Recently, someone who identified himself as “J. S.” published a false and slanderous article concerning Brother Witness Lee’s teaching. The article was entitled, “The Worst Blasphemous Words of Witness Lee against God.” We feel that we must present something to refute what he has said. First, we would like to present clearly and briefly what Brother Lee has said concerning the high peak of the divine revelation of God’s eternal economy, which this opposing one has slanderously distorted. Then we would specifically like to address how this opposing one misinterprets Brother Lee with an evil intent by omitting crucial points of what he has said, by distorting what he has said, and by loosely translating what he has said. Finally, we would like to present what some prominent teachers in the past have said concerning this high peak of God’s divine revelation. Because what our brother is releasing in the Lord’s present ministry is so crucial, the enemy, the deceiver, will do everything he can to fight against it with his lies and distortions. May the Lord grant us a spirit of wisdom and revelation to see the depths of His eternal economy so that we can walk in the light of His divine revelation to arrive at a full-grown man.
Ed Marks
Recently, the Lord has opened up to us the high peak of His divine revelation. This high peak can be summarized in the following statement: God became man that man may become God in life and nature but not in the Godhead. This statement embodies the entire revelation of God’s New Testament economy in an absolutely scriptural and careful way. The following selected excerpts from Brother Witness Lee’s writings make this abundantly clear.
In our recent life-study of the book of Jeremiah, I pointed out that in God’s new covenant (Jer. 31:33-34), we have been made God in His nature and in His life, but not in His Godhead. This is because we have been begotten of God (John 1:13). Dogs beget dogs; lions beget lions; and man begets man. Since your father is a man, and you are born of him, are you not a man? As believers in Christ, we have been born of God; we have been regenerated by God. God is our Father, and we are His sons. Since our Father is God, what are we, the sons? The sons must be the same as their Father in life and in nature. We have been born of God to be the children of God (1 John 3:1). Eventually, when Christ comes, He will make us fully the same as God in life and in nature (v. 2). However, none of us are or can be God in His Godhead as an object of worship. In a family, only the father has the fatherhood. The children of the father do not have his fatherhood. There is only one father with many children. The father is human, and the children also are human, but there is only one father. In the same way, God is our unique Father; only He has the divine fatherhood. But we as His children are the same as He is in life and in nature.
The early church fathers used the term deification to describe the believers’ participation in the divine life and nature of God, but not in the Godhead. We human beings need to be deified, to be made like God in life and in nature, but it is a great heresy to say that we are made like God in His Godhead. We are God not in His Godhead, but in His life, nature, element, essence, and image.
In our spiritual breathing by the exercise of our spirit, we enjoy, receive, and absorb the divine substance with the divine essence, the divine element, and the divine expression. This will cause us to be deified, that is, to be constituted with the processed Triune God to be made God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead. In this sense we may speak of the deification of the believers, a process that will consummate in the New Jerusalem.
Do you know what the New Jerusalem is? The New Jerusalem is a composition of God’s chosen, redeemed, regenerated, sanctified, transformed, and glorified people who have been deified. On God’s side, the Triune God has been incarnated to be a man; on our side, we are being deified, constituted with the processed and consummated Triune God so that we may be made God in life and in nature to be His corporate expression for eternity. This is the highest truth, and this is the highest gospel.
Athanasius, one of the early church fathers, said concerning Christ, “He was made man that we might be made God,” and “The Word was made flesh...that we, partaking of His Spirit, might be deified.” This is the principle of God’s move on earth. God’s move is in man and through man. God’s move is to deify man, making man God in life and in nature but not, of course, in the Godhead.
God in eternity past was God only, but in incarnation He was made man. He made Himself man that man may become God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead. We may be able to say that we “become like God” in life and nature, but do we have the boldness to say that we “become God” in life and nature? We need to see that we have been born of God, and we are the sons of God. Have you not been born of man? Then are you not man? If you are not man, then what are you? In the same way, since we are born of God and are the sons of God, are we not God? You are whatever you have been born of. If you have been born of Chinese, you are Chinese. If you have been born of Caucasians, you are Caucasian. Since we are born of God, we may say and even we should say that we are God in life and nature but not in the Godhead.
The church fathers taught the truth concerning deification in the first four centuries. They pointed out clearly that deification means that the believers in Christ have been made God in His life and in His nature but not in His Godhead. He is the unique God for people to worship in His Godhead, but we are God only in life and in nature, not in the Godhead. We all have to be clear that today we are God-men. Others should be able to sense that we are men plus something else. They may not be able to pin down what we are, but they can sense that we have something more. Eventually, when we speak something concerning Christ, they all will realize that what we have as something more is Christ Himself, that is, God. This is the testimony of a God-man.
The sanctifying Spirit in God’s sanctification first sought us out and then regenerated us, making us sons of God. If a cat begets kittens, those kittens are baby cats. In the same way, God begot us to make us the sons of God. To make us the sons of God is to make us “baby gods,” having God’s life and nature but not His Godhead. In life, in nature, and in expression we are the same as He is, because we are born of Him. Thus, we are not only the children of God, we are not only the sons of God, we are not only the heirs of God, but we are also the “baby gods.” The kittens, the baby cats, are surely cats because they are according to the cats’ kind. God created everything according to its kind. Man, however, was created according to God’s kind because he was created in God’s image (Gen. 1:26). Later, we men were born of God, not only bearing God’s image but also having God’s life and nature. Thus, we become God in life and in nature, but not in the Godhead. This is what the sonship means.
This brings us to the matter of deification — God’s intention to make the believers God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead. Athanasius referred to deification when at the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325 he said, “He [Christ] was made man that we might be made God.” Although the term deification is familiar to many theologians and Christian teachers, during the past sixteen centuries only a small number have dared to teach regarding the deification of the believers in Christ.
I have not been influenced by any teaching about deification, but I have learned from my study of the Bible that God does intend to make the believers God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead. For instance, 1 John 3:2 says, “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not yet been manifested what we will be. We know that if He is manifested, we will be like Him because we will see Him even as He is.” This verse clearly reveals that we will be like God.
God makes us like Him by imparting His life and nature into us. Second Peter 1:4 says that we have become “partakers of the divine nature.” John 1:12-13 says that we were born, regenerated, by God with His life. As God’s children we are “baby gods,” having God’s life and nature but not His Godhead. The Godhead is unique; He is the only One who should be worshipped.
We have been born of God and today, having God’s life and nature, we are partially like Him. One day, when He comes, we will be wholly and entirely like Him.
It was wonderful for David to be a man according to God’s heart, but it was not sufficient. God wants those who can say, “I am not just a person according to God’s heart. I am God in life and in nature but not in His Godhead.” On the one hand, the New Testament reveals that the Godhead is unique and that only God, who alone has the Godhead, should be worshipped. On the other hand, the New Testament reveals that we, the believers in Christ, have God’s life and nature and that we are becoming God in life and in nature but will never have His Godhead.
Revelation 4 tells us that God looks like jasper (v. 3). Then Revelation 21 says that the entire New Jerusalem has the appearance of jasper (v. 11). Thus, God’s redeemed people have become absolutely the very God in life, in nature, and in appearance, but not in His Godhead....All of God’s redeemed people will eventually become gods as the very God in life, in nature, and in appearance but not in the Godhead. The New Jerusalem is the God-men who have been transformed, glorified, and mingled with the processed and consummated Triune God.
Our practice is not to live the life of any kind of natural man, good or bad. Our practice is to live the life of a God-man. A God-man is a man who is regenerated and transformed to be one with God, taking God as his life, his person, and his everything. Eventually, this one becomes God in His life and His nature, but not in His Godhead. This is a God-man. In the recovery today we should practice to live the life of such a God-man. This life is a life of crucifixion by and in and with resurrection. It is a life in which I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live but He who lives in me (Gal. 2:20). Yet when He lives in me, He lives with me, with the result that I live with Him (John 14:19). He lives with me, and I live with Him. We two live together in the way of mingling, a mingling of God and man.
