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This year marks the centennial of the publication of Evelyn Underhill's magnum opus Mysticism. It has held up remarkably well and Underhill's work remains the subject of much scholarly and popular interest. To honor the book's 100th birthday I have culled a few quotes on theosis (which she calls by its synonym deification) from chapter 10. Two striking things about this material are her use of metaphors drawn from alchemy to describe deification, and also the fact that almost all the mystics referred to are western Christians, proving that theosis is not some parochial notion limited to Eastern Orthodox monks.

The complete text of the book may be found here in an online version.

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The mystic, I think, would acquiesce in these [psychological] descriptions, so far as they go: but he would probably translate them into his own words and gloss them with an explanation which is beyond the power and province of psychology. He would say that his long-sought correspondence with Transcendental Reality, his union with God, has now been finally established: that his self, though intact, is wholly penetrated--as a sponge by the sea--by the Ocean of Life and Love to which he attained. "I live, yet not I but God in me". He is conscious that he is now at length cleansed of the last stains of separation, and has become, in a mysterious manner, "that which he beholds."

...In the image of the alchemists, the Fire of Love has done its work: the mystic Mercury of the Wise--that little hidden treasure, that scrap of reality within him--has utterly transmuted the salt and sulphur of his mind and his sense. Even the white stone of illumination, once so dearly cherished, he has resigned to the crucible. Now, the great work is accomplished, the last imperfection is gone, and he finds within himself the "Noble Tincture"--the gold of spiritual humanity.

We have said that the mystic of the impersonal type--the seeker of a Transcendent Absolute--tends to describe the consummation of his quest in the language of deification. The Unitive Life necessarily means for him, as for all who attain it, something which infinitely transcends the sum total of its symptoms: something which normal men cannot hope to understand. In it he declares that he "partakes directly of the Divine Nature", enjoys the fruition of reality. Since we "only behold that which we are", the doctrine of deification results naturally and logically from this claim.

...Whilst the more clear-sighted are careful to qualify it in a sense which excludes pantheistic interpretations, and rebuts the accusation that extreme mystics preach the annihilation of the self and regard themselves as co-equal with the Deity, they leave us in no doubt that it answers to a definite and normal experience of many souls who attain high levels of spiritual vitality. Its terms are chiefly used by those mystics by whom Reality is apprehended as a state or place rather than a Person: and who have adopted, in describing the earlier stages of their journey to God, such symbols as those of rebirth or transmutation.

...The first thing which emerges from these reports, and from the choice of symbols which we find in them, is that the great mystics are anxious above all things to establish and force on us the truth that by deification they intend no arrogant claim to identification with God, but as it were a transfusion of their selves by His Self: an entrance upon a new order of life, so high and so harmonious with Reality that it can only be called divine. Over and over again they assure us that personality is not lost, but made more real. "When," says St Augustine, "I shall cleave to Thee with all my being, then shall I in nothing have pain and labour; and my life shall be a real life, being wholly full of Thee". "My life shall be a real life" because it is "full of Thee". The achievement of reality, and deification, are then one and the same thing: necessarily so, since we know that only the divine is the real.

Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941) was one of the 20th century's leading writers on mysticism. Her 1911 book of the same title remains a classic. After a long spiritual pilgrimage she became a prominent laywoman in the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England, itself no mean feat. She was the first woman to lead clergy retreats in the C of E.

On her feastday today I include an excerpt from Worship, one of her lesser-known works that nevertheless still has lots of relevance (orig 1936; Crossroad 1985). The excerpt is from pp 60-61.

The character of worship is always decided by the worshipper's conception of God and his relation to God: that is to say, whatever its ritual expression may be, it always has a theological basis. Though the cultus may not tally at every point with the creed, since it often carries along many traditional and even primitive elements which have long ceased to bear their original meaning, in general the relation between the two is close; and only the believer, acting from within that cultus and conforming to its ritual pattern, can truly appreciate the meaning or the spiritual value of those devotional words and acts by means of which his worship is expressed. All this is eminently true of Christianity. In the bewildering variety, and even the apparent contradictions, of its many practices, from the extreme of liturgic ceremonialism to the extreme of silent or informal prayer, and from a close dependence on sacramental acts to their entire rejection, Christian worship is yet always conditioned by Christian belief; and especially belief about the Nature and Action of God, as summed up in the great dogmas of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Though the awestruck movement of the soul over against the surrounding mystery, and intimate devotion to the historic Person of Christ, in Whom that mystery draws near to men, both enter into it, its emphasis does not, or should not, be on either of these completing opposites of our spiritual experience. Its true secret is hidden between them, and is at one and the same time a personal communion and a metaphysical thirst.

Perhaps we come as near to that secret as human language permits, if we define Christian worship as the total adoring response of man to the one Eternal God self-revealed in time. This adoring response is full of contrast and variety; and has a span which stretches from the wordless commerce of the contemplative soul with "that which has no image" to the most naive expressions of popular belief. Profoundly historical, it accepts, carries along, and transforms to its own purpose the devotional language and methods of antiquity; and no one will understand it who does not keep this fact in mind. Yet on the other hand it possesses an inherent freshness and power of adaptation, which again and again accepts new embodiments for its worship of unchanging Truth. Its possibilities, indeed, are too rich to be fully explored by any one worshipper or any one group of worshippers; for it is at once thoroughly personal and thoroughly corporate in character, and in its expression can use many contrasting devotional methods--spontaneous and liturgical, symbolic and spiritual, sacrificial and contemplative--and embody these in the most ornate or the most austere of ritual forms. But careful study will discover a certain character which conditions and gives inward unity and significance to all these different, and even superficially conflicting, expressions of the Christian spirit of worship: and this character is neither ethical nor mystical, institutional nor personal, but doctrinal.