St Cyril of Alexandria Commentary on John (First Part)

Translated by P. E. Pusey

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This Part: 128 Pages

Page 29

CHAPTER V. That the Son is by Nature Creator with the Father, as being of His Essence, and not taken to Him as a minister.

3 All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made.

The blessed Evangelist, having overthrown the intricate objections of the unholy heretics, and having completed his subtil and most exact utterance respecting the Only-Begotten, comes to another snare of the devil compounded of the ancient deceit, and putting forth to us the sting of the polytheic error, which has wounded and cast down many, and widening the way of perdition, and throwing open the broad and spacious gate of death, heaped up souls of men in herds unto hell and set rich food as it were before the devil and brought before him choice meat. For since the children of the Greeks applying themselves to the wisdom of the world, and having plenteously in their mind the spirit of the ruler of this world, were carried away unto polytheic error, and perverted the beauty of the truth and, like to those who walk in mist and darkness, went down to the pit of their own ignorance, serving lifeless idols, and saying to a stock, Thou art my father, and to a stone, Thou hast brought me forth: others again transgressing akin to them, devising nevertheless a more polished error, deemed that they ought to worship the creature more than the Creator, and lavished the glory that befitted the Divine Nature Alone on the elements that were made by It, of necessity does the Divine introduce to us the Only-Begotten as Maker and Creator by Nature, saying that all things were made by Him and that without Him nothing passed into being, that he might close for the future the entrance for their deceits, and might shew to them that know Him not the Creator of all things, and by the very words wherein he says that the creation was made, might clearly teach that other than it is He Who called it into being, and by His Ineffable Power brought things that are from not being unto birth. For thus at length was it possible by the beauty of the creatures proportionally to see the Maker, and to recognize Him Who is in truth God, through Whom all things have been already made, and made are preserved. Against the false-worship then of the Greeks do I deem that he thus well arrayed the Gospel word, and for this cause do we believe that the Only-Begotten was introduced by the voice of the saint as Maker and Creator.

But since it is meet to consider the crooked inventions of the heretics, I think that we ought looking to their ways too to say again a little.

All things, says he, were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made.

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