Iraklis Filios
Saint Cyril of Alexandria wrote that the Mother of God sanctified the Holy Trinity! At first sight this is a scandalous statement. How could a human being sanctify the Holy Trinity? And if that statement’s challenging, there are people on the other side who doubt and deny that Our Lady gave birth to God at all.
How can the created be born of the uncreated? In ancient Greek thought, this was impossible. Far beyond a state of doubt. Completely untenable, since, in Plato’s Symposium we read that ‘God doesn’t mix with people’ [203a1–2]. So how does God, Who is perfect, commune with sinful people, a question found among the Neo-Platonists? In no way. There is no possibility of the perfect communicating with the imperfect. This is what Nestorius claimed. And this is why he didn’t call Our Lady ‘the Mother of God’, but preferred other terms which denoted her human nature and, therefore her created finiteness (for example, ‘Mother of Christ’,…