Cyril and the Antiochenes

If the populace thinks at all about Antiochene and Alexandrian theology, then the popular view is that the Antiochenes are the more earthy of the two, the school more interested in and grounded in the human life of the man Jesus. In a 2008 essay in St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly , Wheaton’s George Kalantzis contests this view. On the contrary, he says, the Antiochenes were the metaphysicians; the Alexandrians, especially Cyril, started from the gospel.

Kalantzis writes: “Divine transcendence, immutability, and impassibility are . . . essential in understanding the Antiochene concept of the Incarnation.” Alexandrians of course shared these assumptions, but they played a controlling role in Antiochene Christology that they did not in Alexandrian. The question Antiochenes asked was a metaphycial one: How can an impassible and immutable God take on humanity. To preserve the divine attributes, they posited a “dual subjectivity and predication” that extended to “a division of the dominical sayings.” Thus, “This division protected divine transcendence, and, at the same time, safeguarded the fullness of the ‘assumed man’ in the union. The problem it created, of course, was that such language was susceptible to the accusation it advocated ‘two sons’ – a charge they would deny strenuously.”

Kalantzis notes the irony that “Cyril, coming from the ‘allegorical school’ of Alexandria . . . would be more faithful to the Scriptural narrative of the Incarnation than his interlocutors in Antioch . . . . Unlike his counterparts in the East, Cyril was far less interested in the impassibility of God per se than he was with the narrative of the incarnation . . . . For Cyril what was most important was to protect the integrity of the Scriptural narrative itself – the narrative within which salvation occurs – not God’s transcendence or impassibility.”