The very phrases ‘son[s] of God’ and ‘begotten of God’ could hardly be brought up – whatever the context – in the mid-fourth century without calling to mind the whole dispute over the relationship of the Son to the Father that had raged between 318/9 and 325, and which was re-emerging in the 350s as new groups and individuals continued to consider the potential ramifi cations of Arius’ basic sentiments, together with those of his opponents. Cyril, as we have already noted, is clearly a non-Nicene, and strong evidence of the need to revise our perceptions of how Nicaea was received in subsequent generations prior to its deliberate centralization by Athanasius and others. Nonetheless, not ascribing to or other- wise employing the creed or language of the council, does not equate to a lack of familiarity with the basic and even focused situational concerns that prompted it. A familiarity with the fundamental tenets of Arius’ objections is clear throughout Cyril’s writings, and in its own way propels the substance of his catechetical dis- course.72 In further explaining the manner of sonship effected in humanity through
being baptismally ‘begotten of God’ (cf. John 1.13), Cyril states summarily: Jesus Christ was the Son of God, but he did not preach the gospel before his baptism. So if even the master chose the time for this in the proper order,
70 Cf. Cat. 11.4.
71 Cat. 11.9.
72 Once again, ancient questions surrounding Cyril’s involvement with Arian parties, especially those of Patrophilus and Acacius, stand in tension with what appears, in Cyril’s writings, to be a delib- erate anti-Arian orientation. See various quotations to this effect on p. 124. See R. C. Gregg, ‘Cyril of Jerusalem and the Arians’, in R. C. Gregg (ed.), Arianism: Historical and Theological Reassessments (Philadelphia: The Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1985) 85–109; and Drijvers, Cyril of Jerusalem:
should we servants presume to act out of order? Jesus began his preaching only after ‘the Holy Spirit descended on him, in bodily form like a dove’ (Luke 3.22) – not that Jesus wished to see the Spirit fi rst, for he knew the Spirit even before he came in bodily form; what he wanted was that John, who was baptising him, should see. For John said, ‘I did not know him; but he who sent me to baptise in water told me, the one on whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining on him’, that is he (cf. John 1.33). If your devotion is genuine, the Holy Spirit will descend on you too, and the Father’s voice will resound over you; but it will not say ‘this person is my Son’, but ‘this person has now become my son’. Over Jesus ‘is’, because ‘in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’ (John 1.1); over him ‘is’ because he has always been the Son of God. But over you ‘has now become’, because you do not possess sonship by nature, but receive it by adoption. He is eternal; you receive the grace as an advancement.73
It is the eternal relation of Son to Father that merits, in Cyril’s eyes, the change in language from ‘this is my beloved Son’ spoken at Christ’s baptism, to ‘this person
is become my son’ that can be spoken at one’s own. John 1.1 is Cyril’s ‘proof text’
for the fact that Christ as incarnate Word has always been Son of God, and is not made so economically. His stature is his by nature, from his proper eternity as Son of the Father. This is true of his sonship as it is also of his priestly dignity, as it is also of his title ‘Christ’, which Cyril reads usually as ‘healer’.74 Others have
been called ‘christs’ as types, designated priests by promotion; but the Son ‘is the true Christ. He did not attain priesthood from among men by promotion, but possessed priestly dignity from his Father from all eternity’.75
Whether or not Arius himself ever taught that the Son was ‘promoted’ as such is unclear. Cyril does not explicitly name Arius or any of the so-called ‘neo-Arians’ as the sources of the teaching against which he here inveighs, though it seems diffi cult to extricate his argument from the Arian dilemma.76 He dedicates exten-
sive space to refuting any claims against the Son’s eternal relationship in divinity to the Father:
Again, when you hear him described as ‘Son’, do not conceive him to be adopted, for he is the Son by nature, the only-begotten Son, without any brother.77
73 Cat. 3.14. 74 Cf. Cat. 10.13.
75 Cat. 11.1.
76 Based on a comparison with the dates of Athanasius’ pointed attacks against Arius and ‘the Arians’ (which cannot be much earlier than the 340–50s), there is grounding here for resisting the assertion, put forward by some scholars, that such characterizations of Arius’ thought are wholly Athanasius’ invention.
