It is not infrequent that claims are made that the Virgin Mary is not deified, was not deified at conception, and has never been deified. This kind of claim seems to originate from the deep-seated fear that the Virgin is being worshipped with the kind of worship reserved for God alone, instead of being honored as the Mother of God; the Theotokos. Such fear, however, is unfounded and what seems to be happening is the perpetuation of a basic misunderstanding of terms deification and worship.
What is Worship?
Two kinds of worship exist: the worship of latreia and the worship of proskynesis. Latreia is the worship reserved for God alone, while proskynesis is the relative worship that can be legitimately given to any of the saints – this includes the Virgin Mary. In common terms, proskynesis is more commonly understood as veneration. However, it is still worship in a technical sense, although not the same kind of worship that is to be reserved only for God. What is deification, therefore, and what kind of worship is employed towards human persons who have become deified? Even more: can human persons indeed become deified, or is it erroneous to say so?
Deification: Brief Overview
Have I not said that you are gods? (Jn 10:34). God, you see, wants to make you a god; not by nature, of course, like the One whom He begot but by His gift and by adoption (Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 166.4). Through Christ, the Word made flesh, man has access to the Father in the Holy Spirit and comes to share in the divine nature (Paul VI, Dei Verbum, 1965). The Most High knew that Adam wanted to become a god, so He sent His Son who put him on in order to grant him his desire (Ephraim the Syrian, Nisb. Hymns LXIX.12). He became human so that he might make us gods (Athanasius of Alexandria, De Incarnatione 54.3).
According to Dionysus the Aeropagite, deification is defined as “the attaining of likeness to God and union with Him so far as is possible” (EH 1. 3, PG 3. 376a) both in this life and the next. Maximus the Confessor called deification “the invocation of the great God and Father, the symbol of the authentic and real adoption, according to the gift and grace of the Holy Spirit, thanks to the bestowal of which the saints become and will remain the sons of God” (Ad Thalas 61, PG 90, 636C; Scholia 6, ibid. 644C). Thomas Aquinas stated that deification allowed “this name God [to be] communicable not in its whole signification, but in some part of it by way of similitude so that those are called gods who share in divinity by likeness, according to the text I have said, ‘You are gods (Ps 82:6)’ (Summa Theologica, Resp. to I.13,9).
Gross (1938/2002) elaborated that deification, that is [the] “divinization of the Christian is not an identification with God [but] an assimilation, a very eminent restoration of the original divine likeness [where one] participates by grace in the perfections that God possesses by nature . . . [Throughout the process of deification], the Spirit transforms the soul to the image of the Logos, the natural Son of God, thus making the Christian an adoptive child of God. Affecting, it seems, the very essence of the soul, this mysterious conformation is not of a moral nature only, but of a physical nature. It is a veritable partaking of the divine nature and of the divine life” (p. 272). Aquinas added that in deification “the gift of grace surpasses every capability of created nature, since it is nothing short of a partaking of the Divine Nature, which exceeds every other nature . . . God alone should deify, bestowing a partaking of the Divine Nature by a participated likeness” (Summa Theologica, 2.1:112.1).
Irenaeus of Lyons explained that God had “become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself” (Adversus Haereses, Preface). He added, “Do we cast blame on Him because we were not made gods from the beginning, but were at first created merely as men and then later as gods? Although God has adopted this course out of his pure benevolence, that no one may charge him with discrimination or stinginess, He declares, ‘I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are sons of the Most High’ . . . It was necessary at first that nature be exhibited, then after that what was mortal would be conquered and swallowed up in immortality” (ibid., 4.38[4]). Clement of Alexandria declared, “Yea, I say, the Word of God became a man so that you might learn from a man how to become a god” (Exhortation to the Greeks 1). He stated, “If one knows himself, he will know God, and knowing God will become like God . . . His is beauty, true beauty, for it is God and that man becomes a god since God wills it. So Heraclitus was right when he said, ‘Men are gods and gods are men’” (Stromateis 23). Clement added, “He who obeys the Lord and follows the prophecy given through Him . . . becomes a god while still moving about in the flesh” (Stromata 716,101,4). Augustine of Hippo stated, “He Himself that justifies also deifies for by justifying He makes sons of God: ‘For he has given them power to become the sons of God’ [Jn 1:12]. If then we have been made sons of god, we have also been made gods” (On the Psalms 50.2.).
