Cyril of Jerusalem, Lecture 6, Part A

Cyril of Jerusalem

Lecture 6, Part A

https://www.swrktec.org/catechism

“Sanctify yourselves unto Me, O islands.  Israel is saved by the Lord with an everlasting salvation; they shall not be ashamed, neither shall they be confounded for ever….” — Isaiah 45:16-17

Summary: The Father and the Son are inseparable, indivisible.  Neither man nor angels see the Father as the Son and Spirit see Him within their shared essence.  No one declares the Father as the Son declares Him against every idolatry.

Preview: 1.  The glory of the Father and the Son are one and the same: indivisible.  One cannot be glorified without glorifying the other.  2.  The mind captures in a moment that in nature, which may take many words to describe; yet, the description of God is infinitely greater; in our weakness, we have no exact knowledge of God.[i]  So, all together, let us sing His praises unworthily.  3.  Abraham was earth and ashes before God; so that, all earth and the great vaults of the heavens are not able to praise God worthily; when will we grasshoppers, who are earth and ashes praise Him worthily?  4.  If any would attempt to speak of God, describe first earth, count the stars, number the rain drops, gaze upon the sun before describing or scanning the invisible God.[ii]  5.  “If the Divine substance [essence] is incomprehensible [not-comprehensible], why” discuss it?  Because I must glory in God, without understanding, even more greatly that I glory in the sun, the abundance of earth, every breath: “for the Lord Jesus encourages my weakness … No man has seen God at any time.”  6.  Yet, Angels and Archangels see God as much as they are able; “the Son [and] Holy Ghost alone can rightly behold Him”: Since the Son and the Holy Ghost [are] partaker[s] “of the Father’s Godhead.[iii]”  “Since Angels” are even ignorant; let us not be ashamed to confess our ignorance.  I who cannot describe my own soul, how can I “describe its Giver?”  7.  Devotion suffices to know we have a God, One, Living, without father, mightier, or successor: powerful, good, and just; not diverse; loving and wise; not in parts; as if all eye, ear, and mind: for “it is wholly impossible to imagine His likeness” or His substance.  8.  All such imaginations have failed: God is neither fire nor a chicken; He has not seven eyes.  He is perfect: in sight, power, greatness, foreknowledge, goodness, justice, in loving-kindness.  He is not circumscribed (bounded) by space or any other thing.  “Heaven is His throne, but higher is He that sits thereon: and earth is His footstool Isaiah 66:1, but His power reaches unto things under the earth.”  9.  He is One, omnipresent (ubiquitous), all seeing, all understanding, all creating through Christ; “an [unsurpassable] power condescending to our infirmities.”[iv]  He is “incomprehensible”.  If His judgments and His ways are incomprehensible, can He Himself be comprehended?  10.  If my whole essence were a tongue, “I could not speak His excellence”; all angels combined cannot speak His worth.  Yet, wood and base animals are worshipped as God; wine was the gift of God: but, Dionysus was worshipped; grain was made by God: but, Demeter was worshipped; stones, God’s creation, are struck to make fire: but Hephaestus….  11.  Where did Greek polytheism originate; since “God has no body”?  Who alleges the unashamed adulteries among the gods?  How did Zeus become a swan, or a bull?  Or die, or fall?  “Was it without reason then that the Son of God came down from heaven? Or was it that He might heal so great a wound?”  “The Father was despised, the Son … correct[s] the error: … for what could be worse than this disease, that a stone should be worshipped instead of God?”

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[i] Thus, we see that apophatic theology did not originate in the fourteenth century.  Almost all of our descriptive words for God begin with a prefixed not: not-finite = infinite, not-time-able = eternal, not-changing, not-divided, not-measurable, not-visible….

[ii] Here, St. Cyril cites Sirach 3:21-22 as his Scriptural authority; which directly contradicts the seeming intended meaning of Lecture 4, paragraphs 33-37.

[iii] Godhood, nature, essence, or substance.  Substance is somewhat objectionable term, since it may imply a certain physicality; yet, perhaps we can think in terms of a spiritual substance.

[iv] St. Cyril has in this section, “whose very Name we dare not hear”; which seems to us like the Judaizing superstition about YHWH (a dubious idea in the mouth of St. Cyril): we have no idea what St. Cyril intended.