Theodoret’s Answers to Cyril’s Anathemas

Against Anathema 1. All of us who follow the words of the evangelists say that God the Word was not made flesh by nature, and was not changed into flesh either; for the divine is unchangeable and unalterable. That is why the prophet David says, “You are the same, and your years will not fail.” And the great Paul, the herald of the truth, states in his Letter to the Hebrews that this was spoken of the Son. And in another place God says through the prophet, “I am the Lord; I do not change.” If, then, the divine is unchangeable and unalterable, it cannot undergo change or alteration. And if what is unchangeable cannot be changed, then God the Word was not made flesh by being changed; he took flesh and pitched his tent in our midst, as the evangelist says. The divine Paul expresses this clearly in his Letter to the Philippians, in these words: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation and took upon himself the form of a servant.” Now it is plain from these words that the form of God was not changed into the form of a servant, but, remaining what it was, took the form of the servant. So God the Word was not made flesh; he took to himself flesh that was living and endowed with reason. He himself was not conceived of the Virgin by nature, nor fashioned and formed in her, nor did he take the beginning of his existence from her: he who is before the ages, God, and with God, who is with the Father and is known and worshiped together with the Father. Rather, he fashioned for himself a temple in the Virgin’s womb, and was present with what was formed and born. That is why we call that holy Virgin Theotokos, Mother of God: not because she gave birth to God by nature, but because she gave birth to a man united to the God who had fashioned him. Moreover, if the one fashioned in the Virgin’s womb was not a man but God the Word, who is before the ages, then God the Word is a creation of the Holy Spirit. For what was conceived in her, says Gabriel, is of the Holy Spirit. But if the only Son, the Word of God, is uncreated, and of one substance and coeternal with the Father, he is no longer something formed or created by the Spirit. And if the Holy Spirit did not fashion God the Word in the Virgin’s womb, it follows that we understand that it was the form of the servant that was fashioned, formed, conceived and born. But the form was not stripped of the form of God; it was a temple containing God the Word dwelling in it, as Paul says: “For it pleased the Father that in him all fullness should dwell,” “bodily.” So we call the Virgin not Anthropotokos, mother of a man, but Theotokos, Mother of God, applying the first title to the fashioning and the conception, and the second to the union. For this reason the child who was born is called Emmanuel: neither God separated from human nature, nor a man stripped of the Godhead. For Emmanuel is interpreted to mean “God with us,” as the Gospels say; and the expression “God with us” at once makes known the one who for our sake was taken from among us, and proclaims God the Word, who took him. So the child is called Emmanuel because of the God who took him, and the Virgin is called Theotokos because of the union of the form of God with the form of a servant that was conceived. For God the Word was not changed into flesh; the form of God took the form of a servant. [a]

Against Anathema 2. In obedience to the divine teaching of the apostles, we confess one Christ, and because of the union we call the same one both God and man. But we know nothing at all of the union in hypostasis; it is strange and foreign to the divine Scriptures and to the Fathers who have interpreted them. And if the author of these statements means by a union in hypostasis that there was a mixing of flesh and Godhead, we will oppose his statement with all our might and refute his blasphemy. For mixing is necessarily followed by confusion, and once confusion is admitted, the distinct character of each nature is destroyed. Things that are being mixed do not remain what they were, and to say this of God the Word and of the seed of David would be utterly absurd. We must obey the Lord when he shows the two natures and says to the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” If there had been a mixing, God would not have remained God, nor would the temple have been recognized as a temple; the temple would have been God, and God would have been the temple. That is what the theory of mixing involves. And it would have been quite needless for the Lord to say to the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” If there had really been any mixing and confusion, he ought to have said, “Destroy me, and in three days I will be raised.” As it is, he shows the temple being destroyed and God raising it up. So the union in hypostasis, which, in my opinion, they put forward in place of mixing, is needless. It is quite enough to speak of the union, which both shows the distinct properties of the natures and teaches us to worship the one Christ. [g]

