Abstract
Deification through the Cross is a remarkable study of the Eastern theology of salvation that displays profound scholarly insight. Anatolios masterfully navigates his way through the liturgy, Scripture and history of Christian thought, as he expounds what we mean by ‘salvation’. He does this with a clarity and precision that make this book both accessible and insightful.
Anatolios wishes to reclaim the joy of salvation. He notes that soteriology – the way in which we speak about salvation – is all too often lacking in intellectual clarity. The way in which we understand salvation in modernity, he suggests, is often reduced to a kind of ‘cafeteria buffet’ of models and theories. He critiques these models for being analogical or metaphorical rather than normative. In contrast, he wishes to propose a way of understanding soteriology that is truly integrated, both in the Byzantine liturgy and in Scripture and theological doctrine.
Anatolios roots his grammar of salvation in the Byzantine liturgy. Clearly influenced by the theologian Alexander Schmemann, he suggests that salvation is experienced in the liturgy; to expound this premise, he uses the phrase ‘doxological contrition’, which represents the dialectic that is found in worship, between glory and repentance. Worship is an entering into the glory of the Lord – a form of participation in the life of the divine in which the worshipper is enfolded into this glory while also being made aware of their own shortcomings and failures in repentant contrition. This concept is at the heart of Anatolios’s thesis, and he continues to show how the notion is present in Scripture and doctrine. It is this methodology that allows him to present doxological contrition as an integral part of the Christian narrative and its practice.
In his masterful exposition of Scripture, Anatolios portrays Christ as the model of doxological contrition. In Christ, Anatolios suggests that God ‘marvellously accomplishes both his doxological judgment against sin and humanity’s full reintegration into the intra-trinitarian glorification, through Christ’s representative and inclusive doxological repentance’ (p. 312). He notes how this notion is expounded in Trinitarian and Christological doctrine. Anatolios’s careful engagement with systematic theology (from Patristic and modern sources) shows how the concept of doxological contrition is present in theological discourse, and how it can inform an understanding of salvation. He engages Eastern and Western theologians in this to demonstrate ‘the assimilative and synthetic power of the notion of doxological contrition in relation to the whole Christian tradition, despite the seeming novelty of its explicit formulation’ (p. 375). In doing this, Anatolios presents an understanding of salvation that breaks down the often unhelpful and simplistic binary between the East and the West, in addition to avoiding the simplistic ‘cafeteria buffet’ of models of soteriology.
Anatolios’s broad expertise in theology and biblical studies results in a work that has an importance for a wide variety of fields. The notion of ‘doxological contrition’ also breaks down many of the problematic binaries in soteriology, providing an integrated grammar of salvation that is an integral part of an understanding of Scripture, and an experience of the Byzantine liturgy that is informed by the Trinitarian and Christological doctrine of the church councils. This lucid, scholarly work is an invaluable reference for anyone interested in salvation and deification.