Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius

To the most reverend and God-loving Nestorius, our fellow minister: Cyril and the synod gathered at Alexandria from the province of Egypt send greeting in the Lord. [a]

Our Savior says clearly, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” What, then, is to become of us, when your holiness requires us to love you more than Christ, the Savior of us all? Who can help us on the day of judgment, or what kind of excuse will we find for keeping silent so long about the blasphemies you have spoken against him? If you harmed only yourself by teaching and holding such things, perhaps it would matter less. But you have caused great offense to the whole church, and you have thrown among the people the leaven of a strange and new heresy. And not only among those there in Constantinople; the books setting out your teaching have been sent everywhere. Under these circumstances, how can we any longer defend our silence? How can we help remembering that Christ said, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother”? For if the faith is being harmed, let the honor due to parents be lost as stale and tottering; let even the law of tender love toward children and brothers be silenced; let death be better for the devout than living, “that they might obtain a better resurrection,” as it is written. [b]

Look, then: together with the holy synod that met in great Rome under the presidency of our most holy and most reverend brother and fellow minister, Bishop Celestine, we too testify to you by this third letter. We counsel you to give up these mischievous and distorted doctrines that you hold and teach, and to accept the right faith, handed down to the churches from the beginning through the holy apostles and evangelists, who “were eyewitnesses and servants of the word.” And if your holiness is not minded to do this within the limits set in the writings of our brother of blessed memory and most reverend fellow minister Celestine, bishop of the church of Rome, then know for certain that you have no share with us, and no place or standing among the priests and bishops of God. For we cannot overlook churches so troubled, people so offended, the right faith set aside, and the sheep scattered by you, who ought to save them, if indeed we ourselves hold to the right faith and follow the devotion of the holy fathers. And we are in communion with all the laymen and clergy whom your holiness has cast out or deposed because of the faith. For it is not right that those who resolved to believe rightly should suffer by your decision; they do well to oppose you. You yourself mentioned this very thing in your letter to our most holy fellow bishop Celestine of great Rome. [c]

But it will not be enough for your reverence to confess with us only the creed of the faith set out some time ago by the Holy Spirit at the great and holy synod gathered at Nicaea. For you have not held and interpreted it rightly, but perversely, even though you confess the form of words with your voice. In addition, you must confess in writing and under oath that you also anathematize those polluted and unholy doctrines of yours, and that you will hold and teach what all of us hold: bishops, teachers and leaders of the people, both East and West. The holy synod of Rome and all of us agreed that the letter written to your holiness from the church of Alexandria was right and blameless. To it we have added our own letters, and what you must hold and teach, and what you must be careful to avoid. Now this is the faith of the catholic and apostolic church, to which all orthodox bishops, both East and West, agree: [d] “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten of his Father, that is, from the essence of the Father; God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God; begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father; through whom all things were made, both those in heaven and those on earth; who for us men and for our salvation came down, took flesh, and became man. He suffered, and on the third day he rose again. He ascended into the heavens, and from there he will come to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Spirit. But those who say, ‘There was a time when he was not,’ and, ‘Before he was begotten he was not,’ and that he was made out of what previously was not, or that he is of some other substance or essence, and that the Son of God is subject to change or alteration: these the catholic and apostolic church anathematizes.” [e]

Following in every point the confessions of the holy fathers, which they made with the Holy Spirit speaking in them, following the intent of their thought, and walking, so to speak, on the royal road, we confess this. The Word of God, the only Son, begotten from the very essence of the Father, true God from true God, Light from Light, through whom all things were made, the things in heaven and the things on earth, came down for our salvation, made himself nothing, took flesh, and became man. That is, he took flesh from the holy Virgin and made it his own from the womb; he submitted to birth for us and came forth as a man from a woman, without casting off what he was. Though he took on flesh and blood, he remained what he was, God in essence and in truth. We do not say that his flesh was changed into the nature of the Godhead, nor that the inexpressible nature of the Word of God was laid aside for the nature of flesh. For he is unchanged and wholly unchangeable, always the same, according to the Scriptures. For though he was seen as a child in swaddling clothes, even in the arms of the Virgin his mother, he filled all creation as God and reigned together with the one who begot him. For the Godhead has no quantity or size, and cannot have limits. [f]

