Saint Cyril of Alexandria’s Theology of the Eucharist
Saint Cyril of Alexandria’s Theology of the Eucharist

Summary/Abstract: Cyril of Alexandria (c. 378-444), known in antiquity as the sphragis ton pateron, the ‘seal of the Fathers’ is one of the most important of the all the Early Christian Greek theologians, and was a major protagonist in the great Christological crisis of the 5th century Church. The conciliar debate which he initiated at the Council of Ephesus (431) went on to determine the agenda of three following Oecumenical councils up to the seventh century. To this extent he is rightly regarded as one of the chief exponents of the Church’s Christology, though his work, of course, built upon important patristic predecessors. The doctrine of the Eucharist were thus the primary methods he used to assess the validity of theological speculation, renewing a pattern of procedure he had inherited from the earliest Fathers, and one which would endure after him as substantive to Orthodoxy. Cyril discusses the Eucharist as a paradigm of incarnate soteriology in several key passages, many of which have been neglected because they did not form part and parcel of his dogmatic controversial works.

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