This chapter examines early Christian (Patristic) literature to see the confluence of Graeco-Roman literature with its topoi and evocations of landscapes or plants as habitats and attributes of the gods, with scriptural allusions to the fruitfulness of the earth as a sign of divine bounty and pleasure. Central to early Christian allusions to plants is Eden, site of the Fall, the defining trauma of human exile from it, and the displacement of paradise to an afterlife. The first part of the chapter charts the development of accounts of creation and Eden, starting with Philo of Alexandria, with whom hexaemeral literature (referring to the six days of creation) originates, in synthesis with Plato’s Timaeus. If plants are elements in the universal ordering of species at creation, they are also topoi in rhetorical-inventive analogies for literary genres or organisation. The relations between scriptural-exegetical and classical-literary are therefore not merely a question of iconography or attribute, but of inventive figures. Related to the meadow is the figure of the garland, which will be so central to Christian symbolism, with its diverse significance as wreath, crown, or varied garland. If the rosary provides one case of the Christian development of classical poetic type, albeit beyond the timeframe of early Christianity, another case, little explored in its literary antecedents, is the crown of thorns, central instrument of Christ’s passion, which is in the Greek of the Gospels a wreath of acanthus.

Jesus Christ names the Trinity’s defining purpose. The Holy Spirit names the Trinity’s unfolding purpose. We recognise as the work of the Holy Spirit the occasions when it anticipates or echoes the action of God in Christ. More vividly, Christ, along with the Father, sends the Spirit, to point to Christ, to make Christ present in creation, to foster the ways human beings are with Christ, to prepare the way for Christ’s first and second comings. Hence this chapter explores Israel, church and God’s realm as particular lenses through which we see that Christ-prefiguring, Christ-imitating and Christ-replicating action of the Holy Spirit. The purpose of this chapter is to articulate the continuous activity of the Holy Spirit in actions of bringing people into relationship with God – in their being with God, one another and the wider creation.

Covenant, community and communion are ways in which God’s means and God’s ends are identical. Covenant is not the ‘Plan B’ after the failure of creation in the fall; it is the fulfilment of the reason for creation, and the anticipation of the true covenant, the incarnation itself. God’s love for Israel goes far beyond any instrumental goodwill: Israel is God’s child, God’s spouse, God’s companion forever. Communion is the centre of the Christian faith: being with but also being together. Communion and community name the two aspirations of church. The one is about being in, and bringing others into, relationship with God; the other is about relating civilly, cordially and sacrificially with one another, and attending to the things that need doing to function humanly. When Jesus talks of the realm of God, he is talking about this communion and community becoming a reality for all people.

Chapter 1, ‘My Lord and My God’ in John 20:30–31’, asserts that the cause, content, and consequences of belief all suggest that Jesus is God. In John 20:27–29, Thomas sees Jesus and calls him ‘my Lord and my God’. After Jesus blesses those who believe without seeing him, John claims that he has written down signs in this book so that his readers can come to believe that ‘Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God’ and ‘receive life in his name’ (John 20:30–31). The proximity of both statements is not coincidental but reveals that 20:30–31 describes the same fullness of belief as Thomas’s exclamation. What emerges is that John’s portrayals of the ‘signs’, the titles ‘Christ’ and ‘Son of God’, and the resulting ‘life in his name’ are fundamentally theological. True belief will always make Thomas’s declaration.

I address three questions. First, how do Eastern theologians configure the way the incarnation is rendered as God’s original intention, and how significant is that insight? The answer is that this is central to their portrayal of God’s purpose. Second, what precisely is God’s purpose in the incarnation? The answer lies in the notion of deification, our being made divine, a concept pivotal to Eastern theology – and yet one that seems in significant respects problematic. Third, are there ways in which Eastern theologians portray God’s purpose that are less problematic, yet equally integral to their notion of God’s original and constant purpose? The answer is, yes there are. I conclude with three key motifs that I find more transferable yet nonetheless wholly authentic to the Orthodox theological imagination: communion, participation and transfiguration.

The debate about Christ’s incarnation, and the intention behind the incarnation, is wide-ranging and far-reaching. It concerns God’s purpose and the exercise of God’s will; the identity of Christ; the reason for creation; the nature of salvation; and the destiny of humankind. The thirteenth-century Franciscans had a particular perspective on these questions, characterised by their twin emphasis on creation and incarnation. Rupert of Deutz pointed out that if the incarnation was subject to the fall, God must have intended the fall. He countered that God had always intended the Word to have an earthly role in the divine plan for the chosen people. Figures such as Bonaventure, Grosseteste and Duns Scotus amplify and qualify these issues, and Scotus concludes that Christ would have come in the maximal glory of creation – even if there had been no fall.

This chapter examines the figure of Jesus in the letters of Paul, where Jesus is most often called Christ or messiah. The analysis briefly considers the linguistic puzzles around Paul’s use of the word “Christ,” then trace the contours of Paul’s particular account of Jesus as the Christ: his being sent by God, dying for others, effecting the resurrection of the dead, subduing all rival powers, and handing over kingship to God.

As proclaimed by the churches, Jesus of Nazareth is the key to unlocking the depth and breadth of the Christian faith. Jesus’s relations to God and to the Holy Spirit ground his potential relation to every human being. As a consequence of his identity, to be unveiled in theology, Christ illuminates a whole set of questions at the frontier of the Creed: among others the openness of human nature to God, the relationship between the human and the divine, the paradox of the singular and the universal, the unity of matter and life, the challenge of hope among historical ordeals. Christ offers a new understanding, not only of the core issues of the Christian faith but also of the present moment of each believer and of what is truly definitive facing God.

This introduction situates the book within the landscape of contemporary christology, arguing that a non-competitive christology or a “Chalcedonianism without reserve” best accounts for Christ’s human receptivity to the world. This book will develop such an account through the resources offered by Augustine of Hippo’s christology.

Completing the trajectory of the book through text, illustration, recitation, architecture, and iconography, this final chapter looks at a case study for the intersection of text, image, and sound in Hagia Sophia. By looking at a sixth-century plaque from the church’s original construction and its afterlife over the centuries, the chapter studies how iconographies develop and change through various uses and contexts of display, and how these shifts alter the resonances with which the reading of the Gospel in the church was understood. The chapter seeks to unsettle our expectations of iconography and how ritual and space intersect with one another.

The chapter unites anthropological accounts of blood. It introduces refrains that unify themes of the entire book. It argues that blood marks the bounds of religious and social bodies, using Durkheim, Douglas, and Bildhauer; Irenaeus, Maximus, and Aquinas. Iron compounds make blood red, but societies draft its color and stickiness for their own purposes. Inside, blood carries life. Outside, blood marks the body fertile or at risk. But that’s a social fiction. Skin makes a membrane to pass when a body breathes, eats, perspires, eliminates, menstruates, ejaculates, conceives, or bleeds. Only blood evokes so swift and social a response: It brings parent to child, bystander to victim, ambulance to patient, soldier to comrade, midwife to mother, defender to border. The New Testament names the blood of Christ three times as often as his cross – five times as often as his death. The blood of Jesus is the blood of Christ; the wine of communion is the blood of Christ; the means of atonement is the blood of Christ; the kinship of believers is the blood of Christ; the cup of salvation is the blood of Christ; icons ooze with the blood of Christ; and the blood of Christ is the blood of God.