Explanation of the saying of the Apostle that follows.
Be ye like unto me, as I also am unto Christ.
AND how was the wise Paul like unto Christ? Did he establish the heavens, as did the Word of God? Did he set the earth upon its firm foundation, and bring forth the sun and moon, and the stars, and light? How therefore was he like Him? By being an imitator of that human virtue, which Christ shewed forth for our example.
6:17. He stood upon level ground, and a crowd of His disciples and a great multitude of the people.
But observe, I pray, the manner of the election. For the most wise Evangelist says that it was not done in a corner and secretly, but rather when many disciples were gathered together, and a vast crowd from all the country of the Jews, and from the sea-coast of Tyre and Sidon. These latter were idolaters, lame in the hollow of both knees,26 in part observing the customs of the Jews, but yet not altogether abandoning their idolatrous practices. The election, therefore, was held in the presence of all these spectators, and teachers appointed for all beneath the heaven: and this duty they also fulfilled, summoning the Jews from their legal worship, and those who served demons, from Grecian 27 error to the acknowledgment of the truth.
And when He had appointed the holy Apostles, He performed very many wonderful miracles, rebuking demons, delivering from incurable diseases whosoever drew near unto Him, and displaying His own most godlike power: that both the Jews, who had run together unto Him, and those from the country of the Greeks, might know, that Christ, by Whom they were honoured with the dignity of the Apostolate, was not some ordinary man of those in our degree, but, on the contrary, God, as being the Word That was made man, but retained, nevertheless, His own glory. For "power went forth from Him, and healed all." For Christ did not borrow strength from some other person, but being Himself God by nature, even though He had become flesh, He healed them all, by the putting forth of power over the sick.
If further you wish to learn the interpretation of the Apostles' names, know that Peter is explained as meaning "loosing," or "knowing:" Andrew as "comely strength," or "answering:" James as "one who takes labour by the heel:" John, "the grace of the Lord:" Matthew, "given:" Philip, "the opening of the hands," or "the mouth of a lamp:" Bartholomew, "the son suspending water:" Thomas, an "abyss," or "a twin:" James, the son of Alphaeus, "the supplanting "of the passage of life:" Judas, "thanksgiving:" and Simon, "obedience." 28
[Selected footnotes moved to the end and renumbered. Almost all marginalia, any purely textual footnotes, most Greek or Syriac material has been omitted without notice]
1. e The Syriac translator explains his own term: the Greek is "that so and so leads a good life."
2. g The MS. is imperfect, and ends here abruptly.
3. h The two, viz,. His fasting for forty days without His body wasting; and His permitting it to feel hunger afterwards.
4. k T. Aquinas here inserts: "But how is the Son adored, if, as the heretics say, He is a creature? What charge can be brought against those, who have served the creature instead of the Creator, if we worship as God, the Son Who, according to them, is a creature?"
5. 1 Mai notices that this passage is either taken from the Commentary on the Psalms, or vice versa. Cf. Mai's Patrum Nov. Bibl. vol. iii. pp. 419. 420. on Ps. xc. 9.
6. m As the Greek Church denies the procession of the Spirit from the Son, and says that it is not taught by their Fathers; and as S. Cyril in a previous passage, (cf. c. iii. v. 21.), speaks as if he held, that though the Spirit is the Son's, yet that It proceeds from the Father only, this passage is of great value, and therefore I append the original. Τὸ ἐξ αὐτοῦ προχεόμενον πνεῦμα ταῖς ἄνω δυνάμεσιν ἐνιεὶς ὡς ἑαυτοῦ. Another passage to the same effect will be found in the treatise against Nestorius, vol. vi. pp. 98, 99, where S. Cyril thus comments on Luke x. 19.: "The Spirit, therefore, is His own, and from Him: of which a plain proof is, that He can give It to others also, and that not by measure, as the blessed Evangelist says. For the supreme God has measured out to the saints the grace of the Spirit, giving to one the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge; to another the gift of healings: and this is, I think, the meaning of those thus endowed having the power by measure. But our Lord Jesus Christ, pouring out the Spirit of His own fulness, even as doth also the Father, gives it, not as by measure to those who are worthy to receive it." A more full account of the teaching of the Fathers upon the procession of the Holy Ghost, may be seen in Owen's Introduction to Dogmatic Theology, pp.169-178.
