St Cyril of Alexandria Against the Synousiasts (Fragments)

Translated by P. E. Pusey

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[a] The opening fragment of this Treatise has been preserved to us by the fifth General Council, those that follow by John Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine, in his Defence of the Council of Chalcedon, of the two last fragments, the former is in Severus' treatise against John, the latter in a later collection. Bishop John heads his citations from S. Cyril: "Divers citations of Cyril Archbishop of Alexandria wherein one may find the difference of the Two Natures proclaimed by him and that God the Word is Impassible and Immortal, the Temple passible and mortal." The ms. containing Bishop John's fifteen citations from this treatise numbers them, 77-90 (91 is a passage from the Glaphyra), while the citations from the 3 books against Diodore and Theodore are numbered 181-190. This led to these fragments being placed first in the edition of S. Cyril's works, following the order of Bishop John's citations. But the present treatise is not purely against the Synousiasts or Apollinarians, though it cites their objections, in something of the same way as S. Athanasius does: but against the Apollinarians with a reference to the previous labours, not free from error, of Diodore and Theodore; see the commencement and the 17th fragment, cited by Severus and the words with which Severus introduces it, below p. 376. See too above p. 335 fragment 27 against Diodore, which may really belong to this book, not to that. I have then no doubt that the present treatise is the one on the Incarnation which Liberatus refers to. He says, "Cyril as reports go, wrote 4 books, three against Diodore and Theodore as authors of Nestorian dogma and another book on the Incarnation, wherein are contained genuine testimonies of old Fathers, i.e., Felix Pope of Rome, Dionysius Bishop of Corinth and the marvellous Gregory called the Wonderworker. And though in the Books the words of Theodore against the Arians are cited yet they maintain that he was Nestorius' master." Liberatus, Breviarium, cap. x. in Gallandi xii. 134. The opening paragraph of this Treatise, "A long discourse has already been made &c", shews that it was written after the books against Diodore and Theodore.

[b] S. Athanasius, after having spent all his life in combats and sufferings for the Truth against Arianism, had, in the close of his days, to oppose the mad errors of the Apollinarians or Synousiasts. Their chief errors are stated thus by S. Athanasius in the opening of his first book against Apollinarius; "but these either fancy a change of the Word or suppose that the Economy of the Passion is a semblance; one while saying that the flesh of Christ is Uncreate and heavenly, other while, that it is consubstantial with the Godhead. Next they say that in place of the man that is within in ourselves [i. e. the inner man] there was an heavenly mind in Christ; for He used as an instrument the form which envelopes Him, for it was impossible that He should be Perfect man: for where perfect man is, there too is sin, also that two perfects cannot make one whole." Against Apollinarius lib. i. § 2. t. i. 923. See extracts of his two books against them, above p. 324 note c. S. Athanasius exposes the chief points of their misbelief more succinctly in his famous Letter to Epictetus, Bishop of Corinth. S. Gregory of Nazianzum, the contemporary of S. Athanasius had to contend with them in his very midst (see Tillemont's life of him, Art. 88 t. 9. pp. 515 sqq. ed. 2) and as Tillemont points out, to bear their accusation that he divided into Two the One Son ("Next they accuse me as though I introduced two natures separated or opposed, and divided the Super-natural and marvellous Union, when I ought either not to do what they accuse me of, or not to accuse them of what they do," second Letter to Cledonius, near the end, t. i. 749 ed. 1609)). Under these circumstances S. Gregory both opposes the Apollinarians, and expresses himself with that accuracy on the Incarnation that his words are cited before the Council of Ephesus as contradicting Nestorius' teaching. He says, "If any suppose that Mary is not mother of God, he is external to the Godhead. If any say that He passed through the Virgin as through a channel, and not that He has been formed in her Divinely alike and humanly, Divinely because without a man, humanly because by the law of bringing forth, he likewise is godless. If any say that the man was formed, that God then entered Him he is condemned; for no Generation of God would this be, but a shunning of birth. If any introduce two sons, one Him who is out of God the Father, the other him who is forth of his mother and not One and the same, may he fall away from the sonship which is promised to them that believe aright. [This will illustrate the strenuous efforts which Diodore Theodore and Nestorius made to persuade themselves that they were not really saying two sons.] For two natures are God and man, as also soul and body, not two sons nor two gods. For neither are there with us two men, even though Paul so spoke of the inner part of man and the outward. And to speak briefly, one thing and other (ἄλλο μὲν καὶ ἄλλο) are that whereof the Saviour is, seeing that the invisible is not the same as the visible, and the apart from time with the subject to time, not one and other (ἄλλος δὲ καὶ ἄλλος), not so; for Both are One in commixture (ἓν τῇ συγκράσει), God made-man, man-made-God, or however we are to call it. I say 'one thing and other' in contrast to how it is in the TRINITY: for there it is One and Other (ἄλλος καὶ ἄλλος) that we confound not the Persons, it is not one thing and other (ἄλλο δὲ καὶ ἄλλο), for in the Godhead the Three are One and the same Thing." first Letter to Cledonius t. i. 738 d 739 a b cited in the council of Ephesus among the authorities which Peter priest of Alexandria and protonotary read out of a collection that he had. S. Cyril, as having drunk in and made his own the teaching of the Fathers which were before him in all his writings speaks expressly of One Christ, and that by Union, the Word remaining Word and the Flesh flesh: see the citation from the seventh Paschal homily (A.D. 420) p. 227 note m, and again p. 233 note z; in the latter place S. Cyril guards against Apollinarian error, in the former against both.

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