The Kenosis of Christ in the Context of Saint Cyril of Alexandria's Theology *

The Kenosis of Christ in the Context of Saint Cyril of Alexandria’s Theology 

Deac. FLORIN TOADER TOMOIOAGĂ University of Oradea, Faculty of Orthodox Theology “Episcop Dr. Vasile Coman”

1. The major features of Saint Cyril of Alexandria’s theological work The theological work of Saint Cyril of Alexandria (378-444) reflects the Church polemics from the 5th century, with the paganism which was living its last days, with the Judaism, which aimed at the restoration of the temple and mostly with various heterodox Christian teachings. The Alexandrian father was not only a man of his time, but as well the author which will leave the mark of his thinking upon the whole posterior development of the Christology, in the East through the Ecumenical councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451) and in the West through Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225- 1274).1 Offering a general picture of the great hierarch, fr. John McGuckin asserts that “Cyril of Alexandria was not only one of the finest Christian theologians of his day, he also stands out in the ranks of the greatest patristic writers of all generations as perhaps the most powerful exponent of Christology the Church has known and, after Athanasius, the writer who has had the greatest historical influence on the articulation of this most central and seminal aspect of Christian doctrine. When one adds to this the political aspects of his life, the fact that he occupied the throne of one of the most important sees of the Byzantine Oecumene and was, by virtue of that office, in the select ranks of the most powerful men in the world of his time, then the extraordinary range of his life and work stands out all the more vividly and in relief”.2 A profound and controversial figure, “for the Eastern Church he is the father of Orthodox Christology par excellence; a great exegete as well as a spiritual guide, a saint in the full range of his doctrine and his life’s energy and focus”. Considered by a minority of bishops “as a great heretical manipulator of the Church”, he was regarded by many “as a living saint and

A short version of this article was published under the title “The Crucified Lord of Glory – the Relationship Between Kenosis and Glorification in Saint Cyril of Alexandria’s Work”, in Orizonturi teologice, nr. 1/2013. 1 See HANS VAN LOON, The Dyophisite Christology of Cyril of Alexandria, (Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, vol. 96), Brill Publishing House, Leiden, Boston, 2009, p. 2. 2 St. Cyril of Alexandria: the Christological Controvery: its History, Theology, and Texts, (Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, vol. 23), E. J. Brill, Leiden, New York, Köln, 1994. 182 defender of the truth in a time of crisis in the manner of a new Athanasius or Gregory Nazianzen”.3 His theological work is even more impressive, taking into account the multitude of practical problems at which Saint Cyril had to give an answer. As Norman Russel writes, “When the Egyptian bishops assembled at a synod, they did not come to debate theological points with their Alexandrian colleague. They came to receive instructions from their patriarch”.4 The conflictual relationships with the Jews and with the heretics were not limited only to concrete measures, but they needed it a strong doctrinal motivation. In this respect, N. Russel affirms: “The theoretical relationship between Christianity and Judaism could not be established by burning a few synagogues, nor could erroneous views on the nature of the Trinity or the person of Christ be countered by episcopal fiat”.5 The necessity of an ecclesiastical doctrine able to offer a reliable answer to various challenges both from inside and from outside the Church was keenly felt. Saint Cyril “became a bishop at a time of greatly increased tension between Christians, pagans and Jews as a result of the Theodosian laws of 391”,6 through which the pagan worship was prohibited, the temples were deprived of subventions and the Jews were not allowed to attract new proselytes. Having “a combative cast of mind, sharpened on Aristotelian dialectics and steeped in the study of the Bible”,7 the patriarch of Alexandria possessed the necessary intellectual and spiritual qualities for such a mission. The great theologian conceives his polemic speech as a wide commentary over the Holy Scripture, referring permanently to the former patristic tradition and to the first Council of Nicaea (325). Regarding his interpretation of the Bible, N. Russel asserts: “Like all patristic exegetes he distinguishes between the historia, the historical or literal meaning, and the theoria the spiritual significance. Amongst Christian Platonists such as Origen or Gregory of Nyssa, the theoria was often interpreted as an allegory of the ascent of the soul to God. For Cyril, however, with his strongly christocentric emphasis, the spiritual sense always leads to some aspect of the mystery of Christ”.8 The literal meaning is not ignored, but Saint Cyril puts an emphasis on the allegorical one, in which can be contemplated the mysterium Christi. The whole Scripture is full of Christ, the Old Testament

3 JOHN A. MCGUCKIN, St. Cyril of Alexandria: the Christological Controvery …., p. 1. 4 Cyril of Alexandria, Routledge Publishing House, Londra and New York, 2000, p. 12. 5 IBIDEM, p. 12. 6 IBIDEM, p. 12. 7 IBIDEM, p. 12. 8 IBIDEM, p. 16. 183 announcing Him through “images and shadows” which require an interpretation in the light of New Testament. In the work of the Alexandrian theologian, one can notice, according to Norman Russel, three major concerns: “First of all, soteriological concerns are uppermost. It is these that determine his christology, just as his christology shapes his trinitarian theology. Secondly, he is fundamentally a Paulinist, deploying and developing many of the leading themes of Paul’s epistles. Thirdly, symmetries are important to him. The time of Adam is followed by the time of Christ, the descending movement of God by the ascending movement of man, kenosis by exaltation. Cyril’s polemics are directed against those who are perceived by him to block this descending and ascending pattern of salvation”.9 But for the Orthodox priest John A. McGuckin, the Christology holds the main position and all the other doctrinal points are defined in relationship with it: “The Christology of Saint Cyril is the driving force of his entire theological vision. Like Athanasius before him, Cyril understands the Church christological doctrine to be the central point to which and from which all other comprehensions run. It is the central resolution of all thought about revelation, atonement, and the ascent to the life-giving vision of God. The Christological argument is, thus, fundamentally about soteriology and worship, and this is why these aspects feature so strong in Cyril’s argument with Nestorius”.10 In our opinion, the above excerpts, without necessary being two antagonistic visions over the cyrilian work, express the concentrical character of the great hierarch’s Christology and soteriology. This means that any discussion about the redemption involves Christ and that any discussion about the person of the Saviour is necessary related to His redemptive work. The next paragraphs will be dedicated to some Christological aspects and especially to the relationship between Christ’s kenosis and glorification (exaltation) in the frame of the divine iconomy of redemption.

