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Did You Know?

22 Wednesday Jul 2020

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A word of explanation from Neo. For some months, as many of you know, at NEO, I have had a new co-blogger. Audre Meyers. She brings something to my blog that it has missed since Jessica left, a lighter touch, perhaps a woman’s touch, and a bit of wandering off the reservation, which is needed.

The other day, she sent me a very pleasing draft, about a lesson from her Bible study group led by her priest. She is a Continuing Anglican, essentially an American Amglo-Catholic, and it shows. Her draft recalled something to me, which took some time to place. This is it. In it, she strikes many of the same notes that Jessica did in her best posts. Well, at least one of my commenters has remarked that she thought Audre was Jessica in disguise. She’s not but they do share an outlook and a style which I find very refreshing.

In any case, as I read her draft, I came to the conclusion that it belongs here, not on NEO. NEO too, has an underlying Christian ethos, but is far more political, and likely will continue as such at least until the election. Audre finds this collection of curmudgeons intimidating (I can’t imagine why!) something about the way we speak our minds clearly and robustly, I think. But I think we all also listen to that still small voice in our hearts and souls. That’s where I think Audre’s viewpoint comes from.

Eventually, I convinced her to let me post it here as sort of a guest post. So be nice to her, she’s my friend as well as co-blogger. Here’s Audre!

I’ve read my Bible front to back many times throughout the years. While I’m not good at quoting chapter and verse numbers, my understanding of what I’ve read is pretty sound. So imagine my surprise at Bible study yesterday when our priest gave a new insight into what we were reading in the Book of John.

The chapter is 3 and the verse is 30. “He must increase and I must decrease” (KJV)

This is obviously John the Baptist explaining to his followers, his disciples, that Jesus is the Man and he, John, just the herald; that he will be eclipsed by Jesus and that Jesus is the One to follow. Simple. Read it quick and move on. But what our priest suggested brought me to a screeching halt. He said he is impressed with John’s great humility. Humility? Our priest, Fr. Ellis, pointed out that John was very popular and had a fairly large following; he was, in effect, telling his followers that they must now follow Jesus and he himself was not the one they should be looking to. I hadn’t thought of the common, very human trait of ‘pride’ – there had to have been, within John, a sense of being important and noteworthy. Here he was, the momentary Elvis and all that it implies, saying,  “I’m not going to sing anymore because you need to listen to Roy Orbison whose voice is way beyond that of mine.” Who does that sort of thing? Who walks away from fame? A very, very humble soul.

But here’s the concept that rocked my boat. Fr. Ellis stated that the verse applies to us. Head snap. What? The verse applies to us today and forever. We are to decrease and Jesus is to increase. How is that so? We are so self-centric; life is, after all, all about us. Individually. What I want, what I need, what I like, what I think, what I have. The ‘great’ imperative. Me. We lament that our prayers aren’t answered, that things aren’t going our way, that we want change and we want it now. But He can only act in our lives when we give Him room. We believe we are the masters and captains of our lives and as such, we blunder, fail, hurt ourselves, hurt others, have a skewed perspective of the world around us. Just take a look at the world if you don’t believe me.

Things ‘come right’ when we decease. When we start to chip away at the ‘me’ and start to open up to Him. If we decrease, we open up space for Him to come in and fill us with all the love of the Father and all the aid and comfort of the Holy Spirit and a greater, deeper, sustaining relationship with Jesus.

So verse 30 applies to me – to us. I MUST (not a random word choice, it’s highlighted in the KJV by the format of the word)

I MUST decrease and He MUST increase.

Verse 30 is an instruction.

As St. Cyril said:
“If the poison of pride is swelling up in you, turn to the Eucharist; and that Bread, Which is your God humbling and disguising Himself, will teach you humility.”

Theosis, Theotokos and St Cyril

10 Wednesday May 2017

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As this short series draws to an end, I hope it is clear that although Ephesus was technically about the use of the word ‘Theotokos’ it was about much more than that; it was about the whole question of the Incarnation and the nature of Jesus. The Docetists and Adoptionists had argued that Jesus was just a man upon whom the Spirit had descended and in whom the Spirit dwelt until the crucifixion; some of this eway of thinking can be traced in Islam’s ideas about Jesus.

Cyril, like his great predecessor, believed in theosis. Though now often misunderstood (there is information here on this blog) it was at the heart of Cyril’s theology, inherited from St. Athanasius. In principle, the Incarnation transformed human nature as a whole, the Word refashioning it in His own flesh. Cyril was following Athansius in holding that ‘The Word was made man so that we might be made God” (De Inc 54.3).

