A few months ago, I attempted to explain the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity by drawing on the first- through eighth-century patristic tradition, especially St Gregory of Nyssa. [1] In this post, I will try to do the same for the doctrine of the Incarnation. As I said before, it’s wrong to view Christian theology as a logical ‘problem’ to be solved. Nor can theology be really separated into different fields like triadology, Christology, and soteriology, all of which are intimately bound up with one another and with Scripture and the liturgical life of the Church. The seven ecumenical councils weren’t discussing sterile logical propositions, but discerning and refuting errors about the hypothesis of the Christian faith himself, the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ, which challenged our salvation in him. [2]
Our starting point, therefore, must be the Nicene Creed that is recited weekly by most Christians worldwide, which says about Jesus:
[I believe] in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten, begotten of the Father before all ages; light of light; true God of true God; begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father; by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man; and he was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried; and the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father; and he shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.
The Fathers, especially St Cyril of Alexandria, also took the Creed as a starting point and saw it as sufficient for orthodox Christology. However, they encountered various errors that implicitly denied the truth of Christ, which forced them to elaborate the doctrine of the Incarnation and how it’s possible for God to become human. Here, we’ll go through a few key texts from the Christological controversies of the fifth to seventh centuries to better understand “the whole mystery of Christ,” as St Maximus the Confessor referred to the Incarnation.
Christology before St Cyril
Prior to the fifth century, there wasn’t a lot of focus on the Incarnation proper: that is, Christ as God-man. [3] In the apostolic era, the main Christological controversy was about whether Jesus had a genuine physical body or only in appearance (docetism), and St John insisted that the Son of God really was “in the flesh” (1 John 4:1-3; 2 John 1:7; cf. Luke 24:39; John 1:14; 6:51-56; 1 Tim 3:16). The few Incarnational statements in the New Testament – “the Word became flesh” (John 1:1-18), “Christ Jesus… being in the form of God… taking the form of a slave” (Phil 2:6-8), “God sent his Son, born of a woman” (Gal 4:4-6) – are embedded in a larger narrative or exhortation.
St Ignatius of Antioch, following his teacher, was a strong opponent of docetism and insisted on the real physical existence of Jesus Christ (Tral 10; Smyrn 1–7). Against false teachers (the docetists?), he says that “there is one Physician, both fleshly and spiritual, born and unborn, in humanity, divine, in death, true life, both from Mary and from God, first passible and then impassible: Jesus Christ our Lord” (Eph 7.2). [4] Ignatius’ attribution of apparently contradictory (both divine and human) predicates to one subject anticipates later Christological formulations.
By the time of St Irenaeus of Lyons, the main challenge to proto-orthodoxy was gnosticism. Because the gnostics made a stark distinction between the God of spirit and the demiurge who made matter, some also (at least in Irenaeus’ view) divided Jesus Christ into two, between the fleshly Jesus and the Christ who descended upon him (Against Heresies 3.16.1). Against them, the bishop of Lyons repeats the refrain “one and the same”: the only-begotten Word of the Father is the very same one who was born of the virgin and became human (3.16-18). We know, therefore, that “there is one God, the Father, and one Christ Jesus [cf. 1 Cor 8:6]... the invisible becoming visible, the incomprehensible becoming comprehensible, the impassible becoming passible, and the Word human” (3.16.6). He became, says St Irenaeus, what we are, so that we may become what he is (3.19.1; 5.pref).
