Letters (first part: Migne letters 1-55) 1

Cyril to the presbyters and deacons, to the fathers of monks, and to those with you who practise the solitary life and are established in the faith of God, beloved and most dearly longed for: greeting in the Lord.

Some of your number came to Alexandria, as is customary. I asked them, with great eagerness to know, whether you too, following in the footsteps of the fathers' goodness, were striving to excel in a right and blameless faith, were adorning yourselves with the finest way of life, and were taking pride in the labours of the ascetic discipline, counting it true delight to choose nobly to endure hardship for the sake of the good. They reported that this is indeed how things stand with you, and they added that you vie very zealously with the noble deeds of those who went before. I rejoiced, as I could not help doing, and my mind was flooded with gladness, since I count the good reputation of my children as my own; and very rightly. For it would be absurd for athletic trainers to delight in the strength of the young, and, if anything is achieved by them that brings praise to their art, to bind it like a crown on their own heads and to share in the boasts of the young men's courage, while we, who are spiritual fathers and anoint you with words that lead to good daring, so that you may wrestle down the motions of the flesh, refuse to fall into sin, and indeed refuse to be overcome by Satan when he tempts you, and so carry off the prize, should not be filled with godly delight even more than they. Therefore, as the Saviour's disciple says, “making every effort, supply in your faith virtue, in virtue knowledge, in knowledge self-control, in self-control endurance, in endurance godliness, in godliness brotherly affection, and in brotherly affection love. For if these are present in you and abound, they make you neither idle nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” For I say that those who choose to walk the glorious and lovely road of the life understood to be in Christ must first be adorned with a simple and unblemished faith, and then add virtue to it; and when this has been done, they must try to grow rich in the knowledge of the mystery of Christ and to climb up to the most perfect understanding. This, I think, is what it means “to attain to the perfect man, and to come to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” With the sobriety proper to monks, then, gird your loins well and play the man against the passions of both soul and body. For so you will be bright and of good repute, and you will stand well in the hope prepared for the saints. Above all else let your faith be right and unadulterated, and wholly beyond reproach. For so, so you yourselves, tracing the piety of the holy fathers, will lodge with them in the mansions above and dwell in the tents that are in heaven, of which the divine Isaiah makes mention when he says: “Your eyes will see Jerusalem, a rich city, tents that shall not be shaken.”

That your life is bright and admirable, and that a right and unadulterated faith is firmly set in you, I did not fail to learn. But I have been not a little troubled to hear that certain grievous rumours have reached you, and that some people go about unsettling your simple faith, spitting out a heap of idle phrases, inquiring and saying whether the holy Virgin Mary ought to be called Mother of God or not. It would have been better for you to keep entirely clear of such questions and not to dig at all into things that are seen only barely, as in a mirror and a riddle, even by those whose minds are sound and whose understanding is steady; for the subtler speculations float above the minds of the simpler. But since you have once and for all not stayed deaf to such talk, and since some are likely to choose to wrangle, and this harm may fix itself like a thorn in those whose minds are not firmly grounded, I thought it necessary to say a few things to you about these matters: not so that you may rather fight about words, but so that, if any attack you, you may set the truth against their idle talk, and so both escape the damage of going astray yourselves and also help others, persuading them with fitting reasons, as brothers, to keep in their own souls, like a pearl of great price, the faith handed down from the beginning to the churches by the holy apostles.

