AIOCS Director Dr Wagdy Samir has just published a major monograph, Divine Participation: A Reconstruction of St Cyril of Alexandria’s and Fr Matta al-Miskīn’s Commentaries on the Gospel of St John, in the prestigious series Texts and Studies in Eastern Christianity (vol. 38), at Brill (Leiden and Boston, 2025). Warm congratulations!
The book is based on his doctoral dissertation at the Sydney College of Divinity (2022) and is a major contribution towards establishing the traditional legitimacy of Fr Matta al-Miskīn’s theology of deification as transformative divine participation.
As Samir writes,
Matta’s position on participation in, and union with, God is primarily anchored in the early Alexandrian tradition while still making original contributions. These findings cast a clarifying light upon the recent debates within the Coptic Orthodox Church about deification. They also invite members of the broader Christian research community to explore the breadth and depth of Matta’s theology in the context of their respective traditions.
The book can be found at Brill, where further details are available.