Confessing that the Word was made one with the flesh according to substance, we worship one Son and Lord, Jesus Christ. We do not divide God from man, or separate him into parts, as though the two natures were joined to each other in him only by a sharing of rank and authority; that is a novelty and nothing else. Nor do we give the name Christ separately to the Word of God, and the same name separately to another, born of a woman. We know only one Christ, the Word from God the Father with his own flesh. For as man he was anointed along with us, although it is he himself who gives the Spirit to those who are worthy, and not by measure, as the blessed evangelist John says. [g] But we do not say that the Word of God dwelt in him as in an ordinary man born of the holy Virgin, lest Christ be thought of as a God-bearing man. For although the Word made his dwelling among us, and it is also said that in Christ “all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily,” we understand that he became flesh, not in the way he is said to dwell in the saints; and we define that his dwelling in Christ was “according to equality.” Rather, being made one by nature, and not changed into flesh, he made his dwelling in such a way as we might say the soul of a man does in its own body. [h]

One, then, is Christ, both Son and Lord. It is not as if a man had reached only such a conjunction with God as consists in a unity of rank alone, or of authority. For equality of honor does not unite natures. If it did, Peter and John, who were of equal honor with each other, both of them apostles and holy disciples, would have been one; yet the two are not one. Nor do we understand the manner of the joining to be a placing side by side, for that is not enough for a oneness of nature. Nor is it a sharing by relation, as we too are joined to the Lord, as it is written, “we are one Spirit in him.” Rather, we reject the term “junction” as not expressing the oneness well enough. But we do not say that the Word of God the Father is the God or the Lord of Christ, lest we openly cut the one Christ, the Son and Lord, in two, and fall under the charge of blasphemy by making him the God and Lord of himself. For the Word of God, as we have already said, was made one with flesh hypostatically; yet he is God of all and rules all. He is not the slave of himself, nor his own Lord, for it is foolish, or rather impious, to think or teach this. For he said that God was his Father, although he was God by nature and of the Father’s essence. Yet we are not unaware that while he remained God, he also became man and subject to God, according to the law that suits the nature of manhood. But how could he become the God or Lord of himself? So it is as man, and with regard to the measure of his humbling, that he is said to be subject to God equally with us. In this way he came under the law, although as God he spoke the law and was the lawgiver. [j]

We are careful, too, about saying of Christ: “I worship the one who is clothed because of the one who clothes him, and because of the unseen I worship the seen.” It is a dreadful thing to say in this connection: “The one taken up as well as the one who took him up bears the name of God.” For to say this divides Christ into two again, and sets the man apart by himself and God apart by himself. This saying openly denies the unity, by which one is not worshiped in the other, nor does God exist together with another. Rather, Jesus Christ is considered as one, the only Son, to be honored with one worship together with his own flesh. [l]

We confess that he is the Son, begotten of God the Father, and God, the only Son. Although by his own nature he could not suffer, he suffered for us in the flesh, according to the Scriptures; and though he could not suffer, he made his own, in his crucified body, the sufferings of his own flesh. By the grace of God he tasted death for all, giving up his own body to it, though by nature he himself was the life and the resurrection. He did this so that, having trampled down death by his inexpressible power, first in his own flesh, he might become the firstborn from the dead and the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. And so that he might open a way for human nature to reach incorruption, by the grace of God, as we have just said, he tasted death for everyone, and after three days he rose again, having plundered hell. So although it is said that the resurrection of the dead came through a man, we understand that man to be the Word of God, and through him the power of death was broken. And he will come in the fullness of time as the one Son and Lord, in the glory of the Father, to judge the world in righteousness, as it is written. [m]

We must add this as well. We proclaim the death according to the flesh of the only Son of God, that is, Jesus Christ, and we confess his resurrection from the dead and his ascension into heaven; and so we offer the unbloody sacrifice in the churches, and go on to the mystical thanksgivings, and are made holy, having received his holy flesh and the precious blood of Christ, the Savior of us all. We do not receive it as ordinary flesh, God forbid; nor as the flesh of a man made holy and joined to the Word by a unity of worth, or as one who has a divine indwelling; but as truly the life-giving flesh, the very own flesh of the Word himself. For he is life by his nature as God, and when he became one with his flesh, he made it also life-giving, as he said to us: “Truly, truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood.” For we must not think that it is the flesh of a man like us (for how can a man’s flesh be life-giving by its own nature?), but that it has truly become the very own flesh of him who for our sake both became the Son of Man and was called so. Besides, what the Gospels say our Savior said of himself we do not divide between two hypostases or persons. For the one and only Christ is not to be thought of as double, even though he is from two, and these different. He has joined them in an undivided union, just as everyone knows that a man is not double, though he is made up of soul and body, but is one from both. So, when we think rightly, we refer both the human and the divine sayings to the same person. [n]

