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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 59
But since to say that the Nature of the Word was Incarnate is (I deem) nought else than to hold that It has been made Man and not without birth of woman (for this only way does the nature of human bodies know of), how were you not taught by the God-inspired Scripture the Birth after the flesh of the Only-Begotten? albeit yourself too, when the prophetic lessons were before you, Unto us a Child was horn, unto us a Son was given, say thus of the Child that was born, " Great the mystery of the gift, for this is the Babe That is seen, this the new-born That appears, this that needed bodily swaddling bands, this the just-born after the Essence that is seen, in the hidden part[ ]Everlasting Son, Son Creator of all, Son Who by the swaddling-bands of His own aid binds the instability of the creation. " And elsewhere again, " And the Babe is God All-free, so far removed is God the Word, O Arius, from being subject to God." In which words he styled even the body connected with Him God. And again, We recognise therefore the human nature of the Babe and His Godhead, we preserve the oneness of the Sonship in the nature of manhood and Godhead. " Lo here with all clearness you say that the Babe, the just-born, the visible, the new-born, the swaddled, is Son and Creator of all; and the Babe the holy Virgin hath borne to us. You know therefore that God has been born after the flesh, and this you have learnt out of the God-inspired Scripture. For who will be conceived to be Creator of all, save He alone through Whom the Father hath made all?
But I said (you will haply say) " in the secret part Son and Creator of all." Well, I agree, but I will ask you: You say that the hidden is the Word of God and that this is the Creator of all: how then did you but now point out as with your finger the Babe just-born and new-born and in swaddling clothes, and called this same both Son of God and Creator of all? or do you haply suppose that the Word out of God has been transformed into the nature of the flesh, and accuse yourself, not others, of daring to say this? Surely if the Babe be the hidden Son and Creator of all, and have been born of the holy Virgin, you have acknowledged with us even against your will that she is Mother of God in some unlooked-for way, since how is a babe God all-free? For if you use the word, all-free, in the sense in which each one of us too may be so conceived, as entrusted by God with the reins of his own free-will, what is there special in Him beyond the rest? or why do you put about Him the freedom, as some God-befitting and truly choice Dignity? albeit it is in the power of all upon the earth to possess it and indeed they already have it. But if the freedom here signify the being not subject to the laws of another, and He be free in such sort as the Divine Nature itself too is conceived of, how do you say that the new-born Babe is in case so august and befitting only the Supreme Nature and glory? albeit that all which is called into being is subject unto God and runs under the yoke of bondage. But you will perchance deem that that empty word [6] of yours suffices unto all this, that I mean in respect of the natures being connected one with another, and that, not Personally, but rather in honour unvarying [in each] and equality of rank: for this is what you are always unlearnedly saying to us. But that in saying such things, you will be caught to be staying yourself upon rotten and fragile conceptions, will be shewn and not at length, when opportunity offers to us to speak upon this too.
But to these he subjoins some others by which he deems that he can shew and that skillfully that the mode of a generation like ours is unmeet and impossible. And our words he arrays against himself, and deems that he can over-master them easily and shew that they are nothing although they set forth the truth. He says thus:
6. [k] This word συνάπτω and its noun συνάφεια, S. Cyril had used long before to express the kind of Union which Christ gives us with Himself. S. Cyril says, "For as elsewhere He says that He is a Vine, we the branches, shewing that not alien nor of other kind are the branches from the Vine but of it by nature, so here He says that He is our foundation (1 Cor. iii. 11) in order to shew the natural kindship to Him when He was made man, of them which are built upon Him. For then are we connected (...) with Him by nature too, and suspended as it were from our relation to Him as the branches from the vine, we bear the fruit of piety to God-ward," Thes. cap. 15. p. 171 c d. "If on receiving Christ's Spirit we are through It brought near to God the Father, as made partakers of His Divine Nature, how is It a thing made, through which we are connected (...) with God as being now His offspring?" Thes. cap. 34 p. 360 D. And in his treatise de Trinitate written more than five years before this date, S. Cyril says, "Nor could human nature any otherwise have been partaker of the Divine Nature, had it not gained this through the Son as Mediator, receiving it as a natural (...) mode of connection (...)," Dial, i. p. 406 a: "we are temples of the Spirit Who existeth and is, we are called therefore gods as being participant with the Divine and Ineffable Nature, by connection (...) with It," Dial. 7 p. 639 fin. Of God the SON's union with His human nature, S. Cyril says, "But that the SON was Lord, before His concurrence with flesh and His connection therewith through union (...) we shall see without any trouble," Dial. 6. p. 605 d. S. Cyril then used the word to denote our union with Christ in which our own personality is preserved to us entire. When he speaks of the Incarnation in which God the Son's human nature was so made His own, by Union with Him, as to have no distinct or separate personality, S. Cyril uses connection by way of union, a connection that makes the Two natures but One.
