SCHEEBEN, Matthias Joseph (1835–88), German Catholic theologian. He was educated at the Gregorian University in Rome (1852–9), ordained priest in 1858, and was professor of dogma at the seminary at Cologne from 1860 to his death. Already in his first speculative work Natur und Gnade (1861) he outlined his doctrine of the supernatural, which he describes as a participation in the Being of God, and popularized this conception in Die Herrlichkeiten der göttlichen Gnade (1863, an independent version of a work of the 17th-cent. author, E. Nieremberg), which had an immediate success and was translated into many languages. In his profound, though sometimes obscure, Mysterien des Christenthums (1865) he attempted to build up the whole organism of Christian doctrine, viewed as a supernatural cosmos with the mystery of the Blessed Trinity as its centre.

[[He made much more extensive use of patristic authors than was common in the scholastic tradition of his day.  A central concept in his understanding of the incarnation and divinization/theosis is the biblical (and patristic) interpretation of ritual burning - the offering of a sacrifice that produces a sweet fragrance, pleasing to God (Ex 29:41, Lev 8:21, etc.).  This contrasted with a more Thomistic/scholastic emphasis on ritual sacrifice as complete immolation, reflected in a spirituality of detachment and negation of self.

See esp. The Mysteries of Christianity, ch 16, “Activity of the God-man in the Execution of His Divine Plan.” 421 ff., esp 436 ff.]]

In the following years his dogmatic work was interrupted by the controversies raised by the impending Vatican Council, in which he took a vigorous part as one of the chief opponents of J. J. I. von Döllinger and a passionate defender of Papal Infallibility. Between 1873 and 1887 he wrote his Handbuch der katholischen Dogmatik, a work of immense erudition, based on Thomist principles but also making extensive use of the Fathers as well as of modern theologians. Scheeben stood for the rights of supernatural faith against the rationalist and naturalist tendencies of 18th- and 19th-cent. theology which had been rife esp. in Germany and Austria.

Gesammelte Schriften, ed. J. Höfer (8 vols., Freiburg i.B., 1941–67). Eng. trs. of Die Mysterien des Christentums by C. Vollert, SJ (St Louis, 1946), and of Natur und Gnade by id. (ibid. and London, 1954). J. Hertkens, Professor M. J. Scheeben: Leben und Wirken eines katholischen Gelehrten im Dienste der Kirche (1892). K. Feckes and others, M. J. Scheeben (Mainz, 1935). F. S. Pancheri, OFM, Il pensiero teologico di M. J. Scheeben e S. Tommaso (1956), with bibl.; B. Fraigneau-Julien, PSS, L’Église et le caractère sacramentel selon M.-J. Scheeben (1958); N. Hoffmann, SSCC, Natur und Gnade: Die Theologie der Gottesschau als vollendeter Vergöttlichung des Geistgeschöpfes bei M. J. Scheeben (Analecta Gregoriana, 160; 1967); E. Paul, Denkweg und Denkform der Theologie von Matthias Joseph Scheeben (Münchener theologische Studien, II. Systematische Abteilung, 60; 1970), with extensive bibl; U. Sander, Ekklesiologisches Wissen: Kirche als Autorität: Die ‘Theologische Erkenntislehre’ Matthias Joseph Scheebens als antimodernistische Theologie der Moderne (Frankfurter Theologische Studien, 54; 1997). T. F. O’Meara, OP, Church and Culture: German Catholic Theology, 1860–1914 (Notre Dame, Ind., and London [1991]), pp. 53–67. K.-H. Minz in Dict. Sp. 14 (1990), cols. 404–8, s.v.

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David Augustine: Christ and the Altar Fire: Sacrifice as Deification in the Theology of Matthias Scheeben

The topic of this dissertation is the center and culmination of the systematic theology of the German Catholic dogmatic theologian Matthias Joseph Scheeben (1835-88)—the deification of the human being through sacrifice. I argue that Scheeben is able to conceive of sacrifice as the ultimately perfective process of human deification due to his use of the Old Testament (OT) type of the God-given altar fire as a type for grace, charity, and glory in the New Testament (NT). A corollary of this idea is that the non-rational sacrificial victims of the OT (plants and animals) were stand-ins for the human offerer. It is the human being that therefore needs the NT counterpart to the sacrificial treatment the substitute victims received in the OT rites of sacrifice.

Offered up in sacrifice through the divine grace-fire, Scheeben holds that the human being is called to rise up to God in a transfigured form that is the NT equivalent to the odor of sweetness that resulted from the ritual burning of a sacrificial victim in the OT. As sacrifice is about the deification of the human being, this work focuses extensively on Scheeben’s understanding of Jesus Christ’s status as primordial priest and archetypal sacrificial victim, a status that arises from his deification par excellence through the hypostatic union.

Scheeben grounds Christ’s unique priesthood 1) in the grace of union and 2) in his attendant accidental graces. In Christ’s actual redemptive deed, Scheeben applies the altar fire typology twice over to 1) Christ’s charity in his Passion and 2) to his bodily glorification in the resurrection. Scheeben’s dual use of the altar fire typology is what allows him to give a coherent account of the unity of Christ’s Paschal mystery in accomplishing redemption since it 1) preserves the properly atoning-meriting modality of the Passion, while 2) accounting for the sacrificial character of the resurrection and the latter’s role in effecting human justification. Overall, this work demonstrates how Scheeben’s sacrificial theology utilizes the grammar of the OT sacrificial rites to give a lucid account of the Christological mediation of grace to humans.

