2nd–3rd centuries

Salvation as Deification in Irenaeus, Clement and Origen

For the Greek tradition the highest goal of saving knowledge, forgiveness and deliverance from death was deification. Clement of Alexandria wrote: "The Logos of God became man so that you might learn from a man how a man may become God"; for him faith is the beginning of the new life, followed by love and "true gnosis." Origen defined salvation as the gift of divinity: the soul rises from the world of becoming into the realm of being by contemplating the eternal Word. Pelikan concludes from these authors that salvation is participation in the gift of the second Adam, not merely the restoration of what was lost in the first, but notes that the term could be clarified only after the controversy over the deity of Christ.