Pastoral Theological Reflections on Deification from a Lutheran Perspective

Abstract

In this article, I explore deification in light of the practice of pastoral ministry in Lutheran settings, engaging the biblical witness and key features of the Lutheran theological tradition as sources for understanding deification from a Lutheran perspective. Through this study, I have come to view deification from a Lutheran perspective as our union with Christ in faith, individually and communally embodied, that is generated by the energies of the Holy Spirit working through the means of grace in the church for the sake of advancing God’s mission in the world.

1. Introduction

“[Christ’s] divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:3–4).1 This passage from the Second Letter of Peter grounded an invitation to write and deliver a paper at an academic conference on deification in 2004. My contribution, “Martin Luther: ‘Little Christs for the World’—Faith and Sacraments as Means to Theosis” became a chapter in a volume of published proceedings, Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christians Traditions, edited by Michael Christensen and Jeffrey Wittung.2 My contribution summarized the findings of the then comparatively new Finnish School of Luther interpretation, itself an outcome of the theological dialogue between the Lutheran Church of Finland and the Russian Orthodox Church. This theological dialogue revealed that themes of deification are not absent from the writings and thoughts of Martin Luther and in the Lutheran tradition. Deification as a theme is not an explicitly prominent feature of Lutheran discourse as it is in other theological traditions, such as those of the Orthodox Church. But themes allied with deification are present within Lutheranism. In the view of the Finnish School, faith, namely trust in God’s grace for our salvation, is that which unites us with Christ. This affirmation is central to understanding how it is that we can be participants in or partakers of the divine nature. Here is how Martin Luther himself puts it in “The Freedom of a Christian”, a treatise which is an important summary of Luther’s thinking:

Not only does faith impart so much that the soul becomes equal to the divine word—completely full of grace, free, and blessed—but it also unifies the soul with Christ as a bride with her bridegroom. It follows from marriage, as St. Paul says, “that Christ and the soul become one body”. Thus, for better or worse, all things are shared in common, so that what belongs to Christ becomes the believing soul’s very own, and what belongs to the soul becomes Christ’s very own. Now to Christ belong every possession and blessedness, and they become the soul’s very own. And all the vices and sin burdening the soul become Christ’s very own. At this point the struggle of joyful exchange begins. Because Christ is human and divine—who has never sinned and whose righteousness is invincible, eternal, and almighty—through the wedding ring of the bride (that is, faith), he thus takes the sins of the believing soul and makes them his own and acts just as if he had done them. In this way the soul’s sins are swallowed up and drowned in Christ, because all sins combined are no match against the strength of his unassailable righteousness…. Is this not a joyous wedding celebration when the rich, noble, righteous bridegroom, Christ, receives the poor, despised, evil whore in marriage, unburdening her of all evil and adorning her with every good thing?3

In short, when faith in Christ is ignited, our share in the divine life is established. We become participants in Christ and thus also partakers of the divine nature.

After summarizing essential features of a Lutheran approach to deification, I further noted in my work from 2004 that for Luther and for Lutherans, faith itself is a gift that results from our sharing in the means of grace with the Holy Spirt working through those means. I focused my attention in that essay on baptism and the Eucharist as means through which the gift of faith is offered, nurtured, renewed, and strengthened. Article Five of the Augsburg Confession, a centerpiece of Lutheran confessional writings, succinctly summarizes the Spirit’s work through the means of grace: “To obtain such faith God instituted the office of preaching, giving the gospel and the sacraments. Through these, as through means, he gives the Holy Spirit, who produces faith, where and when he wills, in those who hear the gospel”.4

2. Methodology

I am glad now for the opportunity to offer further reflection on my work from two decades ago, elaborating on what I began then, and now also to share thoughts on the topic of deification, which remained undeveloped in that work. When I wrote in those early years of the twenty-first century, I was a full-time professor teaching at a theological seminary. Since that time, I have returned to a more direct exercise of pastoral ministry, serving as a bishop’s staff member responsible for processes of formation for ordination in our church, as well as conceiving and leading occasions for the spiritual care and continuing education and formation of clergy. Subsequent to my time on the bishop’s staff, I have also served as a pastor in local congregations. Given my recent contexts for serving, I offer here largely pastoral theological reflections on deification from a Lutheran perspective, informed by the practice of ministry in the church. Which is to say, the reflections that follow are primarily grounded in personal–communal–ecclesial practice in dialogue with the biblical witness and Lutheran theological affirmations to help render churchly pastoral practice intelligible in relation to the theme of deification. This focus on praxis, I should add, is in keeping with Eastern Orthodox and Western mystical approaches to theologizing, for which the mystical and practical dimensions of the life of faith are integral to the work of practicing theology. Like Western mystics, such as Julian of Norwich, who in Showings wrote for many years on her mystical experience, the principal “texts” from which I draw are the experiences and occasions of pastoral praxis. Grounded in such experience and praxis, I will focus my attention on articulating my understandings of deification, again, in dialogue with both biblical and Lutheran theological perspectives.

An admitted shortcoming of the approach I take in this offering is that what I say in the following pages does not represent explicit dialogue with other scholars, including Lutherans, who have worked on theologies related to deification. Thus, it may well be that points that I make and conclusions that I draw have already been said before by others. In that light, I make this offering in humility, recognizing that I may not be covering new material, and may be unwittingly indebted to others and their work. I pray that my contributions here can serve as a basis for dialogue with other scholars working on deification—Lutherans to be sure, but also those from other churches and traditions which may hold similar, or widely divergent, views from my own.

Here are the areas of focus that I will attend to in that which follows: an exploration of deification in light of particular Lutheran theological affirmations; deification understood in relation to Lutheran understandings of the Holy Spirit; deification understood as rooted in the communality of the church; the centrality of the Word of God in connection with deification; deification and hymns and music in the Lutheran tradition; deification as an experienced reality; deification and God’s mission in the world, with special attention to social ethics and ecumenism.

