Orthodox Church Fathers: Patristic Christian Theology Classics Search Engine
Excursus on the Word Qeotovko".
Excursus on the Word Qeoto/koj.
There have been some who have tried to reduce all the great theological controversies on the Trinity and on the Incarnation to mere logomachies, and have jeered at those who could waste their time and energies over such trivialities. For example, it has been said that the real difference between Arius and Athanasius was nothing more nor less than an iota, and that even Athanasius himself, in his more placid, and therefore presumably more rational moods, was willing to hold communion with those who differed from him and who still rejected the homousion. But however catching and brilliant such remarks may be, they lack all solid foundation in truth. It is perfectly manifest that a person so entirely lacking in discrimination as not to see the enormous difference between identity and likeness is not one whose opinion on such a point can be of much value. A brilliant historian is not necessarily an accurate historian, far less need he be a safe guide in matters of theological definition.3
A similar attempt to reduce to a logomachy the difference between the Catholic faith and Nestorianism has been made by some writers of undoubted learning among Protestants, notably by Fuchs and Schrockh. But as in the case of the homousios so, too, in the case of the theotocos the word expresses a great, necessary, and fundamental doctrine of the Catholic faith. It is not a matter of words, but of things, and the mind most unskilled in theology cannot fail to grasp the enormous difference there is between affirming, as does Nestorianism, that a God indwelt a man with a human personality of his own distinct from the personality of the indwelling god; and that God assumed to himself human nature, that is a human body and a human soul, but without human personality. (Wm. Bright, St. Leo on the Incarnation, pp. 160, 161.)
It is, then, clear that the question raised by the wide circulation of the discourses of Nestorius as archbishop of Constantinople was not verbal, but vital. Much of his language was irrelevant, and indicated some confusedness of thought: much would, of itself, admit of an orthodox construction; in one of the latest of his sermons, which Garnier dates on Sunday, December 14, 430, he grants that "Theotocos" might be used as signifying that "the temple which was formed in Mary by the Holy Spirit was united to the Godhead;" but it was impossible not to ask whether by "the temple" he meant the body of Jesus, or Jesus himself regarded as a human individual existing i0di/a|, i0dikw=j, o0na\ me/roj-as Cyril represents his theory-and whether by "union" he meant more than a close alliance, ejusdem generis, in the last analysis, with the relation between God and every saint, or, indeed, every Christian in true moral fellowship with him-an alliance which would amount, in Cyril's phrase, to no more than a "relative union," and would reduce the Saviour to a "Theophoros," the title claimed of old by one of his chief martyrs. And the real identity of Nestorius's view with that of Theodore [of Mopsuestia] was but too plainly exhibited by such statements as occur in some of the extracts preserved in Cyril's treatise Against Nestorius-to the effect that Christ was one with the Word by participation in dignity; that "the man" was partaker of Divine power, and in that sense not mere man; that he was adored together with the Word; and that "My Lord and my God" was a doxology to the Father; and above all, by the words spoken at Ephesus, "I can never allow that a child of three months old was God."
It is no part of my duty to defend the truth of either the Catholic or Nestorian proposition-each has found many adherents in most ages since it was first started, and probably what is virtually Nestorianism is to-day far more widely held among persons deemed to be orthodox than is commonly supposed. Be this as it may, Nestorianism is clearly subversive of the whole Catholic Doctrine of the Incarnation, and therefore the importance of the word Qeoto/koj cannot be exaggerated.
I shall treat the word Theotocos under two heads; (1) Its history (2) its meaning, first however quoting Bp. Pearson's words on its Conciliar authority. (Pearson, Exp. of the Creed, Art. III., n. 37). "It is plain that the Council of Ephesus which condemned Nestorius confirmed this title Qeoto/koj; I say confirmed it; for it is evident that it was before used in the Church, by the tumult which arose at the first denial of it by Anastasius [Nestorius's presbyter]; and so confirmed it as received before, because they approved the Epistles of St. Cyril, who proved it by the usage of those Fathers which preceded him."
(1) History of Word Qeoto/koj.
