Cyril of Jerusalem: Catechetical Lectures

Compare vi. 6: ὁ γεννηθεὶς ἀπαθῶς. The importance attached to the assertion of a “passionless generation” arose from the objections offered by Eusebius of Nicomedia and others to the word ὁμοούσιος when proposed by Constantine at Nicæa. We learn from Eusebius of Cæsarea (Epist ad suæ parœciæ homines, § 4) that the Emperor himself explained that the word was used “not in the sense of the affections (πάθη) of bodies,” because “the immaterial, and intellectual, and incorporeal nature could not be the subject of any corporeal affection.” Again, in § 7, Eusebius admits that

(See the next note.)

Athanasius (Expos. Fidei, § 1): “Word not pronounced nor mental, nor an effluence of the Perfect, nor a dividing of the passionless nature.” Also (de Decretis, § 11): “God being without parts is Father of the Son without partition or passion; for there is neither effluence of the Immaterial, nor influx from without, as among men.”

James i. 17.

Matt. xi. 27.

John viii. 49.

John xv. 10.

2 Cor. i. 3.

Eph. iii. 14, 15.

1 John ii. 22: “This is the Antichrist, even he that denieth the Father and the Son” (R.V.).

v. 23, bracketed in the A.V. as spurious, but rightly restored in R.V.

Phil. ii. 11.

Ex. iii. 6.

Compare Lect. iv. 33.

Luke ii. 49.

John ii. 16.

Matt. x. 29. S. Cyril instead of “your Father” writes “my Father which is in heaven:” so Origen and Athanasius.

Matt. vi. 26.

John v. 17.

John xx. 17. On this text, quoted again in Cat. xi. 19, see the three Sermons of Bishop Andrewes On the Resurrection.

ἐνεργεία, meaning here, the operation of God, by nature in begetting His Son, by adoption in making many sons.

Deut. xxxii. 6.

Is. lxiv. 8.

1 Cor. iv. 15.

Job xxix. 16.

John xix. 26, 27.

φιλοστοργία might be applied to the mutual affection of mother and son, but the context shews that it refers here to parental love only; see Polybius, V. § 74, 5; Xenoph. Cyrop. I. § 3, 2.

Luke ii. 33.

Matt. i. 25.

Is. lxiii. 16.

Ib. li. 2.

Ps. lxviii. 5. Cyril quotes as usual from the Septuagint (Ps. lxvii. 6), where the clause ταραχθήσονται ἀπὸ προσώπου αὐτοῦ, answering to nothing in the Hebrew, is evidently an interpolation, and may have crept in from a marginal quotation of Is. lxiv. 2.

John xvii. 5.

1 Tim. ii. 16.

John i. 18.

John vi. 46: He hath seen the Father. The weight of authority is against the reading (τὸν θεόν) which Cyril follows.

Matt. xviii. 10.

Is. xl. 12 and 22.

Jer. ii. 27.

Ps. xlv. 10.

John viii. 41.

Ps. l. 18.

1 John iii. 10.

Mark iii. 23.

John i. 12.

Rom. viii. 14.

John viii. 39.

1 Pet. i. 17.

1 John ii. 15.

Matt. v. 16.

1 Pet. v. 7; Matt. vi. 8.

Heb. xii. 9.

Deut. v. 16.

Col. iii. 20.

Matt. x. 37.

Ex. xxi. 17; Lev. xx. 9; Matt. xv. 4.

Compare for the thought Euripides, Medea, 1029–1035.

ἀντιγεννῆσαι. Jeremy Taylor (Ductor Dubitantium, Book III. cap. ii. §17) mentions several stories in which a parent is nourished from a daughter’s breast, who thus ‘saves the life she cannot give.’

On the change of Moods, see Jelf, Greek Grammar, § 809. The second verb (καταξίωσειεν) expresses a wish and a consequence which might follow, if the first (στηρίξωσιν) wish be realized, as it probably may be. Cf. Herod. ix. 51.

Matt. xiii. 43.

Lecture VIII.