Before I proceed further, I offer a word about the use of terms. The invitation to me to write on the topic uses the term deification, which is a term I will use in this essay. Of course, theosis is another term, along with divinization. Christification is still another term which has some appeal to Lutherans who tend to focus on the second person of the Trinity.5 Bridal mysticism is another allied term, in my opinion, as is the phrase union with God or with Christ. Because, in the end, what we are talking about here remains largely a mystery, I am not wedded to the use of a single term, nor am I drawn to seeking to use terms with rigid precision, which may be in contrast to scholars from other traditions, for whom more precision in terminology is warranted. That said, here is my working understanding, perhaps definition, of deification, which will guide my thinking and reflections in what follows: I understand deification to be union with Christ in faith, individually and communally embodied, that is generated by the energies of the Holy Spirit working through the means of grace in the church for the sake of advancing God’s mission in the world.

3. Results

3.1. Deification in Light of Lutheran Theological Affirmations

In my work as an assistant to a Lutheran bishop, I had the privilege of shepherding in 2017 our jurisdiction’s commemorations of the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation. A major focus of our varied commemorations during that anniversary year involved the identification and articulation of Lutheran identity for a twenty-first century mission field. Through writing communications pieces and crafting commemorative events, I had the privilege of immersing myself again in the essential features of the Lutheran tradition, thus renewing my own Lutheran sensibilities and theological commitments and affirmations. Such efforts in my practice of ministry inform what follows.

Theologizing in the Lutheran tradition one way or another begins with Reformation-era rallying cries: grace alone (sola gratia); faith alone (sola fide); Christ alone (solus Christus); word alone (sola scriptura)—resulting in our thanks to God alone (soli Deo gloria). Thus, my reflections on deification from a Lutheran perspective begin with these intrinsically inter-related themes. Which is to say, if there is any participation in the divine nature, this occurs only by God’s grace as a gift and our trust in that grace, mediated to us through Christ, who is God’s word made flesh, and his work, to which the pages of scripture faithfully testify.

Given the centrality of God in Christ’s sovereign initiative in giving us gifts, such as a share in the divine nature, Lutherans generally do not by nature have high regard for human effort, that is, our works that seek to achieve such participation in the divine life. Given the nature of human mortality and sin, Lutherans are by nature suspicious of notions of spiritual progress apart from God’s decisive actions. So, notions of deification understood as making progress through human effort and initiative via practices seeking purgation and illumination resulting in union with the divine are largely foreign to Lutheran understandings. As a Lutheran, I understand the dynamics of growth in holiness in this way: God purges us of the effects of sin as a gift of grace working through the proclamation of law and gospel and likewise illumines us through the means of grace, and God unites us to Christ as a gift working through the Holy Spirit. All of this is communally grounded in the church and the means of grace, which, for Lutherans, include preaching, baptism, the Eucharist, and absolution, along with mutual conversation and consolation among siblings in Christ.6

In terms of theological methodology, as a Lutheran, I begin not with tradition or with philosophy, or other sources, but with the scriptural witness, seeking scriptural wisdom to elucidate and ground understandings of experience and pastoral praxis. This is a methodological way of honoring the “sola scriptura” of Reformation-era rallying cries. Thus, throughout this essay, I will regularly be in conversation with biblical narratives. Here, the appointed readings for Reformation Sunday, which commemorates Luther’s posting of the 95 Theses on All Hallows’ Eve in 1517, lay a biblical foundation for extolling the primacy of grace effective through faith in Christ for all theologizing and for attempts at understanding deification from a Lutheran perspective. One appointed passage on Reformation Sunday is Jeremiah 31:31–34, in which the prophet speaks of a new covenant to be written on the heart, suggestive for Lutherans of our faith, our trust in Christ: “This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel… says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:33–34). For the author of the letter to the Hebrews, this prophetic promise is fulfilled in Christ (cf. Hebrews 8:1–13). This affirmation of the foundational nature of grace, effective through faith, is echoed in the words of the apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans, another appointed reading for Reformation Sunday: “But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith” (Romans 3:21–25a). Thus, in Christ is our gracious, faith-filled freedom, as attested to by the Gospel writer John in a third appointed passage for Reformation Sunday: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:31b-32). These three passages, familiar in Lutheran liturgical practice on the Sunday to remember the Reformation, are foundational to all theologizing, and they help to ground my understandings of deification rooted in faith in Christ, by whom we are freed by God’s grace, effective through faith. Further attention to the scriptural word in connection with deification will be given in a subsequent section of this essay.

Another Lutheran theologically methodological approach crucial to advancing my own theological reflection involves the blending of matters of head and heart. To take this up in relation to deification, is deification an objective or subjective reality? My response to this query as a Lutheran, a lover of paradox, is “Yes!”. The Lutheran tradition has encompassed approaches to theology that embrace the head, that is, rigorous, objective thinking, and also matters of the heart, the subjective dimensions of experience. Lutheran scholastic traditions, which emerged after the Reformation period, emphasized the objective claims of the gospel and the objective realities of our salvation by grace alone. In reaction to rigid Lutheran scholasticism, as a pendulum might swing in an opposite direction, Lutherans also came to participate in the pietistic movements of the 18th and 19th centuries, which emphasized more the subjective, personal, and affective dimensions of faith. My own Swedish Lutheran heritage tends to seek to blend the objective with the subjective, embracing both the head and heart. Thus, in reflecting on deification as our union with Christ and a share in this nature, I seek integration and a blending of these apparent opposites.

That said, because of the continued claims of human mortality and sin, the subjective, personal, and experiential dimensions of the life of faith may not be trustworthy. Even in the heart of the church with the people most explicitly committed to faithful teaching and living, we continue to see the sometimes tragic outcomes of our human persistence in sin. This was brought home to me again and again in my work in the bishop’s office, for we tended to see and to have to deal with the worst of the effects of human sin in the church. Thus, my theological default mode is to return to the objective claims of gospel truth. In times of distress, when his faith life was lukewarm, or worse, when he was assaulted by doubt or spiritual torment (anfechtung), Luther would reportedly return again and again to the objective claim: “I am baptized”. In terms of approaches to understanding deification, therefore, I view deification foundationally as an objective reality, whether I am aware of it, feel it, experience it, or not. In Christ, in faith, mediated by the means of grace, believers, I and we, are united with the Trinitarian God, even if I or we may not experientially always apprehend this reality.

