Cyril of Alexandria's Biblical Commentaries

Apologies, dear readers, for the unintended neglect over the last week as the semester enters its most crushing phase and multiple demands on my time converge.

But I am happy to report that IVP Academic sent me their most recent catalogue, and in it are some new books readers will be interested in, including a new volume in their Ancient Christian Texts series: by Cyril of Alexandria, Commentaries on Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, and Hebrews, trans D.R. Maxwell and J.C. Elowsky  (IVP Academic, March 2022), 176pp. 

About this new translation the publisher tells us this:

Cyril of Alexandria (c. 378–444) was one of the most significant figures in the early church: bishop of the church, defender of orthodoxy, proponent of Alexandrian theology. Indeed, he is probably best known as the supporter of the term Theotokos (God-bearer) with regard to Mary in opposition to Nestorius during the early Christological controversies.

But Cyril viewed himself, first and foremost, as an interpreter of Scripture. In this volume in IVP Academic's Ancient Christian Texts series, Joel Elowsky and David Maxwell offer―for the first time in English―a translation of the surviving Greek and Syriac fragments of Cyril's commentaries on four New Testament epistles: Romans, 1–2 Corinthians, and Hebrews.

Abounding with Cyril's insights regarding these canonical texts and biblical themes such as the triune nature of God, Christ's sacrificial death, and justification, these commentaries are essential tools for understanding Cyril's reading of Holy Scripture.

Ancient Christian Texts is a series of new translations, most of which are here presented in English for the first time. The series provides contemporary readers with the resources they need to study for themselves the key writings of the early church. The texts represented in the series are full-length commentaries or sermon series based on biblical books or extended scriptural passages.

Cyril of Alexandria's Glaphyra

In its long-standing and prestigious series The Fathers of the Church, Catholic University of America press is bringing out, this December, the latest edition: Cyril of Alexandria, Glaphyra on the Pentateuch, Vol. I: Genesis, trans.Nicholas P. Lunn (2018), 400pp.

About this book the publisher tells us the following:

Cyril of Alexandria (ca. 376–444) is best known for his defense of orthodoxy at the time of the Nestorian controversy over the nature of Christ. However, by far the larger part of Cyril's literary output consisted of commentaries on books of both Old and New Testaments, written before the Christological debate was sparked off in 428. One of these works, of major proportions, was the so-called Glaphyra ("elegant comments") on the Pentateuch. This comprises a total of thirteen separate "books," or volumes: seven on Genesis, three on Exodus, and one each on Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The comments primarily concern the narrative portions of the Pentateuch, hence the greater space given to Genesis, though a number of the legal prescriptions are also treated. This present volume, containing all seven books on Genesis, is the first of a projected two-volume set which will offer a translation of the whole Glaphyra for the first time in English. Cyril's aims within the commentary are both theological and pastoral. His chosen method begins with a consideration of the historia. Here the Alexandrian patriarch deals with the text at the literal level. At this stage he explains any historical, cultural, and at times even linguistic and textual issues presented within the passage, which is then followed by some theological instruction or lessons of a more practical nature based upon the literal interpretation. The exposition then moves on to the theoria. This is Cyril's preferred term for the contemplation of the spiritual sense, that is to say, the mystery of Christ which he firmly held lay hidden beneath the surface of the Old Testament text. With great adeptness and consistency Cyril identifies elements within the ancient narratives as figures, or "types and shadows," of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Church, and the teachings of the gospel.

From Byzantine to Islamic Egypt

First released in hardcover in 2014, and then this past May in paperback, Maged Mikhail's From Byzantine to Islamic Egypt: Religion, Identity and Politics after the Arab Conquest joins a series of other recent publications (discussed here and here) examining what happened to Christian populations after the conquest of Islam in the early seventh century.

As with Penn and Hoyland, Mikhail's book begins by noting that when Arab Muslims encountered residents of Egypt, what began in that encounter was not the complete replacement of one culture by another, but the great co-mingling of many ideas and practices. Thus he also issues a correction and caution against seeing the year 641 as some kind of radical break.

He begins by noting important issues with texts and their interpretation. In some ways, there are problems of abundance. In others, as is well known, there are problems of scarcity and unreliability among Arabic texts. With these latter, the biggest problem is the length of the period in which they circulated orally, subject to all manner of revision and emendation. You can only imagine what that does to the reliability of the tales retailed thereby.

