Letters (first part: Migne letters 1-55) 2–9

Cyril, bishop, to the most reverent and most God-beloved bishop and fellow minister Nestorius: greeting in the Lord.

Respected and trustworthy men have come to Alexandria and reported that your Reverence is very angry and is moving every rope to cause me grief. When I wished to learn the cause of your Reverence's grief, they said that some people from Alexandria are circulating the letter written to the holy monks, and that this has become the occasion of your hatred and displeasure. I am surprised, then, that your Reverence did not rather consider this for yourself: the disturbance over the faith did not arise first because of my letter, but because of certain things said, or perhaps not said, by your Reverence. In any case, since papers, that is, expositions, are being circulated, we are hard at work, wishing to set right those who have been perverted. For some have come close to refusing any longer to confess that Christ is God, calling him rather an instrument and tool of the Godhead, and a God-bearing man. And what is there beyond such things? That is the reason for our distress, whether your Reverence said these things or not; for I do not altogether trust the papers that are circulating. How, then, can one keep silent when the faith is being wronged and so many have been perverted? Shall we not stand before the judgement seat of Christ? Shall we not have to give account for an untimely silence, though we were appointed by him to say what must be said?

What am I to do now? I must take counsel with your Reverence, since the most reverent and God-beloved bishop of Rome, Celestine, and the most God-beloved bishops with him have informed me about the papers that were somehow carried there, asking whether they are your Reverence's or not; for they write as men greatly scandalized. And how shall we satisfy those who come from all the churches of the East and grumble against the papers? Or does your Reverence perhaps think that only a small disturbance has sprung up in the churches from such homilies? We are all in struggles and labours, bringing back to the truth those who have somehow been persuaded to think otherwise. Since, then, it is your Reverence who has given everyone occasion to grumble, how can you justly accuse us? Why do you cry out against me in vain, and not rather correct your own language, so as to put an end to a scandal that fills the world? For even if a word slipped out, as happens when one speaks to a congregation, let it be corrected by reflection; and be so good as to grant a single word to those who are scandalized, naming the holy Virgin Mother of God, so that, having healed those who are grieved and having a right reputation among all, we may celebrate the assemblies of the people in peace and harmony. And let your Reverence not doubt that for the faith in Christ we are ready to suffer anything, to experience prisons and even death itself.

I say in truth that while Atticus of blessed memory was still living I composed a book on the holy and consubstantial Trinity, which includes a discourse on the incarnation of the Only-begotten in agreement with what I have now written; and I read it to him, and to bishops, clergy, and those of the people who love to listen. But I have not yet published it to anyone. When the work is published, I shall probably be accused again, because the little treatise was composed even before your Reverence's ordination.

Nestorius to the most God-beloved and most holy fellow minister Cyril: greeting in the Lord.

Nothing is more compelling than Christian gentleness. By it we have now been compelled to write this letter, through the most reverent presbyter Lampon, who said much to us about your Reverence and heard much as well; in the end he would not let us go until he had extracted a letter from us, and we have been overcome by the man's force. For I confess that I hold in great awe all Christian gentleness in anyone, since it has God dwelling in it. As for our part, then, although much has come from your Reverence that was not in keeping with brotherly love (for one must speak with restraint), it is a letter of greeting, written in patience and love. Experience will show what kind of fruit we gain from the force put on us by the most reverent presbyter Lampon. I and those with me greet all the brotherhood with you.

Cyril to the most reverent and most God-beloved fellow minister Nestorius: greeting in the Lord.

Some people, I hear, are prattling against my reputation before your Reverence, and doing so often, watching especially for the gatherings of those in authority; perhaps they even think they are pleasing your ears, and they send out unwelcome words. They have not been wronged at all; they were convicted, and that usefully: one because he wronged the blind and the poor; another because he raised a sword against his mother; another because he stole someone else's gold together with a maidservant, and has always had such a reputation as one would not wish to befall even one's worst enemies. But I take little account of such men, so as not to stretch the measure of my littleness beyond the Master and Teacher, or even beyond the fathers. For it is not possible, however one chooses to live, to escape the perversities of wicked men. They, having their mouths full of cursing and bitterness, will give account to the Judge of all. I, however, shall turn again to what most befits me, and shall remind you now too, as a brother in the Lord, to present the word of teaching and the doctrine of the faith to the people with all exactness, and to bear in mind that to scandalize even one of the little ones who believe in Christ brings unbearable anger. And if the number of those who are grieved is so great, do we not stand in need of all skill, both to remove the scandals wisely and to open up the sound word of the faith to those who seek the truth? This will be done quite rightly if, when we come across the words of the holy fathers, we are eager to hold them in high regard, and, examining ourselves whether we are in the faith, as it is written, we shape our own thoughts thoroughly to their right and blameless opinions.