Origen of Alexandria elaborates his incarnational Christology in his work of systematic theology, On First Principles. “The medium between all these created things and God [the Father]” is the Son of God, not by being an ontological intermediate between God and humanity, but by having emptied himself and become himself a human (2.6.1). What baffles the intellect is how one subject can be both divine and human: “If it thinks of God, it sees a mortal; if it thinks of a human, it sees him returning from the dead with spoils, having conquered the kingdom of death” (2.6.2). This is possible because the Word of God, from the beginning of creation, was perfectly united to his soul in its properties and moral disposition, like iron taking on the properties of fire (2.6.4-6). The soul mediated between the Word and his flesh, making it possible for him to become human (2.6.3). Origen’s view was not, of course, followed in all its details, but his emphasis on the human rational soul of Jesus Christ became an important part of later orthodoxy. [5]
The Arian controversy marked a turning point for Incarnation Christology. If Jesus is not as divine as the Father, but rather a created deity (even the greatest one), then it’s possible to see the Incarnation as an episode in the life of a single psychological subject, the Word, who begins as a god and then ensouls a human body (e.g., Eusebius of Caesarea, Church Theology 1.20.40-44). But if Jesus is “true God of true God [the Father],” then it’s no longer possible to view the Incarnation as a temporal movement from one state to another. Thus, after the victory of Nicene orthodoxy, the issue of the Incarnation came to the forefront. The main contributors to the fourth-century discussion were Apollinarius of Laodicea, Diodore of Tarsus, and St Gregory the Theologian. [6]
Apollinarius emphasized the unity of Christ, to the point that, in his view, the communication of attributes applies not just to the person of Jesus Christ but his humanity and divinity. Thus, his flesh is eternal and descended from heaven, and his divinity was born from Mary. [7] There is, therefore, “one nature constituted out of both parts” (Union 5). Furthermore, as seen in the fragments of his writings, he believed that the Word took the place of the human spirit in his composite of body, soul, and spirit, since the natural human spirit is indelibly stained by sin. Because of this, Christ did not assume full human nature; indeed, Apollinarius can go so far as to say that Christ is “not a human” and “not of our nature” (e.g., Anak. 3; 23).
Against him, Diodore of Tarsus stressed the full humanity, and the duality of Christ, to preserve the impassibility of the Word which he saw as challenged by Apollinarius’ view. Diodore argued that the attributes of the divinity and the humanity – and the various statements about Christ in Scripture – must not be confused, but rather attributed to different subjects, the “divine Word” and the “son of David” (BD 6). [8] The Word was not born, but rather his temple (the body), from Mary, who is therefore not strictly speaking theotokos (“birthgiver of God”: BD 1; cf. SD 2). Therefore, Christ is not “one and the same” (BD 26), but “one and another” (BD 2).
St Gregory the Theologian opposes both of these views in his writings, especially his Letter 101 to the presbyter Cledonius. In this letter, he sets out his own view:
...we affirm and teach one and the same God and Son, at first not man but alone and pre-eternal, unmixed with body and all that belongs to the body, but finally human being too, assumed for our salvation, the same passible in flesh, impassible in divinity, bounded in body, boundless in spirit, earthly and heavenly, visible and known spiritually, finite and infinite: so that by the same, whole man and God, the whole human being fallen under sin might be fashioned anew. (4)
He goes on to reject several claims: that Mary is not theotokos; that Christ passed through her like a channel; that his humanity was first formed and later assumed; that there are two Sons – because Christ is “one [thing] and another” (allo kai allo), not “one [person] and another” (allos kai allos), just as the Trinity is one person and another but not one thing and another –; that the man Jesus was “activated by grace” and not “united”; that the Crucified is not to be worshipped; that Jesus was made worthy of adoption; that Christ no longer has a body; that his flesh descended from heaven; and that he does not have a human mind (5). Most of these anathemas refute Diodore, but the last two or three refute Apollinarius. Against him, St Gregory insists that the Word and a human mind can occupy the same body because both are incorporeal (6–7). Clearly influenced by Origen, he says that the mind is precisely what mediates between Christ’s divinity and his body (8). If the human mind is stained by sin, then all the more it should be assumed by Christ to restore it: “what is not assumed is not healed, but what is united to God is being saved” (5; 8–10).
“The one Lord Jesus Christ must not be divided”
So much for the doctrine of the Incarnation in the first through fourth centuries. Controversy sprung up again in the fifth century when Nestorius, the archbishop of Constantinople and indirect disciple of Diodore of Tarsus, claimed publicly that Mary cannot strictly (akribos) be referred to as theotokos: she “did not produce the Creator, rather she gave birth to the human being, the instrument of the divinity” (First Sermon Against the Theotokos). Whatever his actual views, Nestorius’ opponents, especially St Cyril of Alexandria, interpreted him as saying that Christ is two subjects, divine and human, who are united only by an external relation. [9] It’s undeniable that he stressed the duality of Christ to an extent that his real unity was called into question.