I am amazed, then, that some are in doubt at all whether the holy Virgin should be called Mother of God or not. For if our Lord Jesus Christ is God, how is the holy Virgin who bore him not Mother of God? This is the faith the divine disciples handed down to us, even if they did not mention the word. So we have been taught to think by the holy fathers. Indeed our father of celebrated memory, Athanasius, who adorned the throne of the church of Alexandria for forty-six whole years, who set an unconquerable and apostolic understanding against the inventions of the unholy heretics, who gladdened the world under heaven with his writings as with a most fragrant ointment, and who is attested by all for the correctness and piety of his doctrines, when he composed a book for us on the holy and consubstantial Trinity, in the third discourse calls the holy Virgin “Mother of God” again and again. I must use his own words, which run as follows: “This, then, is the aim and character of the divine Scripture, as we have often said: that it contains a twofold account of the Saviour, that he was always God and is the Son, being the Word and radiance and wisdom of the Father; and that afterwards for our sake, taking flesh from the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, he became man.” And again, a little further on: “Many, then, have been holy and pure from all sin. Jeremiah was even sanctified from the womb, and John, while still being carried in the womb, leaped for joy at the voice of Mary, the Mother of God.” The man is trustworthy and fit to be relied on, since he would not have said anything that does not agree with the sacred Scriptures. For how could one so brilliant and so celebrated miss the truth, one who was admired by all at that holy and great synod, I mean the one assembled in its time at Nicaea? He did not yet hold the episcopal throne, but was still ranked among the clergy; yet for his sharpness of mind, his general goodness, and his very keen and incomparable intelligence, he was taken along at that time by Alexander of blessed memory, the bishop. He was with the old man as a son with a father, guiding him in everything useful and showing him well the way in each thing to be done.

But since some will probably think that our argument on these points must be established from the holy and divinely inspired Scripture itself, and will add that the holy and great synod neither called the Lord's mother “Mother of God” nor defined anything of the kind at all, come, let us now show, as far as we can, in what way the mystery of the dispensation in Christ has been proclaimed to us by the divine Scripture, and what the fathers themselves said when they set out the definition of the blameless faith, while the Holy Spirit sounded the truth in them; for, in the Saviour's words, it was not they who spoke, but “the Spirit of God the Father who speaks in them.” For once it has been shown that the one born of the holy Virgin is God by nature, no one, I think, will hesitate at all to understand and indeed to say that she may very rightly be called Mother of God.

Our symbol of faith runs thus: “I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, only-begotten, that is, of his substance; God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father, through whom all things came to be, those in heaven and those on earth; who for us men and for our salvation came down, was made flesh, became man, suffered, and rose on the third day, ascended into the heavens, and is coming to judge the living and the dead; and in the Holy Spirit.”

The inventors of the heresies, digging pits of destruction and folly for themselves and for others too, slid so far in their thinking about Christ as to suppose and say that the Son is recent and was brought into being by God the Father on a level with the creatures. The wretches are not ashamed to confine within a beginning in time the one who is before every age and time, or rather the maker of the ages. Lowering him, as far as their opinion goes, from equality and glory with God the Father, they barely concede that he exists before the others, and say that he is a mediator between God and men, neither having obtained the glory of supremacy as his lot nor yet settled within the measures of creation. Who, then, is this who falls short of divine supremacy and has been lifted out of the measures of creation? The thing is utterly inconceivable: no place or category is seen between maker and made. So, while dragging him down, as far as they can, from the seats of the Godhead, they call him Son and God and think he must be worshipped, although the law cries out openly, “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him alone shall you serve,” and God says to the Israelites through the voice of David, “There shall be no new god in you, nor shall you worship a foreign god.” But they, as if leaving the well-trodden highway of truth, rush off over pits and rocks, and, as Solomon says, “They have wandered from the axles of their own farm and gather fruitlessness with their hands.” We, however, on whose mind the divine light has shone, having chosen to think what is incomparably better than their folly, and following the faith of the holy fathers, say that the Son was truly begotten from the substance of God the Father, in a manner befitting God and ineffably; that he is understood in his own hypostasis, yet is one with his begetter by identity of substance; that he is in him and in turn has the Father in himself. We confess that he is light from light, God from God by nature, equal in glory and equal in working, the stamp and radiance, equal in measure in every respect and lacking in nothing. And when the Holy Spirit is counted together with them, the holy and consubstantial Trinity is united in one nature of Godhead.

The divinely inspired Scripture says that the Word from God became flesh, that is, was united to flesh possessing a rational soul. And the holy and great synod, following the gospel proclamations, said that the very Only-begotten who was begotten from the substance of God the Father, “through whom are all things and in whom are all things,” for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, was made flesh and became man, suffered and rose, and will come in due time as judge; and it named the Word from God “one Lord Jesus Christ.” See, then, how, saying “one Lord” and naming him Christ Jesus, they say that he was begotten of God the Father, that he is Only-begotten, God from God and light from light, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father.

