{"id":4585,"date":"2016-11-06T10:00:03","date_gmt":"2016-11-06T15:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=4585"},"modified":"2016-11-03T16:46:24","modified_gmt":"2016-11-03T20:46:24","slug":"gaining-a-deeper-understanding-of-our-faith-20161106","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/?p=4585","title":{"rendered":"Gaining a Deeper Understanding of Our Faith — 20161106"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"St.<\/a>

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

Like Cyril, the central inspiration for Athanasius can be expressed in this phrase taken from Paul\u2019s writing: God, who \u201calone has immortality\u201d is the only Savior from corruption and death. In his polemics against Arius, Athanasius clearly states: only God can save. Similarly, Cyril, engaged in controversy, once proclaimed quite naturally, paraphrasing Isaiah 63:9, that \u201cit is not an elder, nor an angel, but the Lord Himself who saved us, not by an alien death or by the mediation of an ordinary man, but by His very own blood.\u201d If you recall the heresy of Arius and even Nestorius, you can tell that he is directly addressing them.<\/p>\n

This recognition of God as the agent of salvation is shown also in the repeated use of the title \u201cEmmanuel\u201d (\u201cwhich in translation means \u201cGod with us<\/em>\u201d) for Christ, particularly in Cyril\u2019s famous twelve anathemas contained in his third letter to Nestorius. Like Athanasius before him, Cyril could not conceive of the divine love manifested in the incarnation to be really perfect unless it as an act of self<\/em>-giving of God. \u201cGod so loved the world that he gave his only Son\u201d (John 3:16). This implied the personal presence of God in the human reality of Jesus of Nazareth.<\/p>\n

The Christological trend that originated in Antioch with Theodore of Mopsuestia and was most only preached by Nestorius was based on the fear that the humanity of Jesus would be totally ignored by the proponents of \u201cdeification.\u201d This is why the controversy against Nestorius, undertaken by Cyril with such energy and consistency, was centered on the two most human moments in the Gospel story of Jesus: his birth from Mary and his death on the cross. Although Cyril always recognized that both these moments belong to divine economy in the flesh – that is, that the eternal God by nature could neither be born in history nor die – he considered that the salvation of the world would not have occurred unless it was personally the Son of God who was born of the Virgin, and also personally suffered on the cross \u201caccording to the flesh.\u201d<\/p>\n

As you will recall, the heresies of both Arius and Nestorius challenged who we believe Jesus to be, namely fully God and fully man. They found it difficult to comprehend how God could have achieved this and, therefore, saw Jesus as either more God than man or more man than God. We believe Jesus to be fully God and fully Man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like Cyril, the central inspiration for Athanasius can be expressed in this phrase taken from Paul\u2019s writing: God, who \u201calone has immortality\u201d is the only Savior from corruption and death. In his polemics against Arius, Athanasius clearly states: only God … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gaining-a-deeper-understanding-of-our-faith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4585","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=4585"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4586,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4585\/revisions\/4586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stmichaelarchangel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}