A spiritual exodus : Worship and the scriptural way of life in Cyril of Alexandria's De Adoratione

The claim of this study is that in his long, early treatise De adoratione, Cyril of Alexandria exegetes select passages of the Pentateuch in service of a larger goal. That goal is to lead his readers on the journey of Exodus, as they seek to progress in virtue and holiness. Pentateuchal exegesis is not incidental to the purpose, but integral, as Cyril draws his readers into the journey and ritual worship of Israel so that, in Christ, they are brought into a spiritual maturity in the Christian way of life in the church. Cyril does this by employing different generic approaches and by making various theological claims about the Old Testament. On the one hand, he fashions a dialogue that also bears characteristics with other genres like questions-and-responses, biblical commentary and moral exhortation. These approaches allow him to fashion a text that is didactic, paraenetic and pastoral. And then when it comes to his theological claims, Cyril constructs a Christophanic reading of Israel's history and cultic worship. By placing the mystery of Christ at the heart of Israel's worship, he seeks to collapse the distance between his Alexandrian Christian audience and Israel at Mt Sinai, with both dwelling in the presence of Christ. By journeying with Israel through Exodus in this way, he leads his readers to find their own identity as royal priests, and thus offer their own lives as an act of spiritual worship to God the Father through Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit. In so doing, they reach eternal rest and feasting with God, as first inaugurated in Exodus.

The argument that I have traced here is presented in this dissertation against a backdrop of some scholarly misunderstandings about this untranslated and under-studied treatise. But I also build upon more recent research into Cyrillian exegesis by contributing close readings of De adoratione to scholarly conversations about Cyril and his world. Further, I place De adoratione within broader conversations in patristic scholarship on biblical reception, re-envisioned Scripture, and liturgical theology. Those conversations help to draw out the three "threads" that I argue run through De adoratione: exegesis of the Pentateuch, spiritual or moral guidance, and a vision of the Christian life as one of worship. And these three threads are continually interwoven. The Pentateuch is, for Cyril, a text suitable for pedagogy, for growth in spiritual maturity, both for Israel and for Christians. It is also a text fundamentally concerned with cultic realities, offering right sacrifices and celebrating the prescribed feasts, just as the Christian life, for Cyril, is ordered towards right worship and the offering of spiritual sacrifices with the goal of eschatological Sabbath rest. While the work is one of moral or spiritual guidance, that guidance is understood within the larger context of the worship or service of God. Moral guidance is then also guidance in how to offer one's life as a spiritual sacrifice to God the Father on account of the sacrifice of Christ Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit. By structuring the whole work loosely around the journey of Israel in the book of Exodus, Cyril seeks not so much to offer a commentary on the Pentateuch according to the norms of that genre, but rather a pedagogical journey in which the Scriptural texts of Israel are read “in Spirit and truth”, leading his Christian readers to live lives of right worship or service to God. By calling this "A Spiritual Exodus", I am attempting to draw these threads together in a unity. That is, that the journey of Israel in Exodus is also, in a spiritual sense, the journey of the Christian, a journey which is ordered towards right worship. The subtitle of this dissertation fleshes out this claim, with reference to the three "threads" – that the Christian way of life or πολιτεία is, for Cyril, ordered and given shape by the Scriptures and the Pentateuch in particular, and that this way of life is one of worship, finding its goal in a life of adoration and offering spiritual sacrifices in the holy presence of God.

This work © 2024 by Thomas Pietsch is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).