Sacrifice as Participation

In the act of the imitation of Christ’s life, we join ourselves to Christ’s own Sacrifice since this is what we are imitating, and enabled to do so by Christ himself. It is therefore the “SAME PERFECT SACRIFICE” (Mal.1:11, Rom.12:1) as that of Christ, that we offer also. Christianity is not just God sacrificing for us, rather it is us enabled to sacrifice as God did. Christ’s Sacrifice is to desire nothing but the Will of God “my food is to do the Will of him who sent me…” (Jn.4:34) and indeed the Will of God is this, that we desire nothing but God “you shall the love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength”. In this imitation of Christ’s desire for the Father alone, we are enabled by God himself, God enables us to truly love nothing but him. And in this perfect giving of ourselves in which we are enabled by God himself, we are also able to perfectly receive God. This is the fullness of “participation in God”, being as St. Paul says “filled with the fullness of God”(hina perothete eis pan to pleroma tou Theou) is none other than this participation, since it is on our part a “filling”, which means that we are completely absorbed into this relationship, while on God’s part it is “fullness”, it is not merely a part of God that we receive, rather the “fullness” of Him. This cannot fail to be a definition of what it means to “participate” in the other: “…And to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:19,20). The indwelling of God (which is seen in numerous Biblical passages right from the Old Testament) in us cannot fail to transform us into the very Image of God (2Cor.3:18) so that we may “Participate in the Divine nature” (2Pet.1:4) desiring that purity. “Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine” Eph 3:20

“In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered;and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him…” (Hebrews 5:7-9). God could not suffer as God, but as Man, he suffered and thus “was made perfect” “because of his reverent submission”. In obedience to God, we are “made perfect” through suffering. In Christ, we happen to have a God who “IS LOVE” (1Jn.4:8) and as love, “POURS HIMSELF” (Rom. 5:5) into us, a participation, when we as recipient vessels desire none but him through Faith. That is the mode in which the Holy Spirit is “given to us” (still Rom.5:5).

“…is still the God of the Old covenants. The God who has always been sending forth his word and his Spirit (and without God’s word and his Spirit, no covenant with man would have been possible). But the Word had not yet definitively stepped over to man’s side to be recognisable as a  divine Person, and the Spirit that rested on man had not finally penetrated his heart (this remained a prophecy)…so that it could be experienced as an infallible, divine cry of prayer coming from the depths of his heart (…) Christians are admitted to the “marvellous light” (1 Pet2:9) of him in whom “are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col2:3). They “have received” the Spirit who “searches everything, even the depths of God” and knows the thoughts of God” so that they “may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God” (1Cor2:10-12). This means that it is possible to have infinite progress with the New Covenant: the Fathers (Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa. Augustine) frequently speak of it….ever-deeper insight into the profound mystery of God…” with all the saints” into the dimensions of “the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph 3:18f”) (Balthasar TD3, p.514)

Participation is Immortality, and Eternal Life

We have just finished describing how God in Sacrificing for us, enables us to receive Him into ourselves. In a way that we cannot understand and yet in a way that is more real than anything we do understand, we “participate” in God in giving ourselves to God and God being given to us, “filled with the fullness of God”. Jesus’s sacrifice makes this possible, that by it we are truly able, our self-giving to God, to fully receive God also. “Do you not know that you yourselves are God’s temple, and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (1Cor.3:16) “And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.” (Rom 8:11). We are immortal because of God who lives in us, who has come to us, who dwells in us as “his Temple”, when we thus receive him in Faith. Then when we die, we do not die but we live, because of the Spirit of God living in us which gives us Life. This is our guarantee of Salvation- not merely a verbal statement but a living promise, and Life itself. We live eternally because we are given to God and God given to us, and in that we are given He-who-is-Life-itself. We live because God lives in us, without God there is only death. There is no room for sin in God. Thus God-whom-we-receive is our “living hope”: “…he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” (1 Peter 1:3b) and “Now it is God who establishes both us and you in Christ. He anointed us, placed His seal on us, (ἐσφραγίσθητε) and put His Spirit in our hearts as a pledge (ἀρραβὼν) of what is to come.” (2Cor.1:21,22b, also 2Cor.5:5) and “you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the pledge of our inheritance “ (1Eph 13b,14a) And this is through believing: “Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession…Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:14-16). Thus in Christianity, it is “Life” that is revealed, the Eternal Life of God (I John 1:2) “this life was revealed…we have seen it…”.  