We can see from the above excerpts how crucial this revelation is. The contents of God’s economy involve both the Triune God being processed and consummated and His chosen and redeemed people being processed and consummated. First, the Triune God was processed by becoming a man (John 1:14) to pass through human living, an all-inclusive death, and an all-surpassing resurrection to become the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). This life-giving Spirit is the consummation of the processed Triune God. Then when this wonderful Spirit enters into God’s chosen and redeemed people, they begin to pass through a wonderful process of becoming God in life and nature but not in the Godhead. This process begins with regeneration and continues with sanctification, renewing, transformation, conformation, and glorification until they are consummated to be the bride of Christ. Thus, at the end of the Bible there is a marvelous couple. The Spirit as the consummation of the processed Triune God marries the bride as the consummation of the transformed, tripartite church (Rev. 22:17a). This is the ultimate consummation of God becoming a man that man might become God in life and nature but not in the Godhead, so that God and man can be an eternal couple, a pair of lovers of the same kind, mingled together as one entity for eternity for the full expression of the Triune God in this universe.
We do not become God in His Godhead to become an object of worship. Only our wonderful Triune God embodied in Christ is worthy of worship. Only He is the Head of the Body and the Lord of all. But the marvelous thing is that through regeneration we have received God’s life and nature to become the children of God, the sons of God. In eternity past we were chosen to be holy by being predestinated unto sonship (Eph. 1:4-5). Now through the process of being sanctified, we are being “sonized,” that is, we are being made God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead. We aspire to walk according to the spirit to live Christ as we look forward to the day when He is manifested and we shall be fully like Him in life, nature, and appearance but not in His Godhead. Thank the Lord for this high peak of the divine revelation!
Ed Marks
J. S.’s article, entitled “The Worst Blasphemous Words of Witness Lee against God,” is a condemnation of Brother Lee in three parts. The first part is a rather poorly executed translation of a message Brother Lee gave in Chinese during the 1994 Chinese New Year’s Conference in Anaheim, California. The second part is a translation of a passage from a book by Brother Lee, which includes a hymn that he wrote. Both translations were done in such a way as to make Brother Lee say what he did not mean and to provide “evidence” for J. S.’s accusation that Brother Lee is heretical. The third part is the “meat” of J. S.’s accusation. In it he attempts to prove scripturally that any form of the teaching that man may become God is heretical. The basis of his proof is his interpretation of Psalm 82:6 and John 10:34. He further gives a few verses to show that men should not be worshipped as God and that any who seek such worship are persons of the worst sort. Again, the presentation is such that Brother Lee is accused of saying things that he never said.
The heart of J. S.’s false accusations is his repeated suggestion that Brother Lee teaches that the believers can become God in the sense of having the Godhead and also in the sense of being an object of worship. As the previous section makes clear, the crux of Brother Lee’s teaching concerning this matter is that, for the carrying out of the divine economy, God desires that the believers in Christ become God in life and in nature but never in the Godhead and never as an object of worship. In this section we will deal with the heart of J. S.’s false accusations in contrast to the crux of Brother Lee’s teaching. We will first examine J. S.’s spurious accusations, showing how he uses excerpts of Brother Lee’s ministry to misrepresent him and quotations from the Bible to attack him and even to categorize him with heretics, false apostles, Antichrist, and Satan. Then we will comment on other significant matters related to J. S.’s apparent refusal to accept the revelation in the Scriptures regarding man becoming God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead.
Stated succinctly, J. S. charges Brother Lee with espousing and propagating “the greatest and worst blasphemous heresy,” “the devilish heresy that man will become god (or God).” As quoted in the foregoing section, Brother Lee clearly and emphatically teaches that “the Godhead is unique” and that “He is the only One who should be worshipped.” Recall Brother Lee’s balanced word that, on the one hand, the New Testament reveals that “the Godhead is unique and that only God, who alone has the Godhead, should be worshipped” and that, on the other hand, the New Testament reveals that we, the believers in Christ, have God’s life and nature and that “we are becoming God in life and in nature but will never have the Godhead” (emphasis added). In speaking of deification — the process through which the believers are constituted with the Triune God to be made God in life and in nature — Brother Lee says that man becomes “God in life and in nature but not, of course, in the Godhead” (emphasis added). Of course, the Godhead is unique. Of course, we will never have the Godhead. Of course, God alone is worthy of worship. Of course, the believers will never become an object of worship. Of course, the believers will never be made God in the sense of having the Godhead. “Never have the Godhead” — this crucial phrase deserves the attention of every honest reader of Brother Lee’s materials.
The J. S. of “The Worst Blasphemous Words...” is neither an honest reader nor a trustworthy reporter. Instead of recognizing and acknowledging Brother Lee’s clear and emphatic distinction between man becoming God in life and in nature and man becoming God in having the Godhead or as an object of worship, J. S. uses (or misuses) Brother Lee’s words to create the impression that Brother Lee teaches that in being made God in life and in nature the believers also become God in the sense of having the unique Godhead and of being an object of worship.
To further J. S.’s plan, on each of the first four pages of “The Worst Blasphemous Words...” the expression “GOD BECAME MAN — MAN BECAME GOD” is printed in huge, bold letters. J. S.’s obvious intention is to create and then reinforce the impression that, supposedly according to Brother Lee, it is an accomplished fact that God became man and that man has become God, not merely in life and in nature but also in the Godhead and as an object of worship. However, Andrew Yu points out (see the following section) that the original Chinese wording for the expression rendered “GOD BECAME MAN — MAN BECAME GOD” is “God becoming man, man becoming God.” Andrew Yu goes on to say that although the original expression in Chinese bears no reference to time and tense, the context of the book (The Dispensing, Transformation, and Building of the Processed Divine Trinity in the Believers [Chinese], pp. 38-39), together with the new hymn quoted on page 4 of “The Worst Blasphemous Words...” clearly indicate that Brother Lee means God becoming man so that man may become God, and that, to be sure, God only in life and in nature, not God in the Godhead nor as an object of worship.
A close, objective, fair-minded reading of the material J. S. quotes in the first two pages reveals that Brother Lee indicates that the believers’ becoming God is a matter of becoming God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead. Brother Lee says that God took human nature upon Himself in order to make the men He had chosen exactly like Him in life and in nature: “In order that these men, although they are [and remain] human beings, could have His divine life and His divine nature [but not His Godhead or His unique standing as an object of worship].” From this Brother Lee concludes, “In life and nature [not in the Godhead nor as an object of worship], man and God belong to the same kind.” God, through incarnation, took on human nature; we, through regeneration, partake of the divine nature. “He is God, but with the human nature, we are men, but with the divine nature. By means of these two natures and lives, God has mingled Himself with man together....This is ultimately to make these two, namely God and man the same.” Whereas God and man may be the same in life and in nature, they are not, and never will be, the same in the Godhead or as an object of worship. Therefore, the believers’ in Christ becoming God is limited to their becoming God in the divine life and in the divine nature and always and forever excludes any participation in the unique Godhead and any assuming of a position as an object of worship.
J. S. (or another translator) repeats the same egregious error by his English rendering (with certain words highlighted in boldface) of a new hymn written by Brother Lee. As shown below, Andrew Yu notes that the version given in “The Worst Blasphemous Words...” is a very poor and flawed translation. “Having no share in His Godhead” is rendered “only His deity I have no part.” “Coordinated with the saints in God to be built up as the universal house of the divine Trinity” is rendered “I also coordinate with all the holy Gods to build up the triune universal family.” Through a glaringly mistaken translation, J. S. presents a perversion and a caricature of Brother Lee’s teaching, depicting him as one who believes that the saints are “holy Gods” the same as God in every way and that the believers enter the Godhead as members of a family of Gods, the so-called “triune universal family.” What distortion! What deception!
