Deification and the Sacrament of Marriage

Image: Gold-glass medallion, fourth century, with Christ crowning a married couple, inscribed DULCIS ANIMA VIVAS (‘Sweet soul, may you live’), © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

Text: Paper given at the Conference “Deification and the Sacraments: Perspectives East and West,” at St. Mary’s University, Twickenham, UK, June 25-26, 2026.

In his great Catechesis on the Theology of the Body, Saint John Paul II affirmed that in the state of original innocence “man, in his body as male and female, experiences himself to be a subject of holiness.”[1] This is true inasmuch as he is fully aware of the spousal significance of his body, that is, of his call to express his being in the image and likeness of God through a sincere gift of self. The redemption of the body that follows original sin, which chapter 5 of the Letter to the Ephesians illustrates through the analogy of spousal love between humans and between Christ and the Church, will be expressed by manifesting “the radical nature of grace”, the summit of the economy of salvation and a visible and historical participation in the mystery of divine life.[2]

It is thus that the great Polish Pope established an intimate link between the call to holiness and the sacrament of marriage in his theological anthropology, grounding it in the concept of the “gift of self”. This had already found a concise and original formulation in “conjugal charity”, which the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio defined as “the proper and specific way in which the spouses participate in and are called to live the very charity of Christ who gave Himself on the Cross” (no. 13). In this way, the sacrament of marriage becomes a source of mutual sanctification and an act of worship that glorifies God (no. 56).

The objective of my talk is to highlight the innovative nature of this teaching, which fulfills the vision of the Second Vatican Council by moving beyond a reductive view of marriage as oriented solely to human goods such as procreation, mutual support, or the remedium concupiscentiae,[3] and which recognises its nature as a specific vocation aimed at participation in the divine life itself: the same deification that is the ultimate purpose of human existence within the divine plan.

But why was it so difficult for theology to see marriage as a path to holiness and a sharing in the divine life? On the one hand, a certain opposition came from a negative view of the body and sexuality, and more generally from a naturalistic conception of marriage that is defined on the basis of its natural ends. On the other hand, there was a tendency to reduce the Christian life – and married life in particular – to a moralism based on the external observance of rules. I wish to therefore examine these aspects more closely.

1. Sexuality and the Image of God in the Human Being

The biblical account of the creation of the first human couple, as recorded in the two narratives of Genesis 1:1–2:4a and Genesis 2:4b–25, appears to be aimed at desacralising human sexuality as presented in the myths and rites of the ancient religions of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Canaan. In those traditions, fertility, erotic passion, and marriage itself found their source and interpretative schema in the divine, archetypal relationship of a god-father and a goddess-mother.[4] In these religions, matters of life, sex, and fertility were sacralized in hierogamies, which were believed to reflect and offer a magical influence over human and animal fertility, even over that of vegetation. In the Bible, however, Yahweh is unique and has no goddess companion at his side: sexuality is thus a human reality, and although it is a gift bestowed by the Creator God and therefore holy, it is free from any magical legacy.

Here we see the theological crux of the relationship between sexuality and the imago Dei, which was the particular focus of the first series of John Paul II’s Catechesis on the Theology of the Body.[5] In the account of the first chapter of Genesis, the imago Dei – a specific characteristic of the human creature in relation to its Creator – is linked to sexual difference, when it is stated that “God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27).

The Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem observes that this statement is clarified in its “even deeper truth” by reading the older, second text, Genesis 2:18–25, of Yahwist origin.[6] While the first account, attributed to a priestly source, reveals the personal dignity of the human being, whether man or woman,[7] it is in the light of sexual difference that the reason for likeness to God becomes apparent: man and woman reflect the image of God in the call to unity with one another in the flesh and the call to procreation. Thus, for John Paul II, the sexual difference of the human being, created male and female, is something primordial and belongs to the deepest core of the creature’s vocation, that is, to being “ad imaginem Dei.”

