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St Cyril of Alexandria: The One Incarnate Nature of

Christ
“We say that there is one Son, and that he has one nature even when he is considered as having
assumed flesh endowed with a rational soul” (On the Unity of Christ, p. 77; my emphasis). We first
note the assertion of the one Son: Jesus Christ is identical to the eternal Son of God the Father. St
Cyril thus reaffirms the unitive thrust of his christology and rejects any suggestion of Jesus being a
creaturely son alongside the divine Son. Jesus simply is the Son. “You must not divide him who is of
David’s line by saying that he is someone different to the one Christ and Son and Lord,” writes Cyril,
“for the correct position is that the Only Begotten Son who is born from God the Father is himself,
and no other, the Son of David according to the flesh” (p. 83). Or as Christopher Beeley puts it:
“There is one Son in the incarnation just as there is one Son apart from it” (The Unity of Christ, p.
260). But then Cyril goes on to speak of the “one nature” of Christ after the Incarnation. The heirs of
Chalcedon do not speak this way. We speak of the one hypostasis of the incarnate Son in two
natures. Cyril himself frequently spoke of the Incarnation as a “union in hypostasis,” and he insisted
upon the theandric union as the consolidation of divinity and humanity, without confusion or
mixture. So why speak of “one incarnate nature”?

To clarify his meaning Cyril offers a creaturely analogy. “Do we not say,” he asks, “that a human
being like ourselves is one, and has a single nature, even though he is not homogeneous but really
composed of two things, I mean body and soul?” (p. 78; my emphasis). When body and soul are
joined together to make a human being, they do not lose their distinctiveness nor is their integrity
compromised. At first glance the analogy seems weak. The union of soul and body brings about a
composite being greater than its parts; but in the hypostatic union the divine Son remains the divine
Son, only now enfleshed.

Let’s take a look at Cyril’s two letters to Succensus, written sometime between 434-438, to see if we
can gain further clarity.

In his first letter Cyril reiterates his contention that in the Incarnation “two natures come together
with one another, without confusion or change, in an indivisible union” (Ep. 45.6). He then makes the
following important statement:

The flesh is flesh and not Godhead, even though it became the flesh of God; and similarly the Word is
God and not flesh even if he made the flesh his very own in the economy. Given that we understand
this, we do no harm to that concurrence into union when we say that it took place out of two natures.
After the union has occurred, however, we do not divide the natures from one another, nor do we sever
the one and indivisible into two sons, but we say that there is One Son, and as the holy Fathers have
stated: One Incarnate Nature of The Word.
As to the manner of the incarnation of the Only Begotten, then theoretically speaking (but only in so far
as it appears to the eyes of the soul) we would admit that there are two united natures but only One
Christ and Son and Lord, the Word of God made man and made flesh. (Ep.45.6-7)
The Incarnation occurs out of or from two natures, resulting in the one incarnate nature of Christ. At
an intellectual or notional level, we may of course distinguish the divine and human natures in Christ
—neither are obliterated when hypostatically united—but in reality the two natures have so
interpenetrated the other that there is now only the single nature of the God-Man. Cyril restates this
argument in his second letter, in response to a criticism of his one-nature formulation:

This objection is yet another attack on those who say that there is one incarnate nature of the Son.
They want to show that the idea is foolish and so they keep on arguing at every turn that two natures
endured. They have forgotten, however, that it is only those things that are usually distinguished at
more than a merely theoretical level which split apart from one another in differentiated separateness
and radical distinction. Let us once more take the example of an ordinary man. We recognise two
natures in him; for there is one nature of the soul and another of the body, but we divide them only at a
theoretical level, and by subtle speculation, or rather we accept the distinction only in our mental
intuitions, and we do not set the natures apart nor do we grant that they have a radical separateness,
but we understand them to belong to one man. This is why the two are no longer two, but through both
of them the one living creature is rendered complete.

