SOURCE: Hallman, Joseph F. “The Seed of Fire: Divine Suffering in the Christology of Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius of Constantinople.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 5, no. 3 (fall 1997): 369-91.

In the following essay, Hallman centers on the element of divine immutability in Cyril's Christology and in his confrontation with Nestorianism.

For as if one took a spark and buried it amid much stubble, in order that the seed of fire preserved might lay hold on it, so in us too our Lord Jesus Christ hides life through his own flesh, and inserts it as a seed of immortality, abolishing the whole corruption that is in us.

Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John 6.54

Beginning with the Apologists of the second century Christian thinkers have continually defended the immutability and impassibility of God. The tradition has absorbed a philosophical understanding of the divine which is difficult to square with some...