Theosis is divine-human union for which the divine transcends time and movement but for which the human is in time and moves by separating from God or by returning to God. Saint Maximus the Confessor described theosis both as ‘ever-moving rest,’ and as the ‘stationary movement’ of the eighth day. The sixth day completes the ‘being’ of creation, the seventh completes the ‘well-being’ of creation, whilst the eighth completes the ‘ever-well-being’ of creation in uncreated completeness. Theosis is ever-moving incompleteness moving into the unmoving rest of deified completeness, so is both stationary and ever-moving in its divine-human mysteries of stillness.
The communion of grace restores the union of creation with God, extinguishing division and the distance that results from separation. Grace is the gift of God, not reward for effort and strain, so never an individual achievement. The uncreated transcends temporality and motion, but deification invites creation to partake in uncreated grace, opening to an ever-moving repose in peace that is a stationary movement around God, a dynamic stillness through God, in God. This is the life of Holy Trinity, eternal yet in time, unmoving yet ever-moving. Theosis communicates identity of activity and energy, but not of substance or essence, transfiguring our human into a divine mode of existence, called stillness, hesychia, by Hesychast seers. These mysteries of grace are ineffable because by transcending ordinary language, they are enlightened by the uncreated Logos and initiated into the deifying language of the logoi of creation.
Theosis extinguishes division but not God-given difference, when the Sabbath of Sabbaths dawns in stillness on the eighth day. Returning motion restores glory to creation, completing incompleteness in timeless completeness without confusing God-given differences. Eschatological time unites created temporality with uncreated timelessness, ending time and history with a timeless, dimensionless renewal of creation. The ‘NOW’ of timeless completeness embraces time’s incompleteness with stillness, without confusion or division. There is otherness and therefore difference but no trace of separation or of distance. Time still measures motion but in the fullness of time, consummates hallowing communion in the revelation of consummate completeness. Dynamic stillness is ever-moving in the Holy Spirit, timeless but in time, abiding in peace but free of static fixation. Ever-moving, but centred in God, stillness stands steadfast in wisdom, moving with the created heavens round the uncreated presence of glory in the midst.