What are the implications of this anthropological connection? On the one hand, as Pope Benedict XVI writes in a recently published posthumous text, “‘being an image’ is a ‘being in relation.’ Thus, the concept of relatio rises to the level of a fundamental definition of the human person. While the concept of relatio as image of God primarily refers to human beings in a relation that goes beyond themselves, on a second level it is also true and significant that humans are created male and female and thus exist as relational beings even within the human sphere.”[8] For this reason, Benedict’s affirmation also entails an anthropological appraisal of human sexuality. It is no longer confined to the intra-cosmic realm like that of animals, or wrapped up within a numinous (theion) sexual exchange of a cosmogonic nature between heaven and earth. Without denying the biological and instinctual dimension and its affinities with animal sexuality, human sexuality has a personal character and is therefore referable to the relationship with the Creator.

The human body, bearing within itself this meaningful sexual difference, thus becomes a “primordial sacrament,”[9] to use the words of John Paul II. It reveals to men and women its spousal meaning and the ethos of the gift, allowing one to perceive the other as a subject rather than merely the object of impulse and desire. The reciprocity between male and female is not, however, a complementarity that leads to fusion, but an asymmetrical relationship in which the difference is insurmountable. Orientation towards the other thus opens the human being to the discovery of the gift of self as the means of finding oneself, according to the formula proposed in Gaudium et Spes, no. 24. In the Letter to the Ephesians, the man – woman relationship becomes a prophetic prefiguration of the great mystery of the union between Christ the Bridegroom and the Church, his Bride.

Within the Christian theological tradition, the richness of human sexuality had long remained obscured due to a spiritualistic reading of the imago Dei in the Genesis accounts of creation. The interpretation of Philo of Alexandria[10] – and consequently those of the Gnostics and Manichaeans – had a significant influence on certain Greek Fathers. These thinkers posited a dual creation: an initial, ideal, and asexual creation described in Genesis 1, and a second creation, described in Genesis 2, that exists historically after the Fall. As a result, the original imago Dei was conceived of as existing prior to the sexual division between man and woman. For Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, and John of Damascus, the imago Dei ultimately came to be located in the spiritual and higher part of the soul, without reference to sexual difference. Sexuality itself, whilst not being regarded as a consequence of sin, was understood as a defining feature of the post-lapsarian condition.[11] Whilst not stemming from a specifically sexophobic outlook, this anthropological vision reflected a limited attempt to develop a theology of the original state of man, and ultimately led to a marginalisation of sexuality and of the difference between man and woman in the dynamic of deification.

Above all, it is Hans Urs von Balthasar who explicitly affirms that sexuality forms part of the imago Dei.[12] In doing so, he builds on Matthias Joseph Scheeben, who seeks to establish an analogy between the male–female relationship and the relationships of the divine Persons within the Holy Trinity;[13] on Karl Barth, who interprets the imago Dei as male–female reciprocity;[14] and on Erich Przywara, who proposes a spousal theology of the entire Catholic dogma.[15] Balthasar shows how the first creation account reveals an ascending creative dynamism, such that the reference to the image serves to distinguish between infra-human and properly human fertility. The second account then assigns to Adam the capacity to generate “offspring in his own image and likeness” (cf. Gen. 5:3), and not merely individuals of the same species: the relevance of sexual difference to the imago Dei is therefore grounded in its ordering toward procreation. Balthasar thus goes on to affirm that “in the proper sense, perfected creaturely love is an authentic imago Trinitatis.”[16] He therefore recognises a spousal significance to the difference amongst the very three divine Persons, with the all the due caution necessitated by the abyssal dissimilarity between Trinitarian relations – which are relations of origin – and those between man and woman.[17]

In this way, theological anthropology moved beyond a restriction of the image of God to the purely spiritual dimension and a confinement of sexuality to the intra-cosmic realm, affirming the body’s participation in that image insofar as it is a personal body marked by sexual difference and oriented toward union and procreation. This line of thought also paves the way for re-evaluating marriage as a vocational path of sanctification and of participation in the divine life.

