The Exchange Formula

“For He was made man that we might be made God” — the sentence from St. Athanasius’ On the Incarnation 54.3 in which the whole doctrine of deification is compressed. This file quotes the formula exactly, traces its earlier form in St. Irenaeus and its restatements in St. Gregory the Theologian and St. Maximus, and shows that the admirabile commercium is not an epigram but a Christological argument on which the Nicene faith itself was defended.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Sentence

The most quoted sentence in the entire literature of deification stands near the end of St. Athanasius’ On the Incarnation, in a recapitulating passage where he lists what the Word accomplished by becoming flesh:

“For He was made man that we might be made God; and He manifested Himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father; and He endured the insolence of men that we might inherit immortality.”
— Athanasius, On the Incarnation 54.3 (trans. NPNF II/4)

The Greek verb is theopoiethomen, “that we might be god-made,” from theopoieo; the older repository article gives the clause as autos gar enenthropesen, hina hemeis theopoiethomen (see St. Athanasius: Theosis in Athanasius, and Theosis). Modern translations render the second clause variously — “that we might become god,” “that we might be deified” — and the variation matters, because the English capital G in the NPNF rendering can suggest exactly what Athanasius spends three Orations against the Arians denying. He means that we are made gods by grace and participation. He does not mean that we are made God (Athanasius, Contra Arianos 1.9; 3.19–20; trans. NPNF II/4).

Note also the structure of the sentence. The exchange formula is not a stand-alone maxim; it is the first of three parallel clauses, each pairing something the Word underwent with something we receive. Deification stands alongside the knowledge of the Father and the inheritance of immortality as one description of a single gift.

The Earlier Form: St. Irenaeus

Athanasius did not invent the pattern. Its classic patristic ancestor is St. Irenaeus of Lyons, writing in the last quarter of the second century, in the preface to Book V of Against Heresies:

“…our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.”
— Irenaeus, Against Heresies V, preface (trans. ANF 1)

Irenaeus states the same reciprocity without the word “god” in the second clause, and he grounds it in his characteristic doctrine of recapitulation (anakephalaiosis): Christ “summed up” the whole of human nature in himself in order to heal it from within (see St. Irenaeus of Lyons: Exchange and Deification). Elsewhere he does use the stronger term: the Word of God “became the Son of man, that man… might become the son of God” (Against Heresies III.19.1; trans. ANF 1). Irenaeus also grounds the whole in his theology of human growth — Adam created immature, meant to advance toward the likeness — which supplies the anthropology deification requires (Against Heresies IV.38; see St. Irenaeus of Lyons: Infancy and Growth, and Image and Likeness).

The order of witnesses therefore runs Irenaeus first, Athanasius second. The popular attribution of the formula’s invention to Athanasius is a matter of fame, not of chronology.

The Cappadocian Restatement

St. Gregory the Theologian uses the exchange constantly and in a homiletic key. In the first of his orations, preached at Pascha, he turns it into an exhortation:

“Let us become like Christ, since Christ became like us. Let us become gods for His sake, since He for ours became man.”
— Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 1.5

[Corrected: the widely circulated English form given above renders the Greek theoi as “gods”; the NPNF II/7 text at this point reads “Let us become God’s for His sake,” a rendering that turns the noun into a possessive and loses the point of the sentence. Readers checking the passage in NPNF should be aware of the discrepancy and consult the Greek or a modern translation.]

And in the theological orations he states it in the first person: the Word “was made man… that I might be made God so far as He is man” (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 29.19; trans. NPNF II/7). The phrase so far as He is man is the safeguard: the proportion of our deification is set by the reality of his humanity, not by any claim on our part to divinity.

From the same theologian comes the corollary that governed the Christological councils: “That which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved” (Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistle 101, to Cledonius; trans. NPNF II/7). This is the exchange formula run backwards. If deification depends on the Word’s taking what is ours, then whatever he did not take is not deified — which is why the Church insisted on a rational human soul in Christ against Apollinaris, and on a human will against the Monothelites (see Christology; St. Maximus the Confessor).

St. Basil the Great supplies the same doctrine in the pneumatological register: among the effects of the Holy Spirit he lists “abiding in God, the being made like to God, and, highest of all, the being made God” (Basil, On the Holy Spirit 9.23; trans. NPNF II/8; see St. Basil the Great). The superlative — highest of all — is Basil’s own ranking of the goods of salvation.

Why It Is an Argument, Not an Epigram

The formula reads like a rhetorical antithesis, and it is easy to quote as one. In its original settings it is doing hard polemical work.

