About the book
In the Greek patristic tradition, deification meant more than salvation from sin: it was the destiny humanity was created for, an entry into the full divine life of the Trinity. Norman Russell follows the idea from its origins in the second century, as a metaphor rooted in the Bible, to its mature form as a doctrine at the center of the spiritual life of the Byzantine Church. Covering patristic writers from Irenaeus to Maximus the Confessor, he sets out the background and context of the doctrine and stresses what makes it distinctively Christian, while drawing attention to how varied the patristic approaches were. When it appeared, it was the first study of the subject in more than sixty years.
In an Amazon review, Nassim Nicholas Taleb said he bought it out of curiosity about how East and West differ on theosis and found it went much further, into pre-Christian practices such as Stoic thought and the deification of kings and Roman emperors.
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This book has 1 recommendation
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Flaneur)
I initially bought this book as I was curious about the differences between Eastern & Western traditions, particularly with the notion of theosis --the deification of man. This book goes far deeper, and covers pre-Christian practices (like Stoic thoughts, the deifications of Kings, Roman Emperors, that of private citizens who committed symbolic acts --such as Antinous, Hadrian's obsession, who drowned to "save" mankind and other sotirologies).
The book was initially Russell's doctoral thesis, which, as far as I can guess from the dates, had to have been completed when he was in late middle age. But he made it very readable, free of the theophilosophical jargon of similar texts. He still has quotes in the original language and it is a true piece of scholarship.
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