Yet someone may say that we shall find the name “christ” not fitted to Emmanuel alone but applied to others as well. For God said somewhere about those chosen and sanctified in the Spirit, “Touch not my anointed ones, and do my prophets no harm.” And the divine David, though he himself had been anointed king by God through the hand of Samuel, called Saul “the Lord's anointed.” And why do I say this, when anyone who wishes can easily see that those justified by faith in Christ and sanctified in the Spirit have been honoured with this title? So the prophet Habakkuk proclaimed in advance the mystery of Christ and the salvation through him, saying, “You went out for the salvation of your people, to save your anointed ones.” So the name “christ” would fit not only and specially, as I said, Emmanuel, but also all the others who have been anointed with the grace of the Holy Spirit; for the word has been made from the thing: from being anointed, they are “christs.” That we ourselves are rich in this truly glorious and precious grace the wise John confirms, saying, “And you have an anointing from the Holy One”; and again, “You have no need that anyone teach you, but his anointing teaches you.” It is also written of Emmanuel: “Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power.” And the divine David says to him, “You loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, your God, anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.” What extra, then, would one see in the holy Virgin above the other women, if she were said to have borne Emmanuel? For there would be nothing absurd if someone chose to call the mother of each anointed person a “mother of Christ.” But the gap between us is great, and our condition is walled off by incomparable differences from the glory and supremacy of our Saviour. For we are servants, but he is Lord and God by nature, even though he came to be with us and among the things that are ours by the dispensation. For this reason the blessed Paul too named him both Christ and God, saying, “For know this well, that no sexually immoral or impure or greedy person, that is, an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.” So all the others, as I said, may quite rightly be “christs” because they have been anointed, but Emmanuel alone is Christ, true God. And one would not miss the truth if one chose to say that the mothers of the others are mothers of christs, but not also mothers of God; while the holy Virgin alone, beyond them, is understood and said to be both mother of Christ and Mother of God. For she bore not a mere man like us, but rather the Word from God the Father made flesh and become man. For we too have been named gods by grace; but the Son is not God in that way, but rather by nature and in truth, even though he became flesh.

But perhaps you will say: “Tell me, then, did the Virgin become mother of the Godhead?” To this we say that his living and subsistent Word was, as all agree, begotten from the very substance of God the Father and has his existence without beginning in time, always existing together with his begetter, existing and being conceived of in him and with him; but in the last times of the age, since he became flesh, that is, was united to flesh possessing a rational soul, he is said to have been born also according to the flesh through a woman. The mystery concerning him is in a way like our own birth. For mothers on earth, serving nature for birth, have in the womb flesh that is gradually set and that advances and is completed into human form by certain ineffable workings of God; and God puts the spirit into the living being in a way he knows, for “he forms the spirit of man within him,” in the prophet's words. The principle of flesh is one thing, and likewise that of the soul is another. Yet although these women are mothers only of earthly bodies, still, since they give birth to the whole living being, I mean the one composed of soul and body, they are not said to bear a part. No one would say, for example, that Elizabeth was a bearer of flesh but not also a bearer of soul; for she bore the Baptist ensouled, and as one being out of both, the man, I mean, of soul and body. We shall accept that something of this kind took place in the birth of Emmanuel too. For his only-begotten Word was begotten, as I said, from the substance of God the Father; but since, taking flesh and making it his own, he has also been called Son of Man and became like us, there is nothing absurd, I think, in saying, or rather it is necessary to confess, that he was also born according to the flesh through a woman; just as the soul of a man is born together with its own body and is reckoned as one with it, although by nature it is understood to be and is different from it, according to its own principle. And if anyone chose to say of a certain person's mother that she bore the flesh but not also the soul, he would be talking great nonsense. For she bore, as I said, a living being skilfully compounded of unlike elements, and out of two, yet one man, each element remaining what it is, while they have run together, as it were, into a natural unity and, so to speak, mingle with each other what belongs to each.

