Being is communion because “being” is an energy/actuality/name of the Triune God. Being is not “indeterminate,” that is, conceptually or actually prior to the perichoresis of the three divine persons. Rather, being is the being-of the Holy Trinity, an always-already “determinate” or, more precisely, hypostatic reality. Our creaturely being is nothing more than our participation within the Holy Trinity through being “adopted as sons,” which later (in the Orthodox tradition) would be described as deification by grace. Some have argued that the “Palamite” doctrine of theosis via direct participation within the divine energies/grace lacks a Christological basis and undermines the Pauline doctrine of adoption/incorporation as sons in the Eternal Son, but this is often based on a misunderstanding of both (I am speaking specifically of most Catholic readings of Palamas and most Protestant readings of St. Paul).
To say we are “adopted” as sons is to say we participate in God by grace, as adoption signifies the establishment of a purely gratuitous and non-essential relation. It is “non-essential” because it is not a power of the nature in question and is only possible due to the condescension of the higher nature into the lower. Furthermore, it involves not the destruction or alteration of either nature but the free self-transcendence of both into the others while preserving the essential distinction. This power of self-transcendence, according to St. Gregory of Nyssa, is a cause for wonder: “Everything that goes beyond the limits of its nature becomes especially an object of wonder for all.”1 When a child is adopted into a new family through the latter’s free and generous inclusion of the former into their household, the biological relation between the child and his/her actual parents (and the lack of biological relation with his/her adopted parents) is not magically erased, but, to borrow the language of Maximus, the child takes on a “new mode of being” which is constituted precisely by the establishment of a new relation. This is exactly how Maximus (and Palamas) speaks of deification by grace.
I hope what has been said so far is sufficient to convince the reader that “grace” and “adoption” are two ways of speaking of fundamentally identical things (namely, our participation in God). But why precisely is “deification” spoken as our becoming “sons” of God? According to Maximus, this is because deification is the transformation of ourselves into the likeness of Christ the Eternal Son, a union that is so perfect we, in a sense, receive Christ Himself as our identity: “those who choose the pure and undefiled life of the Gospel … become living images of Christ, or rather become identical to him through grace (rather than being a mere simulacrum), or even, perhaps, become the Lord himself, if such an idea is not too onerous for some to bear.”2
We are deified, but we are deified through becoming “like Christ.” This is because, in the Holy Trinity, the Son is the one who “receives” the fullness of the Father’s divinity in the communion of the Holy Spirit. It is only because the Father Almighty is generous by nature, fully sharing Himself in His eternal self-emptying in the begetting of the Son, that He has the power and freedom to go beyond His nature in creating a world to freely receive what the Son receives eternally by nature. This is how we ought to conceive of the distinction between Sonship by nature, possessed only by Jesus Christ, and sonship via grace, possessed by all who are united to Jesus Christ in the Spirit. Our deification can never be one of “nature” because to say it is “by nature” is simply to say that Godhood is proper to our being, i.e. it is to say we are God Himself. But, as the Fathers say, we do “become God,” but we do so through deification, which we have established occurs by way of our transformation into the likeness of Christ. We are adopted as sons in receiving the Holy Spirit of the Son, thereby being united to the Eternal Son and participating in His eternal act of reciprocating the Father’s self-emptying love. Seraphim Hamilton explains this concisely:
No creature can possibly share in the generation of the Son. Yet, scripture refers to incorporation into Christ as “sonship” (Gal. 4:5). The ontological basis for such adoption is found in the relationality of the energies. A baptized Christian is not adopted as son through sharing in the generation of the Son, but rather in being drawn, through the Spirit, into the relational place that the Son has with the Father. Articulating the Spirit’s eternal relationship with the Son in energetic terms functions in the same way; the Spirit is named the “Spirit of the Son” (Gal. 4:6) in the context of the Spirit’s adoption of the faithful into the sonship of Christ. The Spirit’s eternal relationship with the Son must be a relationship that is participable if it is to do the theological work scripture requires of it.3
Seraphim’s thesis, of immense significance for the communal ontology, is that the energies of God are inherently relational, that is, Trinitarian. The energies subsist precisely as the “content” of the infinitely plentiful and fruitful communion of the Holy Trinity; they are true things we can say about this ineffable mystery. Thus, our deification is nothing more than our inclusion within the eternal relation/communion of the Holy Trinity.
All three persons possess the same divine energies but in their unique, hypostatic ways. The Father is being, joy, life, (etc.) as a Father, the Son is likewise but as a Son. More specifically, the Father is the monarchia who “grants the Son to have life (and being, joy…) in Himself,” while the Son is being, joy, life in His eternal reciprocation of the Father’s timeless movement. The unity of the Godhead is preserved as the actuality of the “divine actualities” can only be conceived in the Trinity, while the distinction of the persons is equally preserved. Being, life, joy…is the Trinitarian communion.
Thus, as I said above, our being, life, joy… is only ever participation within the Holy Trinity. This occurs through our adoption as sons of God in Christ, our transformation into His likeness, our deification by grace. Just as the Son of God eternally receives the fullness of divinity, we are called to enter into this very eternity, “becoming uncreated,” to use the (perhaps scandalous) language of St. Maximus. Our “becoming uncreated,” as Maximus makes clear, is not a negation of our created nature but a transformation of its mode of being (tropos). An adopted child does not become a biological child of their adopted parents, but through adoption, we can truly say that the child is a son/daughter of their new parents. This is not the negation of nature, but its transformation, its ekstasis beyond its natural limits, which is, paradoxically, its “natural” end (what our nature was destined for from the beginning). It was the eternal plan of God to deify our nature beyond its essential limits because it was the eternal plan of God to unite His divine nature with our human nature in the person of Jesus Christ, thereby communicating the fullness of divine life to us:
By gracious condescension God became man and is called man for the sake of man and by exchanging his condition for ours revealed the power that elevates man to God through his love for God and brings God down to man because of his love for man. By this blessed inversion, man is made God by divinization and God is made man by hominization. For the Word of God and God wills always and in all things to accomplish the mystery of his embodiment.4
Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomius.
Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguum 21.
Seraphim Hamilton, Energies of the Trinity.
Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguum 7.
Isn't our very existence itself inherently participation in God - that being is by nature communion? Why do we insist on separating the world from the very source and substance of it's communal being? And then we develop a theology of uniting that which we've convinced ourselves is separate. Perhaps there really is no separation of being, but only a lack of conscious participation in being (i.e., God) - the actualization of that which we always already are. Have we really considered that? Distinctions?! Yes. But separation of being? Why?!?
What need is there to be adopted by God? Are we not already sons of God? Moreso, as Christ quotes, "you are gods, sons of the most high"? Why do we insist on trying to separate ourselves from God?