Against Arianism. If the Word were a creature, however exalted, he could not deify; a creature cannot confer what it does not possess by nature. Athanasius’ soteriology therefore requires the homoousion: only if the Word is God by nature does his incarnation actually make gods (Athanasius, Contra Arianos 1.9; 2.70; 3.34; trans. NPNF II/4; see St. Athanasius: Orations against the Arians).

Against the Pneumatomachi. Athanasius extends the same logic to the Holy Spirit in the Letters to Serapion: the Spirit deifies, therefore the Spirit is not a creature; a creature could not be the agent of another creature’s deification (Athanasius, Letters to Serapion 1; trans. NPNF II/4; see St. Athanasius: Letters to Serapion, and Pneumatology).

Against Apollinarianism and Monothelitism. Gregory’s “the unassumed is the unhealed” makes the completeness of Christ’s humanity a soteriological necessity rather than an anthropological nicety, and Maximus deploys the same principle to establish that Christ has a human will (see St. Maximus the Confessor: Dyothelite Christology).

The formula, in other words, is the hinge between Christology and soteriology. Every Christological definition the Church has made can be read as an answer to the question: what must be true of Christ if he is actually to deify us?

St. Maximus and the Symmetry

St. Maximus the Confessor takes the exchange to its most exact statement, and turns the direction of dependence around. Deification is not a hopeful inference from the Incarnation; the Incarnation is the guarantee of it, and in the same measure:

“A sure warrant for looking forward with hope to the deification of human nature is provided by the incarnation of God, which makes man god to the same degree as God himself became man.”
— Maximus, Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, and Virtue and Vice 1.62, in The Philokalia, vol. 2, trans. Palmer–Sherrard–Ware (a Byzantine compilation drawn from Maximus’ works; the theme pervades Ambiguum 7)

Maximus also presses the symmetry to its limit in his teaching that God and man are, in a sense, paradigms of one another — that the Word “wills always and in all things to accomplish the mystery of his embodiment” (Maximus, Ambigua 7 and 10; see St. Maximus the Confessor: Theosis in Maximus). The Incarnation is not a remedial afterthought occasioned by the fall; it is the fulfilment of the purpose of creation, and deification is its intended term.

The Limits the Formula Sets

Because the sentence is short and startling, it has been made to carry weight it will not bear. Three limits are internal to it.

The exchange is asymmetrical. He is what he is; we are made what we become. The passive voice in theopoiethomen is not an accident of Greek style. Athanasius is emphatic that we do not acquire the Word’s natural sonship, do not become uncreated, and do not cease to be creatures (Athanasius, Contra Arianos 3.19; trans. NPNF II/4).

The exchange is Christological, not generic. It is not a statement about the divine potential latent in humanity as such. It is a statement about what happened in one man, Jesus of Nazareth, and about what reaches other human beings only through incorporation into him. Cabasilas draws the consequence directly: deification is had by being made a member of Christ’s body and nourished on his flesh and blood, not by a spiritual technique (The Life in Christ, Books I and IV; trans. deCatanzaro, SVS Press, 1974).

The exchange does not specify its own metaphysics. Athanasius says that we partake of God and that we do not partake of the divine essence as the Son does; he does not say precisely what in God is partaken. That question was left to the later tradition and answered at the Palamite councils by the distinction of essence and energies (see Essence and Energies; St. Gregory Palamas: The Essence-Energies Distinction). The formula is therefore a foundation, not a complete building — which is exactly how the Church has used it.

See Also

References

  • Athanasius of Alexandria. On the Incarnation, 54. Trans. NPNF II/4.
  • Athanasius of Alexandria. Orations against the Arians, 1.9, 2.70, 3.19–20, 3.34. Trans. NPNF II/4.
  • Athanasius of Alexandria. Letters to Serapion. Trans. NPNF II/4; cf. C. R. B. Shapland, trans., The Letters of Saint Athanasius Concerning the Holy Spirit. London: Epworth, 1951.
  • Basil of Caesarea. On the Holy Spirit, 9.23. Trans. NPNF II/8.
  • Gregory of Nazianzus. Orations 1.5 and 29.19; Epistle 101 (to Cledonius). Trans. NPNF II/7.
  • Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies, III.19.1; IV.38; V, preface. Trans. ANF 1.
  • Maximus the Confessor. Ambigua, 7 and 10. Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, and Virtue and Vice 1.62, in The Philokalia, vol. 2, trans. G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, Kallistos Ware. London: Faber, 1981.
  • Nicholas Cabasilas. The Life in Christ. Trans. Carmino J. deCatanzaro. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1974.
  • Russell, Norman. The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.