A Modest Conference Paper Proposal to the Evangelical Theological Society

Image of page three of Johnathan Swift's infamous A Modest Proposal (1729). Full facsimile at Internet Archive here.

I've just submitted the following abstract to the ETS section on Deification as Apologetics. Deification has a perpetual presence in early Christian theology, and especially in the context of the New or heavenly Jerusalem. And so recently I've been discussing it more and more in my papers as a stand-alone topic. Not least because it helps me to develop my thinking on this complex animating idea within the ancient literature but also because the broader academic community stands in great need of realizing the centrality of this fundamental Christian doctrine in doing historical theology. 

So here's the proposal as submitted:

Rejection of Deification as Christian Heresy: A Modest Proposal

In this fast-moving paper, I make a novel apologia for the centrality and orthodoxy of deification in the scriptural, apostolic, historic, and universal Christian faith. An apologia, in that I will defend the doctrine (and the reality the doctrine articulates) against the widespread if diminishing opposition it faces. And novel because I am in fact making the case for deification by fundamentally challenging the orthodoxy of opposition against it. Specifically, I propose that rejection of the reality of human deification approaches the gravity of rejecting the reality of the divine Trinity or of the hypostatic union—that is, that rejection of deification signals a fundamental both a distortion and misapprehension of the Christian faith as articulated by Scripture and historical Bible-based teaching. I will marshal my argument from three directions: (1) biblical (esp. NT), (2) historical (including the Ante-Nicene Fathers, the Reformers, and early evangelicals), and (3) biographical (a short study of the motivations driving the greatest historical Christian opponent of deification). In the end, it will be amply demonstrated that to reject deification is to deny the very direction of creation, incarnation, and Christian salvation, and is, moreover, to reject two-thousand years of biblical Christian consensus. The burden of proof rests no longer on the Christian who embraces it, but on the Christian who rejects it.

Stay tuned for updates on where, when, etc. 

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