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. The sad thing about those Protestants who attack the Church for ‘bigging up’ Mary and think is somehow lessens the role of Christ, is that they get it precisely wrong. Our Lady may be the most blessed of human beings, but she simply facilitates the birth of the Saviour; her soul magnifies God. Of course, if you start with the odd idea that Catholics ‘worship’ Our Lady, you will end up in an odd place; and it is sad that some, however often they are shown it is not so, continue to repeat their own legend.

St. Cyril saw the truth with a clear eye; we have much to thank him for.

It is fitting to finish with this prayer of St. Cyril’s:

“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.”

It may well be that we have so far lost sight of the sense of the sacred that was with Cyril, that we can no longer enter into the world which he inhabited, but if we cannot, we shall not understand what motivated him, or why it mattered so much to him and his contemporaries. What was at stake was nothing less than the issue of our eternal salvation.

My gratitude to those of you who have expressed your appreciation of this series. There will be a hiatus as we approach the centenary of Fatima, and thereafter I shall return to this topic with an examination of the Christological controversy which led to the split at Chalcedon in 451.

Ephesus: the aftermath

09 Tuesday May 2017

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It took sixty years after Nicaea before its results could be said to have been accepted by a majority of Christians; even then, it took an expansion of the Creed agreed there before anything resembling a consensus was reached. In the case of Ephesus, there was a more ready consensus – but also a resistance to the doctrine. This is not the place to go into the history of the so-called ‘Nestorian’ Church, but for those interested there is a good short series on it on this blog starting with this introduction. The whole dispute had been one about the nature of Christ, and it was that subject, and especially the issue of the legitimacy of confessing two natures in Christ after the Incarnation, which occupied the next three Councils: Ephesus II in 449, Chalcedon in 451 and Constantinople II in 553.

It is worth dwelling a little more on the reconciliation with Antioch, because it is one of the few examples we have of such a major potential schism being healed.

The reconciliation with John of Antioch had been an act of great courage on Cyril’s part. Right through the year after Ephesus, most of Syria had been in the rejectionist camp; Theodosius’ instructions that they should accept what had been decided had been ignored, and the Syrians had made a rejection of Cyril’s Twelve Anathemas a condition of reconciliation. Had Cyril been the man portrayed by Gibbon he would not have acted as he did, and there would have been no reunion.

Cyril gave no ground on what he had said, but did make it plain that his condemnations had been of Nestorius, not of the whole Antiochene school. John of Antioch offered an explanation of his position which Cyril found orthodox; Cyril insisted that they accept the deposition and condemnation of Nestorius. With good will on both sides, the way to substantial reunion was found. Once orthodoxy had been established, Cyril worked hard to make the yoke easier on those whose pride had been assailed. If only some later Popes had behaved in such a manner. It is terribly unfair that Cyril has been stigmatised in the way he has been; in practice, once the central theological orthodoxy was established, he was flexible on other matters.

It was, as the Pope told Cyril, his triumph. But within his own Church, and within the Syrian one, there were those who wanted a different sort of triumph – one more akin to that won by Rome against Carthage. Nestorius never accepted his fate, and even in exile in the prison colony of the Great Oasis in Egypt, continued to protest his case; his Bazaar of Heraclides was rediscovered in the nineteenth century, and for those with a taste for such things, stands as a monument to human vanity. Theodoret of Cyrrhus  continued to agitate against Cyril, and would help cause the next great crisis.

As for Cyril, his victory won, he continued to write on Christological issues. His three great Christological works: That the Christ is One; The Exposition of the Creed; The Three Books to the Monks, as well as the monumental Against Julian the Apostate all belong to this last period of his life. He died on 27 June 444, just short of his 70th birthday. He was the greatest theologian of his time; one the the greatest of all time. It was fitting that he should have been called ‘The Seal of all the Fathers’. Had his successor, Dioscorus, possessed a fraction of either his genius in theology of diplomacy, much ill might have been averted.

It remains only to comment on what Cyril achieved – from his own point of view.

Ephesus: the triumph of the Theotokos

08 Monday May 2017

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To return to the Council. We left it with St Cyril in the ascendant and the definition of Our Lady as ‘Theotokos’ as agreed. But things were far from over. The Antiochene delegation, led by Bishop John, turned up on 26 June, convoked another synod and announced that Cyril was deposed. That created a deadlock: two Councils, two decisions. The emperor originally agreed with both groups – so all the leading bishops were deposed. Here is where the charge comes that Cyril bribed his way to victory.

