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Hello and welcome to Word Magazine.
This is Jeff Riddle, pastor of Christ Reformed Baptist Church
in Louisa, Virginia. Today is Monday, July the 16th
of 2018. I'm trying to get back in the
groove of doing these Word Magazines weekly, and it seems like Mondays
have been a good day the last few weeks. to either record or
to post to sermonaudio.com, my word magazines. In this episode,
we are going to be doing a topic from church history, from patristics,
and we're going to be looking at a man named Cyril of Alexandria,
and I'm going to be reading some excerpts from one of his best-known
writings, which is called On the Unity of Christ. And this
person, Cyril of Alexandria, is probably lesser known by those
of us who are Protestants, but this person had a deep impact. He was highly influential in
shaping the early Orthodox views on Christology, the doctrine
of Christ. And as I've been preaching through
my series on Sunday afternoons in our church through the Confession,
When I got to chapter 8 on Christ the Mediator, I spent some time
trying to read and study the backgrounds for the Orthodox
Protestant views that are expressed there on Christology. And I noted
several times when I was preaching through that series that the
Second London Baptist Confession of Faith is baptistic. It is
also reformed. But it is also Catholic with
a small c, Orthodox with a small o, in that it reflects the universal
and the Orthodox views that emerged and were identified in the patristic
period. And this sent me back to look
at this man, Cyril of Alexandria. with whom I was less familiar,
but I got a copy of his book on the unity of Christ that is
published by St. Vladimir's Press in their popular
patristic series. And I also read Philip Jenkins'
book called Jesus Wars, subtitled How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens,
and Two Emperors decided what Christians would believe for
the next 1,500 years. I don't really like that subtitle
of that book, but Jenkins does do a nice job in surveying the
early Christological controversies and spends some time talking
about Cyril of Alexandria. So let's first of all just look
at the life of Cyril. Cyril lived from 378 to 444. He was the nephew of Theophilus,
who had been the bishop of Alexandria from 385 to 412, was a very influential
man in Alexandria, Egypt. And then on the death of Theophilus
in 412, Cyril, when he was only 34 years of age, became his uncle's
successor as the bishop of the church in Alexandria. While he was the bishop, he clashed
in particular with Nestorius, who was the bishop of Constantinople,
over the unity of the person of Christ. And he also apparently
clashed with Nestorius and others on the orthodoxy of the title
that was given to Christ of Theotokos. Theotokos, I guess we could pronounce
it. I'm not sure. And this means
the God-bearer. It's got theos, God, in there,
takos, to bear, so theotokos, the God-bearer. And this was
a title that Cyril and others liked to use for Mary. And it's
a little squishy because we've got that piety that's centering
around Mary. that'll go into full-blown Mariolatry. I'm not sure if we would define
it as that at this point. But Cyril supported this title
that while Christ had been in the womb of Mary, Christ as God
and man, that it would be proper to call Mary the Theotokos, the
God-bearer. Nestorius opposed this. And he
said that it would be proper to call Mary the Christakos,
the Christ-bearer. But he wanted to defend the distinction,
apparently, between Christ as God and man. And he was accused of preaching
two persons of Christ rather than one person. And the controversy
between Cyril and Nestorius eventually resulted in the calling of what
is referred to as the Second Ecumenical Council, or the First
Council of Ephesus in the year 431. And during this council,
Cyril's views were affirmed, and Nestorius was denounced,
and he was eventually sent into exile. And it was a contentious
meeting. It's kind of interesting to read
the account of it in Philip Jenkins' The Jesus Wars. Jenkins says
that Cyril was both a brilliant thinker and, at the same time,
an obnoxious bully. And he apparently used some kind
of political tactics in that council to sort of get his way. He had sort of had a reputation
for this. One of the darkest marks against him in Alexandria
was that he had had a role in the death of a noted pagan woman
philosopher named Hypatia in 415. And so he was known for
the use of force, violence, politics. And he was accused of using his
political power and muscle to depose Nestorius and sent him
into his exile. Nevertheless, his views on the one person of Christ and