It is worth emphasizing that especially in the Eastern theological tradition (for example, Irenaeus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nazianzus), “image” and “likeness,” used in Gen 1:26–28,[18] are not synonymous. “Image” (ṣelem) indicates what is given in creation and is not lost in the fall, whereas “likeness” (dᵉmût) describes what humanity lost through sin and can gradually regain through cooperation with divine grace in Christ.[19] It is thus that the dynamic of the process of divinization is articulated: beginning with the original gift of the image, it proceeds with the help of divine grace and the cooperation of human freedom towards the restoration of the likeness that has been lost.

2. Deification and the Spousal Body

Let us now directly address the question of deification in relation to the body, a body marked by sexual difference and thus characterised by its own spousal vocation.

The concept of “deification” (theosis) is generally attributed to the Eastern, if not the Greek, patristic tradition.[20] It denotes the work that the Holy Spirit accomplishes in the Christian through Baptism, not only by destroying sin but also by sanctifying the person and making him or her a “child of God” (1 John 3:1) and thus, according to 2 Peter 1:4: “θείας κοινωνοὶ φύσεως” – “partakers of the divine nature.” This is the life of grace, a free gift by which God makes us partakers of his own Trinitarian life.[21]

Although the term theosis (θέοσις) does not appear as such in Holy Scripture, the doctrine of deification is of Christian origin. It finds Biblical ground in Psalm 82: “God stands in the assembly of the gods; he judges amongst the gods. I said, ‘You are gods, you are all children of the Most High.’ Yet you will die like any man, you will fall like all the mighty” (Ps 82:1, 6–7). These words are validated by Jesus himself in the Gospel of John (Jn 10:34–36), in response to the Jews who wished to stone him for the blasphemy of calling himself “God,” Jesus responded, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said, you are gods’? Now, if it called those to whom the word of God was addressed ‘gods’ (and Scripture cannot be set aside), to the one whom the Father has consecrated and sent into the world, you say, ‘You are blaspheming’, because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?” In the writings of Luke and Paul, the term charis (grace) increasingly takes on the specific meaning equivalent to theosis, that of a gift which elevates one to a supernatural state and makes one an (adopted) child of God and a brother of Jesus Christ.

The ancient liturgical formula of the exchange, of the admirabilis commercium between God and humankind, which was so widely used not only in the antiphons of the Christmas season but also in early Christian literature, states that “God became man so that man might become a son of God.” It thus reveals that the purpose of the Incarnation of the Son lies not merely in justification, but in the deification of humankind. It has its origin in Saint Irenaeus of Lyons: “Jesus our Lord, Son of the Most High … became the Son of Man so that man might become a son of God.”[22]

The concept of deification was severely criticised by nineteenth-century Protestant liberal theology as an aberrant expression of a Hellenising corruption of early evangelical Christianity. However, since the middle of the last century, deification has undergone a re-evaluation within Catholic theology following a rediscovery of its theological richness and of its presence throughout the Latin patrology and into Scholasticism.[23] Thus, one can speak of a true «rediscovery and retrieval of deification in Western theology».[24]

It is of course to be acknowledged that the term “god” is used analogically with reference to a created nature, which in itself excludes those properties that characterise divinity, chiefly amongst them being causa sui and eternity. For human beings, it concerns the gratuitous gift of filial adoption in Christ – that is, of becoming filii in Filio – sons in the Son – to use the expression of Émile Mersch, later taken up by the Second Vatican Council in Gaudium et Spes, no. 22.[25] For Gregory of Nazianzus, “man is an animal who has received the vocation to become God.”[26] The abyssal difference between the Creator and creature is evident precisely in the gratuitous character of the call to “become” God. A tension thus exists between the image bestowed in creation and the likeness that is painstakingly recovered and brought to a new fullness through deification.