But Christian texts are not without their own problems. Focusing on the well-known History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Mikhail notes the textual variants in the two main recensions of that key document for so much of Alexandrian ecclesiastical history.

All this pales, he suggests, in the light of the massive doctrinal controversies that so marred Egypt, the frontline of the fight between Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians. Anything and everything has been touched and tarred by this, and the fact that the Coptic Church emerged as a non-Chalcedonian church has been used to explain all kinds of things, no matter how far-fetched. Here a good deal of the influence is still felt by W.H.C. Frend's study from 1972, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement.

It is now exceedingly difficult, Mikhail says, to see which, if any, of the Coptic Christians in Egypt believed in the comical and amateurish notion of "monophysitism" that has come down to us as a belief in a "single divine nature." It was, in other words, a heresy held by nobody. Rather, Coptic Christians were concerned that Chalcedon was suspectible of a "Nestorian" interpretation, and to guard against this they preferred the well-known Cyrillian formula "of two natures" rather than Chalcedon's "in two natures."

As a result of getting this clear, Mikhail says we must now reject the idea that the "monophysites" suffered from an "intrinsic inability to resist Islamic theology." To be sure, the intrusion of Islam did eventually force greater co-operation among the various Christian groups in Egypt, but it was a much longer and messier process than many imagined. And here, too, he also debunks the slanderous nonsense that the Copts, hating their "Byzantine" "overlords" turned around to "welcome" the Islamic invaders. This lie has been debunked again and again, and it comes in for fresh demolition here in a book marked by careful sifting of the evidence (the notes and bibliography run to well over 100pp) and very much worth your time if you have any interest in Coptic, Egyptian, Islamic, Arabic, and doctrinal history.

Cyril of Alexandria's Commentary on John

Whatever his failings in the realm of inter-personal relations (if the Church in Alexandria had an HR department as bothered by busybodies as most organizations today, you can bet Cyril would have been written up during his annual evaluation as "divisive" and "extremist," which things could well be said of most if not all Church Fathers!), there is no denying his significance to the development of early Christian doctrine. Set for release in May is another translation of one of Cyril's works: Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, vol. 2, David R. Maxwell, trans. and Joel C. Elowsky, ed.,  (IVP Academic, 2015), 400pp. 

About this book we are told:

Cyril of Alexandria (ca. 378-444), one of the most brilliant representatives of the Alexandrian theological tradition, is best known for championing the term Theotokos (God-bearer) in opposition to Nestorius of Constantinople. Cyril's great Commentary on John, offered here in the Ancient Christian Texts series in two volumes, predates the Nestorian controversy and focuses its theological firepower against Arianism. The commentary, addressed to catechists, displays Cyril's breathtaking mastery of the full content of the Bible and his painstaking attention to detail as he offers practical teaching for the faithful on the cosmic story of God's salvation. David R. Maxwell provides readers with the first completely fresh English translation of the text since the nineteenth century. It rests on Pusey's critical edition of the Greek text and displays Cyril's profound theological interpretation of Scripture and his appeal to the patristic tradition that preceded him. Today's readers will find the commentary an indispensable tool for understanding Cyril's approach to Scripture.

Cyril of Alexandria

However unpleasant a person Cyril of Alexandria is said to have been (Robert Taft calls him a "thug" while Cardinal Newman more delicately put it that Cyril's holiness could not be deduced from his actions), there is no disputing his importance in Christological and other debates. A new study, forthcoming next month by Matthew R. Crawford, shows us Cyril's significance in early exegesis also: Cyril of Alexandria's Trinitarian Theology of Scripture (Oxford 2014, 304pp.)

