Scholars from around the world offer a comprehensive, ecumenical survey of the history and development of deification.

We are children, sons, and Offsprings of God, and we partake of the Nature of God. We have the Life and Nature of God in us. We are representatives of God and His ambassadors here. We are gods and the children of the Most High! The Holy Spirit of the Living God lives inside us. We have the Power and Anointing of God abiding in us. We are supernatural and extraordinary beings. We are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ! Stop seeing yourself as an ordinary man, for you are not one!

The book promotes a serious examination of the attributes of God and his desire to impart specific aspects of his divine nature into the renovated hearts of his adopted children through the work of the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:4) to the end that their renovated lives will glorify God the Father who is in heaven (Matt 5:16). It can be thought of as three books in one: Part 1 (Chapters 2-12) examines and discusses the attributes of God as they are described in Scripture and Stephen Charnock's The Existence and Attributes of God, first published in 1682. Part 2 (Chapters 13-20) discusses the biblical concept of the heart and the interaction between the distinct spheres of the heart - the mind, desires/passions, and will. And Part 3 (Chapters 21-27) describes what a maturing renovated life might look like as the Holy Spirit is imparting aspects of the divine nature into the hearts of God's adopted children in different spheres of life - dating, engagement, marriage, rearing a family, singleness, business, politics, and the world at large. Each "book" could stand alone but together they provide understanding into how God re-establishes in our heart the divine nature that was lost at the fall of mankind. Even though we "live and move and exist" in God (Acts 17:28) we cannot exhaustively know him, but it is nevertheless possible for his image-bearers to possess true knowledge of him and to become - by his work alone - more like him.

This critical volume focuses on the issue of continuity and discontinuity of the Christian concept of theosis, or deification, in the intellectual history of ideas. It addresses the origin, development, and function of theosis from its antecedents in ancient Greek philosophy to its nuanced use in contemporary theological thought. Often seen as a heresy in the Protestant West, the revival of interest in deification in both lay and scholastic circles heralds a return to foundational understandings of salvation in the Christian church before the divisions of East and West, Catholic and Protestant.