DAY 245
CHALLENGE
“The Catechism states that men can become gods (CCC 460), but this is false.”
DEFENSE
The Church’s teaching is biblically grounded and doesn’t mean we become equal to God.
The Church emphatically teaches there is only one God (CCC 200– 202, 2112). There is a single, uncreated Creator, but the term “god” can be used more than one way. In addition to being used of pagan deities, it is used to refer to angels and some humans (see Day 263).
Thus Jesus quotes the statement “You are gods” (Ps. 82:6), which he interprets as a reference to those “to whom the word of God came” (John 10:34). It is thus possible for men to be linked to the divine or divinized in a way they can be called “gods” from contact with the word of God.
This theme is mentioned by Peter, who says Christians “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). This means that, by God’s grace, we come to share in certain of his attributes to the extent a creature can. Theologians sometimes call these God’s “communicable at-tributes,” and they include things like immortality, glory, and holiness.
We have begun to share in these, for in Christ we are new creations (2 Cor. 5:17) and we have tasted “the powers of the age to come” (Heb. 6:5). The process will be complete at the Second Coming, when “we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). This process, known in the East as theosis and in the West as divinization, is discussed by Church Fathers such as St. Irenaeus and St. Athanasius, and theologians like St. Thomas Aquinas (see CCC 460).
Theosis or divinization means we become godlike (like God), but we will never be equal to God. That’s impossible, for we are finite and created and can never become infinite and uncreated.
TIP
The English edition of CCC 460 mistranslates a quote from Athanasius as saying Jesus became man “that we might become God.” The authoritative Latin edition of the Catechism has “ut nos dii efficeremur,” meaning “that we might be made gods” (see Tim Staples, “Does the Catholic Church Teach We Are Gods?” at TimStaples.com). The Church thus does not teach that we become God but “gods” in the sense discussed above.