2. The importance of the Epistle to Philippians 2: 5-11 in Saint Cyril’s work A question of great importance involved in the way in which Saint Cyril presents the Incarnation is the relationship between the self-emptying of the Son and the divine glory, in the moment of His birth as a human being but also during His entire life on earth until the moment of His Ascension to Heaven. In order to reach a correct conclusion regarding this relationship, it is necessary to analyse several texts from the Saint Cyril’s work which deal

9 IBIDEM, p. 14. 10 JOHN A. MCGUCKIN, St. Cyril of Alexandria: the Christological Controvery ..., p. 175. 184 with the famous biblical fragment from the Epistle to Philippians 2: 5-11. The modern interpreters noticed that this is a central excerpt in the frame of his work and therefore the topic of the kenosis occupies a similar essential position.11 In Saint Cyril’s theological works, Philippians 2: 5-11 and the topic of the kenosis are shaped and reshaped continuously in order to underline: the reality of the Incarnation, its realism through the assumption of the fully human nature, the full consubstantiality of the incarnate Son with the human beings and, simultaneously, the preservation of His equality with God, the Father. From the perspective of the modern interpreters of Saint Cyril, the divine Logos “did not take to himself another human being, who by nature is a slave, but actually became himself one. Although the Logos of God is free, according to his own divine nature, in becoming Incarnate he has lowered himself to the human level of servitude and slavery. Human nature is said to be enslaved, and by becoming an ἄνθρωπος, the Word has come in the form of a slave”.12 The various descriptions of Christ’s human nature – γέγονε ἄνθρωπος, γέγονε σάρξ, γέγονε σῶμα, and γέγονε ἡ μορφὴ δούλου are synonymous terms13 and related to the kenosis.

3. What is the divine glory? Before discussing about the relationship between kenosis and divine glory, a short description of the divine glory from the perspective of the Alexandrian theologian would be more than useful. The word “glory” means the divine brightness that surrounds God as a garment, though being inaccessible to the eyes of the angels and of the human beings. The author evokes the vision of Isaiah in which the angels that surround the divine Throne cover their eyes to avoid being blinded by the burst of light which comes out of this throne.14 This is a natural quality which emanates from the divine Being, a Face of the Trinity turned towards the creation, as it is perceived from its perspective; a torrent of light that, in Saint Cyril’s work, seems to combine in a unique rainbow the diverse “colours” of the divine attributes. The divine love, the holy almighty and wisdom, the God’s absolute infinity and spirituality seem to be embraced altogether in glory, even if Saint Cyril does not present the relationship between glory and the divine attributes, in such minutely details.

11 IBIDEM, p. 186; p. 189. 12 STEVEN A. MCKINION, Words, Imagery and the Mystery of Christ. A Reconstruction of Cyril of Alexandria’s Christology (Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, vol. 55), Brill Publishing House, Leiden, Boston, Köln, 2000, p. 168. 13 IBIDEM, p. 171. 14 CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA, In Johannis Evangelium I, 10 (PG 73, 176 D-177 B). 185 4. The kenosis as an assumption of the human limitation Excepting few expressions apparently ambiguous, Saint Cyril does not see the kenosis as an emptying of the divine glory, in the real meaning of the word. The kenosis is firstly an assumption of the human limitation15 (including death), and not an exhaustion of a divine attribute or of the glory itself. The kenosis means that the Infinite admits the experience of the finite, that it is framed in the finite and that lives fully and simultaneously both dimensions involved by the two natures of Christ. The experience of both the human limitation and the divine infinity is expressed by the use of the verbs “to seem” or “to appear”. “Cyril often speaks of Christ who «seeming» (dokein) to pray, appearing to grow in knowledge, seeming to be humiliated, appearing to be troubled and sorrowful, seeming to succumb to death, and appearing to be exalted in the resurrection. In fact, Cyril says that he seemed to undergo all the limiting experiences proper to humanity”.16 “What he means by it is not to deny the genuiness of the experiences per se, but to insist that they do not tell the whole story. This is simply because they are focusing on the limitations of the human economy and Cyril wishes to remind his readers that although the Word assumed those limits in his earthly condition, he did so as an act of power that did not negate his unlimited condition as God. Just as a mountain, from the distance, seems to be small, but on approach its great size makes us reconsider our judgement, so in the case of Christ, his full reality would make us reconsider any definitive statement that he was ignorant because he only knew two languages at most in his lifetime. To say «he seemed to be limited» means, then, that although he was limited in his human life, he remained unlimited as God, and the observer is required by the terms of his faith to discern the deeper reality behind the material forms: the deity veiled in the flesh”.17

5. Christ’s divinity and His equality with the Father in the kenosis The discussion about the relationship between the kenosis and the glory of Christ represents the frame in which Saint Cyril affirms the divinity of Christ and His equality with the Father, against those who denied them. For the latter, the glory is acquired by Christ at His Ascension to Heaven as a reward for some moral merits, while the consubstantiality and the equality of the Son with the Father are totally rejected. For the Alexandrian bishop,

