CHRISTOLOGY –
Comparative Outline: Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria & Gregory of Nazianzus
Athanasius – 'On the Incarnation', from "The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers", second series, vol. IV. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, reprinted 1978.
The Word of God who was from the beginning involved in creation was the only one who could, in turn, bring humanity out from sin's corruption and back to incorruption; "He alone of natural fitness was both able to recreate everything, and worthy to suffer of behalf of all and to be ambassador for all with the Father…", all the while the Word "fills all things everywhere, remaining present with his own Father. (40)
Seeing corruption ever greater weighing upon humanity whom he had created, and unwilling to allow it to continue, the Word chose to become incarnate;
He took a body "of our kind, but from a spotless and stainless virgin, knowing not a man, a body clean and in very truth pure from intercourse of men. For being Himself mighty and Artificer of everything, He prepares the body in the Virgin as a temple unto Himself and makes it His very own as an instrument, in it manifested and in it dwelling…". (40)
He took a body like our own out of his love for us in order to vanquish sin, and corruption, and death in humanity.
Incorruptibility of the flesh is introduced to humanity through the bodily resurrection of the incorruptible Word. Sin corrupted humanity in his nature, but by Jesus' assuming flesh he redeemed all humanity and all creation. The Word, by his life, death, and resurrection redeems the whole of the created order; "He blotted out… death… by the offering of His own body, He corrected [humanity's] neglect by His own teaching, restoring all that was man's by His own power." (40-41) Only the Word who created humanity could act to save humanity.
In Jesus humanity was recreated in the image of the Father; Humanity, remade after the image of the Father, in Jesus incarnate and resurrected from the dead, "might once more be renewed." (43) Only the Word of God incarnate could re-teach humanity the truth of who God is as Father and Saviour. Jesus became incarnate to meet humanity "half way" as human beings sought after God through nature and the material world. (44)
By coming as man God guided man back to himself, persuading them "by the works he did that he is not man only, but also God, and the Word and Wisdom of the true God." (45) Jesus' bodily presence among men did not circumscribe his power as the one "in whom we live and move and have our being" as the Word of God, but rather, like the sun, he "illumines and cleanses" humanity and the created order. (45)
Jesus as immortal God could not die, so his human bodily death results in the resurrection of the dead, offering "his own [body] in the stead of all" to deliver humanity from death. Death now is only like the 'dissolution' of the seed that is, in reality, birth to fullness of life. (47) Jesus' dying the most reprehensible death his enemies could conceive is evidence of his humility and power overall death; he did not choose to die a glorious death, he died a death in shame before the eyes of man. (49)
As to the unity of Christ, "even in death his body was not divided (ie. as in John's decapitation - his body being divided into two parts) "in order that even in death He might still keep his body undivided and in perfect soundness, and no pretext be afforded to those that would divide the Church." By dying on the cross his hands were outspread "that with the one he might draw the ancient people [Israel], and with the other those from the Gentiles, and unite both in himself." (49)
Christian martyrdom and the choice of virginity for Christ are a witness to his resurrection. (62, 64) That war like peoples become peace loving is testimony to his deity. (65-65) The Word "was made man that we might be made God" (65); and the Scriptures "were spoken and written by God through men who spoke of God. (66) The imitation of the lives of the saints opens one to "understand also what has been revealed to them by God…". (67)
Cyril of Alexandria – 'On the Unity of Christ', Trans. John A. McGuckin. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1995.
