Trinitarian Life in Christ

Tentatively I walk up to the sanctuary each week to participate in the Eucharist ever grateful that I can receive the Eucharist and that I am invited to share in Trinitarian life.

While it is true that in our “conversion”, however we understand it, we are gifted our redemption by accepting Chris as our Lord and Saviour—we also are invited to be a part of the theosis of Trinitarian life.

Theosis is often misunderstood as a purely Eastern orthodox doctrine or belief. Often it is believed that in deification we acquire the divine qualities as separate entities. As Rowan Williams states,” …to be deified is to be renewed in the likeness of the eternal Son (not to acquire a set of detached supposedly divine qualities)” emphasis mine. Still less, is it an opportunity for self-glorification on our part.

Theosis, amongst other things, is how we reflect the life of Jesus in all that we think, say or do. In short, by acknowledging our love and worship to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we are called upon to reflect that love and commitment to those whom we meet. We are given the capacity and ability to see the face of God in others. Just as God the Father sees in us the face of Christ when he looks at us.

You might ask how that is possible? “So limitless is the divine life as Source that it cannot generate what is less than itself, and so too, what is generated cannot be thought of as living with anything less than full equality of the glory, radiance and freedom…” that we receive as believers in Christ [Rowan Williams].

This places a great deal of responsibility on us as believers to look after all those whom we come in contact with—regardless of who or what they believe in. Simply because, “the word is the image of the Father in receiving and reflecting the Father’s generative power; the Spirit in eternity is the actualization of the fact the generative freedom of the divine Source is not exhausted in the mere binary of the Father and Eternal son but exceeds even this”

What Rowan Williams is saying is that we are to reflect the power of God in our lives and in reflecting that generative power it is by no means exhausted. Indeed, it is renewed as we give out that love and care to those whom we contact. It is an inexhaustible supply of power and glory circling back to the Godhead and given out again.

We pass that gift on to others by recognising their God-given life. And the hope is that in our contact with others that gift is reflected to the other person, and it may in turn be reflected to others.

It needs to be said that to be ‘like God’ or be His image is not to be free to do what we want when we want. We can only be like God through our commitment to Christ. The farewell discourses in John chapters 14-17 certainly reflect theosis available to us all.

We are set free to share the healing and restoration that is Trinitarian life; and that is available to all believers at any time but especially in the Eucharist.

I am heavily in debt to the writing of Rowan Williams and Eastern orthodox theology.

Robert Daly