{"id":4042,"date":"2016-06-05T10:00:41","date_gmt":"2016-06-05T14:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=4042"},"modified":"2016-05-27T14:02:09","modified_gmt":"2016-05-27T18:02:09","slug":"learning-our-faith-from-the-greek-fathers-of-the-church-20160605","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=4042","title":{"rendered":"Learning Our Faith From the Greek Fathers of the Church — 20160605"},"content":{"rendered":"

I would continue sharing Cyril\u2019s ideas about Christ as Savior in the East. There is no doubt that Cyril used ambiguous terminology (like his formula one nature incarned of God the Word, <\/em>which he unknowingly\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 borrowed from Apollinaris), but his rejection of Nestorianism was motivated not by any \u201canthropological minimalism\u201d but, on the contrary, by the conviction that human destiny is linked with communion with God – an ultimately maximalist view of humanity.<\/p>\n

\"St.<\/a>

St. Cyril of Alexandria<\/p><\/div>\n

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. According to Nestorius, the human nature of Christ kept not only its identity but also its autonomy. Christ\u2019s birth and death were human only. Mary was mother \u201cof Jesus,\u201d not \u201cof God.\u201d Jesus the \u201cSon of man\u201d died, not \u201cthe Son of God.\u201d 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, complete humanity – in an incomplete, unfulfilled state, from which it need to be saved – that the divine Logos had to assume suffering and death. He did this in order to lead humanity to incorruptibility through the resurrection. He first came down where incomplete humanity truly was – \u201cin the depth of the pit\u201d – and then cried before dying, \u201cMy God, why have you forsaken me.\u201d This moment was indeed \u201cthe death of God\u201d: the assumption by God himself, in an ultimate act of love, of humanity in its state of separation from its truly \u201cnatural\u201d communion with God. Christ\u2019s humanity was, therefore, neither diminished nor limited: it was humanity in its very concrete incompleteness.<\/p>\n

Hopefully\u00a0 you, my\u00a0 readers, are beginning\u00a0 to see how Cyril and, of course, other Greek Fathers of the Church struggled to find the right way to truly express the great mystery of God\u2019s unique incarnation as a man in the Person of Jesus. How we express this great mystery makes all the difference.<\/p>\n

It is obvious that some aspects of Cyril\u2019s Christology needed to be more clearly defined. In 451 the Council of Chalcedon affirmed the doctrine of Christ\u2019s two natures in their real distinctiveness and the doctrine of a hypostatic <\/em>(not a \u201cnatural\u201d) union of the two natures.<\/p>\n

Think about this!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I would continue sharing Cyril\u2019s ideas about Christ as Savior in the East. There is no doubt that Cyril used ambiguous terminology (like his formula one nature incarned of God the Word, which he unknowingly\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 borrowed from Apollinaris), but his … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,73],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-learning-our-faith-form-the-church-fathers","category-st-cyril-of-alexandria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4042"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4045,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4042\/revisions\/4045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}