The Appropriation of Divine Life in Cyril of Alexandria

Abstract 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.