St Cyril, archbishop of Alexandria, wrote three letters in response to Nestorius over the course of the controversy. The Second Letter to Nestorius was later canonized by the Councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451), and hence it is a genuine expression of the orthodox Christian faith. He begins by quoting the Creed of Nicaea (325):
Well, the great and holy Synod [of Nicaea] said that it was the Only begotten Son himself, naturally born from God the Father, true God from true God, light from light, through whom the Father made all things, who was the one who came down, was made flesh, was made man, suffered, rose again on the third day, and ascended into the heavens. We must follow these words and teachings, and realise what is meant by the Word of God being made flesh and made man. (3a) [10]
His starting point is the creed worked out a century before him, because, as he wrote earlier, “we shall [expound the sound doctrine of the faith] most correctly if we are very careful, when we encounter the teachings of the holy Fathers, to hold them in the highest regard” (2). St Cyril was deeply concerned for his doctrine to be in line with the historical teaching of the Church and her bishops, especially as worked out at the council of Nicaea.
We do not say that the nature of the Word was changed and became flesh, nor that he was transformed into a perfect man of soul and body. We say, rather, that the Word, in an ineffable and incomprehensible manner, ineffably united to himself flesh animated with a rational soul, and thus became man and was called the Son of Man. This was not effected only as a matter of will, or favour, or by the assumption of a single prosopon. While the natures that were brought together into this true unity were different, nonetheless there is One Christ and Son from out of both. This did not involve the negation of the difference of natures, rather that the Godhead and manhood by their ineffable and indescribable consilience into unity achieved One Lord and Christ and Son for us. (3b)
Here Cyril refutes the charges, laid against him by Nestorius, that he confused the divinity and humanity of Christ and that he was an Apollinarian. The Word did not unite to himself flesh alone, or flesh with an animal soul alone, but “flesh animated with a rational soul” (psychē logikē). Against Nestorius, this union wasn’t an external relation – whether an agreement of wills between the Word and the man, or favor bestowed on the man by the Word, or the manifestation of the Word and the man as a single persona (prosopōn) – but a “true unity” which is described as “hypostatic” (kath’ hypostasin). This means that a single concrete subject was formed out of “the divinity and humanity,” making “one Christ and Son out of both,” without thereby denying “the difference of natures” (tōn physeōn diaphoras).
For this reason, even though he existed and was begotten of the Father from before all ages, he is also said to have been begotten from a woman according to the flesh. This does not mean that his divine nature received the beginning of its existence in the holy virgin or that it necessarily needed a second generation for its own sake after its generation from the Father. It is completely foolish and stupid to say that he who exists before all ages and is coeternal with the Father stood in need of a second beginning of existence. Nonetheless, because the Word hypostatically united human reality to himself, ‘for us and for our salvation’, and came forth of a woman, this is why he is said to have been begotten in a fleshly manner. The Word did not subsequently descend upon an ordinary man previously born of the holy virgin, but he is made one from his mother’s womb, and thus is said to have undergone a fleshly birth in so far as he appropriated to himself the birth of his own flesh.
So it is we say that he both suffered and rose again; not meaning that the Word of God suffered in his own nature either the scourging, or the piercing of the nails, or the other wounds, for the divinity is impassible because it is incorporeal. But in so far as that which had become his own body suffered, then he himself is said to suffer these things for our sake, because the Impassible One was in the suffering body. We understand his death in the same manner. By nature the Word of God is immortal and incorruptible, and Life, and Life-giver, and yet since his own body ‘tasted death by the grace of God on behalf of all’ [Heb 2:9], as Paul says, then he himself is said to have suffered death for our sake. This does not mean he underwent the experience of death in terms of his nature for it would be madness to say or think such a thing; rather, as I have said, it means that his flesh tasted death. Similarly when his flesh was raised up, once again we say that the resurrection is his. This does not mean that he fell into corruption, certainly not, but again that his own body was raised. (4–5)
This passage is key to understanding St Cyril’s Christology and his dispute with Nestorius. Cyril coins the term “hypostatic union” in this letter to indicate that the Word of God and the “flesh animated with a rational soul” are one concrete subject. Therefore, the body and the flesh are “his own” (to idion autou), and anything that is predicated of the body – birth from Mary, suffering, death, and resurrection – must also be predicated of the single subject, the Word, even though they don’t apply to “his own [divine] nature.” Nestorius, on the other hand, sought to precisely distinguish between the terms that applied to the humanity (e.g., birth, death) and the divinity (e.g., “God,” “Word”), versus the combination of both (e.g., “Christ,” “Son”). St Cyril saw the communication of attributes as absolutely necessary, because dividing the titles in this way implicitly denies the single subjectivity of Christ.
