Is the belief that men were created to be "gods," either in
this life or in some future exaltation, a Christian teaching? Is it
in any sense Christian to speak of the "deification" of man -- to
say that God created or redeemed man in order to become deity? What
do various religious groups who use such language today mean? Are
they all saying the same thing? Are all who use such terminology
heretics? If not, how do we tell the difference? All of these
questions will be addressed in this article.
*DIFFERENT IDEAS OF DEIFICATION*
The first step in answering these interrelated questions is to
recognize that talk about men being gods cannot be isolated from
basic world views, or conceptions of the world and its relation to
God. Norman Geisler and William Watkins have pointed out that there
are seven basic world views: _atheism_ (no God), _polytheism_ (many
gods), _pantheism_ (God is all), _panentheism_ (God is in all),
_finite godism_ (a finite god made the world), _deism_ (a God who
does not do miracles created the world), and theism, or
_monotheism_ (a God who does miracles created the world), which is
the biblical view (and is held by orthodox Jews and Muslims as well
as Christians).[1] Not all doctrines can be neatly categorized into
one of these seven world views, since some people do hold to
combinations of two views; but such positions are inherently
inconsistent, and usually one world view is dominant.
In this article our concern will be with doctrines of
deification which claim to be strictly Christian. (This means that
we will not discuss, for example, New Age concepts of deification.)
Varieties of such "Christian" views on deification can be found
among adherents of monotheism, polytheism, and panentheism.
*Monotheistic Deification*
It may surprise some to learn that a monotheistic doctrine of
deification was taught by many of the church fathers, and is
believed by many Christians today, including the entire Eastern
Orthodox church. In keeping with _mono_theism, the Eastern orthodox
do not teach that men will literally become "gods" (which would be
polytheism). Rather, as did many of the church fathers,[2] they
teach that men are "deified" in the sense that the Holy Spirit
dwells within Christian believers and transforms them into the
image of God in Christ, eventually endowing them in the
resurrection with immortality and God's perfect moral character....
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