7. n In Cramer's Catena, in which this passage occurs anonymously, as is often the case with extracts from S. Cyril, the conclusion is as follows: "Convicting them of disbelieving and denying, that these prophecies chiefly apply to Him, by saying that Elias had been sent to a single widow, though there were many at that time in Israel; and that the prophet Elisaeus had healed one leper, Naaman the Syrian, though there were very many of them in Israel; because of all the widows she alone was found faithful, and he in like manner of all the lepers."
8. o Cr. reads ἀναβαίνει for ἐκβαίνει, and proceeds thus; "for neither did He ever speak these things in the way of argument, but as one enunciating law, He spake things that surpass the law, and with godlike authority rebuked the unclean spirits." Aq. agrees with M., but adds, "changing the letter to the truth, and the figures to the spiritual meaning," with which the conclusion of M.'s next extract agrees.
9. p The word ψυχή in Greek signifies "the vital principle of the body:" and as there is no equivalent in English, a difficulty occasionally arises in translating it. Sometimes it signifies "sensation;" so St.Paul and St.Jude call those ψυχικούς sensuous, who live a mere animal life. Sometimes it means "a person's self:" so the rich man said to his ψυχὴ, or self, Self, thou hast much goods, &c.: and such is the meaning of its Hebrew and Syriac equivalent ..., "that which exists by breathing;" and so one's self: still even here there may be an allusion to man's animal nature, which was the sole part of him which the rich man valued. Sometimes it is used in opposition to the body, because the life is something better than the frame which it vivifies; and so S. Cyril seems to understand it in this place, though doubtless it is rightly translated in our version, "But save his life." Certainly just above he had used it for man's moral state, saying, that we must not think evil of the soul of those who suffer from bodily maladies. In all cases the ψυχή is rather the mortal than the immortal, and is opposed to the πνεῦμα, although even in this word, as in Spiritus, the original idea is taken from the physical act of breathing. Possibly, however, we often take the word "soul" in the A.V. in a sense not intended by the translators. For by the gradual change of language, the meaning of the term has been limited since their time to its higher signification, and a different sense thereby given to many passages of Scripture; such, for instance, as, "What is a man profited if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" that is, his life. (Mat. xvi. 26.) So "to deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine." (Ps. xxxiii. 19.) Wicklif uses soul-haver as equivalent to animal: "Thou shalt be cursed among alle the soul-hauers and beestis of the erthe." (Gen. hi. 14.) From not attending to this gradual alteration in the meaning of words, curious misunderstandings often arise; as, for instance, in an emended Book of Common Prayer lately put forth, the word 'wealth,' which signifies our general well-being, is expunged as being supposed to signify money.
10. q S. Cyril refers in these words to the doctrine of Nestorius, who taught that in the one person of Christ the two natures existed separately, so as to energize ἀνὰ μέρος in turn, or rather apart from one another, sometimes one nature exerting its influence, and sometimes the other. In explaining, therefore, a miracle such as that before us, in which the flesh of our Lord performs the proper act of Deity, Nestorius must have used some such argument as S. Cyril here brings forward, and to conjecture from the absolute use of ὁ Μονογενής, and other technical Nestorian terms, it was a quotation. The catholic doctrine respecting the nature of our Lord has been thus defined by the Council of Chalcedon (Hard. Conc. ii. 456): that the two natures in our Lord remain distinct and unaltered, and not blended and confused, as the Eutychians taught, into some new third nature; but, on the other hand, that they are inseparable in their action, and while each preserves its own proper attributes, the two united form but one person and substance.