Because understanding deification persists in mystery, Lutheran theological epistemology rooted in paradox is compelling. Lutherans might say, “if it is paradoxical, it’s likely to be true”. Thus, my Lutheran understanding of deification is informed by the paradoxes which ground both Lutheran theological anthropology and Lutheran sacramental theology. To be a believing human, according to Lutheran understanding, is to dwell in realities simultaneously of sin and redemption. This is captured in the phrase, simul justus et peccator—we as humans, baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection, redeemed by God in Christ, exist simultaneously as both saint and sinner. This paradoxical reality persists even if we may be deified and have a share in the divine nature. Deification, this side of the consummated reign of God on the last day, does not eradicate our mortal, broken nature.

The paradoxical nature of Lutheran sacramental theology also helps ground my understandings of deification. Lutherans affirm the real, bodily presence of Christ in the Eucharist, present to us in, with, and under the gifts of bread and wine. When debating Ulrich Zwingli amidst the Marburg Colloquy, Luther resisted getting into the metaphysics of the nature of Christ’s presence. Arguing against Zwingli’s understanding of a spiritualized presence, but not going as far as sacramental understandings rooted in doctrines like transubstantiation, Luther insisted on simply trusting the promise of Christ, who said, “this is my body, this is my blood”. Thus, for Lutherans, the bread remains bread and the wine remains wine, even as these earthly gifts also and at the same time convey Christ’s bodily, real presence in the power of the Holy Spirit working through the word of promise in connection with bread and wine. This view informs my Lutheran understanding of deification. We remain fully earthly, human creatures, even as we, by the gift and initiative of God’s grace, share also in the divine life and nature, created and restored as we are in the image of God through the incarnate Word who is Christ. In other words, God in Christ dwells with us, and we are united with Christ in the power of the Spirit in, with, and under—and perhaps despite—our human creatureliness.

3.2. Deification and the Holy Spirit in the Lutheran Tradition

Since the days of Jesus’ resurrection and ascension and with the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we have been living in the epoch of the third person of the Trinity. Thus, any consideration of deification is best undertaken with and grounded in a robust theology of the Holy Spirit (pneumatology). This is especially true in our day, with the birth and exponential growth of the Pentecostal movement over one hundred years ago. Moreover, the current-day interest in spirituality also beckons rich pneumatological considerations. The general theme of spirituality, thus, has permeated my practice of ministry and my theological work throughout my career.

Lutherans traditionally, historically, and generally speaking, have focused on the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ. Yet, the Lutheran theological tradition offers much for a robust pneumatology. For purposes of this essay, I will simply focus on Luther’s explanation of the third article of the Apostles’ Creed in his Small Catechism—an affirmation well known to and often memorized by rank-and-file, lifelong Lutherans who encountered Luther’s words in their confirmation instruction. In response to the creed’s affirmation of belief in the Holy Spirit and in the church and its promises, Luther’s explanation is this: “I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy and kept me in the true faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and makes holy the whole Christian church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one common, true faith”.7 Luther’s explanation of the third article goes on to assign to the Spirit’s work the abundant forgiveness of sins and to discuss the Spirit’s role in the promised resurrection of all believers to life eternal. Notice that Luther affirms the apostle Paul’s conclusion: “no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3b). Luther acknowledges that the Spirit calls us to faith through the gospel, offering the Spirit’s gifts, holiness, and steadfastness in faith. What is true of individual persons of faith is true of the whole church. The Spirit’s work in nurturing faith is communal and ecclesial.

Which is to say, it is Lutheran understanding that even faith, our trust in God’s saving grace, is itself a gift of the Holy Spirit, offered apart from and in spite of our capacities or lack thereof to believe. If it is faith that unites the believer with Christ to share in the divine life and nature, even that grounding and starting point is the result of God’s sovereign initiative and not our effort or our own spiritual practices. Our efforts and spiritual practices at best serve to open our eyes to the fundamental realities of God’s grace and God’s work in bringing us to faith, to belief in Christ, via the Holy Spirit’s energies. Furthermore, and again, other resulting features of the life of faith—receiving the gifts of the Spirit, being made holy, and being kept in true faith—are the fruit of the Spirit’s gracious activity, often in spite of ourselves and our efforts.

To reiterate for emphasis, for Luther, the Spirit works through means, namely the gospel, and its proclamation and sacramental enactments. Which is to say, for Lutherans, and as stated previously in this essay, the Spirit works through the ministries of the church: preaching, baptism, Holy Communion, absolution, and mutual conversation and consolation among siblings in Christ. While the winds of the Spirit may blow where they will (cf. John 3:8), for Lutherans, the Spirit works most reliably through churchly means. It is the Holy Spirit, working through these reliable forms or expressions of the gospel, who generates the faith that unites us with Christ to share in his divine life in deification.

Quite crucially, the church and its ministries are integral to the Spirit’s deifying work, for it is in the church where the means of grace can be found. When the Spirit arrived at Pentecost, her first work was to unleash the tongues of the apostles to proclaim God’s mighty deeds of power in raising Jesus from the dead—and this in the languages of the nations (Acts 2:1–4ff.). The en-Spirited fruit of this proclamation was the birth of the new order of the church. While the Spirit’s coming was disruptive, introducing bewilderment, what followed on the heels of this disruption was the order described in Acts as life together in the newly birthed church: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved” (Acts 2:42–47).

Rooted in Acts 2 and in Luther’s understanding of the Holy Spirit’s work in the church, Lutheran pneumatology is thoroughly ecclesial. The Holy Spirit and the ministry and mission of the church are intimately inter-related and integral. There is not one without the other, even as God’s Spirit may well choose to work in other ways and through other means as well. Thus it is that, in my understanding of deification as a Lutheran, our union with Christ is both individual, that is, personal, and also communal. Furthermore, the individual, personal experience has its source in the communality of the church.

