Physicalist soteriology, which proposes that Christ’s incarnation has a universal effect on the nature of every subsequent human being, rises as a logical and organic fourth-century development of the early Christian commitment to a universal fall combined with reflection on the Adam-Christ parallel. It falls because of the seemingly unrelated rise of the creationist ensoulment model that, in proposing that God directly creates and implants an unfallen soul in each fetus, removes any logical connection between individual souls and the fall of Adam. When humanity was viewed as a corporate whole in early Christianity, physicalist soteriology was a natural theological position that was never either criticized or defended. There are several signs manifesting a renewal of societal and academic openness to corporate understandings of humanity in theology, which suggests that physicalist soteriology is a part of the Christian tradition that may also prove to have contemporary theological value.

Maximus’ physicalism is the result of his combination of the creationist ensoulment model with an exacting application of the Adam-Christ parallel in which the agency of Christ must mirror that of Adam. Since the creationist ensoulment model excludes the soul from universal fallenness, Maximus reasons that Adam’s singular agency had a universal effect only on bodies. The fall of souls cannot be entirely accounted to Adam; rather, it requires individual wrong willing. Maximus insists that Christ mirrors Adam’s agency by having a universal physicalist effect only on human bodies, while the rectification of souls and wills requires individuals to follow Christ’s example in accepting suffering, thereby escaping the destructive cycle of pain and pleasure. Maximus demonstrates that the triumph of the creationist ensoulment model fatally limits the theological usefulness of physicalist soteriology.

Physicalism was a logical development of fourth-century theology, but the fifth-century triumph of the creationist ensoulment model had the effect of making physicalist soteriology a much less useful theological tool by narrowing the possible physicalist effects of the incarnation to the body only (and not the soul). The disappearance of physicalism is one manifestation of the detrimental effect the creationist ensoulment model had on theological conceptions of human solidarity through its sharp division between body and soul that rendered “human nature” a category that no longer had logical relevance as regards articulations of fall or redemption. The renewed interest in both human solidarity and “human nature” as a meaningful soteriological category – manifest most clearly in the current explosion of interest in deification studies – emphasizes the need for a new curation of the Christian tradition that would both restore the category of human nature to soteriological usefulness and would recognize physicalist soteriology as a historical reality that should be evaluated for its possible utility to contemporary needs.