Toward a Semiotic Theory of Divinization

It is a universal rule that no one knows divine perfection “who does not receive.”²

I

Over the last half-century, there has been a vigorous renewal of attention to the topic of divinization on the part of some Christian theologians. These theologians are taking up a topic that predates the birth of Christian thought, informs New Testament writings, and is a focal point in the earliest attempts at systematic reflection. Norman Russell, a leading contemporary scholar of divinization—theosis, in Christian tradition—defines it this way: “Theosis is our restoration as persons to integrity and wholeness by participation in Christ through the Holy Spirit, in a process which is initiated in this world through our life of ecclesial communion and moral striving and finds ultimate fulfillment in our union with the Father—all within the broad context of the divine economy.”³ Russell’s definition grows out of its context, a work of historical and pastoral theology that draws together various aspects of the topic from various sources, all of which contribute something valuable to the understanding. However, it exhibits a weakness shared with the work of others on the topic.

Current discussions of divinization often simply defer to the supranaturalistic language of the patristic writers on whom they draw, and the metaphysical commitments behind that language bear the mark of their age. The doctrinal specificity of terminology and rhetoric such as Russell’s can—at least initially—limit opportunities for significant conversation with a wider twenty-first century public informed, on one hand, by the practice and findings of modern/postmodern science and, on the other, by religious conceptions and practices of becoming divine that developed in relative isolation from the Hellenistic matrix of early Christianity. The members of this public are worth engaging in terms less charged with confessional particularity—at least initially—so that whatever awaits discovery in their experience can become a resource for possibly revealing dialogue rather than simply grist for a dogmatic mill.

Russell is no grist-grinder.⁴ However, to open up the topic of divinization to wider conversation, I seek a less particular account of what we talk about when we talk about divinization, understanding that although this account will involve loss, there is also gain to be had. Such an account will necessarily be vague, having abstracted from some of the rich this-ness of historical actualization, yet it can also gain the capacity to interpret different particular traditions to one another with more critical assurance of how the traditions may speak to each other.

The question arises, then: can divinization be conceived intelligibly in late modern philosophical terms, particularly within the framework of a naturalistic metaphysics, or does responding to its attraction more or less require accepting an entire worldview that is out of touch with crucial shared elements of late modern experience? I suppose the best way to answer that question is to attempt a theory of divinization in a contemporary philosophical language that is intelligible to a broader set of audiences than just those Christian communities for whom the tradition is alive and integral enough that it needs no apology. This language must make it possible to offer an account of divinization that, while abstract in comparison to the historical and cultural particularities of Christian tradition, precisely by virtue of its abstraction carries over what is vital in the tradition for examination, perhaps even recognition, in terms of other traditions. This paper makes a beginning on such a theory, working with the pragmatist semiotics and metaphysics of Robert Cummings Neville. The cross-cultural intelligibility of Neville’s philosophy is already evident in his own and others’ comparative work, and explicit allusions to divinization in Neville’s writings suggest the aptness of his thought for the present task.

II

Through much of his career, Robert Cummings Neville has been advancing the hypothesis that truth is the carryover of value or importance from objects into interpreters in the respects in which the signs interpret the objects, as qualified by the biology, culture, semiotic systems, and purposes of the interpreters. For the...