Reconstructing Evangelical Soteriology and Missiology: A Theology of Human Flourishing

Contemporary Evangelicalism faces a paradox: despite its historical and demographic vitality, a soteriological imbalance in many (though by no means all) of its expressions—an overemphasis on afterlife-centred salvation relative to present flourishing—has contributed to a crisis of meaning for believers navigating present-day realities. This gap can leave the faith an insufficient bulwark against secular nihilism and radical ideologies, both of which thrive (however perversely) by addressing present suffering. This article argues not for the replacement of Evangelical soteriology but for its recovery and enrichment through a Theology of Human Flourishing, centred on the human person-in-communion conformed by grace to Christ—what it terms, with deliberate qualification, the Divine Individual. The theotic dimension developed here complements rather than supplants the forensic categories of justification, regeneration, and reconciliation. The argument proceeds in five moves. First, it grounds the Divine Individual in the New Testament “Son of Man” tradition, drawing on Walker’s exegesis of John 1.43–51 and Moule’s argument for Johannine individualism. Second, it deploys Jordan Peterson’s phenomenology of meaning as a modern grammar through which the patristic doctrine of theosis can be re-articulated, while critically assessing where Peterson’s anthropology of the autonomous subject diverges from a theology of grace and must be corrected by it. Third, it shows—with Henrich and Duchesne—that the Divine Individual is not a colonial construct but a long civilizational inheritance with deep biblical and Greco-Christian roots. Fourth, it answers the standard critiques: Pelagianism, syncretism, atomistic individualism, and the post-colonial objection. Fifth, it sketches the missiological implications: mission as the formation of Christ-shaped persons whose transformation ripples outward into the renewal of culture, institution, and civilization.