To become one with the incarnate God

Father Théotokis offers a theological meditation on the place of the body and matter in the process of deification. Against a Platonizing reading of Christianity that would tend to devalue the corporeal, the author affirms the essential participation of the fleshly dimension in the spiritual journey toward God. His reflection pays particular attention to the faculty of imagination, which he presents as the privileged locus where human freedom is exercised. This freedom, a divine gift, enables the human being to orient himself toward his Creator or to turn away from him. The article thus offers a contribution to Orthodox theological anthropology by rehabilitating the role of corporeity and imagination in the economy of salvation, emphasizing that union with God engages the human person in his total psychosomatic reality.