Jesus was conceived by the Spirit and born of a virgin to make a 'new beginning' for humanity in Him. Jesus was conceived of a virgin so that by the Spirit God would be Father of all through Jesus' incarnation; we no longer have Adam as our father but in Christ we have God as our Father in a direct line – Jesus is the new Adam and God is His Father as well as our Father. (62-63)
Nestorius said a human Jesus was born but a divine Jesus came to indwell that body, so Cyril suggests that it must be inferred that in fact there are two separate sons. Cyril by contrast argues "the Word became flesh" (Jn. 1:14) therefore there is one and only one Son, the Word incarnate. (68-69) Cyril explains that God can assume manhood without either nature being diminished, i.e. in the burning bush neither bush nor fire are the less; God chose to do this and nothing is impossible to Him. (79) To suggest as Nestorius does, that there is in Jesus one divine and one human son is to say that there is not one Son but a duality of sons, and that clearly the divine son is superior to the human son. (84) Cyril uses Phil 2:5-9 to illustrate how if Jesus were not fully God and fully man, why did he, as God, choose to "humble himself", become obedient unto death, etc.? (85) As God, Jesus "humbled himself, economically submitting himself to the limitations of… manhood." (86)
Jesus, the second person of the Trinitarian God, came as man to save those in danger "so that in him first of all the human race might be refashioned… in him all things became new (cf. 2 Cor. 5:17). (88) That Jesus worked miracles and commanded angels in his own name testifies to both his divinity and humanity without division. (95) If Jesus was merely a man who worked miracles because "the Word was within him" as Nestorius suggested, then He is no more than any of the ancient prophets. (97)
At the baptism of Jesus he received the Holy Spirit in order to give the Holy Spirit and received the Holy Spirit at the desire of God the Father, [not for his benefit, I would suggest, but for our benefit, so that we might come to perceive the Holy Trinity]; at baptism "He was sanctified insofar as he was man, but sanctifies insofar as he is understood as God. As I have said, He was both the one and the other in the same person." (99-100)
"The Only Begotten did not become man only to remain in the limits of the emptying. The point was that he who was God by nature should, in the act of self-emptying, assume everything that went along with it. This was how he would be revealed as ennobling the nature of man in himself by making it participate in his own sacred and divine honours." (101)
That Jesus, for example, cried out from the cross, "O God, why have you forsaken me?", Cyril says this was not for his own sake but for our own sake that we would know in our struggle how we might call out to our God in the midst of our own terrible trials. (102-103) That "Jesus suffers in his own flesh, and not in the nature of the Godhead" is a presupposition that Cyril holds due to contemporary philosophical views regarding the impassibility of deity. Like fire affects iron and makes it malleable yet does not change the nature / properties of the iron, so Jesus in his humanity suffers, but not in his divinity. (130-131)
Finally, Cyril suggests that the bread and wine of the eucharist are the body and blood of Jesus present in actuality; "His flesh is life giving" in the eucharistic elements. If Jesus' body is not his actual flesh "then how could it be understood as life giving. He said himself: 'I am the living bread which has come down from heaven and gives life to the world... [my flesh is the bread of life for the world] (Jn. 6:51, 33). (130-131)
Gregory of Nazianzus – "On God and Christ: the Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius", Trans. Frederick Williams (Oration 27) and Lionel Wickham (Orations 28-31). Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2002.
"To know God is hard, to describe Him impossible... to tell of God is not possible… and to know him is even less possible… to mentally grasp." (39) "That God, the creative and sustaining cause of all, exists, sight and instinctive law inform us". (40-41) The devil "caught at [humanity's] unguided longing to search for God, meaning to divert power to himself and cheat that desire of theirs – it was like taking a blind man's hand"… and pushing him "headlong down a variety of cliffs [leaving the pieces made of him to go] into just one pit of death and destruction." (48) Reason has guided man away from false deities and false worship; "God derived reason, bound up… with the whole of nature, man's most ancient law, has led us up from things of sight to God." (49) However, at a certain point, when reason's limits have been acknowledged, faith must come to take its role in these matters / questions. (60)
"Monotheism, with its single governing principle, is what we value - … the single rule produced by equality of nature, harmony of will, identity of action, and the convergence toward their source of what springs from unity – none of which is possible in the created nature. The result is that though there is a numerical distinction, there is no division in the substance. For this reason, a one eternally changes to a two and stops at three – meaning the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." (70) The Son and Holy Spirit are not some kind of spontaneous overflow out of the one God as the product of a kind of "involuntary generation"; "This is why we limit ourselves to Christian terms and speak of "the Ingenerate", "the Begotten", and (as God the Word himself does in one passage) "what Proceeds from the Father." (70) "There has not been a 'when' when the Father has not been in existence. This then is true of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." (71) "For us [Jesus] is true God, and on the same level as the Father." (86)
As regards Scripture's reference to Jesus as both God and man "we have now established a general… solution… of allocating the more elevated… divine expressions to Scripture to the Godhead, the humbler and more human to the New Adam, God passible for our sake over against sin." (93) "[Jesus] was actually subject as a slave to flesh, to birth, and to our human experiences; for our liberation, held captive as we are by sin, he was subject to all that he saved. What does the lowliness of man possess higher than involvement with God, than being made God as a result of this intermingling…?... Yes, these things were brought about by the action of the offspring, and the favor of his parent." (94) Jesus 'receives' from the Father only insofar as "'receiving' belongs to his manhood" (99-100); Jesus' will is in total conformity with the will of the Father. (102-103) "The Son is the concise and simple revelation of the Father's nature – everything born is a tacit definition of it's parent." (109) "[Jesus] has united with himself all that lay under condemnation [except sin], in order to release it from condemnation… the joint result is a man who is visibly, because he is spiritually discerned as, God… ". (111)
"We receive the Son's light from the Father's light in the light of the Spirit: that is what we ourselves have seen and what we now proclaim – it is the plain and simple explanation of the Trinity." (118) The Holy Spirit, "insofar as he proceeds from the Father… is no creature; inasmuch as his is not begotten he is no Son; and to the extent that procession is the mean between ingeneracy and generacy, he is God." (122) "To express it succinctly, the Godhead exists undivided in beings divided. It is as if there were a single intermingling of light, which existed in three mutually connected Suns." (127) "… To the best of my ability I will persuade all… to worship Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as the single Godhead and power, because to him belong all glory, honour, and might forever and ever. Amen." (143)
Key Similarities and Significant Distinctives Between the Arguments of Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria and Gregory of Nazianzus
The key distinctives between the above cited works of Athanasius, Cyril, and Nazianzus lie in areas of focus primarily, rather than content; Jesus Christ and how we are to understand God incarnate in Christ is the central theme of the works, in addition to how the persons of the Trinity relate to one another in terms of the economy of salvation.
