Here are a few thoughts on why I think Protestants don’t like theosis as a soteriological category. These are a few claims that I’ve heard about why it’s not good. Some are more difficult to overcome than others.
1) It is unfamiliar.
2) It unseats justification: As a competing soteriology, it impinges the sole place to be held by justification, especially because justification language isn’t really used at all to describe theosis.
3) It is synergism: Not only does it replace justification, but it smacks of a works-based salvation.
4) It is idolatry: It confuses the created with Creator. That is, it repeats the sin of Adam and Eve.
5) It is mysticism: Closely related to #4, is the idea of fusion of the created with the creator (a la neo-platonism). Whereas #4 is ideological, #5 relates to ontology.
6) It sounds like Mormonism.
Dunelm Road 
Friday, 28 August 2009 at 10:45 am
Hi Ben,
I have been following your blog for the last few months as I, an Evangelical, also have interests in theosis (and am doing a PhD in Birmingham UK that deals with the subject — in particular in regards to Maximus).
Being in Durham, have you spoken with NT Wright much about this? It seems as though the NPP has many similarities to theosis and, likewise, has similar attacks from traditionally more Reformed Protestantism. For me personally, I think I struggle the most with #3 on your list. BTW, would it be possible for me to get a digital copy of your ThM thesis?
Cheers,
Alex
Friday, 28 August 2009 at 4:13 pm
I, for one, am intrigued with the concept, but I am not sure I fully understand it. I am wondering whether you think the concept of theosis is compatible with the doctrine of Christian Perfection as espoused by John Wesley.
Friday, 28 August 2009 at 8:44 pm
Alex,
Perhaps I can help assuage your worries on #3.
I suppose it depends on if you wish to exclude all human activity from justification or just certain kinds like Augustine does. If the former there isn’t much that can be done, but if the latter, there seems to be quite a bit. Since Augustine includes human activityin justification, then there is no principled reason why synergism should be a problem. Synergism isn’t co-extensive with semi-pelagianism.
Saturday, 29 August 2009 at 1:08 pm
Brian,
I can tell you that there is considerable interest in scholarly Wesley/Wesleyan circles in connecting the theology of Wesley and the Wesleyan tradition with the East and theosis–including some interesting papers from Wesleyan-Orthodox discussions. I don’t have access to that material at the moment, but some of it has been published in book form. There is much more to be done, but I suspect there is significant mutual complementarity.
Tuesday, 1 September 2009 at 7:20 am
Yes, the Wesleyans do seem to be more open to this. In fact, there is a Methodist minister here in Durham about to start her PhD on Charles Wesley and theosis.
Saturday, 29 August 2009 at 5:20 pm
[…] Blackwell ponders six reasons why Protestants don’t like theosis. He leaves out ignorance, patrophobia (have I just invented a word?) and suspicion of […]
Saturday, 29 August 2009 at 10:44 pm
4 and 5 aren’t a problem either, on the Eastern Orthodox understandng, there is no mixing or replacement sof essences, but a transfer of properties or energies. A created analogy might help. Heat is the energy of fire. If I get hot, I do not become the essence of fire. Blacksmiths forming a sword for example, the steel ges hot and takes on the energy of the fire, while remaining steel. Likewise the flesh of Christ is transfigured with the eternal glory as was Moses’ face and yet their flesh remained such.
Consequently, there is no “mysticism” if by that one means a loss of identity or human nature. There is no drop lost in the ocean of the divine.
Sunday, 30 August 2009 at 5:27 am
Ben, I recently preached (at our fairly typical evangelical church) on 1 John 3:1-10. In doing so I introduced the concept of theosis. I think in part it was well received but in part I think people just heard “sanctification” and so didn’t get the full concept. But I think it was useful to introduce to the congregation. PS – My wife and I are getting excited about coming to Durham in a month.
Sunday, 30 August 2009 at 9:47 pm
#2 is true, if by justification we are talking about the Reformation understanding of it, but not if we are talking about that notion endorsed by say Augustine, Athanasius or the Cappadocians.
But that is just to say that the view of justification in the early church wasn’t that of the Reformation a thousand or so years later.
Monday, 31 August 2009 at 10:38 pm
Hi all, good posts thank you.
Points 2-5 do not necessarily have to be associated with a doctrine of theosis though. The point of my work on theosis is that there is no one doctrine of theosis that rules them all in Tolkein-like fashion. Palamas was not the last word on it and the EO do not have rights to the concept.
Rather, there are doctrines of theosis, within EO, and even, many suggest, within individual thinkers such as Athanasius! So it depends on whether you want to construct a western doctrine of theosis or an eastern one, and if a western one, what sort: Reformed, Wesleyan, Pentecostal, Arminian, etc.? And all of these decisions will be influenced by exegesis and theological committments.
For my money, a Reformed doctrine of Theosis holds out the most promise and it is not synergistic (in a semi-Pelgain or Arminian sense), idolatrous, or mysticism simpliciter. And it does not have to unseat justification, although it does seek to ‘reform’ the idea back to a more biblical mode.
I have written on this in Theology Today, Princeton Theological Review, in Finlan’s edited volume on theosis, and in a forthcoming work I am editing for a Wipf and Stock volume tenatively titled ‘The SPirit of Truth’.
