CS Lewis and Theosis

This week’s Catechumen class reading is from The Orthodox Faith, Worship, and Life. 

The subject is Section 3.7 The deification of man. This is also called theosis.

Theosis is “to become Gods by grace.”

CS Lewis had the same teaching.

Lewis the lover of myth, and Lewis the imaginative writer who was most sensitive to this idea’s power. In this, too, he showed himself kindred to the mystical tradition of the Christian East, where theology is more experiential than systematic, more poetic than propositional. – Shine As the Sun: C.S. Lewis and the Doctrine of Deification

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all love, all play, all politics.