3.3. Deification and the Communality of the Church

My work in a bishop’s office gave me the gift of extensive involvements with and awareness of the wider church beyond local congregations. The organizing principle of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, of which I am a member, is that of interdependence between and among local congregations, the wider expression of the local church which we call synods, and our national churchwide organization. Each expression of the church is understood fully as church, but not the whole church. Our church is thoroughly synodal in that the assemblies of local congregations, of geographic synods, and of the whole church constitute the highest legislative authorities of our church. Thus, for me, I do not emphasize the primacy of my individuality as a Christian. My experience and practice of the faith are thoroughly and primarily communal and relational. I cannot conceive of being a Christian apart from Christian community in the church.

This communal reality was brought home to me in striking and poignant ways during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. The social isolation of those years revealed to me just how deeply and profoundly even my personal devotional life and prayer practices are communal and relational, undertaken primarily in communal, ecclesial contexts. In short, I realized that I am not called to be a lone hermit. In light of this communal, ecclesial contextualization, I have come to view deification, our union with Christ and our share in his divine nature, as principally a communal reality that, yes, I may experience individually, but only in relation to the church as a community.

The communal contextualization for deification is fundamentally rooted in the mystery of the Christian God, understood as a Trinity of three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Just as deification must be seen in relation to the Holy Spirit in this epoch of the post-Pentecost church, so, too, deification in my understanding must be grounded in the Trinitarian realities of our Godhead. The familial community that is God in a Trinity of three persons means that any kind of union with that God in Christ is likewise familial and relational.

The communal nature of deification in connection with the church is likewise reinforced by understanding the church as the body of Christ, a fundamental reality that I take literally. In the twelfth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul concludes, “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Corinthians 12:27). In the previous verses of this passage, Paul explores the unity and the plurality of ecclesial realities. “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many” (1 Corinthians 12:12–14). Paul’s metaphor of the body and its members, its body parts, and the need we have for each other in an interdependent reality (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:15–26) is crucial for my understanding of deification as a communal–ecclesial reality in which individuals share. And a primary mystery is that this community, the church, is in fact Christ’s literal body now offered for the sake of the world in the post-resurrection–ascension era.

Moreover, the reality of the church as the body of Christ is sacramentally constituted in the Holy Eucharist, where we, as Lutherans, believe that we receive the true body and blood of Christ. To put it in strikingly simple terms, we are or become what we eat, the true body of Christ as church. This for me is the fundamental locus and incarnate expression of our deification, our union with Christ. And it is an objective reality of which I may not have full awareness or experiential appropriation or understanding. We apprehend this reality in faith, in trust, even if we cannot appreciate or understand the fullness of the mystery. With a Eucharistic contextualization for deification, our sharing in Christ and the divine nature centers on the worshiping Christian assembly that is gathered by the Spirit on Sundays, the Lord’s Day. This is consistent with the basic Lutheran definition of church articulated in the Augsburg Confession. To paraphrase this key confessional document which Lutheran clergy pledge to teach faithfully, the church is an event, the gathering, the assembly, when and where the gospel is preached and the sacraments are celebrated. Here is the succinct definition of church in the Augsburg Confession: “It is also taught that at all times there must be and remain one holy, Christian church. It is the assembly of all believers among whom the gospel is purely preached and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel”.8

To emphasize the communal nature of deification as our union with Christ in the church and as the church is not to sidestep the also intensely personal and individual nature of this union. In the spirit of Lutheran appreciation for paradox, our share in Christ is simultaneously communal and individual, the individual reality made possible by the communal. Thus, we may speak of Christ’s presence within us, but also among us. This individual–communal reality is expressed in a lovely way in the words of the sacramental administration in use among North American English-speaking Lutherans, for whom the second person pronoun “you” is both singular and plural: “the body of Christ given for you; the blood of Christ shed for you”. When we receive Christ, we receive him personally and communally at the same time.

In addition to deification’s communal contextualization in the Sunday assembly among Lutherans, where the Spirit generates and enlivens faith through the means of grace uniting us to Christ in the Trinitarian Godhead, Martin Luther also gives some privilege of place to the mutual conversation and consolation among the siblings in Christ mentioned in passing previously in this essay alongside the other means of grace—preaching, baptism, Eucharist, and absolution. Luther includes mutual conversation and consolation in the listing of the means of grace in the Smalcald Articles, another among Lutheran confessional writings: “We now want to return to the gospel, which gives guidance and help against sin in more than one way, because God is extravagantly rich in his grace: first, through the spoken word, in which forgiveness of sins is preached to the whole world (which is the proper function of the gospel); second, through baptism; third, through the holy Sacrament of the Altar; fourth, through the power of the keys and also through the mutual conversation and consolation of brothers and sisters. Matthew 18:20: ‘Where two or three are gathered…’”.9 Luther holds that that such interaction among individual believers is a fulfillment of Jesus’ promise recorded in Matthew’s gospel: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:20). It may be that Luther himself knew this kind of quickening of faith in the conversations he experienced when he was an Augustinian Friar, when he and his brothers in holy discourse proclaimed the gospel to each other in ways that offered a palpable presence of Christ and God’s forgiveness among them, uniting them to each other as brothers and in so doing rediscovering their union with Christ, relationally contextualized. In my work in the oversight of our candidacy processes that lead to ordination in our church, especially in the conversations I had with candidates for ministry discerning their callings, I certainly had innumerable occasions of faith-enlivening conversation, which were salutary not just for those in my care but were conversations that also had the effects of renewing my own faith.

3.4. Deification and the Word of God

In the essay I wrote on deification years ago, I focused on the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist as means through which the Spirit generates, enlivens, and strengthens faith, which unites us to Christ. Largely undeveloped in that essay was my attention to the word of God in generating faith. I am, therefore, glad for the opportunity here to reflect more deeply on the role of the word of God for Lutheran understandings of deification. For God’s scriptural word, dwelling with it in studied and devotional ways, personally and communally, has had pride of place in my pastoral practice in preparing sermons and preaching them, in leading bible studies, as well as facilitating lectio divina (sacred reading of scripture) in group settings. The scriptures are featured prominently in my individual practice of praying in the daily office with a full slate of lectionary readings for morning prayer. These personal and communal practices certainly have been for me and those in my care significant loci of the faith-generating and enlivening energies of the Spirit working through the scriptural word. The practice of lectio divina, reading a particular biblical passage multiple times and engaging the passage with a distinct presence of mind in keeping with four movements, has been particularly rich for me and for others, especially in group settings. In the movements of lectio divina, we attend to the objective claims of the word (lectio, reading) and the subjective or personal meanings (meditatio, meditation), praying with and in response to the word (oratio, prayer), and then resting or dwelling in unitive ways with the word who is Christ via the Spirit working through the word (contemplatio, contemplation). My faith and that of others have been deeply enriched by such engagement with scripture, particularly when the gift of a sense of unity with God in Christ and with others is the en-Spirited fruit of the contemplative movement of lectio divina.

