
If I understand Paul correctly, divine transformation commences when a faithing person is co-crucified with Christ—becomes baptized into his death (Galatians 2:19; Romans 6:4).
“Living by the Spirit” (Romans 8:9) is another way of expressing the transfer from “vessels of wrath” to “vessels of mercy” (Romans 9:22–23).
If God in Christ has graced nature in an individual through the transforming agency of the Holy Spirit, would it not be more accurate to say that God has graced the particular person holistically rather than primarily her/his nature? Believers are persons in communion with God in Christ, not simply graced natures.
–John
ddpbf
Paul says the faithful are baptized into one body “in one Spirit” and “drink of one Spirit”(1 Corinthians 12:13). Edification certainly occurs within the Body/Temple/Church as a collective entity. Paul also deals with the personal aspect of faithing into Christ—becoming bonded to the Lord Jesus through the Spirit. Those faithing into Christ constitute the Temple of God in a plural sense (1 Corinthians 3:16) as well as personally (1 Corinthians 6:19). Excluding the personal dimension shortchanges the collective qualities of togetherness.
In part because of the Spirit’s “with-ness” and “in-ness”, the body of Christ in relation to salvation is simultaneously personal and ecclesial. Unless each believing person belongs to God in Christ, the Church cannot truly be transformative.
I would appreciate your explaining more of what you mean by man-man-God. I would expect that grace embodied in the incarnate-crucified-risen Christ implies a downward movement from divinity to humanity before an upward response from faithing believers to God in Christ through the Spirit would be possible.
Thanks kindly for sharing, ddpbf.
–John
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I think some of the confusion can be cleared up by attending to this excerpt from Jacobs: “I propose that we think of the relationship between the human person
and divine energies similar to the way that the hylomorphist thinks of the
relationship between the human person and her body. Just as the body is
literally a metaphysical component of a fully human person, so too those who
accept the Eastern conception of theosis outlined above should think that
the divine energies are literally a metaphysical component of a FULLY human
person. But just as the human person can perhaps exist in an incomplete
manner apart from her body on the hylomorphist conception, so too a human
person can exist in an incomplete manner apart from union with God.” [emphasis added]
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This is a great discussion and very helpful. I keep mulling the topic over and over in my mind, but have not yet achieved enlightenment. 🙂
Let me try this: Substitute “Holy Spirit” for divine energies. Are you comfortable thinking of the Holy Spirit as a “metaphysical component” of human nature? I’m sure not. I’m not comfortable thinking of God as being a component of any created being. This language intimates, at least in my mind, a confusion of nature and grace.
Part of the problem here may simply be the impersonal connotation of the word “energies.” It invites us to reify the reality of God. We just can’t help ourselves. I think of energy and I immediately think of electric current or perhaps the Force. Met John Zizioulas has raised this concern somewhere in his writings. But the divine energies are simply God in his self-communication and giftedness.
Keep up the conversation, folks. Hopefully Dr Jacobs will chime in eventually and clear up everything for us. 🙂
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Yes! I strongly prefer the personal, abiding relationship of the Holy Spirit and His perfecting enablement on believers rather than impersonal divine energies.
Similarly, grace is fully embodied and personalized in Jesus Christ. Grace is not a “substance” or mystical component adjoined to human nature. Believers are bonded through the Spirit to the One who is full of grace and truth.
The Holy Spirit takes up permanent residence in those who are faithing into Christ (Romans 8:11). The leadership of the Spirit is far more encompassing and effectual than positing any metaphysical construct to human nature.
–John
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Forgive my somewhat unorthodox contributions as a non-Orthodox guest. But I truly value what I learn by engaging the process there. Thanks!
Fr Smith, I love your (1) through (6). Some thoughts:
Re: (1): I wonder if by “purely human” you mean “human metaphysically independent of God,” in which case I totally agree (and am a bit puzzled by any Orthodox person who’d disagree). Creation ex nihilo would presumably entail the metaphysical dependency of created being upon divine being such that there’s no ‘pure’ or ‘exhaustive’ defining of or accounting for created metaphysics apart from the presence of uncreated being.