And so, even if one attributes the nature of manhood and Godhead to the Emmanuel, still the manhood
has become the personal property of the Word and we understand there is One Son together with it.
The God-inspired scripture tells us that he suffered in the flesh (1 Pet. 4.1) and it would be better for us
to speak this way rather than [say he suffered] in the nature of the manhood, even though such a
statement (unless it is said uncompromisingly by certain people) does not damage the sense of the
mystery. For what else is the nature of manhood except the flesh with a rational soul? (Ep. 46.5)

Again we see Cyril allowing a distinction between the two natures at a theoretical level, but he has
little interest in dualistic theories about Christ. What is important is the one divine Son who has
clothed himself in our humanity. He especially fears that the Nestorian rhetoric of an abiding
association of two natures must ultimately dissolve the Incarnation. “Cyril is happy,” John McGuckin
explains, “to accept the notion of ‘two natures’ but feels that this needs qualification if it is to avoid a
tendency towards the kind of separatism that has been advocated by Nestorius. He wishes to speak
of a concurrence to unity ‘from two natures’ but does not posit a union that abides ‘in two natures’.
For Cyril, to abide in two natures means to abide in an ‘un-united’ condition that can only be
theoretically applied before the incarnation takes place; the incarnation itself is the resolution to
union of the two natures” (Saint Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy, p. 355, n. 6).

At stake is the single-subject hermeneutic discussed in “Holy Scripture and the Grammar of the
Son.” But ultimately what is at stake is nothing less than the salvation of the world, for if Jesus is
not the Word himself, all is undone. McGuckin elaborates upon the importance of the mia physis for
Cyril:

For Cyril, if the christological union means anything it means that there is only one reality to be affirmed
henceforth. This concrete reality (physis) is what stands before the christian observer; it is a single
concrete reality enfleshed before us: Mia Physis Sesarkomene. What is more, that concrete, fleshed-
out reality, is that of the Word of God, none other. In short, by using the phrase Cyril is attributing the
person of the Word as the single subject of the incarnation event. He does so in a phrase which is
highly succinct (a good rallying phrase for his party), provocatively robust (using concrete physis terms
as opposed to the semantic word-plays of Nestorius), and radically insistent on the single subjectivity
of the divine Word (the direct personal subject of the incarnate acts). (p. 209)

For Cyril physis signifies a “concrete personal individuate”—thus equivalent to hypostasis.

He employs both terms to refer “to individual and real personal subjectivity, and in the way he uses
them they are synonyms of ‘the Logos as subject'” (p. 209). As Cyril writes: “Thus, there is only one
nature (physis) of the Word, or hypostasis if you like, and that is the Word himself” (quoted by
McGuckin, p. 209). Yet given that physis can also signify an entity’s defining properties (see Hans
van Loon, The Dyophysite Christology of Cyril of Alexandria [pp. 512-517]), one can understand why
Antiochenes and Latins found the “one incarnate nature” objectionable and why the phrase did not
survive in the post-Chalcedonian Church.

(Return to first article)

11 January 2016

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newenglandsun on 11 January 2016 at 6:29 am

The “monophysite” Orthodox Churches (I quote monophysite because it’s highly debatable
as to whether they are actually holding this view), i.e., the Syriac Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox,
etc., tend to still use St. Cyril’s definitions of the nature of the God-Man when referring to
Christ over that of the Chalcedonian definition, right?

 Liked by 1 person

davidirving301 on 11 January 2016 at 7:14 am

I agree with Cyril on the complete unity of the Word of God Incarnate. It’s obvious from
Scripture that Christ’s Flesh was also Divine, because He was able to do things in His Flesh
that no mortal man could do; such as walking on water, escaping on different occasions an
attempt to kill Him, His being able to be transfigured on the Holy Mount, and many other
deeds that only His Divine Flesh could do, including being raised from the dead incorruptible
after three days. I believe that the Nestorians were confused on the issue that Christ had two
distinct “persons” in one Incarnate Son, but that didn’t mean that they rejected the Deity of
Christ. The Nestorian Catholics made many missionary conversions of peoples as far east
as China an maybe Japan, bringing the Gospel farther than the Western Latin Church ever
reached for many centuries. So, I wouldn’t consider the Nestorians as “anathema” as Cyril
did. Nestorius was a student of Theorodet (spelling maybe incorrect) and other saints of the
ancient Syrian Universal Church who were considered orthodox and taught the truth of the
ultimate universal reconciliation of All.