For when he speaks of himself as God, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” and “I and my Father are one,” we consider his inexpressible divine nature, by which he is one with his Father through identity of essence, “the image and imprint and radiance of his glory.” But when, not scorning the measure of his humanity, he said to the Jews, “But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth,” we no less recognize that he is the Word of God, from his identity and likeness to the Father and from the circumstances of his humanity. For if we must believe that, being God by nature, he became flesh, that is, a man endowed with a rational soul, what reason can some people have to be ashamed of the language about him that suits him as a man? For if he were to reject the words that suit him as a man, who forced him to become a man like us? And since he humbled himself for us to an emptying he freely chose, why should anyone reject the words that suit such an emptying? So all the words that are read in the Gospels are to be applied to one person, to the one hypostasis of the Word made flesh. [o]

For the Lord Jesus Christ is one, according to the Scriptures, even though he is called “the apostle and high priest of our confession,” since he offers to God the Father the confession of faith that we make to him, and through him to God the Father and also to the Holy Spirit. Yet we say that by nature he is the only Son of God. And we do not assign the name and the reality of priesthood to any man different from him. For he became “the mediator between God and men,” and a reconciler who brings peace, having offered himself as a fragrant aroma to God the Father. That is why he also said: “Sacrifice and offering you did not want, but a body you have prepared for me. In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you took no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Here I am, I have come (in the scroll of the book it is written of me) to do your will, O God.’” For it was for our sake that he offered his body as a fragrant aroma, and not for his own. What offering or sacrifice did he need for himself, who as God was above all sins? For “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” so that we became prone to fall, and human nature has fallen into sin; but not so he (and so we fall short of his glory). How then can there be any further doubt that the true Lamb died for us and on our account? To say that he offered himself both for himself and for us could in no way escape the charge of impiety. For he never committed any fault at all, nor did he sin. What offering, then, did he need, when he had no sin for which sacrifices are rightly offered?

But when he spoke of the Spirit, he said, “He will glorify me.” If we think rightly, we do not say that the one Christ and Son received glory from the Holy Spirit as though he needed glory from another. For his Spirit is neither greater than he nor above him. But because he used the Holy Spirit to show forth his own divinity in his mighty works, he is said to have been glorified by him; just as any one of us might say of his own inborn strength, for example, or of his knowledge of something, “They glorified me.” For although the Spirit is of the same essence, yet we think of him by himself, as he is the Spirit and not the Son; but he is not different from him. For he is called the Spirit of truth, and Christ is the Truth, and the Spirit is sent by him, just as he is also from God the Father. So when the Spirit worked miracles through the hands of the holy apostles after the ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ into heaven, he glorified him. For it is believed that he who works through his own Spirit is God by nature. That is why he said, “He will take what is mine and declare it to you.” But we do not say this as if the Spirit were wise and powerful by some sharing with another; for he is wholly perfect and in need of no good thing. Since, then, he is the Spirit of the Power and Wisdom of the Father, that is, of the Son, he is plainly Wisdom and Power.

And since the holy Virgin gave birth in the body to God made one with flesh by nature, for this reason we also call her Mother of God; not as if the nature of the Word had the beginning of its existence from the flesh. [r] For “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God,” and he is the maker of the ages, coeternal with the Father, and creator of all. But, as we have already said, since he united human nature to himself hypostatically from her womb, he also submitted to birth as a man. He did not need, in his own nature, a birth in time and in these last times of the world. He did it to bless the beginning of our existence, so that, by his being born of a woman in the flesh, what had sent the earthly bodies of our whole race to death might lose its power from then on. And with this sentence, “In pain you shall bring forth children,” removed through him, he showed the truth of what the prophet said: “Strong death swallowed them up, and again God has wiped away every tear from all faces.” For this reason too we say that, having been invited, he attended and blessed the wedding at Cana in Galilee with his holy apostles, in keeping with the plan of salvation. We have been taught to hold these things by the holy apostles and evangelists, by all the Scriptures inspired by God, and by the true confessions of the blessed fathers. [s]

Your reverence also should agree to all these things and give heed to them without any guile. And what your reverence must anathematize we have attached to this letter.