In contrast, consider Brother Lee’s clear word in the Life-study of 1 and 2 Samuel (p. 182): “God’s intention from eternity to eternity is to make Himself us, that we might become Him in life, in nature, and in constitution (but not in the Godhead).” Further clarification is provided in the Life-study of Job (p. 157): “Seeing God equals gaining God (Matt. 5:8). To gain God is to receive God in His element, in His life, and in His nature. Eventually, this not only makes us one with God — it even makes us a part of God....To be made a part of God, to be constituted with God in His life and nature, is more than being one with God. We see God that we may be constituted with God, yet we do not have any share in the Godhead.” Having God’s life and nature but not having any share in the Godhead, we surely are not “holy Gods” participating in the Godhead to receive the worship of God’s creatures. As quoted earlier, Brother Lee has taken the lead to declare that “it is a great heresy to say that we are made like God in His Godhead.” As he emphatically explains, “None of us are or can be God in His Godhead as an object of worship.”
As the heading of the second part of “The Worst Blasphemous Words...,” J. S. quotes Peter’s statement to Cornelius in Acts 10:26: “I myself also am a man.” Peter uttered these words when Cornelius fell down at Peter’s feet and worshipped him. J. S.’s quotation here indicates that he is still occupied with the same false accusation — the base yet baseless charge that Brother Lee claims that the believers become God in the sense of having the Godhead and of being an object of worship.
J. S. introduces this second part by saying, “Recently, many dear brothers and sisters have been confused by the serious heretical teaching, that man can become god (or God).” (It is ironic that J. S., purporting to dispel confusion, succeeds only in adding to it.) J. S.’s expression “serious heretical teaching” refers, of course, to a teaching which J. S., in a most dishonest, disreputable, and despicable way, ascribes to Brother Lee. Then J. S. goes on to discuss, or comment on, five matters: the background of Psalm 82; the background of John 10; 1 John 3:2 condemnation on all who want to become God; and the teachings and attitudes of the apostles. The first two matters need not concern us here, since Brother Lee has not used these verses in teaching, based on the Bible, that the believers in Christ may become God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead. The remaining three, most serious in their use by J. S. to attack Brother Lee, require brief attention.
First John 3:2 tells us that when Christ appears, we, the children of God, “will be like Him because we will see Him even as He is.” With respect to this verse, J. S. says, “To be like God does not mean that we become gods.” Brother Lee does not claim that it does. He does not take this verse as a basis for saying that we will become God in the Godhead. What he does say (in the Life-study of 1 John, p. 225) is this: “Since we are the children of God, we shall be like Him in the maturity of life when He is manifested....This indicates that the children of God have a great future with a more splendid blessing. We shall not only have the divine nature, but shall also bear the divine likeness. To partake of the divine nature is already a great blessing and enjoyment; yet to be like God, bearing His likeness, will be a greater blessing and enjoyment.” In a passage quoted earlier, Brother Lee points out that “when Christ comes, He will make us fully the same as God in life and in nature (v. 2). However, none of us are or can be God in His Godhead as an object of worship.” It is evident, then, that Brother Lee does not use 1 John 3:2 to teach heresy, in particular the heresy that the believers will share in the Godhead and become an object of worship.
J. S. asserts: “We like to be like God in His righteousness and holiness, in His light and in His love.” According to his opinion, to be like God, who is light (1 John 1:5), is simply a matter of walking in the light as God is in the light (v. 7). According to other portions of the New Testament, we may not only walk in the light — we actually are light. First John 1:5 says that God is light, and Ephesians 5:8 says that we are light in the Lord. In John 8:12 Jesus declares, “I am the light of the world,” and in Matthew 5:14 He says, “You are the light of the world.” Do these verses not indicate that, in a very real and wonderful sense, we become what God is as light? How do we, who once were darkness, become, with Christ, the light of the world? The word of the Lord Jesus in John 12 reveals that we become light by being born of the very God who is light. The Lord Jesus came as a “light into the world” (v. 46), and those who “believe into the light...become sons of light” (v. 36). Having been born of God who is light, we are not like light — we are light in the Lord!
Concerning being “like God” in His righteousness and holiness, J. S. makes this remark: “It is very strange that those who say that they are gods are not very holy nor righteous.” This is aimed at Brother Lee. J. S. not only falsely accuses Brother Lee of believing and teaching that he is a god; J. S. presumes to pass judgment on Brother Lee by insinuating that he is “not very holy nor righteous.” What is J. S.’s standard of measurement? Is “The Worst Blasphemous Words...” an expression of the righteous and holy God it purports to defend?
Next, J. S. says that the Word of God condemns all who want to become God. According to the context of the entire document, here J. S. is actually saying, by evil insinuation and innuendo, that Brother Lee wants to become God with the unique Godhead and as an object of worship. But J. S. goes even further; he quotes without comment passages about some of those who wanted to become God: the prince of Tyrus (Ezek. 28:1-10); Satan, the former anointed cherub, Lucifer (Ezek. 28:13-19; Isa. 14:12-20); Herod (Acts 12:21-23); and Antichrist, the man of sin, the son of perdition (2 Thes. 2:3-8; Dan. 11:36-37). We need to be clear what J. S. is really doing here: He is categorizing Brother Lee not only with heretics and with Herod but even with Antichrist and with Satan himself. First, J. S. wrongly accuses Brother Lee of wanting to become God as an object of worship, and then J. S. goes so far as to associate Brother Lee with Antichrist and Satan. How evil, hateful, and malicious!
Finally, J. S. refers to four passages related, in his view, to the teachings and attitudes of the apostles with respect to the notion that man can become God in the Godhead and as an object of worship. He comments on Barnabas and Paul at Lystra (Acts 14), Peter at the house of Cornelius (Acts 10), the old apostle John at Patmos (Rev. 19:10; 22:8-9), and the New Jerusalem (Rev. 22:3-5). J. S. uses each of these cases to make a twofold point: that the apostles did not teach that we are gods or ever will become gods and that Brother Lee (classified by J. S. as one of the “modern day false apostles”) does teach the “devilish heresy, that man will become god (or God).” Not satisfied with falsely accusing Brother Lee by presenting a distorted and perverted account of his teaching, J. S. attacks Brother Lee’s person, calling him a heretic and a false apostle and classifying him with Antichrist and Satan. Such an accusation is not only untrue — it is ungodly, wholly unbecoming of a brother in the Lord and a servant of God.
Three additional matters related to J. S.’s accusation and attack should be noted.
At the end of “The Worst Blasphemous Words...,” J. S. says, “May the Lord save us from adding anything to the scriptures.” We agree. Nothing should be added to the Holy Scriptures. In keeping with Revelation 22:19, we would hasten to say that just as nothing should be added to the Scriptures, so nothing should be taken away. It is utterly false to accuse Brother Lee of adding to the Word of God. In particular, it is false to accuse him of adding the heretical teaching that man can become God in the sense of having the Godhead or of being an object of worship. Brother Lee does not teach this and thus he does not add it to the Word of God. However, regarding J. S. there is reason for concern that, in principle, by denying a crucial aspect of the divine revelation in the Bible — the truth that God intends for the believers in Christ to become God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead and not as an object of worship — J. S. is taking away from the Scriptures something most precious to God. Furthermore, he may be depriving God’s children of the truth and hindering their entering into a life that is in keeping with the peak of God’s revelation. According to Revelation 22:18-19, adding to the Word of God and taking away from the Word of God are equally serious. Brother Lee is innocent of the former; if J. S. denies this truth, he is guilty of the latter.
J. S. may not only take away from the Word of God; he may also deny a crucial aspect of the teaching of the apostles. In his concluding paragraph J. S. remarks: “The word of God never says that we, the believers, will at any time become little gods, baby gods, or mature gods. Not one of the twelve apostles, the foundations of the New Jerusalem, ever taught this.” To be sure, the apostles did not teach that the believers can become God in the Godhead or as an object of worship. Nevertheless, if we have an intrinsic view of the writings of Paul, John, and Peter, we will realize that these apostles certainly did teach that the believers in Christ, having been born of God to be His children possessing the divine life and nature, may, in fact eventually will, become God in life, nature, and expression. Christ, the very God incarnate, is life (John 14:6), and now our regenerated spirit is life (Rom. 8:10). Further, we are one spirit with the Lord (1 Cor. 6:17); we live a life of coinherence with Him (John 15:4; 1 John 4:15); we partake of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4); we are being transformed into the Lord’s image (2 Cor. 3:18); we will be conformed to the image of the firstborn Son of God (Rom. 8:29); and for eternity we will be the same as God in expression as well as in life and in nature (Rev. 4:3; 21:10-11). Yet God alone possesses the unique Godhead, and God alone is to be worshipped.