on the propriety of calling Mary the God-bearer prevailed. So in later years, his stress
on the one person of Christ, though, came to be distorted
in Alexandria. And in later years, one of his
successors, Dioscyrus, who became Bishop of Alexandria, stressed
not only the one person of Christ, but also, as he saw it, the one
nature of Christ. Conflicts over this led to another
council that was held in Ephesus in 449, and this one was sort
of notorious, for even greater violence that was exacted and
greater political force. So much so that this synod is
called the Gangster Synod, or the Robber's Council. And in
this council, Dioscorus sort of intimidated the Orthodox opponents. And this council declared the
one nature of Christ. And this one nature view is sometimes
called the Monophysite view. from the Greek word physis meaning
nature, saying that Christ only had one nature. This view had
been championed by a man named Eutyches who lived from around
375 to 454 and I might recommend another little
book that I found helpful as I've tried to study some of the
early councils and the early history of Christianity. And
it's David Bentley Hart's little book called The Story of Christianity,
subtitled A History of 2,000 Years of the Christian Faith. And this goes from, you know,
the ministry of Jesus and the apostles all the way up to modern
times. It's a very helpful book. David
Bentley Hart's a very good writer and has a lot of very colorful
anecdotes in this. Hart is an Eastern Orthodox philosopher,
theologian, and I'd recommend the book. But anyways, he summarizes
the view of Eutyches in the story of Christianity as In the incarnation,
Christ's humanity was wholly assumed into his divinity. So his humanity was swallowed
up by his divinity. We might say the corruption of
Cyril of Alexandria's view on the one person of Christ went
to seed in saying that Christ only had one nature in the teachings
of Eutyches and in this gangster synod at Ephesus in 449. However, this council was later
rejected, roundly rejected, by other Orthodox bishops and theologians. And so it's dubbed the Second
Council of Ephesus. But because of its errant Christology,
it is not accepted in wider Orthodox Christianity to be among the
so-called great early ecumenical councils. And in later church
councils, Most notably, at the Council of Chalcedon in 451,
a more balanced and well-defined Orthodox Christology was adopted,
which articulated and declared that Christ was one person, as
Cyril had contended, but also that Christ had two natures or
has two natures, that he is true man and true God. So as opposed to the Monophysite
view, mono, one nature. There was, at Chalcedon, the
triumph of the diophysite view, that Christ had two natures. He's true man, true God. The
monophysite view, the one nature view, however, continued. And
it continues to this day to be held in several of the so-called
Oriental Orthodox churches. That is the Coptic Church of
Egypt, the Ethiopian Church, the Syrian Jacobite Church, and
the Armenian Church. And so this is an interesting
thing. Sometimes we think. sort of as
the Eastern Orthodox churches monolithically, but there's a
division here where we could say Constantinople and Rome or
the Western Christianity and the greater part of Eastern Orthodoxy
accepted the definition of Chalcedon, that Christ is one person with
two natures. true man, true God, but you've
got within Eastern Orthodoxy this break off of these monophysite
churches, again, that exist to this day. We hear a lot today
about Coptic Christians, for example, being persecuted in
Egypt, but they hold to what would be considered a view of
Christ that does not conform to the Chalcedonian view of Christ. I have a student this semester
in a course I'm teaching who's from Ethiopia and I met with
him the other day and was talking with him and he was telling me
some about his experiences in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church,
and we were talking a little bit about this view of the monophysite
view versus the diophysite view. So these differences, these views
remain and are significant. It's also interesting to note
that this Orthodox Christology, the view of the one person of
Christ, and the two natures of Christ come to be reflected,
again, in the Protestant Orthodox confessions that emerge in the
Reformation, the post-Reformation era. It's there in the Westminster
Confession of Faith, and then it's, of course, picked up in
the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, which is a daughter
confession of the Westminster Confession, and that's the confession
that guides our church. And again, I was working through
