Theopatheia Nestorius S Main Charge Agai PDF
Theopatheia Nestorius S Main Charge Agai PDF
Theopatheia Nestorius S Main Charge Agai PDF
Abstract
Was Cyril of Alexandria a theopaschite? In order to resolve this controversial
issue, this paper will look at Cyril’s Christology with Nestorius’s eyes. The charge
of theopatheia appears from the very beginning in Nestorius’s correspondence
with Cyril and retains its central place in Nestorius’s work Liber Heraclidis. The
paper discusses Nestorian arguments against Cyril’s position and Cyril’s counter-
charges. The conclusion is reached that Nestorius asserted unqualified divine
impassibility. Cyril, in contrast, held a qualified view of the divine impassibility
and maintained that neither divinity suffered alone, apart from humanity (in which
case the assumption of humanity would be superfluous), nor humanity suffered
alone, apart from and in sharp contrast to the impassible divinity (in which case
the reality of divine involvement in the incarnation would be put at risk).
1
Joseph Hallman, ‘The Seed of Fire: Divine Suffering in the Christology of Cyril of
Alexandria and Nestorius of Constantinople’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 5 (1997),
pp. 369–91; John A. McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy. Its History,
Theology, and Texts (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994); Stephen McKinion, Words, Imagery, and the
Mystery of Christ (Leiden: Brill, 2000); John J. O’Keefe, ‘Impassible Suffering? Divine
Passion and Fifth Century Christology’, Theological Studies 58 (1997), pp. 39–60; idem,
‘Kenosis or Impassibility: Cyril of Alexandria and Theodoret of Cyrus on the Problem
of Divine Pathos’, Studia Patristica 32 (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), pp. 358–65; Thomas
Weinandy, Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000),
pp. 177–210.
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in the recent studies this interpretative angle of vision has not been pursued
systematically.
At the very beginning of his first substantive theological response to
Cyril, Ad Cyrillum II, written in 430, Nestorius singled out theopatheia as the
most problematic feature of Cyril’s theology. Nestorius wrote:
You [Cyril] thought that they [the Fathers] had said that the Word, who
is coeternal with the Father, is passible (παθητ ὸν). Look closely, if you
please, at the precise meaning of their words, and you will find that the
inspired chorus of the Fathers has not said that the consubstantial divinity
is passible (παθητ ὴν), nor that divinity, coeternal with the Father, was
begotten, nor that divinity rose from the dead when raising his destroyed
temple.2
It was precisely the allegation that Cyril did away with the divine
impassibility that became a battle cry of the Oriental party, which supported
Nestorius. While Cyril’s second and third letters to Nestorius received the
majority approval from the bishops who went to Ephesus in 431, many
shared reservations about Cyril’s notorious 12 anathemas appended to the
third letter.3 The pamphlet war under the banner of anti-theopaschitism
began shortly before the council of Ephesus.4 Among the Oriental bishops,
Andrew of Samosata and Theodoret of cyrus voiced their disagreement. In
their opinion, Cyril had a lot of explaining to do. John of Antioch received
the chapters as an open affront to his own position. A rival assembly of the
2
Nestorius Ad Cyrillum 2.3. See the discussion of this passage in L. Wickham, Cyril of
Alexandria: Select Letters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), p. xxxvi.
3
The question whether the anathemas adequately reflected the opinion of the church
at large was debated for the next 100 years, to be finally resolved at the fifth
ecumenical council, which canonized them. We should note that Cyril’s chapters
undoubtedly had enthusiastic supporters at the council of Ephesus, such as Acacius
of Melitene and Proclus, future bishop of Constantinople. On the history of the 12
chapters see Norman Russell, Cyril of Alexandria (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 175–
6; Joseph Mahé, ‘Les Anathématismes de Saint Cyrille d’Alexandrie et les Éveques
Orientaux du Patriarchat d’Antioche’, Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique 7 (1906), pp. 505–
42; H.-M. Diepen, ‘Les Douze Anathématismes au Concile d’Éphèse et jusqu’en 519’,
Revue Thomiste 55 (1955, repr. 1967), pp. 300–38; J. McGuckin, ‘The “Theopaschite
Confession” (Text and Historical Context): A Study in the Cyrilline Re-interpretation
of Chalcedon’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 35 (1984), p. 243.
