The Original Image of the Creation

Now our Jesus, the second Person of the Trinity, the essential Image, the essential Harmony, the Righteousness of God, becomes a creature, springs up from beneath the foundations of the Creation in an Human Soul and Body in the midst of its ruines. This Jesus is the Original Image of the Creation, of Man, of every Creature, the Root, the Rule, the Actor of all, who virtually, eminently comprehends all in their distinct Ideal Forms within himself. As so many eternal Beauties in his own eternal Beauty, who bringeth them forth from himself, beareth them in himself, as Flowers in their Garden-beds.

—Peter Sterry, A Discourse of the Freedome of the Will (1675)

Justification by Co-crucifixion

The basic claim of this book has been that Pauls soteriology is best described as theosis, or transformation into the image of the kenotic, cruciform God revealed in the faithful and loving cross of Christ, and that Spirit-enabled theosis is the substance of both justification and holiness. Justification is participatory and transformative, accomplished by co-crucifixion with Christ and embodied as holiness. Theosis is effected by the mutual inhabitation of those who are justified and the triune God who justifies them. Relating the thesis of this book to the more generally known and accepted notion of cruciformity in Paul, we have said that cruciformity is really theoformity, or theosis. For the sake of clarity and precision, we may wish to use the phrase cruciform theosis as shorthand for Paul's distinctive version of theosis.

—Michael J. Gorman, Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul's Narrative Soteriology (2009)