Transformation, Divinization, Fire

Gregg’s Reflection

Fire is a wonderful image of God. Fire turns everything into itself. John of the Cross describes it this way,

He consumes infinitely, burning with great vehemence, and transforming into himself all he touches.

Fire transforms substance to energy. God transforms being into Spirit. It is a totally different picture than the ‘burning in hell’ images I got from Baptist theology so dominant in the South.

Until my exploration of contemplative literature, the idea of Divinization, or Theosis to use a theological term, were completely foreign to me. I had a chance to ask Richard Rohr about this at a Living School symposium. He said the reason I had not heard of this is that “It was lost to the Western church for 1000 years. The Eastern Orthodox Church never lost sight of this.”

Thomas Merton was the modern figure who did so much to bring contemplation and the deeper journey into God back into the Western mind. Until I was exposed to these ideas, I could not comprehend the idea of Divinization.

Wikipedia tells us:

In Christian theology, divinization or theosis, is the transforming effect of divine grace, the spirit of God. Although it literally means to become divine, or to become God, most modern Christian denominations do not interpret the doctrine as implying an overcoming of a fundamental ontological difference between God and humanity; for example, John of the Cross (AD 1542–1591) indicated that while "God communicates to it [the individual soul] His supernatural Being, in such ways that it appears to be God Himself, and has all that God Himself has", yet "it is true that its natural being, though thus transformed, is as distinct from the Being of God as it was before".

Saint Augustine tells us:

I heard your voice from on high, “I am the food of the strong. Grow and you will eat of me. And you will not change me into yourself, like the food of your flesh; but you will be changed into me.”

So, read on and wade into the depths of transformation possible for humans as we walk with God. And, here is an audio introduction:

Journaling Prompts

We are made in the Image of God. As a child of God, what would it look like to you to grow into the likeness of God? How will you be ‘Transformed by the Renewing of your Mind’ as Paul exhorts us in Romans? How does your image of what Jesus was trying to teach us change when you think of Theosis or Divinization?

Scripture

The Lord your God is a consuming fire.

Deuteronomy 4:24

My child, when you come to serve the Lord, prepare yourself for testing. Set your heart right and be steadfast, cling to him and do not depart. Accept whatever befalls you, and in times of humiliation be patient. For gold is tested in the fire, the furnace of humiliation. Trust in him, and he will help you; make your ways straight, and hope in him. You who fear the Lord, wait for his mercy. Has anyone trusted in the Lord and been disappointed? Or has anyone persevered in the fear of the Lord and been forsaken? Or has anyone called upon him and been neglected? For the Lord is compassionate and merciful. 

Sirach 2:1–7, 10,11

I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled.

Luke 22:49

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind so you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. 

Romans 12:2

And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

2 Corinthians 3:18

If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!

2 Corinthians 5:17

For it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Philippians 2:13

God works salvation in, and we work salvation out. God initiates transformation by stimulating our desire to follow him, inspiring acts expressing that desire, providing strength to persevere, and so on. We, in turn, respond by deciding to follow, acting on God’s inspiration, and choosing to persevere.

RENOVARE Bible notes on Philippians 2:12-13

Our God is a consuming fire.

Hebrews 12:29 

God is not a consuming fire in the sense of punishment or torment, but as the purifier of faith, burning away the dross of cowardice, double-mindedness, disbelief, and whatever would obstruct eternal fellowship with God, so the Sanctifier and sanctified shall be one forever.

RENOVARE Bible notes on Hebrews

You had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith-being more precious than gold, that, though perishable, is tested by fire. 1 Peter 1:6-7. God’s love is cleansing, fiery, astringent. At times God will place is in what seems like a furnace-not to harm us, but to cleanse and refine our faith, so that only what is genuine remains.

Bible notes on 1 Peter 1:6-7.

We will be like him because we will see him as he is.

1 John 3:2

Obedience means to bring our inner person into such a transformed condition that the deeds of Christ naturally arise out of it.

RENOVARE Life with God Bible N.T. p. 7

Ancient Writings

In the beginning there are a great many battles and a good deal of suffering for those who are advancing towards God, and afterwards, ineffable joy. It is like this who wish to light a fire; at first they are choked by the smoke and cry, and by this means obtain what they seek (it is said: Our God is a consuming fire, Heb 12:24); so we also must kindle the divine fire in ourselves through tears and hard work.

Amma Syncletica, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Trans Benedicta Ward, p. 231

God became man, so that man might become God.

St. Athanasius, McGinn, Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, p. 400

What God is by nature, we become by Grace.

St. Athanasius, Martin Laird, Ocean of Light, p. 135

I heard your voice from on high, “I am the food of the strong. Grow and you will eat of me. And you will not change me into yourself, like the food of your flesh; but you will be changed into me.”

