In the beginning we are told of how Adam and Eve refused to become "gods" through submission to God,⁷ and sought autonomous and ultimate godhood instead.

7. The Christian doctrine of deification (cf. Ps. 82:6; John 10:34-36; Rom. 8:29-30; Eph. 4:13, 24; Heb. 2:10-13; 12:9-10; 2 Pet. 1:4; 1 John 3:2) is generally known in the Western churches by the terms sanctification and glorification, referring to man's full inheritance of the image of God. This doctrine (which has absolutely nothing in common with pagan realistic theories of the continuity of being, humanistic notions about man's "spark of divinity," or Mormon polytheistic fables regarding human evolution into godhood) is universal throughout the writings of the Church Fathers; see, e.g., Georgios 1. Mantzaridis, The Deification of Man: St. Gregory Palamas and the Orthodox Tradition, Liadain Sherrard, trans. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984). St. Athanasius wrote:

"The Word is not of things created, but rather is Himself their Creator. For therefore He assumed a created human body, that, having renewed it as its Creator, He might deify it in Himself, and thus bring us all into the Kingdom of heaven through our likeness to Him. For man would not have been deified if joined to a creature, or unless the Son were very God; nor would man have been brought into the Father's presence, unless He had been His natural and true Word who had put on the body. And as we would not have been delivered from sin and the curse, had not the flesh that the Word assumed been by nature human (for we should have had nothing in common with what is alien to us); so too humanity would not have been deified, if the Word who became flesh had not been by nature derived from the Father and true and proper to Him. For therefore the union was of this kind, that He might unite what is man by nature to Him who naturally belonged to the Godhead, that his salvation and deification might be sure"
(Orations Against the Arians, ii.70).

He put it more succinctly in a famous statement from his classic work On the Incarnation of the Word of God (54): "The Word was made man in order that we might be made gods."

Psalm 82:6

⁶ I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.
 

John 10:34-36

³⁴ Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?

³⁵ If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken;

³⁶ Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?
 

Romans 8:29-30

²⁹ For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

³⁰ Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
 

Ephesians 4:13

¹³ Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:
 

Ephesians 4:24

²⁴ And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
  

Hebrews 2:10-13

¹⁰ For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.

¹¹ For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren,

¹² Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee.

¹³ And again, I will put my trust in him. And again, Behold I and the children which God hath given me.
 

Hebrews 12:9-10

⁹ Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?

¹⁰ For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.
  

2 Peter 1:4

⁴ Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
  

1 John 3:2

² Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.