Habets presents Torrance’s theosis as a fundamentally sound, richly patristic–Reformed model that needs refinement, not rejection. Overall he defends Torrance on four main fronts.[1][2]
## 1. Theosis as Torrance’s integrating soteriological theme
– Habets argues that theosis is “a crucial integrating theme” in Torrance that pulls together incarnation, atonement, resurrection, Spirit, church, and eschatology into a single participatory account: salvation as “union with God in and through Christ.”[2][1]
– He claims Torrance offers a “complex but coherent doctrine of theosis,” not a loose metaphor, and that read rightly it gives his whole soteriology an Athanasian shape (unassumed–unhealed, participation in the Son’s filial life).[1]
## 2. Guarding Creator–creature distinction and Nicene orthodoxy
– Habets insists Torrance’s theosis never collapses God and humanity: in Christ “the Triune God and humanity dwell in each other in mutual personal satisfaction” yet “without loss of creaturely status, nor blurring of the Creator–creature distinctives.”[1]
– He underlines Torrance’s anchoring in Nicene dogma and Athanasius—homoousion, hypostatic union, unassumed–unhealed—as the doctrinal guardrails that keep his participatory language safely within classic Trinitarian and Christological orthodoxy.[3][1]
## 3. Compatibility with Reformed union‑with‑Christ theology
– Habets contends Torrance’s theosis is best read as a **Reformed** doctrine of deification: union with Christ is the ontological center; justification, sanctification, and adoption are differentiated aspects of that one participatory union.[2][1]
– He therefore rejects the charge that theosis is foreign to Reformed theology, arguing instead that Torrance shows how a robust doctrine of union with Christ naturally issues in deification language, provided the Creator–creature line is maintained.[3][2]
## 4. Responding to worries about universalism and imbalance
– On universalism, Habets notes that Torrance’s universal scope and objectivity in Christ do not entail automatic salvation; participation is by the Spirit through faith, and Torrance explicitly repudiates dogmatic universalism.[4][5]
– On the objective–subjective and pneumatological criticisms, Habets acknowledges gaps but treats them as areas for development: he proposes strengthening Torrance’s pneumatology and subjective soteriology while keeping the basic theotic framework intact, not abandoning it.[6][1]
In sum, Habets defends Torrance by framing his theosis as (1) structurally central and coherent, (2) Nicene and Creator–creature safe, (3) genuinely Reformed in its union‑with‑Christ emphasis, and (4) improvable but not fundamentally flawed on issues like pneumatology and universalism.[4][2][1]
Sources
[1] Theosis in the Theology of Thomas Torrance: A Review | https://jasongoroncy.com/2010/
[2] Theosis in the Theology of Thomas Torrance | Myk Habets https://www.taylorfrancis.com/
[3] Defining Theosis | Theology Forum – WordPress.com https://theologyforum.
[4] [PDF] T. F. Torrance on theosis and universal salvation https://research-repository.
[5] T. F. Torrance on theosis and universal salvation https://research-portal.st-
[6] Theosis in the Theology of Thomas Torrance – Flip eBook Pages … https://anyflip.com/juvzb/
