Images of Deification

Forthcoming in November is what looks to be a fascinating collection that brings together two very popular and important themes in Eastern thought--iconography and theosis: Visions of God and Ideas on Deification in Patristic Thought, eds. Mark Edwards and Elena Ene D-Vasilescu (Routledge, 2016), 244pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

This volume illustrates the complexity and variety of early Christian thought on the subject of the image of God as a theological concept, and the difficulties that arise even in the interpretation of particular authors who gave a cardinal place to the image of God in their expositions of Christian doctrine. The first part illustrates both the presence and the absence of the image of God in the earliest Christian literature; the second examines various studies in deification, both implicit and explicit; the third explores the relation between iconography and the theological notion of the image

We are also given the table of contents:

Introduction
Part I. What is the image of God?
1. Martyrdom of Polycarp, Markus Vinzent
2. Growing like God: Some thoughts on Irenaeus of Lyons, Mark Edwards

Part 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. Rosenberg
6. Union with and likeness to God: Deification according to Dionysius the Areopagite, Filip Ivanovic
7. Like a glowing sword. St Maximus on deification, Torstein Theodor Tollefsen

Part 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 Pallis
9. The vision of God and the deification of man: the visual implications of theôsis, Clemena Antonova

Bibliography
Index