Theosis. Группа авторов

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Theosis - Группа авторов


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divine life and an access to divine power. People are made whole by their faith. In each of the seven instances where Jesus says, “your faith has made you well” or “your faith has saved you,”24 the verb is in the perfect tense, meaning that their faith has already saved them. Perfect tense refers to an action in the past with continuing effect in the present. The verb σώζω can be translated “save,” “make well,” or “make whole.” In these seven passages it occurs in the perfect tense, σέσωκεν. Your existing faith, persisting in the present, has saved you.

      The recipients of healing are receiving divine power from Jesus. We see this in Luke: “All in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them” (Luke 6:19). We see the spreading of divine power in Mark as well: People who follow him around, or who know he is coming to their town, are healed by just touching “the fringe of his cloak” (Mark 6:56). When the hemorrhaging woman secretly touches his cloak, Jesus is “aware that power had gone forth from him” (Mark 5:30; similarly in Luke 8:46). There are theosis implications to this reception of divine power.

      The coming of divine power is promised in this: “there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power” (Mark 9:1). Since this is followed by the Transfiguration, it may refer to Jesus’ own power, but it could also refer to the manifestation of divine power in the lives of believers. People who are touched by him are changed (Mark 1:41; 8:22; 9:27). The import of these, and even of passages where people refuse to be changed, is that contact with Jesus should bring about profound change, moving people to do the will of God, restoring a person’s sanity, turning proud people into servants of others (3:35; 5:15–19; 9:35; 10:43). Mark keeps his focus on Jesus, but the implication is that discipleship brings a powerful life-change.

      Theosis in Thomas and Mary

      We have already said that the idea of divinity within persons does not “belong” to the Gnostics. It should not be surrendered by the orthodox, any more than the ideas of revelation, illumination, or transformation should be abandoned, just because they happen to be honored by Gnostics. In fact, the sharp distinction between orthodox and Gnostic belongs to a period later than the composition of the earliest gospels—of which Thomas is one, with roots that may go back to the first century CE.

      Of the three versions of the “kingdom within” saying, Luke 17 is the one that preserves inwardness most vividly; Thomas 3 diverts the message toward a mystical sameness of inner and outer. The emphasis in Thomas 113 is on the kingdom as “spread out,” and people as ignorant. Clearly, then, gnosticizing texts do not always have more inwardness than orthodox texts. These two Thomasine sayings move away from an emphasis on inwardness.

      The pattern of variations in the kingdom-within saying, the later ones being more gnosticized than the earlier ones, suggests Luke 17:21 as the initial source, and Gnostic imagination as influencing the later versions. This also indicates that the kingdom within was Jesus’ own idea. It was later used by Gnostics—and unfortunately abandoned or explained away by many of the orthodox.

      Conclusion

      Suggestions of the deification or divinizing of believers are found not only in a vivid Lukan saying on the kingdom within, a Matthean text commanding perfection (or perfecting), and a Johannine reference to people divinized by contact with revelation, but also in many texts that speak of the Spirit within, and of lives transformed by contact with Jesus. Further hints of divinization may be present in Markan records of people being “made whole” (Mark 5:34; 10:52 KJV) by faith, of Jesus imparting divine “power,” and of the kingdom of God coming “with power” (5:30; 9:1). Even more deification statements appear in the epistles.


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