It must be said up front that Cyril did indeed send a considerable number of very expensive gifts to Constantinople, but to attribute his victory to this is to ignore two things; that the partisans of Nestorius did likewise, as this was how these things were done; it is also to ignore the theological dimension.

The people of Constantinople were behind the Cyrilline council and there were demonstrations and riots when it became known that Theodosius had deposed him. Theodosius was in even more trouble when, on 10 July, the Roman delegation turned up and supported Cyril. Rome and the population of Constantinople were united with Cyril in defence of the Theotokos, as were the people of Ephesus, who  refused to abandon him even when he was placed under house arrest. The ‘gifts’ were part of Cyril’s tactics to secure allies in Constantinople where the partisans of Nestorius still had influence. As McGuckin puts it:

‘Cyril’s payments to court officials undoubtedly smoothed the way for his cause … Nonetheless the key factor which swayed Theodosius was without question the solid determination of the Cyrilline party not to abandon their president whom they identified as synonymous with their cause.’ (p. 106).

Cyril and Memnon were restored, Nestorius deposed; what remained to be done was to reconcile Christendom. Here it helped that the majority of the Antiochenes had accepted the orthodoxy of the declaration that St. Mary was, indeed Theotokos.

It took two more years before Cyril and the church at Antioch could be reconciled, but the former knew how to be magnanimous in victory. John, bishop of Antioch, had no wish to continue to quarrel with the powerful Patriarch. In 433 Cyril marked their reunion with his famous epistle which began “Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad”. It contained the credal statement about Our Lady we hold to this day:

Concerning the Virgin Mother of God, we thus think and speak; and of the manner of the Incarnation of the Only Begotten Son of God, necessarily, not by way of addition but for the sake of certainty, as we have received from the beginning from the divine Scriptures and from the tradition of the holy fathers, we will speak briefly, adding nothing whatever to the Faith set forth by the holy Fathers in Nice.  For, as we said before, it suffices for all knowledge of piety and the refutation of all false doctrine of heretics.  But we speak, not presuming on the impossible; but with the confession of our own weakness, excluding those who wish us to cling to those things which transcend human consideration.

We confess, therefore, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, perfect God, and perfect Man of a reasonable soul and flesh consisting; begotten before the ages of the Father according to his Divinity, and in the last days, for us and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin according to his humanity, of the same substance with his Father according to his Divinity, and of the same substance with us according to his humanity; for there became a union of two natures.  Wherefore we confess one Christ, one Son, one Lord.

According to this understanding of this unmixed union, we confess the holy Virgin to be Mother of God; because God the Word was incarnate and became Man, and from this conception he united the temple taken from her with himself.

Peace was restored. Some of the more partisan Alexandrians criticised Cyril for giving way to some of the phraseology of the Antiochenes, but he had won his point – and the harshness of the Twelve Anathema was to be buried in the love of brothers reunited; some sacrifice is always necessary. The unwisdom of his critics would be shown six years after his death in 444. But what had Cyril won?

St Cyril praises Our Lady at Ephesus

07 Sunday May 2017

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One of the tragedies of the Reformation as it progressed was that narrow and literal minded men not only lost contact with the age-old devotion of Christians to Our Lady, but, in their ignorance, sought to suggest that her place in Christian devotion was, in some unspecified way, a version of the worship of Diana which had taken place in Ephesus. Quite how it was that a Church which canonised St Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, which mentions this tradition at Ephesus, but makes clear Paul made converts there, came to adopt ‘Diana worship’, is never explained by such people. Being both rather ignorant and literal minded, and perhaps with a trace or three of misogyny, they see veneration of the Mother of God, they vaguely know there was a cult of Diana at Ephesus, so they put 1 and 1 together and come up with 11, never stopping to explain two things: why Christians would worship Diana in another guise; and why none of their bishops would have noticed?

Ephesus was, as Cyril knew, the place where the Blessed Virgin had come to live with St John, the pair of them fulfilling Jesus’ charge to them. Our friend Bosco poured scorn on the idea, it is not, after all, in the Bible. Well, of course, the charge from Jesus is there, and unless we suppose the pair of them disobeyed that command, we believe they were faithful to Him. But why Ephesus? It was certainly traditional by the time of Cyril, but where did the tradition originate?