J. S. seems to deny much of the apostles’ teaching regarding all this. In view of J. S.’s reckless writing in “The Worst Blasphemous Words...,” we must raise a serious question: To what extent does J. S. now deny the teaching of the apostles concerning the believers’ experience of the Triune God and concerning their being made God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead?
J. S.’s remarks concerning the New Jerusalem cause us to wonder whether he has the proper view and understanding of the nature of the New Jerusalem which, as the wife of the Lamb (Rev. 21:2, 9), is the corporate expression of the Triune God for eternity. We raise this question because, according to the divine revelation in the Scriptures, the New Jerusalem is the ultimate consummation of the building up of the believers, who have been made God in life, in nature, in constitution, and in expression but not in the Godhead. This means that there is an intrinsic relation between the believers’ becoming God in life and in nature (but not in the Godhead) and the producing of the New Jerusalem. In the Life-study 1 and 2 Samuel (pp. 198-199) Brother Lee describes this very clearly:
The conclusion of the divine revelation in the Bible is a building, the New Jerusalem. This building is a blending and mingling of divinity with humanity....The New Jerusalem is a composition of divinity and humanity blended and mingled together as one entity. All the components have the same life, nature, and constitution and thus are a corporate person. This is a matter of God becoming man and man becoming God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead. These two, God and man, man and God, are built up together by being blended and mingled together. This is the completion, the consummation, of God’s building. We all need to see this vision.
Does J. S. see it? Does he believe it? Does he agree with God’s way of carrying it out, the way of mingling divinity with humanity? There is reason to suspect that in “The Worst Blasphemous Words...” J. S. is not only falsely accusing and attacking Brother Lee but may also be tampering with the divine enterprise in the divine economy — the dispensing of the processed Triune God into the believers to make them God in life and in nature (but not in the Godhead) for the producing of the New Jerusalem as the ultimate, consummate corporate expression of the Triune God for eternity in the new heaven and new earth.
We conclude this section with a reference to Brother Lee’s illustration of the “diamond” in the “box” taken from the Life-study of 1 and 2 Samuel (pp. 203-204):
God’s intention is to make Himself man in order to make man God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead....Eventually, the whole Bible consummates with this matter. The New Jerusalem, the ultimate consummation of the Bible, involves God becoming man and man becoming God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead, and God and man being mingled together to be one entity.
If we read the Bible without paying attention to this crucial point, then, in a very real sense, the Bible is to us an empty book. This means that although the Bible is real in itself, in our understanding of it the Bible is empty. As an illustration, let us suppose that a certain box, which is quite attractive, contains a large diamond. A child may be interested in the box but not in the diamond. An adult, however, would focus his attention on the diamond contained in the box. Today, many Christians care for the Bible as the “box,” but they have not seen and do not appreciate the “diamond” which is the content of this box, and they may even condemn those who have a proper appreciation of the “diamond” in the “box.” The “diamond” in the “box” of the Bible is the revelation that in Christ God has become man in order that man might become God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead.
The vast majority of today’s Christians neglect the crucial point in the Bible that in Christ God has become man in order to make man God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead and that God desires to mingle Himself with man to be one entity. Some not only neglect this; they falsely accuse as heretical those who teach it. Today many believe one aspect of this crucial point — that God became a man named Jesus — but they do not believe the other aspect — that man is becoming God in life and in nature but not in the Godhead.
According to what J. S. says in “The Worst Blasphemous Words...,” he not only has an empty “box”; he even tries to use the “box” to deny the existence of the “diamond” and to condemn as heretical those who appreciate the “diamond” and who encourage others to treasure it, even as God does.
Ron Kangas
One subtle attempt to misrepresent Brother Lee is J. S.’s use of the expression “GOD BECAME MAN — MAN BECAME GOD” (). The original Chinese wording for this expression is “God becoming man, man becoming God.” This original expression in Chinese bears no reference to time and tense, yet the context of Brother Lee’s speaking clearly indicates that Brother Lee means “God becoming man, so that man may become God” (from pages 38-39 of the book The Dispensing, Transformation, and Building of the Processed Divine Trinity in the Believers, , given during the Chinese New Year, 1994. This book is only published in Chinese; J. S.’s English quotation is supposedly a translation from the unedited taped message.) In fact, in the first line of stanza two of Brother Lee’s new hymn, which J. S. quoted in his second quotation of Brother Lee (from pages 12-13 of the Chinese book The Highest Vision and the Reality of the Body of Christ, , not yet published in English), it clearly says, “God incarnated to be a God-man, in order that I can become God.” Elsewhere in the same book, Brother Lee clearly points out that “God becoming man, man becoming God” means “God became a man, so that man may become God” (pp. 14, 23-28). This shows that J. S.’s use of the expression “GOD BECAME MAN — MAN BECAME GOD” is clearly a deliberate misrepresentation of its Chinese meaning.
J. S.’s quotation of the second message by Brother Lee in his article, in which we find the new hymn mentioned above, is not complete and fair. Immediately preceding the paragraphs which J. S. quoted, we find the following explanation, which J. S. did not quote:
The expression “God became a man in order that man may become God” was spoken by Athanasius in the fourth century, around the time of the Nicene Council in A.D. 325. At that time he was a young, unnoticed theologian. His word became a famous word in church history. As time went on, Christianity did not talk about this and did not dare to mention it anymore.
God is God, and He has begotten us to be His children. What is begotten is always the same as the begetter. A goat begets a goat. You cannot say that the mother goat is a goat but that the young goat is not a goat. God has begotten us; we are God’s children. First John 3 says that God will work on us until we will be the same as He in every way (v. 2). This was God’s intention from the day He created man. He created man, yet the man He created had the image of God. Adam was created in God’s image and with His likeness. After man was created, God placed the tree of life in front of him, in order that this man, who had God’s image, might receive God into him to be his life. In the end, if these ones who have received God into them to be their life are not God, what are they? Of course, the Lord shows us clearly that we are God only in life and nature. If a father begets a son, the son must necessarily be the same as the father in life and nature. But suppose the father is an emperor. We cannot say that all his children are emperors. The children only bear the life and nature of the father; they do not have the person of the father. God does this in order to produce a Body for Christ, that is, to produce an organism for the Triune God. The ultimate expression of this is the New Jerusalem.
It is clear from the above explanation that Brother Lee teaches that believers are the same as God only in His life and nature; they do not have any share in His Godhead.
The use of the word occult () as an alternate translation of the word mystical in describing God’s economy (p. 1, “The Worst Blasphemous Words of Witness Lee against God”) is obviously another attempt to misrepresent Brother Lee. The word in Chinese bears no connotation of anything evil or cultic, as the translator would have readers to believe by the insertion of the word occult.
The use of the words mixed up (p. 2, line 1 of the same article) is another misrepresentation. The original Chinese expression (), which appeared in the taped message only, merely means the two (God and man) being involved with one another.
Other instances of outright error in translation are as follows: “God as well as man, man as well as God” (), is translated “God who became man, and man who became God” (p. 2, lines 19-21, 25-26; p. 3, lines 6-7). (Incidentally, the same expression is translated by the same translator as “God and man, man and God” on p. 2, line 16 of the same article.) “God, who mingled Himself with man as one” (), is translated as “God who mingled Himself with man to became [sic] a human body” (p. 2, lines 24-25). “A man in the new creation, constituted of the God-man and man-God” (), is translated as “a building of a new man, who is God becoming man and man becoming God” (p. 3, lines 5-7). “Man” (), is translated as “Man-God” (p. 3, line 8).
