Considers Cyril’s understanding of the manner in which the divine life in Christ is appropriated, or passed on, to us. It examines in turn: (a) the gift of the Holy Spirit in relation to baptism; (b) the Eucharist as participation in the life-giving flesh of Christ; and (c) the complex issues surrounding the dual means of reception. Concludes that Cyril presents a twofold path for the reception of divine life, centred around the notion of divine indwelling, and often depicted through the paired terms, ‘spiritually’ and ‘corporeally’. These two modes of indwelling are normally related to the sacramental events of baptism and the Eucharist respectively.

Presents a comprehensive account of sanctification and divinization in Cyril as set forth in his New Testament biblical commentaries. By establishing the importance of pneumatology in Cyril’s narrative of divine life and by showing the requirement for an ethical aspect of divinization grounded in the example of Christ himself, this study brings a corrective to certain readings of Cyril that tend to exaggerate the ‘somatic’ or ‘physicalistic’ character of his understanding of divinization, by arguing that Cyril correlates the somatic and pneumatic means of our union with Christ, and impressively integrates the ontological and ethical aspects of our sanctification and divinization. The final chapter offers brief sketches of Cyril in comparison with Theodore of Mopsuestia, Augustine, and Leo the Great, with the aim of gaining further clarity to the Christological debates of the fifth century, and a better grasp of the theological similarities and differences between the East and West.

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Investigations into the Christian doctrine of deification have multiplied in recent years. Due especially to the emergence of studies on deification from the Western theological tradition, concerns are being raised about what constitutes a genuine doctrine of deification. This article considers three influential efforts to clarify the types of deification – from Norman Russell, Gösta Hallonsten and Paul Gavrilyuk – and offers critical and constructive proposals for identifying the core content of deification and its various types.