ORTHODOX TEACHINGS

Created in Love, Created for Love

We are made in the image of God. This is the foundation of everything the Orthodox Church teaches about who human beings are. To be made in the image of God is to be made for communion with God, with one another, and with the whole created world. 

We are not souls trapped in bodies, nor bodies that happen to think. We are unified persons, body and soul together. We have the capacity to know and be known, to love and be loved. This capacity is not incidental to what we are. It is what we are. Because God Himself exists eternally as a communion of Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, united in perfect love—we creatures made in His image are made for the same pattern of life.

Becoming Who We Are

The Orthodox Church teaches that we are created with the capacity to slowly grow into communion with Christ's divine life. The full flowering of this life is called theosis: becoming by grace what Christ is by nature.

This can sound formidable, but it is really about a relationship of love. As a child is an individual with her own innate character but also comes to reflect the influence of her loving parents, we are invited into a relationship with our loving God and are transformed within it. Theosis is not something we accomplish. It is something we are drawn into, across a lifetime, by the love of the God who made us.

This is why every human person has worth that nothing can diminish. Not hard circumstances, not struggle, not the wounds we carry or the wounds we have caused. The image of God in us is not earned, and it cannot be lost. It can be obscured, neglected, and defaced; it cannot be erased. Every person you meet bears it.

Becoming Whole

When Christ tells us, "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48), the Greek word translated perfect is teleios, which means complete, whole, or brought to its proper end. Christ is not commanding flawlessness. He is naming the destination. We are made for wholeness in Him. The long work of the Christian life, theosis, is being made whole in His love.