Benjamin G. Robinson

CH13

People of all ages have attempted to explain who Jesus is. Some accounts have lauded him as a divine being, others confessing him to be no more than an ordinary man. The early Christians wrestled with their experience of him as both: human and divine. Their struggle is our struggle, and their replies can instruct ours. One of the earliest Christological controversies centered around the nature of the union of the human and divine in Christ. If Christ is both human and divine, how is this relationship articulated? Is there any significance to articulating this relationship in particular ways? The early theologians answered this latter question with a resounding “yes.” In the Dogmatic Letters of Nestorius and Cyril of Alexandria, and in Cyril’s Against Nestorius we are introduced to a Christological controversy that turned on the matter of the nature of Christ’s unity. We will demonstrate how Cyril viewed his position as properly uniting the humanity and the divinity, while he saw in Nestorius the inevitable separation of the two. Our work will proceed by first sketching Cyril’s Christology in relation to Nestorius’, and then by articulating Cyril’s understanding of the salvific benefits bestowed within such a Christology.

In considering Cyril’s argument we must be reminded that he does not see this Christological controversy as theological hairsplitting. Cyril denounces “rashness in speech and an unbridled propensity towards nitpicking.”¹ He addresses this Christological matter with utter seriousness. At stake is the true incarnation of the Word of God, and thus salvation itself. According to Cyril, in the incarnation “[The Word] entered into our situation by uniting what was human to himself in a concrete and personal manner.”² This uniting he clarifies as being by hypostasis.³ The union is personal precisely because it is a hypostatic union. The subject of the incarnation is the eternal Word of God, who took to himself human flesh.⁴ As such, the essential unity of Christ is based on the person of the Word.

This essential unity is what Cyril considers lost in Nestorius’ Christology. According to Cyril, Nestorius’ speech of “conjunction” does not adequately express the union of divine and human. While attempting to distinguish between human and divine in Jesus, Nestorius separates the two natures.⁵ He does so by speaking of the conjoining of a human person with the Word of God.⁶ In his concern to keep distinct the divine and human, Nestorius gives a sort of individual subsistence to the two. Thus it is difficult to conceive of the conjunction as little more than that of juxtaposition.⁷ Cyril, in contrast, will not allow Christ to be divided. In Christ there is a substantial union of the human and divine. While readily admitting the immense difference between humanity and divinity, Cyril nonetheless affirms that this division is put aside. By this, he does not mean that the human and divine are confused or mixed. Rather, he is again pointing to the one Son, the one Christ, the one eternal Word of God the Father who is the basis of union in the incarnation.⁸

Since Nestorius does not speak of a hypostatic union but of a conjunction, the basis for unity in Christ is different than Cyril’s. Nestorius speaks of Christ’s unity as one of will, dignity, and authority. By virtue of sharing the same name with the Word of God, the human person of Christ is afforded the same dignity as the divine Word. Having a common purpose, the two act inseparably.⁹ But Cyril fails to see how this expresses any unique union. For if by virtue of the shared name the two are indivisible, and if others have shared the name of Christ, son, and lord, why are these others not also indivisibly united? How is the human person of Christ different from any other human person? How is the Word’s dwelling in Christ in anyway different from the Word’s dwelling in ordinary humans?¹⁰ The Word of God, through the Spirit, dwelt in the prophets and the apostles, and also within us. If the conjunction is based on this indwelling then how is Christ unique? Nestorius’ language of the humanity of Christ being the temple of the Word of God persuades Cyril to maintain serious misgivings concerning Nestorius’ position.¹¹

As indicated above, Cyril’s concern for an orthodox articulation of Christology is based upon his soteriology. Cyril is chiefly concerned that Nestorius undermines the entire salvation narrative. If the conjunction of Christ is little different than the dwelling of God in ordinary man, what can Christ do for us? If the Word has not truly assumed flesh, and been united hypostatically to human flesh, how can he be our savior? Christ became one of us to stave off the sickness of human nature incurred in Adam. He could not have become one of us if he had not been born like us.¹² Thus, according to the flesh, God was born of Mary, and she is properly theotokos. The eternal Word of God, who exists from the Father, is born according to the flesh and came to be with us. Being born of a woman, he brings blessing to the manner of our beginning.¹³ No aspect of our lives is left untouched when the Word joins himself hypostatically to human flesh.