St. Augustine, Confessions, Bernard McGinn, Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, p. 317

It is only by the grace of God that deification is bestowed proportionately on created beings. Grace alone illuminates human nature with supernatural light and elevates our nature.

Maximus the Confessor, McGinn,Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, p. 410

Maximus the Confessor writes, “the unspeakable and prodigious fire hidden in the essence of things, as in the bush, is the fire of divine love and the dazzling brilliance of His beauty inside every thing—a shining forth, an epiphany, of the mysterious depths of being.”

Justin Coutts, In Search of a New Eden, 10/15/23

To be like God will be to either see or recognize him. One will see or recognize to the extent that he is like him. For to see or recognize him is to be like God, and to be like God is to see and recognize him. This perfect recognition will be eternal life, the joy no one can take away.

William of St. Thierry, McGinn, Essential Writings of Christian Mystics, p. 199

God draws a person out of his human mode into a divine mode, out of all misery into divine security. Here a person becomes so divinized that everything he is and does God does and is in him. And he is lifted up so far above his natural state that he becomes through grace what God in his essence is by nature to be in this stage is the deepest ground of genuine humility.

Johannes Tauler, McGinn, Essential Writings of the Christian Mystics, p. 183

Greatly ought we to rejoice that God dwells in our soul; and more greatly ought we to rejoice that our soul dwells in God. Our soul is created to be God's dwelling place, and the dwelling of our soul is God. 

Julian of Norwich

The place which Jesus takes in our soul he will nevermore vacate, for in us is his home of homes, and it is the greatest delight for him to dwell there. . . . And the soul who contemplates this is made like [the one] who is contemplation.

Julian of Norwich, The Fourteenth Revelation, Chapter 53

Before this time, I had a great yearning and desire to be delivered from this world for frequently I saw the woe here, and the well-being and bliss that exists there. The Lord answered, ‘Without warning you shall be taken from all your pain, from all your sickness, from all your distress, from all your woe, and you shall come up above, and you shall have me for your reward, and you shall be filled with love and bliss, and you shall never have any manner of pain, nor any manner of sickness, nor any manner of displeasure, nor any lack of will, but always joy and bliss without end. Why then should it bother you to suffer a while, seeing that it is my Will and to my honor?

Julian of Norwich, The Complete Julian of Norwich p. 303

Place your mind before the mirror of eternity! Place your soul in the brilliance of glory! Place your heart in the figure of the divine substance! And transform your whole being into the image of the Godhead Itself through contemplation!

St. Clare of Assisi 

Theosis is understood as a true, objective sharing and growing in our divine nature, which was then reflected and received in humans as in a mirror. All we can really do is polish our own mirror to reflect the gift of this Godself more perfectly.

St. Claire, Armstrong, Third Letter to Agnes of Prague, Claire of Assisi, Early Documents, p. 55

Our Lord God is a consuming fire (Deut 4:24) and his power is infinite. He consumes infinitely, burning with great vehemence, and transforming into himself all he touches. He burns everything according to the measure of its preparation, some more, some less. It consumes not the spirit when it burns, but rather delights and deifies it, burning sweetly within according to the purity of their spirits. The divine fire came down at Pentecost, not consuming the soul, the burning does not distress it but gladdens it; it does not weary it, but delights it, and renders it glorious and sweet.

St. John of the Cross, McGinn, Essential Writings of Christian Meditation, p. 214-215

O gentle, subtle touch, the Word, the Son of God, who, because of the pureness of your divine nature, penetrates subtly the very substance of my soul, and, touching it gently, absorbs it wholly in divine ways of sweetness. 

St. John of the Cross,  McGinn, Essential Writings of Christian Meditation, p. 219

I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be. But, but the grace of God, I am not what I was.

John Newton, author of Amazing Grace

Modern Writings

What is it then to be ‘drawn’ if not to be united in an intimate way to the object that captivates our heart? I ask Jesus to draw me into the flames of his love, to unite me so closely to him that he lives and acts in me.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, p. 257

This dynamic of emptying and transcendence accurately defines the transformation of the Christian consciousness in Christ. It is an emptying of all the contents of the ego-consciousness to become a void in which the light of God or the glory of God, the full radiation of the infinite reality of His Being and Love are manifested.

Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite, p. 75

God created the world for the purpose of divinizing his creation by making it become his own body, with Jesus as head and we as members.

Raimon Panikkar, Sutra 8, p. 177

Contemplative prayer is a process of interior transformation, a conversion initiated by God and leading, if we consent, to divine union. One’s way of seeing reality changes in this process. A restructuring of consciousness takes place which empowers one to perceive, relate and respond to everyday life with increasing sensitivity to the divine presence in, through and beyond everything that happens.

