Even in my own Anglican tradition, which is supposed to be so incarnicentric, an unspoken assumption of substitutionary atonement seems to pervade, such that talk of other models of salvation is always couched in the frame of ecumenism. And while most Anglicans are no longer taught Calvin’s doctrine of Predestination, scientific determinism, the greatest friend Double Predestination ever had, has yet to be abandoned in the face of all the evidence (or proof really) to the contrary.

While those hurdles can certainly be overcome, and have been in some places (Edwards and Barth come immediately to mind), my concern would be that even in an internal Reformed conversation on the issue, the influences of the mystical traditions would pervade, and we would end up split into two camps: pseudo-Orthodox and traditional. I think that a concept of theosis that will be finally acceptable to the Reformed tradition would have to emphasise Scripture (for which we can look to Mannermaa as our guide, even engaging Calvin and Zwingli in the same kind of conversation with which Mannermaa engages Luther), but would also have to be acceptable to a rationalistic mindset.

It’s that rationalism criterion that I think presents the biggest problem. Theosis as it stands just isn’t something we can all wrap our heads around because we can’t dissect it. It doesn’t present itself in clear, propositional form, and even in an era which has re-awakened to the narrative character of salvation history, which does not always answer to human reason, we still demand propositional statements of faith. Attempting to force the biblical narrative into a propositional faith is what got us into the Double Predestination trap in the first place.

Is there an answer? I think that would be the Incarnation, but then I am an Anglican ; ). I think that if we can reason God becoming human, then we can reason our own way to entering into the inter-relationship of God. How exactly? I’ll get back to you on that in around say, 2015, when I finish my doctoral dissertation.

Lossky, Vladimir, “The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church” (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1976), 7-22.

Theosis was a particular emphasis of Lossky’s theology, which is likely why it is also present in Rowan Williams thought. Lossky is a major interest of Williams’, and was the subject of William’s doctoral work.

Further on equivalent thought in Anglicanism:

Andrewes, Lancelot, “Ninety-Six Sermons” (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1850), 109.

Among Lutherans, I would add Robert Jenson and Wolfhart Pannenberg as well (although I wouldn’t say Pannenberg has a doctrine of deification in formal sense, but he finds Mannermaa’s reinterpretation of Luther on the mark). And more recently Bruce Marshall (“Justification as Declaration and Deification,” International Journal for Systematic Theology 4/1 (2002).

For readers interested in the Orthodox teaching of salvation as deification, Vladimir Lossky is a great place to start (The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church, 213-15; In the Image and Likeness of God, 97-110) or more recently David Bentley Hart (The Beauty of the Infinite). For good survey essays, see Gosta Hallosten, “Theosis in Recent Research: A Renewal of Interest and Need for Clarity” in Partakers of the Divine Nature (Baker, 2007), and also David Vincent Merconi, “The Consummation of the Christian Promise: Recent Studies on Deification” in New Blackfriars 87/1007 (January 2006): 3-12.

Even among Reformed thinkers it is not entirely uncommon, Trevor Hart being only one example (“Redemption and Fall” in Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine”, 198). Norman Russell lists Barth as another example of a Reformed thinker whose thought on salvation affirms the created finitude of the individual while also affirming a kind of divinization (The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition[Oxford, 2004]).

And (even) among Baptists, Paul Fiddes argues for salvation as deification saying, “The goal of salvation is ‘divinization’ (theosis)” which he qualifies explaining that “Theosis is not, of course, a ‘becoming God,’ but being made into the ‘likeness’ of God, which means being drawn much more deeply into the relationships in which God exists as a Trinity of love” (“Salvation” in Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology” [2007], 176; similarly, “The Quest for a place which is ‘not-a-place’: the hiddenness of God and the presence of God’ in Silence and the Word: Negative Theology and Incarnation [Cambridge, 2002], 35-60).

This is a hot topic these days, and I am sure there are other helpful sources. Feel free to add some more.

For some references:

Boff, Leonardo. “Holy Trinity, Perfect Community.” trans. Phillip Berryman (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2000).

Williams, Rowan. “On Christian Theology” (London: Blackwells, 2000).

I’ll try and track down a reference for Eastern Christian deification.