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David Llewellyn Dodds on 11 January 2016 at 10:31 pm

I have somehow picked up (in a way I cannot immediately document with specific
references) the idea of a ‘high view’ of the unfallen mortal human among some Fathers
(St.Augustine?), such that Christ possesses again (until the Resurrection) what our
progenitors first possessed before their fall – though (if there was/is such a view), I do
not know that it contradicts His also being “able to do things in His Flesh that no
mortal man could do”.

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David Llewellyn Dodds on 11 January 2016 at 10:35 pm

Does the kind of ‘monothelitism’ which St. Maximus the Confessor and Pope St. Martin died
opposing have any kind of direct (degenerate?) relation to the Nicene(-Alexandrian)
‘miaphysitism’ defended by St. Cyril?

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Fr Aidan Kimel on 12 January 2016 at 9:24 am

David, I do not know enough about the development of monothelitism to have an

opinion.

I am curious to know how the Oriental Orthodox Churches handled the monothelite
question. Mina, you there?

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Mina on 12 January 2016 at 9:24 pm

I apologize for the delay in coming to discuss the question. I will add to this discussion
an email Fr. Peter Farrington published online discussing the issue of the will(s) of
Christ:

https://www.academia.edu/6776618/A_Preliminary_Conversation_on_the_Will_of_Chri
st_with_an_Eastern_Orthodox_Monk

With that in mind, I will add my own commentary with what little I have read and
understood on the issue of the will(s) of Christ. First, theologically, we as Oriental
Orthodox (OO) seem to set our standard on St. Severus of Antioch. If one is looking for
the theology of St. Severus, I recommend “Three Monophysite Christologies” by
Roberta Chesnut, where in it, St. Severus uses the same analogy of human “wills” as St.
Cyril used the analogy of human “natures” to make one human nature. In other words,
there is a will of the soul and will of the body, in one human will. In the same way, we
speak of one will of the incarnate Logos.
Other OO fathers seem to speak of the will of Christ as the divine will incarnate. In
other words, just as we can say the flesh of Christ is divine, we also say so of the will,
that by the human will and energy, this becomes a receptacle of the divine will and
energy, and while one can make them distinct in contemplation, after the union, you
can only call that “one will”. Another argument is if we pray to the Father, “let it be
according to your will”, we too who try to conform our wills to the will of the Father and
make that “one”, how much more should one describe the will of Christ Himself. For
the will of Christ Himself, no matter in what sense that will is acted out is the will of the
Father.

So we can recognize in Maximus the Confessor similar undertones with St. Severus’
beliefs, but we find that many other arguments of his are unfair. He condemns anyone
who uses the analogy of two wills in human composition making one human will. Later
on, John Damascene even condemns anyone who makes the same analogy
concerning “physis”! Did he forget that St. Cyril was the one who used this analogy?

Furthermore, this debate of the wills of Christ is very strange. The more I read about it,
the more I am confused. Yes, Maximus did suffer, but so did the Coptic Church. The
Coptic Church and Maximus had a common enemy: Cyrus of Alexandria, nicknamed
“the Caucasian”. While Cyrus was glad to support the cutting off of Maximus’ tongue,
he also ordered the death of Bishop Minas, the brother of the anti-Chalcedonian Pope
Benjamin I. He also thought that by persecutory pressure, he can get some anti-
Chalcedonians to sign on to Monotheletism and reunite the Church. He did win some
support, but he also did accrue some anti-Chalcedonian opposition. One is not sure if
the opposition is because of legitimate rejection of Monothelitism, but rather more of a
principle in standing firm against Chalcedon in general.

It is clear in our tradition’s polemics that Pope Leo of Rome confessed “two wills” in his
Tome, but the way we interpreted it is the will of two persons, united by a concordance
of wills. Can one really describe Christ in the same way as to describe a Christian’s
relationship with God? “The Word does what belongs to the Word, and the flesh does
what belongs to the flesh.” It’s understandable that the Chalcedonian tradition did not
interpret it that way, but after some bloodshed, the OO tradition remained obstinate in
the anti-Chalcedonian polemical interpretation of Nestorianism.
All in all, I would say the issue of theletism is little studied in the OO tradition. Did the
OO Church continue in the same way St. Severus did? A lot of Chalcedonian research
(key word, Chalcedon) seems to indicate that later OO fathers were more clearly
“Monothelite”, whereas Fr. Peter Farrington disagrees with this assessment. So we
hope that in the future, more texts would be translated (like that of Pope Theodosius I
of Alexandria, considered a spiritual successor to St. Severus and dubbed also
“chrysostom” in our tradition, Pope Damian I of Alexandria, and Pope Benjamin I of
Alexandria) that may give us a clearer answer, at least in the Coptic side.

