(h) Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, V, 5. (MSG, 45:705.)
The Christology of the Cappadocians.
The Cappadocians use language which was afterward condemned when given its extreme Alexandrian interpretation. Hefele, § 127, may be consulted with profit.
The flesh is not identical with the godhead before this is transformed into the godhead, so that necessarily some things are appropriate to God the Word, other things to the form of a servant. If, then, he [Eunomius] does not reproach himself with a duality of Words, on account of such confusion, why are we slanderously charged with dividing the faith into two Christs, we who say that He who was highly exalted after His passion, was made Lord and Christ by His union with Him who is verily Lord and Christ, knowing by what we have learned that the divine nature is always one and the same mode of existence, while the flesh in itself is that which reason and sense apprehend concerning it, but when mixed with the divine it no longer remains in its own limitations and properties, but is taken up to that which is overwhelming and transcendent. Our contemplation, however, of the respective properties of the flesh and of the godhead remains free from confusion, so long as each of these is considered in itself, as, for example, “The Word was before the ages, but [pg 503] flesh came into being in the last times.”… It is not the human nature that raises up Lazarus, nor is it the power that cannot suffer that weeps for him when he lies in the grave; the tear proceeds from the man, the life from the true Life.… So much as this is clear … that the blows belong to the servant in whom the Lord was, the honors to the Lord, whom the servant compassed about, so that by reason of contact and the union of natures the proper attributes of each belong to both, as the Lord receives the stripes of the servant, while the servant is glorified with the honor of the Lord.
The godhead “empties” itself that it may come within the capacity of the human nature, and the human nature is renewed by becoming divine through its commixture with the divine.… As fire that lies in wood, hidden often below the surface, and is unobserved by the senses of those who see or even touch it, is manifest, however, when it blazes up, so too, at His death (which He brought about at His will, who separated His soul from His body, who said to His own Father “Into Thy hands I commend My spirit” [Luke 23:46], “who,” as He says, “had power to lay it down and had power to take it again”), He who, because He is the Lord of glory, despised that which is shame among men, having concealed, as it were, the flame of His life in His bodily nature, by the dispensation of His death, kindled and inflamed it once more by the power of His own godhead, warming into life that which had been made dead, having infused with the infinity of His divine power those humble first-fruits of our nature; made it also to be that which He himself was, the servile form to be the Lord, and the man born of Mary to be Christ, and Him, who was crucified through weakness, to be life and power, and making all such things as are piously conceived to be in God the Word to be also in that which the Word assumed; so that these attributes no longer seem to be in either nature, being, by commixture with the divine, made anew in conformity with the nature that overwhelms it; participates in the power of the godhead, as if one were to say [pg 504] that a mixture makes a drop of vinegar mingled in the deep to be sea, for the reason that the natural quality of this liquid does not continue in the infinity of that which overwhelms it.
§ 89. The Nestorian Controversy; the Council of Ephesus A. D. 431.
The Council of Ephesus was called to settle the dispute which had arisen between Cyril and the Alexandrians and Nestorius, archbishop of Constantinople, and the Antiochians. Several councils had been held previously, and much acrimonious debate. Both parties desired a council to adjust the dispute. The Emperor Theodosius II, in an edict of November 19, 430, called a council to be held on the following Whitsunday at Ephesus. The council was opened by Cyril and Memnon, bishop of Ephesus, June 22, a few days after the date assigned. This opening of the synod was opposed by the imperial commissioner and the party of Nestorius, because many of the Antiochians had not yet arrived. Cyril and Memnon, who had undertaken to bring about the condemnation and deposition of Nestorius, forced through their programme. On June 26 or 27 the Antiochians arrived, and, under the presidency of John of Antioch, and with the approval of the imperial commissioner, they held a council attended by about fifty bishops, while two hundred attended the rival council under Cyril. This smaller council deposed Cyril and Memnon. Both synods appealed to the Emperor and were confirmed by him. But shortly after Cyril and Memnon were restored. The Antiochians now violently attacked the successful Alexandrians but, having abandoned Nestorius, patched up a union with the Alexandrians, by which Cyril subscribed in 433 to a creed drawn up by the Antiochians, probably by Theodoret of Cyrus. Accordingly, the council of Cyril was now recognized by the Antiochians, as well as by the imperial authority, and became known as the Council of Ephesus, A. D. 431.
Additional source material: Socrates, Hist. Ec., VII, 29-34; Theodoret, Epistulæ in PNF, ser. II, vol. III, and his counter propositions to the Anathemas of Cyril, ibid., pp. 27-31; Percival, The Seven Ecumenical Councils (PNF).