Chapter 1. Research Question
Background
A case could be made that every research study is motivated from the personal experiences of the researcher himself. As a Canadian evangelical Christian, it was in my late twenties that I began to see signs of spiritual discontentment among my friends and fellow evangelicals. They were going to church weekly, reading their Bibles on a regular basis and perhaps even serving in leadership positions in their churches. However, when I would ask them if they were aware of God’s presence in their everyday life, their answer would commonly be, “Sometimes, but not really.” If I asked them if they thought they were growing in their faith, most didn’t even know what that would look like. At this time I was not measuring or recording these comments, it was simply an overall impression; when it came to the active experience of God in daily life, many evangelicals seemed dissatisfied and lost.
It was about this time when my husband and I moved overseas as Bible teachers. We moved to Ukraine, where the majority of the population identifies as Orthodox Christians. It seemed sensible to study the beliefs of the population that was our main target audience. I was ignorant of the differences that separated Protestant Christians and Orthodox Christians.
I began to read several books written about Orthodoxy. One of the books I read was Becoming Orthodox by Peter Gillquist (2009). Gillquist was a leader in Campus Crusade for Christ, an evangelical campus ministry in America. Over time he became frustrated, not with Christianity, but with the evangelical expression of it. Ultimately he chose to leave the evangelical church and convert to Orthodoxy, along with 260 others from Campus Crusade (3). Gillquist states he became disillusioned with the evangelical movement (7). He describes that he and his colleagues were “dissatisfied -or better to say, unsatisfied- with the status quo of what we perceived as dull, denominational American Christianity” (4). It occurred to me that he was personally experiencing the same challenge I observed with my friends and fellow evangelicals. I wondered what it was he found in the Orthodox expression of Christianity that was more satisfying than the evangelical expression. Gillquist wrote that one of the reasons that he became disillusioned with the evangelical movement was the lack of life change he observed in the campus culture, this in spite of the work he and his colleagues were doing (7). So what did the Orthodox expression of Christianity offer specifically in the area of life change that Gillquist’s evangelical expression did not?
Orthodoxy, Evangelicalism and Theosis
Orthodoxy is a branch of Christianity that claims to have begun with the apostles directly after the life of Jesus. In 1054 C.E the Christian church split due to multiple factors, political as well as doctrinal. One cause was the churches of the East refused to prioritize Rome over themselves. This led to the division between, what came to be known as, orthodox Christians and catholic Christians. In 1517 C.E another major split occurred in Christianity, this time in Rome. A growing group of discontented Christians, led by Martin Luther, left the Catholic Church. It is this branch of Christianity from which evangelicals stem.
Figure 1.1
Timeline of Church History
Source: (St. John the Baptist Greek Orthodox Church 2017)
Evangelicals are a sub group of Protestantism with specific set of beliefs. John Stackhouse is the senior advisor to the Centre for Research on Canadian Evangelicalism. He defines evangelicals as those who adhere to all of the following tenets:
• Orthodox and Orthoprax: Evangelicals subscribe to the main tenets—doctrinal, ethical, and liturgical—of the churches to which they belong.
• Crucicentric: Evangelicals are Christocentric in their piety and preaching, and emphasize particularly the necessity of Christ’s salvific work on the Cross.
• Biblicist: Evangelicals affirm the Bible as God’s Word written, true in what it says and functioning as their supreme written guide for life.
• Conversionist: Evangelicals believe that (1) everyone must trust Jesus as Saviour and follow him as Lord; and (2) everyone must co-operate with God in a life of growing spiritual maturity.
• Missional: Evangelicals actively co-operate with God in his mission of redeeming the world, and particularly in the proclamation of the gospel.
• Transdenominational: Evangelicals gladly partner with other Christians who hold these concerns, regardless of denominational stripe, in work to advance the Kingdom of God. (2007)
Therefore, evangelicals are two steps away from orthodoxy historically and are unfamiliar with many of the doctrines and practices of this ancient Christian church.