4
Cyril Ep. 10.2; Ad Eulogium. Cyril wrote three explanatory apologies: Apologia xii capitulorum
contra Orientales (ACO 1.1.7.33–65) in response to Andrew, Apologia xii capitulorum contra
Theodoretum (ACO 1.1.6.107–146) before 431, and a more balanced Explicatio duodecim
capitum after the council of Ephesus.
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43 bishops, which John held upon his late arrival in Ephesus, deposed Cyril,
demanding that he repudiate the 12 anathemas.
While Cyril and Nestorius were both held under house arrest in Ephesus,
Emperor Theodosius II requested that two delegations, representing the
two hierarchs, should defend their cases before him in Constantinople.
According to the report of the Oriental party, when Theodosius II heard
Bishop Acacius, the spokesman of the Cyrillian party, saying that the Godhead
was passible, the emperor was so scandalized that he theatrically tore apart his
cloak on account of such blasphemies.5 Nevertheless, the winds of popular
dissatisfaction with Nestorius were too strong in the capital for the emperor
to be governed by considerations of theological propriety alone. As a result of
negotiations, Cyril was reinstalled in his see in Alexandria, whereas Nestorius
was deposed and escorted to his former monastery in Antioch. Writing from
his monastic exile years later, Nestorius would represent the Oriental party as
heroic confessors of the divine impassibility, who courageously confronted
Theodosius II with the following ultimatum: ‘Even if the Emperor treats us
with violence, we shall not be persuaded to admit a suffering God.’6
Nestorius shared the common concern of the whole patristic tradition
for a language that would most appropriately describe divine action in
the world. He believed that the only pattern of involvement worthy of
God was one that did not in any way override the divine perfections of
impassibility and immutability. The central preoccupation of Nestorian piety
and theology was to purify theological discourse of any suggestion of divine
suffering.7 Nestorius considered popular ‘God in the womb – God in the
tomb’ Christology to be a piece of barbaric impiety. Cyril once sarcastically
remarked that
Out of his excessive piety he [Nestorius] blushes at the degree of the
self-emptying and cannot bear to see the Son who is co-eternal with God
the Father, the one who in every possible respect is of the same form as
he who begot him and equal to him, descend to such a humble level.8
For Nestorius, it was above all else unworthy of God to suffer and die as
a mere mortal. Time and again Nestorius returned to his favorite charge of
5
Ep. ad eos qui Ephesi, in ACO 1.1.7.77.
6
Nestorius Liber Heraclidis 2.1, trans. G. R. Driver, Nestorius: The Bazaar of Heracleides (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1925), p. 284.
7
‘Do you allot the suffering to human being alone, fending it off from God the Word
to avoid God’s being declared passible? This is the point of their pedantic, muddle-
headed fictions.’ Cyril De symbolo 31, trans. Wickham, Cyril of Alexandria, p. 131. Cf.
Hallman, ‘Seed of Fire’, p. 371.
8
Cyril Contra Nestorium 4.5 (ACO 1.1.6.85).
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theopatheia in his Liber Heraclidis.9 Towards the end of his life he wrote a treatise
with the revealing title Adversus Theopaschitas, only meager fragments of which
have survived. Overall, Nestorius’s criticism remained without substantial
development from the beginning to the end of the controversy inasmuch as
he never took back his allegation that Cyril preached a suffering God.10
In his more theologically perceptive moments Nestorius admitted that
Cyril was not just bluntly asserting that God in his own nature was endowed
with anthropomorphic features, such as suffering and mortality. Nestorius
conceded that, at least in word, Cyril admitted that the divine nature was
impassible.11 What profoundly puzzled Nestorius was the fact that Cyril
could in the same breath claim that God the Word was the subject of
all the human experiences of the incarnation.12 In Nestorius’s opinion,
shared widely by the Orientals, Cyril’s controversial dictum that ‘the Word
, ,
suffered impassibly’ (απαθ° ς ε´παθεν) was a desperate attempt to cover up
the Alexandrian’s real intention to forgo the divine impassibility altogether.
Nestorius claimed that Cyril’s formula ‘the Word suffered impassibly’ or
‘the impassible suffered’ was a blatant contradiction at best and theological
double-talk at worst. ‘The same’, Nestorius was quick to point out, ‘could
not be by nature impassible and passible.’13 Cyril should quit speaking in
riddles, saying one thing and implying another. If Mary did not give birth
to God the Word before all ages, why call her Theotokos? If divine nature did
9
Nestorius Liber Heraclidis 1.1.49; 1.2.7; 1.3.
10
As Cyril complains in Ad Successum 2.4 (ACO 1.1.6.161).
