Replies

"I assume you mean *sinless.* "

That's what I meant...I was listening for the telephone at the time I wrote that and wasn't paying attention! :)

"I'm not sure I completely agree with this. Theosis does not at all mean that a person would be capable of receiving God into one's body. And theosis is not an all or nothing proposition -- there are degrees. Otherwise, heaven will be a very boring place if we won't keep going "from glory to glory." It seems to me that as Metr. Philotheos Vlachos says, based on his reading of St. Gregory Palamas, the Theotokos had achieved theosis at the time of the Entrance -- which isn't at all the same thing as to say that she had arrived at her final and highest spiritual state that she would reach on earth."

I'll have to read +Palamas on this. From what I have read, achieving theosis is that point where we can come into a union with the uncreated energies of God and thus become "wholly gods" as +Athanasius would have it. It seems there isn't more than that which we can aspire to. Now Panagia of course had something more than a union with the uncreated energies of God and thus her theosis might well have been "more" than anything you or I are likely to ever achieve even if we achieve "total theosis". I say this because if she achieved theosis at age three, which she may well have done, still that was not enough to be the Mother of God.

"Are you meaning to say that the Prophets of the Old Testament did not achieve theosis?"

Clearly they didn't achieve complete theosis, that is to say union with God, because they were bound by death until the Incarnation.

"Christ's Resurrection conquered death and the grave, but it wasn't the thing that opened the door to theosis for the first time for the human race, as I understand it."

I think we are looking at theosis differently.