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Translated by P. E. Pusey
St Cyril of Alexandria Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 115 Pages
Page 5
Theodoret's reply shews that he read the Chapters with the conviction that they were Apollinarian, and he accordingly replies, not to the Chapters themselves but to the sense which he himself imagined that they contained. His reply is in the main orthodox, though it looks in one or two places as if his belief was rather vague [13], but he twists S. Cyril's words so as to mean 'mixture,' and so replies [14]. Theodoret seems never to have got over his misapprehension. For in his long Letter [15] to the Monks of his Province, Euphratesia, Osroene, Syria, Phoenicia, Cilicia, he still speaks of Chapter 1 as teaching that God the Word was changed into flesh; of chapters 2 and 3 as bringing in the terms, Personal Union and Natural Union, "teaching through these names a mixture and confusion of the Divine Nature and the bondman's form: this is the offspring of Apollinarius' heretical innovation." And after speaking of Chapter 4, he sums up, "These are the Egyptian's brood, the truly more wicked descendants of a wicked parent." In his letter [16] to John Bishop of Germanicia, written after the Robbers' council in 449, Theodoret says of it, "Let them deny now the chapters which they many times condemned, but have in Ephesus now confirmed."
Andrew of Samosata, on the other hand, seems to have been decidedly more definite in his belief on the Incarnation, and to have thought that some of S. Cyril's chapters were Apollinarian without objecting to all. Thus Andrew's chief objection to chapter 1 appears to have been that he mistook the words "for she hath borne after the flesh (σαρκικῶς)" to mean that the Birth was entirely in the order of nature and so not of a Virgin [17]. Andrew passes over chapter 2, as though the term, "Personal Union," had not even struck him as a difficulty. In chapter 3, Andrew thinks that φυσικὴ, Natural Union, or Unity of Nature is an inadmissible expression, as to what is above our nature. In chapter 4, Andrew thinks that because the words are not to be apportioned to distinct Persons, therefore S. Cyril meant, that they are not to be apportioned at all, either to the Godhead or to the Manhood in the One Person of the Incarnate God. S. Cyril had all his life said that they were to be so apportioned, but Andrew had of course not read S. Cyril's writings. Andrew shews his own definite belief by the expression ἡ ἄκρα ἕνωσις, entire union, here; and, [']we confess the union entire (τὴν ἕνωσιν ἄκραν) and Divine and incomprehensible to us,' are the closing words of his reply to chapter 11. These are almost identical with S. Cyril's expressions, "we shall not take away the unlike by nature through wholly uniting them (διὰ τὸ εἰς ἄκρον ἑνοῦν) [18]," and in his reply to Andrew, διὰτὴν εἰς ἄκρον ἕνωσιν.
13. [n] [Passages from Theodoret's reply to the first, second, fourth and tenth anathematism and from his letter to the monks were read in the 5th General Council before the condemnation of his writings against S. Cyril. Also from allocutions in behalf of Nestorius from Chalcedon after his condemnation at Ephesus; from a letter to Andrew of Samosata, in which he speaks of Egypt [i.e. S. Cyril and the Egyptian bishops] being 'again mad against God,' but owns that those of Egypt, Palestine, Pontus, Asia, and with them the West are against him, and that the greatest part of the world has taken the disease; a letter of sympathy with Nestorius after the reunion of the Easterns with S. Cyril, declaring that, if his two hands were cut off, he would never agree to what had been done against Nestorius, (which however he did when required by the Bishops at Chalcedon); a letter to John of Antioch still condemning the Anathematisms, although accepting the subsequent explanation. Apart from the 'atrocious letter' full of conceits which it is inconceivable how any one could have written, Mercator, a contemporary, says it was one of the charges against Archbishop Domnus, that he had been present when Theodoret preached a sermon, exulting in the peace which would ensue from S. Cyril's death. 'No one now compels to blaspheme. Where are they who say, that He Who was crucified is God?' Mercator from, Gesta quae contra Domnum Antioch. Ep. conscripta sunt p. 276. ed. Garn.]
14. ° There is extant a very careful letter of Theodoret on the Incarnation, written to Eusebius scholasticus, in which Theodoret says, "Nevertheless we do not deny the properties of the Matures, but as we deem those ungodly who divide into Two sons the One Lord Jesus Christ, so do we call them enemies of the Truth who attempt to confuse the natures: for we believe that an union without confusion has taken place and we know what are the properties of the human nature, what of the Godhead." Then after mentioning the two natures of a man which do not part him into two, "thus do we know that our Lord and God, I mean the Son of God the Lord Christ, is One Son after His Incarnation too; for the Union is inseverable even as without confusion." Ep. 21. p. 1085.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/cyril-alexandria/against-nestorius.asp?pg=5