11
‘Those who pass for orthodox [i.e. the Cyrillians] . . . attribute unto him [Christ] in
word a nature unchangeable, impassible and without needs, and they ascribe unto
him all sufferings and every need of the body and make over all the things of the soul
and the intelligence to God the Word in virtue of an hypostatic union.’ Liber Heraclidis
1.2, trans. Driver, Nestorius, pp. 93–4.
12
‘For the one you first proclaimed as impassible and not needing a second generation,
you subsequently introduce (how I know not) as passible and newly created.’ Ad
Cyrillum 2.6, trans. McGuckin, Christological Controversy, p. 366.
13
Liber Heraclidis 1.3, trans. Driver, Nestorius, p. 97. Cf. Liber Heraclidis 1.2, trans. ibid., p. 94:
‘And, like those who change him from his nature [i.e. the Arians], at one time they [the
Cyrillians] call him now impassible and immortal and unchangeable, and afterwards
they prohibit him from being then called immortal and impassible and unchangeable,
being angry against any one who repeatedly calls God the Word impassible [i.e. the
Nestorians].’ Cf. also Theodoret, Eranistes 218.303–4: ‘Who in their senses would ever
stand for such foolish riddles? No one has ever heard of an impassible passion or
an immortal mortality. The impassible has never undergone passion, and what has
undergone passion could not possibly be impassible.’ For discussion of this passage
see O’Keefe, ‘Impassible Suffering’, p. 57; R. A. Greer, Theodore of Mopsuestia: Exegete and
Theologian (Westminster: The Faith Press, 1961), pp. 36–7. Cyril takes this critique on
in Quod unus 766B, 775E–776C.
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not suffer, why make God the subject of the suffering in the flesh? If God
is immortal, why speak of him as dying in his mortal body? If the claim
that God was born of a woman, suffered and died has no literal force, why
continue to use such provocative expressions? Such was the set of problems
with which Nestorius challenged Cyril.
Nestorius believed that a sharp distinction between the properties
of the two natures was an effective and simple solution to all the
ambiguities and contradictions that Cyril’s Christology presented. The
Nestorian tradition followed this central point of Nestorius’s theology and
consistently emphasized a rigid demarcation of the corresponding properties
and actions of the two subjects in Christ. This conviction was expressed, for
example, in a later Nestorian confession of faith:
14
Babai the Great (?), ‘The Creed of the Bishops of Persia delivered to Kosroes in the year
612’, trans. Luise Abramowski and Alan E. Goodman, A Nestorian Collection of Christological
Texts (Cambridge: CUP, 1972), 2.88–89, 91.
15
‘The properties of God the Word they set at naught and make them human.’ Liber
Heraclidis 1.2.136, trans. Driver, Nestorius, p. 93.
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16
The contrast between the mutable and passible God of ‘biblical religion’ and the
immutable and impassible God of Greek philosophy has been drawn sharply in a
number of studies. Consider, for example, the following general statement made by
R. S. Franks back in 1917: ‘The Biblical idea of God is religious, not philosophical,
and as such is, especially in the Old Testament, frankly anthropomorphic. Hence
God is represented as both mutable and passible.’ For the Greek philosophers, on
the contrary, ‘one of the chief features of this idea [of God] was the conception
of the divine immutability and impassibility’. Franks, ‘Passibility and Impassibility’,
Encyclopedia of Religious Ethics (New York: Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1917), 9.658. A
ground-breaking essay in this arena is A. J. Heschel’s The Prophets (Philadelphia: Jewish
Publication Society of America, 1962). Heschel’s ideas were partly anticipated by
Thorleif Boman, Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek (Philadelphia: Westminster Press,
1960). See also R. B. Edwards, ‘Pagan Dogma of the Absolute Unchangeableness of
God’, Religious Studies 14 (1978), pp. 305–13; F. House, ‘The Barrier of Impassibility’,
Theology 83 (1980), pp. 409–15; O. T. Owen, ‘Does God Suffer?’, Church Quarterly Review
158 (1957), pp. 176–83; C. C. Cain, ‘A Passionate God?’, Saint Luke’s Journal of Theology
25 (1981), pp. 52–7; Edmond Jacob, ‘Le Dieu souffrant: un thème théologique
vétérotestamentaire’, Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 95 (1983), pp. 1–8;
Jean Galot, ‘La révélation de la souffrance de Dieu’, Science et Esprit 31 (1979), pp. 159–
71; Geir Hoaas, ‘Passion and Compassion of God in the Old Testament: A Theological
Survey of Hos 11: 8–9, Jer 31:20, and Isa 63:9, 15’, Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament
11 (1997), pp. 138–59; R. A. Bauckham, ‘Only the Suffering God Can Help: Divine
Passibility in Modern Theology’, Themelios 3 (1984), pp. 6–12; J. Y. Lee, God Suffers for
Us: A Systematic Inquiry into a Concept of Divine Passibility (Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974),
esp. pp. 28–32, 100–3. Jerry D. McCoy applied this conceptual framework specifically
to Cyril’s Christology in ‘Philosophical Influences on the Doctrine of the Incarnation
in Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria’, Encounter 38 (1977), pp. 362–91.