Christ perfected us and sanctified us, removing all sin form us: Hebrews 10:10 “And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all….But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, (…) ¹⁴ For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.” This is the “new and living way” “through the veil” which Jesus has “opened up for us”, “which is his body”:”Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh)” (Hebrews 10:19,20) Christ entered Heaven, “on our behalf”: For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made by human hands, a mere copy of the true one, but he entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. (9:24) and “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17). What more is there to say!

The Cross and Participation in Virtue

And our suffering in this manner we are not alone, but rather united to God. How so? Because we are exercising the same virtues that He himself exercised in His own state of helplessness. Christ exercised the same virtues in his humanity which we exercise through Faith in him, these virtues in his Humanity flow from his relationship to the Father, for they are his love for the God the Father. The supernatural virtues of Faith are derived from the Love of Christ for God the Father and their perfect loving relationship. God wants us to be like him, but it is impossible for us to be like him “As He is in Glory”. God remedies this by becoming one of us and making it possible now for us to “be like him on the Cross”. St. Paul says: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death…” (Phil.3:10) This awesome mystery can only mean that although we cannot be like God, radiant in his Glory and Majesty, yet it is not untrue to say what we are given to “be like him” in his death and humiliation. This is why St Paul can say “we…were baptised into his death…if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will also be united with him in a resurrection like his” (6:3,5) This is one of my favourite verses to quote because it is a clear “if…then” conditional statement: It is when our death is “like his” that our resurrection will be like his. Is there any other way for us to be resurrected? St Paul certainly does not offer any. What is it for Christians to undergo a “death like Christ’s”? As the famous third verse from Philippians goes “Christ emptied himself, not clinging to equality with God…” Christ’s relinquished his Godly privilege, and in doing so calls us to relinquish our niggardly human privilege, and what pride we have in it. Jesus did not just empty himself of his divinity, he empties himself on he Cross also of his humanity “no one takes it from me, I lay it down of my own accord”.

To undergo a death like Christ is to exhibit the same virtues that Christ exhibited in his Passion which are his gentleness, humility, and love in the face of our own sufferings. Thereby man is brought into a true participation in the Divine Life of the Holy Trinity as we Love with the Trinitarian love of the Son for the Father, that love that is “poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which is given us”. Our own self-regard no longer presents an obstacle to that divine infusion of love.

St Augustine sermon excerpt: “He had no power of himself to die for us: he had to take from us our mortal flesh. This was the way in which, though immortal, he was able to die; the way in which he chose to give life to mortal men: he would first share with us, and then enable us to share with him. Of ourselves we had no power to live, nor did he of himself have the power to die. In other words, he performed the most wonderful exchange with us. Through us, he died; through him, we shall live”. In opening ourselves to the divine Virtues, through the negation of self in the denial of all to the point of the loss of everything (Phil.3:8). What we are receiving is God himself, the Real Presence of God-who-is-Spirit (Jn.4:24) to our spirit, the spirit which is our seat of virtue.

Participation as “Indwelling”

That proximity of God which is truly an “indwelling” because none gets close like God, for there is no barrier to his proximity to us. This sort of language should not surprise us since it is used in a million enraptured love songs when persons are truly emptying the truth of their souls in verse, as “sharing our live”, being “one spirit” and so on. The verses which speak of this indwelling pervade the Holy Scriptures and lead up to what might be seen as their pinnacle in the Last Supper accounts of the first Three Gospels, “take this…eat it/drink it, this is my Body/my Blood”. There are also aprofusion of OT verses that speak of the Holy Spirit of God “coming upon”, persons as well as the expressing desire of God to “be with his people and dwell with them”, as only fulfilled in the New Covenant in Jesus.

