on or deification consists in realising our
true nature, was supported by the favourite doctrine that like only
can know like. "If the soul were not essentially Godlike ([Greek:
theoeides]), it could never know God." This doctrine might seem to
lead to the heretical conclusion that man is [Greek: omoousios to
Patri] in the same sense as Christ. This conclusion, however, was
strongly repudiated both by Clement and Origen. The former (_Strom._
xvi. 74) says that men are _not_ [Greek: meros theou kai to theo
omoousioi]; and Origen (_in Joh._ xiii. 25) says it is very impious to
assert that we are [Greek: omoousioi] with "the unbegotten nature."
But for those who thought of Christ mainly as the Divine Logos or
universal Reason, the line was not very easy to draw. Methodius says
that every believer must, through participation in Christ, be born as
a Christ,--a view which, if pressed logically (as it ought not to be),
implies either that our nature is at bottom identical with that of
Christ, or that the life of Christ is substituted for our own. The
difficulty as to whether the human soul is, strictly speaking, "divinae
particula aurae," is met by Proclus in the ingenious and interesting
passage quoted p. 34; "There are," he says, "three sorts of _wholes_,
(1) in which the whole is anterior to the parts, (2) in which the
whole is composed of the parts, (3) which knits into one stuff the
parts and the whole ([Greek: he tois holois ta mere sunyphainousa])."
This is also the doctrine of Plotinus, and of Augustine. God is not
split up among His creatures, nor are they essential to Him in the
same way as He is to them. Erigena's doctrine of deification is
expressed (not very clearly) in the following sentence (_De Div. Nat._
iii. 9): "Est igitur participatio divinae essentiae assumptio.
Assumptio vero eius divinae sapientiae fusio quae est omnium substantia
et essentia, et quaecumque in eis naturaliter intelliguntur."
According to Eckhart, the _Wesen_ of God transforms the soul into
itself by means of the "spark" or "apex of the soul" (equivalent to
Plotinus' [Greek: kentron psyches], _Enn._ vi. 9. 8), which is "so
akin to God that it is one with God, and not merely united to Him."

The history of this doctrine of the spark, and of the closely
connected word _synteresis_, is interesting. The word "spark" occurs
in this connexion as early as Tatian, who says (_Or._ 13): "In the
beginning the spirit was a constant companion of the s