Trinity

TRINITY & OTHER DOCTRINES OF GOD:
PROF. M. M. NINAN
Cyril regarded the embodiment of God in the person of Jesus Christ to go far beyond the
sacrifice on the cross and be so mystically powerful that it spread out from the body of
the God-man into the rest of the human race. This reconstituted human nature into a
graced and deified condition of the saints, helping human into deification process that
finally accomplishhed immortality and transfiguration to Christ worshippers through the
spirit realm which envoloped all humanity.
As for Cyril Jesus who walked the streets of Nazareth was indeed God in flesh and hence
Mary was simply Theotokos, meaning "Giver of Birth to God”
Cyril affirmed that the Holy Trinity consists of a singular divine nature, essence, and
being (ousia) in three distinct aspects, instantiations, or subsistencies of being
(hypostases). These distinct hypostases are the Father or God in Himself, the Son or
Word (Logos), and the Holy Spirit. Then, when the Son became flesh and entered the
world, the pre-Incarnate divine nature and assumed human nature both remained, but
became united in the person of Jesus. This resulted in the miaphysite slogan "One
Nature united out of two" being used to encapsulate the theological position of this
Alexandrian bishop.
According to Cyril's theology, there were two states for the Son of God:
The state that existed prior to the Son (or Word/Logos) becoming enfleshed in the
person of Jesus
and
the state that actually became enfleshed.
The Logos Incarnate suffered and died on the Cross, and therefore the Son was able to
suffer without suffering. Cyril passionately argued for the continuity of a single subject,
God the Word, from the pre-Incarnate state to the Incarnate state. The divine Logos was
really present in the flesh and in the world—not merely bestowed upon, semantically
affixed to, or morally associated with the man Jesus, as the adoptionists and, he
believed, Nestorius had taught.
Here are some quotes from St, Cyril which will give insight into his stand on the
problems.
“By nature, each one of us is enclosed in his own personality, but
supernaturally, we are all one. We are made one body in Christ, because we
are nourished by One Flesh. As Christ is indivisible, we are all one in Him.
Therefore, He asked His Father “that they may all be One as We also are one.” – Saint
Cyril of Alexandria
“That anyone could doubt the right of the holy Virgin to be called the Mother of God fills
with astonishment. Surely she must be the Mother of God if our Lord Jesus Christ
is God, and she gave birth to him! Our Lord’s disciples may not have used those
exact words, but they delivered to us the belief those words enshrine, and this has also
been taught us by the holy fathers. The divinely inspired Scriptures affirm that the Word
of God was made flesh, that is to say, he was united to a human body endowed with a
rational soul. He undertook to help the descendants of Abraham, fashioning a body for
himself from a woman and sharing our flesh and blood, to enable us to see in him not
only God, but also, by reason of this union, a man like ourselves. It is held, therefore,
that there is in Emmanuel two entities, divinity and humanity. Yet our Lord Jesus Christ
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