The text is translated from the Septuagint, in which S. Cyril found the title Almighty (Παντοκράτωρ), one of the usual equivalents in the Septuagint for Lord of Hosts (Sabaoth). In the English A.V. and R.V. the passage stands thus: Jer. xxxii. 18, 19: The Great, the Mighty God, the LORD of Hosts, is His name, Great in counsel, and mighty in work.

(Apost. Const. VI. 6). Compare Euseb. (E.H. IV. 22.)

Cicero, De Natura Deorum, Lib. I. 27: “Pythagoras thought that God was the soul pervading all nature.” The doctrine was accepted both by Stoics and Platonists, and became very general. Cf. Virg. Georg. iv. 221: Deum namque ire per omnis Terrasque, tractusque maris, cælumque profundum. and Æn. vi. 726: Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus Meus agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet.

Ps. xxxvi. 5. Cyril appears to have borrowed this statement from Clement of Alexandria, who states (Stromat. V. xiv. § 91) that from this Psalm the thought occurred to Aristotle to let Providence come down as far as to the Moon.

Ps. cxxxix. 8.

See note on Lect. IV. 4.

Matt. x. 28.

Ib. xii. 29.

Job xl. 14, τοῦτ᾽ ἔστιν ἀρχὴ πλάσματος Κυρίου, πεποιῃμένον ἐγκαταπαίζεσθαι ὑπὸ τῶν ἀγγέλων αὐτοῦ. In this description of Behemoth the Septuagint differs much from the Hebrew, which is thus rendered in our English Versions, xl. 19: He is the chief of the ways of God: he (only, R.V.) that made him can make his sword to approach unto him. Compare Job xli. 5: Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? and Ps. civ. 26: There is that Leviathan whom thou hast formed to play therein (Sept. to take thy pastime with him). See Baruch iii. 17, with the note in the Speaker’s Commentary.

Ps. cxix. 91.

Dan. iv. 34.

On this doctrine of the Manicheans see Archelaus (Disputatio, cap. 42), Epiphanius (Hæres. lxvi. § 81). Compare Clement. Hom. xv. cap. 9: “To all of us possessions are sins.” Plato (Laws, V. 743): “I can never agree with them that the rich man will be really happy, unless he is also good: but for one who is eminently good to be also extremely rich is impossible.”

Prov. xvii. 6, according to the Septuagint. See note on Cat. V. 2, where the same passage is quoted. Clement of Alexandria (Stromat. II. 5) refers to it in connexion with the passage of Plato quoted in the preceding note. S. Augustine also quotes and explains it in Epist. 153, § 26.

The former clause is from Haggai ii. 8; the latter, taken from the words of the Tempter in Luke iv. 6, is quoted both by Cyril and by other Fathers as if from Haggai. Chrysostom (Hom. xxxiv. § 5, in 1 Cor. xiii.) treats the use which some made of the misquotation as ridiculous.

Matt. xxv. 35, 36.

Ib. xix. 21.

The connexion of σώματα with money and possessions suggests the not uncommon meaning “slaves.” See Polyb. xviii. 18 § 6: καὶ τὴν ἐνδουχίαν ἀπέδοντο καὶ τὰ σώματα, καὶ σὺν τουτοις ἔτι τινὰς τῶν κτήσεων, “household furniture, and slaves, and besides these some also of their lands.” See Dictionary of Christian Antiquities, “Slavery,” where it is shewn that Christians generally and even Bishops still possessed slaves throughout the 4th Century. But here it is perhaps more probable that Cyril refers, as before, Cat. iv. § 23, to the Manichean doctrine of the body as the root of sin.

Matt. iv. 9; Luke iv. 6.

For ἐγκεχειρῆσθαι, the reading of all the printed Editions, which hardly yields a suitable sense, we should probably substitute ἐγκεχειρίσθαι. A similar confusion of the two verbs occurs in Polybius (Hist. VIII. xviii. 6); the proper use of the latter is seen in Joh. Damasc. (De Fide Orthod. II. 4, quoted by Cleopas), who speaks of Satan as being “of these Angelic powers the chief of the earthly order, and entrusted by God with the guardianship of the earth” (τῆς γῆς τὴν φυλακὴν ἐγχειρισθεὶς παρὰ Θεοῦ).