All of this is in keeping with the legacy and charisms of Martin Luther, himself a biblical scholar, for whom studied and devotional engagement with the scriptures resulted in his own “tower experience”, which led to the rediscovery of the centrality of justification by grace, effective through faith, which has been and continues to be the central focus of the Lutheran tradition. Here is how Luther described his experience, and I quote at length to give you a sense of the full effects of his sacred encounter with the scriptural word found in Paul’s letter to the church at Rome:

At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, “In it the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, “he who through faith is righteous shall live” [Romans 1:17] There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning; the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, “He who through faith is righteous shall live”. Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. There a totally other face of the entire Scripture showed itself to me. Thereupon I ran through the Scriptures from memory, I also found in other terms an analogy, as, the work of God, that is, what God does in us, the power of God, with which He makes us strong, the wisdom of God, with He makes us wise, the strength of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God.

And I extolled my sweetest word with a love as great as the hatred with which I had before hated the word “righteousness of God”. Thus that place in Paul was for me truly the gate to paradise.10

Luther’s being captivated by God’s word became the occasion for a profound re-awakening of his faith, a true metanoia, a change of mind, that then became a driving force of the Reformation. Perhaps this was for Luther an occasion for experiencing his union with Christ in re-awakened, rediscovered faith and trust in God’s grace and mercy known through Christ. Which is to say, it was this kind of encounter with the word that no doubt contributed to Luther’s view in “Freedom of a Christian”, referenced earlier in this essay, that we are united with Christ in faith as a bride to her husband. Our trust in the bridegroom Christ, we as Christ’s spouse, is deepened and strengthened through studied and devotional scriptural encounter which binds word to Word, scripture to Christ, revealing our share in the divine life and nature through Christ.

Which is to say that it is essential at this point to acknowledge that in the mainstream of Lutheran thinking and practice, Jesus Christ is the Word of God, to which the scriptures testify. Thus, seeing Christ in the scriptures is a central feature of Lutheran biblical hermeneutics. The German phrase, was Christum treibet, what drives or promotes Christ, is a main guiding principle for Lutheran approaches to biblical interpretation. Through the working of the Spirit in the word, we are drawn to see and more deeply apprehend Christ and the nature of his work. Deification is indeed our union with Christ, and Christ is fundamentally God’s Word made flesh, about whom the scriptures testify. Solus Christus and sola scriptura thus unite to make for our share in the divine life in Christ.

The view of Christ contained in the Gospel of John is particularly rich in terms of being an emerging high Christology that formed biblical foundations for later doctrines concerning the full divinity and full humanity of Christ. John’s Christology also, I believe, is revelatory and helpful for understanding Christian notions of deification with Lutheran accents. Luther reportedly had a particular fondness for the Gospel of John, so I offer here reflections on passages from John that have helped me understand deification as a Lutheran Christian who seeks scriptural foundations for theological reflection. The prologue to John’s Gospel is, I believe, inescapably foundational for any Christian understanding of deification: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth…. From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace” (John 1:14, 16). The Word that was with God at the beginning of creation, the Word that was and is God, this Word that took on human flesh, is the incarnational reality that makes possible our deification, that is, our share in the divine life and nature, receiving Christ’s fullness, grace upon grace. We can share in the divine life and nature because divine life and nature came to dwell with us in Christ the word made flesh. That share in the divine is known in our intimate participation in Christ by faith, or our belief in Christ, believing being a major theme throughout John’s gospel. In the witness of John, believing in Christ is the linchpin that makes Christ available to us, in keeping with a Lutheran view that it is faith, belief, that unites us with Christ. The centrality of such belief is clear in the encounter between Martha and Jesus upon the death of her brother Lazarus: “Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ She said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.’” (John 11:25–27).

John chapter six is arguably that part of the Gospel which has eucharistic overtones and implications. John reports that Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh…. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” (John 6:51, 54–56). It is the sacramental eating and drinking of the true body and blood of Christ that unites us with Christ, Christ abiding in and among us and we in Christ. The biblical Greek word, meno, translated as “abide”, is a key word used in many places in John to speak of the intimate relationship between believers, people of faith, with Christ. This intimate inter-relating in belief, in faith, is cemented in the sacramental encounter as suggested by the bread of life passages in John 6. Such abiding is suggestive of deification, that is, our share in the divine life and nature.

In addition to the intimate participation with Christ that comes with eating and drinking of his flesh and blood, this intimate indwelling is metaphorically reinforced also in the “I am the vine, you are the branches” passages in John: “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:4–5). This also is suggestive of our union with Christ as believers—as intimate as is the connection between the vine and its branches—for whom bearing fruit in the life of faith is possible only through Christ. The branches abiding intimately with the vine is an image likewise suggestive of deification, our union with Christ in belief, in faith.

Jesus’ promise of the coming of the Holy Spirit recorded in John also furthers our understandings of our union with Christ upon his return to the Father: “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you…. Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” (John 14:16–20, 23). Here we see further use of the crucial Johannine theological term translated “abide”, which speaks of the intimate dwelling of Christ with his believing followers, a participation in the divine life also reinforced by the statement of the Father and the Son making a home with believers. We abide with Christ, thus, also through the coming of the Spirit, who makes known to us the unity of the Father and the Son, a unity in which we participate with God in Trinity.

