Union, distinction and creaturely perfections: Petrus van Mastricht’s rejection of deification

Recent work in Protestant soteriology and eschatology has sought to recover and exposit the strands (or doctrines) of theosis present in figures such as Jonathan Edwards, John Calvin and John Wesley, among others. Yet, such ventures can risk unmooring doctrinal convictions from their embeddedness within a larger nexus of theological judgments and concerns. This essay provides a modest contribution to Protestant engagement with the doctrine of theosis, with the help of seventeenth-century Reformed theologian Petrus van Mastricht. In it, I argue that van Mastricht’s ‘upstream’ commitments to Christology and the incommunicability of divine perfections inform his rejection of deification. The essay concludes by highlighting the promise and perils of van Mastricht’s account of the real nature of the unio mystica .