The holy and great synod, then, said that the very Only-begotten Son, begotten by nature from God the Father, true God from true God, the light from the light, through whom the Father made all things, came down, was made flesh and became man, suffered, rose on the third day, and went up into the heavens. We too must follow these words and doctrines, considering what is meant by saying that the Word from God was made flesh and became man. For we do not say that the nature of the Word was changed and became flesh, nor that it was transformed into a whole man made of soul and body. Rather, we say that the Word, having united to himself according to hypostasis flesh animated by a rational soul, became man in an ineffable and incomprehensible way, and was called Son of Man, not by will or good pleasure alone, nor by the assumption of a person alone; and that the natures brought together into a true unity are different, but from both is one Christ and Son: not as though the difference of the natures were abolished by the union, but rather the Godhead and the manhood together have completed for us the one Lord Jesus Christ and Son, through their ineffable and inexpressible concurrence into unity. Thus he who had existence before the ages and was begotten of the Father is said to have been born also according to the flesh of a woman: not as though his divine nature received a beginning of being in the holy Virgin, nor as though it necessarily needed for its own sake a second birth after the one from the Father; for it is both idle and ignorant to say that he who exists before every age and is co-eternal with the Father needs a second beginning of existence. But since, for us and for our salvation, having united to himself according to hypostasis what is human, he came forth of a woman, for this reason he is said to have been born according to the flesh. For it was not that an ordinary man was first born of the holy Virgin and then the Word came down upon him; rather, having been united from the womb itself, he is said to have undergone a birth according to the flesh, making his own the birth of his own flesh.

In this way we say that he both suffered and rose again: not as though God the Word suffered in his own nature blows, or the piercing of nails, or the other wounds, for the divine is impassible because it is also incorporeal; but since the body that became his own suffered these things, he himself is again said to have suffered for us; for the impassible one was in the suffering body. In the same way we understand his dying. For the Word of God is by nature immortal and incorruptible, life and life-giving. But since his own body, by the grace of God, as Paul says, tasted death for everyone, he himself is said to have suffered death for us: not as though he came to experience death as far as his own nature is concerned (to say or think this is madness), but because, as I said just now, his flesh tasted death. So too, when his flesh was raised, it is again called his resurrection, not as though he had fallen into corruption, God forbid, but because his body was raised again.

In this way we shall confess one Christ and Lord, not worshipping a man together with the Word, lest an appearance of division slip in through saying “together with”; but worshipping one and the same, because his body is not foreign to the Word, the body with which he sits beside the Father himself: not again as though two sons sat beside him, but one, by union, with his own flesh. But if we reject the union according to hypostasis as either impossible or unbecoming, we fall into saying two sons. For it will be wholly necessary to make a distinction and to speak of the one as a man specially honoured with the title of Son, and of the other, again specially, as the Word from God, having both the name and the reality of sonship by nature. The one Lord Jesus Christ, then, must not be divided into two sons. Nor will it in any way help the right account of the faith, even if some speak of a union of persons. For Scripture has not said that the Word united to himself the person of a man, but that he became flesh. And the Word's becoming flesh is nothing else than that he shared in blood and flesh as we do, made our body his own, and came forth a man of a woman, not having cast off being God and having been begotten of God the Father, but remaining what he was even in the assumption of flesh. This is what the account of the exact faith everywhere proclaims; so we shall find that the holy fathers thought; so they made bold to call the holy Virgin Mother of God: not as though the nature of the Word, or his Godhead, received the beginning of its existence from the holy Virgin, but because the holy body, animated with a rational soul, was born of her, to which the Word was united according to hypostasis, and so is said to have been born according to the flesh.

I write these things now too out of the love that is in Christ, exhorting you as a brother and charging you before God and his elect angels to think and teach these things with us, so that the peace of the churches may be preserved and the bond of concord and love may remain unbroken among the priests of God. Greet the brotherhood with you. The brotherhood with us greets you in the Lord.

Nestorius to the most reverent and most God-beloved fellow minister Cyril: greeting in the Lord.

The insults against us in your remarkable letter I pass over, as deserving a physician's patience and an answer given in due time by events themselves. But what does not allow silence, since it carries a great danger if it is passed over in silence, I shall try to set out briefly, as far as I am able, not stretching it out at length, and guarding against the nausea of obscure and indigestible wordiness. I shall begin with the all-wise words of your Love, setting them down word for word. What, then, are the words of your letter's remarkable teaching? “The holy and great synod says that the very Only-begotten Son, begotten by nature from God the Father, true God from true God, the light from the light, through whom the Father made all things, came down, was made flesh, became man, suffered, rose.” These are the words of your Reverence, and perhaps you recognize them as yours. Hear now ours too, a brotherly exhortation on behalf of piety, which the great Paul solemnly gave to his beloved Timothy: “Attend to reading, to exhortation, to teaching; for in doing this you will save both yourself and your hearers.” What does “attend” mean, I ask? That, reading the tradition of those holy men superficially, you fell into a pardonable ignorance, thinking that they had said that the Word co-eternal with the Father was passible. Look more closely, if you please, at their words, and you will find that the divine choir of the fathers did not say that the consubstantial Godhead was passible, nor that what is co-eternal with the Father was recently born, nor that what raised the destroyed temple itself rose. And if you lend me your ears for a brotherly cure, I shall set before you the very words of those holy men and free them, and through them the divine Scriptures, from the false charge against them.

