St. Cyril's Letter To Nestor

St. Cyril was born in AD 376. He was the nephew of Pope Theophilus, the 23rd Pope of Alexandria. He spent five years as a monk and learned the spiritual depth of the monastic fathers, in Nitria, in the western desert of Egypt. He was summoned to Alexandria by his uncle who ordained him a priest. Later, he became known as a great preacher. When Pope Theophilus departed, Cyril was chosen to lead the Church and became the 24th Pope of Alexandria in AD 412, at the age of 36. He began to speak against Novatian, who established a rival church in Rome. He accused the Roman church of being lenient in accepting apostates. St. Cyril brought up the decision of shutting their churches. During his period, the pagans were competing with Christianity for …show more content…
He claimed that St. Mary was only the mother of the man Jesus and he denied the divinity of Christ. The news of this heresy reached Alexandria by spring of AD 429. St. Cyril began to denounce this theology without mentioning names. Nestor rebuked St. Cyril for his criticism and outspokenness. St. Cyril began exchanging letters with Nestor. The first letter asked him to acknowledge the title of the Virgin Mary “Theotokos.” The second letter challenged the Christology of Nestor by using the words of the Nicene Creed: “God was incarnate and became man.” The third letter again used the words of the Nicene Creed to explain in detail what he meant by the belief in the one nature of the Incarnate Word, and he appended twelve anathemas. He asked Nestor to sign the anathemas to prove his Orthodoxy, and Nestor refused to sign and responded with twelve anathemas of his own. These letters were circulated throughout the Christian world, and St. Cyril’s explanations were widely accepted and praised. St. Cyril held a local council in Alexandria to discuss the issue and decided to add the Introduction to the Creed: “We magnify you, the Mother of the True Light...”
Emperor Theodosius called for a general council to meet in Ephesus in AD 431. The Pope arrived with 50 of his bishops and some monks. Delegates from Asia, Jerusalem and later Rome all supported St. Cyril’s …show more content…
Cyril explained that Christ “emptied himself, assuming the form of a slave, he humbled himself becoming obedient even to death”. He did not “disdain the poverty of human nature” and “thought it good to be made man and in his own person to reveal our nature honored in the dignities of the divinity”. In talking of Christ becoming incarnate, one “also implies all those other things that are economically brought to bear on the one who willingly suffered this ‘emptying out’, as for example hunger and tiredness”, which means that through the incarnation, the human attributes of hunger and tiredness are communicated to God. Whilst saying that God sinned is something that Cyril is keen to avoid, he upholds that one of the attributes which is communicated is the susceptibility to sin, but this is “in order that he might bring sin to an end”, one of the purposes of the incarnation espoused through the communication of attributes. Another purpose of the incarnation realized through this communication of attributes is that “he took what was ours to be his very own so that we might have all that was his”, so that “we might be enriched by his poverty” (2 Corinthians 8:9). This is necessary for the incarnation, according to Cyril for, “if he who is rich does not impoverish himself… then we have not gained his riches but are still in our poverty, still enslaved by sin and death.” This line of thinking heavily echoes that of Athanasius, also an Alexandrian,