Those who rejected the orthodox view of Christ as one person
with two natures, argued that it would not be possible for any man to take on
the glorious divine nature. In defending his view that in Christ God did not
merely assume the form of a man but became a man, Cyril of Alexander points to
the theophany of the burning bush in Exodus 3 as a type of the incarnation:
It was not impossible
to God, in his living kindness, to make himself capable of bearing the
limitations of manhood. And he foretold this to us in enigmas when he initiated
Moses, depicting the manner of the incarnation in types. For he came down in
the form of fire onto the bush in the desert, and the fire played upon the
shrub but did not consume it. When he saw this Moses was amazed. Why was there
no compatibility here between the wood and the fire? How did this inflammable
substance endure the assaults of the flame? Well, as I have already said, this
event was a type of a mystery, of how the divine Word supported the limitations
of the manhood; because he chose to. Absolutely nothing is impossible to him
(Mk 10:27) (On the Unity of Christ, p. 79).
JTR
No comments:
Post a Comment