About this book we are told:

• More exegetical literature survives from the hand of Cyril of Alexandria than nearly any other Greek patristic author, yet this sizable body of work has scarcely received the degree of attention it deserves. In this work, Matthew R. Crawford reconstructs the intellectual context that gave rise to this literary output and highlights Cyril's Trinitarian theology, received as an inheritance from the fourth century, as the most important defining factor. Cyril's appropriation of pro-Nicene Trinitarianism is evident in both of his theology of revelation and his theology of exegesis, the two foci that comprise his doctrine of Scripture. Revelation, in his understanding, proceeds from the Father, through the Son, and in the Spirit, following the order of Trinitarian relations. Moreover, this pattern applies to the inspiration of Scripture as well, insofar as inspiration occurs when the Son indwells human authors by the Spirit and speaks the words of the Father. Although Cyril's interpretation of revelation may consequently be called "Trinitarian," it is also resolutely Christological, since the divine and incarnate Son functions as the central content and mediator of all divine unveiling. Corresponding to this divine movement towards humanity in revelation is humanity's appropriation of divine life according to the reverse pattern--in the Spirit, through the Son, unto the Father. Applied to exegesis, this Trinitarian pattern implies that the Spirit directs the reader of Scripture to a Christological interpretation of the text, through which the believer beholds the incarnate Son, the exemplar of virtue and the perfect image of the Father, and accordingly advances in both virtue and knowledge. This process continues until the final eschatological vision when the types and riddles of Scripture will be done away with in light of the overwhelming clarity of the Christologically-mediated Trinitarian vision.

Cyril of Alexandria's Christology

The Catholic University of America Press continues their invaluable tradition of publishing translations of ancient patristic texts. In their fall catalogue, they tell me of one such volume set for release around Christmas: St. Cyril of Alexandria, Three Christological Treatises, trans. Daniel King (CUA Press, 2014), 200pp.


About this book we are told:

Cyril, bishop of Alexandria from 412 to 444, is renowned both as one of the most authoritative of all the fathers of the church, and at the same time as one of the most controversial of all church politicians. He oversaw the final extinguishing of pagan religion from Alexandria, and also spent the height of his career as a statesman and an author fighting the doctrines of Nestorius, whose excommunication he brought about at the Council of Ephesus (431). Having spent the first fifteen years of his episcopate writing extensive commentaries on Scripture, from 429 onwards Cyril turned his enormous learning and talent for penning and distributing polemic tracts to the development of doctrinal orthodoxy after he sensed that the new ideas coming out of Constantinople threatened the very core of the Christian doctrines of Incarnation and salvation. The three treatises here translated into English for the first time all belong to the period around the ecumenical council. On Orthodoxy to Theodosius was written for the emperor, a year before the council met, with the aim of persuading him that Nestorius's sermons were heretical and that his task as leader of both church and state was to ensure right religious observance. The Defense against the Bishops of Oriens and the Defense against Theodoret were written in the months leading up to the council when Cyril found himself required to defend his notorious "Twelve Chapters (or Anathemas)," which many bishops in other parts of the empire felt had gone too far in an anti-Nestorian direction. All three works were key parts of Cyril's battle for orthodoxy and mark key moments in the church's progress towards the definition of Christological orthodoxy that was made at Chalcedon.

An Intellectual History of Iconoclasm (I)

On the plane to Los Angeles last week and the fantastic Huffington Institute's 2012 symposium on Pan-Orthodoxy in North America, organized by the liturgical theologian and OCA deacon Nicholas Denysenko, I finally had a chance to dive into a book I've wanted to read for some time: Alain Besançon, The Forbidden Image: An Intellectual History of Iconoclasm, trans. J.M. Todd (University of Chicago Press, 2000 [2009]). 

The French original, published in 1994 as L'Image interdite: une histoire intellectuelle de l'iconoclasme, received wide acclaim, and justly so. This book is a magnificent survey of iconoclasm and iconodulia, starting with the philosophers Cicero, Aristotle, Plotinus, and especially Plato in the antique period; and, in the modern period, Hegel looms large. In his first chapter, on the philosophical history of images, the author notes that Plato is both "the father of iconoclasm" and also "the father of iconophilia." 

Along the way, Besançon examines the theological arguments for and against the use of images in Christianity, with a comparative glance at Judaism and Islam. Of these latter two he says, interestingly, that Judaism has to forbid images (the Greek eidolon for "idol" in the LXX apparently translates 30 different Hebrew terms) because God is so close to His people in the covenant that iconoclasm was almost a relief valve, a way of escaping from Him who is "everywhere present and filling all things" (as Byzantine Christians say of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Monday):  At the root of "iconoclasm, whether Christian or Jewish, is the overwhelming feeling of divine transcendence" (131). 