Once more, when I tell you that he is the Son, do not take this statement to be a mere fi gure of speech, but understand that he is the Son truly, Son by nature, without beginning, not promoted from the state of slave to that of son, but eternally begotten as Son by an inscrutable and incomprehensible birth.78
So he is the Son of God by nature and not by adoption, being begotten of the Father.79
Cyril’s focus in these sections of his eleventh oration could, in theory, be on sim- ple doctrinal clarifi cation – of an ancient systematics or disputational dogmatics; but this is hardly his style. Cyril’s catechesis is broadly objective in its scope, but, as we have already seen, it is intentionally subjective as a means of personal prep- aration. It is doubtful that Cyril here segues into a specifi c response to Arian concerns. His invective against fl awed views of Christ’s eternal sonship is prof- fered not polemically, or at least not chiefl y so, but as a type of apophatic clarifi ca- tion of what is not being attained through baptismal adoption into Christ. That which Christ effects, he so does in the divinity he has naturally and from all eter- nity as only-begotten Son of the Father. If such divine stature were not his natu- rally, Cyril suggests, he would not have had the power to overcome that mar of sin that has infected ‘even his chosen people’.80 Further, he would have been sinful in
his own humanity, for we have seen Cyril maintain that the one nature of man is universally corrupted in an economy that fosters a ‘life’ of death, which must be killed in the regeneration of baptism. Confession of Christ’s sinlessness at bap- tism, however, abrogates this reading. When Christ became incarnate on account of human sin (which Cyril demands is the immediate reason for the incarnation), when he assumed a humanity that ‘was not an appearance only, nor an illusion’, he did so as eternal Son of the Father, capable of overcoming in humanity that which the latter was incapable of overcoming in itself.81
The adoption realized in baptism is, then, an adoption into the life of fi lial rela- tion to the Father which the Son is by nature, and which he makes available to humanity through joining human nature to himself in the incarnation – ‘for if the incarnation was an illusion, so too was our salvation’.82 Explaining this more fully,
Cyril states:
The Lord took on from us a condition like ours, so that our salvation might come through humanity. He took on a condition like ours in order to supply for its defects with a greater grace, and that sinful humanity might become a
78 Ibid. 11.4. 79 Ibid. 11.7. 80 Cat. 12.6. 81 See Cat. 4.9.
partner of God. ‘For where sin was abundant, grace was superabundant’. (Romans 5.20)83
Cyril calls upon his conviction that beings begotten in the world are imperfect, requiring growth, to explain that without supplying for what is wanting in that imperfection, such growth could not take place. When Cyril in another passage discusses humanity’s battle against demonic and temporal foes, he reminds his hearers that a natural ability to wage such battle is not their own, not only on account of imperfection but also due to the disfi guring stain of sin. The power to defeat the enemy comes only via the grace received in the death and new birth of baptism, which order must always be preserved.84 While the Son has divine power
by nature, it is the lot of humanity to receive it by adoption, to ‘receive grace as
an advancement’.85
There is revealed in this a twofold character to incarnational soteriology as Cyril articulates it. On the one hand, it advances humanity to new heights of perfection, causing it to become a ‘partner with God’. On the other, it meets, confronts and defeats the force of sin that hinders such advancement. Christ comes into the cos- mos as human so as to enable man to ‘enjoy him’ by ‘tempering his grace to our capacity’, that the human race might more easily receive the advancement of growth into God.86 These two aspects to the incarnational salvation offered in
Christ correlate to the ‘death’ and ‘new life’ of baptism, and clarify the manner in which the new life offered thereby is one of union and participation. Christ runs the ‘course of endurance’ that is his incarnate life and passion, in order to unite, in his person, the imperfect nature of those who are, as generated beings, inherently imperfect and in requirement of gradual advance. These he draws to himself, he who ‘was already perfect when begotten by the Father’ – that is, his own nature as eternal Son of God.87 The person ‘redeemed’ in baptism is the one whose
temporally defi ned existence is united to the eternal nature of God in Christ, such that the life expressed in the person is one of authentic ‘partnership’ with the divine life.88
How this life of unitive partnership comes about is, in Cyril’s presentation, bound up in the theology of the Holy Spirit that is so much at the centre of his pre- and post-baptismal catechetical projects. It is this Spirit who sanctifi es the waters of the sacrament, as we have already seen him state. It is this Spirit who works the transformation from death to matrimonial new life with Christ. It is by the work- ing of this Spirit only that one becomes, through baptism, ‘true-born’, and without
83 Cat. 12.15.
84 Cf. Cat. 3.13; M. Cat. 2.3.
85 Cat. 3.14. 86 Cat. 12.13, 14.
87 Cat. 11.7; cf. 4.13 on the ‘course of endurance’. 88 Cf. M. Cat. 3.2.
this Spirit the most enthusiastically performed baptismal ceremony represents at best only a physical washing.89 As to the matter of how the initiate to the
mysteries – the one whom Cyril describes as ‘enrolled’ for enlightenment90 – is to
understand the means by which the Spirit effects such regeneration and transfor- mation, Cyril responds with an articulation of the Spirit as personal agent of divine communication with the human individual, through means of the human soul.