In the De Decretis Athanasius argues against the opinion he had heard Eusebius express that the Son alone participates in the Father while we participate in the Son. If that were so, we would then be the Son’s sons. Rather, we are sons of the same Father as the Son is, our sonship being granted to us in accordance with our virtue, so that some sit on the twelve thrones, while others occupy lower places. Yet in a deeper sense the Son does participate in the Father. In the Contra Arianos Athanasius equates participation in the Father with the Father’s begetting. But since the essence of God cannot be divided, his begetting the Son means that he communicates himself wholly to the Son. When men partake of God, they therefore partake of the Son, ‘for that which is partaken of the Father is the Son’. Thus when men are said to ‘participate in the divine nature’, it means that the Son communicates himself to them.
This dynamic participation in the Logos is only possible because of the Incarnation and indeed is dependent specifically upon a Logos-sarx christology. When the Logos assumed a human body, he became the subject by the communicatio idiomatum of what the body experienced. ‘For what the human body of the Logos suffered, this the Logos, being united to the body, ascribed to himself in order that we might be enabled to participate in the godhead of the Logos’. By participating in the deified humanity of the Logos we participate in his impassible divinity, because the flesh has been endowed with divinity, just as the divinity has been endowed with humanity. Athanasius is silent about the soul, which in Origen plays an important part in mediating between the Logos and the flesh. In Athanasius’ view, because the Incarnation has transferred our nature to the Logos, we participate in the divine nature simply by participating in the humanity of the Logos.
Our participation in the Logos is made possible by the Spirit: ‘for through the Spirit we are all called partakers of God’. That is to say, we participate in the Son through baptism. The Spirit is the chrism and the seal with which the Logos anoints and seals us, making us, as it were, the fragrance of Christ. Another way of putting it is to say that the Son is life-in-itself, the Spirit is life-giving and the faithful are life-endowed. It is because the Spirit is divine that he is able to make us ‘partakers of the divine nature’, that is, of Christ, for the divine nature is not impersonal. Through the Spirit we become ‘partakers of Christ and partakers of God’.
Norman Russell Partakers of the Divine Nature (2 Peter 1:4) in the Byzantine Tradition
And have you seen Norman Russell The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition ?
