Christification

Introduction to the Doctrine of theosis

The doctrine of theosis has enjoyed a recent resurgence among varied theological traditions across the realms of historical, dogmatic, and exegetical theology.

Overview of Christification: A Lutheran Approach to Theosis

In Christification: A Lutheran Approach to Theosis, Jordan Cooper evaluates this teaching from a Lutheran perspective. He examines the teachings of the church fathers, the New Testament, and the Lutheran Confessional tradition in conversation with recent scholarship on theosis.

Cooper's Proposal on Soteriology

Cooper proposes that the participationist soteriology of the early fathers expressed in terms of theosis is compatible with Luther's doctrine of forensic justification. The historic Lutheran tradition, Scripture, and the patristic sources do not limit soteriological discussions to legal terminology, but instead offer a multifaceted doctrine of salvation that encapsulates both participatory and forensic motifs.

Comparison with Eastern Deification

This is compared and contrasted with the development of the doctrine of deification in the Eastern tradition arising from the thought of Pseudo-Dionysius.

Early Fathers and Christification

Cooper argues that the doctrine of the earliest fathers—such as Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Justin—is primarily a Christological and economic reality defined as Christification. This model of theosis is placed in contradistinction to later Neoplatonic forms of deification.