We may say that God was crucified, even that God shed his blood, only when we speak of the flesh that God the Son made his very own.

Orthodox Christians sometimes accuse Protestants of Nestorianism because of how theologians like John Calvin speak of the cross. We instinctively want to say that only the humanity of Christ died on the cross because divinity is immortal by nature. And after all, if we say God died on the cross, we imply that the Father and Spirit died too—but that sounds too close to Modalism, a teaching that claims that the Father died on the cross because Father and Son are one subject.

Even so, Paul does say, “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). The phrase “his own blood” (τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου) refers back to God. Given this and other biblical passages, theologians like Cyril of Alexandria were bold to say that the Lord of Glory made human flesh his very own, and thus God the Son died.

The distinction of making flesh one’s own matters. Nestorius taught that God was impassible (unable to suffer) by nature, and so what died at the cross was the man assumed by the impassible Logos. Cyril disagreed. If the Logos made flesh his very own, he experienced death precisely in that created flesh.

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