On the True Faith, to the Empresses Pulcheria and Eudocia · §25

Raises his temple first; receives believers as man; reigns as God

…He says that those who have believed in him have been given to him by the Father, so that he may not lose them but raise them on the last day. How then did he raise them, if not clearly through his own resurrection from the dead? For having made alive his own temple even before the others, and having shaken death’s power through the death of his own flesh, he became a way for human nature toward resurrection and toward being able at last to overpower corruption. So what is proper to the God-Word who came down from heaven is that through which he became firstborn from the dead — so that what was given him may also follow the raised one toward life, no longer being lost through the first-formed man’s transgression, but rather being saved through Christ’s obedience.

And he says again that those who put forward faith toward him have been given to him — as having become human. For all the Father’s things are hard-and-fast his own; but since, as I said, he shared blood and flesh, and then we have believed in him as God, in this way the name of “gift” is brought in. For the one who was King even before flesh has also reigned over us with flesh. And so, as one brought into the beginning of needing to reign when he became as we are, “The Lord,” he says, “said to me: You are my Son; today I have begotten you.” So he receives his own things in a human way, though he always rules over all as God.

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About this text

Cyril’s court treatise on right faith for Pulcheria and Eudocia (CPG 5220). One Son who suffers in flesh yet remains impassible as God. English from Pusey’s Greek.

English follows Pusey’s 1877 Greek of De recta fide ad Pulcheriam et Eudociam. OCR of that print was cleaned section by section before Pass A/B. This is a reading translation for study, not a new critical edition.

Witnesses

  • Copy-text Pusey, De recta fide ad reginas (Oxford, 1877) (Greek · CPG 5220 §§1–48)

English is newly prepared for study from the stated edition. It is not a complete critical edition.