We find many other errors in the very poor and flawed English translation of the above-mentioned hymn by Brother Lee. “Having no share in His Godhead” (), is rendered “only His deity I have no part” (stanza 2, line 2). “His attributes become my virtues” (), is rendered “His own nature becomes my virtues” (stanza 2, line 3). It seems the translator has trouble differentiating between deity and Godhead, and between nature and attributes. The most glaring mistakes lie in stanza 3 of the same hymn, where “Coordinated with the saints in God to be built up as the universal house of the Trinity” (), is rendered “I also coordinate with all the holy Gods to build up the triune universal family” (stanza 3, lines 2-3). It is clear that the translator either does not have a full grasp of the Chinese language or is attempting to say that Brother Lee calls the believers “holy Gods.”
It should also be noted that all the boldfacing in “The Worst Blasphemous Words...” is supplied by J. S.; it is not in the original text, and its implied emphasis is the innovation of J. S.
Andrew Yu
The original hymn, written by Brother Lee in Chinese and referred to above, follows:
J. S. asserts, “To use this verse [Psalm 82:6] to teach that we can become gods (whether with big or small “G” does not make any difference) is to perverse [meaning ‘pervert’?] the word of God and to teach the greatest and worst blasphemous heresy.” Concerning John 10:34, he also claims, “It is altogether nonsense and darkness to use this portion of the scriptures to teach people and to support the heresy that men can become God.” In so claiming, J. S. wishes to argue against Witness Lee’s recent ministry that in God’s salvation man becomes God. Unfortunately, however, Brother Lee does not use these particular verses to demonstrate this matter. Thus, J. S.’s response to this aspect of Brother Lee’s teaching does not address the actual scriptural basis used by Brother Lee. In the first section of this book we have provided a compilation of Brother Lee’s ministry on this matter, and there it is obvious what scriptural basis he has used. What J. S. does address is a major scriptural basis for the same teaching — that in God’s salvation man becomes God — held by the early church of the first through fifth centuries. Hence, J. S.’s attack is not merely against Witness Lee but also against the early church. Further, because large segments of the Christian community today accept this teaching as that which has been handed down from the early church, J. S.’s words are to be taken as against them as well. We find ourselves, then, defending this teaching not only as presented by Witness Lee alone but also as first produced by the early church and held by a large portion of the community of believers today. This we feel should be done.
We cannot be certain of the motivation for J. S.’s complaints. On the one hand, it appears that his charges are propelled primarily by ignorance — ignorance (1) of the historical standing of this teaching, (2) of the proper and accepted enunciation of this teaching, and (3) of the acceptance of this teaching today by large segments of the Christian community. On the other hand, we have demonstrated in the second section of this book that there is malice involved in J. S.’s presentation, and thus our suspicion against ignorance on his part gains even greater credence. At any rate, ignorance, whether actual or feigned, is the chief characteristic of J. S.’s polemic, and this ignorance can best be dispelled by a presentation of the three points mentioned above.
J. S.’s complaint is actually twofold: (1) Psalm 82:6 and John 10:34 should not be used to support the teaching that man becomes God in God’s salvation, and (2) the teaching itself that man becomes God in God’s salvation is heretical. Unfortunately, both claims fly directly in the face of what was taught in the church especially in its earliest centuries. Let us examine these two claims in light of the writings of the early church, beginning with the less complex one concerning the use of Psalm 82:6 and John 10:34. J. S. claims that to use Psalm 82:6 to teach that we can become gods is “to [pervert] the word of God and to teach the greatest and worst blasphemous heresy” and that it is “altogether nonsense and darkness” to use John 10:34 to teach that men may become God. It is not difficult, however, to find numerous instances in the writings of the early church where these two verses are used to demonstrate the scriptural basis for understanding God’s salvation in this way. Since this is the minor issue of J. S.’s complaint, it is necessary to cite only a few of the more prominent examples.
Justin Martyr, a second-century apologist, is one of the earliest witnesses to explicitly teach that man may become God in God’s salvation. In his Dialogue with Trypho he uses Psalm 82:6 to support his teaching and warns against wrangling anything but that out of the passage:
Let the interpretation of the Psalm be held just as you wish, yet thereby it is demonstrated that all men are deemed worthy of becoming “gods,” and of having power to become sons of the highest.... (Dialogue with Trypho 124)
Shortly after Justin wrote this, the next major teacher of the church, Irenaeus of Lyon, also used Psalm 82:6 to support the same teaching:
For we cast blame upon Him, because we have not been made gods from the beginning, but at first merely men, then at length gods; although God has adopted this course out of His pure benevolence, that no one may impute to Him insidiousness or grudgingness. He declares, “I have said, Ye are gods; and ye are sons of the Highest.” (Against Heresies, Bk. IV, ch. 38, sec. 4)
Elsewhere Irenaeus quotes Psalm 82:6 and claims that the reference to those who are called gods in this verse is ultimately to those who receive the sonship from God:
But of what gods [does he speak]? [Of those] to whom He says, “I have said, Ye are gods, and all sons of the Most High.” To those, no doubt, who have received the grace of the “adoption [Gk. huiothesia, ‘sonship’ as in Rom. 8:15], by which we cry, Abba Father.” (Against Heresies, Bk. III, ch. 6, sec. 1)
In a later section we will show that the first clear formulation of the teaching that man becomes God in God’s salvation was that of Irenaeus. For the issue at hand, these quotes show that Irenaeus used Psalm 82:6 to support the teaching.
In the late second century another influential teacher of the early church, Clement of Alexandria, frequently used Psalm 82:6 as the scriptural basis for teaching that man becomes God in God’s salvation. In his notable trilogy of apologetic writings we find at least one instance of such quotation in each of the three works. In the first of these, the Protreptikos, or Exhortation to the Heathen, he, like Irenaeus before him, uses Psalm 82:6 to show that our sonship in Christ is synonymous with our becoming God:
Accordingly this grace is indicated by the prophet, when he says, “I said that ye are gods, and all sons of the Highest.” For us, yea us, He has adopted and wishes to be called the Father of us alone, not of the unbelieving. (Protreptikos 12)
In the second work of his trilogy, the Paedagogus, or Instructor, Clement identifies man’s receiving immortality with his becoming God, and uses Psalm 82:6 to support the connection:
Being baptized, we are illuminated; illuminated, we become sons; being made sons, we are made perfect; being made perfect, we are made immortal. “I,” says He, “have said that ye are gods, and all sons of the Highest.” (Paedagogus, Bk. I, ch. 6)
In the Stromata, or Miscellanies, the third work of his apologetic trilogy, Clement expounds his belief that salvation comes through the assimilation of spiritual gnosis, or knowledge, and borrowing terminology from the heresy he is refuting (Gnosticism), refers frequently to the mature believer as the Gnostic. Using Psalm 82:6, he asserts that even in this life
it is possible for the Gnostic already to have become God. “I said, Ye are gods, and sons of the highest.” (Stromata, Bk. IV, ch. 23)
Some final instances from Athanasius should be sufficient to provide an ample array of evidence that Psalm 82:6 and, by quotation, John 10:34 have long been used in the church to teach that man becomes God in God’s salvation. It should be remembered that it was Athanasius who uttered the classic phrase that most succinctly captures the teaching of the church through his day: “He was made man that we might be made God” (De Incarnatione 54:3). Elsewhere in this same treatise Athanasius speaks of God’s intention in creating man even though man fell short of that intention and uses Psalm 82:6 as evidence of that original intention.
But being incorruptible he would thenceforth have lived as God, as also somewhere the Divine Scripture declares, saying: “I said that you are gods and all sons of the Highest: but you die like men and fall as one of the princes.” For God did not only create us from nothing, but he also granted us by the grace of the Word to live a divine life. (De Incarnatione 4:6 — 5:1)
In his letters to Serapion, in which he argued for the equal deity of the Holy Spirit, Athanasius also interpreted Psalm 82 and John 10 to mean that the believers become God in God’s salvation. The passage is especially important because in it he distinguishes between the unique God, who is God by virtue of His own self-possessed nature, and those whom the Scriptures call God by virtue of their participation in the unique Son of God.
