Deification and Modern Orthodox Theology

A brief review of Deification and Modern Orthodox Theology by Petre Maican (Brill, 2023)

Anyone glancing at the contents page of this little volume would be forgiven for thinking that it is essentially a literature survey (and the volume’s subtitle, ‘Introduction to Contemporary Debates’ might tend to confirm that). And the book does indeed serve as a useful survey of the place of deification in contemporary Orthodox theology. The author traces how the concept has been used across four major loci of twentieth-century Orthodox theology: anthropology, tradition and experience, the doctrine of the Trinity, and ecclesiology. As part of this, he traces how deification has been deployed in debates about gender and sexuality, the ordination of women, the place of hierarchy in the Church, and the idea of sophiology.

Treated simply as a survey, this volume is a remarkably clear and concise treatment of the subjects it deals with. The author’s treatment of sophiology is worth a special mention: it is easily the best introduction to the topic that I have come across.

However, the book is much more than a simple literature survey. What the author has set out to do is to test the thesis stated in chapter 2 that deification is, in fact, the pillar of modern Orthodox theology (or, to put it another way, the metanarrative which gives Orthodox theology its coherence). He points out that this was first proposed by the Russian theologian Ivan Popov at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was later picked up by Myrrha Lot-Borodine and particularly Vladimir Lossky who restructured the whole of Orthodox theology around the notion. Maican demonstrates that deification does indeed seem fundamental to Orthodox trinitarian theology and anthropology. However, modern Orthodox ecclesiology seems to be much less reliant on the concept of deification (the author speculates that this may be because, while Orthodoxy has a more or less clear idea of a deified person, it has no such idea of what a deified community might look like). As for the role of deification in our understanding of tradition, Maican suggests that it ‘appears to be used implicitly in order to legitimate certain hermeneutical options’ (p.108). But, perhaps the most important thing to take away from this volume is the suggestion that modern Orthodoxy has built its sense of identity, not around the concept of deification, but rather around the idea that the Orthodox experience of God is qualitatively different from that of other Christian traditions.

In conclusion, this is a well-written and thought-provoking little volume. It deserves a place on the bookshelves of anyone who has a serious interest in Orthodox theology.