Physicalist soteriology is a scholarly category created by the nineteenth-century German liberal Protestants. Because they immediately connected physicalism with heterodoxy, subsequent scholars have – through methodologically untenable approaches – frequently rejected physicalism as a logic that has no historical existence. A review of scholarship on physicalist soteriology – within development of doctrine studies, studies of individual early Christian authors, and deification studies – reveals that physicalist soteriology has been subsumed into other scholarly projects and has rarely been the direct subject of scholarly study. The six major early Christian proponents of physicalist soteriology, namely Athanasius, Hilary of Poitiers, Marius Victorinus, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, and Maximus the Confessor, are introduced.

Scholars on Hilary have been uniquely open to and accepting of the presence of physicalist soteriology in Hilary’s thought. Hilary presents a corporate physicalism in which all humans exist in Christ’s incarnate body apart from, and prior to, any individual willing or choice, and this existence in Christ’s body gives eternal incorruptibility to all humans. However, Hilary presents salvation not merely as incorruptibility but as a complete and never-ending mutual indwelling of individuals and Christ. The physicalist existence of humans in Christ’s body is the necessary foundation of this permanent mutual indwelling, but the choices of each individual either enable or reject it.