This paper will explore the idea using Biblical and extra-biblical
materials showing how new research from the Dead Sea Scrolls as well
as from the Syriac Christian perspective has opened the field into
interesting possibilities not thought feasible by many in Western
Christianity until now.
Crispin H.T. Fletcher-Louis has noted that the Qumran writings held a
belief in an angelmorphic or divine humanity, which is rooted “in the
prelapsarian identity of Adam, which is then recovered by Israel, her
patriarchal heroes, her lawgiver, mediatorial figures such as the
priest, king and prophet and specific communities such as those behind
the Dead Sea Scrolls and Therapeutae… it has long been recognized that
the Dead Sea Scrolls community believed that it shared its life with
the angels. It is now evident that the Engelgemeinschaft entailed
transformation.” (“Heavenly Ascent and Incarnational Presence: A
Revisionist Reading of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, p. 4)
This transformation is what Paul had in mind as well. The
transformation of the human to the divine. 2 Corinthians 3:18 But we
all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are
changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit
of the Lord.
The Greek word for “changed” is “metamorphoo” which is a
transfiguring, a change such as Jesus underwent on the Mount of
Transfiguration. The “Doxa Kuriou” the Glory of the Lord is what man
is changed into, following Paul’s understanding wherein he notes
“auton eikona metamorphoumetha” which is changed from glory to glory
into the same image.
This is why in the Qumran writings the hosts and servants, the inner
community of the holy ones are the angels of His glory. All community
members are called holy ones, which reflects the priestly
angelmorphism. Moses is understood to have been deified while he was
on mount Sinai. In a fragmentary text, Aaron is described as “you will
be God and an Angel of God you will be called.” (Fletcher-Louis, p. 7)
The true divinity of humanity is reflected also in the Dead Sea
Scrolls Words of the Heavenly Lights which are liturgies of prayers
for the seven days of the week, (4Q504, 4Q506). The formation of man
in God’s image (Genesis 1:26) is here interpreted through the language
of Ezekiel 1:28 as the creation of man as the embodiment of God’s
theophanic Glory: Adam is created “in the likeness of [Your] Glory
(4Q504.8 4). Fletcher-Louis notes bluntly that “…where the Songs use
peculiar language for angels – language normally used of humans – this
is because it is describing divine humans.” (p. 7). In several
passages of the Dead Sea Scrolls, (4Q491, 4Q427 7 ii 16-18, 4Q400 1 I
8, 17, 19) it has been noted that they express “the transferral of the
community member from the sphere of dust to a life in the heavenly
community: the sectarian is no longer a man of flesh, he is now
angelmorphic or divine.”(Fletcher-Louis, p. 13)
In all three texts the Songs of the Sage, IQSb, Sabbath Songs, we
discover an inner self-understanding in which mortality has been
thoroughly transcended in the direction of divinity or
angelmorphism…from the outset the Songs presume the corporate
transformation of the human participants in the liturgy such that
language which has hitherto been thought to described suprahuman
angels must now be taken to refer to angelized and divinized
sectarians.” (Fletcher-Louis, p. 19).
Alexander Golitzin has noted that the Glory of Adam which was given to
him is the very glory of the image of God, i.e., Adam is a divine
being, who was supposed to be worshipped actually! The first humans
were superior even to the angels. (Golitzin, “Recovering the ‘Glory of
Adam’: ‘Divine Light’ Traditions in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the
Christian Ascetical Literature of Fourth Century Syro-Mesopotamia,” in
the International Conference on the Dead Sea Scrolls, St. Andrews,
Scotland, June 28, 2001: 2)
In the Christian Syrian homilies of Marcarius, Adam’s glory was
originally with him in the Garden of Eden, but on falling, he lost
that original image of light from God, and became naked, subject to
mortal pains and temptations. He was “stripped” of the divine glory
which imbued his body, but this is precisely the glory which Christ
restores to mankind, Adam being the primordial man and image for all
mankind. Adam’s restored glory to mankind is the “deiform and living
image of God in man. (Golitzin, p. 3). When restored, man will also
wear robes and crowns of light in the heavenly realms, signifying he
is now a glorified being of God. These are the rewards of those who
walk in the Spirit. In fact, the robe is identified with the Holy
Spirit. It is specifically the Father of Christ who is identified as
the giver of the robes and crowns to the believers soul, not his body.
