Partakers of the Divine Nature

Abstract Aims to investigate what Cyril means by the phrase, ‘partakers of the divine nature’ (2 Pet. 1:4), in the hope that this will provide us with a key for unlocking his understanding of the extent and limit of our kinship with God and its relation to Christ’s unique sonship. Does Cyril’s account of our participation in the divine nature threaten to blur the distinction between the Creator and creation, between things divine and things human? Focusses especially on the concept of participation in Cyril and concludes that Cyril presents us with a rather complex christology in which the incarnate Christ, as genuinely occupying the common frontier of humanity and divinity, in one sense is, and in another sense is not, the pattern for our participation in the divine life.