Against Anathema 3. The sense of the terms used here is misty and obscure. Who needs to be told that there is no difference between a joining and a coming together? A coming together is a coming together of parts that were separate, and a joining is a joining of parts that are distinct. The very clever author of these phrases has set down things that agree as though they disagreed. It is wrong, he says, to join the hypostases by a joining; they ought to be joined by a coming together, and a natural one at that. Perhaps he says this without knowing what he is saying; if he does know, he blasphemes. What is natural is compelled and involuntary. For instance, if I say that we are hungry by nature, we do not feel hunger by free choice but by necessity; and certainly the poor would have stopped begging if the power to stop being hungry had lain in their own will. We are thirsty by nature; we sleep by nature; we breathe by nature. All these actions, I repeat, belong to the class of the involuntary, and whoever is no longer capable of them necessarily ceases to exist. If, then, the coming together in union of the form of God and the form of a servant was natural, then God the Word was united to the form of the servant under the compulsion of necessity, and not because he was putting his love for humankind into action; and the Lawgiver of the universe will turn out to be a follower of the laws of necessity. That is not what the blessed Paul taught us. On the contrary, we have been taught that he took the form of a servant and “emptied himself”; and the expression “emptied himself” points to a voluntary act. If, then, he was united by purpose and will to the nature taken from us, adding the word “natural” is needless. It is enough to confess the union; and a union is understood of things that are distinct, for if there were no division, a union could never be perceived. So to perceive the union, one must first perceive the division. How, then, can he say that the hypostases or natures ought not to be divided? All the while he knows that the hypostasis of God the Word was complete before the ages, and that the form of the servant which it took was complete; that is why he said “hypostases” and not “hypostasis.” If, then, each nature is complete, and both came together, it is obvious that, after the form of God had taken the form of a servant, piety compels us to confess one Son and Christ; while to speak of the united hypostases or natures as two, far from being absurd, follows from the necessity of the case. For if, in the case of a single man, we divide the natures, and call the mortal nature body and the immortal nature soul, and both together man, it is much more in keeping with right reason to recognize the properties both of the God who took and of the man who was taken. We find the blessed Paul dividing the one man into two, where he says in one passage, “Though our outward man perishes, yet the inward man is renewed,” and in another, “For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man,” and again, “that Christ may dwell in the inner man.” Now if the apostle divides the natural joining of natures that came into being together, with what reason can the man who describes the mixing to us in other terms accuse us of impiety when we divide the properties of the natures of the everlasting God and of the man taken at the end of days? [h]

