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Myk Habets is both Torrance’s key expositor on theosis and one of his most careful critics. His work both (1) retrieves and systematizes Torrance’s doctrine of theosis and (2) flags specific weaknesses that need correction or development.

## Core defenses (Habets’s positive assessment)

– Integrative, coherent theosis: Habets argues that, though Torrance rarely uses the word, theosis is a “necessarily crucial integrating theme” and yields a “complex but coherent Torrancean doctrine of theosis” that holds together creation, incarnation, reconciliation, and ecclesiology.[1][2]
– Reformed‑patristic compatibility: He contends that Torrance shows a doctrine of theosis can be compatible with Reformed participation/union‑with‑Christ theology and not a foreign, purely Eastern import.[3][1]
– Creator–creature distinction intact: Habets stresses repeatedly that, for Torrance, in Christ “the Triune God and humanity dwell in each other in mutual personal satisfaction…without loss of creaturely status, nor blurring of the Creator–creature distinctives.”[1]

## Habets’s main critiques of Torrance’s theosis

1. **Underdeveloped pneumatology (especially as bond of union)**
– Habets says pneumatology is “perhaps the least examined aspect of Torrance’s theology,” a “considerable oversight” given that the Spirit is the agent of deification.[4][1]
– He argues Torrance over‑corrects Edward Irving toward an “Alexandrian” christology and does not go far enough in articulating “how the Holy Spirit ‘deifies’ believers in practice.”[4][1]

2. **Objective–subjective imbalance in soteriology**
– Torrance’s robust emphasis on the objective work of Christ (vicarious humanity, ontological reconciliation) is not matched, Habets says, by an equally developed account of subjective appropriation—faith, sanctification, personal transformation.[1]
– He worries Torrance leaves “critical questions…about what theosis ‘looks like’ in everyday life,” and about how clearly the model aligns with a Reformed doctrine of justification by faith.[1]

3. **Christ’s assumption of fallen human nature**
– Habets remains “unconvinced” by Torrance’s insistence that Christ assumes *fallen* human nature and thinks this christological move is not sufficiently clarified, leaving ambiguity around sinlessness and the mechanics of atoning union.[5][1]

4. **Patristic interpretation and historical detail**
– Habets charges Torrance with some misrepresentation or at least over‑systematization of patristic sources, and with “lack of detailed attention to [the] actual historical life of Christ,” especially in relation to divine passibility and the narrative shape of Christ’s obedience.[1]

## How Habets still defends Torrance’s trajectory

– Theosis as “controlling metaphor”: Habets proposes that theosis in Torrance functions as a “controlling metaphor that gives coherence to the disparate themes of Torrance’s soteriology,” even if some elements (pneumatology, justification, fallen nature) need tightening.[1]
– Patristic/Nicene guardrails: He underlines that Torrance’s theosis is anchored in Athanasius, the homoousion, and “unassumed is the unhealed,” and that this framework keeps his participatory language within Nicene boundaries.[3][1]
– Constructive refinement, not rejection: Habets’s later dissertation (“The danger of vertigo”) is a self‑critique of his own book, but its posture is still constructive: he sees Torrance’s theosis as fundamentally promising and wants to prevent “vertigo” (loss of balance) by strengthening pneumatology and clarifying christology and soteriology.[6][7]

In short, Habets both defends Torrance’s theosis as a viable, Reformed‑patristic model and pinpoints where it needs further doctrinal work—especially on the Spirit’s role, the subjective shape of salvation, and the precise status of Christ’s assumed humanity.[2][1]