Glorification in the Christian Life: Fellowship in the Trinity (T-H-E-O-S-I-S)-Introduction

Hank Hanegraaff, the host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast, first wrote on deification in the early 1990s in his bestselling book Christianity in Crisis—where he noted that ever since the dawn of time Satan has tried to peddle the lie that mere men and women can become gods. That his seductive hiss “You will be like God” has reverberated across the ages with sensuous frequency. That he packages and repackages the lie in whatever size or shape is needed to make it sell. Hank went on to provide distortions of deification in the kingdom of the occult, the kingdom of the cults, and in corruptions within Christianity. After cataloging heretical views on deification, Hank wrote that just as there are counterfeits of deification, so, too, there is authentic expression. Eastern Orthodoxy is a case in point. As Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky aptly put it: “After the Fall, human history is a long shipwreck awaiting rescue: but the port of salvation is not the goal; it is the possibility for the shipwrecked to resume his journey whose sole goal is union with God.” The goal is not for the saved to remain within the port of salvation. Rather it is to continue on a journey whose exclusive goal is deification. It is to experience fellowship in the Trinity. Deification is far greater than knowing about God as a logical truth proposition. It is the experience of life.

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