Of Islam he says there is no such problem: the God of the Quran is so far distant, so aloof, so transcendentally uninterested in being part of the world that the Quran does not even think to say anything about images. Islamic iconoclasm, then, must look to other sources for arguments and justification, chiefly the hadiths of the post-Mohammad period. 

The author examines four Fathers of the Church for their theology of images: Irenaeus, Origen (about whom, agreeing with Henri Crouzel's judgment, he says that the condemnations are virtually worthless), Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine. He never really explains why he focuses on these four other than saying apologetically he could not entertain all the patristic literature because it is so immense nobody can account for it. But it is more than passing curious why his list does not include such paramount figures as John of Damascus and Theodore of Studion, though these two will be briefly mentioned passim. 

Besançon notes that the usual argument put forward by Orthodox Christians justifying icons in terms of the Incarnation does little to solve the problem of iconoclasm: "the theological resolution of the problem, which entails a reaffirmation of the Incarnation, does not of itself guarantee that the image expresses and realizes the goal of the incarnation" (3). He also notes that the East and West will handle these problems by generating a different theology: "the Roman Church refused to view the image from the same metaphysical perspective as did the Greek Church" (4). 

When he gets to his third chapter on Christian arguments about images, Besançon begins by noting that the causes of iconoclasm "were so complex that they can dishearten the sage historian." He lists at least six: 

• imperial agrarian policy attacking monasteries (because they were large, wealthy, and major centres of production of icons)
• imperial centralizing policy
• imperial religious policy on the Church-state divide, and the Rome-Constantinople divide
• imperial foreign policy
• Islam
• and of course dogmatic arguments.

Besançon's treatment of the theological or dogmatic arguments draws heavily on Christoph von Schönborn, L’Icône du Christ : Fondements théologiques (Éditions Universitaires, Fribourg, 1976), published in English in 1994 by Ignatius Press as God's Human Face: The Christ-Icon.

In reviewing the arguments over the Incarnation, Cyril of Alexandria looms large here even if, in the author's words, "he was a dreadful person" (119)--or, as the great historian Robert Taft, not discussed here, has put it, Cyril was undeniably a thug. (Newman put it more delicately in noting that Cyril's sanctity could not be deduced from his actions!) Others of importance who are briefly reviewed include of course the great Athanasius as well as Maximus the Confessor. 


When he comes to the arguments of the early Byzantine iconoclasts, he notes that they did not forbid all art, but only certain types. The more iconoclasm succeeds in destroying Christian imagery, the more it also succeeds in reestablishing "pagan" art across the empire. 

In response to iconoclasm, the decrees of Nicaea II in 787 are "minimalist" and leave many questions unanswered. Nicaea II posits a balance that will forever elude most Christians: that between "the twin errors of iconolatry and iconoclasm. But it takes a considerable effort to remain upright on the precarious summit between them and not to slip down either of the opposing slopes....Simply put, in the place of iconophiliac equilibrium, one finds a mixture or unstable juxtaposition of iconolatry and iconoclasty" (142). 

Nicaea II's arguments will also have unintended consequences in different parts of the Church. In the West, he argues that "the poor reception of the Council of Nicaea II 'poisoned Western art at the source'," an argument also mentioned, but not developed, in Joseph Ratzinger's The Spirit of the Liturgy.

In his fourth chapter, on Western treatments of images in the Middle Ages, he notes that the West has been--not surprisingly--much more pragmatic and propadeutic in its assessment and use of images. The key text here, Besançon says, is a letter from Pope Gregory I to Serenus around the year 600 in which the pope makes the argument that icons are tools to instruct the illiterate and those too poor to afford books to read, prompting them to devotion: ex visione rei gestae ardorem componctionis percipiant. In time, this pragmatism will give rise to a greater freedom in the West, which insists far less on the holiness of the iconographer than the East does. Indeed, by the time the West reaches the Renaissance and Baroque periods, it will be accepted by many that beautiful and truthful art may be produced by those who are neither--personal morality, much less sanctity, is scarcely considered. Besançon notes the gains this freedom makes possible, but does not ask the question: what is lost with this approach?

The third part of this book focuses on modern iconoclasm, and here Besançon examines three pivotal figures: Calvin (who seems to substitute snobbery and sneering for serious arguments about images), Pascal, and Kant. Against these three, he will array the different arguments of Hegel, which we will review in due course. 

To be continued.