It has not been unfrequently assumed that the word Theotocos was coined to express the peculiar view of the Incarnation held by St. Cyril. Such however, is an entire mistake. It was an old term of Catholic Theology, and the very word was used by bishop Alexander in a letter from the synod held at Alexandria in a.d. 320,4 to condemn the Arian heresy (more than a hundred years before the meeting of the Council of Ephesus); "After this, we receive the doctrine of the resurrection from the dead, of which Jesus Christ our Lord became the first-fruits; who bore a body in truth, not in semblance, which be derived from Mary the Mother of God (e0k th=j Qeoto/kou Mari/aj). "5 The same word had been used by many church writers among whom may be mentioned St. Athanasius, who says, "As the flesh was born of Mary, the Mother of God, so we say that he, the Word, was himself born of Mary" (Orat. c. Arian., iij., 14, 29, 33; also iv., 32). See also Eusebius (Vit. Const., iij., 43); St. Cyril of Jerusalem (Cat., x., 9); and especially Origen, who (says Bp. Pearson) "did not only use, but expound at large the meaning of that title Qeoto/koj in his first tome on the Epistle to the Romans, as Socrates and Liberatus testify."6 (Cf. Origen in Deut. xxii., 23; vol. ij., p. 391. A; in Luc. apud Galland, Bib. Patr., vol. xiv., append., p. 87, D). A list is given by Dr. Routh, in his Reliquioe Sacroe. Vol. ij., p. 215 (1st Ed.), 332 (2d Ed.).In fact Theodore of Mopsuestia was the first to object to it, so far as we know, writing as follows: "Mary bare Jesus, not the Word, for the Word was and remained omnipresent, although from the beginning he dwelt in Jesus in a peculiar manner. Thus Mary is properly the Mother of Christ (Christotocos) but not the mother of God (Theotocos). Only figuratively, per anaphoram, can she be called Theotocos also, because God was in Christ in a remarkable manner. Properly she bare a man, in whom the union with the Word was begun, but was still so little completed, that he was not yet called the Son of God." And in another place he says: "It is madness to say that God is born of the Virgin. ... Not God, butthe temple in which God dwelt, is born of Mary."7 How far Theodore had departed from the teaching of the Apostolic days may be seen by the following quotations from St. Ignatius. "There is one only physician, of flesh and spirit, generate and ingenerate, God in man, true Life in death, Son of Mary and of God, first passible and then impassible, Jesus Christ our Lord."8 Further on in the same epistle he says: "For our God, Jesus the Christ, was borne in the womb by Mary etc."9 With the first of these passages Bp. Light-foot very aptly compares the following from Melito. "Since he was incorporeal, he fashioned a body for himself of our likeness ... he was carried by Mary and clothed by his Father, he trod the earth and he filled the heavens."10
Theodore was forced by the exigencies of his position to deny the doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum which had already at that early date come to be well understood, at least so far as practice is concerned. (Hefele, Hist. of the Councils, Vol. iii., p. 8.)
This doctrine, as is well known is predicating the same properties of the two natures in Christ, not in abstracto (Godhead and manhood), but in concreto (God and man). Christ. himself had declared in St. John iii., 16: "God ... gave his only begotten Son" (namely, to death), and similarly St. Peter declared (Acts iii., 15): "ye ... killed the Prince of Life," when in fact the being given up and being killed is a property i0di/wma = predicate) of man, not of God (the only begotten, the Prince of Life). In the same way Clement of Rome, for example, spoke of "the sufferings of God" (paqh/mata Qeou= ) (1 Ad Cor. 2), Ignatius of Antioch (Ad Ephes., c. 1, and Ad Rom., 6) of an ai[ma and pa/qoj Qeou= , Tatian of a Qeo\j paponqw\j (Ad Groecos, c. 13); Barnabas teaches (c. 7) that "the Son of God could not suffer except on our behalf ... and on our behalf he has brought the vessel of his Spirit as a sacrifice." Similarly Irenaeus (iii., 16, 6) says, "The Only-begotten impassible Word (unigenitus impassibilis) has become passible" (passibilis); and Athanasius, e0staurw/menon ei\nai Qeo\n (Ep. ad Epictet., n. 10, t. j., p. 726. ed. Patav.)
It is, however, to be remarked that the properties of the one nature were never transferred to the other nature in itself, but always to the Person who is at the same time both man and God. Human attributes were not ascribed to the Godhead, but to God, and vice versa.
For a full treatment of the figure of speech called the communicatio idiomatum the reader is referred to the great works on Theology where it will be found set forth at large, with its restrictions specified and with examples of its use. A brief but interesting note on it will be found in St. John Damascene's famous treatise De Fide Orthodoxa, Book III, iij. (Migne's Pat. Groec., col. 994).
(2) Meaning of the Word Qeoto/koj.
