Theosis for Everyone: Evangelical Resourcement Through Biography

Theosis for Everyone: Evangelical Resourcement Through Biography

Rev Dr Myk Habets, Laidlaw College

I. Introduction: Protestant Anxiety and the Promise of a Participatory Soteriology

Across all Christian traditions, salvation comprises numerous elements that collectively constitute soteriology.¹ Justification, sanctification, and glorification are central to soteriology and yet many Protestants are slow to accept a doctrine of theosis or dismiss it outright. Such suspicion and dismissals are essentially based on several factors that Reformed theologian Thomas F. Torrance, nicely summarised in a quip: “the danger of vertigo.”² With this phrase, Torrance meant that many Protestants are overwhelmed by the teaching of theosis and mistakenly assume this entails a rejection of the Creator-creature distinction and gives humans an elevated place above their station. For others, the terminology of theosis (deification/divinisation) leads to the rejection of the doctrine, on the assumption that it entails a literal apotheosis of the creature. A final feature that leads Protestants to reject theosis is the fear that it is an exotic intrusion from Eastern Orthodoxy and incompatible with the ontological foundations of a genuinely Protestant theology, in whatever register that takes.

Recent Protestant work on theosis has comprehensively answered these objections. Veli‑Matti Kärkkäinen, for example, has shown how a doctrine of theosis does not necessarily overturn a Protestant, in this case Lutheran, emphasis on forensic justification.³ Carl Mosser has systematically illustrated the ways in which theosis is not a foreign body in Reformed theology.⁴ Lucas Stamps and others have provided extensive testimony regarding the provenance of theosis in Free Church theologies.⁵ Randy Maddox convincingly locates Wesley’s Perfectionism in a doctrine of theosis and Eastern synergism.⁶ Many other traditions could also be highlighted.⁷ What is true within Protestantism is also true for Catholicism. Although not the first to articulate a doctrine of theosis within Catholicism, Anna Williams published an influential monograph that illustrated the correspondence between the doctrines of theosis in Thomas Aquinas and Gregory Palamas, paving the way for the contemporary Catholic reception of theosis.⁸

It is no longer academically credible to reject a doctrine of theosis on the grounds that it is incompatible with Protestant (or Catholic) theology, creeds, and catechisms. Theosis is now seen, as it rightly should, as a Christian doctrine of antiquity, retrieved for contemporary purposes that serve the gospel. And yet, theosis still comes under suspicion by many lay Christians and has not yet penetrated the popular psyche. Without popular acceptance of the doctrines of theosis, it threatens to remain largely unknown and esoteric, reserved for the elites of the academic world and unrelated to popular piety or Christian life. And yet, what doctrines of theosis describe is a practical pathway for the Christian life, moral virtue, and progressive sanctification, not to mention, for those who accept a Wesleyan-type account, some form of Christian perfectionism, and if they don’t, a description of spiritual maturity.

The argument of this chapter is that theology has to be lived—theology in action—not merely thought, if it is to have life. More than an academic doctrine or a mere catechetical Question and Answer, theosis speaks to a lived reality of union with Christ and transformation into Christlikeness, from glory to glory, starting now and extending into eternity. To popularise theosis, theology must be lived; as such, biography can serve as a disciplined witness to life in union with Christ, as theosis describes it. In what follows, an evangelical grammar of theosis is presented, followed by a method for using biography responsibly, and the chapter concludes with a series of vignettes of Christian lives that illustrate the reality to which a doctrine of theosis speaks. The intent is to recommend, by example, theosis for everyone, theologian and lay Christian alike. Having posed the problem and thesis, the chapter next establishes doctrinal clarifications so that biography illustrates rather than determines theology.

II. Evangelical Resourcement of Theosis

Without rehearsing arguments for the retrieval of theosis, it is worthwhile to provide the scaffolding for the reception of a doctrine of theosis before recommending and illustrating it through biography. Several theological clarifications are necessary when articulating a doctrine of theosis. First, as mentioned earlier, the Creator-creature distinction is crucial to uphold. All Christian articulations, to qualify as Christian, recognise the ontological distinction between God the Creator and humans as creatures.⁹ Theosis is not the ontological transition from human being into Yahweh. If that were the case, the human would cease to exist, and ontological absorption would result in an anthropological nihilism. Instead, the gospel is clear. Humans are created in the imago Christi and, as such, are destined to be transformed into the image of Christ from glory to glory, to the extent that they are willing. United to Christ, believers participate in the Divine life by the Holy Spirit and are transformed from immaturity to states of maturity. Maturity in Christ looks like Christ’s life formed in us, as his virtues, character, and filial life are made new in each believer. Theosis is thus by grace and not by nature. In a mistaken view of theosis, a physical theory of the atonement holds that all human beings will be transformed automatically, or organically, or in a spiritual evolutionary process into the likeness of God. That view was rejected outright by the fathers and is not found in conciliar theology.¹⁰ Instead, human transformation is a graced process of union with Christ and participation in Christ’s ongoing incarnation. Theosis is a doctrine of grace; the grace of the triune God extended to receptive believers.

