Cyril’s Letter to John of Antioch

This is the letter often called “the Ephesine Creed.” [a]

Cyril, to my lord, beloved brother, and fellow minister John: greeting in the Lord.

“Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad,” for the dividing wall has been taken away, grief has been silenced, and every kind of disagreement has been removed. Christ, the Savior of us all, has granted peace to his churches, and we were called to it by our most devout emperors, beloved of God. They are the best imitators of the piety of their ancestors, keeping the right faith firm and immovable in their souls. For they give their minds above all to the affairs of the holy churches, so that they may have glory and renown forever and make their reign most famous. And Christ himself, the Lord of powers, gives them good things with a generous hand, makes them prevail over their enemies, and grants them victory. For he does not lie when he says, “As I live, says the Lord, those who honor me I will honor.” So when my lord and brother Paul, my fellow minister, most beloved of God, arrived in Alexandria, we were filled with gladness. And that was only natural at the coming of such a man as a mediator, who was ready to work beyond all measure to overcome the envy of the devil and heal our divisions, and who, by removing the stumbling blocks scattered between us, would crown your church and ours with harmony and peace. [b]

There is no need to speak of the reason for the disagreement. I think it more useful both to think and to speak of things suited to a time of peace. So we were delighted to meet that distinguished and most pious man. He perhaps expected no small struggle in persuading us that we must make an alliance for the peace of the church, drive away the laughter of the heterodox, and to that end blunt the goads of the devil’s stubbornness. But he found us ready for this, so that no labor at all needed to be spent on us. For we remembered the Savior’s saying, “My peace I give to you; my peace I leave with you.” We have also been taught to say in our prayers, “O Lord our God, give us peace, for you have given us all things.” So anyone who shares in the peace God supplies lacks no good thing. That the disagreement between the churches in fact came about altogether needlessly and at the wrong time, we are now fully satisfied, through the document brought by my lord, the most pious bishop Paul. It contains a confession of faith beyond reproach, and he declared that it had been drawn up by your holiness and by the bishops there, beloved of God. The document is as follows, and it is set down word for word in this letter of ours. [d]

“This is what we think and say about the Virgin Mother of God, and about the way in which the only Son of God became flesh. We will speak of it briefly, as we must, not by way of adding anything but to give assurance, as we have received it from the beginning from the divine Scriptures and from the tradition of the holy fathers. We add nothing whatever to the faith set out by the holy fathers at Nicaea. For, as we said before, it is sufficient for all knowledge of godliness and for refuting every false teaching of the heretics. But we speak, not presuming to grasp what is impossible, but confessing our own weakness, and we shut out those who would have us cling to things that go beyond human reasoning. [f]

“We confess, therefore, our Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, perfect God and perfect man, made up of a rational soul and flesh; begotten of the Father before the ages as to his divinity, and in the last days, for us and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin as to his humanity; of one substance with his Father as to his divinity, and of one substance with us as to his humanity. For a union of two natures took place. That is why we confess one Christ, one Son, one Lord. [g]

“In keeping with this understanding of the union without mixture, we confess the holy Virgin to be Mother of God, because God the Word became flesh and became man, and from the very conception united to himself the temple he took from her. [h]

“For we know that the theologians treat some of the things said about the Lord in the teaching of the Gospels and the apostles as common, since they belong to the one person, and divide others between the two natures. The worthy ones they attribute to God because of the divinity of Christ, and the lowly ones to his humanity because of his humanity.” [i]

These are your holy words. Finding that we ourselves think the same as they say (“one Lord, one faith, one baptism”), we glorified God, the Savior of all, and congratulated one another that our churches and yours hold the faith that agrees with the Scriptures inspired by God and with the traditions of our holy fathers. [j]

