Imperiled Bodies and Future Holiness: Gregory of Nyssa and John Wesley as Counter-Formations of Embodied Life

This paper argues that John Wesley stands within the patristic tradition of deification exemplified by Gregory of Nyssa. In both late antiquity and early industrial England, bodies were rendered vulnerable within hierarchical and economic regimes that disciplined and exhausted embodied life. I contend that Nyssen’s theosis and Wesley’s sanctification share a participatory grammar in which salvation is understood as transformative participation in divine life that reconfigures mortal embodiment. Under industrial modernity, Wesley reformulates this patristic vision as an embodied holiness capable of resisting the reduction of the body to labor utility. By centering embodiment, this study reframes deification as a counter-formation of embodied existence rather than a purely metaphysical doctrine. It further suggests that this participatory logic bears implications for contemporary regimes of racialized vulnerability, where socially imperiled bodies remain sites of theological and political struggle.