Coredemptrix

[Olga Meerson]

Dear Dan,
God became a Jew is not deification but Divine Incarnation. A Jew became God would be deification. Herein lies the difference between the view of a believer in Christ (the former) and an atheist, or an apostate (i.e., once a believer but no longer--subscribing to the latter sentence).

As to the vast literature on Mary as Co-redemptrix, I agree. But it all has appeared since you stopped being Roman Catholic, I believe: the concept is so new and so much against the Trident notion of Jesus as the sole Redemptor. Again, contradicting the Trident is a problem only insofar as every apt and even piercing "poetic trifle" (what a stab in the body of liturgical poetics, an immensely effective and important aspect of true theology!) is understood as dogmatically "obliging"--i.e., necessary to codify as either a dogma or a heresy. It is your refutation against the stubborn post-Kantian contemporary Catholic compulsive "multiplication of dogmas" that is the stumbling block here. Not a problem for an Orthodox mind, which prefers tropes in liturgical poetics to speculative dogmatic categories. This means that the Orthodox, in their primarily liturgical theological predication, prefer a correspondence between the tenor and the vehicle in a metaphor in ONLY ONE feature, e!
 .g!
., the function for Salvation, to that of a near-complete identity between the signifier and the signified, typical for a dogmatic discourse discarding tropes. With that claim, I did open the Pandora's Box of the whole discussion on SEELANGS. I still think this difference in mentality is important to bear in mind when considering your topic. I believe that many fewer people lapse from the Orthodox faith than from Roman Catholicism for that precise reason: the Orthodox do not feel obliged to turn every theologumena (-on) (Serge Bulgakov's term) into a dogma. 
But back to the beginning: theosis (obozhenie) is a form of Transfiguration (as in Mount Tabor, with Moses and Elijah, not with Jesus Himself, Who transcended even their degree of transfiguration, even there and then). That is, theosis is somethig EVERY person can have if they strive to it and lead a saintly life that reflects God's light. Deification in the sense of turning INTO a specific deity--rather than partaking of God's energy by reflecting it (Palamas), is something pagan, to a Christian mind. And yes, the direction in any maxim matters, from the point of view of formal logic: man (e.g., a Jew) becoming God is deification (an abomination in the eyes of anyone who does not believe in Jesus as Christ, e.g., for any sincere Jew), but God becoming a Jew is Incarnation (NOT deification)--something we OK, Vitalii, I personally, but as an Orthodox Christian and like all of them/us) believe freely and completely. Turning man into a god is not the same as turning God into a !
 ma!
n/Man. Just as turning joy into pain is not the same as turning pain into joy. 
I am rather moved by your admission that you once considered all these points of view from within Catholicism, Dan. It is movingly personal. It is, however, also symptomatic for the Catholic constant production of ever new dogmas--and subsequently pretending they have always been there!--that causes many besides you to lapse. But in the original church (e.g., before the division between the East and the West, or around Trident, say, not even speaking of the Nicene Creed), these things were produced sparingly and with great internal battles, by sincere believers, not ex cathedra, as something the dumb flock had merely to obey. Sorry, here comes my basic disagreement with people Like John Paul the Second, whom PERSONALLY I respect immensely, objecting only to his infallibility. In that matter, it is not merely a point about dogma that differs between the Catholics and the Orthodox, but something in the attitude to formulating and maintaining truths AS dogma. There is a lot of !
 We!
stern Mariology rejected by the Orthodox. There is even more of the Orthodox Mariology (e.g., some of Bulgakov's beautiful insights) that would have been rejected by the Orthodox, had it been a matter of obligatory dogma rather than someone's personal insights, or theologumena (as Bugakov himself called that). 
Again, Dan, I am detecting a serious and sincere misunderstanding here (e.g., of the vectors of transformation, or better, transfiguration, between the human and the divine), rather than any stubborn rejection of all (organized religion"'s dogma as "bullshitting". My respects. But also, please try to understand my (very lame!) attempt at clarification.
Very truly yours,
Olga

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