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David Llewellyn Dodds on 13 January 2016 at 10:31 pm

Thank you for all this!

I’d never heard of the “analogy of human ‘wills’ as St. Cyril used the analogy of
human ‘natures’ to make one human nature.”

Does anyone to your knowledge explicitly discuss the (im)possibility of distinct

Wills of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as well as One Divine Will characterizing The
Divine Ousia?

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Mina on 14 January 2016 at 11:03 am

I highly recommend Roberta Chesnut’s “Three Monophysite

Christologies” for this one, as she describes St. Severus’ take on the
will(s) of Christ. Based on her description, I really don’t find much
essential difference between St. Severus and Maximus the Confessor
(based on what I read in his disputation with Pyrrhus).

Starting at page 22, Roberta Chesnut describes how St. Severus

proceeds to talk about the human will as the origin in which man
chooses to partake of the divine nature (or “His bounty). We were
created for this purpose. However, because of sin and death from the
world, our wills are sick and in need of healing. He denies that the body
is the source of sin, so he refutes any Augustinian notion of Original Sin
(this was a huge dispute with Julian of Halicarnassus), but rather the
world. He would say that Christ did not say “woe to the human genus,”
but “woe to the world”.

We have natural human liberty. God does not violate our human liberty
by any change of our nature, but rather change of the environment of sin
around us through His grace and gifts. He uses the example of King
Saul. God anointed Saul, but Saul is not by nature “kingly”. Saul had free
will, and later on rejected God’s calling or grace. Therefore, when God
said “I repent that I made him king, for he deserted Me,” this is a result
Saul’s free will, not because God created him by nature good or king and
then regretting the creation.

Now comes the fun part (starting page 25). Roberta Chesnut then talks
about how this theology of the will of humanity in general is connected
to Christology. God does not make moral choices. God simply is the
Good that we are called to choose. The fact that Christ had to make
choices means that Christ was endowed not with a mere human puppet,
but a human nature with a rational soul endowed with will and reason.
AT THE SAME TIME, He is God, and so using the text Isaiah 7:15, “before
he knows how to choose evil, he will choose the good”, St. Severus
writes (Hom. LXXXIII from PO xx.415-17):

***************************************
The words ‘he scorned’, and ‘he did not obey’, and this other, ‘he chose’,
show us that the Word of God is united hypostatically not only to flesh,
but still to a soul endowed with will and reason, for the purpose of
making our souls, bent towards sinfulness, incline toward the choice of
good and the aversion to evil.

…
Each of us, in effect, examined at the age of infancy, has no knowledge
of good or evil. . . But as by nature Emmanuel was all God and the Good
itself. . . he did not wait for the time of discernment. . . On the one hand
he scorned evil and did not obey it, and on the other, he chose good.
***************************************

This is consistent with what I read from Maximus the Confessor in his
disputation:

***************************************
If this interpretation of the patristic definition be correct, then in the first
place it is not possible to say that this [appropriated will] is a gnomic
will, for how is it possible for a will to proceed from a will? Thus, those
who say that there is a gnomie in Christ, as this inquiry is demonstrating,
are maintaining that he is a mere man, deliberating in a manner like unto
us, having ignorance, doubt and opposition, since one only deliberates
about something which is doubtful, no concerning what is free of doubt.
By nature we have an appetite simply for what by nature is good, but we
gain experience of the goal in a particular way, through inquiry and
counsel. Because of this, then, the gnomic will is fitly ascribed to us,
being a mode of the employment [of the will], and not a principle of
nature, otherwise nature [itself] would change innumerable times. But
the humanity of Christ does not simply subsist [in a manner] similar to
us, but divinely, for He who appeared in the flesh for our sakes was God.
It is thus not possible to say that Christ had a gnomic will. For the Same
had being itself, subsisting divinely, and thus naturally hath an
inclination to the good, and a drawing away from evil, just as Basil, the
great eye of the Church, said when explaining the interpretation for the
forty-fourth Psalm: “By the same line of interpretation, Isaiah said the
same thing: ‘Before the child knew or advanced in evil, he chose the
good.’ (Isaiah 7:15) For the word ‘before’ indicates that He had by nature
what is good, not inquiring and deliberating as we do, but because He
subsisted divinely by virtue of His very being.”
***************************************

