Book Reviews 139

book is a truly remarkable achievement and all the more heartening for
interchurch dialogue in that it is the work of a native Korean for whom
Torrance’s theology has wide ecumenical significance not just for his own
native land, but for the wider church. It can be warmly commended to the
serious student.
Robert T. Walker
Edinburgh

Weinandy, Thomas G., and Daniel A. Keating (eds). 2003. The Theology
of St Cyril of Alexandria, A Critical Appraisal (London: T & T Clark /
Continuum), pp. xv + 269.
The publication of this collection of essays on Cyril of Alexandria is a
major event in the study of a major figure in the Greek patristic tradition.
It is warmly to be welcomed.
The nine contributors to the volume have all already done substantial
work on Cyril and the theology of his times. Broadly speaking, the agenda
of the book is to liberate Cyril from the narrow and purely polemical
confines of his niche in histories of doctrine (neatly tucked away in a
chapter on The Christological Controversy) and to try to see him whole.
This follows along the lines of some of the most fruitful work on Cyril
that has been produced in recent years but takes the project further by
viewing Cyril from a number of converging perspectives.
In the first essay in the collection, Robert Wilken looks at Cyril’s Old
Testament exegesis (pp. 1–21). One of the few large-scale treatments of
Cyril’s exegesis and – until fairly recently – one of the few substantial
discussions of Cyril in English is Alexander Kerrigan’s Cyril of Alexandria,
Interpreter of the Old Testament, published in 1952. Kerrigan is a hard
act to follow, but Wilken makes a substantial case for the affirmation that
Cyril’s ‘biblical writings are commentaries on Christ and only if one reads
them in that spirit can one appreciate his significance as interpreter of the
Bible’ (p. 21).
That is, of course, not peculiar to Cyril, and in some ways one of the
most significant aspects of his exegesis is precisely the difficulty of dis-
covering what is distinctive about it. The traditional contrast between
Alexandrian allegory and Antiochene literal/historical interpretation is no
longer true – even to the extent that it ever was – by the middle decades
of the fifth century. It is a curious fact that Cyril and his opponent
Theodoret have much in common in their approach to the biblical text –
looking to read the Old Testament in terms of a battery of types and images
of Christ and the ecclesial life. Just at the time when the Eastern Church
140 S TUDIES IN W ORLD C HRISTIANITY

was falling apart on dogmatic lines, there was a growing exegetical consen-
sus. All that would make what is distinctive in Cyril’s exegesis a question
worth asking – but perhaps that would have taken Wilken’s discussion too
far astray from the already large field that it ably surveys.
The second piece, by Weinandy, is a clear and coherent exposition
and defence of the core of Cyril’s Christological position (pp. 23–54). He
argues strongly for the centrality of the communicatio idiomatum (‘it was
not a proper understanding of the Incarnation which gave rise to the
communication of idioms … but rather it was the communication of
idioms … which gave rise to a proper understanding of the Incarnation’
(p. 44)) and against the thesis, put forward by R.A. Norris among others,
that ‘Cyril’s primary christological model’ implied ‘a linguistic or gram-
matical tool to govern christological language’ rather than ‘a metaphysical
statement about the constitution of Christ’ (p. 47). I would like to enter
one note of caution. ‘Communication of idioms’ is a slippery term. As
applied to Cyril, Weinandy is using it to describe the way in which ‘all
those attributes that pertain to his divinity or humanity are predicated of
one and the same Son’ (p. 28). But that is something quite different from
the less robust and fully symmetrical swapping of predicates between the
human and divine in Christ – as found in Leo’s Tome, for example – to
which the term is also applied. There is some danger, I think, that a loose
and elastic descriptor can become reified, so that instead of providing a
shorthand account of a pattern of linguistic usage it comes to be perceived
as a theological factor in its own right.
In any event, Weinandy’s account moves thoughtfully from historical
description to theological affirmation, defending Cyril’s Christological
vision against modern criticism and misunderstanding.
Frances Young, in ‘Theotokos: Mary and the Pattern of Fall and
Redemption in the Theology of Cyril of Alexandria’ (pp. 55–74), examines
Mary’s role ‘in the overarching narrative that was foundational for Cyril’s
reading of Scripture and for his theological thought’ (p. 64) and notes the
way in which an often implicit ‘Eve–Mary typology’ underpins it (p. 70).
In terms of the overall programme of the book, this means that the affir-
mation that Mary is Theotokos / Mother of God must be seen as far more
than a slogan in the war against Nestorius; it is, rather, a central part of
Cyril’s vision of the drama of human salvation.
The next three essays hang together and, in a sense, form the heart of
the book, thematically as well as structurally. Marie-Odile Boulnois
explores ‘The Mystery of the Trinity according to Cyril of Alexandria’
(pp. 75–111), drawing on her major study of Cyril’s Trinitarian thought,
 Book Reviews 141