15 See CHRISTOS KRIKONIS, “Κύριλλος Αλεξανδρείας και η Χριστολογική διδασκαλία του” (Cyril of Alexandria and his Christological Teaching), in Πρακτικά ΙΘ’ θεολογικού Συνεδρίου με θέμα «Ο Άγιος Κύριλλος Αλεξανδρείας», Thessaloniki, 1999, p. 213-284. 16 JOHN A. MCGUCKIN, Saint Cyril of Alexandria, the Christological Controversy…, p. 216-217. 17 IBIDEM, p. 218. 186 the glory is something which intimately belongs to the Son, just like His divinity and His sovereignty over the creation. Because the Son shares the same privileges as the Father and is above all the creation, together with the Father, He does not have the glory added as a gift,18 but as a natural quality. Frequently, when he intends to demonstrate the divine nature of the Son, Saint Cyril discusses about the divine glory and about the equality of the Son with the Father. The reiterated statements that the Son has the divine glory, that He maintains it after the Incarnation and that he manifests it, represent various ways of indicating the divine status which the Son has got naturally, being eternally begotten from the Father. The humiliation of the Incarnation does not affect the divinity of Christ, neither His equality with the Father. Opposing the orthodox creed to the heterodox one, the Alexandrian patriarch states that the former recognises the full equality in nature and dignity of the Son with the Father, while the latter denies them because of His submission due to the kenosis.19 The kenosis does not modify the divine nature but signifies the assumption of the human nature by the divine Logos. Being the immaculate beauty of God the Father, His image and His revelation, He willingly descended and emptied Himself preserving the dignity of His own nature, but assuming iconomically the human nature.20 As the Imprint, Image and Radiance of the Father, the Son manifests in Himself the beauty of all the “divine prerogatives” that the Father also has: glory, power, wisdom,21 goodness and life.22 He carries out the divine attribute of Judger of the world (see Jn. 5:22) and is Giver of life, offering the gift of resurrection to those who wish (see Jn. 5:21).23 The immortality, the incorruptibility and all the divine goods belong to Him in a perfect way and are not added from outside.24 In an extremely theologically dense page, Saint Cyril displays the main verses from Saint Paul’s epistles which ascribe to the Son an exceptional prerogative that usually belongs to the Father: the resurrection of the dead. It is another argument favourable to the equality of glory between the Father and the Son.25 The equality between Christ and the Father is reflected as well in the identity of their will, in Christ’s creative and healing work, in His royal dignity by virtue of which He governs over the creation and in the adoration He receives from the angels and from the

18 In Johannis Evangelium IV, 4 (PG 73, 812 A). 19 In Johannis Evangelium IV, 1 (PG 73, 537 A). 20 De sancta et consubstantiali Trinitate Ι, (PG 75, 692 D - 693 A). 21 In Johannis Evangelium IX (PG 74, 196 A). 22 In Johannis Evangelium IX (PG 74, 209 D-212 A). 23 In Johannis Evangelium II, 6 (PG 73, 364 B-D). 24 In Johannis Evangelium V, 5 (PG 73, 833 D - 836A). 25 De sancta et consubstantiali Trinitate ΙII, (PG 75, 841 B). 187 human beings, thus from the whole creation.26 Saint Cyril’s argumentation, as it is noticed in the commentary he makes to Jn. 3:35 (“The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand”) reaches the conclusion that both divine persons must be equally honoured and worshiped.27

6. Christ’s “inferiority” in regard to the Father However, through the Incarnation, the Son becomes, from a certain perspective, lower than the Father. It is interesting the way in which Saint Cyril alternates the statements about the greatness of the Son with those regarding His humiliation, His descent to the level of a being, inferior to God the Father. It is necessary to be noticed that this humiliation does not affect at all the divine nature of the Son, allowing then the simultaneous affirmation of Christ’s greatness (after His divine nature) and of His humiliation (after His human nature). These two levels are emphasised more and more as one enters more deeply in the network of ideas that compose the Cyrilian Christology. In the interpretation of Phil. 2:5-11, Saint Cyril underlines the simultaneity of those two levels. Nevertheless, he stresses more the consubstantiality and the equality of Christ with the Father. To those who denied them, he addressed the following question: if the Son was “the form of the Father and equal with Him”, how is He lower than the Father? If that was the case, the Incarnation and the humiliation wouldn’t have emptied the Son of the dignity which He has by nature.28 In other words, if the Son had been lower than the Father, He wouldn’t have been able to humble, He wouldn’t have been able to descend deeper, because in relationship with the Father, He had already been lower. Only because He was consubstantial and equal with the Father, was He able to humble Himself, “taking upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:7-8). If He had been lower before the Incarnation, the Incarnation wouldn’t have been permitted to the Son to empty Himself of the “dignity which He has by nature”, because He hadn’t any such dignity. We can assume according to Saint Cyril’s words that through the Incarnation, the Son empties Himself of the “dignity which He has by nature”, hence of the dignity to be recognised by the people as God equal with the Father. He underlines even more this idea when affirms that the