“We believe,” then, “in our Lord Jesus Christ, his only-begotten Son.” Notice how they first set down “Lord,” “Jesus,” “Christ,” “Only-begotten,” and “Son,” the names common to the Godhead and the manhood, as foundations, and then build on them the tradition of the incarnation, the suffering, and the resurrection; so that, with names signifying what is common to both natures set first, neither what belongs to the sonship and lordship should be cut apart, nor what belongs to the natures be endangered by vanishing through confusion in the singleness of the sonship. For Paul himself was their teacher in this. When he mentions the divine incarnation and is about to bring in the suffering, he first sets down “Christ,” the name common to the two natures, as I said a little earlier, and then brings in language fitting both natures. For what does he say? “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but” (not to quote it all) “became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” For since he was about to mention the death, lest anyone should suppose from this that God the Word was passible, he sets down “Christ,” as the title signifying the impassible and the passible substance in a single person, so that Christ may without danger be called both impassible and passible: impassible in Godhead, passible in the nature of the body.

Though I could say much about this, and first of all that those holy fathers, speaking of the dispensation, mentioned not a birth but an incarnation, I feel the promise of brevity I made at the start reining in my discourse and moving it on to the second heading of your Love. In it I praised the distinction of the natures according to the principle of humanity and Godhead, and their conjunction into one person; and the statement that God the Word did not need a second birth from a woman; and the confession that the Godhead is incapable of suffering. These things are truly orthodox and opposed to the evil opinions of all the heresies about the Lord's natures. Whether the rest brought some hidden wisdom, incomprehensible to the ears of readers, is for your exactness to know. To me at least it seemed to overturn what came first. For the one proclaimed at first impassible and incapable of a second birth it brought in again, I do not know how, as passible and newly created, as though what belongs by nature to God the Word had been destroyed by his conjunction with the temple; or as though it were thought a small thing among men that the sinless temple, inseparable from the divine nature, should undergo birth and death for sinners; or as though the Lord's word need not be believed when he cried to the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”; not “Destroy my Godhead, and in three days it will be raised.”

Wishing to enlarge on this point too, I am again held back by the memory of my promise. Still, it must be said briefly. Everywhere in divine Scripture, whenever it mentions the Lord's dispensation, the birth and suffering handed down to us are not of the Godhead but of the manhood of Christ; so that by a more exact title the holy Virgin should be called Mother of Christ, not Mother of God. Hear the Gospels proclaiming this: “The book,” it says, “of the generation of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.” It is clear that God the Word was not the son of David. Take another testimony, if you please: “Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.” Look at another voice bearing witness to us: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was thus. When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit.” But who would suppose that the Godhead of the Only-begotten was a creature of the Spirit? What need is there to mention “the mother of Jesus was there,” and again “with Mary the mother of Jesus,” and “what is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit,” and “Take the child and his mother and flee into Egypt,” and “concerning his Son, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh”? And again about the suffering: “God, sending his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”; and again, “Christ died for our sins,” and “Christ having suffered in the flesh,” and “This is” (not my Godhead, but) “my body, broken for you for the forgiveness of sins.” And countless other voices bear witness to the human race not to think that the Godhead of the Son is recent or capable of bodily suffering, but the flesh joined to the nature of the Godhead. Hence Christ calls himself both David's Lord and his son: “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he? They said to him, David's. Jesus answered and said to them, How then does David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand?” For he is altogether David's son according to the flesh, but Lord according to the Godhead.

To confess, then, that the body is the temple of the Son's Godhead, and a temple united by a supreme and divine conjunction, so that the nature of the Godhead makes its own what belongs to this body, is good and worthy of the gospel traditions. But under the name of that appropriation to attach to it also the properties of the conjoined flesh, I mean birth, suffering, and death, is, brother, the mark either of a mind truly led astray like the Greeks, or of one sick with the heresies of the deranged Apollinarius and Arius and the rest; or rather, something worse than they. For those who are carried away by the name of appropriation must, because of the appropriation, make God the Word share in being nursed with milk, partake in gradual growth, and need courage and angelic help at the time of the suffering. And I pass over circumcision and sacrifice, sweat, hunger, and thirst, which, as happening to the flesh for our sake, are joined to it in a way worthy of worship; but if they are taken of the Godhead, they are false, and a cause of just condemnation against us as false accusers. These are the traditions of the holy fathers; these are the precepts of the divine Scriptures. So one speaks rightly of God concerning both his love for mankind and his authority. “Meditate on these things; give yourself wholly to them, so that your progress may be evident to all,” as Paul says.

