The book concludes by commenting on what can be said about the traditions that Cyril and Julian represent (Christianity and Hellenism) based on the focused analysis of the particular arguments of these two figures. Demonstrating narrative conflict between two individuals does not yet prove incommensurability between their traditions, and this concluding chapter points to how that larger question would need to be broached.

At the end of the historical section, Katharine E. Harmon bridges the gap between the past and the present, inasmuch as she discusses what the Liturgical Movement brought about. This international and ecumenical movement promoted a deeper understanding of the liturgy as well as revisions and reforms it deemed necessary or desirable. Today, many scholars and church leaders are greatly indebted to the Liturgical Movement.

Chapters 5 and 6 focus on clusters of re-narrated episodes in Cyril’s response to Julian. Chapter 5 is organized by one of Julian’s own categories: the “gifts of the gods” which, he had argued, were given in surpassing quality and quantity to the Hellenic people. This chapter groups Julian’s various iterations of gifts and Cyril’s sprawling responses in three, interrelated categories: exemplary characters, intellectual superiority, and military and political domination. In Cyril’s responses, Minos was no legendary hero but rather imitated the fallen angels’ lust for domination; the Attic language itself (not to mention the convention of writing) derived from proto-Christian sources; and the Jewish people’s turbulent history and the present ascendance of Roman superiority equally reflect the Christian God’s management of the cosmos.

How the Shepherd conceives of human–spirit relations leads me to examine two examples of the consequences of this entanglement of spirit possession and enslavement. I point first to how the holy spirit in the Shepherd functions similarly to the Roman enslaved overseer (vilicus) who represents the physically absent enslaver and surveils other enslaved persons. The Shepherd solves the problem that despotic writers (e.g., Cato, Columella) lament regarding how to guarantee that the vilicus is not mistaken for the absentee enslaver: God becomes both the enslaver and the vilicus, the ever-present surveillance over the enslaved through spirit possession. I also focus on one tricky passage in the Shepherd, a parable about an enslaved person working on a vineyard and its complex layers of interpretations offered by the Shepherd (Similitude 5), to better understand how the Shepherd conceptualizes the relationship between the holy spirit and the flesh that it treats as a vessel. I show how the Shepherd views enslavement to the holy spirit as a necessary risk for the enslaver, since the spirit can be polluted and defiled if the enslaved body in which it dwells is not constantly maintained.

This chapter uses a case study from Julian’s and Cyril’s engagement to introduce the central argument of the book: that Julian and Cyril are in narrative conflict, a type of intellectual disagreement that can obtain when strong traditions do not share adequate language or criteria by which their representatives can adjudicate weighty differences. The case study revolves around Julian’s and Cyril’s competing interpretation Leviticus 16, and of one ambiguous word: apopompaios. Julian and Cyril each offer confident interpretations, grounded in their traditions’ constituting narrative, but those interpretations look absolutely nothing alike. The chapter briefly explains the concept of narrative conflict and then summarizes the books’ chapters.

Nathan G. Jennings concludes the volume with a synthetic view on liturgical theology, the art of doing theology from and through the celebration of actual liturgies. He introduces the groundbreaking ideas of Alexander Schmemann on the matter and explains how the field has further developed, despite certain tensions with historical claims.

Kimberly Hope Belcher surveys an impressive number of authors and theories who have engaged with the broad human phenomenon of ritual. For it is evident that both classical ritual studies and more recent approaches have enormous potential for engaging in a dialogue with scholars of Christian liturgy and liturgies.

Maryann Madhavathu presents essential elements of how liturgy structures time – that is, daily, weekly, and yearly rhythms – with special attention to the meaning of Sunday and the important cycles of the liturgical year in different liturgical families. It is no surprise that Easter is of the utmost importance to all of them.

Chapter 6 turns to a cluster of broadly cosmological episodes: the events and agents of creation, the texts that tell of these events and agents, and the authors who wrote these more and less authoritative texts. It focuses on two stretches of Cyril’s Against Julian, broadly concerning the modes of divine management of the cosmos but covering topics ranging from the breadth of human diversity to the Mosaic sacrificial system to the Tower of Babel and Homer’s Aloadae giant brothers. Cyril’s consistent objective is to dislodge the characters of the gods from Julian’s Hellenic story while also demonstrating how much better sense they make within the Christian story as fallen demons. That “all the gods of the nations are demons” (LXX Ps 95:5) was, of course, a common apologetic line. But this re-narrating claim is more than a polemical trope, structuring in fact a surprising range of arguments.

Samuel Goyvaerts explores the notion of liturgical pastoral, the roots of which are to be found in the Liturgical Movement. It is an umbrella term that makes one understand how liturgy is intrinsically connected to the Church’s diakonia, kerygma, and koinonia. Liturgy is essential for building up the Church, for faith formation, and for the faithful’s service to the world.

Harald Buchinger sketches the origins and complex evolutions of liturgies in Christian Antiquity. He focuses on patterns of worship and celebration developed in those times, underscoring how difficult it is to draw straightforward conclusions, mainly because of a paucity of sources.