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Theotokos

At the heart of the theology of St Cyril of Alexandria was a concept known to the Orthodox as theosis. Though now often misunderstood (Jess has written a little on this on this blog) it was was central to his thought, and he inherited it from his great predecessor, St. Athanasius, who has written that: ‘The Word was made man so that we might be made God” (De Inc 54.3). In this, he was following in distinguished footsteps. Irenaeus had written that, “If the Word became a man, It was so men may become gods.”

For St Cyril, participation in the Divine Life is the purpose of the sacraments; without the deifying power of the Word they are emptied of their power and we are lost in sin. ‘If you detach the life-giving Word of God from the mystical and true union with the body and separate them entirely, how can you prove that it is still life giving?‘ If the Word had not deified our flesh through the Incarnation by the Virgin Mary, then Christians could not become sons of God by adoption and thus participate in the Divine Life. In his Commentary on John [i:9] he wrote:

Those who have attained adoption as sons of God through faith in Christ are
baptized not into anything belonging to the created order but into the Holy Trinity
itself, through the mediation of the Word, who on the one hand joined what is
human to himself by means of the flesh that was united to him, and on the other
was joined by nature to him who had begotten him, since he was by nature God.
Thus what is servile [i.e. our humanity] rises up to the level of sonship through
participation in him who is Son in reality, called and, as it were, promoted to the
rank which the Son posses by nature. That is why we are called offspring of God
and are such, for we have experienced a rebirth by faith through the Spirit.

What was at stake in confessing Our Blessed Lady the Theotokos, was nothing less than the reality of our salvation:

Is it not wicked and shocking to try to take away from God the Word his birth
from a woman according to the flesh? For how could his body possibly give life to
us if it were not the very own body of him who is Life? And how could it be that
the “blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin” (1 Jn 1:7) if it was in reality only that
of an ordinary man subject to sin? And how has “God the Father sent his Son born
of a woman, born subject to the law” (Gal 4:4)? Or how has “he condemned sin in
the flesh” (Rom 8:3)?

As always, devotion to Our Lady led towards her Son and our salvation. This, it seems, is something some Protestants lost sight of at some point after the Reformation; but neither Luther nor Clavin shared the low view of Our Lady taken by some nowadays.

This short series on St Cyril is best concluded with one of my favourite prayers of his:

“O most holy Lady, Theotokos, light of my poor soul, my hope, my protection, my refuge, my comfort, and my joy! I thank you for having enabled me to be a partaker of the most pure Body and most precious Blood of your Son. 

Enlighten the eyes of my heart, O Blessed One who carried the Source of Immortality. 

O most tender and loving Mother of the merciful God; have mercy on me and grant me a repentant and contrite heart with humility of mind. Keep my thoughts from wandering into all kinds of distractions, and make me worthy always, even to my last breath, to receive the most pure Mysteries of Christ for the healing of my soul and body. 

Give me tears of repentance and thanksgiving that I may sing of you and praise you all the days of my life, for you are ever-blessed and praised. Amen.”