While the basic outline of the soteriological narrative of Cyril of Alexandria is a near repeat of Athanasius, Cyril reverses the role that Athanasius had given to physicalism in this narrative. While Athanasius had said that the physicalist (i.e., universal and automatic) transformation of human nature was related to humanity’s ability to receive the Holy Spirt and not connected to the salvation of humans from death, Cyril says the opposite: the physicalist transformation of human nature does not change humanity’s ability to receive the Holy Spirit (which is salvific), but it does save every human being from eternal death (which, in itself, is not salvific). Cyril demonstrates the limitations of physicalism within a theology that also includes the creationist ensoulment model: the physicalist effects of the incarnation are limited to the body. Cyril’s physicalism is part of his nuanced use of the Adam-Christ parallel in which Cyril carefully balances the agency of Adam and Christ.

Physicalist soteriology is a scholarly category created by the nineteenth-century German liberal Protestants. Because they immediately connected physicalism with heterodoxy, subsequent scholars have – through methodologically untenable approaches – frequently rejected physicalism as a logic that has no historical existence. A review of scholarship on physicalist soteriology – within development of doctrine studies, studies of individual early Christian authors, and deification studies – reveals that physicalist soteriology has been subsumed into other scholarly projects and has rarely been the direct subject of scholarly study. The six major early Christian proponents of physicalist soteriology, namely Athanasius, Hilary of Poitiers, Marius Victorinus, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, and Maximus the Confessor, are introduced.

The church fathers made a significant contribution to the almost complete preservation of the Placita of Aëtius. In this chapter I investigate what motivated them to use it so extensively. I first introduce the Placita, outlining six features that give this work a distinctive mode of ordering knowledge. Philo of Alexandria, the first of eight authors to be discussed, is not a Christian. Nevertheless his approach to the variety of philosophical doctrines recorded in the antecdent tradition of the Placita will be crucial for his Christian successors. These commence with Athenagoras and Hermias, followed by three fourth-century authors, Eusebius, Pseudo-Justin and Nemesius, and conclude with two fifth-century writers, Cyril of Alexandrian and Theodoret. Although the Placita bring order into the vast body of contradictory doctrines put forward by the philosophers, this ‘structured disorder’ is in sharp contrast to the ordering of Christian knowledge, which is presented as being founded on a unified body of revealed truth.

Theological compatibilists have considered the will of God and creaturely wills to be aligned, such that divine election or determination does not undermine but rather preserves the free will of the creature. In the person of Jesus Christ this compatibility is held to be utterly flawless, and the human will of Christ to “follow after” or conform itself perfectly, and without sin, to the divine will. As a theological compatibilist I am persuaded by this largely Augustinian and Cyrillian Christology. However, critics may well wonder whether Christ’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane does not make such a view implausible, perhaps incoherent, and leads to an undermining of a proper doctrine of atonement. This essay undertakes to examine the narratives of Gethsemane in light of this criticism, and to offer a reply.

This chapter argues that there is a logical aporia at the very heart of the Chalcedonian Definition: namely, that Jesus of Nazareth contributes nothing to the constitution of the “person,” or, said differently, that he stands in no real relation to the Logos. This aporia has its origins in a twofold historical pressure: the desire to affirm a unified subject and in Gregory of Nazianzus’ declaration that “the unassumed is the unhealed.” Throughout this chapter the historical conditions for this aporia are explored in the theologies of Origen, Apollinaris, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Cyril of Alexandria. The chapter argues that the majority of the bishops at Chalcedon followed Cyril in making the preexistent Logos as such to be the “person of the union,” leading to this aporia in the Chalcedonian Definition. The chapter ends with John of Damascus’ Christology and his solution to working with the given Chalcedonian definition.

The normative importance of the Council of Nicaea in the Orthodox tradition cannot be overestimated. A landmark event in cementing the authority of the Council of Nicaea was the Council of Constantinople (381). In the fifth century, Cyril of Alexandria was singularly concerned about promoting the Nicene Creed and making the interpretation of its second article a focal point in the Christological controversy. The Council of Ephesus (431) formulated the principle of unchangeability of the Nicene faith. The Council of Chalcedon (451) reaffirmed this principle and, building upon the precedent of the Council of Constantinople, advanced a hermeneutic of continuity with the Council of Nicaea. In the sixth century, the Nicene faith passed into the Byzantine liturgy in the form of the Constantinopolitan Creed rather than the original Nicene Creed. In addition, the role of the Council of Nicaea was safeguarded in the Orthodox Church’s liturgical memory through the feast days dedicated to different aspects of the council. The council also left a mark in hagiography and iconography. During the Filioque Controversy, the Nicene legacy, especially the Constantinopolitan Creed without the Filioque clause, was turned into a marker of a Byzantine Christian as opposed to Latin Christian identity.