The Christological controversy has received more scrutiny than perhaps any other aspect of Byzantine religious life. The controversy has been explored from many different angles. It is seen by some as a clash of personalities. Others have understood it to be a class conflict or a simple difference in language. However it seems that little attention has been given to the liturgical importance attached to the controversy by St. Cyril. In fact it is the Eucharist which was at the heart of his conflict with Nestorius. John McGuckin writes that St. Cyril taught,
That a double-subject Christology [position of Nestorius] which divorces man from the God in Christ makes void the Church’s hope and experience of redemption in and through the Eucharist, since the Eucharist is a life-giving sacrament precisely because it is the very flesh of God Himself… his theology always was, rising as much from liturgical and spiritual experience as from logical and traditional systematic prescripts.”
Cyril was not primarily concerned that the position of Nestorius was philosophically inept or even that it was contrary to scripture. Cyril believed that to deny the body of Christ (historical) as being the very body of the Word and Son of God meant that the body of Christ (Eucharistic) was sacred only by association and therefore the body of Christ (Church) was holy only through imitation and not true union. Speaking of the Eucharist Cyril writes,
“We do not receive this as ordinary flesh, God forbid, or as the flesh of a man sanctified and conjoined to the Word in a unity of dignity, or as the flesh of someone who enjoys divine indwelling. No, we receive it as truly the life-giving and very-flesh of the Word Himself… for how could the flesh of a man be life-giving of its own nature?”
-Micah H.
No comments:
Post a Comment