¹ A nod to Cyril, or even more broadly, an identification of a monophysite tendency in Luther's thinking, not infrequently accompanies accounts of Luther's Christology. See e.g. Lienhard, Marc, Luther: Witness to Jesus Christ: Stages and Themes of the Reformer's Christology, trans. Robertson, Edwin H. (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1982), p. 317Google Scholar. Likewise, Johannes Zachhuber, even as he wonders how to inscribe Luther within the complex landscape of the ‘tensions at the origin of christology’, shows little hesitation as to ‘[a]n obvious starting point[, which] is to note the parallels between [Luther's] position and that of Cyril of Alexandria’; see Zachhuber's Luther's Christological Legacy: Christocentrism and the Chalcedonian Tradition (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2017), p. 113. Carl L. Beckwith is even more direct. As he seeks to demonstrate Zwingli's ‘Nestorianism’, Beckwith simply assumes ‘Luther's affinity for Cyril of Alexandria's Christology’; see ‘Martin Luther's Christological Sources in the Fathers’, in Hinlicky, Paul R. and Nelson, Derek R. (eds), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Martin Luther, 3 vols. (Oxford: OUP, 2017)Google Scholar; available online at https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.372). And yet all that Beckwith does show is a common point of departure and certain formal features common to both Cyril's and Luther's argumentative strategies. This, as we shall argue here, overlooks contextual differences, the actual shape and relation of the two theologians’ soteriological arguments in their respective contexts, and not least the reconfiguration of the eucharistic background that dominates their arguments. Richard Cross's position, in Communicatio Idiomatum (Oxford: OUP, 2019), is more complex, in that he emphasises that Luther remains very much a late-mediaeval theologian; nevertheless, Cross, too, not only acknowledges some unusual moves on Luther's part but also, in order to evaluate those, takes his bearings from christological grammar of a Cyrillian/Alexandrian provenance. Finally, Benjamin Gleede views Luther to be instinctively returning to the roots in pre-Chalcedonian Christology, centred on Cyril's thought and that of his fellow Easterners, a perspective which allegedly explains why Luther had only barely qualified mockery to offer towards the Christology of mediaeval scholasticism; see ‘Vermischt, ausgetauscht und kreuzwies zugesprochen: Zur wechselvollen Geschichte der Idiome Christi in der Alten Kirche’, in Bayer, Oswald and Gleede, Benjamin (eds), Creator est Creatura: Luthers Christologie als Lehre von der Idiomenkommunikation (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007), pp. 35–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Luther, Martin, On the Councils and the Church, in Luther's Works [hereafter, LW], American edn., 82 vols. (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1955ff), 41:105Google Scholar; D. Martin Luthers Werke [Kritische Gesamtausgabe; hereafter, WA], ed. Joachim K. F. Knaake et al., 57 vols. (Weimar: Böhlau, 1883ff), 50:551. The standard English title of Luther's treatise is a bit of a mistranslation, since Luther uses the word ‘church’ in the plural.

³ See Braaten, Carl E., ‘Modern Interpretations of Nestorius’, Church History 32/3 (September 1963), pp. 252–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴ LW 41:102; WA 50:589.

⁵ LW 41:98ff; WA 50:586.

⁶ LW 41:100; WA 50:587.

⁷ This is true of much of the Christian tradition, both before and after Luther, given that the only full-length work from Nestorius’ hand to have survived to our times (and in a later Syriac translation to boot) is his late Bazaar of Heracleides, dated to the year of his death, 451, and in modern times published for the first time (in the Syriac) only in 1910.

⁸ Kusukawa, Sachiko, A Wittenberg University Library Catalogue of 1536 (Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1995), #134Google Scholar.

⁹ Nestorius ‘approached the statement that Mary was God's mother or the bearer of God with the same pride. Then he, in turn, encountered other proud bishops, whom his pride displeased, especially Cyril of Alexandria; for there was no Augustine or Ambrose at hand’ (LW 41:98, cf. 95; WA 50:585, cf. 582).

¹⁰ This is evident especially in Chemnitz's impressive lists of patristic quotations which he deploys as testimony to support the Lutherans’ Christology in De duabus naturis in Christo, 2nd edn (1580); ET: The Two Natures in Christ, trans. Jacob A. O. Preus (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1971). An earlier work by Johannes Brenz, Recognitio propheticae et apostolicae doctrinae de vera majestate Jesu Christi ad dexteram Dei patris (1564), likewise appeals to Cyril for support. Finally, two dozen or so quotations from Cyril can be found in the ‘Catalog of Testimonies’, appended to the Book of Concord (1580) to demonstrate the antiquity of the Lutherans’ teaching. While Chemnitz quotes broadly from Cyril's Thesaurus de Sancta Trinitate, Scholia on the Incarnation of the Only Begotten and On Orthodoxy to Theodosius, Brenz's references are generally limited to Cyril's commentary on John's Gospel.