But if some have been called gods, they are not so by nature [that is, by what they are in their own nature], but by participation in the Son. Thus he himself [Christ in John 10:35] said, “If he called them gods, unto whom the Word of God came...” Hence, because they are not gods by nature, there comes a time when some of them suffer a change and hear him say: “I said, Ye are gods and sons of the Most High. Nevertheless, ye die like men.” (Ad Serapionem, Epistle 2-3, sec. 4)
J. S. ignores that such a distinction exists and, more outrageously, that such a distinction has been taught by Brother Lee. Instead, he chooses to obscure the distinction and label as heretic even those who carefully, and within the bounds of traditional, orthodox teaching, hold the distinction when they teach that man may become God in God’s salvation.
If J. S. wishes to label as heretic those who use Psalm 82 and John 10 to teach that man becomes God in God’s salvation, he must condemn at least Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Athanasius. And this is only a sampling of the writers of the church who have similarly used these verses to teach this matter. Ironically, J. S.’s attack is leveled at Brother Lee, but Brother Lee nowhere in his ministry appeals to these verses to teach that man becomes God. Thus, J. S.’s comments amount to what is called a straw-man argument, whereby an opponent who does not actually exist is attacked and seemingly refuted. It is always an easy matter to refute a straw man. Unfortunately, J. S.’s refutation is vain because Brother Lee relies not on these verses but on others which J. S. has not addressed at all. At any rate, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Athanasius, and other teachers of the past have used these verses to teach that man becomes God in God’s salvation; why then does J. S. refer to this teaching as “the worst blasphemous words of Witness Lee against God”?
But this use of Psalm 82:6 and John 10:34 is J. S.’s minor complaint. His major complaint is against the teaching itself that man may become God in God’s salvation. This has certainly been taught by Brother Lee, but it was also taught in the church long before Brother Lee taught it. So again, J. S.’s condemnation should not be taken as merely against Brother Lee but even more so as against at least the teachers of the early church. We should therefore demonstrate that the early church believed and taught that the goal of God’s salvation is man’s becoming God and how they understood this to be.
As mentioned above, the first clear expression of this teaching can be found in the second-century writings of Irenaeus of Lyon. We have noted his use of Psalm 82 in AgainstHeresies to show that men may become “at length gods.” But an even clearer statement of his view on man’s becoming God is presented in an explanation of why the Word became flesh.
...but following the only true and steadfast Teacher, the Word of God, 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. (Against Heresies, Bk. V, preface)
Clement of Alexandria (late second century) also offered clear and striking expression to this teaching. In a passage directed to pagan readers, he exhorts them to abandon false gods and choose the true God and the high goal of His ultimate salvation.
But if thou dost not believe the prophets, but supposest both the men and the fire a myth, the Lord Himself shall speak to thee, “who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery, to be equal with God, but humbled Himself,” [Phil. 2:6-7] — He, the merciful God, exerting Himself to save man. And now the Word Himself clearly speaks to thee, shaming thy unbelief; yea, I say, the Word of God became man, that thou mayest learn from a man how man may become God. (Protreptikos 2)
In another work he states emphatically that even in this mortal life the believers can be God.
He who listens to the Lord, and follows the prophecy given by Him, will be formed perfectly in the likeness of the teacher — made a god going about in flesh. (Stromata, Bk. IV, ch. 23)
Clement’s pupil Origen was undoubtedly the most notable writer and teacher of the late second and early third centuries, and he too taught strongly that man may become God in God’s salvation. In a work entitled On Prayer he concludes with his own exhortation to prayer:
Therefore, let us pray “constantly” (1 Thess. 5:17) with a character being divinized [Gk. theopoioumenes, ‘being deified’] by the Word, and let us say to our Father in heaven, “hallowed be your name, your kingdom come.” (On Prayer, ch. XXV, sec. 2)
Elsewhere in the same work Origen commends the Word of God as the practical means of being nourished by God and of thereby being made God.
Now if this is so and there is such a difference between foods, there is one that stands out above all the others mentioned, “the daily bread for our being” about which we must pray that we may be made worthy of it, and being nourished by God the Word, who was in the beginning with God (cf. John 1:1), we may be made divine [Gk. theopoiethomen, ‘we may be made god’ as later in Athanasius]. (On Prayer, ch. XXVII, sec. 13)
In the first quarter of the third century Hippolytus of Rome defended the Christian faith against heretical teaching within the church, showing the relationship between numerous heresies and pagan religion. This he did most notably in a work called the Philosophumena, or Refutation of All Heresies. He concludes this work with an exhortation to his readers not to be deceived by the fallacies of pagan thought and not to be led to eternal destruction through them. Instead, they should receive the salvation ordained by God.
And thou shalt possess an immortal body, even one placed beyond the possibility of corruption, just like the soul. And thou shalt receive the kingdom of heaven, thou who, whilst thou didst sojourn in this life, didst know the Celestial King. And thou shalt be a companion of the Deity, and a co-heir with Christ, no longer enslaved by lusts or passions, and never again wasted by disease. For thou hast become God....And provided thou obeyest His solemn injunctions, and becomest a faithful follower of Him Who is good, thou shalt resemble Him, inasmuch as thou shalt have honour conferred upon thee by Him. For the Deity, (by condescension,) does not diminish aught of the dignity of His divine perfection; having made thee even God unto His glory! (Refutation of All Heresies, Bk. X, ch. 30)
The writers of the church up through the third century certainly believed and taught that man becomes God in God’s salvation, but it was during the fourth century that this teaching so flourished that it found use as an unassailable argument against heresy, particularly in the writings of Athanasius. The fourth century was the time of the great theological debates concerning the Triune God, which in turn led to the debates concerning the Person of Christ. The Council at Nicea in A.D. 325 was actually only the beginning of the final solution, for the debates raged throughout the remainder of the fourth century and well into the fifth. In the years following Nicea, Athanasius was the major figure in defense of what was to become the accepted teaching concerning the Trinity, teaching that we ourselves hold to this day. Regarding man becoming God, Athanasius forged the classic phrase that summed up the utterances of his predecessors in this teaching and has served as the succinct formula for it since then: “For He was made man that we might be made God” (De Incarnatione 54:3). But this is only one of a multitude of similar declarations made by Athanasius concerning the truth that in God’s salvation man becomes God. So strong was this a component of his teaching that he employed it as a major rationale for proving that Christ is truly God in the very same sense that the Father is truly God.
For man had not been deified [Gk. etheopoiethe, ‘had been made god’] if joined to a creature, or unless the Son were very God. (Four Discourses against the Arians, Discourse II, sec. 70)
Jaroslav Pelikan, a modern historian whose five-volume work The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine chronicles the progress of Christian teaching throughout the ages, confirms Athanasius’s use of this teaching as a argument for the full deity of Christ.
Athanasius was the spokesman for the Eastern tradition that God the Logos had become man in order that men might become God; but if this was to be the gift of his incarnation and if man was to be rescued from the corruption that so easily beset him, it was indispensable that “the Logos not belong to things that had an origin, but be their framer himself.” (Volume 1, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition — 100-600, p. 207; Pelikan’s quote from Athanasius precedes our previous quote above.)
In other words, Athanasius challenged his Arian opponents with this question: If Christ were not truly God, how could He make us God? And this argument was difficult to refute because the common view in the fourth century was that man becomes God in God’s salvation (see Pelikan, vol. 1, pp. 155, 216, 233-234, 259, 265-266, 344-345). J. N. D. Kelly refers to another passage in Athanasius’s writings where he repeats the same argument with even greater precision of language:
As he put the matter, “the Word could never have divinized [Gk. etheopoiese ‘deified’ or ‘made god’] us if He were merely divine by participation and were not Himself the essential Godhead, the Father’s veritable image. (Early Christian Doctrines, 5th ed., p. 243; Athanasius is quoted from De Synodis 51)
Athanasius repeatedly declares, in various forms and with various intents, this same truth. Perhaps it is sufficient here to merely present some of these other declarations without analysis.