this, and let me just read, this is chapter 8 on Christ the Mediator,
this is paragraph 2, and we can hear the Orthodox Christological
language here. It says, the Son of God, the
second person in the Holy Trinity, being very and eternal God, the
brightness of the Father's glory, of one substance and equal with
Him who made the world, who upholds and governs all things He has
made, did, when the fullness of time was complete, take upon
Him man's nature, with all the essential properties and common
infirmities of it, yet without sin, being conceived by the Holy
Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the Holy Spirit coming
down upon her and the power of the Most High overshadowing her,
and so was made of a woman of the tribe of Judah, of the seed
of Abraham and David, according to the Scriptures. so that two
whole, perfect, and distinct natures were inseparably joined
together in one person without conversion, composition, or confusion,
which person is very God and very man, yet one Christ, the
only mediator between God and man?" So, you know, they're the
one person who is with two distinct natures, two whole perfect and
distinct natures. Those natures are without conversion,
composition, or confusion. And he is very man, very God. So there's the orthodox Christological
language that's hammered out in the council that was held
in Ephesus, the first council at Ephesus that Cyril so much
influenced. Next, I want to, having surveyed
the life of Cyril and a little bit on the Christological controversies
in those early councils, I want to turn to the book, Cyril's
book, which is on the unity of Christ. The Greek title of it
was Hachais Hachristas. which I guess could be rendered
the one, the Christ, and the English title, On the Unity of
Christ. Now, this book was composed toward the end of Cyril's life,
and long after the conflict with Nestorius had been concluded. And it reflects Cyril's mature
views on Christology. And the book uses a sort of a
hypothetical dialogue format. I think it's pretty common for
books of that era, where he sort of has a person posing questions,
and then he is providing the orthodox answers. And it was
interesting as I read through this, I saw several places where
he's appealing to scripture, I saw some of the him appealing
to many of the same scriptures that we see listed as proof texts
in the Second London Confession on chapter 8. And I did a post,
I'll put a link to this when I do a blog post at JeffRiddle.net,
to an earlier post I did on how Cyril's exegesis is reflected
in the Westminster Confession, the Second London Baptist Confession
of Faith, particularly in paragraph three of the section of the Confession. So again, the edition that I
read was the one that is put out by St. Vladimir's Press.
They've got this whole series called the Popular Patristic
Series. And it kind of struck me as I
was reading this, I have several of these other ones that I've
read, that it kind of reminds me of the Puritan paperback series
from Banner of Truth. So Banner of Truth, there's a
focus on the Puritan tradition, with St. Vladimir's Seminary
Press, which is an Orthodox seminary and an Eastern Orthodox press. Their counterpart to sort of
the Puritan paperbacks is this Patristics paperbacks, we might
call, or this popular Patristics series. They do have many very
important of these early We might say Catholic, again, with a little
c in Orthodox writings. So anyways, I want to share a
few citations on several topics so we can hear directly from
Cyril. And so here are a couple of statements
that he made on the incarnation, on the word made flesh. This
is from page 59. He said, it follows, therefore,
that he who is The one who exists is necessarily born of flesh,
taking all that is ours into himself, so that all is born
of the flesh, that is, us corruptible and perishable beings. might rest in him. In short,
he took what was ours to be his very own, so that we might have
all that was his." And that last statement, I was struck by. He
took what was ours to be his very own, so that we might have
all that was his. And then on page 61, Another
statement on the incarnation, he writes, for God was in humanity. He who was above all creation
was in our human condition. The invisible one was made visible
in the flesh. He who is from the heavens and
from on high was in the likeness of earthly things. The immaterial
one could be touched. He who is free in his own nature
came in the form of a slave. He who blesses all creation became
accursed. He who is all righteousness was
numbered among transgressors. Life itself came in the appearance
of death. So another striking quotation.