These reflections on the foundational nature of key biblical passages to ground our Christian—and my Lutheran—understandings of deification thus point to the crucial role of the proclamation of God’s word in preaching and teaching. Again, such proclamation for Lutherans is one of the principal means of grace through which the Holy Spirit acts to bring about the gift of faith, which unites us with Christ. The apostle Paul speaks to the centrality of hearing God’s word proclaimed or preached for the generation of faith:

“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved”. But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”… So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ.

(Romans 10:13–15, 17)

Because faith comes from what is heard, that is, through the proclamation of the word of Christ, preaching has pride of place in the Lutheran tradition and is integral to understanding deification from a Lutheran point of view, since it is faith that unites us with Christ, the Word. For Lutherans, one of the main functions of preaching is to generate, enliven and renew faith. For the sake of reinforcing this central idea, I refer again to the affirmation in Article V of the Augsburg Confession, where the office of preaching was established, such that the Holy Spirit works through preaching: “who produces faith, where and when he wills, in those who hear the gospel”.11 Again, when faith is produced and nurtured and strengthened, our union with Christ, our share in the divine life, is likewise established and nurtured and strengthened.

3.5. Deification and Hymns and Music in the Lutheran Tradition

Martin Luther was devoted to music and held it in high regard as a form of gospel proclamation. He himself was a musician and a composer of hymns on occasion, offering hymnic paraphrases of biblical passages. And so it has been that hymn singing and music making have always been central to the Lutheran tradition and praxis. This has certainly been true in my practice of the faith. I am a singer and have consistently felt my faith enlivened by the sung, choral word, in keeping with the saying attributed to St. Augustine, “the one who sings, prays twice”. For Luther, music was close to the heart of the proclamation of the word of God, as he wrote the following: “Thus it was not without reason that the fathers and prophets wanted nothing else to be associated as closely with the Word of God as music. Therefore, we have so many hymns and Psalms where message and music join to move the listener’s soul… After all, the gift of language combined with the gift of song was only given to [humans] to let [them] know that [they] should praise God with both words and music, namely, by proclaiming [the Word of God] through music and by providing sweet melodies with words”.12

In current Lutheran practice, the Hymn of the Day in the Lutheran liturgy follows the sermon and is itself an expression of the assembly’s share in the proclamation of the word. Or as an instructional rubric puts it in our current book of worship, Evangelical Lutheran Worship, “The assembly stands to proclaim the word of God in song”.13 There is something spiritually very powerful in experiencing unity amidst diversity in communal hymn singing, even as the weddedness of text to tune can reinforce the weddedness of people of faith in the community of the church with Christ.

The decades and centuries following the Reformation saw a flowering of hymn texts written by Lutherans. Many of these hymns embodied the paradoxicality of the objectivity of God’s word and work and the affective subjectivity of receiving that divine work in faith. Quite significantly for our purposes here, bridal mysticism—allied, in my opinion, with deification and an image that, as we have seen, Luther himself used in extolling the wonders of faith—consistently appears in some classic Lutheran hymn texts, thus revealing that themes related to deification are not foreign to Lutheran sensibilities in the practice of singing the faith.

Here is one such text in an English translation from Johann Franck’s classic hymn for Holy Communion, “Soul, Adorn Yourself with Gladness”.14 I offer in full the stanzas that appear in our worship book to give a sense of the nuptial anticipation, joy, love, and intimacy reflected in the Lord’s Supper, where we are united with Christ in the spirit of a marriage feast:

• Soul, adorn yourself with gladness,
  leave the gloomy haunts of sadness,
  come into the daylight’s splendor,
  there with joy your praises render.
  Bless the one whose grace unbounded
  this amazing banquet founded;
  Christ, though heav’nly, high, and holy,
  deigns to dwell with you most lowly.
• Hasten as a bride to meet him,
  eagerly and gladly greet him.
  There he stands already knocking;
  quickly, now, your gate unlocking,
  open wide the fast-closed portal,
  saying to the Lord immortal:
  “Come, and leave your loved one never;
  dwell within my heart forever”.
• Now in faith I humbly ponder
  over this surpassing wonder
  that the bread of life is boundless
  though the souls it feeds are countless;
  with the choicest wine of heaven
  Christ’s own blood to us is given.
  Oh, most glorious consolation,
  pledge and seal of my salvation.
• Jesus, source of lasting pleasure,
  truest friend, and dearest treasure,
  peace beyond all understanding,
  joy into all life expanding:
  humbly now, I bow before you,
  love incarnate, I adore you;
  worthily let me receive you,
  and, so favored, never leave you.15

The text of this classic Lutheran hymn suggests that the marriage between Christ and believing communicants is one that lasts forever, where the Eucharist is a kind of consummation of that eternal loving relationship.

Themes of bridal mysticism also appear in the texts of cantatas composed by J.S. Bach, perhaps the most prominent of Lutheran composers. For example, bridal mysticism is clear in Cantata BWV 140, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, based on a Philip Nicolai hymn text and offering flowering elaborations on the themes of that hymn. You will see in the English translation of the cantata text below the unitive themes of the weddedness of Christ with believing souls, where both the heavenly banquet and eucharistic celebrations convey and embody the reality of the union, our intimate, sacramental share in the divine life:

