be deified.21 His “life was the light of all people . . . The true light, which enlightens everyone” (John 1:4, 9). “The Son gives life” (John 5:21). For John, Jesus is light and life, and he imparts “the fullness of the knowledge of God.” 22
Applying theosis to the Exodus generation may seem inconsistent with the teaching that theosis is derived from Christ, but it ceases to be so if Jesus is saying that he was the source of the Israelites’ theosis—and he may be implying just that, when he says “‘I said, you are gods’” (10:34). Instead of the Hebrew text’s “I say,” the Johannine Jesus uses the aorist form “I said,” apparently identifying himself as the one who spoke to the Israelites in the past. Elsewhere he affirms, “Before Abraham was, I am” (8:58). He had divine glory before the world began (1:1; 17:5, 24). Of course, it is Paul, not John, who specifically places Christ in the Exodus, as the rock that led them in the wilderness (1 Cor 10:4; the rock is a Talmudic expansion of Num 14:14; 20:11), but the idea is not completely alien to John’s thinking. John’s preferred focus is to have Jesus fulfill the meanings of Hebrew festivals: he is the new Passover; he, not the water of Siloam ceremonially poured on the altar, is the water of life; he, in contrast to the torches burning around the temple area,23 is the light of the world (John 1:29; 7:2, 37–38; 8:12). All this implies that Jesus lay behind the symbols, unrecognized.
The Rhetoric of Revelation
Now it is necessary to take a step back from the exegesis of Johannine texts, and speculate about why the historical Jesus might have said these things, or something similar. Here we find a similar pattern in all four Gospels. There are many stories in the Synoptics in which Jesus, in response to ill-willed criticisms, will come back with surprising exegesis of the Scriptures that suggests new ideas. He may use a Scripture to refute the theology of his opponents, as when he cites the familiar “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” to show the Sadducees that God is “God not of the dead, but of the living” (Mark 12:26–27). He will respond to a Sabbath-breaking accusation by citing a story that shows David breaking the Sabbath, and cap it with the radical saying, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:25–27). He will co-join two Scriptures to make a stunning statement about God’s openness to the Gentiles, and opposition to commerce in the Temple: “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers” (Mark 11:17; cf. Isa 56:7; Jer 7:11). On every one of these occasions he says something that goes against or goes beyond the theology of his foes. Affirming the “you are gods” passage in the psalms does so, as well.
Whether he is quoting Scriptures or not, Jesus makes his most astonishing theological statements either to selfish people, to those who are openly hostile to him, or to friends who misunderstand him. To his selfish family, interrupting his sermon, sending up notice that they are present, implying that he should pay them some homage, he makes the stunning reply “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:35). To the hostile Pharisees he says “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21 NCV)—even within his enemies! To the clueless Apostle Philip who asks to be shown the Father, he says, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). So when he quotes a psalm that calls some people gods (or engodded), it is in the same provocative and instructive spirit as these other responses. In every case he conveys a teaching. What else can it mean when humans are called elohim, than that they are taking on (some) divine qualities—being transformed?
Taking on Power; Theosis Themes in Mark
In the last two paragraphs we quoted radical and humanitarian sayings of Jesus in Mark. There is no single theosis passage in Mark that compares with the three from the other Gospels, but there are many passages in Mark that support the possibility of a theosis-teaching. One place where this is seen is in the healing stories. In all the Synoptics, the healings involve a bestowal of divine life and an access to divine power. People are made whole by their faith. In each of the seven instances where Jesus says, “your faith has made you well” or “your faith has saved you,”24 the verb is in the perfect tense, meaning that their faith has already saved them. Perfect tense refers to an action in the past with continuing effect in the present. The verb σώζω can be translated “save,” “make well,” or “make whole.” In these seven passages it occurs in the perfect tense, σέσωκεν. Your existing faith, persisting in the present, has saved you.
The recipients of healing are receiving divine power from Jesus. We see this in Luke: “All in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them” (Luke 6:19). We see the spreading of divine power in Mark as well: People who follow him around, or who know he is coming to their town, are healed by just touching “the fringe of his cloak” (Mark 6:56). When the hemorrhaging woman secretly touches his cloak, Jesus is “aware that power had gone forth from him” (Mark 5:30; similarly in Luke 8:46). There are theosis implications to this reception of divine power.
The coming of divine power is promised in this: “there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power” (Mark 9:1). Since this is followed by the Transfiguration, it may refer to Jesus’ own power, but it could also refer to the manifestation of divine power in the lives of believers. People who are touched by him are changed (Mark 1:41; 8:22; 9:27). The import of these, and even of passages where people refuse to be changed, is that contact with Jesus should bring about profound change, moving people to do the will of God, restoring a person’s sanity, turning proud people into servants of others (3:35; 5:15–19; 9:35; 10:43). Mark keeps his focus on Jesus, but the implication is that discipleship brings a powerful life-change.
Theosis in Thomas and Mary
There is room for a glance at The Gospel of Thomas here, to see if it can shed light on Luke 17:21, and/or on the historical Jesus. The Gospel of Thomas is a semi-independent source. Some of its material is independent of the Synoptic Gospels, but most of it seems to be derived from the Synoptics. The Greek copyists of Thomas knew the nomina sacra, the standard abbreviations for “Jesus,” “God,” “Father” and “human,”25 and they knew the contents of Christian texts as well. For instance, there is considerable material resembling Mark 4 in Thomas Sayings 5, 6, 9, 20, and 21; while the Sermon on the Mount is echoed closely in Sayings 24, 26, 32, 33, 34, and 36.
We have already said that the idea of divinity within persons does not “belong” to the Gnostics. It should not be surrendered by the orthodox, any more than the ideas of revelation, illumination, or transformation should be abandoned, just because they happen to be honored by Gnostics. In fact, the sharp distinction between orthodox and Gnostic belongs to a period later than the composition of the earliest gospels—of which Thomas is one, with roots that may go back to the first century CE.
The Gospel of Thomas moves in a gnosticizing direction, but it would be misleading to suggest that it fits wholly into a Gnostic box, having no overlap with the canonical Gospels. There is considerable intersection of ideas between Thomas and the Synoptic Gospels, as well as considerable difference. To be honest about both points (overlap and distinction) Thomas is more accurately labeled “protognostic” or “gnosticizing,” than “Gnostic.” Even someone who calls it a Gnostic work, recognizes that Thomas might include “genuine early tradition” from the historical Jesus.26
Sayings 3 and 113 in Thomas are clearly related to Luke 17:21. We start with Saying 3 (from the Coptic): “The Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves . . . you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father.”27 The Coptic text of Thomas has only “kingdom” or “kingdom of the Father,” never “kingdom of God,” but the phrase “of God” was probably present in the older Greek text at this point, although Papyrus Oxy. 654 is damaged. It reads “And the kingdom [of God] is within you, [and outside]”: καὶ ἡ βασ[ιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ] ἐντὸς ὑμῶν [ἐσ]τι [κἀκτός].28 Thus ἐντὸς ὑμῶν,