Nestorius on the other hand following his own earlier teaching speaks of a connection between God the Son and His human nature no closer than that of any holy person with Christ.
The empty word is found in the creed against which Charisius priest and steward of the Church in Philadelphia brought a complaint before the Council of Ephesus (t. iii. 1205 sqq. ed. Col.), and of which Marius Mercator gives a Latin Translation (see On the Clause And the Son, pp. 76, 77 and note): he gives it at pp. 41 sqq. ed. Baluz. with the heading, Now the setting forth of the corrupt faith of the above mentioned Theodore, and further on, pp. 186 sqq. when giving the session that was holden about Charisius, he gives it over again in a slightly different translation with the heading Nestorian Creed. This Theodore to whom it is attributed was a contemporary of S. Chry-sostom about half a century before and was Bishop of Mopsuestia in Cilicia.
To this empty word S. Cyril opposed his Personal Union (...). Fleury (Eccl. Hist. Bk. 25 § 8 fin.) speaks of, as the first place in which he has met the expression S. Cyril's 2nd Letter (the first (Ecumenical Letter) to Nestorius in which he says, "The Word having united to Himself Personally flesh ensouled with a rational soul" (see 3 Epistles Parker 1872 p. 56). In the final Letter which S. Cyril and his Council of Alexandria wrote A. D. 430 to Nestorius were appended 12 Anathemas which Nestorius was required to sign (3 Epistles p. 68). These Anathemas or Chapters were much misunderstood by John Archbishop of Antioch, and his suffragans in Cilicia, Palestine, Euphratesia &c, who thought that they contained Apollinarian error; Liberatus who wrote about 125 years after tells us in his Breviarium (cap. 4 Gallandi Bibl. Patr. Vet. xii. 127) that John of Antioch "sent to Andrew and Theodoret, Bishops of his Council to reply in writing to the 12 chapters as renewing the dogma of Apollinaris.'' Theodoret too in sending his replies back to John sends him aletter beginning," I was greatly grieved on reading the Anathemas which you sent me, bidding me answer them in writing and lay bare to all their heretical meaning." S. Cyril defended his Anathemas or Chapters against the exceptions made by Andrew and Theodoret separately: in the close of his Letter to his Priest Eulogius, his Proctor at Constantinople, he says that he sends the Provost (inter alia) copies of his answers to each of these Bishops. The second chapter begins, "If any confess not that the Word out of God the Father has been united to flesh Personally, ...." No possible misunderstanding of this term, Personal Union, united Personally, seems to have occurred to S.Cyril, for in his Explanation of his Chapters made at the request of the Synod in order that they should he clearer (as the title tells us), during the days while the Council was awaiting its dismissal, as Alexander of Hierapolis writes to Constantinople to John of Antioch, S.Cyril does not allude to this. There is no trace of Andrew Bishop of Samosata having written against this 2nd chapter nor against the fifth and sixth: so prohably no objection occurred to him either. Nor does Eutherius bishop of Tyana in his Letter to John of Antioch, running briefly through the chapters, except against the Personal Union. Theodoret objects to the term, Personal Union, from its novelty and from its appearing to imply mixture. Again in his letter to the monks of Euphratesia, Osroene, Syria, Phoenicia and Cilicia, giving briefly his objections to some of the chapters, he repeats that the expressions Personal Union and concurrence (...) by Natural Union, teach some mixture and confusion of the Form of God and the form of the servant (Ep. 151 p. 1292 fin.) In answer to Theodore t's objection to the second chapter( written perhaps but a few weeks after this present treatise,) S. Cyril explains the term and says, Seeing that Nestorius is always undoing the birth after the flesh of God the Word and insinuating merely an union of dignities and saying that man is connected (...) with God, honoured with the co-name of Sonship; needs do WE opposing his words say that a Personal Union took place, Personal (...) having no other meaning than only that the nature or Person of the Word, i.e. the Word Himself, united in truth to human nature, apart from any turning and confusion (as we have full often said) is conceived of and is, One Christ, the Same God and Man.
S. Cyril uses the word habitually e.g. it occurs five times in his Treatise to the Princesses Arcadia and Marina on the right faith: he uses also other like expressions, true union, true and Natural Union, inseverable, indissoluble. S. Eulogius, one of S. Cyril's successors in his see (A. D. 581) and a contemporary of Pope S. Gregory, in his famous explanation that the Council of Ephesus forbad oppositions to, not definitions of, the Faith, alludes to this expression and says, For it [the Council of Ephesus] does define what none before it defined. Nay its ἡ καθ' ὑπόστασιν ἕνωσις is a definition not made by the elder Synods. (S. Eulogius in Phot. Bibl. cod. 230 translated in the above-cited On the clause, And the Son in regard &c. p. 80.)
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/cyril-alexandria/against-nestorius.asp?pg=59
