Mark Edwards is Professor of Early Christian Studies at the University of Oxford, UK.Elena Ene D- Vasilescu is a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, UK and teaches in the fields of Patristics, History of the Church, and Byzantine Church Art.

This is a very important collection of studies, from a first rate assortment of scholars, which will contribute further to the gradually growing recognition that deification is an issue of central importance for understanding not only Eastern Christian thought but the very nature of the Christian theological enterprise itself.- Dr Rowan Williams, University of Cambridge, UK

• IntroductionPart I. What is the image of God?1. Martyrdom of Polycarp, Markus Vinzent 2. Growing like God: Some thoughts on Irenaeus of Lyons, Mark EdwardsPart II. Image and Eschatology. Deification 3. ‘Love never fails, not even in death’. Gregory of Nyssa on theôsis, Elena Ene D-Vasilescu 4. Deification in the Alexandrian tradition, Mark Edwards 5. Not so alien and unnatural after all: the role of deification in Augustine’s sermons, Stanley P. Rosenberg6. Union with and likeness to God: Deification according to Dionysius the Areopagite, Filip Ivanovic7. Like a glowing sword. St Maximus on deification, Torstein Theodor TollefsenPart III. Image of God and Byzantine/Meta-Byzantine Icon 8. Communion with God and theology of the icon: a study of the Christological iconology of St. John of Damascus, Dimitrios Pallis9. The vision of God and the deification of man: the visual implications of theôsis, Clemena Antonova BibliographyIndex