Re: (2): Yes, though God’s initiative is not by itself sufficient; theosis is a work of divine-human synergy. So though we can’t accomplished it by our own efforts, it’s also the case that God can’t accomplish it apart from those efforts.
Re: (3): This just posits the necessity of incarnation to human theosis. I don’t know what ‘change’ occurs in human nature on account of the incarnation, but I agree incarnation is necessary to the perfecting of human nature (as the human nature of the incarnate One is the telos of human nature in which our natures achieve their telos).
Re: (6): What might be troubling Fr Aidan by describing God as a “component” or “constituent element” of created nature is how much is sounds like saying God is one being among beings that constitute the inventory of all things. I agree with (6) and I agree God is not one being among beings (or component among components or elements among elements). But if we just understand ourselves to be making a more abstract distinction that essentially says the transcendent God is never excluded from the defining truth of creation. This makes him a ‘component’ only in the sense that we’re recognizing the immanence and transcendence of God as definitive of creation. In other words, transcendence isn’t God’s absence from created being; it’s not that about God which makes it possible to define human being independently of God or without reference to God’s immediacy. It’s that unchanging about God which is fully active/present in creation as the precondition of creation’s even existing at all. Unfortunately I don’t think you can get this while also affirming God as ‘actus purus’, but that’s a different issue.
I’m still unable to derive any usefulness out of the essence/energies distinction, at least as I hear it described by the Orthodox. If divine simplicity is true, then God is wholly convertible with energies. And if as Fr Aidan says the divine energies “are simply God in his self-communication and giftedness” then a ‘simple’ God would be wholly convertible with his energies, which leaves me wondering just what the read difference is between ‘essence’ and ‘energies’. If God is his energies, and if God is simple and undivided, then his energies just are the divine essence “in its self-communication and giftedness” ad extra. I don’t have a problem with this because I don’t view God as ‘actus purus’ (which I why I’m not Orthodox). But I can see how it complicates things for those who hold to ‘actus purus’.
All that to say I’d be OK with a very qualified affirmation of (7), something like:
(7’) Creation is inseparable from that self-defining act we name by the term “God’s essence”; that is, there’s no initial or continuing creation which is metaphysically independent or separated from that.
And because creation is a free expression of that essence ad extra, (a) creation doesn’t itself determine the essence (no fear there), but (b) that essence is not ‘actus purus’ (since creation is contingent). God is essentially unchanging, yes, in the fullness of the triune perfections (the begetting of the Son, the proceeding of the Spirit all in love as apatheia), but not in the potential for free expression of this love ad extra.
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Although I will stop posting on this particular blog entry, I will answer the question about (3). All I meant here is what St Gregory the Theologian presumably meant when he wrote, “For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved.”
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Its about distinction between action and nature. Anomeans asked Young Nicaeans whather Son is name denoting essence or energy of God. Lets remember than Anomeans were Aristotelians, far more so than Aquinas. If Nicaeans replied “Essence” they would fall in trap of Arians. They would explicitely accept modalism. There is no real distinciton. Answere “energy” would, in eyes of Arians mean, accepting Arian position, Son is creation. Saint Gregory the Theologian answered them (Its not Palamas who underlined distinction, nor Maximus Confessor): [b]”Son is neither the name of an essence, nor of an energy; He is the name of a relationship”[/b] He also says that “energy” is [b]“that which is perceivable in other things”[/b] and essence is that which is self-subsistent inside every single thing. God’s Power is Divine energy, but it is being manifested on other things. Divine Energies, as explained by Orthdox, could be find, manifested on creation. Divine essence could not. that’s usefulness of distinction. Divine energy is how transcedent God manifests on creation.
In bottom line how theosis is possible without Divine energies?
