Description
The Church Fathers asserted that man's true greatness is to be found in the fact that he is "called to be a god." They stressed that man realizes his true existence in the measure in which he is raised up toward God and united with Him. In the foreword to this study, Bishop Kallistos (Ware) reflects on how difficult it is today, because of our modern understanding of the human person, to find the right words to express the subtle but significant ways that Christian writers of the past saw this mysterious, often indefinable character of the human person.
In this extraordinary study, Panayiotis Nellas examines certain central themes of patristic anthropology synthetically, throughout the whole range of patristic literature. He then treats the same themes in an individual father and in a service from the Orthodox liturgy. Finally, he cites a number of patristic passages at length and provides references and notes which incorporate the findings of modern scholarship. This approach not only provides an excellent introduction to patristic anthropology, but also clearly demonstrates the internal consistency and coherence of the Orthodox understanding of man and his relation to God and the world.
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We have a 30-day return policy, which means you have 30 days after receiving your item to request a return.
To be eligible for a return, your item must be in the same condition that you received it, unworn or unused, with tags, and in its original packaging. You’ll also need the receipt or proof of purchase.
To start a return, you can contact us at orders@stspress.com. Please note that returns will need to be sent to the following address: 175 St. Tikhon's Rd, Waymart PA 18472
If your return is accepted, we’ll send you a return shipping label, as well as instructions on how and where to send your package. Items sent back to us without first requesting a return will not be accepted.
You can always contact us for any return question at orders@stspress.com.
Damages and issues
Please inspect your order upon reception and contact us immediately if the item is defective, damaged or if you receive the wrong item, so that we can evaluate the issue and make it right.
Exceptions / non-returnable items
Certain types of items cannot be returned, like perishable goods (such as food, flowers, or plants), custom products (such as special orders or personalized items), and personal care goods (such as beauty products). We also do not accept returns for hazardous materials, flammable liquids, or gases. Please get in touch if you have questions or concerns about your specific item.
Unfortunately, we cannot accept returns on sale items or gift cards.
Exchanges
The fastest way to ensure you get what you want is to return the item you have, and once the return is accepted, make a separate purchase for the new item.
European Union 14 day cooling off period
Notwithstanding the above, if the merchandise is being shipped into the European Union, you have the right to cancel or return your order within 14 days, for any reason and without a justification. As above, your item must be in the same condition that you received it, unworn or unused, with tags, and in its original packaging. You’ll also need the receipt or proof of purchase.
Refunds
We will notify you once we’ve received and inspected your return, and let you know if the refund was approved or not. If approved, you’ll be automatically refunded on your original payment method within 10 business days. Please remember it can take some time for your bank or credit card company to process and post the refund too.
If more than 15 business days have passed since we’ve approved your return, please contact us at orders@stspress.com.
Deification in Christ: Orthodox Perspectives on the Nature of the Human Person is a demanding but deeply clarifying work, almost Oxford University Press–level in its density of references and rigor, yet without the usual reading difficulty. Panayiotis Nellas places theosis at the very center of Christian anthropology, not as a mystical add‑on or future reward, but as the key to understanding creation, salvation, and the human vocation itself.
Drawing deeply from the Fathers, especially John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, and John of Damascus, Nellas presents death not as a crude punishment, but as something God permits so that, as the patristic tradition memorably insists, “evil might not become immortal.” Adam is not a finished being who simply failed, but an unfinished one, called to grow into communion. Sin is therefore a cosmic rupture in humanity’s movement toward its proper end, and salvation is not juridical repair but the restoration and fulfillment of what humanity was always created to become.
The section on the “garments of skin,” the primary reason I sought out this book, is especially illuminating. It closely echoes and complements the Syriac vision found in Ephrem’s Hymns of Paradise and Sebastian Brock’s The Luminous Eye. The loss of the Robe of Glory in Genesis is not the end of humanity’s story, but the context in which God mercifully provides for continued movement toward unity and likeness.
It is precisely at this point that, drawing especially on Maximus the Confessor, Nellas situates this anthropology within a broader cosmological vision through a Christian transformation of the Porphyrian Tree (71, 211). In its pagan form, the tree is static and classificatory: beings are fixed within hierarchical categories, and movement across ontological levels is impossible. Maximus radically alters this logic. Humanity is no longer confined to a single branch, but is uniquely capable of movement, ascending and descending, across the divisions that structure creation. Male and female, paradise and the inhabited world, heaven and earth, sensible and intelligible, created and uncreated are not closed boundaries but sites of mediation. Through theosis, the human person is called to traverse and unite these divisions, not by nature alone, but by participation in Christ.
Within this framework, marriage is understood as a postlapsarian mode of being, yet one treated with no contempt. It remains a “great mystery,” blessed by God and revealed in the union of Christ and His Church. Marriage functions as part of the garments of skin, not a fall from grace, but a merciful provision ordered toward unity for those not called to remain chaste. What emerges here is not an isolated ethical teaching, but a vision of humanity’s vocation that necessarily opens onto a wider cosmological horizon.
This vision stands in deliberate contrast to Kabbalistic and neo‑gnostic “tree” schemas, often repackaged in contemporary popular culture, which imagine salvation as ascent through impersonal emanations or secret knowledge and ultimately collapse into Neoplatonic abstraction. For Maximus, there is no ladder to climb apart from Christ, and no escape from creation, only its personal and eucharistic transfiguration. Creation itself is anticipatory rather than deterministic: obedience is hoped for, not coerced. In this way, Deification in Christ pairs naturally with Hymns of Paradise, presenting the same truth in a distinct but harmonious key: that Christian doctrine is not merely believed, but lived as a freely chosen movement toward restored glory in Christ.