Partakers of the Divine Nature

2 Peter 1:4 — that we “may become partakers of the divine nature” — is the locus classicus of deification and the only place in the New Testament where the phrase theia physis is applied to the Christian’s destiny. This file examines the verse in its Greek and its context, sets beside it Psalm 81/82:6 and the Lord’s own use of it in John 10:34–35, and follows the patristic exegesis of both, including the difficulty the verse’s language of “nature” creates and how the Fathers resolved it.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Locus Classicus

“…by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”
— 2 Peter 1:4

The Greek of the key clause is ἵνα διὰ τούτων γένησθε θείας κοινωνοὶ φύσεως — “that through these you may become partakers [koinonoi, sharers, communicants] of the divine nature [theias physeos].” The repository hub article gives the phrase in the same form (see Theosis).

Three features of the verse have governed its use.

The verb is ginesthe, “become.” The text does not say that we are partakers but that we may become so. Deification is a term to be reached, not a status already possessed, and the reaching is placed in the future relative to the readers.

The means are “the promises.” The participation is mediated — dia touton, “through these” — by God’s own gifts, not achieved by ascent. Verse 3 has already said that “his divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness.” Participation is receptive before it is active.

It is set against corruption. The clause “having escaped the corruption [phthora] that is in the world through lust” ties deification to incorruption (aphtharsia), which is the register in which St. Athanasius principally develops it: because the immortal Word united himself to mortal flesh, corruption is swallowed by life, and the deified share Christ’s incorruption and resurrection life (Athanasius, On the Incarnation 8–9, 54; trans. NPNF II/4; see St. Athanasius: Theosis in Athanasius).

The Problem the Verse Creates

The verse says nature. Taken flatly, it appears to say precisely what the Church denies — that the creature comes to share the divine essence. Norman Russell’s history of the doctrine treats this tension as the engine of the whole patristic development: the language of participation had to be refined until it could say something strong enough to be true to the text and guarded enough to be true to the Creator/creature distinction (Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition, Oxford, 2004, esp. 1–3 and the chapters on the Alexandrian tradition).

The Fathers resolve it in two connected ways.

First, by the grammar of participation itself. Koinonoi denotes those who share in something that remains another’s. A partner in a business does not become the business; a communicant does not become the gift. St. Athanasius uses the distinction relentlessly: the Son is the divine nature and gives participation in himself; we receive and partake. What the Son has by nature (physei), we have by grace and gift (Athanasius, Contra Arianos 1.9; 3.19–20; trans. NPNF II/4).

Second, by specifying what is participated. Athanasius does not say precisely what in God is partaken; the fourteenth-century councils did. What is communicated is the uncreated energy of God — God himself in his outgoing act — while the ousia remains imparticipable (Synodal Tome of 1351, in Norman Russell, trans., Gregory Palamas: The Hesychast Controversy and the Debate with Islam, Liverpool, 2020; see How Participation Is Possible). On this reading “divine nature” in 2 Peter names God as he gives himself, not the divine essence considered in itself — the reading required if the verse is not to contradict the rest of Scripture’s insistence that God dwells “in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see” (1 Timothy 6:16).

A Note on the Epistle Itself

Honesty about the sources requires a note that the locus classicus stands in the New Testament book whose authorship is most widely contested in modern criticism. The great majority of critical scholarship regards 2 Peter as pseudonymous and among the latest writings in the canon; a minority defends Petrine authorship or a Petrine circle. [Disputed: the standard critical treatments — e.g., Richard Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, Word Biblical Commentary 50 (Waco: Word, 1983) — argue for pseudonymity and a date around the end of the first century or early second; conservative scholarship continues to defend authenticity or authorized composition. The question is source-critical and falls under METHODOLOGY §4.2.] This bears on the history of composition, not on the canonicity or authority of the text: the Church receives 2 Peter as Scripture, and the doctrine of deification does not rest on this verse alone — as the rest of this section shows, it is read out of the Psalms, the Johannine corpus, and the Pauline letters as well (see The Orthodox Scriptures).

“I Said, You Are Gods”

The second technical text is a Psalm verse, and its importance is that the Lord himself uses it.

