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Translated by P.E. Pusey
St Cyril of Alexandria Resources Online and in Print
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31 Pages
Page 6
And no marvel, if we are overcome by such ideas, when if we accurately investigate our own matters how they be, we confess that the grasp of them is beyond the understanding that is in us. For after what mode we conceive that the soul of man is united to his body, who can tell? But if we, who are wont to conceive and avail to speak scantly and with difficulty must form our judgement of things so subtil and beyond understanding and speech; we say that it will befit to conceive (yet altogether less than the truth is our word) that of such sort is the union [9] of Emmanuel, as one reckons that the soul of man too has with its own body. For the soul makes its own the things of the body although in its own nature imparticipate of its sufferings, both physical and those brought on it from without. For the body is moved to natural desires and the soul which is in it shares the perception thereof by reason of the union, but participates in no way, yet thinks that the achievement of the desire is its own enjoyment. And even though the body be struck by any or be cut with steel, it co-grieves, its own body suffering, yet will itself in its own nature suffer nought of the things inflicted.
Nevertheless above this too do we say that the union is in the case of Emmanuel. For it were necessary that the soul united thereto should grieve along with its own body, that so, fleeing the disgrace, it might submit a tractable neck to God. But of God the Word, it were absurd to say that He were co-percipient of the contumelies (for free from passion is the Godhead and not in our condition), yet has He been united to flesh possessed of a reasonable soul, and when it suffered, He was impassibly in cognizance of what befell it and brought to naught as God the infirmities of the flesh, yet made them His own as belonging to His own Body: thus is He said both to hunger and be weary and suffer for us.
Hence the union of the Word with the human nature may be not unaptly compared with our condition. For[ ]as the body is of other nature than the soul, yet is one man produced and said to be of both; so too out of the Perfect Person of God the Word, and of manhood perfect in its own mode, is One Christ, the Same God and Man in the Same. And the Word (as I said) makes its own the sufferings of Its own Flesh, because Its own is the Body and not another's: and It shares with Its own Flesh the operation of the God-befitting might that is within It; so that it should be able both to quicken the dead and to heal the sick.
But if we must, using examples out of the God-inspired Scripture, shew as in type the mode of the union, come let us say it, as we are able.
9. [i] "Paul somewhere says of the Son of God, Who being in the form of God deemed not the being Equal with God a thing to seize but emptied Himself, taking servant's form and found in fashion as a man. The Word of God therefore hath been made man; He came not into a man like as He was in the Prophets [comp. dial. i. p. 398 c, hom. pasch. x, A.D. 423, p. 159 c] but has been made in truth this which we too are, without only sin. He is therefore God in that He is Word of the Father, and the own of His Essence; man, in that He hath been made flesh as it is written, and put about Him our flesh. The faith respecting our Lord Jesus Christ having this definition, let the words [spoken] of Him be discerned according to the ratio befitting them; and if thou hear, I and the Father are One, view the One Godhead of the Son and of the
Father and conceive of the Son as God out of the Essence of the Father; if again thou hear of Him that He wept and was grieved and was in fear and began to be in sore distress, conceive of Him again as being man along with being also God and attribute to the human nature what is due thereto. For since He took a Body mortal and subject to decay and liable to such like passions, needs does He with the flesh make His own its sufferings, and when it endures them, Himself is said to be enduring them. For thus do we say that He was both crucified and died, the flesh suffering this, not the Word apart and by Himself, for He is Impassible and Immortal. Hence we shall orthodoxly receive what is said, allotting to the Godhead the God-befitting, attributing to the flesh the things spoken of because of it and as it were forth of it through the natural motions that are in us: of which the mind having the perception, gushes up through the tongue the things voicelessly whispered in the depth out of sight." Thes. cap. 24 p. 232 b c d e. Near the close too of his 4th Paschal homily (A. D. 417) S. Cyril says, "The Word makes His own (full rightly) the Suffering (for His was the Body and none other's), seeing that when the Body was scourged, and besides spat on by the all-daring Jews, Himself through the Prophet Isaiah says, My Back I have given to scourges, My cheeks to blows." Hom. Pasch. 4 p. 58 d.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/cyril-alexandria/incarnation-only-begotten.asp?pg=6
