Cyril describes the nature of the
union of God and man in Christ in several graphic images. In the case of each of
them the point is to describe how two things, notionally discernible or
intellectually distinct in themselves, can nonetheless be combined in one
concrete reality, so as to make a singular subject referral evidently
necessary. Christ, for example, is like the Ark of the Covenant (De Adoratione
In Spiritu et Veritae. PG 68.596, 661; Scholia 11. PG 75.138). The Ark is
wooden but was covered inside and out with beaten gold, thus it was golden too.
Was it told or was it wood? The observer would say it was gold, and the
scripture so describes it, but this does not mean that it ceased being wood.
Nonetheless all would agree that there was only one single Ark. In the same
way, Cyril argues, the one Christ was both God and Man. The wood symbolises his
humanity, the gold his deity. Yet the wood is covered in gold and made
indestructible and precious in the process, just as the humanity was
transfigured in its adoption by the Godhead. (John McGuckin, Saint Cyril of
Alexandria and the Christological controversy Crestwood, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 2004], 196)