Athanasius' 'On the Incarnation' establishes that Jesus is 'God as man', and Jesus' birth of a pure virgin matters considerably to both Athanasius and Cyril; additionally Nazianzus' statement that "everything born is a tacit definition of it's parent" ('On God and Christ', 111) has Mariological implications and may be tacitly related to the Christologically rooted Chaldedonian definition of Mary the mother of Jesus as "Theotokos"(God Bearer), and 'Mother of God' . For Athanasius it was Jesus' taking on human flesh that made the redemption of humanity possible; for Cyril, Jesus' being born as human made God the Father of humanity through Jesus, thus removing Adam as humanity's first father and allowing us to become sons of God through Jesus' redeeming of the flesh. Nazianzus says that Jesus took upon himself all in humanity that needed to be redeemed.
"The Word became man that we might be made God" is a theme that runs through the writings of all three theologians. Nazianzus summarises this theme in stating that it was "through the medium of the mind [which forms the interface with the divine mind, that] he had dealings with the flesh, being made that God on earth, which is man: man and God blended… the stronger side predominating, in order that I might be made God to the same extent that he was made man." (86)
Unique to 'On the Incarnation' is Athanasius' reference to the unity of the body of Christ "even in His death" that leads him to infer the necessary and unquestionable unity that must be maintained within the Church which too is the Body of Christ. Additionally Athanasius speaks of how the faith of the Christian martyrs gives evidence of the incarnation of Jesus and his resurrection, as does the witness of those called to consecrated virginity.
His point that "the Scriptures were spoken and written by God through men who spoke of God" reflects the reality of the Trinity's choice of human agency as the means by which God acts to communicate Truth to humanity and is related to the role of the Church in communicating the faith with accuracy and fidelity; this is an aspect of the incarnation that intersects with Cyril's Eucharistic theology and Athanasius' ecclesiological argument regarding the undivided Church reflecting the undivided Body of Christ.
Whereas Athanasius places a primary focus upon how God became man in Jesus Cyril applies more significance and importance to the relationship of Jesus with both the Father and the Holy Spirit. Cyril also bridges Christology with a pronounced and rather distinctly Eucharistic theology when he speaks of the redemption and healing that was wrought through the incarnation of God in Christ, and the healing that continues to be experienced by the believer when they receive the Eucharistic Christ.
Cyril deals directly with the arguments of Nestorius which adds a distinctive element to his work. Cyril focuses on the unity of Jesus as both God and man in contrast with Nestorius who says 'Jesus the man' is indwelt by 'Jesus the God' because to his thinking God cannot be intermingled with man so Jesus may only 'appear to be man' in his deity. Cyril argues that Jesus' humbling himself to be made man infers that Jesus did indeed become fully man and that Jesus was only able to renew the human race because he was fully man; as Jesus himself said, "Behold, I have come to make all things new". Nestorius argues that Jesus received the Holy Spirit, and thus could not be God. Cyril, by contrast, states that all Jesus did which was distinctly human, insofar as we understand those actions, was in fact for the benefit of humanity and not for himself, thus enabling humanity to enter into fullness of relationship with the Father.
Nazianzus is the only one of the Fathers here cited who places great weight upon the role of reason in guiding humanity away from falsehood and superstition toward belief in the possibility of a God. His work is more comprehensive than those of Athanasius and Cyril in its elaboration upon the role of the Holy Spirit rather more than the other two works, however, both Nazianzus and Cyril reference the Holy Spirit repeatedly whereas Athanasius apparently felt little need to do so to make his arguments for the realities relating to Jesus' incarnation.