We Shall Be Like Gods: Thomas Aquinas on Deification through Faith and Love

Aquinas’s view on deification is often explained in reference to his doctrine of participation and/or of grace. I argue that these doctrines only form the background, which also is istorted by historical, ideological disputes between Western and Eastern, and between Catholic and Protestant theology. For Aquinas, human beings become like the triune God by knowing and loving him, thus participating in God’s selfknowledge and self-love. It already starts imperfectly in this life and will be completed in the beatific vision. Locating deification in the acts of knowing and loving Godself enables Aquinas to keep together what Williams calls the “two poles of deification.” The principles and acts by which we can know and love God through his grace, remain created, and constitute the one pole, but what (or better: whom) we know and love is the triune God himself, and this is the second pole.