Well, certainly, various church bodies (even more so Eastern Orthodox than Catholic) zone in on that concept of "divinization"...some (IMO) go well overboard...and others are so afraid of it they won't touch an interpretation of passages like 2 Peter 1:4:
Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.
So first of all, let's "get over" it that any church body somehow "made up from scratch" a concept of "participating in the divine nature."
Essentially, with Eastern Orthodox, you tend to get a description of us becoming "gods" (small "g") or, more likely, that we are "unionized" with God to a degree of becoming "divinized."
Other church bodies would tend to focus that we "partake" of the divine nature thru the Sacraments (like communion) -- and, btw, that doesn't always mean the Catholic interpretation of transsubstantiation. (Luther, for example, believed we partook of Christ but that didn't mean we were biting into His very knuckles).
Certainly the writer of Hebrews wrote: "For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end;" (Heb. 3:14)
So, we all, I believe, have to concede we have solid Scriptural grounds for partaking of Christ; of partaking in the divine nature.
And some of that may simply be linked to not only partaking of Christ, but that we are so intertwined with the Holy Spirit (in being His corporate temple), that it's simply part of having "fellowship" with the Holy Spirit:
14 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. (Apostle Paul, 2 Cor. 13:14)
I have a hunch you are not so naive as to believe the hyper-realist cartoon of transubstantiation that you hint at. (Biting into Christ’s “knuckles.”) Luther’s “consubstantiation,” while heretical, is just as realist as the orthodox understanding of transubstantiation.