The Word was made flesh in order to offer up this body for all, and that we, partaking of His Spirit, might be deified, a gift which we could not otherwise have gained than by His clothing Himself in our created body, for hence we derive our name “men of God” and “men in Christ.” (De Decretis, ch. 3, sec. 14)
Therefore He was not man, and then became God, but He was God, and then became man, and that to deify us. (Four Discourses against the Arians, Discourse I, sec. 39)
For therefore the union was of this kind, that He might unite what is man by nature to Him who is in the nature of the Godhead, and his salvation and deification might be sure. (Four Discourses against the Arians, Discourse II, sec. 70)
For as, although there be one Son by nature, True and Only-begotten, we too become sons, not as He is in nature and truth, but according to the grace of Him that calleth, and though we are men from the earth, are yet called gods, not as the True God or His Word, but as has pleased God who has given us that grace;... (Four Discourses against the Arians, Discourse III, sec. 19)
[Paraphrasing Christ’s prayer in John 17:] “And the work is perfected [v. 4], because men, redeemed from sin, no longer remain dead; but being deified, have in each other, by looking at Me, the bond of charity.” (Four Discourses against the Arians, Discourse III, sec. 23)
Again, the collection is not exhaustive. In fact, a whole “theology” of man becoming God can be surmised in Athanasius’s repeated affirmations of this great truth. For this reason, the teaching that man becomes God became a basic view of salvation in the centuries immediately subsequent to the fourth.
But Athanasius was not the only fourth-century writer to maintain and proclaim this view. The Cappadocians — Basil the Great, his brother Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus — who championed further refinements in the doctrine of the Trinity accepted as orthodox today, heralded the same truth. Pelikan provides us a clear example from Basil:
Enumerating the gifts of the Spirit, Basil affirmed that from him “comes foreknowledge of the future, understanding of mysteries, apprehension of what is hidden, distribution of good gifts, the heavenly citizenship, a place in the chorus of angels, joy without end, abiding in God, the being made like to God — and highest of all, the being made God.” (Vol. 1, p. 216; Basil is quoted from On the Holy Spirit 9:23)
When Basil died, a story was recounted of how he had once confronted the prefect Modestus, sent by the Roman emperor Valens, with the truth of man’s becoming God. When Modestus asked why he did not honor his sovereign the emperor by accepting the Arian Christianity of the emperor, Basil answered,
“Because,” said he, “this is not the will of my real Sovereign; nor can I, who am the creature of God, and bidden myself to be God, submit to worship any creature [referring to the Arian belief that Christ was merely a creature].” (Gregory of Nazianzus, Catechetical Orations, Oration 43, “On the Panegyric of St. Basil” 48)
Basil’s brother Gregory of Nyssa also taught strongly that man becomes God in God’s salvation.
...the God who was manifested infused Himself into perishable humanity for this purpose, viz. that by this communion with Deity mankind might at the same time be deified... (The Great Catechism, ch. 37)
And the third Cappadocian, Gregory of Nazianzus, concurs with his counterparts on this matter and even broadens the use of this teaching to assert the deity of the Spirit.
If He [the Holy Spirit] is in the same rank with myself, how can He make me God, or join me with Godhead? (Catechetical Orations, Oration 31, “On the Holy Spirit” 4)
For if He [the Holy Spirit] is not to be worshipped, how can He deify me by Baptism? (Catechetical Orations, Oration 31, “On the Holy Spirit” 28)
Suffice it to say, based on what has been presented thus far, the teaching that man becomes God in God’s salvation was a prevailing one in the church of the first four centuries. We have presented only the more striking and most clear examples of these centuries, but would time and space allow, we could present the writings of Tatian, Athenagorus, Theophilus of Antioch, Methodius of Olympus, Didymus the Blind, John Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Cyril of Alexandria, Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus, Symeon the Theologian, and Gregory Palamas as further attestation of this teaching’s acceptability by the ancient church. And these are the Greek writers alone. Were we to open up the tomes of Latin writers, we could present Leo the Great, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and hosts of other writers, spanning well into the Middle Ages and up to the Reformation, all from various Christian perspectives. To say that this is heresy is to be sadly ignorant of the great history of this teaching in the long annals of the church.
Perhaps what comes to mind most commonly when people hear the term deification is the practice among the ancient pagan religions of elevating mere men to the status of gods. Historically, this became most prominent in the Roman Empire, where reverence for the Caesars as gods united the multi-national and multi-religious empire. Such reverence was adamantly resisted by two groups alone, the Jews and the Christians (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 16:120h), no doubt because of their absolute insistence on a belief in the one true God. But reactions to deification also reflected particular views on what deity was. It was so much easier for the pagan religions to admit deification into their religious systems because for them the gods were little more than men. Pagan gods were made in the image and likeness of men, so to speak, somewhat fallen and given to the same vices we humans suffer. The ancient world was filled with the intrigue and drama of fleshly tales about the pagan gods. To become god, at the standard of these gods, was hardly an improvement over being mere man and hardly a great leap for humanity. On the other hand, the God of the Jews and the Christians is eternal, perfect, above nature, and certainly above the multitude of flaws of humanity. The most virtuous man could easily qualify as a god in the pagan mind, but for Jews and even more so for Christians “our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Isa. 64:6). The chasm between God and man, and particularly unsaved man, could not be as easily bridged as the emperor cult of Rome suggested.
Furthermore, in the ancient pagan religions men became gods by mere declaration. The process was called apotheosis in Greek and consecratio in Latin, and generally occurred after the death of the emperor. Yet no one believed that the deified ruler had changed in any way except in how he was revered. Formerly, he was respected as an emperor; now he was worshipped as a god, but essentially he was still a man. There was no change in life and nature. It was much the same as the inauguration of a modern president: Formerly, he is without the office and is not accorded the dignity and respect of the office, but in a moment, at his inauguration, he is declared president. The man himself does not change at all, but his status is uplifted, and by this he gains the respect of the citizenry. This contrasts with what the Bible says about God’s redeemed, regenerated, and transformed people, who not only gain the status of being the sons of God but, more importantly, experience a change in life and nature that gives an essential reality to their being the sons of God.
In the early church Christians opposed the deification of man in the widely held pagan sense, but they did not oppose a proper understanding of deification. But how could the early church believe in a God who is far above man in His being and essence and still hope in a salvation so complete that man is ultimately deified? The overwhelming concept among ancient Jews and modern Christians alike is that God is transcendent above all creation and that His transcendence prevents man from ever sharing in what He is. God is God and man is man, and there exists an insuperable distance between the two. Yet for the early teachers of the church there were obvious “contradictions” that could easily be found in the Scriptures. Paul says that God “alone has immortality” (1 Tim. 6:16), but elsewhere he declares that “this mortal must put on immortality” (1 Cor. 15:53). Immortality was viewed as a defining characteristic of God, an attribute that made God what He is. How then could the believers be said to put on immortality without becoming, in some sense, God themselves? Further, the Lord Jesus used Psalm 82:6 to show that the term gods could legitimately be applied to men. Second Peter 1:4 also presented problems, since our partaking of the divine nature strongly implies that we too can be said to be divine. Once this kind of scrutiny is introduced, other “contradictions” can be found. Revelation 15:4 says, “Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify Your name? For You alone are holy”; and yet Peter exhorts the believers: “But according to the Holy One who called you, you yourselves also be holy in all your manner of life; because it is written, ‘You shall be holy because I am holy’” (1 Pet. 1:15-16). In Revelation 21 the bride, the wife of the Lamb, that is, the consummation of God’s elect, redeemed, and transformed people, is described as “having the glory of God. Her light was like a most precious stone, like a jasper stone, as clear as crystal” (v. 11). Certainly these are God’s people, yet having the glory of God, they appear to be God. Their aura is that of jasper, and likewise He who sits on the throne has the appearance of jasper (Rev. 4:3). These “contradictions” invite us, as they did the early church, to surmise that in some sense man can be said to be God in God’s salvation. Far from ignoring these “contradictions” or dismissing them as mere metaphors, the early church made it her task, in reverence to the sacred text, to somehow see how man may become God in light of what the sacred text tells us about God and His salvation. As the centuries progressed, the church’s teaching on deification was refined and by the fourth century reached a full, stable, and mature form. Contrary to what some scholars of the nineteenth century believed (e.g., cf. Harnack History of Dogma, vol. III, ch. 2), the teaching concerning deification was not a holdover from Hellenic religion but a conclusion drawn from the careful consideration of biblical truths. (On this, see, for example, Louis Bouyer, History of Christian Spirituality, pp. 416-420.)