Thomas Keating, Open Hearts, Open Minds.

The Christian religion is primarily about a transformation of consciousness. This takes spiritual practice and the cultivation of wisdom...To be transformed into God, what the early church called deification, theosis, divination.

Thomas Keating, Spirituality, Contemplation and Transformation, p. 12

The closer one approaches this transformation in the sense of identity, the more one will be able to do the divine act of radiating being and love energy to all beings of the world.

Beatrice Bruteau, Prayer and Identity

If what you attempt is not to change yourself but to observe yourself, to study every one of your reactions to people and things, without judgment or condemnation or desire to reform yourself, your observation will be nonselective, comprehensive, never fixed on rigid conclusions, always open and fresh from moment to moment.

Then you will notice a marvelous thing happening within you: You will be flooded with the light of awareness, you will become transparent and transformed. Will change occur then? Oh, yes. But it will not be brought about by your cunning, restless ego that is forever competing, comparing, coercing, sermonizing, manipulating in its intolerance and its ambitions.

No, the transforming light of awareness brushes aside your scheming, self-seeking ego to give Nature full rein to bring about the same kind of change that she produces in the rose: artless, graceful, unself-conscious, wholesome, untainted by inner conflict.

Anthony de Mello, The Way to Love, p. 83-84

I believe that true prayer makes us into what we imagine. To pray to God leads to becoming like God. . . .When we believe that we are created in the image of God himself and come to realize that Christ came to let us reimagine this, then meditation and prayer can lead us to our true identity.

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Morning Devotion, 5/17/20

Solitude is the furnace where transformation takes place.

Henri Nouwen, Way of the Heart, p. 10

In the heart of a disciple, there is a desire, and a settled intent. The disciple of Christ desires above all else to be like Him. The disciple is one who, on becoming Christ-like, and so dwelling in his ‘faith & practice,’ systematically and progressively rearranges his affairs to that end.

Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines

When the heart sighs, and begins its surrender to suffering, hell dissolves before our eyes.

Stephen Levine, Who Dies, p. 68

If the Gospel isn’t transforming you, how do you know that it will transform anything?

N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope, p. 270

The task of a human being is to transform suffering into joy.

Sufi Wisdom, Kathleen Singh, Grace in Dying p. 79

Fruits of Transformation:

Attachment gives way to appreciation

Politeness elevates to kindness

Honor elevates to integrity

Believing gives way to awe

Hope gives way to gratitude

Self-consciousness melts in the intimacy of self-forgetfulness

Unworthiness ceases in grateful humility

Judgment evolves into discernment

Confusion gives way to clarity

Separation dissolves in a glowing experience of unity

Kathleen Singh, The Grace in Living, p. 83

Grief is virtually always the necessary doorway to major personal change, in general, and the underworld journey of soul, in particular. We must open to our lacks and losses in order to find our deepest longings, which in turn, form the path to our true way of belonging in the world. Please recognize and embrace that grief is the very doorway you need...The unrestrained experience of despair leads to empowerment. Similarly, grief, when fully felt, leads to personal transformation.

Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul, p. 154-155

The miracle of grace and true prayer is that they invade the unconscious mind and heart (where real truth lies)-and this really changes us! They invade them so much that the love of God and the love of self invariably proceed forward together. On a practical level, they are experienced as the same thing.

Richard Rohr, Yes, and, p. 8

Contemplation is the key to unlocking the attachments and addictions of the mind so that we can see clearly. I think some form of contemplative practice is necessary to detach from your own agenda, your own anger, your own ego, and your own fear.

Richard Rohr, A Spring Within pg. 283.

God heals people by making them into what they are really meant to be. The prophet Ezekiel proclaims that when Israel sins, all God does is love them more. Their image for that love was a purifying fire. Often when the word fire is used in the Bible, it’s not a torturing fire, it’s a purifying fire. That’s a metaphor that mystics and poets still use to this day. We describe times of suffering that offer us greater strength, insight, or resilience by saying, “It was a trial by fire.”

Richard Rohr, Hell, No!  Available as MP3audio download.

Francis of Assisi was a living exemplar of where we are all being attracted and led. Francis is a prime attractor forward. They draw humanity forward just by walking the full journey themselves. Transformed people simply transform people, and set the bar of history higher for all of us. God gives us his highly evolved people to pull us all forward. The Christian word for that was simply “saint.” We can’t imagine something until we see it as a living model or archetypal figure.

Richard Rohr, Eager to Love, p. 198-199

People who are eager to love change us at the deeper levels; they alone seem to be able to open the field of both mind and heart at the same time.

