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In this paper, I will critically examine the notions of asceticism and ascetic deification as presented in The Oxford Handbook of Deification. In the first part, I will analyze how contributors to the handbook—including Paul Blowers, Paul Gavrilyuk, David Luy, Maximos Constas, and Elizabeth Theokritoff—approach these concepts. Building on this analysis, in the second part I will explore the asceticism, first as a way of the ancient philosopher’s deification and second as a practice and a method of biblical and theological interpretation, focusing on a rare and particularly intriguing hagiographical text: The Life of Hosios Elias the New, a monk and priest from Southern Italy who lived in the Southern Peloponnese.
This paper, in dialogue with The Oxford Handbook of Deification, serves as an introduction to the deification studies. The paper offers a working definition of deification, discusses the main markers of deification, and the hermeneutical issues pertaining to term/ concept distinction in the study of deification-relevant materials. Two major shifts in the deification studies will be introduced and discussed.
Full Proposal Abstract:
Protestant traditions have been the recipients of the ecumenical achievements of the twentieth century. This has borne fruit in the interest in doctrines of theosis. Across denominational lines, doctrines of theosis are being constructed in ways that remain faithful to the central defining dogmas and practices of each tradition. These traditions utilize sophisticated methods of theological retrieval to look backwards before moving forwards. A new generation of scholars is now publishing significant works of constructive theology in which theosis finds a central place. More work remains to be done, and the ecumenical potential that theosis offers has yet to be fully realized, but the signs are encouraging. After examining the doctrines of theosis in various Christian traditions, several critical observations will be presented as an initial way to gauge the ecumenical potential and pitfalls of theosis.
In his contribution on the Pauline epistles, Ben Blackwell identifies participation as a kind of deification and as the core of Paul’s Gospel—relocating justification as a consequence of this more fundamental concept. These claims are critically correct. However, when explaining this process in more detail, Blackwell aligns with a longstanding Christian tradition that insists that the deified human body remains unaltered in substance and form. Instead, it retains its mortal nature but is infused with contranatural divine properties by the Spirit. I argue that this framework, despite its venerable Christian pedigree, is foreign to the Pauline idiom. Rather, Paul conceives of participation in Christ’s death and resurrection as involving the abolition of the flesh, which is irremediably intractable to the noble volitions of the mind, and the assumption of an ‘aethereal and luciform’ body—a more ontologically primitive form not subject to the law nor the condemnation it effects.