02. I. Theosis in the Alexandrian Tradition
02. I. Theosis in the Alexandrian Tradition
Behind John Wesley’s Anglican piety and Moravian sola fide were Patristic sources, principally the insights of Clement and Origen and their vision of theosis.
A. Clement the "Christian Gnostic." Wesley learned from Clement that there are three kinds of persons: the unconverted, the converted but immature, and the mature or perfect Christian. Each required spiritual instruction appropriate to their state. Clement’s three principal works (Protreptikos, Paidagogos, and Stromateis) addressed these three classes of persons. [9] In Stromateis, which Wesley cites and adapts, Clement repeats a Hermetic [10] (Clement would say gnostic) vision of theosis in which the soul ascends to God by means of contemplative knowledge and wisdom. [11] In John and Charles Wesley’s Hymns and Sacred Poems (1739), a remarkable poem is included entitled "On Clemens Alexandrinus’s Description of a Perfect Christian." It describes the vision of holiness as seen from a distance, and how the "mystic powers of love" can perfect the soul’s intent to cross over into the "simple life Divine" (The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, 35). Likewise, in response to queries about the meaning of the term "Methodist," Wesley in 1742 published a tract entitled "On the Character of a Methodist" based on Clement’s description of the "true gnostic" in Book Seven of his Stromateis. Wesley’s "entirely sanctified Methodist" and Clement’s "perfect Christian gnostic" share common elements, according to Campbell: "Both stress prayer without ceasing, love of neighbor, obedience to God’s commandments, freedom from worldly desires and hope of immortality as characteristics of the ideal Christian" (42).
There also are dissimilarities. For Clement, we pass from paganism to Christianity through faith. From faith we rise to God through gnosis. From gnosis we see God face to face, and we are deified: "Being baptized, we are illuminated; illuminated, we become sons (i.e., children or heirs); being made ... (heirs), we are made perfect; being made perfect, we are made immortal, as the Scripture says ’Ye are gods...’" (Stromateis, ch. 6). [12] For Wesley, we are justified and sanctified by "faith filled with the energy of love" (not by works nor by gnosis). We enjoy communion with God as creatures, but not union with God as equals. We may become like God, Wesley hopes and prays, but we do not become divine! Such esoteric ideas for Wesley are "too mystical." Those who interpret the Scriptures in this way: find hidden meanings in every thing, which God never taught, nor the ancient children of God ever knew. They seek mysteries in the plainest truths, and make them such by their explications. Whereas the Christian Religion, according to the Scriptural account, is the plainest, clearest thing in the world: nothing stranger, or harder to be understood than this, "We love him, because he first loved us" (Commentary on the Canticle of Canticles, A Christian Library, Vol. I, vii-viii).
Thus, when Wesley appropriates Clement’s gnostic vision, he "corrects" the assertion of gnosis as the means to perfection. [13] As Outler concludes: "It is almost as if Wesley had read ’agape’ in the place of the Clementine ’gnosis’..." (Outler, John Wesley, 31).
B. Origen the "Christian Platonist." What Origen taught, and which eventually got him branded as heretical, was his doctrine of pre-existent souls on a cosmic transmigration from sin to perfection in successive lives and ages. His complex doctrine of theosis, found primarily in On First Principles, may be outlined as follows: God creates, without reference to time, rational beings/souls (nouses), which are incorporeal, equal and eternal. The Logos, the firstborn of all creation, is the exact image of God, and by God all things were made. Rational beings are reflections of the Image. As such, they participate in the divine nature through the Logos, as sparks of a greater Fire. The Father of Lights is the archetype of the Logos, who in turn is the archetype of rational beings. All souls, except the soul of Jesus, turned their attention away from God and suffered a cosmic fall. Redemption is made possible through the Incarnation of the Logos, which restores the image of God and awakens souls to joyfully participate in the divine nature, and ascend to their native land of Divinity. The universe, Origen imagines, is moving toward a restored and perfected state of integration and completion. After the final age, at the end of time, all souls (in human beings, angels, animals, stars and planets) are finally saved, sanctified, glorified, and unified in God.
Transcending Hellenistic cosmology, Wesley heard in Origen a compelling Christian message of the promise and possibility of perfection: "I beseech you, therefore, be transformed. Resolve to know that in you there is a capacity to be transformed." [14] The goal of the Christian life, according to Origen, is to see God face to face, and in so doing, to be deified. The means to deification is by participation in divinity: that is, by contemplation of God in the mirror of the soul which increasingly appropriates divine being. Thus "...nourished by God the Word, who was in the beginning with God (cf. Jn. 1:1), we may be made divine" (Origen, Treatise on Prayer, xxvii.13).
Human deification is possible, according to Origen, because of God’s humanization in Christ. In the descent of divinity into the body of humanity, an historic mutation occurred - "human and divine began to be woven together, so that by prolonged fellowship with divinity, human nature might become divine" (Origen, Contra Celsum, 3.28). As the human soul partakes of divinity, the soul ascends to God in stages, purified in wisdom and perfected in love. Eventually the soul passes through the "flaming sword" of the cherubim guarding access to the Tree of Life, and returns to the Paradise of God. [15] Origen’s platonic vision is one of gradual unification with God - the soul possessed and progressively perfected in time until all is reconciled, time is no more, and "God is all in all" (On First Principles, XXXVI).
Wesley is selective in his approval of Origen. [16] As with Clement’s, Origen’s gnosticism is easily dismissed, his vision of theosis easily "corrected." For Wesley, the sanctified believer does not become divine in nature, but rather perfected in love and goodwill. Theosis in Wesley is a less esoteric experience and more practical, programmatically focused on what he deemed possible in this life. In substituting the 18th-century concept of "Christian perfection" for that of Alexandrian theosis, Wesley reconstructed his ancient sources.