Theosis and Martyria—The Spiritual Process of Deification and Its Implication for the Mission of the Church

Abstract

This article analyses the role of the spiritual path of theosis in the mission of the Eastern Orthodox church. It evaluates the main directions in which the church could have a fundamental role in the world, such as peace, human dignity or the ecological crises, and does so through the lens of the deification process. The spiritual exercise of deification contributes to a fundamental change in the way that we act, think, and understand reality and this plays an essential part in missionary work as understood by the Eastern Orthodox church. Because of this approach, the theological term martyria/witness is considered more suitable than the term mission, in order to describe the process of transformation of the human persons and, through those who engage on the path of deification, the transformation of the entire creation. The article presents two different perspectives: one offered by two official, programmatic documents of the church (“The Mission of the Orthodox Church in Today’s World” and “For the Life of the World. Social Ethos Document of the Ecumenical Patriarchate”), and addressed to communities, and another one represented by the writings from the Philokalia, which are apparently dedicated to individuals and their personal spiritual journey. In the view presented here, the two perspectives are not different, but in fact complementary.