The texts of the New Testament talk of Jesus Christ in terms that show both his humanity and his divinity. Through the First Council of Nicaea (325), theologians also spoke of Jesus in human and divine terms. St. Irenaeus of Lyons, among many others, gave us a wonderful Christology based on his assertion that Christ is both human and divine, in opposition to the Gnostics and Marcionites of his day. After 325, St. Athanasius of Alexandria defended God’s Trinitarian nature, largely basing his work on his Christology. St. Cyril of Alexandria, likewise, defended the Marian title “Theotokos” (often translated as “Mother of God”) through his Christology. In doing so, he developed a “one-subject” Christology, rejecting Nestorius’ “two-subject” Christology. Cyril’s Christology is important because it defines how we are to speak of Jesus Christ, Son of God, who took on human flesh and nature and dwelt among us.
In developing his Christology, Irenaeus did not speculate on how Jesus Christ’s divine and human natures might work.1 The issue of how Jesus Christ could be fully human and fully divine finally came to a head in the mid-fifth century. Nestorius (ca. 386 – ca. 450) was Archbishop of Constantinople from 428 to 431. Soon after taking that office, he preached a sermon in which he professed his discomfort with the way Christians had begun referring to the Virgin Mary as Θεοτόκος (Theotokos, “God-bearer” or “Mother of God”). He preferred the term Θεοδόχος (Theodochos, “God-receiver”).2 Others have pointed out that Nestorius would have accepted the term Χριστοτόκος (Christotokos, “Christ-bearer” or “Mother of Christ”) as well.3 Nestorius argued that a human cannot give birth to God. Thus, Mary bore the human Jesus, who was a temple for the Logos.4 Nestorius argued this because he believed that when we say that Mary is the Mother of God, we deny the fullness of Jesus’ humanity and his divinity.
Like Irenaeus and many other theologians before him, Nestorius builds his case on a comparison between Christ and Adam, wherein Christ recapitulated Adam’s acts and failures and thus succeeded at them, healing humanity and releasing us from the curse of sin.5 However, his chief inquiry is whether God has a mother.6 He quotes several Scriptures that seem to bolster his case, including Jesus’ words from John 3:6 (“What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit”), arguing that the Word “stooped down to raise up what had collapsed, but he did not fall.”7 He has problems with the idea that Jesus’ divine nature died at the crucifixion. Can God die? Nestorius argues no, writing: “If God died when consigned to the grave, the Gospel saying ‘Why do you seek to kill me, a man, who have spoken truth to you?’ [John 8:40] is meaningless.”8 Yet, “Christ is not a mere man, O slanderer! No, he is at once God and man.”9
It is important to note that Nestorius does not deny either the humanity or the divinity of Christ, nor does he deny that Jesus Christ had two natures. Instead, he argued that Christ put on our nature “like a garment,” that the “third day burial belonged to the man, not the deity.”10 In other words, Christ was both human and divine, but the divine nature was not fully affected by the suffering and death of Jesus’ human body and nature. “That which was formed in the womb is not in itself God,” he wrote.11 He reiterated his position in his second letter to Cyril on the subject, writing that “everywhere in Holy Scripture, whenever mention is made of the saving dispensation of the Lord, what is conveyed to us is the birth and suffering of the Lord, what is conveyed to us is the birth and suffering not of the deity but of the humanity of Christ . . . .”12 In his letter, he continues to build his argument on Scripture and reason, arguing that Jesus’ humanity and divinity are held separate from one another. “The body therefore is the temple of the Son’s deity, and a temple united to it by complete and divine conjunction, so that the nature of the deity associates itself with the things belonging of the body, and the body is acknowledged to be noble and worthy of the wonders related in the Gospels.”13 The word “conjoined” evokes for us the image of “conjoined twins”—twins who share one or more body parts but who each have their own personality and mental capacity. One example from my childhood was the two-headed monster from the Sesame Street television program who shared a torso but whose minds—and therefore heads—frequently were at odds with each other. Nestorius’ use of the word “conjoined” thus has the potential to be problematic because it leads to a belief that Jesus was double-minded, potentially to the point of inner turmoil and conflict.
Cyril’s response to Nestorius was as careful as Nestorius’ original argument, spanning several homilies and letters as the two bishops argued the matter. Cyril argues for what theologians have come to refer to as the doctrine of the hypostatic union. Hypostatic union may be defined as: “(1) the act by which a divine nature and a human nature are united in one hypostasis, and (2) the state of unity that results from that act.”14 Whereas Nestorius argues that the Logos dwelt within one specific human who was a sort of temple for the Logos, Cyril argues that the Logos dwelt within Jesus and joined their natures together in a unique way, thereby taking on humanity in general rather than a specific person.