One of the Churches to whom St John addressed a letter in the Book of the Apocalypse, was that at Smyrna. Now known as Izmir and the third largest city in Turkey, it is located just north of the old capital of Roman Ephesus. St Polycarp, who was martyred in 156, lived there, and was a disciple of St John, whom he had known as a young man, and by whom he had been brought to Christ. St Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyons who died in 200, was a disciple of Polycarp’s, and carried forward the traditions he was taught by the disciple of St John. Among those traditions was that the two saints, John and Our Lady, lived in Ephesus; that house has been uncovered by archaeologists. Naturally, those who prefer their own unaided interpretation of Scripture to the traditions handed on by the Church will do what some of St John’s own disciples did, which is to deny his testimony. The rest of us will respect that a faithful disciple of a faithful disciple of St John knew what he was talking about.

All of that is by way of prelude to an examination of St Cyril’s speech at the opening of the Council at Ephesus, a city steeped in stories of the life of Our Lady and St John. The first of the Church Fathers to have a developed Mariology was Irenaeus. He made no claim to originality in what he wrote, and was recording systematically what the generation before him had taken for granted – it was, after all, a time when first-hand testimony of those who had known the Apostles was beginning to fade – hence the need to note it down. He saw Our Lady as the New Eve, through whose obedience the disobedience of the first Eve was redeemed. Where Eve’s disobedience had condemned mankind, Mary’s obedience brought into the world Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. In emphasising the reality of Jesus as a man incarnate of the Virgin, Irenaeus fought the heresy of docestism, which taught that Jesus was just a man filled with the Spirit (a statement recently made here by our friend Bosco, who was unaware he was repeating the earliest heresy). All of these themes we find in St Cyril’s address to the Fathers at the opening of the Council.

I see here a joyful company of Christian men met together in ready response to the call of Mary, the holy and ever-virgin Mother of God. The great grief that weighed upon me is changed into joy by your presence, venerable Fathers. Now the beautiful saying of David the psalmist: How good and pleasant it is for brothers to live together in unity (Psalm 133) has come true for us.

Therefore, holy and incomprehensible Trinity, we salute you at whose summons we have come together to this church of Mary, the Mother of God.

Mary, Mother of God, we salute you. Precious vessel, worthy of the whole world’s reverence, you are an ever-shining light, the crown of virginity, the symbol of orthodoxy, an indestructible temple, the place that held him whom no place can contain, mother and virgin. Because of you the holy gospels could say: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

We salute you, for in your holy womb was confined him who is beyond all limitation. Because of you the holy Trinity is glorified and adored; the cross is called precious and is venerated throughout the world; the heavens exult; the angels and archangels make merry; demons are put to flight; the devil, that tempter, is thrust down from heaven; the fallen race of man is taken up on high; all creatures possessed by the madness of idolatry have attained knowledge of the truth; believers receive holy baptism; the oil of gladness is poured out; the Church is established throughout the world; pagans are brought to repentance.

And there, of course, we come to the heart of the matter. For Cyril, as for all Christians, the fact of the Incarnation is a cause of overwhelming joy, and that leads him to praise Our Lady extensively. This, of course, is the sort of thing which dour Protestants tend not to get, which makes one wonder what they do when they are taken up with the sheer joy of Christ? St Cyril, however, has only just begun:

What more is there to say? Because of you the light of the only-begotten Son of God has shone upon those who sat in darkness and in the shadow of death; prophets pronounced the word of God; the apostles preached salvation to the Gentiles; the dead are raised to life, and kings rule by the power of the holy Trinity.

Who can put Mary’s high honor into words? She is both mother and virgin. I am overwhelmed by the wonder of this miracle. Of course no one could be prevented from living in the house he had built for himself, yet who would invite mockery by asking his own servant to become his mother?

Behold then the joy of the whole universe. Let the union of God and man in the Son of the Virgin Mary fill us with awe and adoration. Let us fear and worship the undivided Trinity as we sing the praise of the ever-virgin Mary, the holy temple of God, and of God himself, her Son and spotless Bridegroom. To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Formulaic language? No, there is a depth of devotion there which, as events were to show, was shared by so many others. This was no expression of a new doctrine. It was the eloquent restatement of one always held by Christians. Reading it gives one some idea of the depth of Cyril’s devotion – and an insight into why he fought this fight as fiercely as he did.

Fighting the beasts at Ephesus

06 Saturday May 2017

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Three main charges are commonly levelled against St. Cyril by his denigrators:
– that he turned up at Ephesus with what amounted to his own private army and stirred up opposition to Nestorius
– that he intemperately started the Council early
– that he bribed the emperor into accepting his version of events

There is a level at which each of these criticisms is extracted from the truth, but done so in a manner which leaves it an empty shell. An understanding of this requires a resort to narrative history for a while.