We pass now to the meaning of the word, having sufficiently traced the history of its use. Bishop Pearson says: "This name was first in use in the Greek Church, who, delighting in the happy compositions of that language, called the blessed Virgin Theotocos. From whence the Latins in imitation styled her Virginem Deiparam et Deigenitricem."11 In the passage to which the words just quoted are a portion of a footnote, he says: "Wherefore from these three, a true conception, nutrition, and parturition, we must acknowledge that the blessed Virgin was truly and properly the Mother of our Saviour. And so is she frequently styled the Mother of Jesus in the language of the Evangelists, and by Elizabeth particularly the `Mother of her Lord,' as also by the general consent of the Church (because he which was so born of her was God,) the Deipara; which being a compound title begun in the Greek Church, was resolved into its parts by the Latins and so the Virgin was plainly named the Mother of God."
Pearson is mistaken in supposing that the resolution of the compound Theotocos into mh/thr tou= Qeou= was unknown to the early Greek writers. Dionysius expressly calls Mary h9 mh/thr tou= Qeou= mou (Contr. Paul. Samos., Quaest. viij.); and among the Latins Mater Dei and Dei Genetrix were (as Pearson himself confesses in note 37) used before the time of St. Leo I. It is not an open question whether Mater Dei, Dei Genetrix, Deipara, mh/thr tou= Qeou= are proper equivalents for Qeoto/koj. This point has been settled by the unvarying use of the whole Church of God throughout all the ages from that day to this, but there is, or at least some persons have thought that there was, some question as to how Theotocos should be translated into English.Throughout this volume I have translated it "Mother of God," and I propose giving my reasons for considering this the only accurate translation of the word, both from a lexico-graphical and from a theological point of view.
(a) It is evident that the word is a composite formed of Qeo\j = God, and ti/ktein = to be the mother of a child. Now I have translated the verbal part "to be the mother of a child" because "to bear" in English does not necessarily carry the full meaning of the Greek word, which (as Bp. Pearson has well remarked in the passage cited above) includes "conception, nutrition, and parturition." It has been suggested that "God-bearer" is an exact translation. To this I object, that in the first place it is not English; and in the second that it would be an equally and, to my mind, more accurate translation of Qeofo/roj than of Qeoto/koj.
Another suggestion is that it be rendered "the bringer forth of God." Again I object that, from a rhetorical standpoint, the expression is very open to criticism; and from a lexicographical point of view it is entirely inadequate, for while indeed the parturition does necessarily involve in the course of nature the previous conception and nutrition, it certainly does not express it.
Now the word Mother does necessarily express all three of these when used in relation to her child. The reader will remember that the question I am discussing is not whether Mary can properly be called the Mother of God; this Nestorius denied and many in ancient and modern times have been found to agree with him. The question I am considering is what the Greek word Theotocos means in English. I do not think anyone would hesitate to translate Nestorius's Christotocos by "Mother of Christ" and surely the expressions are identical from a lexicographical point of view.
Liddell and Scott in their Lexicon insert the word qeoto/koj as an adjective and translate "bearing God" and add: "especiallyQeoto/koj, Mother of God, of the Virgin, Eccl."
(b) It only remains to consider whether there is from a theological point of view any objection to the translation, "Mother of God." It is true that some persons have thought that such a rendering implied that the Godhead has its origin in Mary, but this was the very objection which Nestorius and his followers urged against the word Theotocos, and this being the case, it constitutes a strong argument in favour of the accuracy of the rendering. Of course the answer to the objection in each case is the same, it is not of the Godhead that Mary is the Mother, but of the Incarnate Son, who is God. "Mother" expresses exactly the relation to the incarnate Son which St. Cyril, the Council of Ephesus, and all succeeding, not to say also preceding, ages of Catholics, rightly or wrongly, ascribe to Mary. All that every child derives from its Mother that God the Son derived from Mary, and this without the co-operation of any man, but by the direct operation of the Holy Ghost, so that in a fuller, truer, and more perfect sense, Mary is the Mother of God the Son in his incarnation, than any other earthly mother is of her son.
I therefore consider it certain that no scholar who can and will divest himself of theological bias, can doubt that "Mother of God" is the most accurate translation of the term Theotocos.
IF anyone shall not confess that the Word of God the Father is united hypostatically to flesh, and that with that flesh of his own, he is one only Christ both God and man at the same time: let him be anathema.
Nestorius.
II.
If any one asserts that, at the union of the Logos with the flesh, the divine Essence moved from one place to another; or says that the flesh is capable of receiving the divine nature, and that it has been partially united with the flesh; or ascribes to the flesh, by reason of its reception of God, an extension to the infinite and boundless, and says that God and man are one and the same in nature; let him be anathema.