In becoming man the Word makes flesh his own. He does so that we might become his sibling(s). The Word undergoes human birth that we might undergo a spiritual birth and be born of God. The Word is the only-begotten and unique Son of God who became like us that we might, by grace, become children of God.¹⁴ By becoming children of God we, through the Spirit, are conformed to Christ’s likeness. We are conformed insofar as he has become one of us. Humanity shares in the image of Adam, an image with a propensity to sin, and one which undergoes death and decay. But, being hypostatically united to human flesh, the Word of God invites us to participate in the divine nature through our conformity with him. This conformity consists of freedom from sin, death, and decay.¹⁵ If Nestorius is right, and the eternal Word is conjoined with a human person, then the only image to which we can be conformed is that of an ordinary man. As Cyril says, “[Nestorius] strips the Word of God of the human element, with the result that he then appears not to have benefited our condition in any way at all.”¹⁶

Nestorius also attributes the suffering of the cross to the human “temple” in the conjunction in such a way as to imply distinct hypostases in Christ. Since the one who suffered and was tempted is our high priest, this must refer to the human person not the divine.¹⁷ Again it can be asked, what benefit to the human condition is this? Yet for Cyril the eternal Word of God suffered, according to the flesh, impassibly.¹⁸ The one who is our merciful high priest is none other than the Word of God made flesh who, by nature of his deity, is good and merciful. As the Word his priesthood is permanent, and as man he officiates his priestly action and offers to the Father the single spiritual offering of his own blood that he might save those who believe in him.¹⁹ Cyril’s point, again, is that in the incarnation the Word of God remains God but by taking to himself human flesh he performs salvific duties on our behalf. This does not confuse the two natures, rather Cyril says “He will not lose his being God because he became as we are. Why should that follow? Nor because he is God by nature will he be incapable of enjoying a likeness with us and have to reject being a man.”²⁰

The incarnate eternal Word of God, who does not give up being God nor is incapable of being a man, in uniting human flesh to himself has made that flesh life giving. By nature, the Word, being God, is Life. Thus, when he unites himself with human flesh that flesh becomes life-giving.²¹ Cyril’s soteriology is to some extent summed up in this affirmation. This is the critical point upon which his Christological fervor lies. The life-giving flesh of Christ is able to overcome death and corruption. Cyril cannot see how if the union of Christ is only a conjunction life can be given to those in the flesh. God became what we are, and in the Eucharist we eat “the Word’s own flesh, which has been made life-giving because it has become the flesh of him who lives because of the Father.”²² It is in the worshipful, Eucharistic life of the Church that the one who has endowed his flesh as life-giving makes us partakers of deity. In giving us life, we are freed from sin and death, we are adopted as children of God, and we are conformed to the image of the incarnate Word. For Cyril none of this is possible in Nestorius’ Christology of conjunction. This is a matter of salvation, and is so treated.

Cyril is clear that his articulation of the hypostatic union is not meant to be mere theological speculation. After all, speculation too he seems to have a penchant against.²³ Cyril believes that the outcome of this controversy will have deep soteriological ramifications. In considering Nestorius’ Christology Cyril sees himself engaging in matters of life and death. We have shown how Cyril understands the union of divine and human hypostatically, that is, the subject and basis of unity in the incarnation is the eternal Word of God. As such, the Word makes the flesh united to himself life-giving, and thereby rescues humanity from the tragedy of its condition. Cyril’s understanding of the hypostatic union is the necessary foundation upon which his robust soteriology depends. If the Word has not truly become man, then in what way is the human condition benefited at all? Cyril leaves us with no option of cleaving to the humanity or the divinity separately or exclusively. Instead, by confessing the Word of God hypostatically united to human flesh we “are sanctified, becoming partakers of the holy flesh and the honorable blood of Christ the Savior of us all […] as truly life-giving and the Word’s own flesh.”²⁴ What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.