God and Trinity.
God is one, without beginning, and eternal. "He did not begin
to live in time and He will never have an end," and "He will have no successor."
The essence of God is beyond comprehension 4nd "we cannot explain what God is."
The whole of creation, "all the members of the whole Catholic Church, both
present and future," are not able to praise the Lord as He deserves. "Our
highest wisdom in relation to God is to admit that we know nothing." Only the
Son and the Holy Spirit can see the Father as He should be seen, for They "share
the Father's Divinity." However, to a certain extent God is knowable from
creation, and a conception of God's power can be formed from His works. God has
many properties, but He is one. "We must confess God both as the Father and as
the sole creator of all things, and believe not only in one God, but recognize
with devoutness that this one God is the Father of our Only-Begotten Lord Jesus
Christ."
By simply uttering "the name of the Father we gain an under
standing of the Son," "for if He is a Father, He must be the Father of a Son. If
there is a Son, then He must be the Son of a Father." There is no distance
between Them. The Fatherhood is eternal. God did not become the Father, but He
is the Father "before any hypostases, before any sensation, before time and all
the ages." Even though he does not use Nicene terminology, Cyril confesses the
apostolic faith as defined at Nicaea and he sets forth his teaching on the
eternity of the Trinity with complete precision.
The Son is the Son by nature, not by an arbitrary act of will.
"The Son is eternally generated in a way that is unknowable and
incomprehensible." Neither time nor an act of reason are relevant in the
generation of the Son from the Father, and there is no development in the being
of the Son. "That which He is now, He also was in the beginning, for He is
generated eternally." The mode of this generation is incomprehensible to us and
we should not try to understand that which is not revealed in Scripture by the
Spirit, Who alone knows the profundity of God's nature. The Father generates the
Only-Begotten, the "true God," before the ages. They are united in Their
divinity, for "God engendered God," Who is "truly like in everything" to the
Father. The Son has the "immutable dignity of Sonship," and by essence and in
truth He is the Lord, one with the Father in Their indivisible authority.
The Father creates and orders everything through the Son,
"through Christ." "Christ is the Only-Begotten Son of God and the Creator of the
World." The Son creates everything "by the will of the Father," by the Father's
authority, and the Son has power and dominion over that which He has created.
Christ creates everything not because the Father cannot do so, but because "God
wished the Son to rule over everything He created, and God Himself gave Him the
design for what He established." In this Cyril strictly follows Scripture. In
order to stress the complete unity and likeness of the Father and Son he
emphasizes that the Son has everything (He did not "receive," for there was
never a time when He was without anything) from the Father, and that He creates
"by the will of the Father." He creates as the Son, but this does not destroy
the unity of their indivisible power and authority. "He rules with the Father,
and through the Father He is thee creator of everything. But this does not
impair the dignity of the Divinity." "He is the rich and inexhaustible source of
all good, the river of all blessings, the eternal, unceasing, shining
light."
The Son is revealed in the Old Testament and was seen by Moses
and the prophets. (The concept of the manifestation of the Word in the God of
the Old Testament had been elaborated long before Cyril). Cyril uses the name
Christ to designate the Son as Creator, and this is connected with his teaching
on the Son as the eternal High Priest. The Son was anointed by the Father to
"the High Priesthood, which exceeds the priesthood of men." "He did not begin
His priesthood in time, He did not assume the High Priesthood as a successor in
the flesh, and He was not anointed with oil prepared by men, but His priesthood
is from the Father before the ages." Apparently Cyril is here referring to the
Eternal Counsel of God, and he probably spoke about this in greater detail in a
sermon "On the Order of Melchizedek" which has not survived.
Cyril speaks of the Holy Spirit only briefly. He should be
thought of in the same way that the Father and Son are thought of, since they
all share the single "glory of divinity." The Spirit is "coeternal" with the
Father and the Son, and concern for our salvation is common to all of them. The
Son reveals the Father "together with the Spirit and through the Spirit." The
Holy Spirit is the Spirit of revelation and enlightenment, the "unique and good"
sanctifier, helper, and teacher of the Church, the Spirit of grace "Who marks
the soul as His own" and Who gives "sanctification and deification to all." "The
Spirit has one aspect" and is not divided by the multiplicity of His gifts. It
is not the Father Who gives one gift, the Son Who gives another, and the Spirit
Who gives another, but salvation, strength, and faith are common to 811, and
their dignity is indivisible. "We proclaim one God with the Holy Spirit through
one Son," without merging and without division. "The Father gives to the Son,
and the Son gives to the Holy Spirit."
"For our salvation it is enough for us to know that there is a
Father, a Son, and a Holy Spirit." Nothing has been written about anything else,
and it is not fitting for us to speculate beyond what can be found in Scripture
"on the essence of the hypostases." Thus the trinitarian theology of Cyril is
distinguished by its strict adherence to the Bible, and Cyril constantly strives
to support his arguments with quotations from Scripture. In spite of this, in
several instances he refers to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as hypostases,
recognizing three hypostases in one God. However, he does not clearly explicate
the concepts of "hypostasis" and "essence." He uses both terms to
express existence which is enduring, as opposed to transient or diminishing
being. "Christ is not a Word which is spoken and then dissipates, but a living
Word, an hypostasis." The Holy Spirit "is not exhaled by the lips of the Father
to spread out in the air, but is an hypostasis, and speaks and acts
Himself."
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