And I'd said that Cyril is called by Jenkins an obnoxious bully. But we can see from this book
that his greatest force, I think, against what he saw as unorthodox
views of Christ wasn't just physical force, but it was the It was
his rhetoric, it was his exegesis, it was his appeal to scripture.
Another interesting segment here, another interesting quote from
page 64. He was arguing on the rationality of Christ's soul,
that Christ had a rational soul. And was opposing apparently various
unorthodox views that said, that views that the Logos was his
soul, that he didn't have a human soul, a rational soul. And he
says, we must admit, of course, that the body which he united
to himself was endowed with the rational soul, for the Word,
who is God, would hardly neglect our final part, the soul, and
have regard only for the earthly body. Quite clearly, in all wisdom,
he provided for both the soul and the body." So Christ had
a human body, and he had a human soul, as well as the point he's
making. He also addresses the Theotokos,
the God-bearer idea. It's also on page 64. He says,
if our opponents insist that the Holy Virgin must never be
called the Mother of God, but Mother of Christ, the Christotokos,
instead, then their blasphemy is patent, for they are denying
that Christ is really God and Son. So Cyril would say that
by calling Mary Theotokos, the point isn't to give veneration
to Mary, but it is to say that Christ is divine, that Christ
is God, that he is the God-man who is in the womb of Mary. And
so it's right to say that Mary was the God-bearer or the mother
of God. His appeal is, you know, consistently
to scripture. And just one quotation relating
to that on page 72, he says, come, let us investigate the
divine and sacred scripture and let us seek the solution there. Cyril's also well known for his
defining, I guess, the term, the hypostatic union, quotes
that he has on the union of God and man in Christ. He says on
pages 73 and 74, how wicked they are then when they divide in
two the one true and natural Son, incarnated and made man,
and when they reject the union and call it conjunction. So his
point is to say that in the one person of Christ, there is this
hypostatic union of God and man. On page 77, he says, well, Godhead
is one thing and manhood is another thing considered in the perspective
of their respective and intrinsic beings. But in the case of Christ,
they came together in a mysterious union without confusion or change. The manner of this union is entirely
beyond conception. Page 79, he says, my friend,
if anyone says then when we speak of the single nature of God,
the word incarnate and made man, we imply that a confusion or
mixture has occurred, then they are talking utter rubbish. And
this is a statement on page 79 where we can see how in his zeal
to defend the one person of Christ, that he also talks about a single
nature. And again, this view would sort
of go to seed in Eutyches and in the Monophysite. So I guess a Monophysite might
claim this quotation to buttress his view that maybe Cyril held
to a Monophysite type of view on Christology. This is why I
think Cyril's views can't be definitive. defining what an
Orthodox Christology is that has to come later with the definition
of Chalcedon in 451. Also on page 79 he says, it was
not impossible to God in his loving-kindness to make himself
capable of bearing the limitations of the manhood. And on page 89
he says of Christ, he lived as a man with earthly beings and
came in our likeness. But he was not subject to sin
like us, but was far beyond the knowledge of any transgression.
The same was at once God and man." And then on the unity of
Christ, on page 91, he says, if someone has another added
to him, he cannot be considered one. How could he be? He could
be one plus one, or rather one plus something different. And
without question, this makes two. Arguing it's Nestorius,
he's wanted to differentiate between the deity of Christ and
the humanity of Christ. And he says, one plus one is
two. One plus something different
is two. And he's hammering on the oneness of Christ, the hypostatic
union, the unity of Christ. And then there were also some
interesting statements in this that struck me, especially after
reading Dolezal's book, All That Is In God, stressing not only
the simplicity of God, but also that God is impassable, that God is
without body parts and passions. And on page 117 he says, so even
if he is said to suffer in the flesh, even so he retains his
impassibility insofar as he is understood as God. And so Cyril
several times makes the point that although he's stressing
the unity of God and man in Christ. He's not saying that this means
that when Christ suffers, say on the cross, that God is suffering. Cyril would see that as not being
true to an orthodox view of God, that God is impassible, that
God does not suffer. So he wants to make a distinction.