26 In Johannis Evangelium II, 8 (PG 73, 376 C-D). 27 In Johannis Evangelium II, 4 (PG 73, 280 D-281A). See STEVEN A. MCKINION, Words, Imagery and the Mystery of Christ…, p. 134. 28 In Johannis Evangelium I, 3 (PG 73, 44 B). 188 Son emptied Himself of His superiority29 in front of the people. It is necessary to point out that this “emptying”, alike the “emptying of glory” it is not an ontological emptying, because the divine Logos remains what He was previously to the Incarnation. He could only remain in “the image and the equality with the Father”, even if simultaneously He lives the humiliation of His body, and this body is more visible for those who don’t believe in Him. This truth is found throughout the whole work of Saint Cyril. The “emptying” of the Son comes, from a certain point of view, from the experience of the human limitations, of his slavery, but more accentuated from the people’s inability to grasp the godly-human riches of Christ. It is the humiliation of not being recognised by all as God, a humiliation that issues out of the kenosis of assuming the form of a slave and which amplifies this slavery. If the kenosis of assuming the form of a slave ceased along with Lord’s Ascension to Heaven (because His human nature is completely deified and exalted, being elevated at the unlimited horizon of the divinity), Christ continues to live a humiliation provoked by the attitude of the unbelievers that insist to deny Him as God. This kind of humiliation will cease only at His second Coming “when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels” (Mk. 8:38)30 and therefore everybody will see Him as God. But in this “Self-emptying”, the initiative belongs to the Son: the humiliation assumed through the Incarnation involves the possibility to be denied as God, to be treated as a simple human being by His fellows. Therefore, it is not an “emptying” entailed forcefully by the people, but it is one that He agrees. He empties Himself of the dignity of being equal with God,31 asserts Saint Cyril. Therefore He does not give up to the dignity of being equal with God but he exposes it to the denials, by the fact that He does not manifest it openly and frightening, but “filtered” through His assumed humanity, and thus impregnated by meekness, mercy, modesty, corporality. In other words, Christ loses His equality with the Father in front of the people, but preserves it in front of God the Father. After the analysis of many kenotic excerpts which exclude the idea of giving up and emptying of divine glory at the Incarnation, there appears the following question: could we talk maybe about a diminution of the incarnate Son’s divine glory? Is it the Incarnation a diminution of the glory due to the fact that the people don’t perceive anymore Christ as the Lord of glory? The fact that He assumed body and soul may “obturate” the “visibility” of the divine radiance that naturally bursts out of His divine

29 De sancta et consubstantiali Trinitate ΙV, (PG 75, 881 B). 30 In Johannis Evangelium I, 3 (PG 73, 44 B). 31 In Johannis Evangelium III, 1 (PG 73, 409 C). 189 nature? The answer can be only a negative one. The divine Logos does not lose, nor diminish His glory along with the Incarnation. As a matter of fact, Saint Cyril applies to Christ the vision of Isaiah and sees the Son in the middle of the circle made by the blissful angels.32 And this image is valid not only previously to the Incarnation, but as well after it. The Son remains a Son exalted by the angels, preserving a divine greatness which cannot be grasped by the human eye without being injured. Through the Incarnation, He seems to have been abandoned the “equality with God the Father” and “His invisible glory”.33 This is one of the possible explanations which the Alexandrian writer ascribes to Phil. 2:7: “He emptied Himself”. In reality, the Son has the divine glory, overflowed through His manifestations even if it is not recognised as such by His enemies.

7. The kenosis as “emptying” of the human glory If Saint Cyril mentions an emptying of glory and a lack of glory regarding the Saviour, these are not related to His divine nature,34 but to the human one. The Alexandrian father notes explicitly that the Son, although He became a man and wore our weak and modest body, didn’t fall from the primordial glory.35 The kenosis does not overcome the uncreated glory which He has by nature.36 Translating in Romanian Περὶ Ἁγίας τὲ καὶ ὁμοούσιου Τριάδος, father Stăniloae feels the necessity to interpret the expression “καθἰκετο γἀρ είς κένωσιν”37 as follows: the Logos “descended to the emptying (of glory)”.38 In brackets he inserts his own interpretation

32 In Johannis Evangelium VII-VIII frgm. (PG 74, 97 C-D). 33 In Johannis Evangelium XI, 12 (PG 74, 564 A). 34 Saint Cyril takes a stand against two radical understandings of kenosis from his time: a first one which affirms that through the Incarnation, the Son emptied the Heavens and the paternal bosom of His hypostatic presence, although according to His divinity and nature, coexisted with the Father (See CHRISOSTOMOS A STAMOULIS, Κυρίλλου Αλεξανδρείας. Κατά ανθρωπομορφιτών (Cyril of Alexandria. Against Anthropomorphites), Publishing House “To Palimpsiston”, Thessaloniki, 1993, pp. 171-180); and a second one which is a version of the previous one, but which on the contrary, asserts that during Son’s living among people on the Earth, He “left the Heavens emptied of His divinity” (See CHRISOSTOMOS A STAMOULIS, Κυρίλλου Αλεξανδρείας. Κατά ανθρωπομορφιτών (Cyril of Alexandria. Against Anthropomorphites)…, p. 181). Saint Cyril answers with biblical and rational proofs against these extreme understandings of kenosis, which are after all a radicalisation of the more “soft” theory of kenosis as an emptying of the divine glory. The two theories, considered dangerous and senseless by Saint Cyril, will reappear in the 16th Century and afterwards in Western theology under the form of the “kenotic theories”. 35 In Johannis Evangelium I, 9 (PG 73, 164 B). 36 De sancta et consubstantiali Trinitate VI (PG 75, 1033 A). 37 De sancta et consubstantiali Trinitate VI (PG 75, 1033 A). 38 SF. CHIRIL AL ALEXANDRIEI, Despre Sfânta Treime, în Scrieri, partea a treia, trad. introducere şi note Pr. prof. dr. Dumitru Stăniloae, în PSB 40, Ed. IBMBOR, 1994, p. 250. 190 which does not exist in the Greek text. Thus, it is obvious from the original text that the uncreated and natural glory is not rejected in the event of kenosis. Due to His love for us, He descended indeed to a humble status, He descended to our lack of glory,39 to the lack of majesty of the body.40 As easily can be noticed, therefore, through the Incarnation He does share the lack of glory of the assumed humanity41 (finitude in knowledge, power, so on), a lack even more impressive if compared with the radiance of His divine glory. But there is a second meaning of Son’s emptying of glory. It is the emptying of the glory as honour received from the people; it is the humiliation of the One who performs miracles but not with the purpose of impressing and of receiving praises; it is the modesty of the One that avoids an earthly glory when He is hailed by the flock at His triumphal entry into Jerusalem or when the Jewish challenge Him to get off the Cross in order to believe in Him. These few examples sum up the Saviour’s delicate attitude who permanently intends to offer room for faith, for free choice, who does not want to violate people’s freedom and refuses to come into prominence in an irrefutable way. “I seek not mine own glory” (Jn. 8:50) is paraphrased by Saint Cyril in the sense that the divine Logos didn’t come to obtain from us glory and fame, but on the contrary, He humbled Himself becoming man.42 If this is the true purpose of the Incarnation, how would He care for an earthly glory and wouldn’t rather endure willingly the lack of glory, on others’ behalf?43 It is thus obvious that Christ refuses a worldly glory but He has got to the full the divine one. Only in this meaning the frequent expression in the contemporary Orthodox theology that the kenosis represents the Logos’s emptying of glory44 remains acceptable. If the nature