For further addition to this page: on Divine Fire penetrating and transforming US

Glories of Divine Grave, ch, 6, "The Participation in the Divine Nature Effects a
Supernatural Similarity to this Nature."

p. 48 :"; for in the mirror the person appears by his own light and not by that of another, in his whole natural beauty, freshness and life. In like manner, the rational creature, then only becomes perfectly similar to God when it has become a true mirror of the Divinity, which reflects the Divinity. in its own peculiar beauty, when it has been penetrated and glorified by the Divine fire, and in a manner transformed into God, as, for instance, a bright crystal globe that collects the rays of the sun, or as the mock-sun, noticed occasionally in the sky, appears to be the sun itself.
The participation in the Divine nature, then, which we enjoy by grace, consists in this, that our nature assumes a condition peculiar to the Divine nature, and becomes so similar to the Deity, that according to the holy Fathers, we may truly say, it is deified or made deiform. "Deifica¬tion," says St. Dionysius,' " is the greatest possible likening and union with God." Likewise, St. Basil teaches : "From the Holy Spirit springs a never-ending joy, the liken¬ing unto God ; to be made God, however, is the highest that man can wish and desire." We do not speak, therefore, of a dissolution of our substance in the Divine substance, or even of a personal union with it as it is in Christ Jesus, but only of a glorification of our substance into the image of Divine nature. Neither shall we become new gods, in¬dependent of the true God, and therefore, false gods. But, in truth, we are made, by the power and grace of God, some¬thing which God alone is by nature ; we are made His supernatural likeness and our soul receives a reflex of that glory,which is peculiar to Him above all creatures."

p. 62 We shall therefore be perfect partakers of the Divine nature only when, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, we participate also in its sanctity, and the holy Fathers iden¬tify this partaking of Divine nature, with being holy, as God is holy. They compare the sanctity of God with a great and potent fire, which seizes our imperfect nature, penetrates it, transforms it and cleanses it from all dross and stain, so that our goodness be similarly pure and per¬fect, as is the Divine.

p. 95 The Holy Spirit it is who, according to the words of the Apostle,' transforms us by His power into the image of God. In this He does not act like the sun, which only from a distance transforms the crystal globe into its image by its rays ; no, because as God He must be present everywhere He acts, He illumines our soul, as a light that is placed within a crystal globe, or as a fire that is most closely united to and penetrates the body, which it makes bright and glowing. He Himself is the seal by which God impresses upon our soul the image of His Divine nature and holiness. As the seal indeed only imprints its form in the wax, but in order to do this must be brought into most intimate connection with it ; so the Holy Spirit, by impressing us with the seal of His image, enters into most intimate union with our soul. Thus the Holy Spirit cannot give us His grace without giving us Himself, as the Apostle says :' " Tite charity of God (which together with His grace is His highest gift) is poured forth into MI' hearts by the Holy Ghost, who is given to us."

p. 208 Light heats and inflames bodies, for in its essence it is one with heat, and when it is apparently without heat, it is only because of its imperfect communication. As with the material sun so with the Divine sun, light and heat are inseparably united and perfectly one ; from the light of the Father and the Son proceeds the fire of the Holy Ghost, the Divine flame of love. And so God kin¬dles in our hearts not only the light of faith, but by it also the grateful and blessed fire of His Divine love.

BUT PROBLEMATIC on PAINS in PURGATORY: [p.285]

As the satisfac¬tion of Christ receives its infinite value not so much from the greatness of His sufferings, as from the infinite dig¬nity of His person, so the sufferings of His living mem¬bers receive from grace an ineffably high value, which of themselves they could not possess.
We could fully appreciate this further blessing of grace, then, only if we had a clear notion of the terrible suffer¬ings of purgatory. St. Gregory the Great teaches that they are more fearful than the most exquisite suffer¬ings of the holy martyrs ; according to St. Thomas, they are more painful than the sufferings of Christ ; according to St. Anselm, they are greater than all the sufferings which a man can endure in this life. Yea, according to the common opinion of theologians, the fire in purgatory is of the same kind as that of hell, and the principal distinction between the sufferings in purgatory and those in hell is this only, that the former are not eternal, and do not destroy, therefore, the hope of liberation.
2. What a boon, then, do we enjoy in grace, when by it we may redeem so many and such great torments by every insignificant and trifling suffering !

[...] [p.290] How easy, then, does grace render the paying of the terri¬ble penalties of sin, since it even does away with the necessity of taking upon ourselves those little labors and troubles by which we may redeem in this life the punishments of purgatory ! Yet, we, who otherwise are bent upon ac¬quiring the greatest amount of good in the easiest and most commodious way possible, are in this case so foolish and senseless, that we often, for a considerable time, remain without sanctifying grace, this easy means of giving satis¬faction for our sins ! When will we finally know our own advantage and acknowledge the wonderful goodness of God towards us, who has given us in grace a source of all good and a remedy against all evil ? Oh, that it may not be necessary in the hour of death, or in purgatory (supposing, that we have not the terrible misfortune to lose grace for¬ever), to repent too late, that we have not extinguished or moderated the fire of purgatory and hastened the time of the beatific vision by careful preservation and exercise of grace !

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