That the union in Christ is most necessary is easy to see, with no trouble at all, from many other things too. Come, if you please, let us examine the words of the blessed Paul closely, applying our minds to them precisely and, as far as we can, in detail. He said, then, of the Only-begotten: “Who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, coming to be in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself.” Who, then, is this who was in the form of God and did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped? Or in what way was he emptied? And how did he come down into humiliation and into the form of a servant? Those who cut the one Lord Jesus Christ into two, I mean into a man and the Word from God the Father, say that the one from the holy Virgin underwent the emptying, separating the Word from God from him. Let them first show that he was, and is understood to be, in the form and equality of the Father, so that he might undergo the manner of emptying, coming down to what he was not. But nothing that has been made, if it is understood in its own nature, is in equality with the Father. How then is he said to have been emptied if, being a man by nature, he was born of a woman as we are? From what higher supremacy, greater than that of man, tell me, did he come down to being a man? Or how could one who by nature is ranked among servants and lies under the yoke of slavery be understood to have taken the form of a servant as something he did not have at the beginning? “Yes,” they say, “the one who is Son by nature and truly free, the Word from God the Father, being in the form of his begetter and equal to him, dwelt in a man born of a woman; and this is the emptying, this is the matter of the humiliation, and the coming down into the form of a servant.” Then, my good friends, would merely dwelling in a man suffice for the Word from God to be emptied? Is it safe to say that this is how he put on the form of a servant, and that this is how his humiliation came about, when, as I hear, he says to the holy apostles, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him”? Do you hear how he said that God the Father himself will dwell with him in those who love him? Shall we grant, then, that the Father too has been emptied and has endured an emptying like the Son's, and has taken the form of a servant, because he makes the souls of those who love him his own holy dwellings? And what of the Holy Spirit who dwells in us? Did it too fulfil the dispensation of the incarnation, which we say was accomplished by the Son alone for the salvation and life of all? Away with such superfluous and wholly foolish rashness!

The Word, then, who was in the form and equality of God the Father, humbled himself when, having become flesh, as John says, he was born through a woman; and, though he has his birth from God the Father, he endured our birth too for our sake. Otherwise, let them teach us in what way the Word from God the Father is to be understood and called Christ by us. If he is called Christ from being anointed, whom did the Father anoint with the oil of gladness, that is, with the Holy Spirit? If they say it was specifically God the Word alone begotten of him, and that this is the truth, they do not know that they are both wronging the nature of the Only-begotten and falsifying the mystery of the dispensation with the flesh. For if the Word, being God, was anointed with the Holy Spirit, they will be obliged, against their will, to confess that in the earlier times, when he was not yet anointed, he was in need of sanctification and had no share in the gift given to him later. But what lacks sanctification is unstable by nature and could not be understood to be wholly free of sin, or at least of the capacity to go wrong. Then the Word has undergone a change, perhaps for the better. How, then, is he the same, and has not been altered? And if the Word, being God and in the form and equality of the Father, was anointed and sanctified, someone carried off by the thing into absurd notions might perhaps say that the Father himself would also need sanctification; or rather that the Son has now shown himself greater than him, since he has been sanctified, though he was equal to him and in his form before the sanctification, while the Father has remained in what he always was, is, and will be, not yet having received the improvement that comes through being sanctified, as the Son has. And the Spirit who sanctifies them is now seen to be greater than both, since it is beyond doubt that “without any dispute the lesser is blessed by the greater.” But this is nonsense and trickery and a charge of madness. For the consubstantial Trinity is holy by nature: the Father is holy, the Son also is holy essentially in the same way, and likewise the Spirit. So as far as his own nature is concerned, the Word from God the Father was not sanctified by himself alone. But if someone thinks that the one born of the holy Virgin alone was anointed and sanctified and for this reason was named Christ, let him come forward and say whether the anointing suffices to show the one anointed equal in glory and sharing the throne with the God who is beyond all things. If the anointing suffices, and they say this is true: we too have been anointed. The divine John will bear witness, saying, “And you have an anointing from the Holy One.” Perhaps, then, we too shall be equal to God, and nothing at all, I think, prevents us also from sitting with him, just as Emmanuel himself does, for it was said to him, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet.” Let the holy host of the spirits above worship us too: “For when,” it says, “he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, ‘And let all God's angels worship him.’” But we, even though we have been anointed with the Holy Spirit, grow rich in the grace of adoption and have even been called gods, shall not be ignorant of the measure of our own nature. For we are from the earth and are ranked among servants; but he is not in our condition: he is Son by nature and truly, Lord of all, and from heaven.