39 In Johannis Evangelium X, 1 (PG 74, 312 A). 40 De sancta et consubstantiali Trinitate ΙV, (PG 75, 913 A). 41 André Laurentin writes: “C’est parce qu’il est venu dans la chair que la gloire de sa nature divine y pénètre et y progresse. Par la chair, il est devenu sans gloire; avec la chair, il doit revenir lui-même à la gloire” (Doxa I- Problèmes de Christologie. Jean 17-5 et ses commentaires patristiques, 1st vol., Blound & Gay, Paris, 1972, p. 115). In order to exemplify his assumptions, following A. Dupré La Tour (“La doxa du Christ, dans les oeuvres exégétique de saint Cyrille d’Alexandrie”, Recherches de science religieuse, nr . 48/1960, pp. 531-537), André Laurentin offers a few synonimous expressions which convey the idea of emptying of glory (“il a quitté la gloire” - He abandoned the glory, “il s’est mis hors de la gloire” - He put Himself out of the glory, “comme s’il n’avait pas la gloire” - as if He hadn’t had the glory and so on). The conclusion is that all these expressions function at the level of appearances because Saint Cyril denies that Christ was lacking in glory (Doxa I- Problèmes de Christologie. Jean 17-5 et ses commentaires patristiques…, p. 115, footnote 154). 42 In Johannis Evangelium VI (PG 73, 913 A). 43 In Johannis Evangelium VI (PG 73, 913 A-B). 44 It is obvious that the authors refer to the divine glory. 191 of this glory is not specified, the kenosis can easily be understood in a Protestant way, due to the multiple Christological implications which this expression has. Saint Cyril notes the simultaneity between the preservation of the divine glory and the emptying of the human glory (the lack of human glory).45 The fragment from the Epistle to Philippians 2:7 (“the Logos emptied Himself”), essential in the understanding of the kenosis, seems to indicate, etymologically speaking, a movement of emptying from the Logos’s part. In an anthropological representation of the Incarnation, we could imagine that the Logos gives up something essential that defines Him as God, to “make room” for the assuming of the human nature so that He could become truly a man. The imperative of the verb “κενόω” convinces the Russian theologian Serge Bulgakov to search for that essential element to which the Son would have renounced in becoming man, and identifies it with the divine glory. In such a Christological frame in which the Logos must lose something in order to be able to assume something else, Bulgakov’s Christology is developed. For Bulgakov, to speak about a real kenosis of the Word would be impossible without the acceptance of this principle. On the contrary, Saint Cyril insists on the integral preservation of the incarnate Logos’s divine nature and attributes, but as well on the full character of the kenosis. The two dimensions do not mutually exclude themselves, but affirm one another in an antinomical complementarity. It is interesting to observe the way Saint Cyril succeeds to maintain the doctrinal balance between Christ’s real kenosis and the integrity of His divine nature, after the Incarnation. In the commentary he makes to Jn. 16:27-28 (“I came out from God; I came forth from the Father”), he admits that the Logos, in a certain way, “comes out” from His own nature, which is Father’s nature, in order to became a human being.46 For our salvation, the Son “left”, in a certain way, the equality with God the Father and seems to have abandoned His invisible glory.47 From a human perspective, it is a movement, a “jump” in another ontological dimension, but this “jump” does not involve the abandonment of the initial dimension from which He “came out”. In this kenotic “coming out” we observe the human way of expression, because actually He “comes out” from Himself, without losing what He had previously, or, in the words of Saint Cyril, “assuming what He was not but keeping what was His own”.48 In the same way in which at His Ascension to

45 De sancta et consubstantiali Trinitate ΙV, (PG 75, 913 A). 46 In Johannis Evangelium XI, 2 (PG 74, 465 B). 47 In Johannis Evangelium XI, 12 (PG 74, 564 A). 48 In Johannis Evangelium XI, 2 (PG 74, 465 B). 192 Heaven He did not abandon the people, He did not left His Father when He became a man.49 Presenting the relationship between the humiliation and glory, Saint Cyril stresses the way in which the divine glory is manifested in and by Christ. The glory does not manifest itself openly, as in the epoch of the Old Testament, but through the assumed human nature. And the human nature is not an opaque mean which does not allow the glory to stream around Christ, but is the filter which makes it accessible to the human eyes and understanding. Only thus the disciple may affirm, as a conclusion to Saviour’s entire life: “and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn. 1:14). What does this “filter” more concretely mean? This question sends us back to the problem of the way in which Christ manifests His divine power and, generally speaking, all His attributes. In healing a sick man, for example, the divine love, the omnipotence, the perfect love are present in Christ as the incarnate Logos. He carries them out simultaneously with His human feelings of mercy, compassion, affection, love, understanding, simultaneously with His bodily actions (as, for example, touching the eyes of the sick with His hands), but they are so penetrated of divine attributes, that it is impossible to say in what measure, in an action performed by Christ, something is divine or human. The theandrism impregnates the Saviour’s entire activity, He manifests Himself in a theandric way and is theandric.50 Therefore, in the miracles that the disciples and those surrounding Him see, they see the glory of Christ as a concrete manifestation of an immanent quality in Him as God. In spite of all these, Saint Cyril repeatedly asserts that the divine glory is diminished by the Jews.51 In what way could this happen? Is it an objective diminution of the Son’s inner glory or a subjective one, provoked by their dullness to perceive it in its brilliance but not less real, although blended with Christ’s human energies? The Cyrilian works recommend the last option. Jews’ obstinacy to accept Christ as the Son of God brings them to unbelief, to deliberate and conscious rejection of the Saviour. And because the unbelief represents spiritual blindness, ignorance,52 denial and