As an evangelical studying Orthodoxy, I found there were many intriguing differences. One particular doctrine seemed to offer a solution to this evangelical dissatisfaction: theosis. This is a doctrine that focuses on experiencing the presence of God in one’s life, which in turn leads to life change. Orthodox theologians, when explaining theosis, will often quote the early church father Athanasius. He wrote the famous words, “God became man so that men might become gods” (31825:192B). Athanasius was, and Orthodox theologians are still today, convinced that Jesus made this possible. The final goal to which every Christian must aim is to “attain theosis, ‘deification’ or ‘divinization’” (Ware 1997, 231). Daniel Clendenin, in his article “Partaker of Divinity- The Orthodox Doctrine of Theosis,” clarifies,
The contemporary Greek Orthodox theologian Christoforos Stavropoulos summarizes this Orthodox vision: In the Holy Scriptures, where God Himself speaks, we read of a unique call directed to us. God speaks to us human beings clearly and directly and He says: “I said, ‘You are gods, sons of the most high—all of you’” (Ps. 82:6 and John 10:34). Do we hear that voice? Do we understand the meaning of this calling? Do we accept that we should in fact be on a journey, a road which leads to Theosis? As human beings we each have this one, unique calling, to achieve Theosis. In other words, we are each destined to become a god; to be like God Himself, to be united with Him. The Apostle Peter describes with total clarity the purpose of life: we are to “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). This is the purpose of your life; that you be a participant, a sharer in the nature of God and in the life of Christ, a communicant of divine energy—to become just like God, a true God. “Man,” writes Gregory of Nazianzus, “has been ordered to become God (Clendenin 1994, 365).
The Philokalia is an important collection of Orthodox texts from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries compiled by St. Nicodimos the Hagiorite (1749–1809). One of these texts, the Theoretikon, puts it this way, “Now the purpose of our life is blessedness … not only to behold the Trinity, supreme in Kingship, but also to receive an influx of the divine and, as it were, to suffer deification” (Nikodimos and Makarios 1983, 356).
Orthodox theologians point to a variety of scriptures as the biblical basis for theosis. The first reference is in Genesis 1:23-36 when humans are made in the image and likeness of God. Orthodox theologians believe that when Jesus rose from the dead, he gave mankind the ability to return to that likeness as was intended from the beginning. John’s Gospel also points to this when Jesus Christ prays that his followers may be one with each other and he will be one with them just as he is one with God (John 17:21-23). Paul the apostle references this theme in many of his letters such as Colossians 1:27 where he speaks of Christ being in the believer. Moreover, Peter’s second letter has the famous statement that is used by many of the church fathers to teach regarding this doctrine,
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to likeness and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire (1 Peter 1:3-4).
In summarizing the biblical basis for theosis and combining it with his theological perspective, Jared Moore, a pastor and PhD student in Systematic Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary writes in his online blog,
Theosis is the restoration and reintegration of the “image” or “likeness” of God, seriously distorted by the fall, in the children of God. One must note that theosis is more than the customary Protestant concept of sanctification. In theosis, while there is no ontological change of humanity into deity, there is a real impartation of the divine life to the whole human being—body and soul. In western churches, the concept of the imitation of Christ is the closest analogy to the theosis doctrine of the east; however, in Orthodox theology, Christians are not merely called to imitate Christ, but to manifest the energies of the Holy Spirit. Through receiving the Spirit, Christians have access to the spiritual power that belongs to Christ. The basis for such theosis is primarily the incarnation of Christ: the Orthodox church believes God joined humanity to divinity in the incarnation so that human beings might assume godlikeness and be imagers of God in His divine life, characters, and actions. The grace of God is essential, but so is human vigilance in obedience to all God has commanded. (2012)
Theosis and Evangelicals
Most evangelicals have not heard the term theosis. They have not been clearly presented with this aspect of salvation. The western church has historically focused on judicial categories of salvation. Theologians such as Augustine, Karl Barth and Martin Luther are generally considered pillars of western theology. Christians, having studied their works concerning the crucial foundation of justification, have had their framework of salvation formed by these teachings.
Dan Clendenin proposes that these judicial categories, while helpful and biblical, are not complete, and can result in lack of direction. Writing about the doctrine of theosis in the Eastern Church, he states, “The real issue here seems to be one of a difference of emphasis—the east emphasizing mystical union through theosis, the west emphasizing juridical categories. No necessity forces us to choose between the two or to see them as mutually exclusive categories that are contradictory” (1994,367).