The concept of deification thus helps to overcome the scholastic and neo-scholastic separation between the natural and supernatural planes. Henri de Lubac’s historical and theological reflection, firmly rooted in Thomas Aquinas and in opposition to the erroneous interpretations of Tommaso de Vio Cajetan and Francisco Suárez, rediscovers the uniqueness of the divine plan and the intrinsic orientation toward deification.[27] There can be no “pure nature,” nor is there a merely natural beatitude for the creature, because its end can only be deification. The human being’s inability to save oneself is redeemed by the omnipotent and merciful love of God.

Man’s ultimate temptation is that suggested by the devil from the very beginning: self-deification. Today, this finds a particularly striking echo in the technological project of posthumanism, with its dematerialisation of the body through computerisation and the unification of humanity into a new cosmic being endowed with four distinctive attributes – omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence – which suggest for the posthuman a kind of deification.[28] Pope Leo XIV spoke of this in his recent encyclical: “We can embrace the technological progress that alleviates suffering and unlocks new possibilities, provided that we do not abandon the very essence of our humanity, namely the capacity for relationship and love. This leads to a crucial question: if an authentic ‘more than human’ exists, where is it to be found? The Christian faith answers that question by pointing to a fulfilment that does not arise from a technological divinization, but through God’s grace received in Christ.”[29]

The Christian path to deification, however, is that of sacramental grace and of love. Myrrha Lot-Borodine emphasises that the practice of love plays an even greater role in deification than true gnosis, asceticism, or sacramental mediation.[30] Nicholas Cabasilas offered an extraordinary reflection on this theme in his Life in Christ, a masterpiece of the Byzantine mystical theology of deification.

But it is precisely in relation to the themes of love and the sacraments that we must now address the place of the body within the process of deification. Indeed, and as we have already seen, the schools of both Alexandria, beginning with Origen, and later of Cappadocia located the imago Dei within the spiritual dimension of the human being. Thus, deification occurs through the acquisition of “true gnosis,” which, according to Clement,[31] is capable of assimilating us to God through prayer and love. For Origen, the main path to ascending and becoming a god is contemplation: a dynamic process of transformation in which the contemplator is transformed into the reality contemplated, thus participating in the divine life.[32]

For the Cappadocians too, the body – and, in particular, sexuality – has nothing to do with deification. Basil echoes Plato when he speaks of the body as a prison from which the soul must be freed, along with all its passions, desires and impulses. Nazianzus emphasises the work of the Holy Spirit in the formation of the virtues. For Gregory of Nyssa, the spiritual life entails a purification of the passions and also a flight from the sensible world that is perceived as an illusion, in order to enter the authentic reality that lies beyond the symbol.

The picture changes when we turn to the theologians of the Asian school, for whom deification is granted by the Logos in his incarnation: it is precisely through the flesh that divine life reaches us.[33] It is not, therefore, a matter of transcending the flesh – as something inferior and unsuited to an encounter with God – but rather of associating it with the great mystery of salvation. Consequently, deification in no way implies the erasure or diminishment of what is human and natural in the marital experience.

In the symbolism of the sacraments, the flesh is not transcended. From the very beginning it tends towards receiving the fullness of God’s gift, and it is through sacramental contact with Christ that this gift is communicated. In the Eucharist, indeed, we are given to eat the flesh, veins, nerves and bones of Christ.[34] Thus, through the process of digestion, the body is filled with divine life and transformed according to the fullness of Christ. Thus, on the one hand, a profound connection is established with creation by the elements that are transformed and metabolised; on the other hand, the flesh is opened to relationship with others: through eating together we share in the same journey with our brothers and sisters.

If we consider the body as decisive for deification by virtue of its constituting the realm of encounter with the divine, as being the space in which we step out of ourselves towards the other and welcome the other, then one can understand how the sacrament of marriage plays a strategic role in the economy of salvation. Marriage, in fact, preserves the original meanings of the body and the capacity to integrate this into one’s life story.[35] It enables us to see nature in a historical and relational way, rather than as a closed reality that is self-sufficient and possessing its own absolute demands (“pure nature”). Starting with marriage and the family also evidences the connection between “nature” and “birth”: the newness and non-deducibility of the birth event points to an origin and a destiny that transcend that same human nature. This aspect is evidenced precisely by the difference between man and woman in their constitution as a duality that is asymmetric and therefore open, and which brings about a dynamism in human nature in that tension between an original gift and a new, gratuitous and super-abundant finality.