49 In Johannis Evangelium XI, 2 (PG 74, 468 C). 50 John A. McGuckin writes on this topic: “There is no instance of a purely divine act in the incarnation (no sole Logos-act), nor is there any instance of a purely human deed (a man’s act)… Each and every single act of the incarnate Logos was, for Cyril, an act of God enfleshed within history; and thus an act where deity and humanity were synchronised as one theandric reality” (Saint Cyril of Alexandria, the Christological Controversy…, p. 200). 51 In Johannis Evangelium IV, 1 (PG 73, 552 B-C). 52 In Johannis Evangelium II, 5 (PG 73, 348 D). 193 rejection of the evidence, in this case is their disability to see His glory,53 although this one is not concealed. They commit blasphemy because they want to dilapidate Christ, not knowing that He wanted to come not with His open divinity, but incarnate from the seed of David.54 Christ’s body is indeed an objective factor that detains the spiritual eyes to perceive God directly, beyond the assumed material garment. Saint Cyril expresses this fact through an allegory of great beauty. In his interpretation, the Ark of the Covenant housed in the Tabernacle of the Old Testament, invisible from the Holy Place (Ex. 25:10-16; 26:31-35) foreshadowed Christ. The two stone tablets that laid down in the Ark of the Covenant foreshadowed the Hypostatic union, because the Law of Moses was as well the word of God, but not the hypostatic Word, as it is the Son.55 The curtain which covered the Holy of Holies and thus the Ark of the Covenant is considered another symbol of Christ’s human nature, symbol that reminds us of His contemporaries’ inability to perceive the mystery of His divinity.56 Using Saint Paul’s metaphor from the Epistle to the Hebrews,57 Saint Cyril affirms that as in the temple, the veil was hiding the Holy of Holies, thus Lord’s body didn’t allow Christ’s glory to be seen in an open and unhidden way.58 So the Logos mantles His divine glory in the “veil” of His human body, but in the same time unveils it to those who have eyes to see it.59 The belief is the necessary quality for this kind of seeing, which the more it grows, the better is the perception of Christ’s divine brilliance. The belief brings the apostles closer and closer to Christ’s mystery, until the glorious unveiling of His divine identity on the Mount Tabor. On the other hand, as it has been anticipated in the previous fragment, the Saint hierarch does not exclude a certain diminution of Logos’s glory through the assumption of the body. But this does not refer to a renunciation of glory, but to the humble status that He has as a human being after the Incarnation. The Logos descended to a state in want for glory

53 In Johannis Evangelium V, 2 (PG 73, 777 B-C). 54 In Johannis Evangelium VII-VIII frgm. (PG 74, 25 A). 55 In Johannis Evangelium IV, 4 (PG 73, 621 A). 56 In Johannis Evangelium IV, 4 (PG 73, 621 A). 57 Heb. 10, 19-20: “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh”. 58 SAINT CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA, That Christ is One, transl. P. E. Pusey, in A Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church, Anterior to the Division of the East and West (LFC), nr. 47, London, Oxford and Cambridge, 1881, p. 298. 59 In Johannis Evangelium IX (PG 74, 140 C). 194 in its human part.60 He comes to His fellows in the humble image of the slave and appears to them usually as One of them, intending to introduce them gradually in the mystery of His divinity. He does not appear all of a sudden and out of nowhere, does not scare them with the supernatural images through which He manifested Himself in the Old Covenant, but submits Himself to the human natural laws, to birth, growth and development. He rises out of a modest Jewish family, grows in wisdom and in time, subjects Himself to His parents and to all the Jewish prescription. In this frame, Jesus calls the Father His God, thanks Him because He listens His prayers, accepts to be sent into the world in His name. He is baptised in Jordan and receives the Holy Spirit, He, who is the Giver of the Spirit and consubstantial with Him. He, who is the Voice of the prophets, manifests Himself as a Prophet. Christ’s humble ways of manifesting Himself do not violate the human freedom and belief. They allow people to get closer to Him in a free way, to accept Him through faith or to reject Him through the lack of faith. The kenosis acts like a protective screen which allow to the human beings to get closer to the burning fire of God and the more they become more intimate with Him, the more they get more and more light from God. But if the human beings do not answer Christ with faith, their sight blocks itself only on the assumed humanity of the Son and they are not able anymore to perceive His divine glory. This is what happens to the Jews, which judge Him only according with His body, rejecting the miracles as proofs of His divinity.61 Because of the body, they do not recognize the One who lives in the body.62 This is the reason why, in Saint Cyril’s vision, Christ vituperates the Jews.63 But it is true as well that the Saviour strives always to diminish His dignity and speaks in a very humble way, not very adequate with His divine glory.64 But these expressions don’t have to deceive us. It is not about a diminution of His divine dignity and glory in the proper meaning of the word, but about His intention to focus Jews’ attention on His human nature. Christ presents Himself frequently as a man to avoid provoking the Jews, each time when His divine character and glory break powerfully through His actions and words. In this way, He accustoms them to the idea that He is the incarnate Son of God. The right understanding of this perspective is easier if we notice the communication idiomatum, a consequence which results from the hypostatic

