Two volumes of essays on deification, the process of becoming like God, discussing the biblical and theological development of the concept.


Deification is the transformation of believers into the likeness of God. While Christian monotheism does not support the notion of any literal ‘god making’ of believers, the New Testament often speaks of a transformation of mind, a metamorphosis of character, a redefinition of selfhood, and an imitation of God. Most of these passages are tantalisingly brief, and none spell out the concept in detail.

This idea was very important in the early Church, but it took a long time for one term to emerge as the standard label for the process. Eventually, the great fourth-century theologian Gregory of Nazianzus coined the term “theosis”. Nowadays, theologians use “theosis” to designate all instances where any idea of taking on God’s character or being made divine occurs, even when the term “theosis” is not explicitly used. Quite naturally though, different Christian authors understood deification differently.

While some of the articles in the first volume discuss pre-Christian antecedents of theosis, the majority of them focus on specific Christian understandings. Gregory Glazov in particular examines Old Testament covenant theology, with an emphasis on divine adoption, and on bearing the fruit of knowledge or attaining the stature of a tree of righteousness in Proverbs, Isaiah, and Sirach. The article by Stephen Finlan on 2 Peter 1:4 (“You may become participants of the divine nature”) examines the epistle’s apparent borrowings from Middle Platonic spirituality, Stoic ethics and Jewish apocalyptic expectation.

The second volume offers a variety of innovative approaches to the issue of theosis – the name by which this process of transformation has become known. The interconnections between the theology of deification and the doctrines of the Trinity, Christology, anthropology, protology, hamartiology, soteriology, and eschatology are made manifest in these fascinating new studies.

This two-volume collection provides a wealth of fresh thinking on a topic of considerable interest to modern theologians. It is aimed both at those who are already students of theosis and at those who are looking for an introductory text. It also contains a comprehensive and up-to-date bibliography for those seeking further resources on the theme.