"Salvation" is a word with various definitions. Many in the Western church view it as being saved from hell, or saved from the wrath of an angry Father. But in the first seven centuries of church history (and still the prevalent focus in the Eastern church), salvation means something quite different. It is nothing less than theosis: the deification or divinization of humanity as partakers in the very divine nature of the Godhead. God's very aim in the incarnation of Jesus was to impart and infuse us with God's own self. As the great saint Athanasius said, “God became man that man might become God."

Explore this ancient mystery, that by grace mankind is destined for such radical glorification as to become identified with her very Creator. Mortality is swallowed up in immortality. And this identity is something out of which we begin to live now, thanks to the finished work of the cross.