Voices and influences
Cyril of Alexandria
A patriarch whose early years in office were genuinely violent, and whose defense of the one Christ shaped every council that came after him.
Summary
This site quotes Cyril of Alexandria 632 times across 25 books, and lists 0 works.
- Lived died 444.
- Quoted here most in John: 328 of 632.
Cyril of Alexandria
- Lived
- died 444
- Tradition
- Patristic
5 of 632 quotations
Own words
Quoted in full, because Cyril of Alexandria died in 444 and these works are out of copyright. Each citation below names its edition and its year. A citation naming a modernised text means that edition makes its own editorial changes, and that edition's terms are not in this site's record.
The fact that the world should have been offended because of Christ, after the increase in the flocks of believers, and that it, excited by its anger, would have reacted, does not need to be confirmed with a long speech.
GLAPHYRA ON Genesis, 5.5, 444
The rest of the quotation
Just see how Laban, together with his sons, pursued Jacob, who was running away, and recalled him. Christ himself, in a sense, departed from the world with his brides, that is, the churches, and moved out with the entire household by spiritually addressing his companions with these words: "Arise, let us go from here."
Genesis 31:21 So he fled with all his possessions, crossed the Euphrates, and headed for the hill country of Gilead. BSB
This forecasts the coming of the Savior and our redemption by his coming. It also foretells the granting of riches to those who believe in him.… Concerning that which is new, that is, the church, it may be fittingly said that it is the daughter…
The rest of the quotation
of Zion.… For whom does he order to proclaim good news to Zion? Those holy spiritual guides, of course, who took on the leadership role in the church and whose job it was to open the gates and to remove the stones from their midst. And what were they to announce?
Isaiah 62:11 Behold, the LORD has proclaimed to the ends of the earth, “Say to Daughter Zion: See, your Savior comes! Look, His reward is with Him, and His recompense goes before Him.” BSB
But perhaps you say that the outcome of these matters grieves you not moderately. Will there then be an affliction in a city, perchance, which the Lord has not done?
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It is like as if one should say: Will there then be anyone among men able to afflict a city either with diseases or sieges or destructions of crops or even in some other such way? But if no one of men could do such things, and it lies rather in the authority and power of God, why are you angry with those who announce it beforehand?
Amos 3:6 If a ram’s horn sounds in a city, do the people not tremble? If calamity comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it? BSB
The divine nature of the only begotten Son was already scorching the demons in unspeakable flames. Christ was shutting up the fiercest demons in blocked roads. He was undoing the devil's tyranny. "You have come before the time," they cried out.
FRAGMENT 101, 444
The rest of the quotation
For they knew from the Scriptures that Christ was going to come and would judge them. Treating the incarnation as if it had happened at the wrong time, they pled that he had come in an untimely way. This misrepresentation is not surprising. In their deceptiveness, they did not hesitate to say even this.
Matthew 8:28–29 When Jesus arrived on the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, He was met by two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. “What do You want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have You come here to torture us before the appointed time?” BSB
Peter did not say "you are a Christ" or "a son of God" but "the Christ, the Son of God." For there are many christs by grace, who have attained the rank of adoption [as sons], but [there is] only one who is by nature…
FRAGMENT 190, 444
The rest of the quotation
the Son of God. Thus, using the definite article, he said, the Christ, the Son of God. And in calling him Son of the living God, Peter indicates that Christ himself is life and that death has no authority over him.
Matthew 16:16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” BSB
Influence, on the record
This site quotes Cyril of Alexandria 632 times across 25 books.
This site’s own count of what it does with the voice
The life, in order
The life told as one accountfrom this site's record
Cyril was born in Egypt about 376 and raised for the church by his uncle Theophilus, the patriarch of Alexandria. When Theophilus died in 412, Cyril succeeded him after three days of street fighting between rival factions. He held the see for thirty-two years. His early years in office were violent, and the record should be stated plainly. He closed the churches of the Novatianists and seized their goods. After a riot, the Jewish community of Alexandria — ancient, large, and long established — was driven out of the city. He quarreled bitterly with Orestes, the imperial prefect. In 415 the philosopher Hypatia, a friend of Orestes, was dragged from her carriage by a mob and murdered in a church. Socrates Scholasticus, a contemporary historian hostile to Cyril, lays the atmosphere at his door; no source proves he ordered it. Both facts belong in the account. The work he is honored for began in 428, when Nestorius became bishop of Constantinople and objected to calling Mary Theotokos, the God-bearer. Nestorius preferred Christ-bearer, holding that the title as used made God the subject of birth. Cyril saw what was underneath the word: if the one born of Mary is not God the Son himself, then the one who died on the cross is not God the Son himself, and the incarnation dissolves into a partnership between a divine person and a human one. He wrote to Nestorius, to the monks of Egypt, to Rome, to the emperor and empresses. He drew up Twelve Anathemas that even his allies found hard. At the Council of Ephesus in 431 he presided, opened the council before the Syrian bishops arrived, and had Nestorius deposed. The Antiochenes arrived and deposed Cyril in return. It took the emperor, imprisonment, enormous bribes to the court, and two years of negotiation before Cyril and John of Antioch signed the Formula of Reunion in 433 — Cyril accepting language about two natures he had resisted, and John accepting Theotokos. Underneath the politics is a vast body of exegesis. Cyril wrote commentaries on John, Luke, Isaiah, the Twelve Prophets and the Pentateuch, an enormous refutation of the emperor Julian's attack on Christianity, and On the Unity of Christ. His single sentence — that in Christ God the Word made a human life his own — is the foundation Chalcedon built on twenty years after his death. He died in 444. Rome named him a Doctor of the Church in 1882; the Coptic and Orthodox churches have honored him as the Pillar of the Faith without interruption. Sources: The Acts of the Council of Ephesus; Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History, book VII; Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ; Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. III.