published (in French) in 1994, and this is followed by Brian Daley on ‘The
Fullness of the Saving God: Cyril of Alexandria on the Holy Spirit’ (pp.
113–48). There is inevitably some overlap here, not least because Daley
builds on Boulnois’s earlier work. Thus, both authors note the close
connection between Cyril’s early Trinitarian thought and his later anti-
Nestorian argumentation (pp. 78, 111, 141) and both offer a sensitive
discussion of his position on the Filioque (pp. 106–8 and 144–8), noting
that Cyril cannot be neatly pigeonholed into any of the later categories.
But the overlap is actually no bad thing, for it means that themes that are
so complex and so central are dealt with from distinctive but comple-
mentary perspectives.
Boulnois identifies ‘two images – deployment and recapitulation,
diastolic and systolic’ (p. 83), in terms of which Cyril habitually structures
discussion of the Trinity – by which she means a conceptualized move-
ment out from oneness to threeness and then a countervailing movement
back from threeness to oneness.
Brian Daley provides along the way a sound and student-friendly survey
of teaching on the Spirit within the Greek Church from Nicaea to
Constantinople I (pp. 117–28). And he argues that
the central concern of Cyril’s reflections on the Trinity … is both
to continue his predecessors’ resistance to any theological position
that would weaken the identification of Jesus or the Spirit with the
transcendent God …. and to emphasize the saving, life-giving, im-
mediate presence of that God, through Jesus and the Spirit, within
history and at the heart of the Church’s daily life. (p. 129)
It is ‘this emphasis on the immediacy of God’, he claims, that brought
Cyril into collision with Nestorius. In that I think he is undoubtedly right.
And it is a claim with huge implications for the way we understand the
doctrinal conflicts of the fifth century.
Perhaps the most ground-breaking essay in the collection is Keating’s
on ‘Divinization in Cyril: The Appropriation of Divine Life’ (pp. 149–85).
He identifies in Cyril what he calls a ‘narrative of divine life’ – an ‘account
of the Trinity, of creation, of the Incarnation of the Word, and of the
sanctifying work of the Spirit, all put at the service of the transmission
of divine life to the human race’ (pp. 150–1) – an account which can be
termed a ‘narrative’ because of the sense of dynamic movement that
infuses it. This theme and this essay are linked to the two preceding
articles by stress on the role of the Spirit in our appropriation of the divine
life. Indeed, ‘the decisive feature of Cyril’s account’ of creation and fall ‘is
142 S TUDIES IN W ORLD C HRISTIANITY

the acquisition and forfeiture of the Holy Spirit’ (p. 155).

That means that there is in turn a stress on baptism, our baptism and
the baptism of Jesus, which is ‘the decisive event for the reacquisition
of the Spirit’ (p. 156). Thus, ‘Cyril offers a fundamentally sacramental
account of our union with Christ’ (p. 160), since his life is appropriated
‘through a twofold means: through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit,
normally related to baptism, and through partaking of the flesh and blood
of Christ in the Eucharist’ (p. 165).
The centrality of the eucharist as the means by which (for Cyril)
we plug in to the divine life was emphasized by Sir Henry Chadwick in
a magisterial article published over fifty years ago (‘Eucharist and
Christology in the Nestorian Controversy’, JTS NS 2 (1951), 145–64). In
that seminal article Chadwick managed to set Cyril’s politics and polemics
within the context of deeper theological concerns. Now the camera is, as
it were, dollied back farther. In other literary and theological contexts,
baptism and ‘the pneumatic mode of indwelling’ come into their own, ‘in
complementarity,’ Keating says, ‘to the somatic [eucharistic] means of
union’ (p. 170). And so here as well, seeing Cyril as a whole, liberating
him from the confines of dogmatic polemic, has resulted in the recovery
of a rich and deep and more complex theological vision.
The last trio of essays is more variegated. It is tempting to suggest that
John O’Keefe drew something of the short straw in writing on Cyril’s
‘eschatology’ (pp. 187–204), for he is forced to conclude rather sadly
that ‘in the final analysis … scholars have not been wrong in their general
judgment that the thought of Cyril of Alexandria did not revolve around
eschatological themes’ (p. 203). What he does produce is an interesting
exploration of the theme of incorruptibility – aphtharsia – as the goal of
transformed humanity, and he argues that, in this sense, ‘a particular
eschatological vision was driving Christology’ (p. 196). Specifically, he
tries to argue that Cyril’s concerns here make most sense when set within
the context of ‘the waning phases of the Origenist controversy’ (p. 198):
‘resistance to Origenism, and the concomitant eschatological themes, may
well be a significant and under-explored subtext of the christological
controversy’ (p. 204).
Were it not for the relish – indeed, the bravura – with which he tackles
his theme, I would have been tempted to suggest that it was John
McGuckin, rather than O’Keefe, who had drawn the short straw, for
McGuckin’s theme is ‘Cyril of Alexandria: Bishop and Pastor’ (pp.
205–36). The one impression of Cyril that first-year students of church
history are likely to be left with is (unfortunately) that he was someone
 Book Reviews 143

