In this article I have been sharing some of the history of how our Church came to its understanding of the “role” of Christ as savior. In the last issue I shared some of the thinking of the Great Greek Father Cyril. There is no doubt that Cyril used ambiguous terms (like his formula one nature incarned of God the Word, which he unknowingly borrowed from Apollinaris), but his rejection of Nestorianism was motivated not by any “anthropological minimalism” but, on the contrary, by the conviction that human destiny truly lies in communion with God – an ultimately maximalist view of humanity. It must be remembered that Nestorianism consisted, on the contrary, in a rationalizing sense of incompatibility between the divine and the human: the person of Christ, in which divinity and humanity met, appeared as a juxtaposition of two mutually impermeable entities. He did not believe that Jesus could be equally and totally God and equally and totally man. According to Nestorius, the human nature of Christ kept not only its identity but also its autonomy. Christ’s birth and death were human only. Mary was mother “of Jesus”, not “of God.” Jesus the “Son of man” died, not “the Son of God.” It was this duality

which implied a different anthropology, that Cyril rejected. On the other hand, he simply could not remain logical with himself if he adopted a doctrine similar to that of Apollinaris or Julian. It is precisely because Christ accepted existentially complete humanity that the Divine Logos had to assume suffering and death. In order to lead it to incorruptibility through the resurrection, he first came down where humanity truly was and then cried before dying, “My God, why have you forsaken me”.

This moment was indeed “the death of God” for it was the assumption by God Himself, in an ultimate act of love, of human nature. Mankind was subject to death and corruption without any sense of immortality. By assuming death, God revealed to humankind the truth of human life.

It is obvious that some aspects of Cyril’s Christology needed to be more clearly defined. The Council of Chalcedon (451) affirmed the doctrine of Christ’s two natures in their distinctiveness and the doctrine of a hypostatic (not a natural) union of the two natures. But in no way did it disavow Cyril. It clarified his language and attempted to answer legitimate questions about his language.