In order to understand what the early church believed and taught concerning deification, it is useful to consider a distinction the writers of the early church utilized to advance this teaching. Perhaps the simplest way to present the distinction is to consider the term God as an answer to two questions: Who are you? and, What are you? If we were to ask God Himself, Who are You, O Lord? He would certainly answer, I am God. If we were to ask Him, Dear Lord, what are You? again, He would say, I am God. If, however, the believers were asked the same questions, the answers must differ. When asked, Who are you? we must say, We are Brother Paul, Brother Aquila, and Sister Priscilla, for example. But when asked, What are you? we, as redeemed and regenerated believers, can say and even we should say, We are God. The distinction respects God as a unique Person with His own unique, personal identity and God as a species to which the Triune God belongs as the source and the believers belong as the partakers. In the language of the early church, we should distinguish between God by nature, referring to God Himself, and God by grace, referring to the believers. These terms even more accurately express not only the difference between God as Person and God as kind or species, but also the difference between God as He is in Himself and God by virtue of what is gained through grace by participation in the organic union with Christ. Hence, in the teaching of the early church, only the Triune God Himself is God by virtue of what He is in Himself; we believers are God only by virtue of what we have received, by virtue of our union with God.
The language of the New Testament certainly respects this distinction. Second Peter 1:4 calls us “partakers of the divine nature,” indicating that it is not our own nature that makes us divine but His. He is God by nature; we are God by virtue of partaking of His nature. John tells us that Christ is life (John 11:25; 14:6), but “he who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life” (1 John 5:12). He is the divine life in Himself, and being the divine life, He is the unique God; we have the divine life through regeneration and through our continued oneness with the Son, and thus we are God in life as well. Further, Paul calls the Body of Christ, Christ (1 Cor. 12:12); but the Lord Jesus is the Head, and we are the Body. He is uniquely Christ, God become flesh; we are Christ because we are His members. In this sense too, we can say that we are God. The Second of the Divine Trinity is the only begotten Son of God, and this admits no brothers; yet on the day of resurrection, the Lord said, “Go to My brothers and say to them, I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God” (John 20:17). Uniquely He is the only begotten Son, but in relation to His believers He is the Firstborn among many brothers (Rom. 8:29). Hence, we are sons of God by participation in Him, by partaking of His life and nature. And just as sons are in kind what their fathers are, we too are in kind what our Father is, God.
Our teaching concerning man becoming God in God’s salvation must respect this distinction recognized by the church from its earliest centuries. And as the many quotations from Brother Lee’s ministry indicate, this distinction is clearly and forcefully held by us. Because of this distinction, man will never take part in the Godhead; he will never be a fourth person in the Trinity; he will never be worshipped as God. Because man will never lose his attributes as a creature, he will never be the Creator. Man will forever possess the human form and the human nature; thus, he will never be omnipresent. Man will forever be endowed with the limited mental faculties he was given by creation; hence, he will never be omniscient. God is God both outside of creation and within creation; man can at best be joined to God and thereby become God within the confines of creation.
In every way, man’s becoming God will be tempered by and limited to his status as a creature; and actually, what man is by creation gives the greatest credence to the notion that man may become God. In the account of creation in Genesis 1, all living things were created “after their kind” (vv. 11, 12, 21, 24, 25) except man. Hence, in God’s creation there are species of living things, each bearing its own characteristics that distinguish it from other species. But when the creation of man is recounted, he is not said to be created “after his kind.” Instead, the Scriptures say, “Let us [God] make man in our image, after our likeness” (Gen. 1:26). We understand this sentence to correspond to the phrase “after their kind” in the other sections of the creation account; we see it as a finer, more detailed utterance of the same notion. Hence, we understand by this sentence that man was created after God’s kind. The apostle Paul made the similar declaration to the Areopagus in Athens: “Being then the race (Gk. genos, ‘species; kind’) of God” (Acts 17:29).
Of course, we all know the sad history of man’s fall, by which man lost a great bit of his likeness to God. Nevertheless, man was created in such a way that through God’s economy man may become God. Adam before the fall was not a deified man; he was not created with God’s life and nature but only with the capacity to receive these. The fall delayed the realization of what man was created for and brought in negative elements that required our redemption. But through Christ’s salvation God’s original intention for man is fulfilled, and man becomes God in life and nature though never in the Godhead.
As a final note to this historical survey, we should comment on J. S.’s statement concerning the capitalization of the word God when it is applied to the believers. J. S. says, “Whether with big or small “G” does not make any difference,” but there is significance to the use of each. The distinction held by the early church is respected by the presence or absence of the capital G: God denotes the unique Person, who alone is God by virtue of His divine self-existence, “God by nature” in the language of the early church; god denotes what we become in God’s salvation, by virtue of partaking of His life and nature, “God by grace” as they would say. Yet even though the presence or absence of the capital letter technically respects the distinction, there is a very real and true sense in which the capital G can be used to denote both aspects at the same time. First Corinthians 15:28 says, “And when all things have been subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to Him who has subjected all things to Him, that God may be all in all.” What does God denote here? Certainly the unique God. But that He is to be all in all means that God is to be everyone — Christ, the believers, the church fathers, Witness Lee, J. S. The goal of God’s economy is God as all in all. Whoever denies that the believers will be made God denies God and His economy. Thus, as J. S. says, “Whether with big or small “G” does not make any difference.” But it makes no difference to him because he believes it is heretical either way, while it makes no difference to us because it is true and right either way.
We in the local churches hold that man may become God in God’s salvation. We are persuaded by our study of the Word of God and by our understanding of God’s economy. We are also confirmed by the ancient testimony of the church. But we are not alone today in our convictions, for great portions of the Christian community also believe and teach the same. Both the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church teach that man becomes God through Christian salvation. We offer the following quotations to document this. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, recently published by the Holy See of the Roman Catholic Church, presents the following:
Article 3
“He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and was born of the virgin Mary” Paragraph 1. The Son of God became man I. Why did the Word become flesh? 460 The Word became flesh to make us “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4): “For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God” (St. Irenaeus, Adv. haeres. 3, 19, 1). “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God” (St. Athanasius, De inc. 54, 3). “The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Opusc. 57:1-4). (Catechism of the Catholic Church, p. 116)
Timothy Ware in his book The Orthodox Church gives the view of the Orthodox Church:
The aim of the Christian life, which Seraphim described as the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God, can equally be defined in terms of deification. Basil described man as a creature who has received the order to become a god [quoted above]; and Athanasius, as we know, said that God became man that man might become god. “In My kingdom, said Christ, I shall be God with you as gods” (Canon for Matins of Holy Thursday, Ode 4, Troparion 3). Such, according to the teaching of the Orthodox Church, is the final goal at which every Christian must aim: to become god, to attain theosis, ‘deification’ or ‘divinization’. For Orthodoxy man’s salvation and redemption mean his deification. (The Orthodox Church, p. 236)
Even evangelical Christianity is not without a positive comment concerning man’s becoming God. Although evangelical Christianity certainly does not emphatically teach that man becomes God in God’s salvation, the following quotation shows that with proper qualification it need not, in their view, be deemed heretical.
First, it should be pointed out that the phrase “little gods” may be unfortunate, but it is not necessarily heretical in and of itself, as long as it is not intended to convey that man is equal with, or a part of, God. The Eastern Orthodox Church, for example, teaches that Christians are deified in the sense that they are adopted as sons of God, indwelt by the Spirit of God, and brought into communion with God which ultimately leads to glorification. (Hank Hanegraaff, Christianity in Crisis, pp. 110-111)
J. S.’s condemnation shows little knowledge of the history of this teaching, of the proper enunciation of this teaching, and of the acceptance of this teaching even today. Unfortunately, we suspect that the motive for the condemnation is laced with malice. If, however, there is a genuine ignorance, we hope that this presentation will serve to enlighten and direct each reader into the full knowledge of the truth. We eagerly await that day when indeed God will be “all in all.”
Kerry S. Robichaux