Against Anathema 4. These statements too are akin to the ones before them. On the assumption that there has been a mixing, he means that no distinction is to be made between the sayings in the holy Gospels and in the apostles’ writings. And he uses this language while priding himself on being at war, all at once, with Arius and Eunomius and the rest of the leaders of heresy. So let this precise teacher of theology tell us how he would refute the blasphemy of the heretics while applying to God the Word what was said humbly, and fittingly, by the form of the servant. For by doing just this, the heretics lay it down that the Son of God is inferior, a creature, something made, and a servant. We hold the opposite opinion to theirs. We confess the Son to be of one substance and coeternal with God the Father, the Creator of the universe, its Maker, Adorner, Ruler and Governor, all-wise and almighty, or rather himself Power, Life and Wisdom. To whom, then, are we to refer the words “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” or “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me,” or “Father, save me from this hour,” or “No one knows that hour, not even the Son of Man,” and all the other passages spoken and written in lowliness by him and by the holy apostles about him? To whom shall we apply the weariness and the sleep? To whom the ignorance and the fear? Who was it who needed help from an angel? If these belong to God the Word, how was Wisdom ignorant? How could it be called wisdom when it was touched by ignorance? How could he speak the truth when he said that he had all that the Father has, if he did not have the Father’s knowledge? For he says, “The Father alone knows that day.” How could he be the unchanging image of the one who begot him, if he does not have all that the one who begot him has? If, then, he speaks the truth when he says that he is ignorant, anyone might suppose this of him. But if he knows the day, and says that he is ignorant because he wishes to hide it, you see what blasphemy the conclusion leads to. For then the Truth lies, and it could not properly be called truth if it has any quality opposed to truth. But if the Truth does not lie, then God the Word is not ignorant of the day that he himself made and himself fixed, the day on which he intends to judge the world; he has the Father’s knowledge, since he is his unchanging image. So the ignorance does not belong to God the Word, but to the form of the servant, which at that time knew as much as the indwelling Godhead revealed. The same position may be held about other similar cases. How, for instance, could it be reasonable for God the Word to say to the Father, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will”? The absurdities that necessarily follow from this are not few. First, it follows that the Father and the Son are not of the same mind, and that the Father wishes one thing and the Son another, for he said, “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” Second, we shall have to see great ignorance in the Son, for he will be found not knowing whether the cup can or cannot pass from him; but to say this of God the Word is utter impiety and blasphemy. For he knew exactly how the mystery of the plan of salvation would end, he who came among us for this very reason, who took our nature of his own accord, who emptied himself. That is also why he foretold to the holy apostles, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed … into the hands of the Gentiles, to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and on the third day he will rise again.” How, then, could he who foretold these things, and who rebuked Peter when Peter pleaded against them, himself pray that they might not happen, when he clearly knows all that is to come? Is it not absurd that Abraham, many generations before, should have seen his day and been glad, and that Isaiah likewise, and Jeremiah, and Daniel, and Zechariah, and the whole company of the prophets should have foretold his saving suffering, while he himself was ignorant of it, and begged to be released from it and prayed against it, though it was destined to come to pass for the salvation of the world? Therefore these words are not the words of God the Word, but of the form of the servant, which was afraid of death because death was not yet destroyed. Surely God the Word allowed these words to be spoken, leaving room for fear, so that the nature of the one who was born might be plain, and to keep us from supposing that the Son of Abraham and David was something unreal or a mere appearance. It is by holding such views that the impious crew of heretics has given birth to this blasphemy. We will therefore apply to God the Word what was spoken and done in a divine way; and, on the other hand, what was said and done in humility we will connect with the form of a servant, so that we may not be tainted with the blasphemy of Arius and Eunomius. [i]

Against Anathema 5. We say that God the Word shared in flesh and blood, as we do, and in an immortal soul, because of the union with them. But that God the Word was made flesh by any change, we not only refuse to say; we accuse those who do say it of impiety. And one can see that this goes against the very terms he has laid down. For if the Word was changed into flesh, he did not share with us in flesh and blood; but if he shared in flesh and blood, he shared in them as being something other than they; and if the flesh is something other than he, then he was not changed into flesh. So while we use the term “sharing,” we worship both the one who took and what was taken as one Son. But we recognize the distinction of the natures. We do not object to the term “man bearing God,” as many of the holy Fathers have used it. One of them is the great Basil, who uses this term in his argument to Amphilochius about the Holy Spirit, and in his interpretation of the fifty-ninth psalm. But we call him a man bearing God, not because he received some particular divine grace, but because he possessed all the Godhead of the Son united to him. For this is what the blessed Paul says in his explanation: “Beware lest anyone carry you off as plunder through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” [n]