I.e., it becomes the believer, or rather, the believer becomes part of
the Glory of God the Father, which is signified by the believer
wearing the appropriate apparel. (p. 4)
Light and glory are equivalent according to Marcarius’ understanding,
with streams of fire coming from the heavenly realm of God, which is
manifest also in the Dead Sea Scrolls descriptions of the Glory of
God. It is a divine product. When the soul is filled with God’s glory
(i.e., divinized), it will shine brighter than the sun itself. Paul
himself features the visio dei luminis/gloriae, e.g., his conversion
by heavenly light in Acts 9 and 22, the glory in 2 Corinthians 2:18
and 4:6; the image of the heavenly man of 1 Corinthians 15:49 and the
body of his [Christ’s] glory of Phil 3:21. As in Merkavah mysticism
stemming from Ezekiel’s chariot, it is the soul of man which is the
throne, and the temple and the dwelling place of God. (Golitzin, p. 7)
Enoch is called the Lesser YHWH, becoming a God bearing the image of
God. He declares that he has been enlarged in stature and holiness
because he has received the Glory of God. In the Syriac-Christian
poem, The Hymn of the Pearl, we read that at the climax the recipient
encounters a robe of light bearing the divine image and woven for him
in heaven. This is the speakers heavenly double. The speaker clothes
himself with the robe and ascends to heaven to meet Christ, the
radiance of the Father, at the gate of greeting. This is the language,
as Golitzin clearly points out, of transformation and divination which
is in common in all the texts of Aphrahat, the Qumran texts, the
rabbinic era-Merkavah literature and the Acta Thomae. (Golitzin, p.
10).
Golitzin’s next point is simply not to be missed! For Aphrahat as well
as Marcarius and the other Syrians, the recovery of the Glory of Adam
means first and foremost, being assimilated to Christ, becoming the
throne of God themselves as Christ is, bearing and having the same
glory as did Moses and the prophets. “Put another way, they all
express, if in a different idiom, what Athanasius of Alexandria summed
up as the Christian hope only a few years before Aphrahat wrote on the
sage: God became man that we may be made God.” (Golitzin, p. 11).
Golitzin has been actively researching and studying the early Syriac
Christians and demonstrating that the idea of human deification is
fundamental in Christianity. In his study of Dionysius the Areopagite,
whose theology stems back into the vision tradition of Apocalyptic
literature deriving from Early Christianity’s original matrix in
Second Temple Judaism, notes that Dionysius, writing of his mentor
Hierotheus, says “the final stage of our ascent is in fact to become
vessels for God’s presence, to suffer divine things.” (Golitzin,
“’Suddenly’, Christ: The Place of Negative Theology in the Mystagogue
of Dionysius Areopagites,” Forthcoming in “Mystics: Presence and
Aporia,” ed., Michael Kessler and Christian Shepherd, Univ. of Chicago
Press, p. 4)
Dionysius expression which had widespread current in Eastern Christian
thought was the idea of humans being created as somehow being “capable
of God,” “homo capax dei,” which is intended from Adam to be the
receptacle and manifestation of the divine presence. “This is, in
short, the famous deification, theosis, which has long been recognized
as a key to Eastern Christian understanding of the salvation offered
in Christ…” (Golitzin, p. 5) Dionysius, in fact, opens his first
treatise by stating that “we gain access (prosagoge) to God through IC
[Jesus Christ], the light of the Father.” (Golitzin, p. 5).