He uses the same passage Is. 7:15 to prove that while Christ exhibited
free human choice, the mode (tropos) of choice is done so divinely (and
since Christ’s human will is not “gnomic”), so that even before knowing
good and evil, He chose good and rejected evil. For St. Severus, instead
of using the idea of tropos, he would say that the distinction in
contemplation of the natures can help us understanding that “choice” is
a human quality or will and the keeping with the good before knowing
good and evil is connected to a divine quality or will, but all together, in
reality, His choice of good before knowing good and evil is the
theanthropic will of Christ, or in another sense, the one will of the Word
incarnate. It is a divinized human will and a humanized divine will all in
one.

Furthermore, Dr. Chesnut continues on the energeia of Christ in St.

Severus’ thought (operations or activity) starting on page 29. I will just
quote the relevant passages of St. Severus:

***************************************
He who acted as one man, who is composed of soul and body, and one
operation, for there is one efficient motion, the outreaching itself of what
he wills. [But] of these different things done, this belongs to the
intelligible realm, but that to the tangible and sensible.

Between the things performed and done by the one Christ, the
difference is great. Some of them are acts befitting the divinity, while the
others are human…Yet the one Word performed the latter and the
former…Because the things performed are different, we shall [not] on
this account rightly define two natures or forms as operating.

Thus one also sees Immanuel [as one sees the builder] for the one who
acts is one–this is the Word of God incarnate–and the operation is one
efficient cause, but the things done are different…Thus let no man
separate the Word from the flesh, and thus he cannot divide or separate
the operations. (Letter 1 to Sergius the Grammarian)
***************************************

In other words, just as much as you can distinguish the differences of

wills and operations of the human soul and body, but cannot separate or
divide them from each other, so in the same sense, while you can
distinguish the differences of human and divine wills and operations,
you cannot separate or divide them, as if saying “The Word does what
belongs to the Word, or the flesh does what belongs to the flesh.” No,
after the hypostatic union, the Word incarnate does divine and human
things, keeping full integrity of both, but also keeping a real hypostatic
union, so that the human nature, will, and operation of Christ becomes
the means by which we partake of the glory and operation of the divinity,
since we cannot know God by essence, but by energy (Chesnut pp. 32-
34).

Based on St. Severus’ Christology alone, I find no difference essentially

between his beliefs and the little I have read from Maximus the
Confessor, who would rather stressed more on the integrity of the wills
than on the theanthropic unity of them, or even the concentrating on the
divine tropos of the human will, which I think is analogous to later OO
fathers describing even Christ’s human will as “divine will”, as if to
describe a divinized humanity of Christ the Word.

I know this is long and tedious, but I hope that answers your question 🙂
Mina

 Like

David Llewellyn Dodds on 18 January 2016 at 12:21 pm

Thank you! Long, but not tedious! Perhaps answering so

deeply/radically, that I do not follow all the answer, yet… I have
certainly not thought about ‘gnome’/’gnomikos’ sufficiently or (to
my recollection) encountered quite such a discussion as St.
Maximus’s (in his work, or elsewhere). Nor have I (to my
recollection) encountered this translation, exegesis, and use of
Isaiah 7:15 [or 16: Vulgate v. 16 has “Quia antequam sciat puer
reprobare malum et eligere bonum,” while I have not looked up
the LXX yet). Even in the sense of the verse given and the
 understanding set out, I am not sure I see a contradiction
between ‘Before the child knew or advanced in evil, he chose the
good’ and (subsequent) gnomical exercise.

But I am not (yet?) sure what to try to ask, further…

 Like

Mina on 14 January 2016 at 11:19 am

I also found this article online:

Click to access 20124-208.pdf

It generally agrees with what I am trying to portray concerning St.

Severus’ Christology.

God bless.