“I said, You are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High. But you die as men, and fall as one of the princes.”
— Psalm 81:6–7 (LXX numbering; 82:6–7 in the Hebrew and most English Bibles)

In the psalm’s own setting the verse is addressed to those who “judge unjustly and accept the persons of the wicked” — most probably the judges or rulers of Israel, or, on another ancient reading, the members of a divine council. The rebuke is that beings addressed as “gods” will nonetheless die like men.

In John’s Gospel this verse becomes the pivot of an argument. Accused of blasphemy “because you, being a man, make yourself God,” Jesus answers:

“Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, You are gods’? If He called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), do you say of Him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?”
— John 10:34–36

Two things follow that the Fathers seized upon. First, Scripture itself applies the word theoi to human beings who received the word of God, and the Lord ratifies the usage — “the Scripture cannot be broken.” Second, the argument works a fortiori: if those to whom the word came could be called gods, how much more the one who is the Word. The passage thus authorizes the vocabulary of deification while simultaneously fixing the asymmetry between the Son by nature and those made gods by grace.

The Church’s use of the verse is old and constant. St. Athanasius reads it exactly this way in the anti-Arian Orations: men are called gods by participation in the Word, and the very fact that they are so called while remaining creatures proves that the Son, who is God by nature and not by adoption, is of another order (Athanasius, Contra Arianos 1.9; 3.19; trans. NPNF II/4). The verse also supplied Byzantine theology with its standard shorthand for the deified: theoi kata charin, “gods by grace” (Russell 2004, on the “metaphorical” and “realistic” registers of theos language).

The Johannine Union Texts

The Fourth Gospel supplies the language of indwelling that the Church reads alongside the language of participation.

The high-priestly prayer. “That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us… And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me” (John 17:21–23). The Fathers read this as a union of participation, not of essence — the disciples are brought into the divine communion, not made consubstantial with the Trinity (cf. Theosis). The gift of glory in verse 22 is important: it is a real communication of something belonging to Christ, and Palamite theology identifies it with the uncreated energy.

The vine. “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me” (John 15:4–5). St. Nicholas Cabasilas takes this as the image of an organic union in which the Christian draws his life from the stock, so that he “can do nothing” apart from it (The Life in Christ, Book I; trans. deCatanzaro, SVS Press, 1974; see St. Nicholas Cabasilas: Union with Christ).

The bread of life. “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him” (John 6:56). This is the bridge from union as abiding to union as communion, and it is why the Orthodox account of deification is sacramental at its centre rather than only contemplative (see Synergy and the Mysteries; The Holy Mysteries: The Mysteries and Theosis).

How the Church Reads These Texts

Two methodological observations close the file.

The doctrine is read from the whole, not from a verse. No responsible Orthodox exposition builds deification on 2 Peter 1:4 alone. The verse names the thing; the Johannine indwelling texts describe its mode; the Pauline adoption and glory texts describe its shape; the Transfiguration shows it (see Sonship, Glory, and the Transfiguration). It is the convergence that carries the weight.

The reading is ecclesial. The Church does not derive theosis from Scripture by private exegesis and then check it against the Fathers; she reads Scripture within the Tradition that produced and receives it, and the Fathers’ exegesis is part of the datum, not a commentary on it (see Holy Tradition; Sources of Theology: Holy Tradition). This is why the argument of Section 03 — the continuity of the patristic witness — is a scriptural argument and not merely a historical one.

References

Athanasius of Alexandria. On the Incarnation, 8–9, 54; Orations against the Arians, 1.9, 3.19–20. Trans. NPNF II/4.
Bauckham, Richard. Jude, 2 Peter. Word Biblical Commentary 50. Waco, TX: Word Books, 1983.
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 Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Russell, Norman, trans. Gregory Palamas: The Hesychast Controversy and the Debate with Islam. Documents Relating to Gregory Palamas. Translated Texts for Byzantinists 8. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020. (Includes the Synodal Tome of 1351.)
The Holy Bible, cited in the New King James rendering except where the Greek or the LXX numbering is specified.