This blog is called “The Third Helix” in reference to the third strand of DNA that is added to our genome as Christians: just as our mortal parents’ DNA combines into the double-helix molecule to create us, God adds His own Nature to make us His.
Of course, that’s just an illustration. Our genome doesn’t literally change, but if the New Testament writers had known about DNA, I have no doubt that that’s an illustration they would have used. What they said was close enough: we are born again from the seed of God’s word, so that we can participate in the Divine Nature.
The early Church Fathers used terms like “theosis” and “deification” and “divinization” (not to be confused with “divination”).
Just like with our mortal parents’ nature, we have God’s Nature, initially, only as potential, in seed form. If our mortal parents are, say, gold medal-winning Olympic athletes, we have it in us to exhibit the same greatness. But, we have to get off the couch and train. If we do, we’ll take to it like a duck in water, because it’s our nature, and so it will be a joy and a gift to grow into what we truly are. But we have to strive and strain and struggle to cultivate it. It doesn’t happen of itself. And if we don’t, we will have squandered the great gift of our inheritance, to our everlasting shame.
So it is with the Divine Nature, but infinitely more so, because we’re not talking about winning trinkets by competing in games. We’re talking about the very meaning of human existence.
According to the New Testament, the entirety of the Christian Life is in undertaking that training – to transform into His likeness. That is the eternal life that Christ died to give us. According to Ephesians 4:1-16, that is the sole purpose for which the Church exists: to mentor believers in that transformation. All of the spiritual gifts and offices Christ gave were in service to that end alone, and evangelism and ministry are the outworking of that transformation.
Theosis is the beating heart of the Church – the nexus of everything Christianity is supposed to be.
But the Church isn’t doing that. Many churches have a doctrinal box they check-off with regard to “theosis” or “sanctification,” but it’s largely an afterthought. And many churches have a concept of “salvation” that just doesn’t leave any room for it at all.
Without that beating heart, the Church is … undead. It’s an animated corpse merely simulating life by artificial means, and as such, it is more often an obstacle to the true knowledge of God than the bearer of that knowledge.
Why that is and how the Church can be restored is the primary focus of this blog.
I am not qualified to do this. At least, not by any formal seminary training or by the endorsement of any church. It shouldn’t be me doing it.
But it must be done, and I don’t see anyone else doing it.
I can be reached at: TheThirdHelix@TheThirdHelix.com