 Like

Mina on 12 January 2016 at 10:36 pm

I want to add a commentary to this post by Fr. Kimel. I wouldn’t use the word “personal”, but
physis would be “concrete individuate” or “concrete specimen” or “concrete existence”. St.
Severus interpreted the term “hypostasis” the same way. Not every hypostasis is a
prosopon, but every prosopon is a hypostasis. In St. Severus, before the incarnation, the
hypostasis was only divine, but after the incarnation, the hypostasis, that is the whole
concrete unit of existence, is both human and divine. The humanity is “hypostatic”, that is “it
truly exists and is concrete”, but we cannot think of humanity separately from divinity. That
is why “after the union”, we think of humanity and divinity as “one hypostasis”, which is also
“one nature”.

The importance of this is most essentially sacramental. We do not partake of flesh and
blood alone, but we partake of the life-giving flesh and blood, or the divine flesh and blood,
or the “one nature” of God the Word incarnate. In addition, since our humanity is mingled and
made one with His humanity, we are exalted into His divine glories. This is why essentially,
the “mia physis” terminology was seen with a soteriological focus, not merely a
terminological focus.

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Fr Aidan Kimel on 13 January 2016 at 6:27 am

It’s interesting, Mina, that you raise a question about McGuckin’s description of
hypostasis as personal subjectivity. There were times when reading his book when I
wondered whether his interpretation of Cyril might be too colored by Zizioulas and
Lossky, in the same way that Zizioulas’s reading of the Cappadocians is too colored by
the modern personalist concerns. I’m too ignorant to have an opinion, but the question
did cross my mind.

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Mina on 13 January 2016 at 2:47 pm

Same here Father. I also am too ignorant to judge this. I am by no means a

scholar, but I read what other scholars say and keep an open mind. Perhaps I’m
wrong, but I also am suspicious of the modern personalist theology developed
later. Not that I am against the personalist theology; I actually am drawn to it.
But I don’t pretend that this is how the ancient fathers thought. I think we need
to admit there was a development of thought, a growth of theology. I also would
say in the same way that Gregory Palamas, while getting patristic support, is
still a development, not a literal adherence of ancient doctrine.

Development of theological language is very difficult to know, and these

developments were only made as a reaction to a heretical development. Can
one consider that after the trying times of the 5th to 7th centuries, that not one,
but two Orthodox developments of linguistic differences occurred? I believe so.
Maybe even a third, but that one is still too difficult to know at the moment.

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Fr Aidan Kimel on 13 January 2016 at 6:24 am

The Classical Christianity blog has provided a lengthy citation from van Loon on Cyril and
the mia physis: http://goo.gl/5V4vYr.

 Like

Mina on 13 January 2016 at 3:28 pm

I had a different impression of St. Cyril’s response to Theodoret. If Theodoret did not
like “hypostatic union”, St. Cyril responded to Theodoret with “Mia Physis” in his “On the
Unity of Christ”, probably to be more provocative. I don’t think St. Cyril ended his use of
“hypostatic union”, let alone “natural union”. Yes, it’s a tool, but so was “homoousios”,
despite the fact that previous fathers may have used “homoi-ousios” in an Orthodox
way. “Homoousios” was not St. Basil’s favorite term, but he accepted it on account of
fighting the Arian heresy. St. Cyril became more frequent with the term “Mia Physis”
because of supporters of not just Nestorius, but also of Theodore of Mopsuestia, lead
by Theodoret.

I think Van Loon is trying really hard to make St. Cyril a diophysite out of Miaphysite
language. The fact that St. Cyril uses the analogy of human composition was “proof”
that St. Cyril was “really” a diophysite. By that logic, so was the whole OO tradition that
demanded “Miaphysis”.

I do appreciate something in this article. When mentioning “one nature of the Word
incarnate”, the term “incarnate” is not a nature, but it describes the Word directly. This
refutes the notion that St. Cyril believed the “one nature” was the divine Word only or
that “incarnate” was a second nature. But since Van Loon’s purpose is to make St. Cyril
look more diophysite than miaphysite, his arguments rely on:

1. St. Cyril’s use of Pseudo-Athanasius (was St. Cyril “fooled”?)

2. A pressure by Miaphysites on St. Cyril
3. St. Cyril didn’t really use it that much before the Nestorian controversy, so it must not
be his favorite

I am doing a lot of research right now on deification. One interesting person is St. John
Chrysostom. It is very difficult to find any reference of deification in him, leading some
 scholars to think he inherited a Diodorian/Theodorian concept of anti-deification. But
others think that he had enough contact with the Cappadocian fathers to have his own
unique theological development that had hints of deification.