Nestorius was the first bishop to arrive (he only had to cross the Bosphorus). He turned up with his ecclesiastical supporters, his own armed guard, and that of the prefect, Count Candidian, who was the emperor’s representative. In these circumstances it was wise of Cyril to turn up with his ecclesiastical supporters and their ‘attendants’. McGuckin (p. 56) quotes a letter extant now only in Coptic in which St. Cyril denies the charge of bringing an army, and he says there ‘is no hard evidence’ to suggest Cyril did so. The ease with which Count Irenaeus and Candidian were able to cut off Cyril’s supply lines later supports such a conclusion. Cyril turned up, as Nestorius did, with supporters; what he lacked was the armed support enjoyed by the latter. So yes, it is true to say he turned with with a large entourage; to represent that as an attempt to overawe the Imperial Power is too simplistic.

There  was a good deal of anti-Nestorian sentiment in Ephesus. Memnon, its archbishop, barred Nestorius from communion, and aligned himself with Cyril. To blame Cyril for the unpopularity of Nestorius is to misunderstand the context of the Council. Ephesus was the city where Our Blessed Lady had lived with St. John, and had long been the centre of Marian devotion; that its people would have been hostile to Nestorius was natural – Cyril needed to do nothing save proclaim orthodox belief to receive support.

The Council was due to convene on 7 June 431. Cyril delayed it for two weeks as many delegates, including those from Rome and Antioch, had failed to meet that deadline. The hot weather and the strain on the food resources of Ephesus took its toll on those delegates who had arrived. When Cyril received information that the Antiochenes would be delayed a while longer, he summoned the Council together. He suspected, and not without cause, that John of Antioch did not want to be there when Nestorius was deposed; the evidence is sifted at McGuckin pp. 66-68.

Should Cyril have waited longer? Perhaps, but since he had no idea when, if ever, the other delegates might arrive, he decided a fortnight was sufficient.

The First Session began on Monday morning, June 22nd, at Saint Mary’s Cathedral, with Cyril presiding; Peter, an Alexandrian priest, was appointed as the chief legal notary. There were 155 bishops present, of whom 68, led by Theodoret of Cyrus, came to protest against the decision to open the Council. Count Candidian came with them and declared the meeting illegal. St. Cyril asked him to read the letter of the Emperor. This had a double purpose. It revealed a clear instruction to the Count from the Emperor to refrain from interfering in theological discussion. By reading the letter, the Count had, in Cyril’s opinion, opened the Council in a formal sense. After hearing the letter, the bishops asked the Count to leave the meeting and not to interfere in the work of the Council. Count Candidian then left, followed by Theodoret and 26 of the 68 dissident bishops. The remaining 42 bishops stayed.  The meeting went on to summon Nestorius, something repeated the following day, and when he refused to attend, he was deposed.

St. Cyril’s description of the reaction of the great crowd outside to this event is worth repeating:

“When they heard that the wretched men were deposed, they all began with one voice to cry out in praise of the Holy Council, glorifying God because the enemy of the Faith had fallen.”

The people had spoken; the bishops had spoken; but would that be enough for orthodoxy to prevail?

Before turning to that, I want to take a moment to look at how Cyril opened the Council, as it will help us understand how he saw Our Lady in the economy of salvation.

St Cyril: how to write about God

05 Friday May 2017

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One of the main shortcomings of Gibbon’s approach, is that in failing to understand what Cyril thought was at stake, he misses the real criticism which might be, and was, levelled at Cyril, and it is one which nearly wrecked the Council – and the unity of Christendom.

Cyril’s Third letter was a sound statement of orthodoxy. If he had left things there he would have saved himself much trouble; but he did not. The Twelve Chapters which accompanied them could be read as an uncompromising attack on the whole Antiochene school. One rule of thumb always works; when something can be read as an attack, it will be. Nestorius sent the Chapters to John, bishop of Antioch, who, prompted his two leading theologians, Andrew of Samosata and Theodoret of Cyrrhus to fire counter-blasts at Cyril. (McGuckin, pp. 44-4)

Some good would come from the subsequent epistolary warfare, although not in time for the Council. Andrew and Theodore both accused Cyril of Appolinarianism, that is of believing that Christ did not have a human soul but was a man with a divine soul, and therefore not man at all. This could certainly be one reading of the theopaschite language used by Cyril ‘God died in the flesh’; but it was a misunderstanding of the paradoxical language which Cyril loved to use. Both Theodore and Andrew hammered out an expression of the Antiochene position which made it less liable to be taken as adoptionist; that is that Our Lord was a man whose form was infused by divinity, but not, itself, divine.