Heaven is the fulfilment of the desire of God for that proximity which is his purpose in his plan for creation, and sanctification is the means by which he brings it about. This is the meaning of the Christian life which is the participation in the Divine Life (2 Pet.1:4) through the fulfilled purpose of the unmediated and unhindered proximity of God our Creator us to our ultimate end. It is only perfectly analogous to the proximity that every parent desires to have with their own child, and the lessons that they want them also to learn, and the person that they want them to become. A parent wants to give to their child the best of themselves. Human parents fail in this quite miserably because of the limitations of the human condition, while truly a parent in their herat wants nothing but to be united to their child completely or a lover to their beloved as they lovingly, if somewhat morbidly and helplessly state things like “I would eat you up/ put you in my pocket if I could”.

As it turns out, there is an answer to the mystery of life. That Transcendent Being did have a Plan when he created us, and that plan was that he creates those that can be like Him, out of a loving motive that can be best described in our own understanding, as parental. He could not make us copies of Himself that needed no spiritual journey as that would be a violation of monotheism and his aseity. He created us to be like him through the passage of earthly life, through the increasing proximity to him, to thus be together with him in Eternal Life.

“…your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory” (Col.3:3b,4)

An Ontology of Participation in God

Fr. Peter Totleben, O.P. on the Pints with Aquinas channel: “The way to think about God in terms of his simplicity, is to start thinking about what does it mean to say that God knows and loves?- The thing that God knows and loves is aimed at himself. What does God know?…The thing that God knows most is himself- that’s the object that’s adequate to his thinking…And what does God love? – he loves himself… Love here is knowledge of the truth and the love of the good, things are attracted by the true and attracted by the good, so if we think of God as supremely true and supremely good then we’ve got to think this way. God knows himself perfectly, and in knowing himself, God knows all of the different ways that he is imitable. He can see in his Essence, the way in which each of us are good. So when God knows himself, he sees Fr. Peter and he sees the special way in which Fr. Peter resembles his beauty, (…and so on, for all created objects) The procession of God the Son is the fruit of God’s intellectual activity. He is the logos and the Word, and all things are made in his and through him and for him. God sees all the things that are created and he loves them. What this means is that God loves everything and in loving himself he loves all the imitations of himself. God’s knowing loving is directed at himself, and in this proceeds the Holy Spirit and the Son. This means that God’s love for us is completely selfless… when I love things I love them at some level because of the good that they can accomplish in me…but God doesn’t use creatures that way…So God’s act of creation is sort of “aside” of God’s knowing and loving himself. God knows and loves himself and in that act of knowing and loving of himself some how as an excess and overflow, an expression of it, he wills that there be imitations of him that he loves. God’s knowing and loving of creation is an overflow, and excess generosity of knowing and loving himself. This is where creation comes from and thus creation is a free act (thus we do not need to consider questions of whether this was the best creation possible etc.) …

When God creates he is not acting in the world, he creates out of nothing. So this act of creation is just spun out of his knowing and loving himself. It is not the action of an agent on a patient, its out of nothing. This means that there is nothing in the creature that’s not already put there by God…what it means is that everything, down to its deepest level, is there because its known and loved by God. All creation is a celebration of God’s goodness. You’re not here because you “had” to be here, you’re here because God sees the beauty and goodness in you. So the manner in which we experience God in prayer, is that we are encountering him directly, God is bringing about a change in our soul without any medium or  mediation of “divine energies” (referring to the Palamist doctrine of Eastern Orthodox Christianity). Divine energy supposes that there is a distance between God and creatures that needs to be bridged in order to make contact. But because creation is made out of nothing, God isn’t working on something that already exists in order to change it….the activity that we attribute to the Holy Spirit, that acts on me to produce a new effect in me, a new effect of God’s love that lifts me up into his Life, that’s happening here and now. But its not as though God is acting from afar to bring about that change in me…It’s not as though I’m going along living my own life and then God enters into my life. God’s already there, I’m already radically directed towards him, I’m already radically related to him, and he’s drawing me ever close in a supernatural sense as an effect of his love. (Q : doesn’t God use grace though, how is that not the same as “energy”?) A Palamite would say that you come to partake in God’s “uncreated energies”. The Thomistic says that deification also needs to be a real effect in me. Deification cannot be merely God’s energies substituting for my energies. Deification is God’s energy energising me, giving me a new energy towards God. God acts so that I might act.