Deification is the process of fulfillment, starting from this earthly life, of the words of the Apostle Peter, “He [Christ] has given us most great and precious promises: that by these you may be made partakers of the divine nature, flying the corruption of that concupiscence which is in the world” (2 P 1:4). Furthermore, deification as a term was common in the writings of the Greek Fathers and other Early Church Fathers – until it was supplanted by the sterile and ‘safe’ language of the Reformation (Kharlamov, 2010).
The Church Fathers on Deification
Below are some statements made by the Church Fathers and early Christian writers on deification. Both on their own and taken as a whole, these statements illustrate how it is deification, not merely salvation, that has always been the aim of God for humankind. This regardless of the stripping of any semblance of divinity and language sanitization that have occurred throughout the more recent centuries:
Ambrosius of Milan: He makes us partakers of the divine nature in His power (On Christ. Faith 5.14).
Athanasius of Alexandria: He Himself has made us sons of the Father and deified men by becoming Himself man . . . He was God and then became man, and that to deify us (Cont. Arian 1.11.38,39). The work is perfected because men, redeemed from sin, no longer remain dead, but being deified, have in each other by looking at Me the bond of charity (Cont. Arian 3.25.23). The Word was made flesh in order to offer up this body for all and that we, partaking of His Spirit, might be deified (De Decret 3.14). He has become Man that He might deify us in Himself and He has been born of a woman and begotten of a Virgin in order to transfer to Himself our erring generation, and that we may become henceforth a holy race and ‘partakers of the Divine Nature’ as blessed Peter wrote (Lett 60).
Augustine of Hippo: If the word of God came to men, that they might be called gods, how can the very Word of God, who is with God, be otherwise than God? If by the word of God men become gods, if by fellowship they become gods, can He by whom they have fellowship not be God? If lights which are lit are gods, is the light which enlighteneth not God? If through being warmed in a way by saving fire they are constituted gods, is He who gives them the warmth other than God? (On the Gospel of John, Trac 48.9). It is evident then that He hath called men gods that are deified of His grace, not born of His substance . . . If we have been made sons of God, we have also been made gods: but this is the effect of grace adopting, not of nature generating . . . The rest that are made gods, are made by His own grace, are not born of His substance, that they should be the same as He, but that by favor they should come to Him and be fellow-heirs with Christ (On the Psalms 50.2). The Son of God hath been made partaker of mortality in order that mortal man may be made partaker of divinity (On the Psalms 53.5). That Godhead equal to the Father was made partaker of our mortal nature not of His own store, but of ours, that we too might be made partakers of His Divine Nature, not of our store, but of His (On the Psalms 139.1). God wishes not only to vivify us, but also to deify us. When would human infirmity ever have dared to hope for this unless divine truth had promised it? . . . Our God, the true God, the one God has stood up in the synagogue of gods, many of them of course, and gods not by nature but by adoption, by grace. There is a great difference between God who exists, god who is always God, true God, not only God but also deifying God; that is if I may so put it, god-making God, God not made making gods, and gods who were made, but not by a craftsman (Sermon 23B). You are already gods (Sermon 81).
Basil of Caesarea: Hence comes foreknowledge of the future, understanding of mysteries, apprehension of what is hidden, distribution of good gifts, the heavenly citizenship, a place in the chorus of angels, joy without end, abiding in God, the being made like to God, and, the highest of all, the being made God (De Spir Sanc 9.23).
Clement of Alexandria: I desire to restore you according to the original model that ye may become also like Me (Exhortation 12). They are called by the appellation of gods, being destined to sit on thrones with the other gods that have been first put in their places by the Savior (Stromateis 7.10).
Cyprian of Carthage: What man is, Christ was willing to be, that man may be what Christ is (Treat 6.11). Freedom made hateful the beauty of Adam that he might be god . . . But grace adorned its flaws and God came to be human. Divinity flew down to rescue and lift up humanity. Behold the Son adorned the servant’s flaw so that he became god as he had desired (Hymns on Virginity 48.14-18).
Gregory of Nazianzus: Who can mold, as clay-figures are modeled in a single day, the defender of the truth . . . be God and make others to be god? (Orat 2). His inferior nature, the humanity, became God . . . in order that I too might be made god (Third Theol Orat). What greater destiny can befall man’s humanity than that he should be intermingled with God and by this intermingling should be deified . . . that thou mayest become a god, ascending from below (Fourth Theol Orat).
Gregory of Nyssa: He was transfused throughout our nature in order that our nature might by this transfusion of the Divine become itself divine (The Great Cat 25). The God who was manifested infused Himself into perishable humanity for this purpose, that by this communion with Deity mankind might at the same time be defied (The Great Cat 38).