IF anyone shah after the [hypostatic] union divide the hypostases in the one Christ, joining them by that connexion alone, which happens according to worthiness, or even authority and power, and not rather by a coming together (suno/dw), which is made by natural union (e\#nwsin fusikh\n): let him be anathema.
Nestorius.
III.
If any one says that Christ, who is also Emmanuel, is One, not [merely] in consequence of connection, but [also] in nature, and does not acknowledge the connection (suna/feia) of the two natures, that of the Logos and of the assumed manhood, in one Son, as still continuing without mingling; let him be anathema.
Hefele.
(Hist. of the Coucn., Vol. III., p. 7.)
Theodore [of Mopsuestia, and in this he was followed by Nestorius,] (and here is his fundamental error,) not merely maintained the existence of two natures in Christ, but of two persons, as, he says himself, no subsistence can be thought of as perfect without personality. As however, he did not ignore the fact that the consciousness of the Church rejected such a double personality in Christ. he endeavoured to get rid of the difficulty, and he repeatedly says expressly: "The two natures united together make only one Person, as man and wife are only one flesh. ... If we consider the natures in their distinction, we should define the nature of the Logos as perfect and complete, and so also his Person, and again the nature and the person of the man as perfect and complete. If, on the other hand, we have regard to the union (suna/feia), we say it is one Person." The very illustration of the union of man and wife shows that Theodore did not suppose a true union of the two natures in Christ, but that his notion was rather that of an external connection of the two. The expression suna/feia, moreover, which he selected here instead of the term e\#nwsin, which he elsewhere employs, being derived from suna/ptw [to join together], expresses only an external connection, a fixing together. and is therefore expressly rejected in later times by the doctors of the Church. And again, Theodore designates a merely external connection also in the phrase already quoted, to the effect that "the Logos dwells in the man assumed as in a temple." As a temple and the statue set up within it are one whole merely in outward appearance, so the Godhead and manhood in Christ appear only from without in their actuality as one Person, while they remain essentially two Persons.
IF anyone shall divide between two persons or subsistences those expressions (fwna/j) which are contained in the Evangelical and Apostolical writings, or which have been said concerning Christ by the Saints, or by himself, and shall apply some to him as to a man separate from the Word of God, and shall apply others to the only Word of God the Father, on the ground that they are fit to be applied to God: let him be anathema.
Nestorius.
IV.
If any one assigns the expressions of the Gospels and Apostolic letters, which refer to the two natures of Christ, to one only of those natures, and even ascribes suffering to the divine Word, both in the flesh and in the Godhead; let him be anathema.
St. Cyril.
( Apol. contra Orientales.)
For we neither teach the division of the hypostases after the union, nor do we say that the nature of the Deity needs increase and growth; but this rather we hold, that by way of an economical appropriation (kat' oi0kei/wsin oi0konomikh\n), he made his own the properties of the flesh, as having become flesh. (Quod unus eat Christus.)
For the wise Evangelist, introducing the Word as become flesh, shows him economically submitting himself to his own flesh and going through the laws of his own nature. But it belongs to humanity to increase in stature and in wisdom, and, I might add, in grace, intelligence keeping pace with the measure of the body, and differing according to age. For it was not impossible for theWord born of the Father to have raised the body united to himself to its full height from the very swaddling-clothes. I would say also, that in the babe a wonderful wisdom might easily have appeared. But that would have approached the thaumaturgical, and would have been incongruous to the laws of the economy. For the mystery was accomplished noiselessly. Therefore he economically allowed the measures of humanity to have power over himself.
A. B. Bruce.
(The Humiliation of Christ. Appendix to Lect. II.)
The accommodation to the laws of the economy, according to this passage, consisted in this-in stature, real growth; in wisdom, apparent growth. The wonderful wisdom was there from the first, but it was not allowed to appear (e0kfh=nai), to avoid an aspect of monstrosity.
St. Cyril.
(Adversus Nestorium.)
Therefore there would have been shown to all an unwonted and strange thing, if, being yet an infant, he had made a demonstration of his wisdom worthy of God; but expanding it gradually and in proportion to the age of the body, and (in this gradual manner) making it manifest to all, he might be said to increase (in wisdom) very appropriately. (Ad Reginas de recta fide, Orat. II., cap. xvi.)