The analogy of deification is: take an iron and put it in the fire at the blacksmith’s shop. The iron begins to glow with the light and heat of the fire…the light and the heat that are properties of that glowing bit of iron are really properties of that iron that transform and transfigure every part of it…there’s the fire that’s doing the heating, and there’s the light and the heat in the iron that are somehow being actively caused by the fire but are also in some sense real properties of the iron, properties that it does not have of itself and only exist as long as its in the fire…a Thomist is going to draw a distinction between a substance and its “accidents”, (which are) its properties. The iron remains an iron, but it acquires these new properties. There are properties that it cannot acquire for itself. It requires some superior causal force to make it to glow, although its capable of being made to glow (54:01). That glowing bit is what the Church calls sanctifying grace or habitual grace…that is superadded on to the iron that further perfects the iron in a new way… in my soul sanctifying grace is a special effect of God’s love. God loves me and that love has a new effect inside of me that formally perfects me in a way that I couldn’t be before.

I love something because I perceive its goodness. I notice that it is good and I start to love it. God doesn’t notice that I’m good and then start to love me. God just loves me, and his love produces in me the good that he loves… something new thing happens inside of me that makes me more and more like him…here the human being is the nature or the substance, the sanctifying grace…is the accident…(Q: How would you explain Palamism using the same analogy?) Thomists are going to very clear to say that sanctifying grace is something created. Palamists are going to say that if it is created then how does it deify. The Thomistic reply will be that it deifies because it’s the effect of God’s  operation in you” (56:52) What’s deifying is God operating on you. That deification shows up in your soul by this kind of transformation. Now that transformation isn’t identical with God. It’s a thing that comes to be in time that’s contingent and it so it has to be created. The Palamites would say that the properties of the fire are the properties of the iron. The fire goes into the iron and then the iron is on fire with the fire of the fire. It substitutes the mode of being of the iron for the fire. But its not clear how to account for this, this is where Thomist would say that. What the Palamist is going to say that the divine energies are distinguished by the things that they energise. So in one sense the energies of God are one thing with God coming out of him, just like the rays of the Sun are one thing with God coming out of God, but they are (59:11) distinct within each person. That is how we distinguish two different rays of the Sun in the manner that this ray lights up this thing….”

Divine Participation fulfils the Plan of Creation

When the actions of “knowing” and “loving” in the Divine Persons of the Holy Trinity of God are externalised as a gratuitous act of mercy, it is Creation. God knows and loves things into being, and he creates them that they might know and love him. Thus Creation is the outflow of the intrinsic activity or internal “act” of God himself.

The soul is made like to God by grace. Hence for a divine person to be sent to anyone by grace, there must needs be a likening of the soul to the divine person Who is sent, by some gift of grace. (…) Whereas the Son is the Word, not any sort of word, but one Who breathes forth Love. Hence Augustine says (De Trin. ix 10): “The Word we speak of is knowledge with love.” Thus the Son is sent (…) but according to the intellectual illumination, which breaks forth into the affection of love, as is said (John 6:45): “Everyone that hath heard from the Father and hath learned, cometh to Me,” and (Psalm 38:4): “In my meditation a fire shall flame forth.” Thus Augustine plainly says (De Trin. iv, 20): “The Son is sent, whenever He is known and perceived by anyone.” [STI, Q.43, Art.6, ad.2]

In the Christian view, creation did not end with the creation of the soul, it ends with the soul’s redemption and sanctification. As is disclosed to St. Catherine of Siena, “…since I have loved both you and others before you were in existence, and that through the ineffable love which I had for you, wishing to recreate you to grace, I have washed you and recreated you in the blood of my only begotten Son, spilt with so great a fire of love…”

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. (Gal 2:20)

“For me to live is Christ and to die is gain (Phil 1:20)

For your life is hidden with Christ in God. (Col3:3)