I think this will be borne out in the Chalcedonian definition
that with regard to his human nature, Christ suffers, but with
regard to his divine nature, he does not suffer. Likewise,
on page 121, he says, in his own nature, he certainly suffers
nothing, for as God, he is bodiless and lies entirely outside suffering. Page 129, he says, the word remained
he was even when he became flesh, so that he who is over all and
yet came among all through his humanity should keep in himself
his transcendence of all and remain above all the limitations
of the creation." And page 130 he says, referring to Christ,
he suffers in his own flesh, not the nature of the Godhead. And finally on page 130, he says,
No, as I have said, he ought to be conceived of as suffering
in his own flesh, although not suffering in any way like this
in the Godhead. And so I think these quotations
here illustrate the way in which Cyril and other Orthodox thinkers
of this period were able to say, affirm the oneness of Christ
and the oneness of Christ in the hypostatic union, but also
to say that he suffered in his humanity But he did not suffer
in his deity. So he's affirming, he's not compromising
the idea of the impassibility, the immutability of God, while
also affirming that Jesus is God. Again, it's a little different
word magazine for today. We're not dealing with a text
issue, but it's related to text issues in that we also see that
Christology was a huge battleground in those early centuries of Christianity. That's another reason why I'm
interested in Cyril and this whole question, because it is
related to Christology, because we see, I think, reflected in
the textual conflicts, battles, over proper Christology. Some of the major changes that
are made in the New Testament relate to how the person and
the natures of Christ are presented. And so this is a battleground. I think often a lot of these
battles are lost in the shadows. We don't understand all of them,
but this provides, I think, some of the background and reasons
why there were battles over the text, why there was tampering
with the text. So anyways, obviously Cyril of
Alexandria was not a perfect person. He was a flawed person,
no doubt. And yet, one of the things I
thought about as I read this, reflected on it, is just how
God in his providence was working even in men like this, even in
flawed situations, in flawed ecclesiological circumstances,
in these flawed councils. Still, God was at work providentially. And he was, I think, working
through various men to articulate an Orthodox view of who Christ
is. Because obviously, this is going
to be at the center of Christianity. Who is the Lord Jesus Christ?
What does it mean when we say he is truly God and truly man? And obviously, these councils
are subordinate standards, like the confessions, like the Second
Lenten Confession. These are subordinate standards
to Scripture, and yet they're important. And obviously, if
we say we're a confessional Reformed Baptist, we hold the 1689 Confession,
it's important for us to see how there is reflected in that
confession these earlier articulations of Orthodox views of who Christ
is. So in that regard, I think it's
valuable to read and study some of these church fathers. And
as many of our Catholic and Orthodox friends will say, Protestants
often are quite ignorant of what was said by the church fathers.
I don't think we have to fear them, I think it actually can
strengthen us to understand them, read them, and so that's something
I'm interested in doing right now. As usual, I'm going to put
up on my blog, JeffRiddle.net, a post in which I'll put my notes,
and I'm going to put these quotes, and a couple of them, as I was
reading them, I'm going to go back and look. I think I might
have not always written them down exactly right, but I'll
double-check it. So, some of the quotations, if you were struck
by them, I'll put up the quotes and page numbers where you can
find them in the St. Vladimir's Press edition that
was translated by John A. McGuckin. and you can look it
up for yourself. Anyways, hope that this was helpful
and useful for you, and I'll look forward to speaking to you
when we put out the next Word magazine. Till then, take care
and God bless.
WM 99: Cyril of Alexandria
Series Word Magazine
| Sermon ID | 716181251210 |
| Duration | 34:18 |
| Date | |
| Category | Podcast |
| Language | English |
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