But if the controversy forced the Antiochenes to clarify their position, the same was true for Cyril. His language had left him open to the charges laid against him, and his answers in treatises Response to the Orientals, and To Euoptus, while they dealt with the charge of Appolinarianism, did not quite provide an answer to the key question at issue. Should Jesus be ‘properly and distinctly viewed as a human individual (a Jewish man) or whether he was the divine Son in person (God).’ (McGuckin, p. 49). The Theopascite language had been meant as a paradox to show the mystery of the mode of union between the divine and the human – that is it was as such that ‘God died’. But Cyril would have to do better than that.

Cyril knew that God had become man and died for us, and on that point he would not yield; it was that which he took Nestorius to be challenging by denying to Mary the title of God bearer. But he also came to realise that he would need to do more work to explaining the way in which the humanity of Jesus was not simply a cypher.

However, the calling of the Council at Ephesus would both cut across this work, and make the urgency of it the more acute. At Ephesus Cyril, like St. Paul before him, would be fighting with the beasts.

St Cyril contra Nestorius

04 Thursday May 2017

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At the heart of the dispute was not the power struggle depicted by Gibbon and others, but the very nature of our salvation. Nestorius’ position was clear:

That God passed through the Virgin Christokos I am taught by the divine Scriptures, but that God was born from her I have not been taught anywhere

Nostorius argued that those who taught that Mary was Theotokos were ‘heretics’. (Russell, p. 34) This he proclaimed from the cathedra in Constantinople; this it was which so concerned Cyril. As neither of his first two letters secured any concessions from Nestorius, and with the latter clearly marshalling the forces of the Empire against him, Cyril needed to gather his own resources. His attempts to garner support from the sister of Theodosius back-fired; but he fared better elsewhere.

In the summer of 430 Cyril sent Pope Celestine a dossier on Nestorius’ teaching, along with a commentary and patristic testimony. The Pope, no theologian, handed the dossier to his archdeacon, Leo (later Pope Leo the Great) and John Cassian, the two most formidable theologians in the West; they advised him that Cyril was correct.   On 11 August 430 a local synod was held in Rome. It condemned the teachings of Nestorius as heretical. Celestine told Cyril of this and appointed him his representative at the synod which it had been announced would take place at Ephesus. Nestorius’ own appeals to Celestine went unanswered. For those who care about such matters, it ought to be noted that both patriarchs appealed to Rome for support.

In November 430 a local synod at Alexandria found Nestorius guilty of heresy. St. Cyril send a third letter to Nestorius containing 12 anathemata which he was required to accept as the price of entering back into communion:

1. If anyone does not confess the Emmanuel to be truly God, and hence the holy virgin to be Mother of God (for she gave birth in the flesh to the Word of God made flesh), let him be anathema.

2. If anyone does not confess that the Word of God the Father was hypostatically united to the flesh so as to be One Christ with his own flesh, that is the same one at once God and man, let him be anathema.

3. If anyone divides the hypostases of the One Christ after the union, connecting them only by a conjunction in terms of honour or dignity or sovereignty, and not rather by a combination in terms of natural union, let him be anathema.

4. If anyone interprets the sayings in the Gospels and apostolic writings, or the things said about Christ by the saints, or the things he says about himself, as referring to two prosopa or hypostases, attributing some of them to a man conceived of as separate from the Word of God, and attributing others (as divine) exclusively to the Word of God the Father, let him be anathema.

5. If anyone should dare to say that Christ was a God-bearing man and not rather that he is truly God as the one natural Son, since the Word became flesh and ‘shared in flesh and blood just like us’ (Heb.2.14), let him be anathema.

6. If anyone says that the Word of God the Father is the God or Lord of Christ, and does not rather confess the same one is at once God and man, since according to the scriptures the Word has become flesh, let him be anathema.

7. If anyone says that Jesus as a man was activated by the Word of God and invested with the glory of the Only Begotten, as being someone different to him, let him be anathema.

8. If anyone should dare to say that the assumed man ought to be worshipped along with God the Word and co-glorified and called ‘God’ as if he were one alongside another (for the continual addition of the phrase ‘along with’ demands this interpretation) and does not rather worship the Emmanuel with a single veneration and render him a single doxology since the Word became flesh, let him be anathema.

9. If anyone says that the One Lord Jesus Christ was glorified by the Spirit, using the power that came through him as if it were foreign to himself, and receiving from him the power to work against unclean spirits and to accomplish divine signs for men, and does not rather say that the Spirit is his very own, through whom he also worked the divine signs, let him be anathema.