you would not want to meet in a dark alley at night, or, in McGuckin’s
words, ‘he seems to be a nightmare vision of a pastor; one whose threat-
ened visit to the family home would induce a nervous slamming of the
shutters’ (p. 210).
McGuckin clearly feels Cyril has been hard done by and tries to democ-
ratize the opprobrium: ‘quite simply, are there any of the ancients we
moderns would care to identify with?’ (p. 210). Well, yes – at least for
some moderns. We might, for example, think of John Henry Newman’s
warm identification with Cyril’s opponent Theodoret, who, according to
Newman, ‘abounds in modes of thinking and reasoning which without
any great impropriety may be called English’ (An Essay on the Development
of Christian Doctrine (1845 edn), p. 284). (But since I am writing from
a Scottish rather than an English perspective, that might, I suppose,
actually reinforce McGuckin’s point rather than undermine it.)
In any event, McGuckin effectively deconstructs the notion of Cyril
the pastor, defining the role not in terms of sipping tea in the parlour, but
rather in terms of exercising oversight over the Egyptian churches as ‘a
national Christian ethnarch’ (p. 236). Thus, he traces pastoral strategies
designed to ‘hold together from the centre such large and disparate church
communities’ (p. 222) and to staunch ‘cultic leakage of Christians to the
Jewish community’ (p. 226) and to a still vibrant paganism. One of the
most interesting specimens of such pastoral strategy is Cyril’s establish-
ment of the cult of Cyrus and John at Aboukir, at the end of the Canopic
Way, east of Alexandria, as a rival to the healing cult of Isis (pp. 230–5).
It must be said that an apologist for Cyril has a certain amount of thin
ice to traverse – incidents like the murder of Hypatia or the sequestration
of a synagogue and other Jewish property (pp. 229–30), but it is
clearly right that we must refrain from self-satisfied indulgence in the
anachronism of passing judgement on the social and ecclesial realities of
late antiquity from the sanitized perspective of liberal, Western values.
The last essay is by Norman Russell, whose volume in the Routledge
Early Church Fathers series has made a wide and well-chosen selection
of Cyril available in English. ‘“Apostolic Man” and “Luminary of the
Church”: The Enduring Influence of Cyril of Alexandria’ (pp. 237–57)
traces something of the Cyrilline legacy, from the Christological debates
of the fifth century to the ecumenical discussions of the twentieth – and
beyond. Russell is undoubtedly right when he says that even today ‘the
key to the solution’ of the continuing theological divisions between
Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Churches ‘is Cyril of Alexandria’
(p. 256).
144 S TUDIES IN W ORLD C HRISTIANITY

There, perhaps, lies the special relevance of this volume for readers
of this Journal. A truly world Christianity, as a phenomenon embracing
the heritage of the historic Eastern Churches (Chalcedonian and non-
Chalcedonian alike), cannot be understood without coming to terms with
the theological vision of Cyril. And that vision is far richer and far wider
than can be seen from a narrow and exclusive focus on the controversy
with Nestorius – as important as that controversy was for the history
of doctrine. And beyond that circle of meaning, there is the possibility
that Cyril’s picture of graced and transformed humanity – the picture that
emerges with such clarity from these essays – may have something to say
within the context of wider religious dialogue as well.
In any event, The Theology of St Cyril of Alexandria is a major contri-
bution to the continuing reappraisal and reappropriation of the Cyrilline
heritage. It is an excellent collection.
Paul Parvis
The University of Edinburgh

Escobar, Samuel. 2003. A Time for Mission: The Challenge for Global
Christianity. Leicester: InterVarsity Press, pp. 192.
One cannot accuse Samuel Escobar’s A Time for Mission: The Challenge
for Global Christianity of lacking ambition. The book seeks to serve as an
introduction to the past, present, and future of Christian missions. This
slender, 192-page volume encompasses much: the history of Christian
missions, globalization, postmodernism, theological and Biblical justifi-
cation for mission, Jesus and the Holy Spirit in missions, the function of
scripture in modern mission, the role of service, and the new international
Christian partnerships. All of this supports his assertion that ‘Christian
mission in the twenty-first century has become the responsibility of a
global church’.
It is likely that no author could do a completely satisfying job of tying
all these themes together within the space allocated. Parts of the book
definitely come over as having too much information and citing too many
scholars. The section on the history of missions in particular suffers from
being rushed.
However, Escobar generally succeeds in presenting a clear overview of
mission issues. His work on the evangelical and biblical foundations
of mission is eloquently stated. Escobar’s treatment of the impact of the
Lausanne Conference on the course of mission is especially well formed,
which should not be surprising as Escobar was a leader at Lausanne. Also