A second theological clarification concerns the means by which theosis becomes a reality in the life of a believer, namely, through union with Christ and participation in his ongoing humanity. In the believer’s mystical union with Christ, they are united with Christ’s person and life, as it were, and are adopted by the Spirit into the Father’s family.¹¹ The use of filial language is a feature of Pauline soteriology and safeguards the fact that becoming like Christ, or theosis, is only possible through an ontological union with Christ and in that union, a new identity is conferred on believers, that of being “sons (children) of God,” heirs and co-heirs of Christ.¹² As persons possessed of the Spirit of Christ, believers are being transformed into the likeness of the incarnate Son in thought, word, and deed. Union with Christ thus leads to a participatio Christi, enabled by the Holy Spirit, whereby believers become divine by becoming more, not less, human. The concept of participation is crucial to a doctrine of theosis and to one’s understanding of its practical dimensions. In Greek, participation (methexis) represents one thing taking part in another thing.¹³ In salvation, these two ‘things’ are Christ and the believer. The nature of this type of participation means that only the creature (believer) is changed. According to Aristotle, in a mixed relation, only one thing—the believer—is ontologically affected; in a real relation, whilst one thing—God—is not ontologically changed, it is still a genuine (real) relation.¹⁴ According to a Christian doctrine of theosis, in union with Christ, a believer takes on certain communicable divine perfections, including immortality, glory, and love. Andrew Davison explains this as the “modus principle,” whereby, “when something is received from another, it is received in the manner of the recipient, not that of the donor.”¹⁵ In theosis, humans become more human to the extent that they become more Christlike, and the more Christlike they become, the more divine they are.

A third theological clarification is that theosis is first a reality in the life of Christ before it is a reality in the lives of believers. This necessarily follows from the previous clarification. In the Son’s incarnation, Christ both humanises divinity and divinises humanity for us and our salvation (without ceasing to be fully divine or fully human). In taking to himself a human nature, the eternal Son becomes one with humanity (homoousios) and in so doing he divinises that humanity through his life and ministry, overcoming sin and evil and uniting humanity with divinity as a perfectly mature human. Because Christ has achieved salvation in himself, here construed as theosis, all those savingly united to Christ also experience deification.¹⁶ This is an important clarification for it means there is no theosis outside of Christ and no conception of reconciled humanity apart from Christ. This principle applies both in the present and into eternity and is an application of Christ’s continuing incarnation. Theosis is primarily a Christological doctrine before it is an anthropological one. This clarification is consistent with the previous one: union with the incarnate Christ is the vehicle by which theosis occurs in humans, because theosis was first a reality for Christ. This emphasises the relational foundation of Christianity and clarifies how theosis is not to be understood as an external transaction. It is also commensurate with the first clarification, in that it is Christ who deifies, not some generic principle or natural process.

With these doctrinal clarifications in place, a doctrine of theosis can be heard on its own terms, without the unnecessary preconceptions brought over from Platonic philosophy, Eastern religions, or cultic forms of religion. A Christian doctrine of theosis asserts the transformation of human beings into the likeness of the Incarnate Son, taking on communicable perfections that are now true of the humanity of the risen Christ and, in union with Christ, are now participated in by believers. Through sacraments, meditation upon the Word, good works, spiritual disciplines, and ecclesial practices, the Holy Spirit is perfecting human creatures and transforming them into the likeness of Christ. This transformational process begins at conversion and continues throughout eternity, as the bodily resurrection removes the fallen human nature resulting from the fall and places believers in direct communion with the triune God of grace and glory. In becoming divine, believers become like Christ as they exist, full of the Spirit, and live and move and have their being in God. The process of theosis is neither automatic nor work-driven (semi-Pelagian); instead, it is a phenomenon of grace whereby believers, justified by grace alone through faith alone, are inspired by the Spirit to cruciformity in Christ. With these clarifications in place, the methodological question follows: how can biography function as a theological witness without becoming a rival authority?

III. Biography as Theological Witness

Because doctrine aims at lived communion, biography can function as a disciplined witness to participatory salvation—illustrative rather than authoritative—when governed by Scripture and the rule of faith. Theosis speaks directly to a transformative spiritual journey; hence, as Yohanes Mulyono states, “theosis is not just a theoretical concept but a practical, lived experience.”¹⁷ He continues, “it suggests a spirituality that is simultaneously deeply mystical and practically engaged, aimed at nothing less than becoming a living expression of divine love in the world.”¹⁸ Mulyono emphasises the corporate nature of theosis, which suggests “a view of human nature as fundamentally open to and capable of divine indwelling and implies a spirituality focused on union and participation rather than mere obedience or belief.”¹⁹ Mulyono outlines practical areas in which theosis takes root in human experience and moves from being a theoretical concept to a lived experience “involving a deepening communion with God through prayer, worship, contemplation, and the sacraments.”²⁰ These features are worth reviewing briefly.

First, theosis as a lived experience speaks directly to the sanctifying aspects of salvation.²¹ While not reducible to sanctification, theosis is deeply embedded in God’s work of making us holy. Here, “the Spirit starts the work of renewal that molds a person’s heart and character to look more like Jesus (2 Cor 3:18)” through such spiritual disciplines as “talking (prayer), listening (word of God), worshiping, and fellowship with other believers.”²² Theosis speaks to a profound communion with God that is intimate, purposive, and graciously empowering. A corollary of this relationship is a sharing in the mission of God “as participants in the divine nature, humans are called to embody and express the love, compassion, and justice of God in their lives and relationships.”²³

Second, theosis is ethical. United to Christ and full of the Spirit, believers become like the One they worship and, through what Mulyono refers to as a “spiritual metamorphosis,”²⁴ believers embody Christ’s “selfless love, mirroring the divine love that embraces all humanity.”²⁵ This sponsors several practices such as prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and repentance, “not as mere rituals but as means to deepen their union with God and cultivate virtuous living.”²⁶ This, in turn, supports a social dimension of ethical life characterised by “communities of love, justice, and reconciliation.”²⁷

Third, theosis involves a corporate eschatology. Through the “sacraments, liturgical worship, and spiritual fellowship,” believers come together to work out their salvation, to build each other up, and to encourage one another. The theme of eschatology “offers believers a profound sense of purpose and assurance amid life’s struggles and challenges. It provides a perspective that transcends the limitations of earthly existence, reminding believers that their ultimate destiny lies in union with God.”²⁸ With these practical points in place, Mulyono rightly concludes: “theosis offers one of the most powerful—and potentially liberating—paradigms for interpreting Christian living.”²⁹

Having established the practicality of theosis, we now address the issue of biography as theology. Biographies display the shape of participation without replacing doctrinal normativity, and biographical exemplars provide thick descriptions of the habits through which participatory communion is pursued. The most thorough work on biography as theology comes from Baptist theologian James McClendon Jr., whose work, Biography as Theology, is a landmark.³⁰ Critically drawing upon his work, the following offers a justification for biography as theology.