And we who have chosen to think rightly certainly do not say that God became the father of flesh, nor again that the nature of the Godhead was born through a woman before it had assumed what is human. Rather, bringing together into union the Word who sprang from God and the man perfectly from the holy Virgin, we shall worship one Christ Jesus and Lord, neither placing him outside the bounds of Godhead because of the flesh, nor bringing him down to mere humanity because of his likeness to us. In this way you will understand that the Word who sprang from God underwent the voluntary emptying; in this way he who is free in his own nature humbled himself, taking the form of a servant; in this way the Word of God “took hold of the seed of Abraham” and shared in blood and flesh. For if he is understood to be a mere man like us, how did he take hold of the seed of Abraham as something naturally other than himself? And how is he said to have shared in his own flesh, “so that he might be made like his brothers in every respect”? For what is said to be made like others passes from being unlike them to being made like them. So the Word of God took hold of the seed of Abraham and shared in blood and flesh, making the body from the woman his own, so that he might be understood to be not only God but, having also become man, to be like us because of the union. So, as all agree, Emmanuel is from two realities, Godhead and manhood. Yet the Lord Jesus Christ is one, one and true Son, God and man at once; not deified like those who are deified by grace, but rather true God who appeared for our sake in human form. The divine Paul will assure us of this when he says, “But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption.” Who, then, is the one sent forth, born, as he said, under the law and of a woman, except again the one who as God is above laws, but since he has been called man, having become man, came also under the law, so that he might be made like his brothers in every respect? So he pays the double drachma along with Peter according to the law of Moses. But that he is free as Son and above the law as God, even if as man he came under the law, he taught when he said, “From whom do the kings of the earth take census or tolls? From their sons or from strangers?” And when Peter said, “From strangers,” the same one added, “Then the sons are free.”

Since it is plain, then, that the Word from God would not be called Christ while existing outside the flesh and, as it were, by himself, but that such a title rather befits him when he became man, come, let us show, taking our proofs from the sacred writings themselves, that he is both God by nature and brought into unity, I mean with his own flesh. Once this has been shown to be true, the holy Virgin would be called Mother of God by us, and very rightly. So the prophet Isaiah, all but pointing out the Son made man and about to be present, said in advance: “Be strong, you slack hands and paralysed knees; comfort one another, you faint-hearted in mind; be strong, do not fear. Behold, our God renders judgement, and will render it; he himself will come and save us. Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will hear. Then the lame will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the stammerers will be clear.” See, then, how he calls him both Lord and God, since he speaks in the Spirit; for he did not know Emmanuel as simply a God-bearing man, nor as taken up in the rank of an instrument, but as truly God made man. For then, yes then, the eyes of the blind were opened, the ears of the deaf heard, the lame leaped like a deer, and the tongue of the stammerers became clear. So the Holy Spirit commanded the holy evangelists to proclaim him, saying, “Go up on a high mountain, you who bring good news to Zion; lift up your voice with strength, you who bring good news to Jerusalem; lift it up, do not fear. Say to the cities of Judah, ‘Behold your God! Behold, the Lord comes with strength, and his arm with lordship; behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him. Like a shepherd he will tend his flock, and with his arm he will gather the lambs.’” For our Lord Jesus Christ appeared to us having the strength befitting God and an arm with lordship, that is, with authority and dominion. So he said to the leper, “I will; be cleansed.” He touched the bier and raised the widow's dead son. He also gathered the lambs, for he is the good shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep. So he said, “As the Father knows me, I also know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock, one shepherd.” The divine John the Baptist too, beginning the proclamation about him, announced to those throughout Judea, not an instrument of the Godhead nor a man simply bearing God, as some say, but rather God with flesh, that is, made man, saying, “Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.” Whose ways did he command to be prepared, except Christ's, that is, the Word who appeared in human form?

