Evelyn Underhill and divine initiative: from voluntarist mysticism to Christocentric participation

Abstract This article demonstrates that Evelyn Underhill’s 1920s shift from voluntarist mysticism to christocentric participation reflects a modern Anglican retrieval of Augustine’s doctrine of grace. Drawing on her books, letters, and revisions to Mysticism , it argues that wartime disillusionment and Friedrich von Hügel’s guidance reoriented her from Neoplatonic aspiration toward divine initiative, ecclesial emphasis and christological mediation. Underhill emerges as a constructive theologian of grace whose mature outlook challenges accounts that centre religious progress in human effort, insisting instead on God’s prior action and the mediating work of Christ.