Forged in the foundry of narrative theology, McClendon’s Biography as Theology extends the dramatic turn to theology.³¹ Based on the conviction that Christian theology is best seen in practice, McClendon’s work offers a solid justification for narrating theology in action through biography and supports the insight that lives are the sites where beliefs show their truth or falsity.³² This insight has proven influential for those engaged in virtue, ecclesial, and pastoral ethics, reinforcing the claim that Christian truth is performative and communal rather than merely intellectual.³³ McClendon distinguishes between theology and practice, and rightly argues that biography functions as a theological verification of doctrines, not their foundation. However, he also argues, problematically, that biography is not merely illustrative but actually bears “truth-content.”³⁴ Biography thus functions as a form of theological litmus test for McClendon.³⁵ In terms of methodology, McClendon’s biography-as-theology operates according to three criteria.³⁶ First, the particular life under focus is retold truthfully. Second, a biographical narrative reveals a person’s governing convictions. Finally, these convictions can be assessed for their coherence, endurance, and faithfulness. The lives of saints thus become normative test cases for theology.³⁷ In these ways, theology becomes communal, narratival, and temporal.³⁸

What follows differs from McClendon’s biography as theology in a few significant ways. First, the conviction is not shared with McClendon that lived experience is proof of the validity of a doctrine. Instead, the biographical vignettes which follow are merely illustrative. There is an epistemological claim here, notably, that ontology precedes function, and doctrine precedes belief. Both doctrine and belief in turn precede practice. Second, a doctrine is not viable because it is existentially acceptable. Instead, biographies illustrate doctrine; they do not prove their truthfulness. Third, visionary claims and interpretations such as those of Singh are evaluated under the norming authority of Scripture and the rule of faith, and secondarily by dogmatic coherence and spiritual fruit, not by claims to privileged access. This is why theology in action is preferred to the term “biography as theology.”

IV. Theology in Action

With method and limits clarified, what follows are couplets of biographical vignettes of lives that exemplify the lived experience of theosis as a participatory and transformative process of spiritual maturity and Christlikeness.

IV.1. Ascetical Formation

Two biographical accounts of saints’ lives begin our theology in action section. Both accounts are of significant ascetic exemplars who lived out lives of theotic transformation and were influential on future ascetical practices and monastic living. The first is St Antony of Egypt (c.251–356 AD), followed by St Macrina the Younger (c.327–379 AD).³⁹

Athanasius of Alexandria wrote a life of St Antony between 356 AD and 362 AD in response to requests from monks, and, as was common in the ancient world, to provide a model for others to imitate.⁴⁰ Remembering St Antony and imitating him brings many spiritual benefits, Athanasius tells us. We also note that Athanasius penned the Vita Antonii to illustrate theosis in action, to show, in a concrete life, what he had taught in his great work On the Incarnation, written as early as 318 AD.⁴¹ Athanasius wrote that Christ was “incarnate that we might be made god,”⁴² and Christ “was God, and then became man, and that to deify us,”⁴³ and “for the Word was not impaired in receiving a body, that He should seek to receive a grace, but rather He deified that which He put on. And more than that, ‘gave’ it graciously to the race of man,”⁴⁴ and finally, for our purposes, “Thus sealed, it is proper that we also become, as Peter said, sharers of the divine nature [2 Pet 1.4]. And thus all creation partakes of the Word in the Spirit.”⁴⁵ Athanasius also penned the Vita Antonii for the same purpose; not as an antiquarian biography but as an ascetical icon—a narrative intended to form its readers into what it depicts. He opens by telling “the monks in foreign parts” that requested Antony’s story, that they “will be wishful to emulate his determination; seeing that for monks the life of Antony is a sufficient pattern of discipline.”⁴⁶ The text, then, is deliberately pedagogical: it narrates Antony’s sanctity so that the reader may enter the same trajectory of theotic transformation.

After nearly twenty years of solitude sealed in a fort, Antony emerges to greet admirers who were trying to break in. Antony comes forth “as from a shrine, initiated in the mysteries and filled with the Spirit of God.”⁴⁷ The language is strikingly mystagogical: Athanasius depicts ascetic discipline as a kind of interior liturgy whose fruit is Spirit-filled humanity. What they see is not an otherworldly spectacle but a restored person: Antony’s body is unchanged—neither “fat … nor lean”—and, more importantly, his soul is “free from blemish,” uncontracted by grief and unrelaxed by pleasure, “guided by reason, and abiding in a natural state.”⁴⁸ In Athanasius’s theological grammar, this “natural state” is not Stoic equilibrium; it signals human nature healed and re-ordered—the image stabilised toward the likeness. Indeed, Athanasius elsewhere describes humanity’s intended end as sharing, by grace, a “life according to God,”⁴⁹ so that—if kept in incorruption—one would “live thereafter like God.”⁵⁰ Antony’s serenity is theosis enacted: a life so permeated by divine communion that the passions no longer tyrannise, and the human person becomes transparently God-ward.