Aquinas, Aristotelian like radical Arians centuries before him was Aristotelian. He defined God as “Actus purus”. Of course, to him there was no trouble in Trintarian field. He was using Augustine as his starting point in Triadology. When Varlaam of Calabria, thomist in his system, arrived on Hagion Oros, he was introduced to Hesychast fathers, who were practicing Jesus’ prayer, and claimed to be able to see uncreated light from Mount Tabor. To an tomist it was heresy. But Palamas was aware of legacy of Capadocians and Confessor, distinction of energy and essence that is.
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Another question popped into my head while I was out on the deck this afternoon smoking a cigar (how can one think theological thoughts without being surrounded by pipe or cigar smoke?): Think about the Chalcedonian definition. It says that Christ subsists in “two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably.” We typically speak of the eternal Word as assuming human nature. If the divine energies are a metaphysical component of human nature, does that mean that he assumed the divine energies?
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I think it means the Logos sustains his own embodied experience in all its created finitude and constrains (which experience we name “Jesus”) the same way he sustains all other created beings. So yes, the Logos employs his own creative energies in adopting and sustaining that humanity he personalizes as his own.
Maduro, I hope.
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But that still doesn’t answer my question, Tom. If the divine energies are a metaphysical component of human nature, does that mean that he assumed the divine energies?
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I think it means that, yes; i.e., the nature he assumes is a nature his energies define at the level of creation, just like he creates/sustains all things and is by virtue of that inseparable from what he sustains. In other words, creation is “metaphysically inseparable” from God. Saying this makes God “part of the definition” of creation can be misconstrued. I just don’t know a better way to posit that ‘intimacy’. In other words (again), we don’t want pantheism (God part of our definition = we are God), but we don’t want a two-storied view either where God is excluded from the whole truth that defines us.
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Connecticut wrapper. 🙂
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Of interest here is E. L. Mascall’s Gifford Lectures, The Openness of Being: particularly chap. 7 (“Creature and Creator”) and Appendix 3 (“Grace and Nature In East and West).
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Here is a quote from Eric Osborn’s _Irenaeus of Lyons_: “Dostoevsky claimed that truth was never found at either extreme but only in the middle; hence come the difficulty and debate in Irenaeus’ anthropology. Man is not God but he can grow in the likeness of God. Man is, by his own choice, a sinner; but God takes him and draws him upwards to perfection in Christ. Man is mere body and soul, incomplete until he shares in the divine spirit. lmmortality is never a property of man in his own right. He must constantly receive this gift by participation in the God who grants him life through a continuing act of creation (5 .3). The body is included in this reception of life. He who raised up Jesus from the dead now gives life to our mortal bodies through his spirit dwelling in us (Rom. 8:1 1). It is the triumph of God’s goodness, not our survival, which we celebrate in the resurrection of the body (3.20.1).”
I think this recapitulates (wink, wink) what (I think) Prof. Jacobs was getting at. Irenaeus clearly affirms the uniqueness of the human being as a creature created in the image of God and called to be in his likeness, that we are incomplete until we share in the divine spirit (Jacobs’ line about our not being _fully_ human without the divine energies), that our theosis/immortality are not a “property” of our nature in its own right but is constantly part of us by virtue of our participation in God (via his energies, of course), and this include the body (which was actually part of Jacobs’ main thesis). I think this passage illumines what Jacobs is getting at, and I see it as perfectly Orthodox.
Regarding Mascall, who was one of my favorite Thomists, I haven’t been persuaded by his arguments against the essence/energies distinction. This is an issue I would like to pursue sometime, but I think one way to parse our usage is to understand them as “formal features’ of divinity as David Burrell CSC would say. But I haven’t time to pursue it at the moment.
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I was hoping someone might introduce St Irenaeus into the discussion. Thanks, Fr Lev.
Your comment about Mascall reminded me of the conversation between Mascall and Lossky. I know I have it in my files. I’ll find it and post on the blog in the next day or two.