17
O’Keefe frames this question as an either/or issue in his article ‘Kenosis or
Impassibility’ (see n. 1 above). O’Keefe concludes that Cyril was more biblical and
less philosophical, while Theodoret was more philosophical and less biblical in their
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respective views on the issue of divine pathos (p. 365). While I agree with the point
that the protection of divine impassibility was an overriding concern of Nestorianism,
I do not find the supposed opposition between the bible and Greek philosophy to be
a helpful key to interpreting Nestorius’s concern.
18
Cyril, as we noted earlier, deemed the terminology of the two natures quite acceptable,
as long as it did not undermine the oneness of Christ. See Ad Eulogium.
19
See esp. Cyril De symbolo 13. The centrality of Phil. 2:5–11 in Cyril’s theology has
been noted by several scholars. See P. Henry, ‘Kénose’, Dictionnaire de la Bible: Supplement
(Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1957), 5.92; F. Young, From Nicaea, 260; O’Keefe, ‘Impassible
Suffering’, pp. 46–9. A fuller list of Cyril’s favorite scriptural loci includes: 2 Cor 8:9;
Heb 2:14–17; and John 1:14.
20
Ad augustas 4 (ACO 1.1.5.28), trans. Rowan A. Greer, ‘Cyril of Alexandria, “To Pulcheria
and Eudocia On the Right Faith”’ (unpublished, n.d.), p. 3.
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article of the creed.21 Cyril remained faithful to his rule in his later writings:
any interpretation of the incarnation had to do justice to Phil. 2:5–11.22
Two problems loom large in Cyril’s numerous expositions of the kenotic
hymn: who was the subject of the emptying and what did the emptying
consist of?23 Theodore of Mopsuestia made a sharp distinction between ‘the
one who is in the form of God’ and ‘the one who is in the form of a slave’.24
He taught that God’s indwelling of the man Jesus was only quantitatively
different from his indwelling of the prophets and the saints of the past.
, »
God chose to dwell in the saints ‘by his good pleasure’ (κατ ευδοκ ίαν)
on the grounds that they were worthy of his nearness. As Theodore pointed
out in his De incarnatione, Jesus excelled all other human beings in virtue and
moral insight, and for that reason was worthy of God’s indwelling ‘by good
pleasure’ to the highest degree.25
Nestorius, following Theodore, held that the subject of the emptying was
‘the form of a slave’, a passible man indwelt by the Word.26 It was a God-
bearing man who became poor, suffered, was emptied out of his human life
and died. The Nestorians believed that any involvement of the Word in the
emptying would violate his impassibility.
Cyril disagreed in principle with such an interpretation. He stressed
that something unique and absolutely unparalleled had happened in the
incarnation. Cyril believed that, by speaking of Christ as merely a God-
bearing man, Theodore and Nestorius missed the very nerve center of the
gospel.27 Following Athanasius, Cyril objected that the difference between
God’s presence in Christ and in deified human beings was not merely a matter
of degree of grace.28 The difference was qualitative, and for that reason all
21
Ad Nestorium 3.3: ‘And we declare that the only-begotten Word of God . . . came down
for our salvation, emptying himself, he it is who was incarnate and made man, that
,
is to say, took flesh of the holy Virgin, making it his own (’ιδίαν αυ τὴν ποισάµενος)
from the womb . . . .’ Trans. Wickham, Cyril of Alexandria, p. 17.
22
Kenosis is the major theme of Cyril’s christological dialogue Quod unus sit Christus. Cf.
also Scholia 12.
23
Ad augustas 18 (ACO 1.1.5.35).
24
Theodore De symbolo 6.
25
Theodore De incarnatione bk 7.
