Observations placeholder

Eriugena, Johannes Scotus - miscellaneous writings

The word “deification” is rarely found in Latin books, but its meaning is found in many authors, especially Ambrose. Perhaps it is that the meaning of the word theosis, commonly used by the Greeks, to signify the passing of saints into God not only in soul but also in body, when nothing animal, corporeal, human or natural remains in them—perhaps, I say, to those unable to rise above carnal thoughts it seems too lofty, incomprehensible and incredible, and hence not to be proclaimed in public.... [Yet,] Just as each and everything, whether sensible or intelligible, is naturally compelled to return to its beginnings, so human nature will also return to its beginning, which is nothing other than God’s Word, in which it was made, and unchangeably subsists and lives.

Our mortal bodies will be transformed not only into spiritual bodies but actually into our souls, because natural necessity prescribes that just as a rational soul made in God’s image is to return to Him in whose image and likeness it is, so the body too, made in the image of the soul and, as it were, the image of the image, will, when freed from all earthly weight and corporeality, be returned to its cause, the soul; and through it, as a kind of mean, it will be turned into the unique Cause of all things.