The divine Paul too, I think, suffices to persuade, when he testifies and says, “What then shall we say? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him freely give us all things?” Then tell me, how would the one from the holy Virgin be understood to be God's own Son? For as what is naturally begotten of a man, and indeed of each of the other living beings, is its own, so what is from God's substance would be understood and called God's own. How then has Christ been named God's own Son, he who was also given by God the Father for the salvation and life of all? For “he was handed over for our trespasses, and he himself bore the iniquities of many in his body on the tree,” in the prophet's words. It is clear, then, that the fact of the union, which must be assumed, shows Emmanuel, the one from the holy Virgin, to be God's own Son; for the body born of her was not that of some other one of us, but rather the own body of the Word himself who is from the Father. But if someone assigns him merely and only the service of an instrument, he will be forced, against his will, to deny him also being Son in truth. Suppose, for argument's sake, a man, and let him have a son skilled at the lyre who has practised playing excellently. Will such a man count the lyre, the instrument of song, as ranked with his son as a son? Yet how is the thing not utterly silly? The lyre was taken up to display the skill, but the son is his father's son even without the instrument. And if they say that the one from the woman was taken up for service, so that miracles might be performed through him and the proclamation of the gospel oracles might shine out, then let each of the holy prophets also be called an instrument of the Godhead, and before all the rest Moses, the revealer of sacred things, who by raising his rod changed the rivers into blood, divided the sea itself and commanded the Israelites to walk through the midst of the waves, brought it down on rocks and made them mothers of waters, and showed a spring in the flint; who became a mediator between God and men, was minister of the law, and led the people. So there is nothing extra in Christ, and he has in no way had the advantage over those born before him, if he too is taken up in the same way in the rank and use of an instrument. And the divine David too, it seems, talked nonsense when he said, “Who in the clouds will be equal to the Lord? And who will be like the Lord among the sons of God?” But the most wise Paul shows Moses ranked among servants, and calls the one who was born of a woman by the dispensation, that is, Christ, God and Lord. For he wrote thus: “Therefore, holy brothers, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider the apostle and high priest of our confession, Jesus, who was faithful to him who appointed him, as Moses also was in all his house. For this man has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses, as much as the builder of a house has more honour than the house. For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God. And Moses was faithful in all his house as a servant, for a testimony of the things to be spoken later; but Christ as a son over his house, whose house we are.” See, then, how he has both kept the measure of his humanity and assigns him the supremacy of the highest glory and the dignity befitting God. For having called him high priest and apostle, and having firmly affirmed that he was faithful to the one who appointed him, he says he has been honoured more than Moses, as much as the builder of a house has more honour than the house. Then he goes on: “For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.” So the divine Moses is ranked among things made and things built, while their builder is the God of all; yet God is said to have built all things. Christ, then, is beyond doubt true God. “And Moses was faithful in all his house as a servant, but Christ as a son over his house, whose house we are”; yet God says through the voice of the prophets, “I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” “But what,” someone may perhaps say, “is to be understood as the difference between Christ and Moses, if both were born through a woman? How is the one a servant and faithful as in a house, and the other lord by nature as a son over his house, that is, over us?” I think the matter is plain to everyone who is of sound mind and has “the mind of Christ,” in the blessed Paul's words. For the one was a man and under the yoke of slavery, while the other is free by nature as God, creator of all things, who endured the voluntary emptying for our sake; yet this will not banish him from the glory befitting God, nor drive him away from his supreme superiority over all. For just as we, enriched with his Spirit (for he has dwelt in our hearts), are ranked among the children of God, yet have not thrown away being what we are (for we are men by nature), though we say to God, “Abba, Father,” so too God the Word himself, who ineffably came forth from the substance of God the Father, in assuming what is human honoured that nature, yet did not go outside his own supremacy, but remained God even in humanity.

