Participation without Absorption: Divine Indwelling, Theosis, and the Ontological Grammar of Salvation in Witness Lee

This article examines Witness Lee’s theology of divine-human participation through the categories of indwelling, theosis, mingling, and the Creator-creature distinction. Rather than treating Lee’s soteriology merely as an extension of his Trinitarian language, the study asks how his account of salvation construes the relation between divine life and created human existence. It argues that Lee’s language of participation is best understood as an attempt to articulate an intensive union with God without ontological absorption into the divine essence. Particular attention is given to the distinction between participation and identity, the relation of economy to ontology, the patristic background of theosis, and the theological risks created by metaphors of mingling and mutual indwelling. The article places Lee in conversation with broader Christian traditions of deification while maintaining the classical distinction between uncreated divine being and created human nature. It concludes that Lee’s theology is most coherent when divine-human union is read as participatory, relational, and transformative rather than as a collapse of ontological difference.