Athanasius immediately links this interior transfiguration to charismatic love for others: “Through him the Lord healed … and cleansed others from evil spirits,” and God “gave grace to Antony in speaking” so that he reconciled enemies and persuaded many into the “citizenship in the heavens.”⁵¹ Theosis here is not private spiritual attainment but participated life in Christ that overflows as healing, reconciliation, and teaching, praying, singing, and working.

Antony’s life—received and circulated as a model for imitation—displays participation as a cruciform habitus of prayer, renunciation, and spiritual struggle ordered to communion with Christ, thereby demonstrating how theosis can be narrated without metaphysical speculation. The Vita Antonii is intentionally designed as a theological instrument of theosis: it narrates an embodied, communal, Spirit-filled transformation so that readers might imitate—and so participate in—the same divine life. Antony’s ascetical model establishes a grammar for participatory salvation; Athanasius provides its doctrinal ground in incarnational christology.

A generation later, Gregory of Nyssa, one of the three great Cappadocian fathers, penned a life of his elder sister, Saint Macrina the Younger (written sometime between 380 AD and 383 AD), largely for the same purposes as Athanasius’s Vita Antonii, to provide a model of theosis in practice.⁵² Anna Silvas concludes, “Gregory certainly presents the entire life of Macrina as a ‘mystic procession’ culminating in divine communion.”⁵³ In their various visits to Macrina at Annesi in the years of the Arian conflict and the Nicene debates, the brothers “discovered,” in James Mamone’s words, “what their faith actually looked like when it was lived rather than merely defended.”⁵⁴ Macrina’s witness—mediated through her brother—exemplifies participatory salvation as a pedagogy of virtue and hope, where communal ascetic practice and deathbed confession display theosis as lived communion and eschatological confidence.

Macrina was the eldest of ten children, and her brothers included Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa. Their family was one of, if not the most sainted family in Christian history. Macrina’s parents were Saint Basil and Saint Emmelia; her paternal grandmother was St Macrina the Elder; and among her siblings, Basil, Gregory, and Peter were saints. Macrina, Basil, and Peter founded monasteries along the Iris River, Macrina’s at Annesi. Another brother, Naucratius, became something of an eremite and died whilst hunting to provide food for those in his care.⁵⁵ At the age of twelve, Macrina was engaged, but her fiancé died, and she vowed henceforth to live as a virgin. Gregory refers to Macrina as “his teacher” and tells us that her ideas and theology are foundational to what we now know as the theology of the Cappadocians.⁵⁶

The Vita Sanctae Macrinae is intentionally a work of theology in action: Gregory narrates his sister’s concrete habits, choices, and posture toward suffering so that readers may see what deification looks like in ordinary time—within family responsibilities, social relations, grief, prayer, community, and death. Anna Silvas’s study of St Macrina explains its intent: “Just as the innate character of Christian liturgy involves a certain sense of progression from the earthbound to the supremely sacred, a gradual broaching of thresholds until access to the innermost shrine is finally gained, so the life of the virgin is portrayed [as] a gradual progression towards divine communion.”⁵⁷

Gregory depicts Macrina as a quiet but decisive “teacher” whose holiness reshapes others. When Basil returns from his studies “puffed up” and “monstrously conceited” with rhetorical prestige, Macrina “took him in hand” and won him “to the ideal of philosophy,” so that he renounced “worldly appearance,” committed to a life of poverty, so as to live “without impediment towards virtue.”⁵⁸ In Gregory’s telling, this is theosis enacted as Christlike kenosis: the heart is freed from the slavery of acclaim and property so it may become spacious for God. Macrina’s sanctity is not self-enclosed; it is contagious, generating conversion in others. Here, deification appears as the Spirit’s reordering of desire—turning human excellence away from self-absorption and toward communion with God.

Gregory portrays Macrina’s community at Annesi as an anticipation of eschatological humanity: free from anger, envy, rivalry, and pride, ordered by “constant prayer and the unceasing singing of hymns,”⁵⁹ and consciously imitating the “angelic life.”⁶⁰ Theosis here is not escape from embodied or economic realities; it is their transfiguration. A hierarchy of domination is converted into a fellowship of equals, because communion with God necessarily presses toward communion with neighbour. “This is the theology of theosis as it manifests in daily life. The divine image within the human person is restored not by escaping the world but by redeeming it from within, bringing every act, gesture, and labour into the orbit of God’s love. The kitchen is the chapel. The kneading trough is the altar. Not metaphorically. Actually.”⁶¹ Macrina’s community life was full of praying the Psalms, making bread, cooking for the poor, working vegetable gardens, running what we would call an orphanage, and other manual labour.⁶² Ordinary life is here depicted as holy living, as deification in practice.

The asceticism practised at Annesi was not a Neoplatonic type but a deeply Christian version in which the passions are disciplined, not suppressed, and turned to the service of God’s glory. By reordering the passions, a certain kind of kenosis is reenacted, the same kenosis of the eternal Son who became human for us and our salvation. Through askesis, the image of God is restored in each human person, encompassing their thoughts, emotions, and works. For Macrina, this meant a vow of virginity and a community dedicated to praying the Psalms, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, educating the ignorant, and feeding the souls of all people with Christ’s presence. Asceticism, including virginity, was not a deprivation for Macrina but a concentration. The goal of the Christian life is not the release of the soul from the prison of the body. Theosis is about an embodied transformation from glory to glory; it is about the participation of matter in the Divine life.⁶³

Gregory’s notes several times that his sister and the community at Annasi seemed to “transcend human nature.”⁶⁴ He does not mean they ceased to be human. Instead, as with all accounts of theosis, he means to say that in their deification, they were becoming more human, not less. Silvas notes that “The presiding genius, the patient but unwavering catalyst of these domestic ‘recalibrations’ was Macrina.”⁶⁵