Wednesday, 26 May 2010 at 2:15 pm
It is an interesting story of how theosis/sanctification as taught by the Pentecostals of Azusa and diapora of Zion Illinos (the second of three works of grace) got removed from subsequent incarnations of the Pentecostal movement. The place where they are now might in fact be the direct result of this neglect of teaching and emphasis.
Wednesday, 28 March 2012 at 10:23 am
I like number 6. It sounds like Mormonism.
It sounds like Mormonism because Mormonism sound like the ancient Christian Church.
Non-LDS church historian Ernst Benz insisted that the doctrine of deification was present in the early Church, and pointed out a potential risk for those who do not understand it:
“Now this idea of deification could give rise to a misunderstanding—namely, that it leads to a blasphemous self-aggrandizement of man. If that were the case, then mysticism would, in fact, be the sublimist, most spiritualized form of egoism. But the concept of imago dei, in the Christian understanding of the term, precisely does not aspire to awaken in man a consciousness of his own divinity, but attempts to have him recognize the image of God in his neighbor. Here the powerful words of Jesus in Matthew 25:21–26 are appropriate and connected by the church fathers to imago dei…
“Hence, the concept of imago dei does not lead toward self-aggrandizement but rather toward charity as the true and actual form of God’s love, for the simple reason that in one’s neighbor the image of God, the Lord himself, confronts us. The love of God should be fulfilled in the love toward him in whom God himself is mirrored, in one’s neighbor. Thus, in the last analysis, the concept of imago dei is the key to the fundamental law of the gospel—”Thou shalt love . . . God . . . and thy neighbor as thyself” (Luke 10:27)—since one should view one’s neighbor with an eye to the image that God has engraven upon him and to the promise that he has given regarding him.” (Ernst W. Benz, “Imago Dei: Man in the Image of God”)
Ernst Benz (1907-1982) was a world renowned German professor of Theology at the University of Marburg, the world’s first and oldest protestant university.
Wednesday, 28 March 2012 at 3:33 pm
Hi Hannah Rebekah, Thanks for your comments. Mormon theology is not an area that I have fully explored. I think there is much overlap between the patristic, Mormon, and biblical perspectives on soteriology, but what separates biblical and patristic soteriology from Mormon theology is the foundation in the Trinity and the infinite qualitative difference between God and humanity. I can say that I find the arguments of Rob Bowman convincing: http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2011/11/did-joseph-smith-restore-theosis-part-five-early-church-fathers-and-joseph-smith%E2%80%99s-doctrine-of-exaltation/ However, properly researching the Mormon position is on my list over the next year or so. Could you recommend who you think represents the best exposition of Mormon deification?
Wednesday, 28 March 2012 at 10:27 am
“One can think what one wants of this doctrine of progressive deification, but one thing is certain: with this anthropology Joseph Smith is closer to the view of man held by the ancient Church than the precursors of the Augustinian doctrine of original sin.” (Non-LDS church historian Ernst Wilhelm Benz (1907-1978), world renowned Christian Theologian and Historian, stated the previous concerning the Latter-day Saints.)
Monday, 29 October 2012 at 3:30 pm
I think you hit it on the head in #2. Protestants only discuss salvation in term of justification. Sanctification is sometimes discussed but never glorification. When you say salvation, they are just thinking about the hymn “just as I am”, and walking up to the front of a meeting crying.
Thursday, 21 March 2013 at 8:17 pm
The best Modern Mormon take on deification is in the works of Blake Ostler, particularlly his “Exploring Mormon thought” volume 3, Of God and gods. Summery of the work:
“Blake Ostler announces his purpose as “a rescue operation to save the heart of God’s revelations to the Hebrews from the Greek mind.” The direct and powerful experience of the mysterious God that characterizes Hebrew religion was, he asserts, taken captive by the Greek fascination with intellectual puzzles. And the result was the complicated and unsatisfactory doctrine of the Trinity that has dominated traditional thinking ever since.
Ostler steps through the common complaint that Mormons aren’t Christian because they believe, not only in three separate individuals in the Godhead, but also in the deification of human beings. He demonstrates the clear biblical understanding, both in the precursors of the Old Testament and the New, that Jesus and God the Father were not one in some incomprehensible “substance” while separate in person, but were actually distinct individuals. What made them one was their indwelling love. It is that loving unity into which they invite human beings.
A major contribution of this volume, the third in Ostler’s series Exploring Mormon Thought, is his reconstruction of the Hebrew view of a council of gods, presided over by the Most High God. In the oldest Hebrew sources, Yahweh was one of these gods. Thus, from the beginning of the Christian revelation, there was no confusion about a shared identity, although Ostler’s discussion of the king/vizier relationship in the honor and shame culture of the ancient world explains how the confusion could have arisen.
In language and thought accessible to the lay reader but simultaneously rigorous and scholarly, Ostler analyzes and responds to the arguments of contemporary international theologians, reconstructs and interprets Joseph Smith’s important King Follett Discourse and Sermon in the Grove just before the Mormon prophet’s death, and argues persuasively for the Mormon doctrine of “robust deification.”