Panel: HISTORICAL APPROACHES TO THE TRINITY AND THE BODY



589.2 - THE HUMAN BODY IN THE DEIFYING LIGHT OF THE TRINITY: BYZANTINE MONASTIC FUNERAL SERVICES

AUTHORS:
Mitov G. (University of Vienna ~ Vienna ~ Austria)
Text:
The term deification or theosis has a pivotal position in Byzantine theology, in particular, and in Eastern Orthodox theology, more broadly speaking. At the centre of this concept is the theological understanding that the human person is made according to the image and the likeness of the Trinity (Gn 1: 27) and as the three persons of the Trinity dwell in each other, so each human being is called to dwell in the Trinitarian God. However, the human person does not become a tertium quid in the Trinity, i.e. God by nature—but only a god by grace. Even though deification is the final goal of each human being, one can argue that especially the Byzantine monastic tradition is prominently marked by the continuous strive for the achievement of this aim. Furthermore, in Byzantium, the theological interpretation of the nature of deification and the ways of achieving it took place mainly in a monastic milieu. The deification of the human person changes also their bodies, as evident from the icons, which represent the already deified and, in this way, changed body of the saints. Moreover, the Byzantine funeral services, especially the monastic ones, reveal more aspects of the Byzantine understanding of the human body, deified in the Trinity. Therefore, in my paper, I will focus on the notion of the deified human body in some Byzantine monastic funeral services, which so far have remained unedited and largely neglected in scholarship.