10. The divine scripture says that Christ became ‘the high priest and apostle of our confession’ (Heb.3.1) and ‘offered himself for our sake as a fragrant sacrifice to God the Father’ (Eph.5.2). So if anyone says that it was not the very Word of God who became our high priest and apostle when he became flesh and man as we are, but it was someone different to him, a separate man born of a woman; or if anyone says that he made the offering also for himself and not rather for us alone (for he who knew no sin had no need of offerings), let him be anathema.

11. If anyone does not confess that the Lord’s flesh is life-giving and the very-own flesh of the Word of God the Father, but says that it is the flesh of someone else, different to him, and joined to him in terms of dignity, or indeed only having a divine indwelling, rather than being life-giving, as we have said, because it has become the personal flesh of the Word who has the power to bring all things to life, let him be anathema.

12. If anyone does not confess that the Word of God suffered in the flesh, was crucified in the flesh, and tasted death in the flesh, becoming the first-born from the dead, although as God he is life and life-giving, let him be anathema.

This, along with the decision of the Roman synod, was conveyed to Nestorius on 30 November. Only two weeks earlier, on 19 November 430, Theodosius II had invited the bishops to a synod to be held at Pentecost (7 June 431). The scene was set for one of the most controversial of all ecumenical councils, and an occasion which would provide Cyril’s opponents with much ammunition.

St Cyril, Gibbon and the limits of Enlightenment thought

03 Wednesday May 2017

Posted by in Faith, Marian devotion, st cyril of alexandria

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After the due acknowledgement to St Cyril’s great predecessor, St Athanasius, I want to return to Cyril himself, and, as May is the month of Mary, to an examination of his role in the definition of the dogma that Our Lady is the Theotokos, the God-Bearer, the Mother of God. That involves a preliminary skirmish with Edward Gibbon whose Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, contains one of his most vicious pen portraits, which has set the tone for the way in which later writers have treated St Cyril. If history does not repeat itself, the same cannot be said of historians.

As an Enlightenment thinker, Edward Gibbon had little patience with religion, and even less interest in understanding it as a motive force in politics. Thus, when he came to examine St Cyril’s part in the Council of Ephesus, which defined the dogma that Our Lady is the ‘God-bearer’ or Theotokos, he brushed aside impatiently the immense weight of writings in which Cyril explained his case, and went straight for a motive he understood – power. In this he was a pioneer for a method many historians have used since. It is essentially reductionist. It begins with the view, clearly shared by the historian, that all this religion stuff is to do with power, and proceeding from that assumption, goes on to ‘prove’ it is so. Thus, writing about the background to Ephesus, Gibbon observes:

Cyril was at length awakened by the exaltation of a rival more worthy of his esteem and hatred. After the short and troubled reign of Sisinnius, bishop of Constantinople, the factions of the clergy and people were appeased by the choice of the emperor, who, on this occasion, consulted the voice of fame, and invited the merit of a stranger. Nestorius, native of Germanicia, and a monk of Antioch, was recommended by the austerity of his life, and the eloquence of his sermons …

Gibbon assumes the lowest of motives: ‘Religion was the pretence’, he explains, adding that: 

in the judgment of a contemporary saint, ambition was the genuine motive of episcopal warfare

The saint concerned was St. Isidore of Pelusium. If we read what the Blessed Saint (who was probably related to Cyril) wrote, we see how disingenuous Gibbon is. St. Isidore wrote:

Liking cannot see far ahead, while dislike cannot see clearly. So if you wish to remedy both of these sight problems, do not spout out such vehement statements, instead be more fair in your accusations. Even God All Knowing, before his birth, thought it best out of his love for man to come down and see the boisterousness of the Sodomites, teaching us a lesson in fully inquiring. Many of the people who have come to Ephesus (are) ridiculing you for acting out of personal enmity and not for the doctrine of Jesus Christ. “Here’s this nephew of Theophilus, they say, imitating his way of thinking. Like him, he falls into a rage against the God-loving John, inspired by God, and he desires ever so much to lecture, even though there is a great difference between the people (who are) deciding.”

Isidore, is referring to Cyril’s uncle and predecessor, Theophilus of Alexandria who had brought down St. John Chrysostom at the Synod of Oak. He is warning Cyril about how to behave and what people are saying about him; what he is not doing is attributing that motive to Cyril. Had a student of mine made such a mistake, he or she would have been awarded a ‘fail’. But it illustrates the way in which a polemicist differs from the genuine historian; the latter allows the sources to shape the narrative, the former shapes the sources around the agreed narrative. That so many later historians have accepted this without question tells us more about their biases than they should be comfortable with.