11. s Βελίαρ is the reading of most of the MSS. and Fathers. The Hebrew is Belial, and signifies "worthlessness," from ... without, and ... utility. Sons of Belial, therefore, as in i Sam, ii. 12., according to the ordinary Hebrew use of "son," signifies "worthless persons." Bar-bahlul says, that the word Beliar is derived from ... and means Lord of the air.
12. t That is, One person consisting of both natures. The passage referred to by Mai, as preceding this extract in Aquinas, is from the Thesaurus.
13. u As the Masoretic punctuation of this word as Miriam, is apparently of very modern date, I have retained the spelling of the LXX. Even Jerome apparently had never heard of it.
14. y The Nestorians, to whom this doctrine is several times expressly assigned by S. Cyril in this Commentary. The phrase, "one and the same Son and Lord," was afterwards formally enacted by the Council of Chalcedon. Cf. above.
15. z The Monophysites, whose doctrines Eutyches subsequently pushed to an extreme.
16. a This passage being evidently collected out of the preceding, shews that the writers of the smaller Catenae rather gave an epitome in their own words than an exact transcript of the Fathers. It changes the difficult reading of the old MSS. αὐτὸν into πάντας.
17. c This extract from D., which I had previously marked as suspicious, I find assigned in Cramer's Catena to Titus Bostrensis.
18. d In Syriac, the ordinary language of Palestine when our Lord was upon earth, the phrase "son of man," is equivalent to man simply: and the word [Syriac] 'man' signifies "any," "some," so that we even find [Syriac], literally Deus homo, as the translation of Θεός τις. In Hebrew [Hebrew] is seldom found, except in poetry, but men are called "sons of Adam," and Adam is even used simply for "any one," as in Lev. i. 2. "Son of man" therefore signifies man absolutely, and so even Adam is called [Syriac], son of man, in the Syriac version of 1 Cor. xv. 45. This sometimes leads to an ambiguity in Scripture, as that noticed in the text by S. Cyril: and again, Luke vi. 5, where some interpret that our Saviour is Lord of the Sabbath day, whereas the sense requires us to understand it of mankind generally.
19. e The Novatians are probably meant, who subsequently are more than once referred to in the course of the Commentary.
20. f This extract, and some sentences in the next, apparently belong to the Commentary upon St. Mark, cf. c. ii. vv. 1.7, 18, and confirm Cramer's opinion, upon the authority of the Laudian Greek Codex xxxiii. in the Bodleian, that the Catena upon that Evangelist is to be assigned to S. Cyril, rather than to Victor of Antioch; who possibly nevertheless compiled it, as in many codices it bears his name.
21. i This extract, which is taken from the same MSS. A. and H., which contained the dubious passage in page 92, [conf. note h.], is assigned by Cramer's MS. to Titus of Bostra.
22. Arius.
23. k συναφθέντι κατὰ συνάφειαν Nestorius' favourite word: upon his use of which Cyril observes in his Commonitorium to Posidonius: "Therefore he always avoids the word 'union,' ἔνωσις, and calls it instead συνάφεια, a connection, like one who is from without, and as God said to Jesus, As I was with Moses, so will I also be with thee." Hard. Conc. i. 1319.
24. l Mai's difficulty from finding that this passage is quoted in two codices as from a homily of S. Cyril, and also that occasionally direct addresses are made as to persons present, is cleared up by the Syriac, which shews that the whole commentary was delivered in a course of sermons.
25. m In the original ἄρτος both means "bread," and a "loaf:" but this identity of the terms cannot be preserved in the translation.
26. o The ἰγνύα is the hollow of the knee, where Jacob's sinew shrank. The Jews thus were lame of one knee, the Sidonians of both, as having mingled up Judaic rites with their heathenism. Conf. i Kings, xviii. 21.
27. p Graecian in the Fathers is often equivalent to heathen. So "the sages of the Greeks" above means the chief writers of heathenism generally: and so S. Chrysostom, Hom. cxxi. T. v. p. 792., says, speaking of those who preceded Abraham.
28. q The explanation given by S. Cyril of the names of the Apostles corresponds in great measure with that in S.Jerome.
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