The most searching test of deification is not ecstasy but suffering. When Naucratius dies suddenly, Macrina becomes “the one support” of her devastated mother, refusing to collapse and teaching courage through steadfastness. Gregory emphasises that she conquers not only her mother’s grief but her own “natural affection,” so that sorrow is not suppressed but healed by hope.⁶⁶ “It was theosis made perceptible, the image of God restored in a human soul to the point where that soul could bear what would otherwise be unbearable, not because it was numb, but because it was full.”⁶⁷ This same hope matures in her final hours. Turning her couch toward the East, Macrina ceases conversation and speaks directly to God in a long prayer: she blesses Christ for freeing humanity “from the fear of death,” confesses the resurrection as God’s “transforming with incorruptibility and grace what is mortal and deformed in us,” and asks that her “soul be received blameless and immaculate … as an incense offering.”⁶⁸ In this dying prayer, theosis is revealed as a cruciform journey—union with the crucified and risen Lord that renders death not as annihilation but as a transition to fuller life.

Macrina’s holiness is not an abstract theory of participation but a narrated pattern of it. Theosis is lived as kenotic freedom from self-obsession, as communal equality that reflects heaven’s economy, and as a hope-saturated endurance that prays its way through death into God.

IV.2. Vernacular Expression

The next couplet of theotic exemplars is the Indian Christian Sadhu, Sundar Singh (1889–1929), and the British academic and novelist, C. S. Lewis (1898–1963). Both Singh and Lewis explicitly adopt a doctrine of theosis and were evangelists, lay theologians, and popularisers of theosis for their peers.

The life of Sadhu Sundar Singh demonstrates how participatory salvation can be expressed in an unmistakably evangelical register—Christ-centred, missionally directed, and cruciform—while taking an indigenous ascetic form that renders theosis logical in an Indian Hindu context.⁶⁹ As with Antony and Macrina, Singh was born into wealth but chose to forsake this for the way of Christ. He was a mystic and had many encounters with the risen Christ in dreams, visions, and words. Through one such vision in 1904, whilst at a Presbyterian Mission School, he converted to Christianity, began preaching as an ascetic, wore saffron robes, and lived a mendicant lifestyle.⁷⁰ Singh was being true to his Indian context as well as being faithful to Christ. Singh illustrates a theology in action in an Indian way. Despite being baptised in the Church of England, he remained non-denominational, travelling extensively across Asia and the West, before disappearing in 1929.⁷¹

Singh was an advocate of theosis, although he rarely used that term, preferring other terms, such as participation in Christ’s life, indwelling divine presence, fullness of the Holy Spirit, and being changed into God’s image and likeness, culminating in sharing Christ’s glory—a classic deification grammar of likeness and participation by grace rather than identity by essence.⁷² In prayer, one becomes like God as they share in his will and participate in the Divine nature.⁷³ Through prayer, we are changed “into [God’s] glorious image and likeness.”⁷⁴ His Meditations underscores the necessity of silence and solitude to hear Christ, and speaks of God flowing into the humble heart with all the fullness of his presence, a practical ascetical path to union. “To be saved by Christ is to receive new life from Him, to become a new creature.”⁷⁵ In Heiler’s summation:

humanity is not only called to become a new creation, it is destined for something higher still: to be conformed to the likeness of Christ, who is the “express image” of God. “The real purpose of the Incarnation of Divine Love is to raise humanity to its perfection.” Thus the Sadhu’s doctrine of salvation rises to the heights of the mystical idea of deification—a ‘deification,’ however, which avoids the dangerous reefs of pantheism. The Athanasian idea that God became man in order to deify humanity is re-echoed by Sundar Singh.⁷⁶

Singh thought of believers as “Christ’s own parts,”⁷⁷ or even, “they are Christ Himself.”⁷⁸ This did not mean Singh thought believers became the one true God. He wrote, “we do not become gods.”⁷⁹ He taught that “those who, through prayer, abide in communion with Me, partake of My nature alongside the saints and angels, and by being formed in My image, they gradually become like Me.”⁸⁰ In union with Christ, believers are made into “new creatures like [Christ] Himself.”⁸¹

Through poverty, suffering, mission, humility, love, and good works, Singh sought to live into Christ, full of the Spirit. This is evident in his decision to be a sadhu. This physical and visible transformation was more than symbolic for Singh; it was a powerful form of theological witness. He was saying, by his physical appearance, that Christianity is not a Western religion; hence, a foreign import. Instead, it is for everyone, anywhere, and at all times. Having no institutional status meant Singh had to rely only on Christ.

The presence of Christ both accompanies the humble believer and transforms them into his likeness, producing peace, joy, and holiness. Theosis, according to Singh, is thoroughly orthodox, being participation in Christ and, through Christ, in the divine nature. In the present, this looks like a cruciform life, “the cross is the key to heaven … as soon as believers take up their cross and follow Me they enter heaven.”⁸²

Singh’s theology has a clear eschatological orientation, as he looks forward to the glorification of believers who share in the Divine life. Singh’s teaching is theotic in that Christianity is union with the living Christ by the indwelling Spirit, through which believers are changed into God’s image and likeness, grow into Christ’s fullness, and finally share Christ’s glory—a participation by grace that he modelled in a cruciform, prayer-saturated, humble, itinerant life.