Gregory of Thessalonica: He who participates in the divine energy . . . becomes himself, in a sense, Light; he is united to the Light and with the Light he sees in full consciousness all that remains hidden for those who have not this grace. He thus surpasses not only the corporeal senses, but also all that can be known . . . for the pure of heart see God . . . who, being the Light, abides in them and reveals Himself to those who love Him (Serm Feast of Pres Bl Virgin).
Hilary of Aries: Just as God stepped out of his nature to become a partaker of our humanity, so we are called to step out of our nature to become partakers of his divinity (Intro Comm 2 P).
Hilary of Poitiers: The object to be gained was that man might become God (De Trinitate 9.38). When God was born to be man, the purpose was not that the Godhead should be lost, but that the Godhead remaining, man should be born to be God (De Trinitate 10.7).
Hippolytus of Rome: Thou hast become God: for whatever sufferings thou didst undergo while being a man, these He gave to thee because thou wast of mortal mould, but whatever it is consistent with God to impart, these God has promised to bestow upon thee because thou hast been deified and begotten unto immortality (Ref Her 5.30).
Ignatius of Antioch: It is therefore good for you to be in perfect unity that you may at all times be partakers of God (Eph 4.2).
Irenaeus of Lyons: God stood in the congregation of the gods, He judges among the gods (Adversus Haereses 3.6.1). To whom the Word says, mentioning His own gift of grace: ‘I said, Ye are all the sons of the Highest and gods; but ye shall die like men’ . . . it was for this end that the Word of God was made man and He who was the Son of God became the Son of man, that man, having been taken into the Word and receiving the adoption, might become the son of God (ibid., 3.19.1). Man does not see God by his own powers; but when He pleases He is seen by men, by whom He wills and when He wills, and as He wills . . . those who see the light are within the light and partake of its brilliancy; even so, those who see God are in God and receive of His splendor . . . Men therefore shall see God that they may live, being made immortal by that sight and attaining even unto God (ibid., 4.20.5, 6a). The Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did through His transcendent love become what we are that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself” (ibid., 5.Pref). As the opinions of certain [persons] are derived from heretical discourses, they are both ignorant of God’s dispensations and of the mystery of the resurrection of the just, and of the [earthly] kingdom which is the commencement of incorruption, by means of which kingdom those who shall be worthy are accustomed gradually to partake of the divine nature (ibid., 5.32.1).
Jerome of Stridon: We are gods, not so by nature, but by grace: ‘But as many as received him he gave power of becoming sons of God.’ I made man for that purpose, that from men they may become gods: ‘I said, You are gods, all of you sons of the most High’ (Homily 14).
John Chrysostom: He Himself is God and He hath called me god; with Him is the essential nature as an actual fact, with me only the honor of the name: ‘I have said ye are gods, and ye are all children of the most highest.’ Here are words, but in the other case there is the actual reality. He hath called me god for by that name I have received honor (Homily 2). Man can become God and a child of God. For we read, ‘I have said, Ye are gods, all of you are the children of the Most High’ (Ps. lxxxii. 6). And what is greater, the power to become both God and angel and child of God is put into his own hands (Hom Acts 32).
Justin Martyr: All men are deemed worthy of becoming ‘gods’ and of having power to become sons of the Highest (Dial 124).
Lactantius: The Word exercises an influence which does not make poets . . . by its instruction it makes mortals immortal, mortals gods (Discourse to the Greeks 5). The man will triumph over the earth. He will be exactly similar to God (hic erit consimilis Deo) who has embraced the virtue of God (Div Inst 6.23).
Mark the Ascetic: The Logos became man, so that man might become Logos (Let Nic).
Origen of Alexandria: It was by the offices of the first-born that they became gods, for He drew from God in generous measure that they should be made gods, and He communicated it to them according to His own bounty (Comm J 2.2,3). From Him there began the union of the divine with the human nature in order that the human, by communion with the divine, might rise to be divine (Adv Cel 3.28).
Tertullianus of Carthage: We shall be even gods, if we shall deserve to be among those of whom He declared, ‘I have said, Ye are gods,’ and ‘God standeth in the congregation of the gods.’ But this comes of His own grace, not from any property in us, because it is He alone who can make gods (Adv Herm 5). Although Adam was by reason of his condition under law subject to death, yet was hope preserved to him by the Lord’s saying, ‘Behold, Adam is become as one of us;’ that is, in consequence of the future taking of the man into the divine nature [hominis in divinitatem] (Adv Marc II.25).
