Project Hail Mary might be 2026’s film of the year. It’s nothing short of spectacular, featuring a powerful story, incredible visuals, and excellent writing. In the words of Rocky, it truly is “Amaze! Amaze! Amaze!” I was particularly moved by the bonds of love, loyalty, and friendship that develop between Ryland Grace and Rocky. Their friendship and loyalty transcends all the categorical boundaries of language, species, culture, and planet. This bond of love between astronaut and alien is powerful and becomes a lifelong connection that overcomes the vastness of space itself!
Both make incredible sacrifices for each other: Rocky risks his life and endures horrific pain to save Ryland while Ryland gives up his only chance of ever returning home to save Rocky. I was struck by how much those sacrifices echoed the love of Christ. Through the characters’ embodiment of genuine love, loyal friendship, and extraordinary sacrifice, I encountered the love of Jesus and the good news of the Gospel anew.
The beauty of Project Hail Mary‘s depiction of love, loyalty, and sacrifice is not that it baptizes those things in Christian language but that it shows the full embodiment of them in action.
Indeed, some of the most glorious expressions of goodness and beauty can be found in art and media that have no direct or open affiliation with Christianity. Project Hail Mary, in particular, gives us a profound glance at the sacrificial love of Christ without ever using the word “Jesus,” bringing religion into the story, or forcing its main characters to evangelize. As I watched the movie, though, I nevertheless wrestled with the tension of appreciating a display of God’s beauty and goodness in what my evangelical tradition would deem a “secular” piece of art.
There’s a tendency in evangelicalism’s cultural engagement to focus more on words and labels than any genuine display of virtue and authenticity. This is plainly evident in our politics: a politician who quotes enough Bible verses tends to elicit evangelical support regardless of whether their character and actions actually align with their words. This is also evident in our witness, which employs evangelistic strategies that favor words and content over service and relationship. I have continually witnessed fellow evangelicals express skepticism towards a non-profit’s mission and ministry if there isn’t an explicit proclamation of Christian doctrine attached to their work.
At times, the embodiment of Christ and his character seems to be of secondary importance to the appearance and expression of it. But this has not always been the norm in the broader history of Christian faith and practice, theology, and history.
A Return to Our Roots
Parts of the early Church held to a deeply valued theological idea that has long been lost in the West: theosis. In its earliest expressions, this theological idea considered salvation to be a human participation in the Divine. Theosis viewed salvation in Christ as a journey into a divine life empowered and shared by God. This theology was rooted in a sacramental understanding of the world whose very existence participated with, and found its being in, the power and life of God. Existence and being itself was held together in Christ (Colossians 1:15-17).
While theosis mainly focused on salvation in Christ, it also had powerful implications for how one viewed the world and the people in it. Theosis held that there could be no genuine embodiment of love, goodness, or sacrifice that was neutral. There was no “secular” love and “Christian” love, no “secular” virtue and “Christian” virtue. Rather, all love and virtue, in whatever complete or incomplete form they took, found their roots in God. The starting point by which Christians viewed other people and the ontology of all humans was rooted in this sacramental understanding of the world.
The second-century Christian apologist Justin Martyr wrote that “[w]e have been taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have declared above that He is the Word of whom every race of men were partakers; and those who lived reasonably are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists; as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them.”1
Later, in his second apology, Justin reflects on pagan philosophers and how genuine value and truth can be found in their reflections. His theological position saw the embodiment of virtue as being rooted in God the Creator as well.
Other church fathers believed that the Incarnation of Christ had paradigmatically shifted God’s relationship with humanity. All human acts of virtue and love were now mysteriously connected to, and participating in, the divine through the Son of God who took on flesh. In the fourth century, Athanasius held to a sacramental worldview centered on theosis, stating “For He was made man that we might be made God; and He manifested Himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father.”2
For Athanasius, the Incarnation changed everything. If Christ truly took on the fullness of humanity, then the implications were universal, impacting all of humanity. Christ, the true Image of God (Colossians 1:15, 2 Corinthians 4:4, Hebrews 1:3) paved the way for all image-bearers. 4th-century church father Gregory of Nazianzus echoed this idea, claiming that the Incarnation brought all of humanity into a secondary kind of communion to God by which people could be saved through faith in Jesus.3
This understanding of the Incarnation had powerful ramifications on how the early Church viewed the world. When people performed acts of love, kindness, or charity, they weren’t just doing “nice,” “secular” deeds. Somehow, they were participating in the very love and goodness of God. There was a beautiful, mysterious link by which the early Church understood the “virtuous pagan” to be connected to God. All virtue, flawed or in full, was mysteriously rooted in Jesus Christ, the God-Man. Whether this divine connection should be called “common grace,” a human residue of being made in God’s image, or just how the Holy Spirit presently moves in people’s lives and points them to Christ is a discussion for another day.