So we do not say that the temple from the Virgin was taken up in the rank of an instrument; rather, following the faith of the sacred writings and the words of the saints, we shall hold that the Word became flesh in the ways we have already many times explained. He also laid down his life for us. For since his death was the world's salvation, he endured a cross, despising the shame, although he is life by nature, as God. How, then, is the life said to have died? By suffering death in its own flesh, so that it might appear as life by making that flesh alive again. Come, let the manner of our own death too be examined. No one of sound mind will say that souls perish together with earthly bodies. This, I think, is doubtful in no case at all; yet what happens is called the death of a man. So you will understand it in the case of Emmanuel himself as well. The Word was in his own body, the one from the woman, and gave it over to death at the proper time, suffering nothing at all in his own nature (for he is life and life-giving), but making his own what belongs to the flesh, so that the suffering might also be said to be his, and so that he, the one worth all, having died for all and risen, might purchase the world under heaven with his own blood and win for God the Father those throughout the whole earth. The blessed prophet Isaiah proclaims this as true, speaking in the Spirit: “Therefore he shall inherit many, and he shall divide the spoils of the strong, because his soul was handed over to death, and he was counted among the lawless; and he bore the sins of many and was handed over because of their iniquities.” So the one who is worth more than all laid down his own life for all, and by the dispensation allowed his flesh to be overpowered by death for a little while. But he abolished death in turn, as life that does not endure to suffer what is contrary to its own nature, so that corruption might lose its force in the bodies of all, and the power of death might be undone. “For as in Adam we all die, so also in Christ we shall all be made alive.” For if he had not suffered humanly for us, neither would he have worked divinely what was for our salvation. For he is said first to have died as man, and after this to have come back to life because he is God by nature. If, then, he did not suffer, by dying in the flesh, according to the Scriptures, neither was he made alive in the spirit, that is, he did not come back to life. And if this is true, our faith is vain; we are still in our sins. For we have been baptized into his death, in the words of the blessed Paul, and we have received the forgiveness of sins through his blood. But if Christ is neither truly Son nor God by nature, but a mere man like us and an instrument of the Godhead, then we have not been saved in God at all, but rather by one of us who died for us and was raised by powers not his own. How then has death still been abolished through Christ? Yet I hear him clearly saying about his own life, “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself. For I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it again.” For the one who knew no death went down with us into death through his own flesh, so that we too might go up with him to life. For he came back to life after despoiling Hades, not as a man like us, but as God in flesh with us and for us. Our nature grew rich in incorruption in him first, and death was crushed when it attacked the body of life like an enemy. For as it conquered in Adam, so it has fallen in Christ. So when he ascended for our sake and on our behalf to the Father and God in heaven, to make heaven a place the people of the earth can walk to, the divine psalmist offered the songs of victory, saying, “God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet. Sing praises to our God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises; sing praises with understanding. God has reigned over the nations.” And the blessed Paul too said of him somewhere, “He who descended is the very one who also ascended far above the heavens, so that he might fill all things.”

Since, then, he is truly God and King by nature, and the one crucified has been called the Lord of glory, how could anyone hesitate to call the holy Virgin Mother of God? Worship him as one, not dividing him into two after the union. Then the senseless Jew will laugh in vain; then he will be in truth a slayer of the Lord, and he will be convicted of having sinned not against one of us, but against Christ himself, the Saviour of all. And he will hear: “Woe, sinful nation, a people full of sins, an evil seed, lawless sons! You have forsaken the Lord and provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger.” And the children of the Greeks will in no way find fault with the faith of the Christians. For we have not worshipped a mere man, God forbid, but rather the one who is God by nature, not ignorant of his glory, even though he became like us, remaining what he was, that is, God. Through him and with him be glory to God the Father with the holy and life-giving Spirit, to the ages of ages. Amen.