60 That Christ is One, LFC 47 (1881), p. 309. 61 In Johannis Evangelium V, 4 (PG 73, 820 B-C). 62 In Johannis Evangelium II, 5 (PG 73, 349 A). 63 In Johannis Evangelium V, 2 (PG 73, 784 B-D). 64 In Johannis Evangelium V, 5 (PG 73, 845 D). 195 union and on which Saint Cyril insists in many fragments. In one of the most significant fragments, it develops the idea from Jn. 3:13: “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven”. Descending from heaven the Word of God, the Evangelist says that has descended the Son of man.65 The divine Logos appropriates thus the humiliation which characterizes the human nature, but this humiliation does not affect the divine nature. Communication idiomatum is one of the main clues in understanding the multiple levels on which the kenosis takes place: it denotes identity with the Father on the divine level, on one side, and on the other side, inequality on the human level; in fore-front, the incarnate Logos which lives both His divinity and His humanity. While the heretics think in a fragmentary way, stressing the human level which shows Christ inferior to the Father, the Orthodox teaching is a holistic one and affirms the simultaneity of these two levels.

8. The kenosis as a manifestation of the divine glory In Saint Cyril’s interpretation, there are three modalities in which Christ manifests His divine glory and through this, His quality as the Son of God: miracles, words and passions. We have seen previously that in His miracles, His divine glory was explicit. We must notice that due to the kenosis, Christ manifests His divine power and glory only on the measure we are able to suffer it. It is a kenotic adaptation at our level of acceptance and understanding of the divine. Similarly, in His hypostasis, the divine nature accommodates to the human nature, and thus the latter is able to endure it and it is not destroyed by the brilliant fire of its glory, in the same manner in which the fire didn’t consumed the burning bush that Moses had seen.66 The same thing is true for Christ’s prophetic dignity. Accommodating Himself to our possibilities of understanding, the Redeemer reveals gradually His identity, avoiding to hurt the monotheistic sensibility of His contemporaries.67 Being the supreme Prophet and thus the Revealer of the divine things, He introduces us gradually in His mystery, combining the assertions about His humanity with those about His divinity. When the latter provoked the Jews, Jesus used a humble language, adapted to people’s sensibility.68 Thus, in Jn. 10:30, Christ presents His consubstantiality with the Father (“I and my Father are one”), but in Jn. 8:40, He defines Himself as “a man that hath told you the truth”.69 The Jews

65 In Johannis Evangelium II, 1 (PG 73, 249 C). 66 That Christ is One, LFC 47 (1881), p. 265. 67 De sancta et consubstantiali Trinitate Ι, (PG 75, 684 B). 68 In Johannis Evangelium VII-VIII frgm. (PG 74, 16 A). 69 In Johannis Evangelium VII-VIII frgm. (PG 74, 21 D). 196 were easily able to accept the last statement, but they were definitely against the first one. For them, Christ’s humanity excluded from the very beginning the possibility of an ontological union with God. But we know Him – asserts Saint Cyril – as being equal with the Father as well from the measures of His humanity.70 If sometimes the Redeemer presents Himself according to the human nature or to the divine one, other times His words reflect more the unity of these natures. In the frame of Saviour’s promise that at His prayer the Father will send to the apostles the Holy Spirit (Jn. 14:16-17), Saint Cyril notices Christ’s theandrism and the hypostatic union of the two natures. In this case, Christ speaks simultaneously as a God and as a man, still not exclusively as a God, nor exclusively as a man.71 This divine pedagogy of “combining the human and the divine”72 is not a simple game. Through it, Christ guides us gradually to the deep mystery of His consubstantiality with the Father: “He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me” (Jn. 12, 44).73 The Alexandrian patriarch requires his enemies not to despise Christ considering Him lower than the Father because of His humble way of speaking and acting. The humble words from Jn. 8:28 (“I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things”) are considered by Saint Cyril Christ’s accommodations to human weakness,74 accommodations that aim at avoiding the charge of blasphemy. They are “accommodations” because in their frame the Redeemer stresses the kenotic aspect of His person and does not remind His auditory about His divine nature. But this kind of accommodations is not a simple wordplay, with a docetic base, but it is based on the real assumption of the form of slave, due to which the Son of God can really experience the human humiliation. Thus, His humiliation is not only a declaratory one, but a practical one; it derives from the assumption of the form of slave and allows to the Son to express Himself in a way as human as possible.75 It is a descent to the measure of our incapacity to understand Him and to accept all of a sudden the mystery of His theanthropism, a nuance of the kenosis as protection for our humanity; it is the gentleness which avoids provoking and enraging even more the Jews through His audacious words. From the same reason, the Saviour ascribes not only His words to the Father, but His entire earthly mission. He recognizes that He is sent by the Father (Jn. 5:23, 26, 37; 6:44,