If Singh exemplifies participation in cruciform and culturally translated form, C. S. Lewis shows how participation can be articulated in a Western lay idiom understandable by lay readers.⁸³ Like Singh, Lewis avoids technical vocabulary and instead prefers vernacular terms such as transformation, participation, and the exchange formula, so ubiquitous in early Christianity. As an Oxford and Cambridge Professor of English Literature, an esteemed author of popular Christian essays, and the writer of the Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis’s works have reached a global audience and appeal to both young and old. Lewis is perhaps the most successful exporter of the doctrine of theosis today, although due to his non-technical prose, the term is still unknown to most.

For Lewis, salvation is not merely moral improvement or forensic pardon but ontological transformation through union with Christ. This, in addition to the strong participationist theme across all his works, places him squarely in the realm of theosis. In his popular work, Mere Christianity, he directly echoes Athanasius, writing, “The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.”⁸⁴ He presses the point further in unmistakable language, “He said (in the Bible) that we were ‘gods’ and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him—for we can prevent Him, if we choose—He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature.”⁸⁵

Later he writes, “Century by century God has guided nature up to the point of producing creatures which can (if they will) be taken right out of nature, turned into ‘gods’.”⁸⁶ Lewis is aware of the misunderstanding this can cause, and so he is careful to clarify that this is participation by grace, not equality by nature: “That is why men are not Sons of God in the sense that Christ is. They may be like God in certain ways, but they are not things of the same kind. They are more like statues or pictures of God.”⁸⁷

Lewis speaks of theosis by analogy, metaphor, symbol, and image. “This world is a great sculptor’s shop. We are the statues and there is a rumour going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life.”⁸⁸ Theosis works like a “good infection,”⁸⁹ whereby “if we let God have His way, [we] come to share in the life of Christ.”⁹⁰ The transformative process of theosis is like the process of turning a horse into a winged creature,⁹¹ a tin soldier into a real boy,⁹² it is the difference between being made and being begotten.⁹³

And what is the result of this transformation? For Lewis, it is nothing other than theosis. Five times in the fourth part of his popular book Mere Christianity, Lewis tells us that the telos of the Christian life is to become “little Christs.”⁹⁴ This is not achieved by moral effort or self-help, but is a transformation enabled by grace. This echoes Pauline and Johannine theology (e.g. Gal 2:20; 2 Pet 1:4) and shows Lewis’s deeply incarnational account of participation: Christ’s humanity becomes the means by which the Divine life is communicated to creatures.

In his essay “The Weight of Glory,” Lewis places theosis within the horizon of eschatological glory: “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.”⁹⁵ Human destiny, for Lewis, is transfiguration, not annihilation or absorption. Glory perfects creaturehood rather than erasing it.

Lewis did not merely describe transformation; his own life shows progressive participation in the Divine life through costly love and surrender. Lewis wrote several autobiographies on various parts of his life, and he was not shy about his faults or the difference Christ made to his life. There is an intellectual kenosis, of sorts, retold in his conversion story, whereby he moves from an intellectual pride to a humble submission to God. Lewis moved from militant atheism to Christian faith through a painful relinquishing of intellectual autonomy. He later described his conversion as a reluctant surrender, “I gave in, and admitted that God was God … perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”⁹⁶ This marks the beginning of theosis as submission of the will, not triumph of the ego.

Relationships are another area in which theosis made a practical difference in Lewis’s life. Before his conversion, relationships were difficult to form, and people were objects of use rather than seen as persons. Once united to Christ, however, his relationships took on a different hue. Lewis’s long, difficult care for Mrs Janie Moore required decades of financial, emotional, and domestic sacrifice. Though often burdensome, it disciplined him in self-giving love, preparing him for later relational obedience. His early bachelor self was slowly reshaped into a man capable of kenotic commitment—a key mark of participation in Christ. His enjoyment of the company of the Inklings, the Agape Fund he established to help those less fortunate than himself, his opening of the house to children in wartime and his continued support for many of them long after, and his care for his brother Warnie are all symptoms of a Christ-like transformation.

Lewis presents theosis as the central logic of Christianity: God became human so that humans might share in divine life. His writings offer a patristic vision translated for modern readers, while his life demonstrates that deification occurs not through simply spiritual ascent but through costly obedience, love, suffering, and grace. Lewis gives theosis a global voice and impact, albeit disguised in images, idioms, and symbols.

V. Conclusion: Theosis in Action—A Participatory Salvation Evangelicals Already Know

When union with Christ is taken seriously, theosis names salvation’s participatory and eschatological depth—best grasped not only in propositions but also in lives conformed to Christ by grace. Each of us in Christ is a proleptic icon of God’s deifying work. In this way, biography witnesses to doctrine’s telos without becoming a doctrinal source. As we praise Christ for our union with him, thank the Spirit for his presence in our lives, and look towards that future when the Father shall welcome us into the Kingdom, may our biographies be living testimonies to God’s deifying work. Evangelicals need not fear theosis as a foreign theology: theosis is already implicit in the language of union with, and participation in, Christ, sanctification, glorification, and now clarified and deepened through personal biography.

