Book Review: Deification Through the Cross: An Eastern Christian Theology of Salvation by Khaled Anatolios

Abstract

This remarkable book is for reading and studying—and (most unusually) praying—together. The title and subtitle are a clean summary of the thesis and approach. But they wisely reveal as well as hide: “deification”—“through the cross”? “Eastern”—and “Christian”? So I would make this required reading and studying and praying on salvation-theology for professors and pastors and anyone else who is reading thus far. But here I speak briefly as a provincial Roman Catholic theologian to give readers some small sense of the riches here. I begin with the sub-title and move toward the title. This is a “theology of salvation.” But it is written with “the distinctly modern befuddlement in the face of this central Christian doctrine” in mind (1). This includes befuddlement over the claim that Christ’s suffering and death save. It is exemplified in the marginalizing Christ’s death as expiatory sacrifice, the proliferation and fragmentation of un-normed “models” or “metaphors” of salvation (Aulen, Turner, Gunton, and McIntyre), and “the lack of experiential access to this doctrine” (23). The dismissal of clear Scriptural themes (such as expiatory sacrifice) for exemplifying the befuddlement is not as subtle a befuddlement as various proposals of un-normed “models” or “metaphors,” but each arises from and leads to the experiential vacuity of “salvation.” Anatolios’ alternative to these befuddlements is an “Eastern Christian” theology of salvation. What is this? In one of those rare moments when he calls attention to himself, Anatolios says he is a member of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, “which claims the same Byzantine dogmatic, liturgical, and spiritual heritage as the Byzantine Orthodox Churches, while also maintaining communion with the Church of Rome” (38, note 56). But “Eastern Christian” means a good deal more than this autobiographical sidenote. I have never read a book that so clearly and effectively criticizes Book Review