And so we confess One Christ and Lord. This does not mean we worship a man alongside the Word, in case the shadow of a division might creep in through using the words ‘along with’; rather that we worship one and the same because the body of the Word, with which he shares the Father’s throne, was not alien to him. Again this does not mean two sons were sharing the throne, but one, because of the union with the flesh. But if we reject this hypostatic union as either impossible or unfitting, then we fall into saying there are two sons, and in that case we will be compelled to make a distinction and say that one of them was really a man, honoured with the title of Son, while the other was the Word of God who enjoyed the name and reality of Sonship by nature. (6)
Nestorius also accepted “one Christ,” and “Lord,” and “Son,” because he applied these titles to the conjunction of the two natures. However, Cyril clarifies that we “do not co-worship [symproskynountes] a man with the Word.” He prefers to not use the term “with” (syn) at all, since this could be taken to imply division between two subjects in Christ. Instead, we should speak of the “union with his own flesh” (henōsis meta tēs idias sarkos) or “the hypostatic union” (tēn kath’ hypostasin henōsin), which makes it clear that Christ is one concrete subject.
And so, we must not divide the One Lord Jesus Christ into two sons. To hold this in no way benefits the correct exposition of the faith, even if certain people do declare a unity of personas; for the scripture did not say that he united the persona of a man to himself, but that he became flesh [John 1:14]. Yet the Word ‘becoming flesh’ means nothing else than that ‘he shared in flesh and blood like us’ [Heb 2:14], and made his very own a body which was ours, and that he came forth as man from a woman, although he did not cast aside the fact that he is God, born of God the Father, but remained what he was even in the assumption of the flesh. Everywhere the exposition of the orthodox faith promotes this doctrine. We shall also find that the holy Fathers thought like this, and this is why they called the holy virgin ‘Mother of God’. This does not mean that the nature of the Word or his divinity took the beginning of its existence from the holy virgin, rather that he is said to have been born according to the flesh in so far as the Word was hypostatically united to that holy body, which was born from her, endowed with a rational soul. (7a)
St Cyril concludes his letter by defending Mary’s title theotokos, which is what sparked the controversy in the first place. The reason this title is so important is because of the communication of attributes: if the Lord Jesus Christ is one subject, rather than a “unity of personas” (prosōpōn henōsin; i.e., an external relation between two subjects), then everything which applies to his body also applies to himself. It was therefore God the Word himself who was borne by the holy Virgin Mary. Nestorius’ denial of this implies the division of the one Lord Jesus Christ, which was Cyril’s central concern from the very start of the Christological controversy.
“Let the heavens rejoice!”
St Cyril held a council of Egyptian bishops in Alexandria in 430 to address the Christological issue, and the synod composed a letter to Nestorius which is known as Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius. This letter is more or less an extended discussion of the same issues as the Second Letter, but with twelve anathemas attached to the end. These anathemas were taken by Antiochene theologians, such as Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Andrew of Samosata, to mean that Cyril was confusing Christ’s divinity and humanity, and he had to write several works to defend them. Especially his fourth and twelfth anathemas came under scrunity:
If anyone interprets the sayings in the Gospels and apostolic writings, or the things said about Christ by the saints, or the 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.
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.
These could be taken in the sense of Apollinarius, that is, that the communication of attributes applies even to Christ’s divinity and humanity, so that it can be said his flesh is eternal and his divinity suffered. However, St Cyril clearly didn’t mean that in context. Even earlier in this letter, he distinguishes between “the humanly” and “the godly sayings,” and what is said “in a God-befitting way” versus “when not despising the limitations of the humanity,” while emphasizing that both are “attributed to one person and one incarnate hypostasis of the Word” (Third Letter 8). Likewise, in his Explanation of the Twelve Chapters, he makes clear that “we apply all the sayings in the Gospels, the human ones as well as the ones befitting God, to one person” (14), and that the divine nature is impassible, but the Word of God made passible flesh “his own” in which he suffered and died (31).
