<P> All of humanity is fully restored to the full potential of humanity because the Son of God took to himself a human nature to be born of a woman, and takes to himself also the sufferings due to sin (yet is not himself sinful, and is God unchanged in being). In Christ the two natures of God and human are not two persons but one; thus a union is effected in Christ between all of humanity in principle and God . So the holy God and sinful humanity are reconciled in principle in the one sinless man, Jesus Christ . (See Jesus' prayer as recorded in John 17 .) </P> <P> This reconciliation is made actual through the struggle to conform to the image of Christ . Without the struggle, the praxis, there is no real faith; faith leads to action, without which it is dead . One must unite will, thought, and action to God's will, his thoughts, and his actions . A person must fashion his life to be a mirror, a true likeness of God . More than that, since God and humanity are more than a similarity in Christ but rather a true union, Christians' lives are more than mere imitation and are rather a union with the life of God himself: so that the one who is working out salvation is united with God working within the penitent both to will and to do that which pleases God . </P> <P> Theosis has three stages: first, the purgative way, purification, or katharsis; second, illumination, the illuminative way, the vision of God, or theoria; and third, sainthood, the unitive way, or theosis . Thus the term "theosis" describes the whole process and its objective . By means of purification a person comes to theoria and then to theosis . Theosis is the participation of the person in the life of God . According to this doctrine, the holy life of God, given in Jesus Christ to the believer through the Holy Spirit, is expressed through the three stages of theosis, beginning in the struggles of this life, increasing in the experience of knowledge of God, and consummated in the resurrection of the believer, when the victory of God over fear, sin, and death, accomplished in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is made manifest in the believer forever . </P> <P> Yet through faith we can attain phronema, an understanding of the faith of the church . A common analogy for theosis, given by the Greek fathers, is that of a metal which is put into the fire . The metal obtains all the properties of the fire (heat, light), while its essence remains that of a metal . Using the head - body analogy from Paul the Apostle, every man in whom Christ lives partakes of the glory of Christ . As John Chrysostom observes, "where the head is, there is the body also . There is no interval to separate between the Head and the body; for were there a separation, then were it no longer a body, then were it no longer a head ." </P>

Phases of theosis in the eastern orthodox church