¹¹ For a brief overview of similarities between Luther's theology, on the one hand, and that of Cyril and the Antiochene school, on the other, see Zachhuber, Luther's Christological Legacy, pp. 113–25.

¹² Lienhard, Luther, p. 28.

¹³ Cross, Communicatio Idiomatum, p. 57.

¹⁴ Lienhard, Luther, p. 233; Cross, Communicatio Idiomatum, pp. 73–7.

¹⁵ St. Cyril of Alexandria, On Orthodoxy to Theodosius, §19, in Three Christological Treatises, trans. D. King (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), p. 54.

¹⁶ Cyril, On Orthodoxy, p. 58 [§23].

¹⁷ Martin Luther, Disputation on the Divinity and Humanity in Christ (1540), in LW 73:255; cf. 258–9; WA 39^II:94, cf. 95–6. Cf. Cyril's statement on the need of analogies in On Orthodoxy, p. 55 [§20].

¹⁸ St. Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ, trans. John A. McGuckin (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1995), p. 107.

¹⁹ ‘It pertains to one and the same both to exist and subsist eternally, and also to have been born after the flesh in these last times.’ Cyril, Unity, pp. 69, 76 and passim.

²⁰ Cyril, Unity, p. 73.

²¹ Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, 2 vols., trans. David R. Maxwell (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2013), 1:212–3.

²² If a conjunction were the case, Christ would be in need of a savior himself, rather than dispensing salvation. See e.g. Cyril, Unity, pp. 60–1.

²³ See here Luther's approach to patristic testimony: ‘we must speak differently about the councils and fathers and look not at the letters but at the meaning’ (LW 41:52; WA 50:547).

²⁴ Martin Luther, Confession Concerning Christ's Supper (1528), in LW 37:209–10; WA 26:319.

²⁵ LW 41:104; WA 50:590.

²⁶ LW 73:267; WA 39^II:107.

²⁷ LW 73:260; WA 39^II:97.

²⁸ LW 41:101; WA 50:587.

²⁹ Nicholas of Cusa, De li Non-Aliud (1461). Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Encyclopaedia Logic, Part I, §§ 94–5.

³⁰ Martin Luther, The Disputation Concerning the Passage, ‘The Word Was Made Flesh’ (1539), in LW 38:245; WA 39^II:8–9. Cf. ‘A creature, in the old use of language, is that which the Creator has created and distinguished from Himself’ (LW 73:265; WA 39^II:105).

³¹ LW 38:262; WA 39^II:8b.

³² LW 73:264; WA 39^II:102.

³³ Cf. LW 38:252, with Disputation on the Mystery of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation of the Son, and on the Law (1544), Theses 15–26, and Disputation on the Distinction of Persons in the Trinity and on the Origin of the Souls (1545), Theses 1–17; LW 73:470–1; WA 39^II:287–8; and 516–8, 533–4; WA 39^II:339–40, 368–70, respectively. One may, of course, argue that, by opposing, or at least qualifying, Peter Lombard's position, affirmed by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) contra Joachim of Fiore, Luther intends to challenge both conciliar and papal authority. But that still does not explain why this particular dogma – i.e. the non-generative character of the divine essence – comes under Luther's scrutiny, not to mention a dogma that requires Luther to revise his earlier affirmation of it. When one takes into account the broader context of Luther's late trinitarian disputations, with their emphasis on the inadequacy of (inherited) conceptual language and their emphasis on the ‘new language’ of theology, it is clear that much more is at stake for Luther than the question of authority. The signification of divinity is the issue.

³⁴ LW 73:255; WA 39^II:93.

³⁵ LW 73:270; WA 39^II:110.

³⁶ LW 73:274–5; cf. 263; WA 39^II:116.

³⁷ For Luther's broader, but still theological, definition of the human as justified by faith and his polemical engagement with the received philosophical definitions, see his Disputation Concerning Man (1536), in LW 34:137–8; WA 39^I:175.

³⁸ ‘sic etiam hic in Christo est una persona Deus et homo coniuncta nec distingui debent’ (LW 73:263; WA 39^II:101).

³⁹ Cyril, On the Unity, pp. 61, 77.

⁴⁰ Cf. ‘he whose natural property is to be quite other from the whole universe and who is external to it, came into it; as a man he became a part of it, save only that he did not on this account abandon his divine glory’. Cyril, On Orthodoxy, p. 66 [§30].

⁴¹ ‘[God] can only be incorporeal. But the term “incorporeal”, though granted, does not give an all-embracing revelation of God's essential being. The same is true of “ingenerate”, “unoriginated”, “immutable”, and “immortal”, indeed all attributes applied, or referred, to God. For what has the fact of owning no beginning, of freedom from change, from limitation, to do with real, fundamental nature?’ Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 28.9, in On God and Christ, trans. Williams, Frederick and Wickham, Lionel (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2002), p. 43Google Scholar.