Another research I read is the deification language of St. Athanasius as “theopoeisis”.

This particular scholar I was reading was saying that St. Athanasius never used
“theosis”, which is a philosophical term that is used a lot by the Cappadocians, and
may cross the line into inappropriate understandings of the glorification of mankind.
Therefore, St. Athanasius confesses “theopoiesis”, but is “anti-theosis”. This line of
argumentation is what I consider “stretching it”, and is filled with a personal bias (this
is a man who wanted to defend his predecessor’s condemnation of the term
“deification”).

So I find Von Loon suspiciously doing something similar with regard to St. Cyril’s
alleged “diophysite” theology.

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Maximus on 13 January 2016 at 10:47 am

St. Maximus main point: Humanity fell in the disobedience of Adam, if Christ did not take up
a human will/energy then He isn’t human and therefore, we aren’t saved in Him. Human will,
above most things, needs to be recapitulated. Fr. Demetrios Bathrellos has a wonderful book
on this subject.
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Fr. Florovsky compares every christology that falls short of confessing a fully human will and
act in Christ to Augustinianism, since anthropological minimalism is the common theme.

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Mina on 13 January 2016 at 2:48 pm

I remember reading somewhere a defense of St. Augustine as a diothelite. I need to

find this, but I thought it was an interesting read.

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Mina on 13 January 2016 at 3:39 pm

Found it:
 Click to access nature-will-and-the-fall-in-augustine-and-maximus-the-confessor.pdf

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davidirving301 on 13 January 2016 at 1:27 pm

It seems perfectly clear from all Scriptures (OT-Emmanuel, God with us–& NT), that Jesus
Christ was Deity in every way, including The Divine Word within His Divine supernatural
Flesh! As Jesus said, ” I always do the Will of My Father and always please Him”. Only a
Divine and perfectly sinless Flesh could take our sins upon Himelf, and be raised from the
dead in three days INCORRUPTIBLE! He was, is, and always will be Deity in Word, (now
incarnate), Heart, Soul, and Will–filled with the Holy Spirit and ONE with the Father. He was
Deity in every way. I can’t find in any Scripture that he possessed two Wills! (Of course, He
had the “nature” of the Flesh and the Word) He did have human needs and emotions just like
us, but always perfectly followed our Heavenly Father’s Will. Even in the Garden of
Gethsemenee, in the literal Greek text, He said, ” Father, if you WISH, allow this cup to pass
from Me; nevertheless, not My WILL but Your WILL be done”.

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Maximus on 13 January 2016 at 2:01 pm

https://www.academia.edu/7312873/The_Patristic_Tradition_on_the_Sinlessness_of_J
esus_from_Studia_Patristica_

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davidirving301 on 13 January 2016 at 3:44 pm

After reading today about all the persecution in the church of those who didn’t agree with
monotheletism, especially in the times following the orthodoxy of the fourth century, I can’t
understand why there was such a difficulty in understanding the difference between Christ,
the eternal Word taking on Flesh and trying to mold the two into one inseparable unity? The
diotheletists were surely wrong in thinking of Christ’s flesh and the Word as indivisable.
When Christ’s was crucified, his Body lay incorruptible in the tomb, while The Word preached
the Gospel to the spirits in hades as recorded in 1 Peter 3:19-20, 4:6. From what I’ve read
about Cyril’s belief, he saw the distinction between Christ,s Flesh and the Word. The
diophysites believed Christ had two wills, which runs contrary to Scripture. What I can’t
understand is the anathemas, tortures, and cruel murdering of so-called Christians who
differed on some things that those with heresies didn’t understand. It’s obvious from
Scriptures that Christ, The Word of God took on flesh–yet sinless and supernatural flesh–He
even laid down His Life, as He said, no one takes it from me. He had only ONE Divine Will
and that was to do everything His Father and the Holy Spiritempowered Him to do. God
works in perfect Triunity. All of church history is filled with Christians persecuting one
another over doctrinal differences (many times over theological hairspliting and hating each
others theological interpretations and different sects. I realize that we have to stand for
orthodoxy, but not at the expense of all the anathemas and violent persecutions.

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