SSCN Voumes 1-10, 1994-2004

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

Christ as our Model With this theme of Christ as Victor and King, Shenoute makes clear that we are given help to overcome Satan through Christ's conquest of Satan. Shenoute maintains that we retain our free will and use it to overcome sin. David Bell in his article (Shenoute the Great and The Passion of Christ) 18 makes clear that he does not believe that Saint Shenoute is being an Augustinian here. That is, that he is not taking part in the Pelagian controversy, which was a Western Church matter in which the Eastern and Oriental Churches did not involve themselves, since original sin was not a contentious theological issue. In this same article David Bell offers a translation in which Shenoute explains that Christ should also be considered a model for us. If they spoke iniquity against him…if they have also slandered the one who created them…how will they not slander you?…This is the way it was with all his other saints…They bound him like a thief for your sake, so that if you too are bound for his sake you will not stumble…It would have been nothing for him would it, to have the earth open and swallow up that evil crowd…But instead He looks to the Divinity which profits from the multitude of those who have believed in him … 18 Christ as Divine (Response to the Arian controversy) One of the heresies that roiled the theological waters in the fourth and fifth centuries was the heresy of Arius. Shenoute described it in the words of the great holy Apa Athanasius, the Archbishop, as the heresy:

In this section of Against the Origenists Shenoute clearly comes in on the side of Apa Athanasius: the Son is always with the Father and is the mediator of all. Indeed the Son and the Holy Spirit have the same substance as the Father according to the testimony of Scripture: 'My Father and I are one' this shows the unity of his nature which is one substance. (CGO, …) Saint Shenoute, the Incarnation and Nestorius Perhaps the major theological battlefield for Shenoute was the one in which he accompanied Cyril of Alexandria to Ephesus, the Incarnation. Nestorius and the Antiochenes had insisted on the differences between the human and the Divine in Jesus. Christ was for them an Association of the Divine and human. Cyril offered the concept of Union (Henosis) in distinction to this notion of Association. His notion was not semantics but a statement of a Dynamic transformation in humanity, a process of Deification, we become by grace what Christ was by nature. This radical transformation infiltrates all of humanity and determines the economy of salvation. (Cyril of Alexandria, On The Unity of Christ ) Saint Shenoute wrote in simpler terms but it was clear he sided with Cyril concerning the concept of Henosis of the Divine and Human. There is nothing presently found in his writings to mirror the complexity and the implications of Saint Cyril's teachings. (Keep in mind we have only this one treatise that Tito Orlandi assembled and it was addressing a number of heresies and errors that Shenoute was correcting. Hence we have here in encapsulated form his view of the role of Christ in the economy of salvation and the relationship of Christ to the Father and the Holy Ghost.)

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter of those who uphold this impiety and stay with these wicked words, namely 'the Father has not always been Father, and his Son has not always existed, but rather the Son of God was born from what was not, and like all things in this manner he was created, a creature and a creation 19 Describing Nestorius Shenoute wrote: the creator of darkness has tied up with his thoughts, Nestorius (who) does not believe that Christ was a man in which God inhabited; and that only after he was generated by Mary the Logos entered him 22

(For) the Logos of the same God, there was a time before which he did not exist: and he did not exist before being generated'. 'He was one of those that are generated and created' 20 'He was a creature and a creation and a thing and God alone was and no one was with him.' And following afterwards he willed to create; at that moment he created the others and gave them the name Logos and Son. 21

Nestorius also said: that is why it is not to be said the virgin generated a God and I will not say that one who stayed in the womb for nine months and drank milk and grew up little by little is a God. Shenoute's stand is taken from the scripture: Why then did he not simply say "Look at the hands and

6