26
Nestorius Ad Cyrillum 2.6; Theodoret Eranistes 3.
27
Ad Nestorium 3.4; anathem. 5.
28
In Quod unus 751B–C Cyril argued that it was the implication of the Nestorian teaching
that ‘Christ surpassed the holy prophets who came before him only in terms of the
amount of grace and its duration, and this was what constituted his pre-eminence’.
Trans. McGuckin, On the Unity of Christ, p. 98. Cf.: ‘He [the Evangelist] does not say
that the Word came into flesh; he says he became flesh in order to exclude any idea
of a relative indwelling, as in the case of the prophets and the other saints.’ In Joannem
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Cyril insisted that it was not a man indwelt by God, but God the Word
incarnate who was the subject of all statements about Christ. In his letter to the
monks of Egypt Cyril asked: ‘Well, my friends, would the fact that the Word
of God only dwelt in a man be enough to connote his self-emptying?’30 If
there was no qualitative difference between God’s sanctification of the saints
and God’s participation in the life of Christ, one would have to conclude that
God, in all three persons, emptied himself in the souls of all those whom
he indwelt. Besides, if the God-bearing man Jesus was worthy of worship,
so should all ordinary believers be who were endowed with the Spirit of
God. Thus, Cyril met the accusation of theopatheia with the counter-charge of
,
ανθρπολατρία.31
Ascribing the emptying exclusively to the human subject, as Theodore
and Nestorius did, also led to the following problem, which Cyril pointed
out repeatedly: human nature is already empty and powerless and, therefore,
incapable of further emptying out. Drawing upon 2 Cor 8:9, Cyril observed
that since humanity was ‘utterly poor’ in the eyes of God, it could not possibly
‘become poor’. Poverty and emptiness are humanity’s natural condition; they
cannot in principle become its voluntary goals in the incarnation. One cannot
give up what one does not possess.32 Only the one in whom the fullness of
God dwelt could become empty, only the one who was rich was in a position
to give up his riches for the sake of others. The emptying of a mere human
being was not an emptying at all.33 In his Explicatio duodecim capitum, written
1.9.95E, trans. Russell, Cyril of Alexandria, p. 106. Cf. Contra Nestorium 2.4.41; 3.2 (ACO
1.1.6.60); 4.3 (ACO 1.1.6.83); Explicatio Duodecim Capitum 16–22 (ACO 1.1.5.21); Scholia
2, 17–19, 23, 25, 35; Ad monachos 14, 19–21; Quod Unus 717A, 741D–E, 750C–D.
29
Ad Nestorium 2.4, trans. Wickham, Cyril of Alexandria, p. 7.
30
Ad monachos 14, trans. McGuckin, Christological Controversy, p. 253. Cf. Quod unus 734E,
750C.
31
Cyril advanced these arguments in Scholia 18, 24; Quod unus 771B; 732E; Contra Nestorium
4.6 (ACO 1.1.6.89).
32
Cyril, In Lucam 11; Ad monachos 13.
33
‘If it was simply and solely a man born of a woman [which is what Nestorius implied
by calling Mary ‘man-bearer’], then how did he possess such fullness so as to be
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under house arrest in Ephesus in the late summer of 431, Cyril underlined
that the notorious 12th anathema was written specifically against those who
,
were ‘saying that an ordinary man (ανθρπος ´ κοινὸς) endured the cross
34
for our sake’.
Nestorius and the Orientals quite legitimately objected that they had never
claimed that Christ was a mere man, that Cyril had created a straw man for
the sake of polemic. They could attest that the Oriental Christians suffered
a great deal from the Arians for holding unflinchingly to the confession of
Nicea.35 This is a measure of just how far they were from the heresy of
anyone who taught that Christ was not fully God. On these grounds Cyril’s
psilanthropist objection (i.e. the objection against the claim that Christ was
a mere man) could be quite easily dismissed. As Rowan Greer observed in
his study of Theodore, Cyril and his supporters in their belligerent moments
proved unwilling to recognize this point.36
In the vicinity of the psilanthropist objection was another problem that
Nestorius would never be able to get away with. As I have already mentioned,
in his attempt to protect the divine impassibility, Nestorius introduced a sharp
demarcation between the two subjects of Christ’s experiences and actions. He
wanted to make sure that Christ’s human experiences were not ascribed to
the divine nature in any way. Inevitably, this move made a human individual
alone the subject of the emptying. In Cyril’s opinion, the Nestorians went too
far in their seemingly pious effort to protect God’s dignity:
They fail to bear in mind God’s plan and make mischievous attempts to
shift the suffering to the man on his own, in foolish pursuit of false piety.
Their aim is that the Word of God should not be acknowledged as the
Savior who gave his own blood for us but instead that Jesus, viewed as a
distinct individual man, should be credited with that.37
understood as “emptied out”? Or in what lofty state was he formerly positioned that
he could be said to have “humbled himself”? Or how was he made in the likeness
of men if he was already that beforehand by nature? . . . Or how could he be said
to have been “emptied out” if he was assuming the fullness of the deity?’ Scholia 12,
trans. McGuckin, Christological Controversy, p. 305. Cf. Quod unus 730B, 777A–B.
34
Explicatio duodecim capitum 31. Cf. Quod unus 763B, 766C.
35
Theodore mentions that his church suffered under a local Arian persecution. See De
incarnatione bk 6. This may partially explain why Nestorius was nicknamed ‘incendiary’
for overzealously persecuting Arians in Constantinople. See Socrates, H.E. 7.29.
36
Greer, Theodore of Mopsuestia, p. 43.
37
Ad Succensum 4, trans. Wickham, Cyril of Alexandria, p. 91. Cf. Explicatio duodecim capitum 13–
14: ‘Why would he [the Word] empty himself out if the limitations of the manhood
made him ashamed? Or if he was going to shun human characteristics who was it that
compelled him by force or necessity to become as we are? For this reason we apply
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all the sayings in the Gospels, the human ones as well as those befitting God, to one
prosopon.’ Trans. McGuckin, Christological Controversy, p. 287. See also Contra Nestorium
3.2 (ACO 1.1.6.58, 60); Prooem 2 (ACO 1.1.6.33); 2.10 (ACO 1.1.6.47).
38
Nestorius Quaternion 21, trans. McGuckin, Christological Controversy, p. 370.
39
John 8:40. Cyril Contra Nestorium 2.10 (ACO 1.1.6.47), trans. Russell, Cyril of Alexandria,
p. 157.
40
Nestorius Quaternion 4 (ACO 1.1.2.51), trans. McGuckin, Christological Controversy, p. 376.
Cf. Contra Nestorium 4.7 (ACO 1.1.6.90).
,
41
Cyril Quod unus 764B: ‘[The Word] is not given on behalf of us nakedly (ου γυµνὸν), as
it were, or as yet without flesh, but rather when he became flesh.’ Trans. McGuckin,
On the Unity of Christ, p. 114. Cf. Quod unus 754E, 758B, 773A; Ad augustas 31 (ACO
1.1.5.50); 11 (ACO 1.1.5.31).
42
See esp. Ad Nestorium 3, fourth anathema.
43
The distinction is made explicitly in Quod unus 727C–D, 728B–C.
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by all the divine perfections and negative attributes. In that state clear-cut
distinctions between the Creator and creation obtained and anthropomorphic
descriptions of divine action were not to be construed literally: God could
be said to act like a man, but he could not be said to become human in order
to act in this way.
Within the confines of the incarnation, the language of the negative
attributes still obtained, since the Word had not abandoned his divine status.
At the same time, something new happened in the incarnation, so new
and unparalleled that it became possible to predicate human experiences
of God the Word, not considered ‘nakedly’, but within the framework of
the incarnation. While God in his omniscience ‘knew our frame’, in the
incarnation he became a participant in our weaknesses and in this sense
it was possible to speak of an utterly unique divine acceptance of human
limitations.44
In the incarnation it became entirely legitimate, even necessary, to make
the divine Word the grammatical subject of the passages that Nestorius used
to prove his point. Thus, according to Cyril, the statements ‘God wept’ or
‘God was crucified’ were theologically legitimate, as long as it was added
that the subject was God-in-the-flesh, and not God outside of the framework
of the incarnation.45
Cyril believed that a way of coming to terms with the newness of the
incarnation was to resort to language fraught with paradoxes:
44
Ad augustas 29 (ACO 1.1.5.47): ‘But even if it is right for something of human
experience to be evident to him [God the Word], nevertheless he has not yet been
called to the very experience of our weaknesses. But when he embraced our flesh,
he was “tempted in every respect.” Consequently, we do not say that He had been
ignorant before, but that to the knowledge suitable to God which he possessed was
added that which came through experience itself. And he did not become sympathetic
(συµπαθὴς) from his being tempted. Why? Because he was and is merciful by nature
as God.’ Trans. Greer, ‘Cyril of Alexandria, “To Pulcheria and Eudocia On the Right
Faith”’, p. 29.
45
This point is especially well brought out by McGuckin, Christological Controversy, p. 191.
46
Quod unus 753B–C, trans. McGuckin, On the Unity of Christ, p. 101.
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was numbered among the transgressors; life itself came in the appearance
of death.47
He who as God is all perfect submits to bodily growth: the incorporeal has
limbs that advance to the ripeness of manhood; he is filled with wisdom
who is himself all wisdom. And what say we to this? Behold by these
things him who was in the form of the father made like unto us; the rich
in poverty; the high in humiliation; him said to ‘receive’ whose is the
fullness as God. So thoroughly did God the Word empty himself!48
47
Ibid., 723E, trans. ibid., p. 61. Cf. Explicatio duodecim capitum 11.
48
Cyril In Lucam 5, trans. R. P. Smith, Commentary on the Gospel of Saint Luke, homily 5
(Astoria, NY: Studion Publishers, 1983), p. 63. 1:29. Cf. In Lucam 1.1; Ad augustas 31
(ACO 1.1.5.51).
49
Quod unus 766B.
50
Ad Nestorium 3. 8, anathem. 2 and 3.
51
On this point see Wickham, Cyril of Alexandria, p. xxxiii.
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The Word remained what he was, namely God, and did not abandon his
divine status.52
The question, then, has to be pressed with a new force: what was it
that happened in the emptying? If there was any change at all, how should
this change be described? Nestorius, following Theodore, explained that the
emptying consisted in the conjunction (συνάϕεια) of humanity with the
divine Word. Cyril responded that conjunction was something that ‘any other
man could have with God, being bonded to him as it were in terms of virtue
and holiness’.53 If conjunction was no more than an external appending of
human nature to the divine, in what sense was it emptying? What was the
Word emptied of? Theodore was adamant that insofar as one could speak of
emptying or change, these experiences could be ascribed only to the man
assumed, not to God who did the assuming.54
Cyril responded that the emptying did not consist in merely appending
humanity to a divinity that remained unaffected. The incarnation for Cyril
meant God’s ‘descent to the limits of humanity’ and his allowing of
‘the limitations (µέτροι) of the manhood to have dominion over himself
» » – 8 81
(εϕ εαυτ τὸ κρατειν).’55 Thus, the Word’s submission to the limitations
L
52
Cyril Scholia 5; Ad monachos 23.
53
Quod unus 733B, trans. McGuckin, On the Unity of Christ, p. 74.
54
Theodore of Mopsuestia Catechetical Homilies 6.6; 8.7.
55
Quod unus 760C, trans. McGuckin, On the Unity of Christ, p. 110. Cf. Ad augustas 44 (ACO
1.1.5.58–9).
56
J. D. McCoy proposes process metaphysics as a more suitable philosophical framework
for understanding the divine passibility. Cyril, on McCoy’s reading, was captivated by
the static metaphysical scheme of later Platonism. See his ‘Philosophical Influences’
(see above, n. 16). Cf. Joseph M. Hallman, The Descent of God: Divine Suffering in History and
Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), pp. 125–45.
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Such a reading of the evidence puts patristic theologians into quite artificial
boxes of ‘biblicists’ and ‘philosophers’, ‘theopaschites’ and ‘impassibilists.’
Nestorian ‘impassibilism’ represented a particular type of piety that was
inspired by the scriptural vision of the ontological distinction between
the Creator and creation. Likewise, Cyril’s defense of the paradox of the
incarnation was not philosophy-driven, but was motivated by the desire to
articulate a distinctly Christian account of the divine involvement. To claim
that ‘bare divinity’ suffers or that God suffers outside the framework of the
incarnation (as many contemporary advocates of divine suffering tend to
do) is to incur the following two major problems. First, it would mean that
the anthropomorphic descriptions applied to God literally, that God had a
constitution which would enable him to feel human emotions and suffering
prior to the incarnation.57 Second, the presupposition that the divine nature
could suffer on its own renders the assumption of humanity superfluous. If
God could suffer as humans do without assuming humanity, the incarnation
would be unnecessary.58
When Cyril said that the Word suffered impassibly, he did not mean
that God remained unaffected and uninvolved in the human experiences of
Christ. On the contrary, it was Cyril’s clear intention to repudiate any such a
view. Rather, Cyril intended to say that it was an unmistakably divine subject
who submitted himself to the limitations of the incarnation and accepted all
the consequences associated with this condition. It is not accidental that the
apophatic claim that the divine nature is impassible always appears in Cyril’s
writings in tandem with the affirmation that God suffered in the flesh.
