We Are Made Partakers of the Divine Nature

Then, 2 Peter starts off running: Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature (ἵνα διὰ τούτων γένησθε θείας κοινωνοὶ φύσεως), having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. Not only is he speaking of partaking of the divine nature, but clearly connecting that with a practical, lived-out life of virtue, “escaping corruption”.

Throughout Peter’s epistles, he develops this lived knowledge of God, which is important to understand when reading the Cappadocians in their response to Eunomius. Peter continues, For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ—importantly, immediately followed by a Tabor/Transfiguration reference—For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For He received from God the Father honor and glory when such a voice came to Him from the Excellent Glory: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain. And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

We cannot skip St. Paul. St. Basil makes a reference to a passage from 1Corinthians that seems to be quite suggestive of much more than what he says in response to Eunomius. St. Basil quotes the following: The Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For no one knows what belongs to a man except the spirit that is in him, an no one knows what belongs to God except the Spirit that is from God. That passage, in itself, is rather unimpressive, though his choice of this particular passage, is signifiant.

Immediately preceding the words to which Basil referred, St. Paul says, but we, of God, speak wisdom concealed in mystery, which God preordained before the ages, unto our glory, which none of the [first-ones] of this age knew...But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. Restated, those things hidden in mystery, which the preeminent among us did not know, have been revealed to us.

Next comes the passage Basil quoted, which specifically states that no one knows what belongs to God except the Spirit. He follows with more seemingly bad news: that we might know the things that have been given us, or maybe only the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. That language is limiting, but the end of this chapter throws all of that on its head: but we are having the mind of Christ (ἡμεῖς δὲ νοῦν Χριστοῦ ἔχομεν). I can just see St. Basil turning to this chapter of St. Paul to refute Eunomius, quoting the necessary passage for his purposes, but leaving us to understand that this is one of his “go-to” passages in understanding the mysteries which have been revealed to us, even the depths of God.

Basil may also be referring to this same passage from St. Paul, more indirectly, when he packages together the necessary anti-Eunomian scriptures for the common man for his homily on the first two verses of the Gospel of John. He uses a wordplay on ‘first-ones’ or ‘preeminent’, which in Greek can also be understood as ‘beginning’. He has talked long of the ‘beginning’ in this homily (since "beginning" figures to prominently in the first verses of John's gospel), and then makes a word play on the ‘preeminent-ones’, which is likely referring to this same 1Corinthians passage.

Later, St. Gregory of Nazianzen also brings us to these same mysterious depths of the knowledge of God in saying, “the common out of these [the death-condemned body, soul, and mind]; man, visible God, toward the beyond-perception-mind (τὸ κοινὸν ἐκ τούτων, ἄνθρωπος, Θεὸς ὁρώμενος, διὰ τὸ νοούμενον.). Here St. Gregory of Nazianzen speaks of moving toward the mind beyond perception, and Basil, as well, speaks of the ‘en-nous-ing’: “but out of God’s energies [we are the] being-raised-up ones, through the things made forming a conception of the maker, of his goodness and wisdom receiving insight (ἐκ δὲ τῶν ἐνεργειῶν τοῦ Θεοῦ ἀναγομένους ἡμᾶς, καὶ διὰ τῶν τοιημάτων τὸν ποιητὴν ἐννοοῦντας, τῆς ἀγαθότητος αὐτοῦ καὶ τῆς σοφίας λαμβάνειν τὴν σύνεσιν.)

Next time, some wrap up: what do we take away from all this?