You do well to hold to your concern for those who are scandalized, and thanks to your soul, careful of divine things and mindful even of ours. But know that you have been misled by clergy of your own way of thinking, perhaps, who were deposed here by the holy synod for holding Manichaean views. For the affairs of the church make progress daily, and the people are advancing so much by the grace of God that those who see the crowds cry out with the prophet, “The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as much water covers the seas.” And the emperors' affairs are in exceeding joy, since they have been enlightened by the doctrine. To sum up and so close: with regard to all the heresies that fight against God and the orthodoxy of the church, one may find this saying fulfilled among us daily: “The house of Saul went on and grew weaker, and the house of David went on and grew stronger.” This is our counsel, as from brothers to a brother. “But if anyone seems to be contentious,” Paul will cry out through us too to such a one, “we have no such custom, nor do the churches of God.” I and those with me greet all the brotherhood with you warmly. May you continue in good health and praying for us, most honoured and most God-beloved in all things.

Cyril, to those who blamed him for not keeping silent when he heard that the impious teaching of Nestorius was spreading for the worse.

Since your Reverence has written to me that the most God-fearing Nestorius is grieved because I wrote the letter to the monks, wishing to hold back those who had been scandalized by the rumour, I must say this: it was not so much my doing as his Reverence's. I set out the account of the right faith for people who had been scandalized by his expositions; but he allowed the good bishop Dorotheus, in the catholic church and the church of the orthodox, to say openly, “Anathema to anyone who says that the holy Mary is Mother of God.” And not only did he keep silent when he heard him say this, but he at once received him into the mystical communion and made him a communicant. See, then: we have been anathematized in his presence, not to say for the moment by him; for Dorotheus would not have uttered such things in church against his wishes. So we who are living, the bishops throughout the whole world, and our fathers who have departed to God, have been anathematized. What, then, prevented us too from writing the opposite of his words and saying, “If anyone does not say that Mary is Mother of God, let him be anathema”? But I have not done so, for his sake so far, lest some should say that the bishop of Alexandria, or the synod of Egypt, anathematized him. But if the most God-fearing bishops of West and East learn that they have all been anathematized (for all say and confess that the holy Mary is Mother of God), how will they be disposed? How will they not all be grieved, if not for themselves, then for the holy fathers, in whose writings we always find the holy Virgin Mary named Mother of God? If it did not seem that it would be burdensome, I would have sent many books of many holy fathers, in which one can find the word I have used set down not once but very often, in which they confess that the holy Virgin Mary is Mother of God.

I know the sincerity of your Love, and I am not unaware of your zeal. If I were writing to someone who did not know my character, I would use many words to persuade him that I am a very peaceable man, not quarrelsome or fond of fighting, but one who prays both to love all and to be loved by all. But since I am writing to one who knows, I shall be brief and teach this one thing: if it were a matter of suffering the loss of property or money and so ending a brother's grief, I would gladly have done it, so as not to seem to rank anything above love. But since it is a question of the faith, and the churches throughout, so to speak, the whole Roman empire have been scandalized (for there is no one who comes from any city or country who does not say, “What are these things that are being noised about? And what new teaching is being brought into the churches?”), what shall we do about this, we who have been entrusted by God with the word of the mystery, and against whom those we have initiated will surely bring their case on the day of judgement? For they will say that they kept the faith as they were initiated into it by us. If we have done this rightly, we shall receive a reward and obtain praise; but if otherwise and perversely, what flames will be enough for us? For we shall hear, “You destroyed my land and killed my people,” as it is written. Each of those in the rank of laity will give account for his own life; but we who are burdened with the ministries of the priesthood shall give account not for ourselves alone but for all who believe in Christ.

So I take no account of grief, of insult, or of the great abuse that some disreputable people have heaped on me. Let all this go into oblivion; God will judge those who have talked nonsense. Only let the faith be kept safe, and I am a friend, and loving, and yield to no one in the duty of loving more the most God-beloved bishop Nestorius, whom, as before God, I wish to be well regarded in Christ, to wipe out the blame for what is already past, and to show that what some are noising abroad about the faith is a slander and not at all the truth. If we have been commanded by Christ to love even those who hate us, how much more fitting is it to do this for brothers and fellow priests? But if the faith is being undermined by some, we shall not betray our own souls, even if we must suffer death itself; there is no doubt of that. For if, out of fear, we do not speak the truth for the glory of God, so as not to fall into unpleasantness, with what face shall we then deliver to the people the praises of the holy martyrs, whom we praise because they kept the saying, “Strive for the truth unto death”? For if …