How Cyril of Alexandria saved Christmas
Cyril of who?
Cyril of Alexandria, or Saint Cyril as he is also known, was the bishop of Alexandria from 412 to 444, and if his name has come down to us as one of the notable names of Church history, it’s because of the part he played in one big controversy. This controversy was kicked off by another bishop, the bishop of Constantinople, whose name was Nestorius.
Mary Theotokos?
Now Nestorius, as the newly minted bishop of the Imperial City, set about right away to solve what seemed to him to be a serious problem in the Church of his day, a problem with sloppy language. Previous Church controversies had settled the fact that Jesus is fully God (contrary to what Arius had said) and fully man (contrary to what Apolloniris had said), but the problem in Nestorius’ eyes was the way those two realities were mashed together into all sorts of ridiculous expressions. He was very concerned that they way Christians speak ought to preserve the divinity of Christ’s divine nature and the humanity of his human nature. One word in particular caught his ire and that was the word theotokos. Theotokos was a commonly used title for Mary and it means “God-bearer” or, as it’s more commonly said in English, “Mother of God.”
According to Nestorius, this was unacceptable for the obvious reason that God was never born and he never had a mother. Of course it’s true that Mary was the mother of the man Jesus, but that doesn’t make her the mother of the divine Logos (Word) who was with God and was God from the beginning. In the same way, Nestorius was opposed to saying that “God died on the cross for our sins” or that “Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.” Instead of mixing and matching human titles with divine actions or divine titles with human actions, we ought to be very precise and say that “Jesus died on the cross” and that “the Logos raised Lazarus from the dead.”
The God who was born, died, and rose again
Nestorius’ teaching got around, and when it made its way to Egypt, confused and upset monks turned to their bishop Cyril to help them figure out what to make of it. Cyril saw a problem straightaway with Nestorius’ fastidiousness. Although Nestorius did confess that Christ is one (rejecting the “two sons” christology of his mentor Diodore of Tarsus), his insistence on such a severe distinction between the divine and human natures effectively divided Christ in two. If we conceive Christ to be a conjunction (Nestorius’ word, συναφεια) of two natures, a divine nature doing divine things standing beside a human nature doing human things, we no longer have the Christ of John 1:14, the eternal Logos who became flesh.
Cyril’s response was to speak of the incarnation as the union (Cyril’s word, ἑνοσις) of the human nature with the divine nature in a single person (hypostasis in Greek1). He’s careful to clarify that union does not mean mixture; the Logos becoming flesh does not involve any change in the divine nature, nor does the human nature lose any of its essential humanity. That said, there is true union, such that the one and the same Logos who was from the beginning is also a man who was born in Bethlehem, died at Calvary, and rose from the dead. Cyril saw in the incarnation a profound mystery that defies human comprehension, and he embraced the paradox by saying such things as “the Logos suffered impassibly,” that is, God who in his divine nature does not experience pain, through his union with the human nature, did experience pain. The same Son who, as God, remains forever free from weakness and hunger and death, as man passed through all those things. Although God was never tired or hungry, a Person who is also God was.
For this reason, Cyril defended the title of theotokos, mother of God, for Mary. Obviously Mary did not give birth to God as God, but the man that she did give birth to is also God, and so Mary carried God in her womb. This paradoxical way of speaking is not only proper, but necessary in order to do justice to the union of divine and human natures described in the Bible. The child to be born is Mighty God; the Word that was from the beginning became flesh; the First and the Last died and rose again (Is 9:6, Jn 1:14, Rv 1:17-18). John’s first letter opens with a wondering expression of the mystery of God made flesh:
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you.
1 John 1:1-3
Councils and Condemnations
The Council of Ephesus was convened in 431 to settle the debate between Cyril and Nestorius. At that council, Nestorius was condemned as a heretic and Cyril’s christology was vindicated. The only problem was that Cyril started the council before the delegation from Antioch, more favorable to Nestorius, even arrived. When they did get there and found out what had happened in their absence, they convened their own council that vindicated Nestorius and condemned Cyril. Unfortunately the Council of Ephesus, instead of allowing clarifying debate, prolonged a complicated struggle marked by political maneuvers and even bribes. In the end, Nestorius was removed from his office, and Cyril and the bishops of Antioch were able to find an acceptable compromise to express the union of the two natures of Christ. Further controversy necessitated the Council of Chalcedon which adopted Cyril’s expression of the union of two natures in one hypostasis (person), condemning on the one hand any separation between the natures, and on the other any idea of mixture.
The character of Cyril who emerges from the historical record does not exactly correspond to Christlike godliness. Even as we can celebrate that he defended the biblical truth of the unity of Christ, we might not find much to admire in the methods that he used at the Council of Ephesus. We can however be unreservedly thankful to the God who used a flawed man to defend the mystery of the incarnation in the face of rationalistic aversion to the paradox. Because Cyril saved Christmas, we can celebrate with wonder that the babe in the manger is God himself, and we can sing in awe the words to Hark the Herald Angels Sing:
Christ by highest heaven adored, Christ the everlasting Lord
Late in time behold him come, offspring of the virgin’s womb.
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail th’incarnate deity.
Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus our Immanuel.
Postscript: Should we call Mary the mother of God then?
John Calvin addressed this question in a letter to the French church in London in 1552. On the one hand he recognizes that some oppose this title for Mary out of ignorance, presumably ignorance of how this title relates to orthodox christology. On the other hand, he goes on to say, “for my own part, I cannot think such language either right, or becoming, or suitable […] for to call the Virgin Mary the mother of God, can only serve to confirm the ignorant in their superstitions.2” That is to say, although we ought to confess that Mary is the mother of God, in that the same person is both her son and the eternal God, because of the superstitious reverence that has grown up around the person of Mary herself, it’s better not to use this particular expression.
Image Credit: By Ted - Flickr: Icon: St. Cyril of Alexandria, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16943473
Which is where the expression hypostatic union comes from.
Jean Calvin, “To the French Church in London”, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45463/45463-h/45463-h.htm#Page_360.