• “Wake up”, the voice of the watchmen calls to us
  Very high on the pinnacle [of the city wall];
  “Wake up, you city of Jerusalem”.
  This hour is named midnight;
  They call to us, declaiming brightly:
  “Where are you, Wise Virgins?”
  Cheer up, the bridegroom is coming;
  Stand up, take your lamps.
  Hallelujah.
  Make yourselves ready
  For the wedding;
  You must go to meet him.
• He comes, he comes,
  The bridegroom comes!
  You Daughters of Zion, come forth;
  His exodus hastens from on high,
  Into your mother’s house.
  The bridegroom comes, who like a roe
  And like a young stag
  Leaps upon the mountains,
  And brings you the wedding meal.
  Wake up, rouse yourselves
  To receive the bridegroom.
  Look, there he comes along.
• Soul
  When will you come, my salvation?
  Jesus
  I am coming, your portion [bestowed by God].
  Soul
  I wait with burning oil [in my lamp].
  Soul, Jesus
  Open up|I open the hall
  Soul & Jesus
  For the heavenly meal;
  Soul
  Come, Jesus.
  Jesus
  I am coming; come, lovely Soul.
• Zion hears the watchmen singing;
  Her heart takes to leaping for joy;
  She wakes and hurriedly stands up.
  Her beloved comes from heaven: magnificent,
  Strong in grace, mighty in truth;
  Her light becomes bright, her star rises.
  Now come, you valuable crown,
  Lord Jesus, God’s Son!
  Hosanna!
  We all follow [God’s Son]
  To the hall of joy
  And join in keeping the Lord’s Supper.
• Jesus
  So go in, unto me [for the heavenly meal],
  You, my chosen bride.
  I have betrothed myself to you
  Out of eternity.
  I will place you just like a seal upon my heart,
  Just like a seal upon my arm;
  And your sad eye I will make joyful.
  Forget now, o Soul,
  The fear, the agony
  That you have to endure;
  Upon my left [hand] shall you rest [your head],
  And my right [hand] shall cushion you.
• Soul
  My beloved is mine,
  Jesus
  And I am his [—God the Father’s];
  Soul & Jesus
  Nothing shall separate the love [of God from us].
  Soul, Jesus
  I will|you shall revel with you|me in [the beloved’s garden of] roses-of-heaven,
  Soul & Jesus
  Where fullness of joy, where gladness will be.
• Let “Gloria” be sung to you
  With the tongues of men and of angels,
  Even with harps and with cymbals.
  Of twelve pearls are the gates
  In your city [where] we are consorts
  Of the angels high around your throne.
  No eye has ever perceived,
  No ear has ever heard
  Such joy.
  Of this, we are glad;
  “Io, io!” [we exclaim]
  In sweet jubilation, eternally.16

While there is an awaiting of the fullness of the consummation at the heavenly banquet, we receive foretastes of that banquet in the Sacrament of the Altar, where again we are constituted as Christ’s body the church and know union with him and participation in his divine life and nature by the gift of grace effective through faith, our trust in our beloved Christ.

3.6. Deification as an Experienced Reality

In this work, I have emphasized the more objective qualities of deification from a Lutheran perspective, that we share individually and communally in the life and nature of Christ when we are constituted as Christ’s body, the church, through the Holy Spirit working via the word and sacraments. The extent to which we experientially apprehend this gift and reality is arguably of secondhand importance, in my estimation, to the objective realities. That said, there are those occasions when we may personally apprehend our union with Christ in liminal, mystical kinds of experiences. I have had such experiences on occasion, but mostly mine has been a more mundane and ordinary walk of faith.

Our share in the divine likeness and nature will find its completion and fullness at the end of time with the consummation of God’s reign in Christ. The promise of this consummated reality is suggested in the visionary poetry of the Book of Revelation: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’” (Revelation 21:1–4).

That said, the eschatology in John’s Gospel is in significant measure a realized eschatology, such that we share in the promise of eternal life even now. John reports that Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life” (John 5:24a). This passage suggests that eternal life is a present tense reality, available now to those who believe. Thus, belief, faith, trust in Jesus whom God sent is key to opening us to eternal life even now, according to John’s understanding. In Jesus’ high priestly prayer recorded in John, Jesus prays, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given hm authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:1b–3). In short, belief in Jesus, knowing Christ, which makes possible our abiding with Christ, is eternal life.

The eternal life we enjoy even now is characterized by divine love, and such love is known experientially in Christian community, even if quite imperfectly. Here is Jesus’ promise in John concerning our share in divine love and joy: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:9–11). Indeed, my experience of life in the church and in the exercise of pastoral ministry has consistently offered occasions of loving community and of joy, even amidst and alongside the sometimes tragic and conflicted aspects of our life together.

Again, for John, belief in Jesus, faith, is that which makes for eternal life, which is in fact God’s work in us: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (John 6:29). This remains in keeping with Lutheran understandings of deification, where faith is key to the whole reality. Once again, faith unites us to Christ and everything flows from there, including fruit that is born of the reality of our abiding in Christ (cf. John 15:1–5). Thus, outwardly available signs of deification, of our union with Christ, may be seen in the qualities or dimensions of the fruit of the Holy Spirit, as Paul recounts: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22). Outwardly available signs of our union with Christ occur in the congruence between the theology we proclaim and the theology we live, reflected in our actions, dispositions, and behavior. In short, when we practice what we preach, we bear the life-giving fruit of the Spirit, giving evidence of and experiential access to its qualities in our actions and dispositions.

Another way of putting it is that the fruit of deification is holiness, dimensions of which are seen in Paul’s listing in Galatians. These are realities that we know and reveal in our lives, if only in fits and starts. It is the rare person indeed who gives consistent and convincing evidence of the holiness of the fruit of the Spirt. Which is to say, as a Lutheran, a principal feature of growth in holiness is less moral perfection, and more an ever-deepening awareness of our need for and dependence on the grace, mercy, love, and forgiveness of God in Christ. For we do not have the capacities to grow in holiness by our own efforts as saintly sinners who endure the daily struggle between the ways of the old Adam in us and the new creation in Christ. Thus, it is Christ dwelling in us and among us, our deified individual and communal grounding, that is the foundation for bearing tangible fruit for the sake of God’s mission in and for the world.

3.7. Deification and God’s Mission in the World

Lutheran pastors of my generation have rediscovered the centrality of God’s mission in and for the world in our understanding both of the gospel and the nature of the work to which God has called us. What we do in church is beckoned and intended to have a salutary effect on the life of the world via words and deeds of loving service that attend to human need, that make for God’s justice, and that bear witness to the hope that is in us in Christ Jesus. Thus, I would be remiss if I did not explore the relationship of deification to God’s mission.

Guided by the telos, the intended outcome, of God’s missionary activity, deification, our share in divine nature and life in union with Christ, does not occur for its own sake as an end in itself. Rather, it serves to further God’s mission in and for the sake of the world, as the church as the body of Christ offers itself in cruciform ways, extending God’s love in Christ, in word and deed, in mercy and in seeking God’s justice for the world’s healing and salvation. Again, because of the ongoing claims of human brokenness and sin, it is ultimately only Christ working through us in the Spirit—and often in spite of ourselves—that we can faithfully serve the mission God has entrusted to us. In short, it is our deified state as church, our union with Christ, that makes possible any salutary effects of our missionary efforts.

