He Does Not Suffer the Fact that He Suffers

God Glorifies Himself in the Human: A Christological Anthology

By Your Wounds I Am Healed

God Glorifies Himself in the Human: A Christological Anthology

1. God Glorifies Himself in the Human (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christology Lectures)

2. He is God, He is All Things (Melito of Sardis, On Pascha)

3. God Could Not Not Save Us (Athanasius, On the Incarnation)

4. What Happens with Jesus is How God is God (Jenson, Systematics Vol 1)

This passage is from the end of Cyril of Alexandria’s On the Unity of Christ (translated by John McGuckin). For an introduction to Cyril’s work, you might start with this McGuckin lecture.

B. We would argue that one inflicts a terrible dishonor on the Word of God if one says that he suffered, and that this brings our noble mystery into disrepute.

A. Well, “despising the shame” he chose to "suffer in the flesh" for our sake, according to the scripture (Heb 12:2; 1 Pet 4: 1), and in my opinion he must evidently have the problem of a Jewish mentality or the culpable stupidity of the Greeks if he thinks that the suffering on the cross was anything to be ashamed of. The divine Paul wrote of this…

B. How can this be? I really do not understand.

A. Does he not say that the suffering on the cross became a stumbling block for the Jews and a foolishness for the Greeks? When they saw him hanging on the wood the former shook their murderous heads against him and said: "If you are the Son of God come down from the cross and we shall believe in you" (Mt 27:40). They thought that he was beaten by their power and so had been seized and crucified; but they were mistaken, for they did not think that he really was the Son of God. They were looking at the flesh. The Greeks, on the other hand, are wholly incapable of grasping the profundity of the mystery, for they think it is foolishness on our part to say that Christ died for the life of the world. Yet this very thing which seems to be foolishness is that which is “wiser than men.” This system concerning Christ the Savior of us all is very profound and truly full of heavenly wisdom. What the Jews think of as weakness is far stronger than men; for the Only Begotten Word of God has saved us by putting on our likeness. Suffering in the flesh, and rising from the dead, he revealed our nature as greater than death or corruption. What he achieved was beyond the ability of our condition, and what seemed to have been worked out in human weakness and by suffering was really stronger than men and a demonstration of the power that pertains to God.

B. But they say, how can the same one both suffer and not suffer?

A. He suffers in his own flesh, and not in the nature of the Godhead. The method of these things is altogether ineffable, and there is no mind that can attain to such subtle and transcendent ideas. Yet, following these most correct deductions, and carefully considering the most reasonable explanations, we do not deny that he can be said to suffer (in case we thereby imply that the birth in the flesh was not his but someone else's), but this does not mean that we say that the things pertaining to the flesh transpired in his divine and transcendent nature. No, as I have said, he ought to be conceived of as suffering in his own flesh, although not suffering in any way like this in the Godhead. The force of any comparison falters here and falls short of the truth, although I can bring to mind a feeble image of this reality which might lead us from something tangible, as it were, to the very heights and to what is beyond all speech. It is like iron, or other such material, when it is put in contact with a raging fire. It receives the fire into itself, and when it is in the very heart of the fire, if someone should beat it, then the material itself takes the battering but the nature of the fire is in no way injured by the one who strikes. This is how you should understand the way in which the Son is said both to suffer in the flesh and not to suffer in the Godhead. Although, as I said, the force of any comparison is feeble, this brings us somewhere near the truth if we have not deliberately chosen to disbelieve the holy scriptures.

A few reflections:

1. It’s anachronistic but nonetheless true to say that Cyril’s christology is a biblical christology. Bottom line, Nestorius’ theology fails because it cannot make good sense of all that the apostles and prophets said about Jesus.

2. Notice the distinction Cyril makes between human nature and the human condition: “he revealed our nature as greater than death or corruption” and did so by achieving something “beyond the ability of our condition.” This distinction allows Cyril to insist both that Jesus shares fully in our experience, being everything we are without violating himself, and that we can share fully in his experience, becoming everything he is without violating ourselves. It’s worth asking what happens, theologically and pastorally, if we fail to make this distinction.

3. For Cyril, suffering is not “beneath” God, although death and corruption are. It is no disgrace for God to be human, although it is a disgrace for God to be crucified. But even when Jesus is tortured to death, he is not changed but reveals the truth of our nature by exposing and altering the condition in which we exist. The fire of the divine nature not only remains inviolate, as in the analogy, but actually alters that which seeks to violate it. The hammer that strikes the iron in the raging fire is itself melted.

4. If you’re teaching the passage, ask students to explain Cyril’s answers to these questions: Who suffers in the Incarnation? How does he suffer? Why?

5. Cyril’s attack on “Jewish” and “Greek” mindsets should not be taken in racist terms. That does not mean, of course, that there are no problems whatsoever with what Cyril says elsewhere of “the Jews,” or that what he writes did not prove all too useful for anti-Jewish/anti-Judaistic agenda and propaganda. Tragically, even Paul’s writings (as well as Peter’s and John’s), and the words of Jesus have been taken and used maliciously. But the point made in this passage is simply that no human ways of knowing can or could make sense of who Jesus is and what he did.