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Translated by P. E. Pusey
St Cyril of Alexandria Resources Online and in Print
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44 Pages
Page 23
But if they think that they have thought out something clever, in taking yesterday and to-day to mean recent, asserting and saying, He that is yesterday and to-day how will he be also for ever, WE too will transfer the force of the question unto the direct opposite: The Word which is for ever how will He take to Himself Yesterday and to-day, if Christ is One and has not been divided, as says the Divine Paul? For that thus He would be known by us, you will know hence also. For although seen in the flesh and having entered on the measures of the human nature, He has testified to Himself His Eternal Being saying, Verily I say to you, Before Abraham was I am, and again, If I told you the things of earth and ye believe not, how will ye believe if I tell you those of Heaven? and no one hath gone up into Heaven except He which descended from heaven, the Son of man. For as Word Which ever is and before the ages, come down from heaven, and then the Same appearing man as we; as One Christ and Lord even when He was made flesh, does He say these things.
B. Another argument too has been discovered by them, it is this: they say that he which is of the seed, of David, ought so to be called son of God as the Word Which is forth of God the Father is said to be son of David: for neither is so by nature [33].
A. Now let the mode of the true Union come in, that so the Word be believed to have been made flesh, i. e. man, and therefore son of David not falsely but as from forth him according to the flesh, having remained too what He was, i. e. God out of God. And verily the priests of the gospel preachings, knowing that the Same is God alike and man, have told us of Him. It is written of the blessed Baptist that, On the morrow he seeth Jesus coming to him and saith, Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world: this it is of whom I said, After me cometh a Man which has been made before me because He is prior to me, and I knew Him not, but in order that He should be manifested to Israel, therefore came I baptizing in water. Understand therefore how he saying, a Man, and calling Him a Lamb, says that none other is He who taketh away the sin of the world, and hath allotted to Him this great and truly vast and God-befitting Dignity. And he says that He is before and prior to him, albeit made after him, I mean according to the time of the generation after the flesh. For if Emmanuel is late-born as man, yet was He before every time as God. His therefore is both the recent humanly and the Eternal Divinely: hence the all-excellent Peter too, looking on the Word not bare nor without flesh, but appearing in flesh and blood, clearly and unerringly [34] []made his tribute of faith in Him, saying, THOU art the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and heard in reply, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona, because flesh and blood revealed it not to thee, but My Father which is in Heaven. But were not the Mystery deep, and God in the flesh, but [only] a man having according to them the sonship by grace, how should he have needed an Initiator [35][ ]so great, that no one of them on the earth revealed it to the disciple, but that he had the Father Himself as his Instructor in this?
33. [t] Compare the fragments cited before the fifth council from S. Cyril's first book against Theodore of Mopsuestia.
34. [v] ἀπλανῶς. Euthymius Zigabenus in his extract from this treatise has ἁπλῶς, simply, which is a far more usual expression with S. Cyril: ἀπλανῆ however occurs in de recta fide to the Emperor, p. 26 c.
35. [x] S. Cyril uses the same argument in his Treatise de recta fide to the Princesses Arcadia and Marina, p. 82 b. comp. too Schol. § 20, above p. 209.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/cyril-alexandria/christ-one.asp?pg=23