70 In Johannis Evangelium VII-VIII frgm. (PG 74, 21 D-24 A). 71 In Johannis Evangelium, IX (PG 74, 256 B). 72 In Johannis Evangelium VII-VIII frgm. (PG 74, 101 D). 73 In Johannis Evangelium VII-VIII frgm. (PG 74, 101 C-D). 74 In Johannis Evangelium V, 5 (PG 73, 832 C). 75 In Johannis Evangelium V, 5 (PG 73, 845 D). 197 57; 8:18, 29, 42; 20:21) and consequently submits to Him “and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Phill. 2:8). Despite all these, nothing is slavish in Christ, because He has the power and government above all.76 The purpose of this succession of paradoxical statements is to demonstrate the fact that, despite His humble Incarnation, the Son has remained equal and consubstantial with the Father. The third way of Christ’s manifestation of His divine glory is not related anymore to His miracles and words, but paradoxically to His suffering which will culminate in the event of the Cross. After passing in review a series of miracles performed by Christ (the calming of the storm on the sea, Lazarus’s resurrection, the feeding of five thousand people in the wilderness)77 as humble modalities of manifesting His glory, the Alexandrian saint indicates the supreme way: His passions for the life of the world and His Resurrection.78 This is the way of glory on which Christ’s disciples are invited to step, to follow “in the footsteps of His glory”, and His glory is the descent to such a humiliation that He endured to be offended, ridiculed and accused that He is possessed, drunk and a fruit of fornication.79 Christ remains actually “the Lord of glory”.80 In full accord with the patristic tradition, the crucifixion is glorification and the cross is glory.81 On the Cross, Christ revealed His glory both as defeat through suffering and as victory against death. If some of Saint Cyril’s expressions related to glory seem to involve a certain ambiguity, this ambiguity is due not to a lack of coherence of his thinking, but to a limitative terminology, unable to catch entirely the content of the divine Revelation with Christ in its centre. Only the paradoxical formulas, coincidenta oppositorum – so difficult to be understood by his adversary, Nestorius, succeed in “explaining” the mystery. The Logos suffers in an impassible way82 – affirms, for example, Saint Cyril. This means that the Logos suffers, but in the same time He does not suffer, that He feels the pain but in the same time that He does not feel the pain. In the same manner must be understood the paragraphs which affirm the Logos’s emptying of glory. We could say that the Logos empties Himself of His divine glory, without emptying of it. And this because from a certain angle, the Incarnation seems to be an emptying of the divine glory, through its

76 In Johannis Evangelium V, 5 (PG 73, 889 A). 77 In Johannis Evangelium, IX (PG 74, 152 C). 78 In Johannis Evangelium, IX (PG 74, 153 A). 79 In Johannis Evangelium, X, 2 (PG 74, 401 A). 80 In Johannis Evangelium, XI, 12 (PG 74, 604 B). 81 In Johannis Evangelium VII-VIII frgm. (PG 74, 92 B). 82 Scholia 33-35. See JOHN A. MCGUCKIN, Saint Cyril of Alexandria, the Christological Controversy…, p. 185. 198 “covering” by the human nature and through Christ’s enduring of human finitude and of the humiliations provoked by His enemies. But from another angle, the divine glory is preserved in its entire integrity, manifests itself and surrounds Christ as a spiritual garment intrinsic to His divine nature. It becomes “visible” to those who have faith and are not disturbed by the fact that God can descend to the measure of the human, remaining in the same time God. The best illustrations of the above principles are the commentaries that Saint Cyril undertakes on the event of Christ’s Ascension to Heaven and mainly on the words that precede this moment: “Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee… And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was” (Jn. 17:1, 5). According to these commentaries, the divine Son had always been having the glory, being equal with the Father in all respects. He couldn’t ask for it as long as He had it. If nevertheless, according to the Evangelical proofs, He asks this from His Father before the passions, does not ask it in the name of His divinity, but in the name of His assumed humanity. He asks it to be poured abundantly over His human nature, as it is over His divine nature. It receives it from inside the Trinity, not from outside, as the One that is consubstantial with the Father and the Holy Spirit. The way in which He addresses to the Father indicates Son’s humiliation, who prays to obtain as a man something which He has already had as God. How could He receive the glory, He who is Father’s Glory itself, His brilliance and His Imprint in all respects? The fact that Christ does not receive glory in His divinity it is also stressed through the intertextuality Saint Cyril uses. The series of biblical verses that affirms Son’s glorification by the Father does not exclude the reverse side: Father’s glorification by the Son, through His redemptive activity that He undertook on the earth. The most eloquent text that comprises both affirmations is from Jn. 17:1: “Father ... glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee”. Thus not only the Son is glorified by the Father with a glory that He has anyway as God, but the Father is as well glorified by the Son. The mutuality of the glory reverberation over the two divine persons is another proof that the Son does not receive a glory to which he had previously renounced, and the Father is not glorified in the sense that He is given back something lost. If the Son receives the glory without having it previously, this means, according to the Nestorian thinking pushed to the limit, that the Father as well receives the glory from outside, a conclusion that even the Nestorians couldn’t accept. But Jesus’s prayer indicates another aspect of the relationship between kenosis and glory: the sanctifying importance that His Sacrifice will have for the human nature and, through this, the fact that Christ’s 199 Sacrifice is a glorified one, because it brings victory over death, sin and the devil. The death shows Him as a master of death, because it has not the power to keep Him in the grave. In Christ’s sacrificial love for us the divine glory is perceptible and can shine there where the man is defeated. And because it represents voluntary obedience to Father’s will, it determinates the human’s sanctification. Finally, this is the soteriological efficiency of Saviour’s Sacrifice in Saint Cyril’s work. On the opposite side stays Nestorius’s and Apollinaris’s teaching to which Saint Cyril makes frequent allusions. For Nestorius, the problem of kenosis is inexistent from the start, but when he discusses about it, he makes it in a false manner. About what kind of kenosis could we talk when, in his opinion, the Son is not incarnate but approves the suffering and the humiliations of a simple man? But neither this man can live the kenosis, because the humanity is humble by its very definition. He does not descend to another level, but lives the normality of the human nature.83 If we think at Apollinaris’s teaching, neither here we can find an authentic kenosis. The Logos does not really become a man, but He is rather dressed with the body - a human phantasm, because it does not have intellect (nous). The Logos does not really suffer, but rather suffers the instrument that He assumes – the human body. The communication idiomatum cannot take place, and hardly could be applied the human suffering and death to the Logos. Without the real kenosis and the preservation of the divine glory, it is difficult to discuss about salvation. Only the two of them assure simultaneously the divine Son’s descent to the people and their ascension to the communion with the Father. This is the lesson of the kenosis that teaches the great Alexandrian father.

83 See PAUL GAVRILYUK, The Suffering of the Impassible God. The Dialects of Patristic Thought, Oxford Early Christian Studies, Oxford, 2004, the chapter “Nestorianism Countered: Cyril’s Theology of the Divine Kenosis”, p. 135-172. 200