Gibbon’s account tells us more about him, and the limits of Enlightenment thought, than it does about Cyril and Ephesus. Gibbon, like many moderns, cannot understand why men thought the issues at stake were worth dying for; if we are to do so, we must investigate Cyril’s thought and the context in more depth. It is to that I shall turn tomorrow and for the rest of the week.

May: the month of Mary, the Theotokos

01 Monday May 2017

Posted by in Catholic Tradition, Faith, Marian devotion, st cyril of alexandria

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May is the month of Our Lady for Catholics. To the poorly-educated, the prejudiced and the ignorant, this will raise the issue of Catholics ‘worshipping’ her, so it is as well to say at the outset, that this is nonsense. Catholics, like all Christians, worship only God. To say that a Catholic ‘worships’ Our Lady by kissing a statue of her, would be like claiming a Protestant ‘worshipped’ the Bible by kissing it. It is the sort of pernicious sectarian tosh that has no place in Christian dialogue.

For as long as we can look back, Christians have had a veneration for Our Lady. One of the most popular non-canonical texts was the so-called Evangelion of St James, which dates to the mid or late second century, and shows that by then, the intense interest in her was being satisfied by a steady supply of imaginative literature. Nor is this surprising. Last week we looked at St Cyril of Alexandria, who had a particular devotion to Our Lady. If its origin is unclear,its depth is not. Any attempt to deny that St. Mary was the Mother of God cast doubt on the source and fact of our salvation. Cyril agreed with St. Gregory Nazianzus that what was not assumed cannot be healed.

If Christ was not both fully divine and fully human, he wrote:

 we have no longer been redeemed by God (how could we have been?) but rather by the blood of someone else. Some man or other, an impostor and a falsely-named son, has died for us. The great and venerable mystery of the incarnation of the Only Begotten has turned out to be only words and lies, for he never really became man after all. We certainly could not regard him as our Saviour who gave his blood for us, we would have to attribute this to that man.

When it came to his ears that the new Patriarch of Constantinople, Nestorius, was denying St. Mary the title of ‘Theotokos’ (God-bearer), he was alarmed.

Our opponents have chosen to hold and teach that the Only Begotten Word of God assumed a man of the line of the divine David and Abraham, and took care to form him in the holy virgin, then conjoined himself to him, made him come to the trial of death, raised him from the dead, took him up to heaven, and seated him at the right hand of God. But if this is the case then it seems to me that the holy Fathers and all the God-inspired scriptures, and we ourselves, are speaking in vain whenever we say that he became man. Nonetheless I think that it is exactly this, and nothing else, that the all-wise John meant when he wrote: “The Word became flesh” (Jn 1:14).

‘Thetokos’ was popularly translated as ‘Mother of God’. The laity had long used this appellation for the Blessed Virgin. Long before any theologian pronounced, the consensus of the faithful was orthodox – the Blessed Virgin was the Mother of Our Lord and Saviour, and since He was the God-Man (Theandros) she was the Theotokos. Popular opinion in Constantinople was outraged at any attempt to deny this; so was Cyril. In his paschal letter of Easter 429, St. Cyril affirmed the reality of the humanity of Christ and insisted on the unity of His Divine Person in terms quoted above. He composed his ‘Letter to the Monks‘ in which he founded his belief in the unity of God in his understanding of the position of Our Lady:

I was completely amazed that certain people should be in any doubt as to whether the holy virgin ought to be called the Mother of God or not. For if our Lord Jesus Christ is God, then how is the holy virgin who bore him not the Mother of God? The divine disciples handed on this faith to us even if they did not make mention of the term. We have been taught to think this way by the holy Fathers. Our Father Athanasius … composed a book for us concerning the holy and consubstantial trinity where, throughout the third discourse, he calls the holy virgin the Mother of God… the exact words are these: ‘This, then, is the purpose and essential meaning of the divine scripture, as we have said many times, that it contains a two-fold statement about the Saviour; firstly that he is eternally God,and that he is the Son being the Word, the Radiance, and the Wisdom of the Father, and secondly that later for our sake he took flesh from the virgin Mary the Mother of God and so became man’ (Contra Arianos 3.29).

At Ephesus in 432, St Cyril fought Nestorius to ensure that the correct understanding of the place of Our Lady in our salvation was enshrined in Christian doctrine. At the beginning of the month when we celebrate her, it seems respectful to remind ourselves of what St Cyril said and to honour his devotion. This is the first in a short series examining the Council of Ephesus.