632 quotations across 25 books
Where this voice is quoted
But no one at the table knew why Jesus had said this to him.
“The disciples however understand not the force of the saying, and this (it seems) in accordance with the Divine dispensation, as Christ did not unfold its meaning to them: since in other places indeed we find Him teaching them that He would be delivered into…”
If God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify the Son in Himself—and will glorify Him at once.
“The traitor departs to minister to the stratagems of the devil. And now Christ begins His discourse; teaching us thereby, as in a figure, that the things which are fitted only for true disciples are not to be uttered in the hearing of all men.”
A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you also must love one another.
“He plainly indicates the novelty involved in his command here—and the extent to which the love he enjoins here surpasses the old idea of mutual love—by adding the words "Even as I have loved you, you also should love one another."”
“Lord,” said Peter, “why can’t I follow You now? I will lay down my life for You.”
“What is there, he means, that prevents or that can keep him back from following His Master, now that his deliberate aim is to die for Christ's sake, reckoning this as his proudest boast?”
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe in Me as well.
“In commanding them not to be troubled, Jesus placed them, as it were, on the threshold between hope and fear. This way, if they fell into weakness and suffering in their human frailty, the hope of his mercy might help them to recover.”
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and welcome you into My presence, so that you also may be where I am.
“Therefore if the mansions in God the Father's home had not been many in number, He would have said that He was going on before them, namely to prepare beforehand the habitations of the saints: but knowing that there are many such, already fully prepared…”
You know the way to the place where I am going.”
“"I Myself," He seems to say, "am going on before to make ready for you the path of entrance into the heavens: but if you wish, and if it is the delight of your heart, to rest within those mansions, and if you have devoted…”
Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.”
“Philip is anxious to learn, but not very keen in that understanding which is adapted to Divine vision; for else he would never have supposed it possible with bodily eyes to behold in its fulness the Divine nature in spite of the plain declaration of…”
If you ask Me for anything in My name, I will do it.
“Having ordained that when men pray they must ask in His Name and promising that He will Himself supply to them that ask whatsoever they desire to receive, He takes great thought not to seem to speak falsehood, having in view the unholy slanders of…”
If you ask Me for anything in My name, I will do it.
“Undisguisedly now He says that, being Very God, He will accept exceeding readily the prayers of His own people, and will supply right gladly what things soever they desire to receive, meaning of course spiritual gifts and such as are worthy of the heavenly munificence.”
I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
“Of necessity our Lord Jesus the Christ at this point finishes the discourse touching the Holy and Consubstantial Trinity.”
In a little while the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you also will live.
“Those who love evil in the world will go down to Hades and be banished from the presence of Christ. However, the lovers of virtue who have kept inviolate the earnest of the Spirit will be with him and dwell with him.”
On that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you.
“If it is merely because he loves and is loved that the Son is in God the Father, and if by the same law we are in the Son and he in us, and no different bond of union is discernible—whether we consider that which…”
Whoever has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me.
“Our Saviour here says that the revelation of the mystery in us will then be clearest when we see ourselves living in conformity with His likeness.”
All this I have spoken to you while I am still with you.
“Contrariwise, His speech has in it the human element, and is not quite foreign to the standards we apply to ourselves, to the extent that the mind into which it entered was fitted to receive the words before us.”
And now I have told you before it happens, so that when it does happen, you will believe.
“A prophecy of the future is manifestly a sure pledge of what the future has in store for us. Christ confirms therefore the heart of His disciples, and seems to inspire in them a firm conviction that He is really ascending to God the Father…”
I will not speak with you much longer, for the prince of this world is coming, and he has no claim on Me.
“Now when the impious Jews were already at hand, with the band of soldiers whom they brought, and their leader who also had promised to betray Him, and were ready to take Him and bear Him away in no long time to His sufferings upon…”
This is to My Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, proving yourselves to be My disciples.
“He says that God His Father has been glorified, being justly admired for His incomparable goodness and crowning as it were His exceeding kindness with actual proof.”
I have told you these things so that My joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.
“Here it is as though when Jesus says, "All this I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you," he's saying that those things which encourage me may give you encouragement as well.”
If the world hates you, understand that it hated Me first.
“The word that speaks to the pleasure of the listeners will flatter rather than benefit the world. But those who obey the words of the Savior will not conduct their ministry in this way.”
If you were of the world, it would love you as its own. Instead, the world hates you, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you…
“He lightens by His art even that which was most grievous, and gives them unexpected pleasure at that which it was reasonable to suppose would greatly trouble them.”
Whoever hates Me hates My Father as well.
“He makes a definite charge of atheism against those who choose, in the impiety of their minds and the estrangement of their hearts, to hate Him. And the charge is a true one.”
They will do these things because they have not known the Father or Me.
“He showed that the zeal of the Jews was a zeal not according to knowledge, as also Paul says, but that it had gone far astray and wandered out of the straight path, even though according to the purpose that was in them it seemed…”
But I have told you these things so that when their hour comes, you will remember that I told you about them.
“He contends that mention has been made to them of these things for no other reason except that they might know that, meeting for His sake the assaults of sin, they would at all events gain glory therefrom.”
Now, however, I am going to Him who sent Me; yet none of you asks Me, ‘Where are You going?’
“Did the Saviour then separate from His disciples when He ascended to the Father, and was He still with them, by the working and power and grace of the Spirit? How, or in what way, was He with them?”