Richard Rohr, Eager to Love, p. 248

Strategies for staying on the path of transformation:

Read good books, especially biographies of people you admire

Gaze at art, listen to music

Pray and meditate regularly to clean your lens so the images of soul can appear

Learn from the negative as well as the positive

Make use of practices that engage the right brain, where soul can speak to you more spontaneously 

Spend a lot of time in nature

Keep a journal, uncensored, not for anyone else to read

How do I go to a place where soul can speak?

Richard Rohr, On the Threshold of Transformation, p. 358

When Scripture is read through the eyes of vulnerability, it will always be liberating and transformative. Scripture will not be used to oppress or impress. The question is no longer, “How can I maintain the status quo?” (which just happens to benefit me), but “How can we all grow and change together?” Now we would have no top to protect, and the so-called “bottom” becomes the place of education, real change, and transformation for all.

Richard Rohr, CAC Morning Devotion, 2/10/20

All the truly transformed people I have ever met are characterized by what I would call radical humility. They are deeply convinced that they are drawing from another source; they are simply an instrument. Their genius is not their own; it is borrowed. Their life is not their own, yet at some level they know that it has been given to them as a sacred trust. Such people just live in gratitude and confidence and try to let the flow continue through them. They know that love can be repaid by love alone.

Richard Rohr, CAC Morning Devotion, 4/8/20

Because the humanity of Jesus is our humanity, what happens in Jesus is our destiny as well— transformation and union in God.

Ilia Delio, Christ in Evolution, p. 96

Love is a fire of transformation that constantly needs wood to keep the fire alive. Real fire is destructive; throw yourself into a fire and you will be destroyed. God’s fire is destructive too because it can swiftly eliminate all self-illusions, grandiose ideas, ego-inflation, and self-centeredness. Throw yourself into the spiritual fire of divine love and everything you grasp for yourself will be destroyed until there is nothing left but the pure truth of yourself.

Ilia Delio, Birth of a Dancing Star: From Cradle Catholic to Cyborg Christian, p. 155–156.

Deep within the cave of my heart, a depth that belongs to me alone, I recognize a fire that burns brilliantly and glows with warmth. Through that glowing fire I see the outline of a face, the face of Christ, but I also see my face, and then I begin to see Christ’s face as my face. Sometimes I cannot tell Christ’s face from my own face, and all at once I recognize a single face whose eyes are looking inward and outward. The word “God” simply doesn’t capture this infinite depth of my soul that stretches toward an endless horizon. By its sheer unlimited being I know it must be divine life, because it is life other than my own and yet entangled with my own life.

Ilia Delio, Birth of a Dancing Star, p. 202.

Real imagination-the science of reading the images as they emerge from the imaginal realm -can begin only after the personal imagination has been brought under control. Before it is safe to enter these deeper waters of visionary seeing where the currents of divine passion run hard and deep, the imagination must be contained between the twin banks of attention (teaching it to stay put at a single point) and surrender (letting go of all phenomena as they occur).

Cynthia Bourgeault, Wisdom Way of Knowing, p. 89-90.

The world is tired of Religious people who claim to believe a list of ideas when those very ideas don’t translate into any kind of personal transformation.

Brian McLaren, The Great Spiritual Migration, p.52

To embody union with God is to discover these beautiful characteristics emerging from within and slowly transfiguring us into the very image and likeness of God himself.

Carl McColman, Christian Mystics, p. xix 

The philosopher: Macrina explains why suffering is an incidental consequence to the soul being drawn to God’s blessedness by making a comparison to smelting gold. When a person wants to refine gold out of the rock it is mixed with they place it in the fire. The fire is not prepared for the sake of the gold but rather for the removal of everything else which is mixed with it. As the unrefined ore is placed into the fire, the gold naturally feels the presence of the heat but it is not injured by the fire. The more unhealthy junk we have accumulated in our souls the more time we must spend in the purifying fire. But this is an unavoidable suffering as the evil within us boils to surface and is cleansed away. The purpose of the fire is never revenge but always healing. As the gravity of God’s blessedness pulls us into the holy of holies we experience the pain of the sin we have accumulated being torn away from us. But in the end we emerge as pure gold, the same pure gold which was always inside us, and which you might say is the true essence of who we are.

Justin Coutts, In Search of a New Eden, 2/13/22

Mystics and sages of all traditions speak of the inner fire, the divine spark hidden in our very cells and in all that lives. This flame of love is the pure presence of God.

Paula D’Arcy, “A Surrender to Love,” Oneing, Spring 2017

It is the experience of pain that forms the inner well to contain joy.

Phileena Heuertz, Mindful Silence, p. 78.

Theology of Theosis. For those who seek to grow spiritually, the goal is to learn the curriculum of a truly spiritual life, grounded in love, mercy, tenderness, compassion, forgiveness, hope, trust, simplicity, silence, peace and joy

Carl McColman, Christian Mystics, p. xix