Christian Deification

Abstract This chapter revisits the Christian notion of deification in light of analogous soteriological notions operative in traditions of dharma religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism. First, a brief genealogy of deification in the early Christian East is presented, contrasting the “Origenist” construal of soteriology and the post-Chalcedonian understanding of theōsis. The second section introduces different interpretations of the soteriologies developed in the Bhagavad Gītā and the role of relational and non-relational trajectories to nirvāna characterizing the Tibetan tradition of deity visualization and the Buddhological speculation of the Abhisamayālaṅkāra. This survey will highlight the presence within the Christian and the dharma traditions of a tension between personal and non-personal understandings of deification and spiritual transformation. The chapter also foregrounds how Christianity’s normative embrace of the former and the dharma religions’ ability to accommodate both approaches reflect their distinctive institutional structures and the assimilation of divergent epistemologies.