In the first section of this chapter, I critique Rudolf Bultmann’s emphasis on stripping away the ‘mythological’ apparel of the Gospels in order to access something behind or beneath the New Testament text by suggesting a way of reading that leaves the mythos intact and able to ‘speak’ on its own terms. In the second section, I suggest how Jesus’ own myth-making is inseparably bound up in his identity and the emergence of God’s presence in history, appealing to the work of Eberhard Jüngel and Hans Urs von Balthasar to re-place the kerygma inside the mythos itself as a ‘quasi-sacramental’ presentation of the divine.

The first chapter explores the meaning of religion - which is much broader than the belief-system of any given ecclesial communion - and also the meaning of theosis in its early historical development. Religion is considered up to the early modern age but theosis only to the end of the patristic age as the springboard for the study of later developments as they relate to religion.

The second chapter traces the post-patristic career of theosis in the Byzantine world from its role in the promotion of Chalcedonian Christology in the sixth century through to the definition (at the Constantinopolitan Council of 1351) of theosis as participation in the uncreated energies. A postscript explains why the Byzantine tradition was taken up in modern times not by the Greeks but by the Russians.

The Afterword summarises the previous seven chapters, arguing that theosis is not a gnostic type of spiritualisation that de-creates us but the bringing of creation as a whole to its ultimate fulfilment.

The sixth chapter examines the patristic revivals of theosis in the early twentieth century by the Russian émigré theologians of the ’Paris School’, principally through the work of Myrrha Lot-Borodine, Vladimir Lossky, and the later Bulgakov. The first two of these writers engage with modern theologians partly to differentiate Orthodoxy from its new Catholic environment and partly (especially in Lossky’s case) to enable Western theology to enrich itself through interacting with Orthodox thinking.

The Introduction surveys the different meanings of theosis and religion that have evolved over the centuries as a way of defining the book’s principal terms. Then after discussing the recent debate about whether theosis is a doctrine or a theological theme, it introduces the subsequent chapters as an exercise in intellectual history. The narrative thread of this history is provided by the different receptions of Dionysius the Areopagite in Eastern and Western Christianity. Theosis emerges as a polyseme, its meaning defined by the different contexts in which it is used.

One important reason why Tolstoi so fiercely rejected Orthodox dogmatics was that he considered a purely theoretical approach to faith, disconnected from the lives of the believers, to be useless. Therefore, he had far greater sympathy with the Orthodox mystic-ascetic devotional literature associated with the so-called Hesychast movement. Chapter 4 analyzes Tolstoi’s exposure to this Orthodox monastic spirituality and how it influenced his thinking. He had a well-thumbed copy of Philokalia (Dobrotoliubie), a basic text of Orthodox spirituality and the most important of the Hesychast writings. Here, Tolstoi found confirmation of his strongly negative views of the body and the passions. The Philokalia taught that we should not merely control but indeed extinguish our passions. Passionlessness, apatheia – a concept also found among the Stoics and in Buddhism – should be the aim of the Christian life. This was an ideal that Tolstoi preached and which informed many of his views, on the necessity of physical labor, nonresistance to evil, and abstention from property, drugs, alcohol and even sex. Moreover, also Tolstoi’s claim that the essence of human life is not only spiritual but divine has a clear affinity with the Orthodox doctrine of theosis, the deification of man.

This introduction distinguishes angelification (becoming an angel) from angelomorphism (becoming like an angel), although it acknowledges ambiguity. After briefly discussing angelification in modern literature and film, it defines both angels and daimones in the ancient sense, discusses the analogous concept of a hero, and distinguishes angelification and daimonification from the broader concept of deification in the ancient world.

In the third section of the book, a range of topics from doctrinal or systematic theology are considered, building on the survey of the first part of the book, which had dealt mainly with the doctrines of God and of creation. This chapter turns to Christology: to the doctrine of the Person of Christ and of the Incarnation, where participatory language and thinking have also been important. This is worked through in terms of a number of central contentions in traditional Christology. It also brings some less-often-considered aspects of the doctrine of Christ to the surface, such as Christ's participation in God through growth in virtues. A participatory account of Christology can bear witness to the full revelation and presence of God in, and as, Christ. This is contrasted with kenotic Christology.

This second chapter on redemption, salvation, or union with God looks at the consequences for the redeemed creature, principally in terms of justification, sanctification, and merit. Alongside consideration of patristic and mediaeval sources, it considers Reformation perspectives on these questions. We look at Aquinas on the effectiveness of grace, and at how notions of participation can help us to navigate themes in the doctrine of redemption. These include awareness of the dangers inherent in paradigms that compare creatures directly with God, and attention to how the formal or exemplary note explored in Chapter 4 aligns with recent scholarship on the meaning of 'the righteousness of God' as what justifies sinners in the thought of Paul. The chapter closes by thinking more broadly about how approaches to participation align and link up across what has hitherto often been siloed between 'creation' and 'redemption'.