"But the boy increased and waxed strong in spirit, being filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him." And again: "Jesus increased in stature and wisdom, and in favour with God and men." In affirming our Lord Jesus Christ to be one, and assigning to him both divine and human properties, we truly assert that it was congruous to the measures of the kenosis, on the one hand, that he should receive bodily increase and grow strong, the parts of the body gradually attaining their full development; and, on the other hand, that he should seem to be filled with wisdom, in so far as the manifestation of the wisdom dwelling within him proceeded, as by addition, most congruously to the stature of the body; and this, as I said, agreed with the economy of the Incarnation, and the measures of the state of humiliation. (Apol. contra Theod., ad Anath. iv.)
And if he is one and the same in virtue of the true unity of natures, and is not one and another (two persons) disjunctively and partitively, to him will belong both to know and to seem not to know. Therefore he knows on the divine side as the Wisdom of the Father. But since he subjected himself to the measure of humanity, he economically appropriates this also with the rest, although, as I said a little ago, being ignorant of nothing, but knowing all things with the Father.
IF anyone shall dare to say that the Christ is a Theophorus [that is, God-bearing] man and not rather that he is very God, as an only Son through nature, because "the Word was made flesh," and "hath a share in flesh and blood as we do:" let him be anathema.
Nestorius.
V.
If any one ventures to say that, even after the assumption of human nature, there is only one Son of God, namely, he who is so in nature (naturaliter filius=Logos), while he (Since the assumption of the flesh) is certainly Emmanuel; let him be anathema.
Petavius.
It is manifest that this anathematism is directed against the blasphemy of Nestorius, by which he said that Christ was in this sense Emmanuel, that a man was united and associated with God, just as God had been said to have been with the Prophets and other holy men, and to have had his abode in them; so that they were properly styled Qeofo/roi, because, as it were, they carried God about with them; but there was no one made of the two. But he held that our Lord as man was bound and united with God only by a communion of dignity.
Nestorius [in his Counter Anathematism] displays the hidden meaning of his heresy, when he says, that the Son of God is not one after the assumption of the humanity; for he who denied that he was one, no doubt thought that he was two.
Thedoret in his criticism of this Anathematism remarks that many of the Ancients, including St. Basil had used this very word, Qeofo/roj, for the Lord; but the objection has no real foundation, for the orthodoxy or heterodoxy of such a word must be determined by the context in which it is used, and also by the known opinions of him that uses it. Expressions which are in a loose sense orthodox and quite excusable before a heresy arises, may become afterwards the very distinctive marks and shibboleths of error. Petavius has pointed out how far from orthodox many of the earliest Christian writers were, at least verbally, and Bp. Bull defended them by the same line of argument I have just used and which Petavius himself employs in this very connection.
IF anyone shall dare say that the Word of God the Father is the God of Christ or the Lord of Christ, and shall not rather confess him as at the same time both God and Man, since according to the Scriptures, "The Word was made flesh": let him be anathema.
Nestorius.
VI.
If anyone, after the Incarnation calls another than Christ the Word, and ventures to say that the form of a servant is equally with the Word of God, without beginning and uncreated, and not rather that it is made by him as its natural Lord and Creator and God, and that he has promised to raise it again in the words: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will build it up again"; let him be anathema.
Hefele.
This [statement of Nestorius's that any should call "another than Christ the Word"] has no reference to Cyril; but is a hyper-Nes-torianism, which Nestorius here rejects. This [that "the form of a servant is without beginning and uncreated"] was asserted by some Apollinarists; and Nestorius accused St. Cyril of Apollinarianism.
Petavius.
As Nestorius believed that in Christ there were two distinct entities (re ipsa duos) that is to say two persons joined together; it was natural that he should hold that the Word was the God and Lord of the other, that is of the man. Cyril contradicts this, and since he taught that there was, not two, but one of two natures, that is one person or suppositum, therefore he denied that the Word was the God or Lord of the man; since no one should be called the Lord of himself.
Theodoret in his answer shuffles as usual, and points out that Christ is styled a servant by the Prophet Isaiah, because of the form of a servant which he had received. But to this Cyril answers; that although Christ, inasmuch as he was man, is called the servant of the Father, as of a person distinct from himself; yet he denies that the same person can be his own lord or servant, lest a separation of the person be introduced.
IF anyone shah say that Jesus as man is only energized by the Word of God, and that the glory of the Only-begotten is attributed to him as something not properly his: let him be anathema.
Nestorius.
VII.