Deification is real the Areopagite argues, because God truly gives
Himself. Yet, while He is Himself the ‘deifying gift’, “theopoion
doron,” He still transcends the relations He enters into… the source
of the gift of deification is Christ.” (Golitzin, p. 10)
“Christ is the sacrament, at once the source and terminus of the
divine processions to us, both the vehicle and the goal of our
return.” (p. 11).
As Golitzin elsewhere noted, for the Areopagite, “it is Jesus who
makes our life, disposition and activity something divine.” (Golitzin,
“Revisiting the ‘Sudden’: Epistle III in the Corpus Dionysiacum,” p
485)
Further to the point, Golitzin in discussing the “Fides Adorans
Mysterium” of Jacob of Serug, he notes that the imagery of “mingling”
in the earliest texts of the Syriac-speaking Christians, “denotes that
the Greek Fathers refer to as deification, theosis, the gift of
participation of God’s uncreated glory…Paradise, Sinai, and Temple,
heaven and the Church’s worship, are all of them joined in Christ, who
thus is the bond between both the beginning and the end, and between
those on high and those below.” (Golitzin, “The Image and Glory of God
in Jacob of Serug’s Homily, ‘On that Chariot that Ezekiel the Prophet
Saw’”, Based on a paper given at the North American Patristics Society
Conference, May 1998, p. 18)
Alan Segal notes that when Paul uses the word “transformed” (Romans
12:2), it means much more than just a renewal. This is a
transformation from one state to another, which suggests “a mystical
reformulation and immortalization process, which was discussed in
contemporary Jewish and apocalypticism and pagan spirituality.” (Alan
Segal, “Some Observations about Paul and Intermediaries,” Philadelphia
Seminar on Christian Origins, Feb. 4, 1988, p. 7) Segal further notes
that the language Paul uses in Philippians 3:7-11 “is not merely that
of analogy or imitation; it is that of transformation, metamorphosis,
from one state of being to another, in which he has become the same
substance as Christ through his death.” (Segal, p. 8).
“The term transformation was available to the ancient world to
designate the experience that we might call conversion, but they call
transformation because it involved the gaining of immortality and
changing one’s form.” (Segal, p. 11). Philo demonstrates that Moses
was deified, thus showing the possibility for humans who experience
what Moses experienced, which is the essence of the idea of Jewish
Mysticism and Ezekiel’s chariot throne- theophany revelation. (Segal,
p. 15). In the book of 1 Enoch believers come to share the being of
the Messiah. The Messiah not only saves but serves as the model for
transformation of believers. (Segal, p. 17). Similar to Enoch, Paul
understands that he was transformed into a more divine state. He is
actually in Christ with his transformation. (Segal, p. 19).
In line with this thought of St. Paul’s in the New Testament, is that
of Enoch, where, in reference to the Angels of the Presence, Enoch is
installed as a visionary of Sar-ha-panim, which is an identity with
his heavenly counterpart. “In 1 Enoch 71, Enoch is transformed and
identified with the Son of Man in front of God’s Throne. In 2 Enoch
22:6-10, Enoch’s initiation into one of the Prince’s of the Presence
also takes place in front of the fiery face of the Lord. This
encounter transforms Enoch into a glorious being. It is important to
note that after this procedure Enoch observes that he had become like
one of the glorious ones, and there was no observable difference.”
(Andrei Orlov, “The Face of the Heavenly Counterpart of the Visionary
in the Slavonic Ladder of Jacob,” the extension of this paper will be
published in Studies in the Scripture in Early Judaism and
Christianity, ed., C. A. Evans, Sheffield Academic Press, 2001, p. 17)
Based on non-Canonical literature during the age of Early Christianity
and Judaism, as well as on the meaning of the word “transformation” as
Paul uses the term in the New Testament, the deification of man does
not appear to be an aberrant doctrine. Rather it is fundamental to
Paul’s theology in his own transformation, as well as many other
biblical heroes who encountered the divine, recorded their encounters
as proof that Christ, indeed will save us, and we can all become One
with God in Christ, i.e. become Sons of God, divinized, as our true
potential is indicated in the scriptures.