Friday, March 11, 2022

Cyril of Alexandria (375-444) on the Ark of the Covenant being a Type of Jesus


 

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)