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1. Reformed theology calls this an ordo salutis. See Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1939), 416.↩︎

2. Thomas F. Torrance, Space, Time and Resurrection (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 136–39. For a full presentation, see Myk Habets, Theosis in the Theology of Thomas Torrance (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009).↩︎

3. Veli‑Matti Kärkkäinen, One with God: Salvation as Deification and Justification (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2004).↩︎

4. Carl Mosser, “The Gospel’s End and Our Highest Good: Deification in the Reformed Tradition,” in With All the Fullness of God: Deification in Christian Tradition, ed. Jared Ortiz (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2021), 83–109; and “John Calvin and Early Reformed Theology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Deification, ed. Paul L. Gavrilyuk, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Matthew Levering (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024), 317–34.↩︎

5. R. Lucas Stamps, “Baptizing Theosis: Sketching an Evangelical Account,” Perichoresis 18.1 (2020): 99–115.↩︎

6. Randy Maddox, Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994).↩︎

7. Myk Habets, “Recent Anglican and Protestant Theology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Deification, 499–521.↩︎

8. Anna N. Williams, The Ground of Union: Deification in Aquinas and Palamas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).↩︎

9. See Habets, Theosis in the Theology of Thomas Torrance, 109.↩︎

10. For a discussion, see Habets, Theosis in the Theology of Thomas Torrance, 57–59.↩︎

11. We read this concept off numerous Pauline texts such as: Rom 6:5, 14; 8:1–17; Gal 2:19–20; Eph 5:31–32; Col 3:3; and 1 Cor 12:21. See the discussion in Shane J. Wood, “Interpenetration Logic: Pauline Spirituality and Union With Christ,” Religions 13.8 (2022): 1–12, and Derek E. Wilder, “Ontological Overtones of Participatory Soteriology in Romans 8:1–17,” (PhD Thesis, Liberty University, 2024).↩︎

12. Examples include: Rom 8:16, 17; Gal 3:26–27; 4:7; Eph 1:5; along with the wider testimony of the New Testament, including John 1:12; 1 Peter 2:9; and 1 John 3:1.↩︎

13. See Paul A. Dominiak, Richard Hooker: The Architecture of Participation (London: T&T Clark Bloomsbury, 2020), 2–3, who notes the influence of Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas and others on such definitions.↩︎

14. See Thomas G. Weinandy, The Trinity: Eternity and Time (Ave Maria: Sapientia Press, 2022), 49–58, and Does God Change: The Word’s Becoming in the Incarnation (Still River, MA: St. Bede’s Publications, 1984), 67–100.↩︎

15. Andrew Davison, “Deification and the Metaphysics of Participation,” in The Oxford Handbook of Deification, 550. See further in Andrew Davison, Participation in God: A Study on Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 150–52.↩︎

16. For a detailed articulation of this from the works of Athanasius and Thomas F. Torrance, see Habets, Theosis in the Theology of Thomas Torrance, 57.↩︎

17. Yohanes B. Mulyono, Transformation in Theosis: Embracing the Divine Nature (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2025), viii.↩︎

18. Mulyono, Transformation, 2.↩︎

19. Mulyono, Transformation, 4.↩︎

20. Mulyono, Transformation, 6. In Mulyono’s work, theosis restores the original imago Dei that has been marred by the fall; see pages 8–14. I prefer an Irenaean account of intentional and progressive human maturing, rather than a perfection-fall account.↩︎

21. Mulyono, Transformation, 8. Don Payne, Already Sanctified: A Theology of the Christian Life in Light of God’s Completed Work (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020), offers a convincing case that in Scripture sanctification is primarily ontological before it is ethical; it is positional before it is progressive.↩︎

22. Mulyono, Transformation, 9.↩︎

23. Mulyono, Transformation, 10.↩︎

24. Mulyono, Transformation, 11.↩︎

25. Mulyono, Transformation, 11.↩︎

26. Mulyono, Transformation, 11.↩︎

27. Mulyono, Transformation, 12.↩︎

28. Mulyono, Transformation, 14.↩︎

29. Mulyono, Transformation, 138.↩︎

30. James Wm. McClendon Jr., Biography as Theology: How Life Stories Can Remake Today’s Theology (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1974).↩︎

31. See Myk Habets, “‘The Dogma is the Drama’: Dramatic Developments in Biblical Theology,” Stimulus 16.4 (November 2008): 2–5.↩︎

32. McClendon Jr., Biography as Theology, 7–9.↩︎

33. McClendon’s work is not without its critics; see Brendon Neilson, “Living Theology: The Discovery, Understanding, and Critical Revision of James Wm McClendon Jr.’s Biographical Method,” (PhD thesis., Auckland University of Technology, 2015); and Randal Rauser, “Biography as Theology: A Review,” RandalRauser.com. March 8, 2019. https://randalrauser.com/2019/03/biography-as-theology-a-review/.↩︎

34. McClendon Jr., Biography as Theology, 12–15.↩︎

35. McClendon Jr., Biography as Theology, 23–26.↩︎

36. McClendon Jr., Biography as Theology, 67–82.↩︎

37. McClendon Jr., Biography as Theology, 78–82. McClendon includes the biographies of Dag Hammarskjöld, Martin Luther King Jr., Clarence Jordan, and Charles Ives.↩︎

38. McClendon Jr., Biography as Theology, 142–56. McClendon’s work found its mature expression in his three-volume Systematic Theology. James Wm. McClendon Jr., Systematic Theology, vol.1. Ethics, vol. 2. Doctrine, Vol. 3. Witness (Nashville: Abingdon: 2012).↩︎

39. The issue of hagiography and historical reliability looms large, but neither is a central issue in the current account. The message Athanasius and Gregory sought to pass on to disciples is more important than the historical reliability of such accounts. See Samuel Rubenson, The Letters of St. Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), Susanna Elm, “Virgins of God”: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), and Jessica Scott “Apophatic Theology at the Edge of Life Writing: A Reading of Gregory of Nyssa’s The Life of Macrina,” Life Writing (29 Sept 2025).↩︎

40. See Athanasius, Life of Antony, in NPNF, 2nd ser., 4: Athanasius: Select Works and Letters, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1892), 195–221. On imitation in Greco-Roman culture and in Christianity, see Cornelis Bennema, Imitation in Early Christianity: Mimesis and Religious-Ethical Formation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2025).↩︎

