ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates how the concepts of hierarchy and deification are connected and argues that deification implies an improvement of human nature, knowledge, and love. The chapter discusses whether Robert Grosseteste considered the return of the human being to the Creator as a return to Eden, or to a better condition. Commenting on The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, Grosseteste affirms that deification is the perfection of rational creatures. A little digression on Grosseteste’s theory of theological knowledge is helpful to comprehend what happens to human knowledge in the blessed state of deification. The word ‘union’, which appears in Dionysius’s definition of deification, does not recur in Grosseteste’s paraphrase, and is substituted by the word ‘imitation’. Norman Russell explains that it is possible to find two concepts of deification in the Greek Patristic – that is, to imitate God and to participate in God.