Even so, this widened the rift between the Alexandrian and Antiochene schools. The council of Ephesus in 431 only worsened the situation, because – although the reports about why this happened differ – Cyril began the proceedings of the ecumenical council, and Nestorius was deposed, before the Antiochene bishops arrived. When the Antiochene bishops finally showed up, they held their own opposing council which deposed Cyril instead. This led to a rift in communion between Alexandria and Antioch. However, under imperial pressure toward unity, the two groups worked toward a compromise and finally found a statement of faith that convinced both St Cyril of Alexandria and John of Antioch of the other’s orthodoxy. This Formula of Reunion is preserved in Cyril’s letter to John, which begins, “’Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad,’ for... all difference of opinion has been removed”:
And so we confess that Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, is perfect God and perfect Man, of a rational soul and body. He is born of the Father before the ages according to the Godhead, and the same one in these last days for us and for our salvation was born of the virgin Mary according to the manhood. The same one is consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the manhood, for there was a union of the two natures, and this is why we confess One Christ, One Son, One Lord. According to this understanding of the unconfused union we confess that the holy virgin is the Mother of God, because God was made flesh and became man, and from the very moment of conception he united to himself the temple that was taken from her. As for the evangelical and apostolic sayings about the Lord, we are aware that theologians take some as common, as referring to one prosopon, but distinguish others as referring to two natures; that they interpret the God-befitting ones in accordance with the Godhead of the Christ, and the humble ones in accordance with the manhood. (Letter 39.5)
This statement removes all question of both Apollinarian and Nestorian heresy from either group. On the one hand, the Lord Jesus Christ is “perfect human, from a rational soul and body,” and “consubstantial with us according to his humanity.” On the other, “the same one” was begotten by the Father and by Mary, and Mary is truly theotokos since “God the Word was made flesh and made human.”
Because of the language of “two natures” in this statement, especially that sayings are “distinguished as referring to two natures,” this was interpreted by some in the Alexandrian party as a betrayal of St Cyril’s earlier principles. In fact, as we saw, even in the Third Letter he distinguished “God-befitting” sayings and “humanly” sayings about Christ. Cyril frequently refers to Christ’s divinity as “his own nature,” and sometimes speaks of his flesh or body as having “its own nature” or “our nature” (esp. see Festal Letter 17), which therefore also belongs to Christ. This language can be found from his earliest to his latest writings, and he even says (when explaining Luke 2:52) that Jesus allowed “the nature like ours to move according to its own laws” (Festal Letter 17.2.8; cf. Comm John 14:20). In all of his writings, St Cyril conceives of Christ as a single separate reality in whom divinity and humanity exist unconfused. [11]
In his letters to Eulogius and Succensus (letters 44–46), Cyril defends his acceptance of Antiochene “two natures” language against members of his own party. Here is his answer in part:
...even if [Nestorius] does speak of two natures to signify the difference between the flesh and God the Word. For the nature of the Word is one thing, and that of the flesh quite another. But Nestorius does not confess the union along with us. We unite these realities and confess that the self-same is one Christ, One Son, and One Lord, and we confess moreover that there is one incarnate nature of the Son; just as one might say in regard to an ordinary man who results from different natures, that is body and soul. Our intellect and deductive ability recognises the difference, but we unite them and then recognise the single nature of man. This is why to acknowledge the difference of the natures is not to divide the one Christ into two. (44.1)
As I have said, if we understand the manner of the incarnation we shall see that two natures come together with one another, without confusion or change, in an indivisible union. 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. (45.6)
These passages make clear that Cyril’s concern is with the division of Jesus Christ into two subjects, and not the difference between Christ’s divinity and humanity (cf. Contra Nestorium 2.6), even though in his own language he prefers not to refer to the divinity and humanity as “two natures.”
