Cyril’s Second Letter to Nestorius

To the most religious and God-beloved Nestorius, his fellow minister, Cyril sends greeting in the Lord. [a]

I hear that some people are rashly talking about the opinion I hold of your holiness, and that this happens often, especially at the times when those in authority hold their meetings. Perhaps they think that in doing so they are saying something pleasing to you, but they speak senselessly. For they have suffered no injustice at my hands; they have only been exposed by me, and that for their own good. One was exposed as an oppressor of the blind and the needy; another as a man who wounded his mother with a sword; another because, in league with his maidservant, he stole someone else’s money, and he had always lain under suspicion of the kind of crimes no one would wish even his bitterest enemy to be charged with. I take little account of what such people say. For the disciple is not above his master, and I would not stretch the measure of my own narrow mind beyond the fathers. No matter what path of life a person follows, it is hardly possible to escape being smeared by the wicked, whose mouths are full of cursing and bitterness, and who in the end must give an account to the Judge of all. [b]

But I return to the point I especially had in mind. I now urge you, as a brother in the Lord, to set out the word of teaching and the doctrine of the faith to the people with all accuracy. Consider that to cause even one of the least of those who believe in Christ to stumble brings a person under the unbearable anger of God. And how great is the care and skill needed when those who are troubled are so many, so that we may give the healing word of truth to those who seek it! We will do this best if we turn over the words of the holy fathers and are eager to obey their commands, testing ourselves, as it is written, whether we are in the faith, and shaping our thoughts to their upright and blameless teaching. [d]

The holy and great synod, then, says that the only Son, born by nature of God the Father, true God from true God, Light from Light, through whom the Father made all things, came down, took flesh, and became man, suffered, rose again on the third day, and ascended into heaven. These words and these decrees we ought to follow, considering what is meant by the Word of God taking flesh and becoming man. For we do not say that the nature of the Word was changed and became flesh, or that it was turned into a whole man made up of soul and body. Rather we say that the Word, having personally united to himself flesh given life by a rational soul, became man in a way that can neither be spoken nor conceived, and was called the Son of Man. He was not called so merely because he willed it or was pleased to be called so, nor because he took a person to himself, but because the two natures were brought together in a true union, and from both there is one Christ and one Son. For the difference of the natures is not taken away by the union; rather, the divinity and the humanity, by their union that can neither be spoken nor expressed, together make perfect for us the one Lord Jesus Christ. [e]

So then, he who existed before all ages and was born of the Father is said to have been born of a woman according to the flesh. This is not as though his divine nature began to exist in the holy Virgin, for it did not need any second birth after its birth from the Father. It would be absurd and foolish to say that he who existed before all ages, coeternal with the Father, needed a second beginning of existence. But since, for us and for our salvation, he personally united to himself a human body and came forth from a woman, in this way he is said to have been born according to the flesh. For he was not first born an ordinary man of the holy Virgin, with the Word then coming down and entering into him. The union was made in the womb itself, and so he is said to have undergone a birth according to the flesh, claiming as his own the birth of his own flesh. On this basis we say that he suffered and rose again. We do not mean that God the Word suffered blows, or the piercing of the nails, or any other wounds in his own nature, for the divine nature cannot suffer, since it has no body. But since the body that had become his own suffered these things, he is said to have suffered for us; for he who in himself could not suffer was in a body that suffered. We think of his dying in the same way. For the Word of God is by nature immortal and incorruptible, life itself and the giver of life. But since his own body, as Paul says, by the grace of God tasted death for everyone, he himself is said to have suffered death for us. This is not as if he had any experience of death in his own nature, for it would be madness to say or think that; it is because, as I have just said, his flesh tasted death. In the same way, when his flesh was raised again, it is called his resurrection; not as if he had fallen into corruption, God forbid, but because his own body was raised again.

We therefore confess one Christ and Lord. We do not worship a man along with the Word, lest the phrase “along with the Word” suggest the idea of division; we worship him as one and the same. For the body of the Word, with which he sits beside the Father, is not separated from the Word himself. It is not as if two sons were sitting beside the Father; there is one, by the union with the flesh. But if we reject the personal union as impossible or unfitting, we fall into the error of speaking of two sons. For then we will have to make a distinction, and say that the one who was properly a man was honored with the title of Son, while the one who is properly the Word of God has by nature both the name and the reality of sonship. We must not, then, divide the one Lord Jesus Christ into two sons. Nor will it help sound faith at all to hold, as some do, 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 this expression, “the Word became flesh,” can mean nothing else than that he shared in flesh and blood as we do. He made our body his own and came forth as a man from a woman, not casting off his being as God, or his birth from God the Father, but remaining what he was even in taking flesh to himself. This is what the statement of the correct faith proclaims everywhere. This was the mind of the holy fathers. That is why they made bold to call the holy Virgin the Mother of God: not as if the nature of the Word or his divinity had its beginning from the holy Virgin, but because from her was born that holy body with a rational soul, to which the Word was personally united, and so he is said to have been born according to the flesh.

These things, then, I now write to you out of the love of Christ. I beg you as a brother, and I charge you before Christ and the elect angels, to think and teach these things with us, so that the peace of the churches may be kept and the bond of harmony and love may continue unbroken among the priests of God.