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…
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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
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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
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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
“How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.
“Long discourse nothing profits him who understandeth not a whit. Wise then is the saying in the book of Proverbs, Well is he that speaketh in the ears of them that will hear.”
Truly, truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, and yet you people do not accept our testimony.
“And ye receive not our witness. As having in Himself the Father and the Spirit Naturally, the Saviour set forth the person of the Witnesses in the plural number, that, as in the law of Moses, by the mouth of two or three witnesses, what…”
If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?
“A doctrine, saith He, not exceeding the understanding befitting man, ye from your extreme folly received not, and how shall I explain to you things more Divine?”
For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.
“He desireth to show openly herein, that He is God by Nature, since one must needs deem that He Who came forth from God the Father, is surely God also, not having the honour from without, as we have, but being in truth what He…”
And this is the verdict: The Light has come into the world, but men loved the darkness rather than the Light because their deeds were evil.
“He lets not the condemnation of the unbelievers remain without consideration, but recounts its causes, and shows clearly that, according to the words of the Proverbs, Not unjustly is the net spread for the birds.”
But whoever practices the truth comes into the Light, so that it may be seen clearly that what he has done has been accomplished in God.”
“But he that doeth truth (that is, the lover and doer of the works of the Truth) cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God.”
After this, Jesus and His disciples went into the Judean countryside, where He spent some time with them and baptized.
“After the conversation with Nicodemus had now reached its conclusion, the Divine Evangelist again prepares something else most profitable.”
Then a dispute arose between John’s disciples and a certain Jew over the issue of ceremonial washing.
“The Jews being powerless to commend the purifications of the law, and not able to advocate the cleansing through the ashes of an heifer, plan something against John's disciples, whereby they thought to cause them no slight vexation, albeit easily worsted in their own matters.”
John replied, “A man can receive only what is given him from heaven.
“A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven. He says that there is nothing good in man, but must needs be wholly the gift of God, For it befits the creation to hear, What hast thou that thou didst not receive?”
You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but am sent ahead of Him.’
“He brings his disciples to the recollection of the words which they have already often heard, partly reproving them rightly, as steeped in forgetfulness of things profitable, and slumbering in respect to this so most dread doctrine, partly persuading them to remember the Divine Scripture…”
He must increase; I must decrease.
“He convicts his disciples of being yet troubled about trifles, and of taking unseasonable offence at what they by no means ought, and of not yet knowing accurately, Who and whence Emmanuel is.”
The One who comes from above is above all. The one who is from the earth belongs to the earth and speaks as one from the earth.
“CHAPTER II. That the Son is not in the number of things originate, but above all, as God of God. He That cometh from above is above all.”
He testifies to what He has seen and heard, yet no one accepts His testimony.
“But since the other part of the verse runs thus, And what He hath seen and heard, that He testifieth, come we will discuss a few things on this too.”
Whoever accepts His testimony has certified that God is truthful.
“There was no other possible way of showing the impiety of those who do not believe except by making known the glorious achievement of the believers. Evil is a lot easier to see when it is contrasted with good.”
For the One whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit.
“The Father then knoweth that His own Son is in Him the Same by Nature (for this I suppose the words, are One, signify, and nothing else), and acknowledgeth Him as Son not creature; Son I mean of His own Essence, and not honoured with…”
Now He had to pass through Samaria.
“O great readiness of mind and deep prudence! He prevents by his answers the things that would have been asked of him.”
When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.”
“The Saviour was not ignorant of the woman's coming. For right well did He know being Very God, that she would forthwith be there to draw the cold stream from the fountain.”
Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God and who is asking you for a drink, you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.”
“Jesus calls the quickening gift of the Spirit "living water" because mere human nature is parched to its very roots, now rendered dry and barren of all virtue by the crimes of the devil.”
Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock?”
“The Samaritans then were aliens (for they were colonists of the Babylonians), but they call Jacob their father for two reasons.”
The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water so that I will not get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”
“Give me this water, that I thirst not neither come hither to draw. Jesus saith unto her, Again does she both speak and imagine only ordinary things, and of the things that were said understands no whit; but she supposes that in being released from…”
“I have no husband,” the woman replied. Jesus said to her, “You are correct to say that you have no husband.
“To whom is it not now evident that the Saviour was not ignorant that she was bereft of any rightful husband and that He made the enquiry about her husband who was not, a plea for making known hidden things?”
“Sir,” the woman said, “I see that You are a prophet.
“With difficulty does she brighten up to apprehension, and that again not yet perfect. For she still calls the Lord of Prophets a Prophet.”
Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews say that the place where one must worship is in Jerusalem.”
“Conceiving that the Lord is in truth a Prophet and a Jew, she boasts exceedingly of the customs of her country, and asserts that the Samaritans are far superior in wisdom to the Jews.”
The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When He comes, He will explain everything to us.”
“Upon Christ teaching that the hour and season will come, rather is already present, wherein the true worshippers shall offer to God the Father the worship in spirit; forthwith the woman is winged to thoughts above her wont unto the hope spoken of by the…”
Jesus answered, “I who speak to you am He.”
“Not to untutored or wholly ignorant souls doth Christ reveal Himself, bat shines upon and appears the rather to those who are more ready to desire to learn, and travailing with the beginning of the faith in simple words, press forward to the knowledge of…”