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Penetration of fire into iron: the sense and the usage mode of this metaphor for description of theosis in the Byzantine theological literature
The texts I have revised testify the line developed from the more “naïve” and ontologizing discourse of Ps.-Macarius to the discourse where the unity is spoken of as a phenomenon revealed for intellectual abilities, which suggests an indication of unity in a certain respect and preserves from interpreting this unity as a merge of unified natures. For the latter we can distinguish the strategy of cognition / recognition, which Maximus the Confessor and Symeon the New Theologian adhered to. According to this strategy, by the properties displayed by incandescent iron, we can discern the nature of fire revealed in iron, and, in the same way, we can conclude that human is god (of small letter) on the basis of that he manifests himself as God, that is, exposes the divine features.