⁴² Cyril, On Orthodoxy, p. 59 [§24].

⁴³ Ibid., pp. 59–60 [§25].

⁴⁴ Ibid., p. 63 [§27].

⁴⁵ Ibid., p. 65 [§30].

⁴⁶ Cyril, On the Unity, p. 73; emphasis added.

⁴⁷ Ibid., p. 86.

⁴⁸ Ibid., p. 107; cf. 110.

⁴⁹ McGuckin, John, Saint Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2004), pp. 201–7Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ ‘he made use of his own body, like an instrument, for carrying out bodily activities and its physical infirmities, at least such only as are not immoral, while his own soul experienced what is peculiarly human but not open to condemnation’. Cyril, On Orthodoxy, p. 56 [§21].

⁵¹ Cyril, On the Unity, p. 111.

⁵² Ibid., p. 118.

⁵³ Ibid., p. 115. Cf. p. 123: ‘he had this divine fullness even in the emptiness of our condition, and he enjoyed the highest eminence in humility, and held what belongs to him by nature (that is, to be worshipped by all) as a gift because of his humanity’.

⁵⁴ McCormack, Bruce L. has recently advanced a similar argument regarding Cyril's Christology in his The Humility of the Eternal Son: Reformed Kenoticism and the Repair of Chalcedon (Cambridge: CUP, 2021)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. McCormack proposes to clarify Chalcedon's silences and overcome its inconsistences, by arguing, first, that ‘the eternal Son has an essential relation to the personal life of Jesus’, and, second, ‘that the nature of that relation is best understood in terms of “ontological receptivity”’ (p. 7). However, whereas for McCormack, Cyril's account of the Logos' activity is forced at crucial junctures ‘to acknowledge a suspension of the instrumentalization of the human’, the argument we have advanced here focuses more on the principled indifference of the Word's divine activity to his human doings. This said, McCormack's goal, namely, establishing the divine Son's receptivity to his humanity, is not far removed from what I think Luther is aiming at, as the following section will show. Luther, to be sure, is interested less in the Logos' openness to human agency and more in arguing for a single yet composite agent whose doings are shown to be converging, coherent, congruent, perhaps even isomorphic.

⁵⁵ Cyril, On Orthodoxy, p. 57 [§21].

⁵⁶ LW 73:258; WA 39^II:96.

⁵⁷ LW 37:219; WA 26:333; cited authoritatively in the Formula of Concord (Solida Declaratio) (1577), VIII.84.

⁵⁸ Martin Luther, LW 37:218; WA 26:332–3.

⁵⁹ On the lumen gloriae, see The Bondage of the Will (1525), in LW 33:292; WA 18:785. For an account of divine hiddenness, as Luther's attempt to bring to their logical conclusion some mediaeval conceptions of the divine, an account that is ultimately offered as a counterfactual, see Piotr J. Małysz, ‘Martin Luther's Trinitarian Hermeneutic of Freedom’, in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Martin Luther, I:501–19; available online at https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.355.

⁶⁰ LW 73:261; WA 39^II:98.

⁶¹ LW 73:263; WA 39^II:101–2; emphasis added.

⁶² See note 21 above.

⁶³ Cf. Chemnitz, Two Natures in Christ, p. 248.

⁶⁴ Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford L. Battles, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1960), 2:1394–5 (IV.xvii.27).

⁶⁵ Ibid., 2:1382 (IV.xvii.19).

⁶⁶ Ibid., 2:1403 (IV.xvii.31).

⁶⁷ ‘So in the mass also, the foremost promise of all, [Christ] adds as a memorial sign of such a great promise his own body and his own blood in the bread and wine. … [T]he mass is nothing else than the divine promise or testament of Christ, sealed with the sacrament of his body and blood’ (LW 36:44, 47; WA 6:518, 520). Though Luther, to be sure, makes much of the death of Christ for the establishment of the mass as testament, this is not to the exclusion of the resurrection of the one who was dead and who now stands by his promise, sealed with his life, in an irreversible way.

⁶⁸ LW 36:62–3; WA 6:530. Luther will return to this very same thought explicitly in the context of faith and its certainty – derived not from one's subjective states, but from God's own action – in Against Rebaptism (1528), affirming that Christ ‘is present at baptism and in baptism, in fact is himself the baptizer’ (LW 40:242; WA 26:156).

⁶⁹ This is the thrust of Luther's argument for the ubiquity of Christ's body (cf. LW 37:216–21; WA 26:228–334) – an argument, which Luther's successors will reverse, again, in a more conventional, even Cyrillian, manner by arguing for the communication of God's essential attributes to Christ's human nature (the so-called genus maiestaticum of the communication of attributes).