John Paul II’s Theology of the Body sheds light on this primordial sacramental reality. The body bears witness to our belonging to the world and to the network of personal relationships it enables: the filial dimension of an original receptivity; the spousal orientation, through sexual difference, towards union in the flesh and the gift of self; and openness to the generation of life, in collaboration with God’s creative action. Recognising ourselves as sons and daughters, in order to be spouses and to become fathers and mothers, is no longer merely a natural task, but enters into that great and unique vocation to holiness, participating in the divine life.

3. Conjugal Charity as a Specific Vocational Path towards Deification

We have now reached the final part of our reflection on the connection between deification and the sacrament of marriage. We can begin with Thomas Aquinas, who clearly emphasises the natural dimension of the ends of marriage and does not place particular emphasis on the way in which it can become a path to union with God. Yet he too establishes a link between the flesh of Christ and that of the spouses, in accordance with what occurs in the other sacraments. The spouses, whose flesh is touched by Christ, can pass on to one another the very love that led him to give himself for us on the cross: the same charity with which he offered his life for us.[36] Through the sacrament, the spouses’ flesh is transformed and made capable of transmitting divine grace.

If the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council gave new emphasis to the theme of love between spouses^[37] and were able to identify a path to holiness within married life,^[38] they did not actually develop a concept for Christian spouses analogous to that of the pastoral charity proposed for priests. The theme of holiness for spouses and parents is spoken of principally in reference to that of mutual assistance and educational responsibilities. While the acts specific to spouses are declared to be “honest and worthy,”^[39] the question of these acts has not yet been integrated into a perspective of holiness, but is linked solely to mutual human enrichment.

It took John Paul II, in Familiaris consortio (1981), to finally speak of “conjugal charity.”[40] Underlying this novel but authentic teaching are his Catecheses on the Theology of the Body (1979–1984), which, as we have seen, enabled a fuller appreciation of the body and thus of the sacrament of marriage, especially in considering the perspective of deification.

Using a new emphasis and language, John Paul II then states, “Conjugal love reaches that fullness to which it is interiorly ordained, conjugal charity, which is the proper and specific way in which the spouses participate in and are called to live the very charity of Christ who gave Himself on the Cross” (no. 13). In this charity, participation in the life of Christ through the Spirit “involves a totality, in which all the elements of the person enter – appeal of the body and instinct, power of feeling and affectivity, aspiration of the spirit and of will” (n. 13). It seeks a profoundly personal unity, which, through and beyond union in the flesh, “leads to forming one heart and one soul” (no. 13).

How, then, can we integrate the bodily dimension of love into the perspective of holiness? We could draw on the insights and reflections of the great apostles of married spirituality, such as Henri Caffarel, Fulton J. Sheen and Pavel Evdokimov[41]. I will, however, turn to Father Enrico Mauri (1938–1967), a Milanese priest with a notable pastorate to Christian couples. He warned against two opposing dangers. The first one is a banal spiritualisation, in which the condition for attaining holiness lies in forgetting the body and the specifically sexual dimension of married life. These are the consequences of what he calls a “Manichaean heresy,”^[42] which is still prevalent today: one takes refuge in a form of pietism that neglects and rejects eros as an enemy of charity. And then there is the second danger, which at the time was being put forward in certain French and German publications: a naive, naturalistic overemphasis on the bodily dimension, which leads to a mystical sensualism and ignores the need for purification and the primacy of the personal dimension in conjugal love.

