Faith, Reason, and Theosis

Aristotle Papanikolaou (Edited By) Aristotle Papanikolaou is Professor of Theology, the Archbishop Demetrios Chair of Orthodox Theology and Culture, and the Co-Director of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University. He is also Senior Fellow at the Emory University Center for the Study of Law and Religion. He is the author of Being with God: Trinity, Apophaticism, and Divine-Human Communion and The Mystical as Political: Democracy and Non-Radical Orthodoxy. George E. Demacopoulos (Edited By) George E. Demacopoulos is Fr. John Meyendorff & Patterson Family Chair of Orthodox Christian Studies and Professor of Theology at Fordham University. He is the author of Colonizing Christianity: Greek and Latin Religious Identity in the Era of the Fourth Crusade and Gregory the Great: Ascetic, Pastor, and First Man of Rome.

Introduction: Faith, Reason, and Theosis 1 Aristotle Papanikolaou and George E. Demacopoulos PART I: THEOTIC EXISTENCE Waking the Gods: Theosis as Reason's Natural End 15 David Bentley Hart Does Aquinas Have the Orthodox Concept of Theosis? 37 Jean Porter Deification as Christification and Human Becoming 72 Philip Kariatlis Theosis as Kenosis: The Paradox of Holy Intimacy in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar 93 Carolyn Chau Martin Luther on Faith and Union with God: Speculations on Theosis 112 Kirsi Stjerna Differentiation as Disfigurement: A Womanist Polemic against the Co-optation of the Divine Essence 133 Michele E. Watkins PART II: THEOTIC KNOWING Revelation, Reason, and Holiness: A Wesleyan Perspective 159 William J. Abraham The Ambiguous Meanings of Theosis in Modern and Postmodern Discourse 176 Andrew Prevot Speculation and Theosis in Vladimir Lossky and Meister Eckhart 198 Robert Glenn Davis Knowing through Unknowing: The Qualified Necessity of Human Reason in Dionysius 218 Peter Bouteneff Knowing in Theosis: A Byzantine Mystical Theological Approach 231 Ashley Purpura Deification in Evagrius Ponticus and the Transmission of the Kephalaia Gnostika in Syriac and Arabic 251 Stephen J. Davis The Embodied Logos: Reason, Knowledge, and Relation 267 Rowan Williams Acknowledgments 293 List of Contributors 295 Index 301

This is a solid and fascinating study. . . a volume that advances very well the idea of how to conduct a powerful ecumenical discussion in our own day; and the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham is to be congratulated on yet another powerfully stimulating piece of research.-- "Heythrop Journal" Demacopoulos and Papanikolaou have brought together a cast of distinguished authors from a broad range of theological traditions to offer their reflections on the multiple meanings of 'becoming divine', the human transformation that we have learned to call theosis. Perspectives rooted in patristic thought, Byzantine and Western Medieval mystical experience, and modern theological and philosophical discourse converge to present an astonishingly rich concept whose potential to revitalize contemporary theology has still not been exhausted. This important book is a tour de force that deserves to be widely read.---Norman Russell, Honorary Research Fellow of St Stephen's House, University of Oxford, and author of The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition.