Anti-Nestorian Apologetic in St. Cyril of Alexandria’s On the Unity of Christ

In the fifth century A.D., there arose yet another among the many theological conflicts during the Early Church era – this one centered primarily on the doctrines and person of the then-current Archbishop of Constantinople, Nestorius. Perhaps the issue was partly political – Nestorius was not well-liked in the area due to his somewhat aggressive policies regarding the monastic communities and morale in the city of Constantinople – but this question is, alas, not a point of interest in this paper. The essence of the conflict is found in the Christological teachings of the archbishop, which, to oversimplify, de-emphasized the “unity” of Christ’s person in His Incarnation (in other words, Nestorianism exaggerated the distinction between Christ’s Divine and Human natures – apart from a tenuous “prosopon [person] of union” – thus leading to the inevitable conclusion that she who gave birth to Christ Jesus the man could in no wise be rightly called “Theotokos” (Gk., “God-bearer”). Nestorius’ most famous critic was a certain Cyril of Alexandria (who is now, and for the purposes of this paper, a saint), whose most famous piece is entitled On the Unity of Christ. Although he fell out of favor in the West for some time, his devotion is continuously acknowledged in the Eastern Church. Regardless of his status, the matter in focus here will be St. Cyril’s rejection of the idea that the Word of God “assumed a man into an inseparable conjunction with himself, which thereby elevated him to the title of both ‘Son’ and ‘Lord.’”


St. Cyril’s first objection is one regarding terminology; to wit, he objects vehemently to Nestorius’ categorical definitions of “union” and “conjunction” as they pertain to the issue. The theological statements in question employ the term “inseparable conjunction” to describe the relationship between the human person of Jesus and the divinity of God the Word. St. Cyril, however, states that this particular word implies an uneasy relationship; that is, it does not properly acknowledge the cosmological importance of the event. In Christ there was “not an overlap, or a co-habitation, or a relationship, or a displacement, or an association” (40); rather, the “unification” – at least for St. Cyril – was one that did not “destroy the constituent elements” (40). In essence, “conjunction” would logically lead to the concept of “assumption” as posited by the Nestorian camp, thus asserting a rather loose connection in the person of the Divine Logos to an already-separate individual. Both these words, “assumption” and “conjunction,” are not strong enough if the Son must call the flesh His own in order to purify it. Instead, St. Cyril counter-proposes a use of the term “union” (henosis), which he defends as a more “extreme” form of conjunction that “in no way causes the confusion of the things it refers to, but rather signifies the concurrence in one reality of those things which are understood to be united” (73). According to this understanding, it can be said that:
“[T]he one assumed in the inseparable union has become the personal property of the one assuming, and while Jesus is God, the one and only true Son of God, the Word of God the Father… nonetheless the same one, in these last times of the present age, has been born of a woman according to the flesh, for the form of a slave belongs to no other but his very own” (75).
In other words, Cyril’s “union” shows itself something of a more formal bond in which it can truly be said that the flesh belonged to the Word. He had truly made the flesh – and therefore humanity – his own (Christ’s assumption of Human nature being, in Byzantine theology, a cornerstone of our common salvation equal to the ransom on the Cross). Assuming unity to be the goal sought after, it seems only proper to apply this term to Christ’s person, according to Cyril’s patently Alexandrian understanding of the word.


To say that the human person was “added” to the Word insofar as the Word Himself was not unified with the flesh – but rather “conjoined” to it – would be to invalidate the fullness of the Word Incarnate. “Christ…was fullness itself and there is absolutely nothing that is given to him insofar as he is considered…God” (91). The Nestorian camp would certainly agree with this; however, their error is in the eventual and inevitable degradation permitted by this pernicious doctrine. Hence, to proclaim that the person of Jesus became a wonder-worker by the indwelling of the Word would be tantamount to degrading the status of Christ to a mere “prophet,” at least “according to the Flesh.” It was the Prophets, Saints, and Apostles who so acted through the energy of the All-Holy Spirit. While Christ, too was “anointed” by the Spirit (Xristos meaning “anointed one”), the nature and properties of this so-called “gift” were intrinsically different, for “He was sanctified insofar as He was man, but sanctifies insofar as He is understood as God” (100). If the premise of “through Him all of mankind was sanctified” is accepted, it follows that the metaphysical properties of the anointing were radically different. In the case of the Messiahship of Jesus Christ, this calling has a greater significance than that of a prophetic anointing bestowed by the Lord on a single person – Christ being the God-Man, His anointing transcends these boundaries of individuality, inasmuch as, in taking on a true Human nature, he deified the entirety of the human race, thus, even as God, connecting in a deeper way with that bond uniting all of humanity.

The necessary ownership of the flesh in Christ is further exemplified in the Patristic antitype of Christ as the “Second Adam.” He was made flesh “for our sake,” or so goes the generally orthodox position, as to overcome the plague of “death” brought upon humanity (and the cosmos as a whole) by the Ancestral Sin of Adam. To this end, what is especially important is: 1) Christ’s ultimate goal of freeing humanity and reuniting them with God; 2) Trampling down death by death – which has been bound with the flesh – through One who does not know death. To wit: “in the likeness of the death of the one who knew not death, death might be destroyed” (59). Yet, if a mere man died upon the cross, the Lord would not have truly sanctified the body. The symbolism of the Old Testament sacrifices would not bear witness to the willful sacrifice of the Unblemished Lamb upon the Cross, since the typological cues would, nonetheless, remain. For “if the ‘type’ of the form makes its entrance with another’s blood and purifies the people, then the true form, or rather the Truth itself, is superior in every respect and the Son enters with His own blood… into that which is above and true, that is into heaven” (113). The true form exceeds the perfection and purity of the “type,” which, in other words, would truly be able to trample down death through a body that, again, had and never will “taste” death or decay. Only a body free from the chains of death could overcome it, and this body must be unified with the only one who has not tasted death and sin: God Himself.