If any one says that the man who was formed of the Virgin is the Only-begotten, who was bornfrom the bosom of the Father, before the morning star was (Ps. cix., 3)1 , and does not rather confess that he has obtained the desig- nation of Only-begotten on account of his connection with him who in nature is the Only-begotten of the Father; and besides, if any one calls another than the Emmanuel Christ let him be anathema.
St. Cyril.
(Declaratio Septima.)
When the blessed Gabriel announced to the holy Virgin the generation of the only-begotten Son of God according to the flesh, he said, "Thou shalt bear a son; and thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins." But he was named also Christ, because that according to his human nature he was anointed with us, according to the words of the Psalmist: "Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity: therefore God, even thy God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows." For although he was the giver of the Holy Spirit, neither did he give it by measure to them that were worthy (for he was full of the Holy Ghost, and of his fulness have we all received, as it is written), nevertheless as he is man he was called anointed economically, the Holy Spirit resting upon him spiritually (nohtw=j) and not after the manner of men, in order that he might abide in us, although he had been driven forth from us in the beginning by Adam's fall. He therefore the only begotten Word of God made flesh was called Christ. And since he possessed as his own the power proper to God, he wrought his wonders. Whosoever therefore shall say that the glory of the Only-begotten was added to the power of Christ, as though the Only-begotten was different from Christ, they are thinking of two sons; the one truly working and the other impelled (by the strength of another, Lat.) as a man like to us; and all such fall under the penalty of this anathematism.
IF anyone shall dare to say that the assumed man (a0nalhfqe/nta) ought to be worshipped together with God the Word, and glorified together with him, and recognised together with him as God, and yet as two different things, the one with the other (for this "Together with" is added [i. e., by the Nestorians] to convey this meaning); and shall not rather with one adoration worship the Emmanuel and pay to him one glorification, as [it is written] "The Word was made flesh": let him be anathema.
Nestorius.
VIII.
If any one says that the form of a servant should, for its own sake, that is, in reference to its own nature, be reverenced, and that it is the ruler of all things, and not rather, that [merely] on account of its connection with the holy and in itself universally-ruling nature of the Only-begotten, it is to be reverenced; let him be anathema.
Hefele.
On this point [made by Nestorius, that "the form of a servant is the ruler of all things"] Marius Mercator has already remarked with justice, that no Catholic had ever asserted anything of the kind.
Petavius notes that the version of Dionysius Exiguus is defective.
Petavius.
Nestorius captiously and maliciously interpreted this as if the "form of a servant" according to its very nature (ratio) was to be adored, that is should receive divine worship. But this is nefarious and far removed from the mind of Cyril. Since to such an extent only the human nature of Christ is one suppositum with the divine, that he declares that each is the object of one and an undivided adoration; lest if a double and dissimilar cultus be attributed to each one, the divine person should be divided into two adorable Sons and Christs, as we have heard Cyril often complaining.
IF any man shall say that the one Lord Jesus Christ was glorified by the Holy Ghost, so that he used through him a power not his own and from him received power against unclean spirits and power to work miracles before men and shall not rather con- fess that it was his own Spirit through which he worked these divine signs; let him be anathema.
Nestorius.
IX.
If anyone says that the form of a servant is of like nature with the Holy Ghost, and not rather that it owes its union with the Word which has existed since the conception, to his mediation, by which it works miraculous healings among men, and possesses the power of expelling demons; let him be anathema.
Petavius.
The scope of this anathematism is to shew that the Word of God, when he assumed flesh remaining what he was, and lacking nothing which the Father possessed except only paternity, had as his own the Holy Spirit which is from him and substantially abides in him. From this it follows that through him, as through a power and strength which was his own, and not one alien or adventitious, he wrought his wonders and cast forth devils, but he did not receive that Holy Spirit and his power as formerly the Prophets had done, or as afterwards his disciples did, as a kind of gift (beneficii loco).
The Orientals objected that St. Cyril here contradicts himself, for here he says that Christ did not work his wonders by the Holy Ghost and in another place he frankly confesses that he did so work them. But the whole point is what is intended by working through the Holy Ghost. For the Apostles worked miracles through the Holy Ghost but as by a power external to themselves, but not so Christ. When Christ worked wonders through the Holy Ghost, he was working through a power which was his own, viz.: the Third Person of the Holy Trinity; from whom he never was and never could be separated, ever abiding with him and the Eternal Father in the Divine Unity.
The Westerns have always pointed to this anathematism as shewing that St. Cyril recognized the eternal relation of the Holy Spirit as being from the Son.