If evangelicals are dissatisfied, perhaps they are not experiencing this mystical union. Stated another way, perhaps they are unaware of God’s presence in their daily lives; making their lives seem empty. Could an understanding of theosis increase an evangelical’s awareness of God’s presence? Rakestraw proposes that an evangelical “may take a kind of quantum leap forward by understanding sanctification as the very life and energy of God in us.” He goes on to say, “we are becoming increasingly like God because we are participating more and more in his divine nature. As Christians, our bodies are in very truth temples of the indwelling Spirit, who radiates his presence and power through us to others” (Rakestraw 1997, 269). This leads to the question, what has been done to help evangelicals understand theosis?
Literature Review
Dan Clendenin has written two highly academic texts, Eastern Orthodox Theology: A Contemporary Reader (2004) and Eastern Orthodox Christianity: A Western Perspective (2004). These texts have sections on theosis but are unlikely to be read by the average evangelical. Timothy Kallistos Ware has also published The Orthodox Way (1979) and The Orthodox Church (1997) but these are dense books filled with difficult theological vocabulary. Another example of a book exploring theosis from a western perspective is Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology (Gorman 2009). All of these books seem designed for academic use and are difficult for the average reader to access.
Journal publications also include articles about theosis and evangelicalism. Primarily these articles focus on theosis and its influence on many famous historical Christians such as John Calvin (Ollerton 2011), Jonathan Edwards (Strobel 2012), and Martin Luther (Trueman 2003).
To a much lesser degree, there have also been articles written with the focus of convincing evangelicals that there is merit to applying the doctrine of theosis.Michael W. Austin wrote The Doctrine of Theosis: A Transformational Union with Christ. He argues that evangelicals would benefit from being introduced to theosis (2015), much like Rakestraw (1997). Austin goes further than Rakestraw by offering ideas how an evangelical could pursue theosis. He advocates memorizing scripture, pursuing virtues and practicing spiritual disciplines in interpersonal relationships. . Yet again, these are scholarly works which most evangelicals will likely never read. Currently, there is no opportunity for the average evangelical to learn about theosis.
In summary, it is difficult to find any empirical studies done on the effects of evangelicals being taught the doctrine of theosis. The discussion has remained in the area of theory and debate. As has been noted, the history of theosis and evangelicalism has been studied, the value of evangelicals being taught about theosis has been asserted, but it has not been tested to see if this assertion is correct. I
Thesis Question
This research project aims to study empirically the effects that learning about theosis has on evangelicals. However, this aim brings two challenges. First, there is no material available for teaching about theosis to evangelicals in a way that is appealing and accessible. Second, studying the effects of learning about theosis has on evangelicals is much too broad for a first study. This aim needs to be narrowed considerably to provide measurable data.
To address the need for material a 28 day program was developed that teaches the basics of theosis and leads participants of the study through a theosis experience. The content of this program will be discussed in chapter 2.
Measuring the effects of this program is also challenging due to the nature of religion and personal experiences. Theosis is a doctrine that addresses spiritual experience: the presence of God dwelling in man, and man’s awareness of that presence. This is a highly personal, subjective matter. Therefore, this research measures awareness of God’s presence by participant’s self-evaluation.
In short, this research study explores whether or not a 28-day program that helps evangelicals explore theosis leads to an increased awareness of God’s presence in their lives.
Delineation and Limitations
While it would have been very interesting to consider evangelicals from different countries, or even different subgroups of Christianity, and compare their experiences with theosis, this would not have been practical or feasible, as this may be one of the first studies of its kind. Therefore, the scope of this study will only consider adult Canadian evangelicals. Furthermore, as mentioned above, it will focus specifically on personal awareness of God’s presence after being exposed to the doctrine of theosis through the 28 day program. Though there may be other effects, they will not be measured.
Ethical Considerations
In this study, there are not many ethical considerations due to the fact that all of the participants will choose to participate voluntarily. The names of the participants will be kept confidential, and all survey responses are anonymous. In addition, no financial renumeration will be given, therefore there will be no incentive to participate due to finance stress.
