“In the unfallen mode (tropos) of being the lives of humans were destined for deification (theosis, divinization). This is the most intimate possible communion between the human and God, in which the human participates in the Love of the Trinity, through the Son, in the Glory of the Holy Spirit. Here all aspects of human lives are immediate revelations of God. Deification however, is not static, but an ongoing growth into this most intimate communion between God and humans. This is a deifying communion which leads to a transfigured cosmos constituted by ecstatic love.

[...]With the fall of humanity, and thus cosmic tragedy, humanity moves from philadelphia, the love of humankind, to philatuia or self love. This self-love is not simply loving oneself. It is essentially construing the cosmos as revolving around the self rather than the Trinity. As such self-love disrupts the hierarchy of being which is constituted by love (particularly participation in Triune Love). It disrupts the entire cosmos, which was characterized most accurately by love. This disruption results in the fragmentation of human relationships and this fragmentation from philautia gives rise to what Maximus calls “tyranny” (turranos). Maximus characterizes self-love in this way for philautia seeks to order all creation toward our possession. The true doctrine of creation, however, in which creatures are ordered and harmonized around the love in and of the Trinity is replaced by the tyrannical gaze of self-love in which creation and others become viewed through the possessing desire of the individual, and ultimately this grows into systemic evils such as racism. Once the true doctrine of creation is lost humans tend to see themselves as masters of creation, and thus masters over one another, rather than stewards of creation in which relationships are understood as God’s gift to be cherished and stewarded in harmony with the Trinity rather than controlled for selfish ends.6
Maximus claims that being formed in the virtues is the way in which the Spirit unites the human to Christ and thus deifies humans. So I argue in the next section that the virtue of hospitality, while not covered often explicitly by Maximus, is one of the avenues of virtue that, through our practice of it, allows us as humans to be deified by the Spirit through Christ. It is in welcoming the other that we welcome Christ and thus return to the life of love (phila-delphia) rather than tyranny, which arises from self-love’s “fortress mentality” with its desire to possess and bring everything thing within its orbit rather than living out a true doctrine of Creation which places the self and all things within the orbit of the Love of God. However, I will first briefly highlight Maximus’ understanding of virtue, the participation of the human in Christ, and thus the divinizing life.”

Read more from

St. Maximus Confessor and Christian Hospitality II

at The Land of Unlikeness