But how does deification apply to the Virgin Mary, since she has always been a creature and not the Creator?
The Immaculate Conception
According to Pius IX (1854), “From the very beginning, and before time began, the eternal Father chose and prepared for his only-begotten Son a Mother in whom the Son of God would become incarnate and from whom, in the blessed fullness of time, he would be born into this world. Above all creatures did God so love her that truly in her was the Father well-pleased with singular delight. Therefore, far above all the angels and all the saints, so wondrously did God endow her with the abundance of all heavenly gifts poured from the treasury of his divinity that this mother, ever absolutely free of all stain of sin, all fair and perfect, would possess that fullness of holy innocence and sanctity than which, under God, one cannot even imagine anything greater and which, outside of God, no mind can succeed in comprehending fully.
“It was wholly fitting that so wonderful a mother should be ever-resplendent with the glory of most sublime holiness and so completely free from all taint of original sin that she would triumph utterly over the ancient serpent. To her did the Father will to give his only-begotten Son — the Son who, equal to the Father and begotten by Him, the Father loves from His Heart — and to give this Son in such a way that He would be the one and the same common Son of God the Father and of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was she whom the Son Himself chose to make His Mother and it was from her that the Holy Spirit willed and brought it about that He should be conceived and born from whom He Himself proceeds” (Ineffabilis Deus, para. 1-2).
This is the dogma of the Immaculate Conception – a dogma held originally also by the Fathers of the Orthodox Church, the Byzantine Fathers.
The Virgin Mary
Hence, it is evident that it can be said that the Virgin Mary is deified, was deified at the instance of her conception, and has always been deified. This because Mary was granted the grace of perpetual deification by the Holy Trinity, in addition to the graces of Immaculate Conception and perpetual virginity, Otherwise, she would not have been worthy of being the Theotokos; the bearer of the sinless Word. To deny, in fact, the deification of the Holy Virgin is to deny the Immaculate Conception, as well as the state of deification in which Saint Adam and Saint Eve lived before they sinned – although the latter’s state of deification differed from that of the Virgin Mary, because they were granted progressive deification, not perpetual deification.
The Eternal Father proclaimed Mary’s deification to the heavens at the commencement of time when He told Satan: “I will put enmity between you and the Woman, and between your seed and her seed. They shall bruise your head and you will bruise their heel” (Gn 3:15). If Mary had not been deified, she would have been unable to remain victorious over the Evil One throughout her entire life, because after Eve disobeyed (Gn 3:6), she lost that state of deification with which she was originally created (as had Adam), and which would have been confirmed in both herself and her offspring had she not sinned.
Christ attested publicly to the Virgin’s perpetual deification during the wedding at Cana, when He explicitly addressed Mary with the Father’s preferred term: “Woman, what is that to Me and to you?” (Jn 2:4). Woman. The woman who had not only been proclaimed deified by the Father (Gn 3:15), but who was also proclaimed thus by the Spirit through the Apostle John: “And a great sign appeared in heaven. A Woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rv 12:1). In addition, the Archangel Gabriel further attested to Mary’s perpetual deification at the Annunciation when he addressed her as “full of grace” (Lk 1:28).
The Virgin Mary is, therefore, the epitome of deification (Palamas, 2005) – a god by grace (Jn 10:34) although not God – as she has always been the incorrupt partaker of the divine nature (2 P 1:4). This because deification is “God’s perfect and full penetration of man” (Staniloae, 2002), with “all who share in this [being] referred to as deified . . . above nature and virtue and knowledge . . . [as] this grace effects this ineffable union” (Gregory Palamas, 1338/1982).
References
Dionysus the Aeropagite. EH 1. 3, PG 3. 376a.
Gregory Palamas. (1338/1983). The triads in defense of the holy hesychasts. Paulist Press.
Gregory Palamas. (2005). Mary the Mother of God: Sermons by Saint Gregory Palamas. Mount Tabor Publishing.
Gross, J. (1938/2002). The divinization of the Christian according to the Greek Fathers. Living Stream Ministry.
Maximus the Confessor. Ad Thalas 61, PG 90, 636C.
Maximus the Confessor. Scholia 6, ibid. 644C.
Pius IX. (1854). Ineffabilis Deus.
Staniloae, D. (2002). The experience of God: Orthodox dogmatic theology, Vol. 2, The world: Creation and deification. Holy Cross Orthodox Press.
Thomas Aquinas. (1225-1274). Summa Theologica.