The Biblical Foundation
These theological expressions found their basis in Scripture. In Acts 17, Paul the Apostle addresses a deeply religious and philosophical crowd of people in Athens. Instead of condemning their idolatry, however, Paul suggests that their spiritual pursuits have been aiming for, and missing, God’s ultimate revelation of Jesus Christ, in whom “we live and move and have our being” (17:28). For Paul, the Holy Spirit is not limited or confined to the inspired pages of Scripture or the walls of a church like some genie in a bottle. Rather, the Spirit is the “Giver of life.”4 Later, 2 Peter 1:4 frames the growth of virtue in Christians as the result of becoming “partakers of [his] divine nature.”
Perhaps the most profound Scripture on this topic comes from the teachings of Jesus himself. In Matthew 25:31-46, he teaches that the path into his kingdom is not found in religious performance but rather, in caring for the hungry and the thirsty, the stranger and the poor, the sick and the imprisoned. Here, he makes a puzzling distinction. Those who worshipped in his name but failed to embody the values of his kingdom in their treatment of others are far from him. However, to the ones who did care for the least of these, the King turns and says: “Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me” (25:40, NASB).
Jesus identifies himself with the least of these in a metaphysical sense and rewards those who cared for him in those moments, moments that weren’t platformed or used to share a message but simply done out of love and hospitality. There is no hint of secular or sacred here, no divide between “holy” ground and “common” ground. To the shock of Jesus’s audience, the true spirituality and virtue that embodies Christ’s kingdom occurs beyond confessional words and labels. This seems to be a perspective that has widely been lost in Evangelicalism.
A Sacramental Worldview
In his book Heavenly Participation, theologian Hans Boersma traces how Protestants lost a sacramental understanding of God, the world, and theology throughout the course of history. Over time, the Church began to stray from the sacramental understanding of reality that the early Church fathers maintained. Nature and reason became separate entities from God and creation’s very existence and reality began to be construed separately from the Divine. Boersma emphasizes the drastic ripple effects of this on the life and theology of the Church.
A theological expression of the creation’s existence and humanity’s participation in the divine doesn’t place limitations on God or deny the reality of sin. The writers of the New Testament and the early Church both viewed God as transcendent yet immanent, beyond his world but involved within it. They praised God as infinite and glorious, as never fully comprehensible or tamable by humans but ultimately revealed in Jesus.
Theosis and sacramental ontology have numerous theological implications and connections that the reader may question or disavow. But at a bare minimum, this theology established a framework for how some of the earliest Christians engaged with the world around them. Where there was beauty, it was true beauty rooted in the beauty of God. Where there was love, it was true love rooted in the love of God. Where there was an expression of sacrifice, it was a true expression of sacrifice rooted in the death and resurrection of Christ.
What Project Hail Mary Can Show Us
Followers of Jesus can, of course, encounter the beauty of Christ in their confessional language, doctrine, traditions, and creeds. Those are important vessels through which the Spirit of God has moved throughout time to sanctify and shape God’s people. I am certainly not disparaging beautifully worded prayers or engagement in religious conversations with others.
But what if there is a powerful and mysterious way in which Christians can encounter the fullness of Christ more in the things we do than what we say? What if there is a powerful way we may recognize God in the world, in “secular” art, and in people living outside the Church’s walls? And what if this could be a transformative tool for witnessing and recognizing the Spirit of God at work in the world around us? After all, the beauty of Project Hail Mary‘s depiction of love, loyalty, and sacrifice is not that it baptizes those things in Christian language but that it shows the full embodiment of them in action.
Project Hail Mary reminds us that God’s love, beauty, and glory can be recognized and valued in the world. These virtues may be recognized and appreciated, not as rivals to be attacked and defaced, but as manifestations of God’s grace, power, and love in the world. These manifestations of the Creator are things to be learned from, enjoyed, and shared, not dismissed with the “secular” label. Perhaps a retrieval and consideration of theosis from our ancient roots is precisely what modern evangelicalism needs for its continued engagement with the world and its art.
- Justin Martyr, “The First Apology of Justin,” in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, vol. 1, The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 178. ↩︎
- Athanasius, On the Incarnation, trans. John Behr. New York: St Vladimir’s Press, para. 54, 107. ↩︎
- Gregory Nazianzen. Select Orations, 38. ↩︎
- Historic Creeds and Confessions. 1997. Electronic ed. Oak Harbor: Lexham Press. ↩︎