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I have only quickly skimmed through the comments, so far, looking for references to St. Maximus the Confessor, and only noted one striking one, from you, Fr. Aidan. I heard an interesting lecture once by Lars Thunberg which included (as I recall it) lots of attention to St. Maximus on the logikoi as both radically personally specific (each created human person ‘having’ his own logikos), and as Uncreated. (I have never yet managed to read more by Thunberg, or enough of St. Maximus (in translation) to discover more about this: does it ring any bells with you?)
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David, I’m afraid that my knowledge of Maximus is exceptionally limited. I find his writings very difficult to grasp.
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David, I came across this thesis this evening. I have not read it, but I thought I’d bring it to your attention: “Grace and Metaphysics in Maximus the Confessor.”
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Thank you! It certainly looks interesting!
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Like I said previously, belonging to our nature by assotiation, but not as constituent part of it.
Orthodox doctrine completly reject both. 🙂
Anyway, I did not want to make hard feeelings. Sorry, father if I sounded disrespecting. 🙂
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If, as we proclaim, “God is everywhere present and fills all things” He is a metaphysical element of all of His creation is He not. He did not unite quite the same way with the rest of creation as He does to us. Also we partake of His Body and Blood. That becomes part of us and we a part of Him. The unity of all is the ultimate goal.
I’m agreeing with Fr. Lev above.
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“Living by the Spirit” (Romans 8:9) is another way of expressing the transfer from “vessels of wrath” to “vessels of mercy” (Romans 9:22–23).
Well, if I understood Paul correctly, he is talking about experience of being part of Church, lead by Spirit, and where we are baptized into. Holy life fo God is being given to us, through Spirit in Church. Theosis has three stages, katharsis (cleaning), theoria knowledge, vision of God and final, theosis itself, like Paul wrote “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” Galatians, 2:20
If God in Christ has graced nature in an individual through the transforming agency of the Holy Spirit, would it not be more accurate to say that God has graced the particular person holistically rather than primarily her/his nature? Believers are persons in communion with God in Christ, not simply graced natures.
Well, we are speaking about fine differences in meaning. But, since here we are discussing Jacobs’ article, and he was speaking about theosis incorporation of Divine energies into true human nature, I was refering to nature. Thing is, as Saint Basil was insisting, there is no naked essence/nature. Its allways manifested in persons. So person undergoing theosis is transforming his (or her) nature. Nature is not separate element of single Human being, its rather what we humans are sharing. It what we are by birth. Its universalia, if you are farmiliar with Scholastic vocabulary 🙂 Of course you are right when you say Believers are persons in comunion with Christ. Thats why I wrote on personal level. Seems fr Aidan was right when he wrote theosis is escaping defintions. 🙂
That theosis is happening in Church 🙂 Even Desert fathers and other hermits were praying for entire world. Despite running and hidding from world, they loved all people. One person-none person. Like you noted, Churhc is communion of believers. And even hermits in far ends of world are part of Church. I was not specificaly replying to you. I just tught its appropriate to underline that Theosis id happening in Church. I would not go that far to say “Extra ecclesiam nullum salus”, but I love to repeat what my professor of liturgis told us students, when such questions would arise: “Orthodox Church is vessel carrying its passeengers to safe harbour, thorough storm. Do we know somebody, going on small boath could reach it? We do not. But we know where this ship is haeding.”
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Hello, ddpbf,
Thank you for your devoting much thought to answering my question. I like your very apt metaphor of a vessel carrying its passengers to safe harbor. One body of the Church reinforces comprehensive togetherness.
“Yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives within me, insofar as I now live in the flesh . . . ” (Galatians 2:20) contextually refers to present life between the “no longer”and “not yet” aspects of salvation.
David, my younger brother (a Russian Orthodox priest based in New York City), has said to me that the gift of theosis may sometimes (perhaps rarely) occur in this present life. Once mortals become clothed with immortality, theosis, which I suggest is Spirit-perfected communion/participation/togetherness, becomes pervasive in the Kingdom of God.
–John
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