In reality, “all that concerns spouses, being the actualisation of a great mystery of Christ, is sacred.” We must therefore “assess, without either exaltation or diminishment, the mission of this body of ours,”^[43] in a balanced and serene manner, so as to honour both nature and grace, which come together in a distinctive way precisely within married life. Herein, then, lies the beginning of conjugal chastity, which “takes nothing away from the body, while giving everything to the spirit; and takes nothing away from the spirit, while giving everything to the body, as God wills.”^[44]

Indeed, married life always entails that intimacy which manifests itself in the attraction of the body and instinct; it presents itself as uniquely captivating in the affection and exultation of feeling and thus impels man and woman to welcome one another and to make a gift of oneself to the other, and this always through the mediation of the body.^[45] The Holy Spirit, through his transforming presence, is able to order and transfigure all the richness inherent in the erotic experience, so that the spouses communicate to one another not only their own human love, but also what God himself has communicated to them, namely the gift of the Spirit, in a journey of progressive growth in charity, of openness to receiving and giving divine love. This opens the way to a “spousal mysticism” of deification that is firmly grounded in sacramental theology.^[46]

This helps us to understand the great theologian Matthias J. Scheeben when he said: “Marriage is a ‘church in the flesh.’”^[47] In effect, if the Church is the Body of Christ and a communio personarum, manifesting the likeness of the divine communion of the Most Holy Trinity, then marriage is the sacrament in which the union of the spouses’ bodies expresses and brings to realisation that communion of persons, which is the temple in which spiritual worship is offered to God. Indeed, “just as the divine mysteries are celebrated in the Church, so the great sacrament of Christ’s nuptial love is celebrated in the church of Christian marriage.”^[48] All this leads us to conceive of and live the whole reality of marriage within a sacramental perspective, seeing in the human spouse the image of Christ the Bridegroom.

Christian marriage takes the covenant of human love between two baptised persons – together with the bond that arises from it and the life of love that manifests itself and bears fruit in the procreation of children – and gives all this a sacramental place within the nuptial mystery of Christ and the Church. For this reason, Matthias Joseph Scheeben referred to marriage as an “extension” of the great spousal mystery, in which the supernatural grace of Christ becomes effective and bears fruit as a permanent element of ecclesial life: the family.^[49]

If the whole of married life, and not only the moment of its celebration, is a sacramental sign of Christ’s love for the Church, his Bride, then it becomes imbued with a remarkable positivity and beauty. As Giovanni Moioli states: «Christ’s action in the two spouses, precisely as such, is permanently ordered to be communicated through their person and their mutual love. This establishes a permanent, objective relational order for salvation between them: as spouse, each of them is actually consecrated for the salvation of the other, because through them Christ has established the communication of conjugal love to the other».^[50]

If the sacrament of marriage enables the Church to be built up in the flesh by bestowing conjugal charity, then the family that results constitutes a “small domestic Church”, where the relationships between parents and children, between relatives, are illuminated by the sacramental gift of grace and are directed towards building a community of love, life and worship of God.

Conjugal charity thus becomes a specific way in which the universal call to holiness is realised, that is, that deification which is the very purpose of Christ’s salvific work in the Incarnation. Through the flesh of spousal love blessed by Christ, spouses can communicate to one another that Spirit which enables them to participate ever more fully in the divine life.

[1] John Paul, Man and Woman He Created Them. A Theology of the Body. Translation, Introduction, and Index by Michael Waldstein, Pauline, Boston 2006, Cat. 19, 201-204. Hereafter: TOB.

[2] Cf. TOB 95b, 500-503.

[3] Cf. TOB 101, 520-525. See also C. Burke, “Il remedium concupiscentiae nella teologia del matrimonio. Profilo storico-critico”, in Annales Theologici 21/2 (2007), 299-340.

[4] Cf. P. Grelot, Le couple humain dans l’Ecriture, Cerf, Paris 1964, 8-33, che si fonda su molti studi di antropologia culturale e soprattutto su quelli di M. Eliade, Traité d’histoire des réligions, Payot, Paris 1949.

[5] Cf. TOB 1-23, 131-223.

[6] Mulieris dignitatem, n. 6; in merito si veda: A. Scola, Il mistero nuziale. Uomo-donna. Matrimonio-famiglia, 3° ediz., Marcianum Press, Venezia 2014, 45-63.