Cyril’s awareness of the subtlety of the theological balance that he
attempted to maintain came out most clearly in the exchange of letters with
the bishops of the opposition which took place after the council of Ephesus.
In one such letter, written to Acacius of Beroea, who on behalf of the Oriental
party demanded that Cyril retract all his writings on Christology, Cyril was
determined to sustain a theological tension between the divine transcendence
and the divine involvement in suffering:
I [Cyril] certainly do not say that any confusion or blending, or mixture
took place, as some people maintain, because I know that the Word of
God is by nature changeless and unalterable, and in his proper nature is
57
Cyril Ep. 10.1 (ACO 1.1.1.110–112). Cyril took up the subject of anthropomorphism
in his Adversus Anthropomorphitas. For a valuable discussion of this work see E. P. Meijering,
‘Some Reflections on Cyril of Alexandria’s Rejection of Anthropomorphism’, in
God Being History: Studies in Patristic Philosophy (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing
Company, 1975), pp. 297–301.
58
Ad Succensum 2.2.
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Theopatheia: Nestorius’s main charge against Cyril of Alexandria
Cyril has very skillfully carved out his vision of the incarnation between
the Scylla of God’s suffering in his own nature outside of the economy of
the incarnation and the Charybdis of the man’s suffering on his own. Cyril
differentiated between unqualified and qualified divine passibility. Divine
passibility without qualifications entailed that God was anthropomorphic
and subject to human weaknesses. Qualified divine passibility, in contrast,
allowed for the possibility of the transcendent God’s suffering in and through
human nature. Cyril pointed out that the charge of theopatheia strictly speaking
applied only to the unqualified divine passibility, not to the qualified one.
In the passage quoted below Cyril spelled out most clearly that divine
impassibility functioned as an indicator of the divine transcendence and
59
Ad Acacium (of Beroea) 7; emphasis added.
60
Ad Succensum 2.4, trans. Wickham, Cyril of Alexandria, p. 91; emphasis added.
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irreducible divinity. Divine impassibility was not meant to rule out the
Word’s suffering in human nature:
God’s Word is, of course, undoubtedly impassible in his own nature and
nobody is so mad as to imagine the all-transcending (υ‘ πὲρ πάντα) nature
capable of suffering (δύνασθαι πάθους); but by very reason of the fact
that he has become man, making flesh from the Holy Virgin his own, we
adhere to the principles of the divine plan and maintain that he who as
, 81 81
God transcends suffering (τὸν ε πέκεινα του παθειν \ ς θεόν), suffered
» 1 8 ,
humanly in his flesh (τη° ιδ ία παθειν ανθρπ ίνς).61
L L
61
De symbolo 24, trans. Wickham, Cyril of Alexandria, p. 123; emphasis added.
62
Ad Nestorium 2.5; Scholia 5, 13, 26; Explicatio duodecim capitum 31; Ad Acacium (of Beroea)
7; Ad monachos 23–24; Ep. 39. 9 (Symbolum Ephesinum, ACO 1.1.4.17).
63
Scholia 25.
64
Scholia 35: ‘But wait, he [Nestorius] says, we find that you are doing exactly the same
thing as us; for you confess that he suffered, in so far as you attribute the sufferings to
the flesh, even though you keep him impassible as God.’ Trans. McGuckin, Christological
Controversy, pp. 334–5.
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the degree to which he made the sufferings of humanity his very own. In
appropriating the experiences of humanity the Word directed them towards
the salvific end and rendered them life-giving.
Ultimately, Nestorius had dissolved the paradox of the incarnation,
while Cyril carefully preserved it, by keeping the tension between Christ’s
undiminished divinity and his suffering in the flesh at the center of his
theology. Nestorius’s view of the incarnation, when all was said and done,
accounted only for the exaltation of man, a mere joining of a human being
to God, and left no room for the self-emptying of the divine Word. Nestorius
saw in Cyril’s kenoticism a piece of sloppy theologizing that ultimately led
to a confusion and mixture of the two subjects in Christ. Cyril objected that
in order to remain faithful to the Nicene creed, one had to insist upon the
centrality of the divine self-emptying in the incarnation. It was God’s kenosis
that secured humanity’s theosis.
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