Against Anathema 6. The blessed Paul calls what God the Word took “the form of a servant.” But the taking came before the union, and the blessed Paul was speaking of the taking when he called the nature that was taken “the form of a servant”; so once the union was made, the name of “servitude” no longer has any place. For the apostle, writing to those who believed in him, said, “So you are not a servant, but a son,” and the Lord said to his disciples, “From now on I will not call you servants, but friends.” Much more, then, would the firstfruits of our nature, through whom even we were rewarded with the gift of adoption, be released from the title of servant. We therefore confess that even “the form of the servant” is God, because of the form of God united to it. And we bow to the authority of the prophet when he calls the infant Emmanuel, and calls the child who was born “Angel of great counsel, Wonderful Counselor, mighty God, Powerful, Prince of peace, and Father of the age to come.” Yet the same prophet, even after the union, when he proclaims the nature of what was taken, calls the one who is of the seed of Abraham “servant,” in the words, “You are my servant, O Israel, and in you I will be glorified,” and again, “Thus says the Lord, who formed me from the womb to be his servant,” and a little further on, “See, I have given you as a covenant of the people, as a light to the Gentiles, that you may be my salvation to the end of the earth.” But what was formed from the womb was not God the Word but the form of the servant. For God the Word was not made flesh by being changed; he took flesh with a rational soul. [p]

Against Anathema 7. If human nature is mortal, and God the Word is life and the giver of life, and raised up the temple that the Jews had destroyed, and carried it into heaven, how is the form of the servant not glorified through the form of God? For if, being mortal from the beginning and by nature, it was made immortal through its union with God the Word, then it received what it did not have; and having received what it did not have, and been glorified, it is glorified by the one who gave. That is why the apostle exclaims, “according to the working of his mighty power, which he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead.” [q] Against Anathema 8. As I have often said, the doxology we offer to the Lord Christ is one, and we confess that the same one is at once God and man, as the manner of the union has taught us. But we will not shrink from speaking of the distinct properties of the natures. For God the Word did not undergo a change into flesh, nor again did the man lose what he was and undergo a transformation into the nature of God. So we worship the Lord Christ while maintaining the properties of each nature.

Against Anathema 9. Here he has plainly had the audacity to anathematize not only those who hold pious views at the present time, but also those who in former days were heralds of the truth; yes, even the writers of the divine Gospels, the band of the holy apostles, and, on top of these, Gabriel the archangel. For it was he who first, even before the conception, announced the birth of Christ according to the flesh. When Mary asked, “How will this be, since I do not know a man?” he answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore also the holy thing that will be born of you will be called the Son of God.” And to Joseph he said, “Do not be afraid to take Mary your wife to yourself, for what is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.” And the evangelist says, “When his mother Mary was engaged to Joseph … she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.” And the Lord himself, when he had come into the synagogue of the Jews and had taken up the prophet Isaiah, read the passage where he says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me,” and so on, and then added, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” And the blessed Peter, in his sermon to the Jews, said, “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit.” And Isaiah, many ages before, had foretold, “A rod will come out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch will grow out of his roots; and the Spirit of the Lord will rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord,” and again, “See my servant, whom I uphold, my beloved, in whom my soul delights. I will put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.” The evangelist too has put this testimony into his own writings. And the Lord himself says to the Jews in the Gospels, “If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.” And John says, “He who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘The one on whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining, he is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’” So this precise examiner of the divine decrees has not only anathematized prophets and apostles and even the archangel Gabriel, but has let his blasphemy reach even the Savior of the world himself. For we have shown that the Lord himself, after reading the passage “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me,” said to the Jews, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” And to those who said that he was casting out demons by Beelzebub, he replied that he was casting them out by the Spirit of God. But we maintain that it was not God the Word, of one substance and coeternal with the Father, who was formed by the Holy Spirit and anointed, but the human nature that he took at the end of days. We will confess that the Spirit of the Son was his own, if he spoke of it as being of the same nature and proceeding from the Father, and we will accept the expression as consistent with true piety. But if he speaks of the Spirit as being from the Son, or as having its origin through the Son, we will reject this statement as blasphemous and impious. For we believe the Lord when he says, “the Spirit who proceeds from the Father,” and likewise the most divine Paul when he says, “We have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God.” [r]

