A few months back I posted a review of The Appropriation of Divine Life in Cyril of Alexandria, by Daniel A. Keating. Last week, at the St. Paul Center‘s Letter & Spirit Conference, I had the pleasure of listening to Dr. Keating speak. Afterward I rushed out to buy a copy of his more recent book, Deification and Grace. I’m reading it now and having a hard time putting it down. I’ll post a review here or in Touchstone. But I thought you’d appreciate the way he approaches this doctrinal issue:

[T]he testimony of the Church Fathers will be the center of gravity of this study … I will rely most heavily on the testimony of the Fathers of the Church. The doctrine of deification emerged in the patristic period as the Fathers wrestled with the Scriptures to understand rightly the doctrine of salvation in Christ. It is to our benefit to have that testimony made more readily available.

He follows through with testimony from everyone you’d want to read in the book: Ambrose, Athanasius, Augustine, Basil, Clement of Alexandria, Cyril of Alexandria, Didymus, Ephrem, Evagrius, three different Gregorys, Hilary, Irenaeus — and, gosh, that doesn’t even get you halfway through the index!

Last time this title came up in the commboxes, people complained that the book wasn’t available on Amazon. But it’s there now.