In Cyril’s second letter to Nestorius, Cyril takes the position that Jesus Christ had two natures that were closely connected:
We do not say that the Logos became flesh by having his nature changed, nor for that matter that he was transformed into a complete human being composed out of soul and body. On the contrary, we say that in an unspeakable and incomprehensible way, the Logos united to himself, in his hypostasis, flesh enlivened by a rational soul, and in this way became a human being and has been designated “Son of man.” He did not become a human being simply by an act of will or “good pleasure,” any more than he did so by merely taking on a person.15
Cyril then argues that Christ had a fleshly birth, even though the Logos needs no second birth.16 But “‘for us and for our salvation,’ [Christ] united human reality hypostatically to himself.”17 Likewise, “his flesh tasted death,” not his divine nature, and thus “this is the sense in which we confess one Christ and Lord.”18 Cyril then turns to Nestorius’ idea that the human Jesus was a temple for the divine Word. He points out that “we do not worship a human being in conjunction with the Logos, lest the appearance of a division creep in by reason of that phrase, ‘in conjunction with.’”19 According to Cyril, though we might be tempted to think of the hypostatic union that Cyril describes as “pointless or unseemly,” we might find ourselves asserting that there are two Sons, which is problematic because it endangers the close connection of Christ’s two natures that Cyril has been arguing.20 “For [then] it becomes necessary to divide the integral whole and to say that on the one hand there is a proper human being who is dignified with the title of ‘Son,’ while on the other hand there is the proper Logos of God, who possesses by nature both the name and the exercise of sonship.”21 The Scripture does not say that the Word “united to himself the person of a human being but that he became flesh.”22
To Cyril, divine and human were so closely united within Jesus Christ that there was “only one subject or subsistent reality in Jesus.”23 The Virgin Mary may properly be called “God-bearer” because “the holy body which was born of her, possessed as it was of a rational soul, and to which the Logos was hypostatically united, is said to have had a fleshly birth.”24 The Son did not have his nature changed by taking on humanity, nor did one nature take precedence over the other, nor did the divine nature taste death when Jesus died, nor did the divine take on a human body as a type of avatar. Instead, Jesus Christ had both a human nature and a divine nature, and both were united hypostatically. This understanding of Christ builds on Irenaeus’ Christology which posits that Jesus had to be fully divine and fully human in order to heal humanity. If Jesus is less than human, less than divine, or even split into what Cyril calls “two sons”, his ability to heal humanity is limited or even blocked. Thus, the hypostatic union is a necessary doctrine of the Christian faith.
The Church accepted Cyril’s Christology. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 adopted a definition of Christ’s natures that was based on Pope Leo I’s letter to Flavian of Constantinople25 and on Cyril’s work to build a Christology based on Scripture, Christian tradition, reason, and experience. Cyril argued that Jesus Christ was fully divine and fully human, and his divine and human natures were united in one person. Despite needing no second birth, the divine Logos was united to the human Jesus at his conception by the power of the Holy Spirit and was subsequently born; the divine eternally begotten Son born in time to take on humanity for us and for our salvation.
1Joshua D. Allison, “St. Irenaeus’ Christology: Understanding the Work and Person of Jesus Christ,” unpublished manuscript, November 28, 2021.
2Richard A. Norris, Jr., “Introduction,” in The Christological Controversy, ed. and tr. by Richard A. Norris, Jr., (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1980), 26. I was unable to locate any reference to ἀνθρωποτόκος (anthropotokos, “bearer of humanity”) in the assigned readings for the class.
3Alister F. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction, 25th Anniversary Sixth Edition, (Hoboken: Wiley, 2016), 223. This text was assigned for ST6301: Interpreting the Christian Message and is cited here since the distinction between Theotokos and Christotokos helps explain Nestorius’ position.
4Nestorius of Constantinople, “First Sermon Against the Theotokos,” in Christological Controversy, 125.
5Nestorius, “Against the Theotokos,” 127.
6Nestorius, “Against the Theotokos,” 124.
7Nestorius, “Against the Theotokos,” 125.
8Nestorius, “Against the Theotokos,” 129. Scripture translation original to the text.
9Nestorius, “Against the Theotokos,” 129.
10Nestorius, “Against the Theotokos,” 128-129.
11Nestorius, “Against the Theotokos,” 130.
12Nestorius, “Second Letter to Cyril,” 137.
13Nestorius, “Second Letter to Cyril,” 138.
14Mike Higton, “Hypostatic Union” in The Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology ed. Ian A. McFarland, et al., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 230.
15Cyril of Alexandria, “Second Letter to Nestorius,” in Christological Controversy, 132-133.
16Cyril, “Second Letter,” 133.
17Cyril, “Second Letter,” 133.
18Cyril, “Second Letter,” 133.
19Cyril, “Second Letter,” 134.
20Cyril, “Second Letter,” 134.
21Cyril, “Second Letter,” 134.
22Cyril, “Second Letter,” 134.
23Norris, “Introduction” in Christological Controversy, 28.
24Cyril, “Second Letter,” 135.
25A tome which lies beyond our scope here but bears mentioning due to its importance.
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