Triadosis Union With The Triune God

The complex nature of Christian communion with a personal God requires a nuanced expression. Since its inception, the early church affirmed God’s unknowable nature and also participation in God through Christ. The church fathers employed the language of theosis in talking about union with God and human transformation in the likeness of God. However, the term theosis or deification is a broad category and requires precise explanation to avoid human dissolution into the divine in the mystical union it attempts to describe. In Triadosis, Eduard Borysov offers a new approach to the conundrum of the imparticipable divine nature and the prospect of personal union between human and the Trinity. Most significantly, he proposes that if God is Trinity, then we are created and restored in the image of the same tri-personal God.

The complex nature of Christian communion with a personal God requires a nuanced expression. Since its inception, the early church affirmed God's unknowable nature and also participation in God through Christ. The church fathers employed the language of theosis in talking about union with God and human transformation in the likeness of God. However, the term theosis or deification is a broad category and requires precise explanation to avoid human dissolution in the divine in the mystical union. This book addresses the conundrum of imparticipable divine nature and personal union between human and the Trinity. If God is Trinity, then we are created and restored in the image of tripersonal God.

The complex nature of Christian communion with a personal God requires a nuanced expression. Since its inception, the early church affirmed God’s unknowable nature and also participation in God through Christ. The church fathers employed the language of theosis in talking about union with God and human transformation in the likeness of God. However, the term theosis or deification is a broad category and requires precise explanation to avoid human dissolution in the divine in the mystical union. This book addresses the conundrum of imparticipable divine nature and personal union between human and the Trinity. If God is Trinity, then we are created and restored in the image of tripersonal God.

Understanding union with Christ as a frame of thought (as a motif or theme) is important for accessing Calvin's theology. While the union-with-Christ doctrine arises when Calvin explains the doctrine itself directly (especially in light of soteriology), the strong presence of this motif--union with Christ (union with the Triune God)--indicates its pervasiveness when other doctrines or theological themes are explained as well. This book suggests that we approach the notion of union of Christ as a theological frame of thought that touches on most of the doctrines and theological themes of Calvin's theology. This book deals with union with Christ as a motif or theme rather than as a doctrine.

This work begins with a transformative idea: human existence is fundamentally relational. Relational Christianity explores how the nature of the Trinity must define the Church and the Christian spiritual life. Utilizing Scripture, Christian spiritual tradition, and philosophy, Pinkham and Gruenberg paint the picture of a Trinitarian, Jesus-centered Christianity, led by the Father and explored in interpersonal oneness. In this view, God’s intimate, unifying love is the theological river that runs through the landscape of biblical revelation and through God’s movement in history. This work of Trinitarian practical theology suggests that the relation between Father, Son, and Spirit should shape and guide all Christian interactions—with God, with others, and with self. In the paradigm of relational Christianity, the formation of genuine personhood and identity are based upon relational connections—first with the Trinity, and second with God’s family. The shape of the new covenant community must reflect the Father’s nature. Church culture must prioritize relationship in the same way the Trinity does.

Theosis, originally a Greek term for Christian divinisation or deification, has become a vogue word in modern theology. Although recent publications have explored its meaning in a selection of different contexts, this is the first book to offer a coherent narrative of how the concept of theosis developed in both its Eastern and Western versions. Norman Russell shows how the role of Dionysius the Areopagite was pivotal, not only in Byzantium but also in the late mediaeval West, where it strengthened the turn towards an individualistic interiority. Russell also relates theosis to changing concepts of religion in the modern age. He investigates the Russian version of theosis, introduced in the West by Russian members the Paris School after the 1917 Revolution. Since then, theosis has undergone additional development through the addition of esoteric elements which have since passed into the mainstream of all theological traditions and even into popular spirituality.

Amid increasing interaction between Eastern and Western theologians, several recent biblical interpreters have characterized Paul's soteriology as theosis, or deification, harking back to patristic interpretations of Paul. In this book Ben C. Blackwell critically evaluates that interpretation as he explores the anthropological dimension of Paul's soteriology. Blackwell first examines two major Greek patristic interpreters of Paul -- Irenaeus and Cyril of Alexandria -- to clarify what deification entails and to determine which Pauline texts they used to support their soteriological constructions. The book then focuses on Paul's soteriology expressed in Romans 8 and 2 Corinthians 3-5 (with excursuses on other passages) and explores how believers embody Christ's death and life, his suffering and glory, through the Spirit. Blackwell concludes by comparing the patristic view of deification with Paul's soteriology arising from the biblical texts, noting both substantial overlap and key differences.

Leading New Testament theologian Grant Macaskill introduces Paul's understanding of the Christian life, which is grounded in the apostle's theology of union with Christ. The author shows that the exegetical foundations for a Christian moral theology emerge from the idea of union with Christ. Macaskill covers various aspects of Christian moral theology, exploring key implications for the Christian life of the New Testament idea of participatory union as they unfold in Paul's Letters.