[7] Cf. C. Caffarra, “La persona umana: aspetti teologici”, in A. Mazzoni (a cura di), A sua immagine e somiglianza?, Città nuova, Roma 1997, 76-90.

[8] Benedetto XVI, “L’immagine cristiana dell’uomo”, testo inedito pubblicato in L. Melina – J. Granados (a cura di), La verità dell’amore. Tracce per un cammino. Con un inedito di Benedetto XVI, Cantagalli, Siena 2024, 31-37.

[9] TOB Cat. 19, 203.

[10] Cf. Filone di Alessandria, La creazione del mondo. Le allegorie delle leggi, Rusconi, Milano 1978, 131-132.

[11] Cf. A. G. Hamman, L‘homme, l’image de Dieu. Essai d’une anthropologie chrétienne dans l’Eglise des cinq premiers siècles, Relais-études 2, Paris 1987.

[12] Cf. H.U. von Balthasar, Teodrammatica t.2, Jaca Book, Milano 1982, 335-369. Svilupperà questa linea di riflessione in particolare il teologo statunitense D.L. Schindler, arrivando a parlare nel cuore del mistero della stessa Trinità divina di un “(supra) – gender”: Heart of the World, Center of the Church. Communio Ecclesiology, Liberalism, and Liberation, W.B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids MI 1996, 237-264.

[13] Cf. M. J. Scheeben, I Misteri del Cristianesimo, Morcelliana, Brescia 1960, 184-191.

[14] Cf. K. Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik III/1, Evangelischer Verlag, Zürich 1945, 329-377.

[15] Cf. E. Pryzwara, L’uomo. Antropologia tipologica, Fabbri, Milano 1968, 177-202.

[16] Cf. H.U. von Balthasar, Teodrammatica t. 3, Jaca Book, Milano 1992, 131.

[17] Presenta qualche cautela e riserva rispetto alle affermazioni di Balthasar e di Schindler: A. Scola, Il Mistero nuziale: una prospettiva di teologia sistematica?, Lateran University Press, Roma 2003.

[18] Per l’esegesi biblica del brano, si veda. B. Ognibeni, Stendi su di me il tuo mantello. Il matrimonio secondo l’Antico Testamento, Cittadella Editrice, Assisi 2021, 32-72.

[19] Cf. D. Keating, Deification and Grace, Sapientia Press, Naples FL 2007, 72ss.

[20] Cf. N. Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004. Al riguardo offre una panoramica teologica ampia e documentata anche: G. Frosini – A. Vaccaro, Admirabile commercium. La divinizzazione nei padri della Chiesa, Le Lettere, Firenze 2020.

[21] Cf. Giovanni Paolo II, Udienza generale del 22 luglio 1998, completamente dedicata al tema della divinizzazione. In merito: D. Meconi, “Deification in the Thought of John Paul II”, in Irish Theological Quarterly 71 (2006), 127-141.

[22] Cf. Ireneo, Contro le eresie, III, 10, 2, in Id. Contro le eresie e gli altri scritti, Jaca Book, Milano 1981, 234; Ivi, III, 19, 1, 278.

[23] Cf. Ireneo, Contro le eresie, III, 10, 2, in Id. Contro le eresie e gli altri scritti, Jaca Book, Milano 1981, 234; Ivi, III, 19, 1, 278.

[24] R.E. Olson, “Deification in Contemporary Theology”, in Theology Today 64 (2007), 188.

[25] Cf. Émile Mersch, “Filii in Filio. II. Théologie” in Nouvelle Révue de Théologie 64-6 (1937), 681-702.

[26] Gregorio di Nazianzio, Orazione 43, 48.

[27] Cf. H. de Lubac, Il mistero del soprannaturale, vol. 11, “Opera omnia”, Jaca Book, Milano 1978 (orig.: Le Mystère du Surnaturel, Aubier, Paris 1965).