Against Anathema 10. The unchangeable nature was not changed into the nature of flesh, but took human nature and set it over the common high priests, as the blessed Paul teaches in these words: “For every high priest taken from among men is appointed for men in things pertaining to God, to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins. He can have compassion on the ignorant and on those who have gone astray, since he himself also is surrounded by weakness. And because of this he ought, as for the people, so also for himself.” And a little further on, explaining this, he says, “As Aaron was, so also was the Christ.” Then, pointing out the weakness of the nature that was taken, he says, “In the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and was heard because of his godly fear, though he was a son, yet he learned obedience by the things that he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, named by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.” Who, then, is the one who was perfected by the labors of virtue, and was not perfect by nature? Who is the one who learned obedience by experience, and before his experience did not know it? Who is it that lived in godly fear and offered supplication with loud crying and tears, unable to save himself, but appealing to the one who is able to save him and asking to be released from death? Not God the Word, who cannot suffer, who is immortal and bodiless, the memory of whom is joy and release from tears, “for he has wiped away tears from all faces,” and again the prophet says, “I remembered God and was glad”; who crowns those who live in godly fear, “who knows all things before they come to be,” “who has all that the Father has,” who is the unchanging image of the Father, “who shows the Father in himself.” On the contrary, it is what he took from the seed of David: mortal, able to suffer, and afraid of death, although this nature itself afterwards destroyed the power of death through its union with the God who had taken it. It is what walked in all righteousness and said to John, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” This is what received the name of the priesthood of Melchizedek, for it had put on the weakness of nature; not God the Word, the Almighty. That is why, a little before, the blessed Paul said, “We do not have a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our weaknesses, but one who was tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin.” It was the nature taken from us for our sake that experienced our feelings without sin, not the one who took it for the sake of our salvation. And at the beginning of this part of his subject he teaches us in these words: “Consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Jesus, who was faithful to him who appointed him, as Moses also was faithful in all his house.” But no one who holds the right faith would call the unmade, the uncreated, God the Word, coeternal with the Father, a creature. On the contrary, that is what he would call the one of David’s seed who, being free from all sin, was made our high priest and sacrifice, after he had offered himself to God for us, having in himself the Word, God from God, united to him and inseparably joined to him. [s]

Against Anathema 11. In my opinion he appears to pay heed to the truth, so that by hiding his unsound views behind it he may not be caught asserting the same doctrines as the heretics. But nothing is stronger than the truth, which by its own rays uncovers the darkness of falsehood. With the help of its light we will make his unorthodox belief plain. In the first place, he has nowhere mentioned flesh endowed with a mind, nor confessed that the man who was taken was complete; everywhere, in keeping with the teaching of Apollinarius, he speaks of flesh. Second, having brought in the idea of mixing under other terms, he works it into his arguments; for here he clearly states that the Lord’s flesh is without a soul. For he says that if anyone states that the flesh of the Lord is not the very own flesh of the Word who is from God the Father, but that it belongs to someone other than he, let him be anathema. From this it is plain that he does not confess that God the Word took a soul, but only flesh, and that he himself stands in the place of a soul to the flesh. We, on the contrary, say that the Lord’s flesh, having a soul in it, was life-giving and rational, because of the life-giving Godhead united to it. And he himself, against his will, confesses the difference between the two natures, when he speaks of flesh and of “God the Word,” and calls it “his own flesh.” Therefore God the Word was not changed into the nature of flesh, but has his own flesh, the nature he took, and has made it life-giving by the union. [v]

Against Anathema 12. Suffering belongs to what can suffer; what cannot suffer is above sufferings. It was, then, the form of the servant that suffered, while the form of God, of course, dwelt with it, and allowed it to suffer for the sake of the salvation that comes from the sufferings, and made the sufferings its own because of the union. Therefore it was not the Christ who suffered, but the man taken from us by God. That is why the blessed Isaiah cries out in his prophecy, “A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” And the Lord Christ himself said to the Jews, “Why do you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth?” But what is threatened with death is not Life itself, but the one who has a mortal nature. And teaching this lesson in another place, the Lord said to the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” So what was destroyed was the temple descended from David; and after its destruction it was raised up by the only Son, the Word of God, begotten of the Father without suffering before the ages. [x]