McGuckin (pp. 214-216)

Unfortunately, the Antiochenes [Tom: John of Antioch, Theodoret, et. al., and Nestorius of course], in Cyril’s time, applied [hypostasis] to signify ‘concrete realities’, and it was, thus, for them almost a synonym for physis understood in the sense of natural properties constituting a genus. [Tom: The technical vocabulary was not yet set in stone; it was still in the process of settling, but Cyril anticipates what is to come by taking hypostasis and prosopon to be roughly equivalent] Just as they insisted on two natures (God and Man) so they insisted that there had to be two hypostases in Christ. They were applying hypostasis in its technical philosophical sense of that which made a real physis and presented it to observation as a concrete entity. In his correspondences relating to Theodoret, Cyril acknowledged this different use of hypostasis. He himself wished to reserve the word [Tom: hypostasis, that is] to signify subjectivity not natural property, but he meets Theodoret’s objections to his own insistence on the single divine hypostasis of the Christ. [Tom: Note that for Cyril ‘subjectivity’ = ‘subject’ = ‘hypostasis’.]

                Theodoret’s problem was that if a physis was not hypstatised, it was simply a notion, not a reality. [Tom: And he’s right on; Cyril agreed this far.] As in our earlier semantic discussions in regard to Nestorian doctrine, we could argue about a unicorn’s physis without ever having to believe that unicorns ‘really’ existed. The notional unicorn was fantastic because it was not hypostatized. If there was only one divine hypostasis in Christ, Theodoret argued, then Cyril’s Christ was certainly God, but he could not be a real man because his human physis had not been made real by having a corresponding human hypostasis. Cyril meets that objection in two ways. In the first instance a human physis humanly hypostatized must be a distinct human being. Like a generic unicorn that does not really exist, once it has been hypostatized it is a real unicorn. More precisely, it now has a name and an identity. So, Cyril argues, if Christ’s humanity was defined as humanly hypostatized then Christ would be a human person, the man Jesus. But in that case the Christological union would necessitate the destruction or abolition of the divine person (for a human person cannot be a divine person and vice versa) which is offensive to Christianity, or alternatively necessitate the acquiescence in having two personal centers in Christ. If this is the case, Cyril demands that the Antiochenes should openly admit that they teach Two Sons, and admit accordingly that in no sense can Christ be called one. If this were to happen, however, then the incarnation does not represent a dynamic interaction between God and Man at all, it is reduced to yet another prophetic epiphany, where God associates himself with a human being in a discontinuous parallel relationship—the inspiring God to the inspired man.

                Theodoret, of course, did not want to accept these Christological implications, but Cyril pressed him to admit that his own logic of double hypostasis demanded it. In his later writings, notably the Eranistes, Theodoret took the point and used Cyril’s terminology of the single hypostasis. If, however, one accepted the overriding principle that there was only one hypostasis in Christ, and that a divine one, did Theodoret’s criticism, that this implied a merely notional or abstract humanity, have a real force? Cyril argued, no.

                To assume that a hypostasis had to correspond with its own generic type was a generally applicable principle. So, a cat physis with a cat hypostasis becomes a real cat, and so on. But Cyril argues that the same rules do not apply in the case of the incarnation which is a unique ontological event. A cat physis cannot be realized by a human hypostasis, or a man’s physis by an elephant hypostasis, simply because these created realities are set within the bounds of their generic limitations, and these limitations are a fundamental part of creature-hood. All created things must obey the limits their nature sets upon them. In the case of the divine hypostasis, however, his nature sets no limit upon him whatsoever [Tom: That’s debatable, but go ahead]; as God he is untrammeled in power and actually expresses that power to create all kinds of natures and their corresponding hypostases. It is thus nothing extraordinary (except for its extraordinary particularity) that God the Word should create a human physis for himself. This he does, outside the normal generic processes, in the particular act of the direct fashioning of a human form in the womb of the virgin. He did not displace a human fetus that had a human hypostatic reality of its own, because there was never an instant when this human fetus existed independently of his personal creative act. It was a human fetus within Mary because it was created in the perfect attributes applicable to the human genus, and within a human womb, but it was unique in that it was the direct and personal presence of the Logos on which it depended for the inception of its existence, not on human insemination….

                In short, this human baby was personally hypostatized, directly and immediately, by the Word of God. [Tom: And THIS, D, is what I have always claimed cannot be the case with us.] He was human in so far as this meant he lived and moved within the attributes and conditions of the human genus, but he was also divine in so far as he lived and moved in the power of the Godhead which was ‘his own nature’. The divine hypostasis of Christ moved and lived within the human form, in the incarnate life, realizing an individual human and historical existence; but some important facts demanded notice, and chiefly that this living out of a human life was an exercise of divine power. The Word initiated the incarnation and sustained an incarnate life as an act of his own omnipotence. To this extent we have the paradox of a human (thus limited and fragile) life lived out as a direct expression of God’s power (so, the limited humanity walks on the sea and rises from its own death). What this amounts to is that Cyril’s doctrine of the single divine hypostasis insists that although Christ is entirely human, he is not a man, rather he is God made man, God enfleshed, God assuming humanity, or however else one cares to express it so as to bring out the centrally important notion that is was none other than the eternal Word of God who was the sole active subject of the human life of Jesus of Nazareth.

                Cyril’s doctrine has been attacked on the basis of two critiques related to this mono-hypostatic theory. The first, developing from Theodoret, is that Cyril’s idea of the humanity without a human hypostasis (often, though wrongly for reasons which we shall see, called the ‘non-hypostatic doctrine’) meant that he saw Christ’s manhood as abstract and notional, and to this extent defective. The second is that if Christ is God made man, but not particularly and precisely ‘an individual man’, then Cyril is again guilty of diminishing the concept of Christ’s real humanness to the point of Docetism: he is merely an apparent man.

                Neither criticism strictly applies to Cyril’s theology. Despite many avowals by later critics, Cyril did not believe that Christ’s humanity was non-hypostatic or merely generic simply because it did not possess an independent human hypostasis of its own [Tom: As is the case with us; Cyril’s entire argument assumes that was is true in the case of Christ, viz., human nature hypostatized by a sole divine hypostasis, is NOT the case with us; human nature in our individual cases is hypostatized in human hypostases]. For him the whole point of the incarnation was that Christ’s humanity was individual, and concrete, and real in the fullest possible sense, precisely because it was hypostatized by the Logos himself. [Tom: Unlike us.]

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Gotta run.

Tom

Page 185
One of his favourites was: 'The Logos suffered impassibly'.25 He has often been accused, largely by those who have not read him in context sufficiently, ...

 

http://books.google.com/books?id=QxhR9ihUAWkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Saint+Cyril+of+Alexandria+and+the+Christological+Controversy+Apollinaris#PPA185,M1

 

Wow, this is good!

Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 4/4/2009 7:40:00 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (One Love) : 4/5/2009 4:49:14 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Tom) : 4/5/2009 5:05:04 AM (GMT-5)