[28] Cf. A. Vaccaro, “Postumanizzazione e divinizzazione” in Comunicazioni sociali 3 (2015) 313-322. Si veda in particolare: F. Heylighen, The Global Brain as a New Utopia, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 2002; “Return to Eden? Promises on the Road to a Global Superintelligence”, in B. Goertzel – T. Goertzel (ed.), The End of the Beginning: Life, Society and Economy on the Brink of the Singularity, Humanity Press 2015, 243-305. Per un approccio critico al transumanesimo: S. Kampowski – D. Moltisanti (ed.), Migliorare l’uomo? La sfida etica dell’enhancement, Cantagalli, Siena 2011; P. M. Corby, The Hope and Despair of Human Bioenhancement. A Virtual Dialogue between Oxford Transhumanists and Joseph Ratzinger, Pickwick, Eugen OR 2019.

[29] Magnifica humanitas, n. 126.

[30] M. Lot-Borodine, La déification de l’homme selon la doctrine des Pères grecs, Cerf, Paris 2011, 143-158.

[31] Clemente d’Alessandria, Stromata VI, 15. 125. 4.

[32] Cf. Origene, Contro Celso 7, 46, Utet, Torino 1989, 630. Si veda lo studio classico di H. Crouzel, Théologie de l’image de Dieu chez Origène, Aubier, Paris 1956.

[33] Cf. J. Granados, “Sacramentalità, corpo e relazione”, in Anthropotes 31 (2015), 59-83.

[34] Cf. Ireneo, Contro le eresie V, 2, 2-3 in in Id. Contro le eresie, cit. 414.

[35] Cf. Granados, “Sacramentalità,,, cit., 65.

[36] Tommaso d’Aquino, Super Sent. IV, d. 26, q. 2, a. 3, ad 1 (Parma, 922). Si veda per questo: J. Granados, Una sola carne in un solo Spirito: teologia del matrimonio, Cantagalli, Siena 2014, 203-205; 404-405.

[37] Cf. Gaudium et spes, n. 49.

[38] Cf. Lumen gentium, n. 41.

[39] Gaudium et spes, n. 49: «Actus proinde, quibus coniuges intime et caste inter se uniuntur, honesti et digni sunt».

[40] Si veda: J.-J. Pérez-Soba, La vocación a la santidad del matrimonio: la caridad conyugal, Didaskalos, Madrid 2024.

[41] Cf. H. Caffarel, L’amour conjugal, chemin vers Dieu, Cerf, Paris 2019; F.J. Sheen, Three to get married, Appleton, New York 1951: P. Evdokimov, Sacrement de l’amour. Le mystère conjugal à la lumière de la tradition orthodoxe, Epi, Pars 1962.

[42] Cf. E. Mauri, Il grande sacramento. Note di spiritualità coniugale (a cura di G. Bertella), San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo (MI) 1998, 44.

[43] Ibidem, 42-43.

[44] La citazione è tratta da O. Richelli, «“Quando il dono avviene nel corpo”. I sacramenti dell’Eucaristia e del matrimonio negli scritti di Padre Enrico Mauri», in Ch. Mori – O. Richelli, Conquistato da Cristo. Cristologia e nuzialità negli scritti di Padre Enrico Mauri, Effatà, Cantalupa 2003, 111.

[45] Cf. J. Noriega, Eros e agape nella vita coniugale, Cantagalli, Siena 2008, 38.

[46] Si veda in proposito: M. Ouellet, Mistero e sacramento dell’amore. Teologia del matrimonio e della famiglia per la nuova evangelizzazione, Cantagalli, Siena 2007.

[47] Espressione citata in A. Kriekemans, Preparazione al matrimonio e alla famiglia, Vita e pensiero, Milano 1959, 93.

[48] Cf. Mauri, Il grande sacramento,cit., p. 41.

[49] M.J. Scheeben, I Misteri del Cristianesimo, trad. I. Gorlani, 3° ediz., Morcelliana, Brescia 1960, 584-604.

[50] Al riguardo: G. Moioli, La spiritualità familiare. Frammenti di riflessione, In dialogo, Milano 2008, 28.