United with Christ, we engage in this mission as justified sinners quite imperfectly, but we also discover realities of how God in Christ propels us on our way in the power of the Spirit.

As the apostle Paul suggests in connection with our prayerful intercession for the world: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes [for us] with sighs too deep for words. And God who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:26–27). Thus, our intercessions for the world and our ministry and mission in that world ultimately emerge from the Spirit already at prayer within and among us, interceding for us and for the world. Moreover, Jesus warns of the challenges and persecutions which will confront those called to serve God’s mission in the world in proclaiming the gospel in word and deed. But Christ offers this promise when we are brought before worldly authorities to bear witness to the hope that is in us (cf. 1 Peter 3:15): “When they hand you over, do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you at that time; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Matthew 10:19–20). God in Christ through the power of the Spirit gives us the word we need in our union with Christ made possible by our faith, our trust in Christ. I have certainly seen in the practice of ministry times when I and others have risen to the occasion in responding to trials, temptations, and traumas, offering needed words and responses that did not seem to result from our own capacities.

An understanding of deification from a Lutheran perspective, where the gift of faith unites us to Christ making effective God’s grace for our salvation apart from our works, allies closely with Lutheran social ethics as a dimension of serving God’s mission. Here is a basis for such ethics in a Lutheran key: because we are saved by God’s grace apart from our works, we are free to be for others in loving service with no strings attached. Instrumentality—our doing right by others to become right with God—plays no part in Lutheran social ethics. In the freedom of the Gospel, I can be for you as an end in yourself and not as a means to an end; namely, my working for my salvation by being good to you. There is a kind of violence implied in approaches to social ethics that accommodate our seeking salvation through our good works where others are reduced to being means to our self-serving ends. The ends do not justify the means when it comes to faithfulness in a Lutheran understanding of Christian social ethics. An approach to ethics centered on the other as other and not a means to an end is crucial in a tit for tat world of manipulative instrumentality where others are reduced to serving our ends even if we serve them. Thus, we embody, in our free, loving servanthood, the paradox central to Luther’s treatise, “The Freedom of a Christian”—“A Christian person is a free sovereign, above all things, subject to no one. A Christian person is a dutiful servant in all things, subject to everyone”.17 Here is how Luther concludes this treatise, which he does in a way that reveals the flow of divine love through us to our neighbors, the fruit of our union with Christ extending sacred love to the world: “Out of all these things the conclusion follows that Christians do not live in themselves but in Christ and in their neighbor—in Christ through faith and in the neighbor through love. Through faith one ascends above oneself into God. From God one descends through love again below oneself and yet always remains in God and God’s love. As Christ says in John 1:51, ‘You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’”18 Furthermore, grounded in a communal understanding of deification where we see the image of God restored in each other by the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ, how can we not treat others as we might treat Christ himself? If my neighbors are united with Christ—or even potentially united with Christ in incipient faith—how can I not love them, seeing and acknowledging their holiness, the image of God in them?

Another feature of deification as serving God’s mission in and for the world involves ecumenism, initiatives that seek to bring about greater visible Christian unity as part of our witness to the world, so that the world may believe. Ecumenical initiatives have played central roles in my pastoral ministry throughout my career in various settings, and they have resulted in some of my most cherished and profound experiences. In short, visible Christian unity serves God’s mission in the world by revealing oneness with each other and God to a divided, broken, and loveless world crying out for unity and reconciliation. Central biblical groundings for ecumenical efforts are found in portions of Jesus’ high priestly prayer, offered amidst his farewell discourse with his disciples: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:20–23). Ecumenism, seeking visible unity among churches, is thus, as suggested by Jesus’ prayer in John, a mystical reality rooted in the ultimate mysteries of our one God in three persons. Ecumenism, mystically understood, is allied, I believe, with themes of deification. Our deification, our share in Christ and the divine life, is not just individual, and nor is it communal only in terms of our local churches. Our share in Christ is a universal reality, a catholic reality, ultimately involving all Christian traditions. Our deified state as the church is an ecumenical reality revealing our ultimate unity in Christ and with Christ, even amidst astonishing diversity of theology and practice. Moreover, the loving, deified oneness we know and enjoy in Christ in the church throughout the world in all of its multitudinous, rich expressions also does not exist for its own sake but, as reflected in Jesus’ prayer for unity among his followers, so that the world may believe in Christ and share with us in the unity we mystically know together, the unity of the Trinitarian Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Finally, abiding in Christ in Johannine theology is all about love, which is a missionary love, God’s love for the world, and our love for each other and our neighbors so that all may taste even now of eternal life in Christ: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:16–17). So it is that Christ gave us the gift of abiding in him as he also gave us our missionary mandate: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34–35). This pretty well sums up what our union with Christ, our share in the divine life and nature, is all about: the communication of divine, unconditional love. Our union with Christ, our sharing in the divine life and nature, then has the effect of evangelizing the world as we serve that world in loving words and deeds for the world’s salvation and share in eternity, for reconciliation, for healing, for being made whole.

4. Concluding Thoughts

As I engaged in writing this essay, nuances to, elaborations on, and qualifications for my thinking emerged for each section of this work. Had I included this material, an already lengthy piece would have become still lengthier. Thus, this is a work in progress as I continue to reflect on the themes related to deification from Lutheran points of view. Rooted in articulating pastoral theological reflections on my practice of ministry, my principal dialogue partners have been the biblical witness and my understandings of the Lutheran tradition drawn from works of Luther and Lutheran confessional and devotional texts. What is missing in this work at this point is dialogue with the scholarship of other contemporary theologians, especially those in the Lutheran traditions, who have also been working on theological understandings of deification. Thus, I offer this essay, as stated in the opening pages, in a spirit of humility, acknowledging the limited scope of my methodology and perspectives and inviting dialogue with others who may wish to be in conversation about the sacred mysteries of our union with Christ in faith, in whom we share the divine life and nature.