His affirmation of “one incarnate nature of the Word” seems at odds with this, and in his own writings from prior to the controversy over “two natures,” he prefers to use the language of “hypostatic union” instead. [12] St Cyril mistakenly believed that “one incarnate nature of the Word” was a phrase used by St Athanasius, when in fact it is from Apollinarius’ Letter to Julian; because he thought that this phrase was from the Fathers, he found it useful for defending his own view against other Alexandrian theologians. However, when he explains this phrase in his second letter to Succensus, he is clear that “one nature of the Word” refers to Christ’s divinity, while “‘incarnate’ implies the whole system of the economy with flesh,” including the rational soul, sufferings, and consubstantiality with humanity (46.2ff).
In summary, St Cyril of Alexandria’s main Christological insight is that the Lord Jesus Christ is one concrete subject who cannot be divided. Nestorius’ claim that the Virgin Mary is not “strictly” theotokos implies, in Cyril’s view, that Jesus Christ who was born from her is not “strictly” God. To divide the sayings about Christ is to implicitly divide him into more than one subject. This is unthinkable for St Cyril because the entire economy of salvation is that the Word of God, the Son of the Father, is one and the same as Jesus, the son of Mary, who died for us and rose on the third day, thereby redeeming us from death and raising our nature.
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[1] See part 1 of my post, in which I explained the monarchy of the Father (that the one God = the Father), and part 2 in which I showed how the Trinity is (the) one God. St Athanasius sums up trinitarian theology much more concisely in his first letter to St Serapion of Thmuis, in an excerpt which is one of the readings for the Catholic Office for Trinity Sunday (see here, second reading), often quoted as “Light, radiance and grace are in the Trinity and from the Trinity.”
[2] For a great overview of the ecumenical councils and their theology, see Sergey Trostyanskiy (ed.), Seven Icons of Christ: An Introduction to the Oikoumenical Councils (Gorgias Press: 2016).
[3] For this overview of Christology prior to the fifth century, I’m heavily relying on Fr John Behr, The Way to Nicaea (St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001); The Nicene Faith (St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004).
[4] εἷς ἰατρός ἐστιν, σαρκικός τε καὶ πνευματικός, γεννητὸς καὶ ἀγέννητος, ἐν ἀνθρώπῳ θεός, ἐν θανάτῳ ζωὴ ἀληθινή, καὶ ἐκ Μαριας καὶ ἐκ θεοῦ, πρῶτον παθητὸς καὶ τότε ἀπαθής, Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς ὁ κύριος ἡμῶν. Don’t read too much into St Ignatius’ statement that Christ is “unborn” (agennētos), since the hard distinction drawn in the fourth century between agenētos (uncreated) and agennētos (unbegotten) had not been drawn yet.
[6] For a great overview of the fourth-century Christological debate, see Christopher E. Beeley, “The Early Christological Controversy: Apollinarius, Diodore, and Gregory Nazianzen,” Vigiliae Christianae 65 (2011): 376-407.
[7] This is most clearly seen in Apollinarius’ work On the Body’s Union with the Divinity in Christ, written around 370, which is precisely about his view of the communication of attributes.
[8] Christopher E. Beeley, “The Early Christological Controversy,” 388-390.
[9] This seems correct to me. In the same sermon, Nestorius says that “the incarnate God did not die, but he raised up the one in whom he was incarnate”; that the Incarnation is like if one person, while remaining what he is, lifts up another hurt person by joining body to body; that Christ “assumed the person of the debt-ridden nature... assumed a person of our same nature”; that he worships the man Jesus “as the instrument of the Lord’s goodness... the one who is borne because of the one who carries him... the one I see because of the one who is hidden”. He never refers to two prosōpa (“persons”), which St Cyril accuses him of believing, but this is because, in his ontology, prosōpon is not a real being but an external manifestation, which is one in the case of the Son of God and Son of Man (e.g., Bazaar of Heraclides 58). The union of prosopōn is not natural, but voluntary, on the part of “the natures” even after the union (Bazaar 47). For a more detailed overview of Nestorius’ metaphysics and Christology, see Sergei Trostyanskiy, Seven Icons of Christ, 119-139.
[10] Translation from John A. McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy: Its History, Theology, and Texts (Brill: 1994), 262-265.
[11] See especially Hans van Loon, The Dyophysite Christology of Cyril of Alexandria (Brill, 2009).
[12] Hans van Loon, The Dyophysite Christology of Cyril of Alexandria, 521-530.
