Notes on Michael Battle and "theosis"

Michel Battle, prolific author and articulator of a "theology of reconciliation", at the "Household of God" conference Saturday spoke of a Christian "meta-narrative", which, as "meta", constitutes an underlying, structural, axiomatic story, without which nothing else would make any sense. In other words, a "myth" as Mircea Eliade would define it, or Taylor Stevenson, a story that is accepted as implicitly true, although, as with "meta" anything, it cannot be analysed objectively from the "outside", so to speak, and must be appreciated or discounted according to some other process of discernment.
Dr. Battle says that the Christian meta-narrative sees the unreconciled, conflicted, disastrous state of humanity and it's environment as proceeding from a primal conflict between creature and creator, with the result that we find ourselves alienated and exiled from "The Garden" of reconciliation. The "cure" for this condition is the Incarnation, whereby the Creator provides a human model for us to follow in our pilgrimage back to the Garden. This return is not, Dr. Battle cautions, a process of infantilization, a destruction of individual identity and freedom, but a much more subtle process, described by the early church fathers as "theosis".
   In theosis we do not just "follow" or "imitate" Christ, we become Christ. We do not just "promote" reconciliation, we "are" reconciliation.
    The twin temptations, it seems to me, are 1) that we seek "salvation" by becoming childishly obedient, deny personal responsibility, and seek refuge from what Eliade called the "terror of history" by hiding inside a comforting meta-narrative; 2) that we embrace a meta-narrative of human progress and domination, seize control of the movement of history and design a new "Garden" according to our own specifications, without regard to gods or traditions from the past. In this second scenario, we don't humbly apply for readmission to Eden, we storm and conquer it.
  My thesis:  Theosis follows a third and distinctive path, one that resembles #1 less than what classical theology has prescribed, and has more in common with #2 than has previously been supposed. For me, any movement toward "salvation" requires a dual movement, on the one hand a struggle to develop spiritual maturity/self-differentiation/critical realism, on the other, a recovery of child-like trust and playfulness, the "gift of joy and wonder", and a capacity to suspend disbelief (I suppose what Paul Ricoeur calls a "second naivite"). Can this occur?