41. See the comments by John Behr, “Introduction,” in Athanasius, On the Incarnation trans., John Behr (Yonkers: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 41–46.↩︎

42. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 54, trans., John Behr (Yonkers: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 167.↩︎

43. Athanasius, Four Discourses Against the Arians, (Discourse I), 39 in NPNF, 2nd ser., 4: Athanasius: Select Works and Letters, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1892), 329.↩︎

44. Athanasius, Four Discourses Against the Arians, (Discourse I), 42 in NPNF², 4:330.↩︎

45. Athanasius, Letters to Serapion on the Holy Spirit, 1.23.7, in Works of the Spirit, trans. Mark DelCogliano, Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, and Lewis Ayres (Yonkers: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 90.↩︎

46. See Athanasius, Life of Antony, in NPNF², 4:195–221.

    See the comments by Behr, “Introduction,” 195.↩︎

47. Athanasius, Life of Antony, in NPNF², 4:200.↩︎

48. Athanasius, Life of Antony, in NPNF², 4:200.↩︎

49. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, (5) 61.↩︎

50. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, (4) 59, going on to cite Psalm 81:6: “I said you are gods, and all sons of the Most High.”↩︎

51. Athanasius, Life of Antony, in NPNF², 4:200.↩︎

52. Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Saint Macrina, trans. Kevin Corrigan (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2005). For a detailed study, see Anna M. Silvas, Macrina the Younger: Philosopher of God (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2008).↩︎

53. Silvas, Macrina the Younger, 105.↩︎

54. James Mamone, The Teacher: The Life and Philosophy of Saint Macrina the Younger (NP: Willow and Thorn Publishing, 2026), 101.↩︎

55. Kevin Corrigan, “Introduction,” in Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Saint Macrina, 6. Gregory Nazianzen tells us Naucratius drowned whilst fishing, The Greek Anthology, vol. II, 156, trans., and ed., W. R. Paton (London: Heinemann, 1925), cited in Silvas, Macrina the Younger, 80.↩︎

56. Gregory’s work On the Soul and the Resurrection, trans. Catherine P. Roth (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1993), is a dialogue between Macrina and Gregory. Macrina is presented as a second Thekla, the virgin companion of Paul, and as a theologian-philosopher of the first order, who, although not formally trained, can teach both Gregory and the great Basil. See Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Saint Macrina, 22.↩︎

57. Silvas, Macrina the Younger, 105.↩︎

58. Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Saint Macrina, 26. Silvas, Macrina the Younger, x, notes the profound influence of Macrina on her brothers.↩︎

59. Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Saint Macrina, 30.↩︎

60. Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Saint Macrina, 31↩︎

61. Mamone, The Teacher, 41.↩︎

62. Silvas, Macrina the Younger, 32–33.↩︎

63. Silvas, Macrina the Younger, 40–43.↩︎

64. Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Saint Macrina, 40.↩︎

65. Silvas, Macrina the Younger, 43.↩︎

66. Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Saint Macrina, 28.↩︎

67. Mamone, The Teacher, 52–53.↩︎

68. Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Saint Macrina, 41, 42.↩︎

69. See Friedrich Heiler, The Gospel of Sadhu Sundar Singh (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1927).↩︎

70. Heiler, The Gospel, 41–49. Singh chose the life of a Christian sadhu thirty-three days after his baptism, at the age of sixteen (Heiler, The Gospel, 57).↩︎

71. Heiler, The Gospel, 54. Singh had to wait until his sixteenth birthday to get baptised due to Indian laws concerning religious conversion. He was baptised in St Thomas Church at Simla by a Mr. Redman according to the rite of the Anglican Church.↩︎

72. See Sadhu Sundar Singh, At the Master’s Feet (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1922), Reality and Religion: Meditations on God, Man and Nature (New York: Macmillan, 1924), and Meditations on Various Aspects of the Spiritual Life (London: Macmillan, 1926).↩︎

73. Sadhu Sundar Singh, Essential Writings (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2005), 58.↩︎

74. Singh, Reality and Religion, 6.↩︎

75. Heiler, The Gospel, 166. Heiler quotes Singh but provides no reference. This is likely a paraphrase of Singh, Meditations on Various Aspects of the Spiritual Life, 17, “To become like flames of fire means to become like God.”↩︎

76. Heiler, The Gospel, 167. When citing Singh, Heiler gives no references, but this comes from Singh, Meditations on Various Aspects of the Spiritual Life, 16.↩︎

77. Burnett H. Streeter and Aiyadurai J. Appasamy, The Sadhu: A Study in Mysticism and Practical Religion (London: Macmillan, 1921), 67.↩︎

78. Streeter and Appasamy, The Sadhu, 67.↩︎

79. Streeter and Appasamy, The Sadhu, 67.↩︎

80. Singh, At the Master’s Feet, 48.↩︎

81. Singh, Meditations, 50.↩︎

82. Singh, At the Master’s Feet.↩︎

83. See Myk Habets, “Walking In mirabilibus supra me: How C. S. Lewis Transposes Theosis,” Evangelical Quarterly 82.1 (January 2010): 15–27.↩︎

84. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 178. Lewis was aware of the works of Athanasius and wrote, “Introduction,” to Athanasius, The Incarnation of the Word of God, trans. A Religious of C.S.M.V. (New York: Macmillan, 1946), 1–12.↩︎

85. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 205–06.↩︎

86. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 222.↩︎

87. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 158.↩︎

88. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 159.↩︎

89. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 172–77↩︎

90. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 177.↩︎

91. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 218.↩︎

92. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 179.↩︎

93. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 153.↩︎

94. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 177, 192, 193, 199, 225.↩︎

95. C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 45.↩︎

96. C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (London: Collins, 2012), 266.↩︎