This is where the phrase “coming in the form of a slave” (Philippians 2:7) becomes important. This Scriptural reference does not necessarily mean Christ bonded with a human under Adam’s sin (thus making the human person subordinate to the Word), but that “[i]t is His life in the form of a slave, in the flesh which He assumes; it is the likeness to us of one who is not as we are in His own nature, since He is above all creation” (86). We find in this example that it is “not as if he joined a man to Himself… but rather that He Himself came in that form, while even so remaining in the likeness of God the Father” (108). Therefore, to say the Son came “in the form of a slave” is an expression of the mystery and economy of the Incarnation. For how could this statement be true if the individual were already by nature a slave – that is, if He were subject to the noetic chaos initiated by Adam’s sin? Instead, freedom (i.e., the freedom from sin) is a necessary prerequisite for the statement to be logical: Christ emptied Himself in fully taking upon Himself the lowliness of human nature in this kenotic mystery of the Incarnation (the theological term is derived from the Greek above), yet without ceasing to be God. Therefore, the Word was “allowing His own flesh to obey the laws of its own nature” (109), making “these human things… His by an economic appropriation” (110).

We see that St. Cyril’s Christology rests on the “transcendent mystery” of the Incarnation, which is an ongoing archetype of a process (35). There are two constructs that explain St. Cyril’s mode of thought. First is the “Exchange of Properties” (also known as the “Communication of Idioms” (Antidosis idiomatum), which is founded “on the basis of this direct personal mutuality of experience founded on the single Divine Personality of the Logos who enjoyed both conditions or lifeforms” (45). The “Exchange of Properties” or “Communication of Idioms” overturns the Nestorian understanding of the dynamic of the two hypostases. Rather than separating or confusing the two through a strange and imbalanced “association,” St. Cyril emphasizes that the experiences of the Incarnate Christ need not be “divided” in such a fashion as to define each (e.g., the death on the Cross) as being that of one nature or another. For instance, on page 103, St. Cyril addresses a few actions attributed to Christ that seem rather unseemly due to the purity of their humanity – such as praying to the Father in the garden or crying out to the Father on the cross. Even so, there was “only one Son, the Word who was made man for our sake” and therefore “everything refers to him, words and deeds, both those that befit the deity, as well as those which are human” (107). All He did or said was for the benefit of all mankind; hence, nothing can be divided.

Secondly – albeit most importantly – we have the “Appropriation Theory.” It is the “redemptive system of exchange and transformation” through which St. Cyril can make use of terminology such as “the death of God” (45). [i] Not only is there the mutual experience present in the “Communication of Idioms,” but there is a transactive element within Him, which is expressed well in the statement: “The One Incarnate Nature of God the Word” (45). [ii] Thus, it is not incorrect to say “God suffered,” for the transcendent unity of Christ’s person allows such a statement to hold water; however, “he did not suffer in the nature of the Godhead, but in His own flesh” (115). Again, as was stated in one the paragraphs above, these statements would be entirely illogical if His flesh were not made His own; instead – without falling into the error attributed by the Nestorians to this mode of thought – God did suffer, but He suffered “impassively,” or, in other words, “in the flesh.” The Godhead is, of course, incapable of suffering, for He is without a body; however, if a unity of the Word and the flesh was established, there would have to be a connection of sorts as well as a shared experience. This unity and connection has various implications for soteriology (“‘What He was by nature, we become by grace’” (35) and other areas of theological thought through the ontological unity of man and the divine in the person of Jesus Christ.


St. Cyril’s Christology preserves, at least in many respects, the Eucharistic theology of the Church and the developing soteriological concept of theosis (i.e., “becoming God” through communication with the Divine Energies). The danger threatened by a Nestorian Christological system to these fundamental points is, perchance, the prime motive of these Church Fathers for countering it so dramatically. “[W]e shall be built upon the foundation stone itself, that is Christ” (133), states St. Cyril in the last paragraph of his text. In fact, it is imperative that orthodox doctrine speak the truth about this foundation-stone, for otherwise the whole structure shall tumble immediately. After all, without Christ, who is the Truth and harbinger of salvation to mankind, there can be no Church, and if there is no Church, there can be no hope.




Footnotes


[ i ] We should be careful here in saying that it was Christ the God-man (subsisting in an unconfused Hypostatic Union) who died on the Cross, or simply that it was Christ, who is God, that died on the Cross. God is not, by nature, a mortal entity or subject to non-being. We will see later on in Church history that the Monophysites (the later and opposite heresy to Nestorianism) added the clause “Holy Mighty… ‘who was crucified for us’”to the Trisagion in the Liturgy, as a sort of battle-cry. Interestingly enough, they claim St. Cyril as their inspiration!


[ ii ] Another famous line later used (or misused) by Monophysites. This is why they prefer to be called “Miaphysites.” What do we mean here by “nature?” It seems there was a shift in terminology. Some Orthodox theologians, like Fr. Georges Florovsky, have theorized the possibility of “asymmetrical Christologies” based on the Cyrillian emphasis.