|
HOME | GREEK LANGUAGE |
LIBRARIES |
BLOG | HELP | SEARCH | BOOKSTORE | FREEWARE |
|
|
Translated by P.E. Pusey
St Cyril of Alexandria Resources Online and in Print
|
31 Pages
Page 30
I will open the force of their opinions, so far as I can, bringing forward instances from the Sacred Writings. Christ hungered, was wearied with the journey, slept, entered into the boat, was stricken with blows by the attendants, was scourged by Pilate, received the spittle of the soldiers, who piercing with the spear His Side, offered vinegar mingled with gall to His Mouth: yea and He tasted death, suffering the Cross and other contumelies of the Jews. All these things they declare to have befallen indeed the man, but to be referred to the Person of the Very Son. But we believe, as in One God the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible, so too in One our Lord Jesus Christ His Son. And we refuse to divide Emmanuel into man by himself and into the Word by Himself: but knowing that the Word became truly Man too as we, we say that Himself the Same is God of God, and in human wise Man as we of a woman. And we assert that by reason of the ownness of the flesh He suffered indeed infirmities, yet reserved to His Nature its impassibility, in that He was not Man alone but the Same therewith also God by Nature. And like as the Body was His own, so too the natural and blameless passions of the body and the things which by the frowardness of some were put upon Him.
He suffered without suffering Who did not therefore humble Himself that He might only be like us, but because (as I said before) He had reserved to His Nature superiority to all these things. But if we should say that through conversion or mutation of His own Nature He had passed into the nature of the flesh [44], it would be in all ways necessary for us even against our will to confess that the Hidden and Divine Nature was passible. But if He have remained unchanged albeit He have been made man as we, and it be a property of the Heavenly Nature that It cannot suffer, and the passible body have become His own through the union:----He suffers when the Body suffers, in that it is said to be His own body. He remains Impassible in that it is truly His property to be unable to suffer.
And if Emmanuel have been glorified through suffering, as Himself says when about to suffer for us the Precious Cross, Now is the son of man glorified, why do they not blush, attributing the glory of the Passion to a man having connection only with Him in Equality of dignity? for as they deem, He connected with Himself according to the Will and Good-pleasure of the Father a man only and made him equal to His own glory, and permitted that by like name he should be styled both Christ and Son and God and Lord:----hence neither is the Word truly Incarnate nor was He at all made man. And haply to call the holy doctors of the whole world false and liars, will do no harm? for either let them say, yea rather come forward and prove that the mode of connection which is brought in by them has the force of incarnation and that that is that the Word was made flesh; or if they think that these things are not so, why do they invent for us a mode of unconnected connection, the truth being neglected? whereas it would be fitting that they should say that the Word of God the Father was united to our humanity, for thus in His own flesh is He conceived to have suffered what belongs to man, but so far as pertains to the Nature of the Godhead, He is free from all that disturbs, as God.
And that by speaking of reference [45], which I know not how they invented, they withdraw Emmanuel from His Glory and make Him barely one of the Prophets, and set Him amid the measure of the many, and are full surely caught thus doing, I will prove, giving examples from the Divine Scripture.
44. [t] This most carefully guarded language of S. Cyril is not the effect of any necessity arising from controversy with Nestorius, but of a mind from the beginning educated in careful precision of thought and utterance as regards the Mystery of the Incarnation. In his 7th Paschal homily (A.D. 420), after speaking of great agricultural distress in various degrees of severity in different villages in Egypt, S. Cyril points out that it is the due punishment of their sin and speaks of the proneness to pity of the Only-Begotten, and that He is God and Man in One. See a passage quoted from this Homily, above p. 227 note n, and the closing words of the extract, "For the Word was made flesh, as saith the holy Evangelist, not turned into flesh; for he says not this, but called Him flesh, instead of saying in full man." Hom. Pasch. vii. 102 d. And in the Thesaurus, "It was then the aim of the Incarnate Word to shew clearly that He really put about Him flesh and has been made man, not casting away the being God the Word: for it was not possible that the human race should in other way be saved. Yet lest any hearing that He has been made flesh should suppose that the Unchangeable Word of God has been transformed and become ought else than He was from the beginning, needs does He at one time utter words befitting man, at another displays deeds belonging to Godhead alone, in order that both together (τὸ συναμφότερον) may be conceived of.... Sin, as sinless and unknowing to have it Me rightly rejects, but suffers His body and His human nature to suffer what belong to the nature itself, as a proof that He really and truly bears flesh and was made man, according to the Scriptures. But since (as we said above) it behoved Him to be shewn forth as God even in flesh, He works sometimes what belong to God and says to them who see Him, If ye believe not Me, i. e. by reason of looking on a man, yet believe My works, that ye may know and believe that I am in the Father and the Father in Me. Hence the things said and wrought in God-befitting wise shew that the Saviour is God: and again the things said and done humanly shew that He is of a truth man. For this is the force of the mystery." Thes. cap. 24 p. 231 a b c d.
45. [u] Probably ἀναφορὰ, which S. Cyril uses several times in the Quod Unus est Christus, below pp. 255, 257 &c, and especially on this very subject, p. 259.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/cyril-alexandria/incarnation-only-begotten.asp?pg=30
