CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA

On June 22, the Orthodox Church celebrates the memory of Saint Cyril of Alexandria. Saint Cyril was the Bishop of Alexandria in Egypt. He is one of the most important Fathers of the Church, a great theologian, interpreter of Scripture, patron of monasticism, and teacher of Christian morality. Many of his written works have come down to us.

In the Orthodox tradition, Saint Cyril is usually called the Patriarch of Alexandria. However, this is an anachronism, since the title of patriarch in relation to the bishops of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem was officially introduced at the Fourth Ecumenical Council in Chalcedon in 451. The decisions of this Council were mostly rejected by the Christians of Egypt. Therefore, Coptic Christians usually call the Bishop of Alexandria by the ancient historical title of Pope. As unusual as it may sound, Cyril was the Archbishop and Pope of Alexandria.

Saint Cyril was Bishop of Alexandria for 32 years, from 412 to 444. His life’s work was to hold the Third Ecumenical Council in Ephesus (431). Initially, it was believed that the Ecumenical Council in Nicaea (325) would be the first, final and only one. However, unlike Judaism and later Islam, Christianity is not a law, not a set of rules, but a dogma, and therefore church dogma continued to be formulated and refined.

The Council of Ephesus adopted the Confession of Faith, according to which God the Word, the Son of God, Consubstantial with the Father, became a man in history, but did not have a separate human personality that would exist before the Annunciation, that is, before the conception of Jesus from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, as stated in the Creed. The personality of Jesus Christ was divine. Therefore, we call the Virgin Mary the Mother of God.

The paradoxical genius of the dogma of the Council of Ephesus is in the assertion that, despite the absence of a human personality in Jesus, His Humanity was not only not reduced, but was all the more genuine, full-fledged, great, the most human of all people. God is the future of man. This is a great and very daring assertion, which Christianity had to not only formulate, but also properly, through the teaching about Christ, understand, in many ways thanks to Cyril.

Despite his extremely wary and even hostile attitude towards ancient philosophy, Cyril of Alexandria was the last great representative not only of the famous Alexandrian school of Christian theology, but of all the Greek-Christian literature of Egypt. Sadly, inexplicably deeply tragically, with his departure, for the Alexandrian Church, its structure, mission and even monasticism, a period of apocalyptic extinction began.

Finally, the Third Ecumenical Council also condemned the teaching of the heretic Pelagius, who claimed that salvation is the fruit of man’s personal efforts, and that grace is merely auxiliary. The condemnation of Pelagius was made possible by Saint Augustine, who had been polemicizing with him for decades. The connection between Ephesus, Augustine, and Pelagius seemed inexplicable for a long time. And now, quite recently, in recent decades, scholars have managed to discover letters that the Church Fathers, Augustine and Cyril wrote to each other. Truly, God is wonderful in His Saints, He is the God of fellowship and the God of friendship.