I learned that some of those who make a habit of finding fault were buzzing around like vicious wasps and spewing out wretched words against me, claiming that I say the holy body of Christ was brought down from heaven and was not from the holy Virgin. So I thought it necessary to say a few words to them about this: You fools, who know only how to misrepresent! How have you been led to such a judgment? How have you fallen into so foolish a sickness? For you must understand, you certainly must understand, that almost all the opposition to us over the faith arose from our declaring that the holy Virgin is Mother of God. But if the holy body of the Savior of all was born from heaven and not from her, how then is she understood to be Mother of God? What, then, did she give birth to, unless it is true that she gave birth to Emmanuel according to the flesh? Those who babble such things about me deserve to be laughed at. For the blessed prophet Isaiah does not lie when he says, “Look, the virgin will conceive and bear a son, and will call his name Emmanuel, which means, God with us.” The holy Gabriel also spoke truly when he said to the blessed Virgin, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And look, you will conceive in your womb and give birth to a son, and you will call his name Jesus. He will save his people from their sins.” [k]

For when we say that our Lord Jesus Christ came down from heaven and from above, we do not say it as though his holy flesh were taken from above and from heaven. Rather, we are following the divine Paul, who declares plainly, “The first man is from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is the Lord from heaven.” [l] We remember, too, the Savior himself saying, “No one has gone up into heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of Man.” Although he was born according to his flesh from the holy Virgin, as we have just said, yet God the Word came down from above and from heaven. He “made himself nothing and took the form of a servant,” and was called the Son of Man, while remaining what he was, that is, God. For he is unchanging and unchangeable by nature. Because he is thought of as already one with his own flesh, he is said to have come down from heaven. [m] He is also called the man from heaven, being perfect in his divinity and perfect in his humanity, and thought of as one person. For the Lord Jesus Christ is one, even though the difference of his natures, out of which we say the indescribable union was made, is not lost sight of.

Will your holiness kindly silence those who say that a blending, or mingling, or mixture took place between the Word of God and the flesh? For it is likely that some are also gossiping that I have thought or said such things. [n] But I am far from any such thought. I also consider those who think that even a shadow of change could happen to the nature of the Word of God to be completely out of their minds. For he remains what he always was. He has not been changed, he never can be changed, and he is not capable of change. For all of us confess, besides, that the Word of God cannot suffer, even though, as he carries out this mystery most wisely, he is seen to ascribe to himself the sufferings endured in his own flesh. To the same effect, the all-wise Peter wrote of Christ as having “suffered in the flesh,” and not in the nature of his indescribable Godhead. So that he might be believed to be the Savior of all, he took the sufferings of his own flesh to himself, as we have just said, by making them his own as part of the plan of salvation. [o] Like this is the prophecy spoken through the voice of the prophet, as though from him: “I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard. I did not hide my face from shame and spitting.” Let your holiness be convinced, and let no one else doubt either, that we follow the teachings of the holy fathers in everything, and especially those of our blessed and celebrated father Athanasius, and we shrink from the least departure from them. [p]

I might have added many quotations from them as well to establish what I say, but that would have made my letter longer, and it might become tiresome. We will allow no one to shake the defined faith, the creed set out by our holy fathers who assembled some time ago at Nicaea. Nor would we permit ourselves or anyone else to change a single word of what was set out there, or to add one syllable. For we remember the saying, “Do not move the ancient landmark that your fathers set.” For it was not they who spoke, but the Spirit himself, of God and the Father, who proceeds also from him, and is not foreign to the Son in his essence. And the words of the holy ones who initiated us into the mysteries confirm this to us. For in the Acts of the Apostles it is written, “When they had come to Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.” And the divine Paul wrote, “So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.” [q]

When some of those who make a habit of turning away from what is right twist my words to suit their own views, I ask your holiness not to be surprised. Be well assured that the followers of every heresy gather the pretexts for their error from the Scriptures inspired by God. In their evil minds they corrupt what the Holy Spirit rightly said, and they draw down the unquenchable flame on their own heads. We have learned that some people have corrupted the orthodox letter of our most distinguished father Athanasius to the blessed Epictetus, and have published it in that form, so as to harm many by it. So the brothers thought it useful and necessary that we should send your holiness a copy of it, taken from some correct old copies that exist among us. Farewell. [r]