On this point compare Irenæus (Hær. V. xxi.–xxiv.), and Gregory of Nyssa (Orat. Catech. § 5).

The reference is to Manes, of whom his disciple Turbo says (Archelai Disput. § 10),

Ps. lxxx. 1.

᾽Αδωναΐ, Heb. ינָדֹאַ, “the Lord,” an old form of the Plural of majesty, used of God only.

παντοκράτορα, Heb. ידַּשׁ לא”, El-Shaddai, “God Almighty.”

Job v. 8, 9. Cyril’s quotation agrees with the Codex Alexandrinus of the Septuagint, which has παντοκράτορα , “Almighty,” while the Vatican and other mss. read τὸν πάντων δεσπότην.

Job xxxvii. 23: God hath upon Him terrible majesty (R.V.). The Vatican and Alexandrine mss. of the Septuagint read ἐπὶ τούτοις μεγάλη ἡ δόξα καὶ τιμὴ παντοκράτορος. (For these things great is the glory and honour of the Almighty.) But Cyril’s text is the same as the Aldine and Complutensian.

Lecture IX.

The Septuagint, from which Cyril quotes the text, differs much from the Hebrew, and from the English Versions: Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man: for I will demand of thee, and answer thou Me.

John i. 18.

Ezekiel i. 28.

Exod. xxxiii. 20.

Is. lxiv. 1, Septuagint. R.V. Oh that Thou wouldest rend the heavens, that Thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow down.

Dan. x. 9, 16, 18.

Wisdom xiii. 5. Compare Theophilus of Antioch To Autolycus, I. 5, 6: “God cannot indeed be seen by human eyes, but is beheld and perceived through His providence and works.…He is not visible to eyes of flesh, since He is incomprehensible.”

Song of the Three Children, 32.

In Ezekiel i. 6–11, the four living creatures have each four wings, as also in x. 21 according to the Hebrew. But in the latter passage, according to the Vatican text of the Septuagint, each has eight wings, as Codd. R. and Casaub. read here. Cyril seems to have confused the number in Ezekiel with that in Is. vi. 2: each one had six wings. By “a wheel of four sides” Cyril explains Ez. i. 16: a wheel in the midst of a wheel, as meaning two circles set at right angles to each other, like the equator and meridian on a globe.

Compare Cat. iv. 4. Irenæus (I. x. 1):

Tertullian (de Præscriptione Hæret. cap. xiii.)

Compare Cat. vi. 13, 27.

Gen. i. 6.

Ps. xix. 5.

The common reading ἵνα μὴ τοῦ ψύχους πλείων γένηται ὁ χρόνος, ἀλλ᾽ ἵνα αἱ νύκτες, κ.τ.λ. gives a meaning contrary to the facts. The translation follows the mss. Roe, Casaubon, which omit μή and for ἀλλά read καί. Compare Whewell’s Astromony, p. 22:

Ibid. p. 34:

Ps. xix. 2. Compare a beautiful passage of Theophilus of Antioch (To Autolycus, vi.).

Lucretius, V. 1182: “They saw the skies in constant order run, The varied seasons and the circling sun, Apparent rule, with unapparent cause, And thus they sought in gods the source of laws.

See note 3 on Cat. iii. 33.

Is. xlv. 7. Compare the Homily of Chrysostom on this text.

Whewell, Astromomy. p. 38:

Chrysostom, VI. p. 171:

Clement of Alexandria (Stromat. IV. 22, E. Tr.):

Chrysostom (Tom. II. p. 793): “We usually take the reckoning of our money early in the morning, but of our actions, of all that we have said and done by day, let us demand of ourselves the account after supper, and even after nightfall, as we lie upon our bed, with none to trouble, none to disturb us. And if we see anything done amiss, let us chastise our conscience, let us rebuke our mind, let us so vehemently impugn our account, that we may no more dare to rise up and bring ourselves to the same pit of sin, being