Irenaeus on Eternal Progression

Irenaeus

eternal progression christian authorities theosis

Do we cast blame on him [God] 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.” . . . For it was necessary at first that nature be exhibited, then after that what was mortal would be conquered and swallowed up in immortality.

Against Heresies, The Ante-Nicene Fathers, pages Book 4, Chapter 38, Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994

Related Quotes

C.S. Lewis

Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have His way, come to share in the life of Christ. If we do, we shall then be sharing a life which was begotten, not made, which always existed and always will exist. Christ is the Son of God. If we share in this kind of life we also shall be sons of God. We shall love the Father as He does and the Holy Ghost will arise in us. He came to this world and became a man in order to spread to other men the kind of life He has — by what I call “good infection.” Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.

Augustine of Hippo

But 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.” If then we have been made sons of God, we have also been made gods.

Hippolytus

You will be a companion of God, and a co-heir with Christ . . . For you have become divine . . . God has promised to bestow these upon you, for you have been deified and begotten unto immortality.

More from Irenaeus

If the Word became a man, it was so men may become gods.

[T]he Word became flesh and the Son of God became the Son of Man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God.

How, then, shall he become a God, who has not as yet been made a man? Or how can he be perfect who was but lately created? How, again, can he be immortal, who in his mortal nature did not obey his maker? For it must be that thou, at the outset, shouldest hold the rank of a man, and then afterwards partake of the glory of God.

Our Lord Jesus Christ . . . became what we are, so that He might bring us to be even what He Himself is.