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THE LORD JESUS CHRIST

It is necessary for salvation to believe faithfully the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.  The right faith, therefore, is that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man.  God, of the substance of the Father, begotten before the ages; and man, of the substance of his mother, born in the world. Perfect God, perfect man, subsisting of a rational soul and human flesh.  Equal to the Father according to his Godhead, less than the Father according to his humanity.  Although he is God and man, he is not two, but one Christ.  One, however, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by the taking of humanity into God.  One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of Person.  For as a reasoning soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ.

Quicunque Vult or The Athanasian Creed

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CHAPTER SEVEN

The Son of God Incarnate

At Caesarea Philippi, the apostles were required by Jesus to state who he was.  Peter, their spokesman, illuminated of mind by the Father in heaven through the divine Spirit, cried out: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God!" (Matt. 16:13-20).  Some eighteen months before this event, and at the very beginning of his ministry, Jesus was baptized by John and immediately afterwards "the heavens were opened and Jesus saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him; and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased’" (Matt. 3:16-17).  The Father’s voice was heard once again from heaven – a week or so after Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi – in the amazing event we call the Transfiguration of Jesus.  From within the cloud, the symbol of the holy presence of Yahweh, came the words to be heard by Moses, Elijah and the three apostles, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him."  As they heard the words they saw Jesus: "his face shone like the sun, and his garments were white as light" (Matt. 17:1-8).

The apostles had no doubt that Jesus was a man because they lived with him daily and saw him being and doing all the

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things which a man normally does.  The apostles also had no doubt that Jesus was more than a mere man: he was the Son of God who enjoyed a unique relation to Yahweh, whom he called "my Father."

To appreciate why and how the early Church arrived at its official teaching or dogma concerning Jesus Christ as One Person made known in two natures, we need to remember that the discussions and resolutions followed the acceptance of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity of the Creeds of Nicea (325) and Constantinople (381).  So in theological controversy and dialogue, it was taken for granted from the fourth to the seventh century that Jesus Christ was in a unique relation to God the Father, and that he was pre-existent before his birth from holy Mary the Virgin.  In fact, he was the Son of the Father, Only-begotten, and of the same, identical Godhead as the Father.  Therefore, in patristic teaching the fact that the coeternal and consubstantial Son of God should become a first-century Jewish man is not primarily a problem for Christology; it is its presupposition.

Thus, the major questions concerning his identity and role assumed that he was truly divine.  He was God the Word made flesh, and he was the Son of God become Man.  The questions concerned (a) the reality of his flesh and manhood (Was he fully and truly a human being?), and (b) how he could be truly God (which the Creeds of 325 and 381 said he was) and truly Man (as the same Creeds also said he was) at the one and the same time, without being some kind of fusion of a heavenly Person and an earthly person?

In this specific context and to prepare my reader to appreciate the debates and the dogma of the early Church concerning Christology, I shall present evidence from the New Testament, which clearly assumes and/or points to the genuine humanity,

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real manhood and particularity of Jesus of Nazareth as a single, Jewish man.  To recognize Jesus as a real man is hardly a problem for modern people, for they tend to begin their thinking concerning Christ the opposite way to that of the Fathers.  Today theologians ask, "How can this Jewish Man be the eternal Son of God?"  A long time ago the Fathers asked, "How can the eternal and Only-begotten Son of God be a genuine Man?"  The changed questions reflects a changed cultural and religious environment.  We live after the Enlightenment, and thus, tend to begin from human experience of the world, rather than the revealed knowledge from God.

Before we can say whether or not Jesus was truly Man, we need to have some idea as to what a man is.  Obviously, biologically speaking, he is a part of the animal creation.  Yet, at the same time, he is different from the animals with whom he shares the earth.  Man is not only a walking, talking and erect body in which are the physical organs such as a brain, liver and heart.  He is a unity of mind (or soul) and body.  He is a being who consciously knows what it is to think, to feel and to decide.  He has not merely an animal soul, the center of his physical life, but a rational soul whereby he is able to enjoy communion with God and his fellow human beings and to contemplate the revelation of God given to him through the created order.  He is like the animals in many respects, but in one major area he is different from them – he has a rational soul.  Thus, man’s true identity is more than the sum total of his bodily parts and their energies.

Who man is can only be stated when his inner self, his real being, his mind and his soul are taken into account along with, and in union with, his flesh and blood.  He is a relational being whose spirit is able to commune with God, man and the created order in and through his bodily existence.  He has reason,

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intelligence and imagination; he experiences and knows deep feelings/emotions/passions/affections, and he has freedom to make moral choices and decisions.  However, his existence is filled with seeming paradoxes and conflicts, for he is not always what he intends to be or knows that he ought to be.  His freedom is impaired, his soul diseased and his body subject to weakness, illness and death.  He thinks, feels, says and does things in his bodily existence of which he is both pleased and ashamed.  He is conscious of being alienated both from God and from his fellow men.

In the Old Testament, the word basar is usually translated as "flesh."  Though it can mean the flesh of the animal that the butcher supplies as meat, it often means the whole body as flesh and blood and human nature (Prov. 14:30; Ps. 16:9).  The union of two living beings, a man and his wife, is "one flesh" (Gen. 2:24).  A man can say of his relatives, "I am your bone and your flesh" (Judg. 9:2).  Thus, "all flesh" means the human race, and "What can flesh do to me?" (Ps. 56:4) means "What can mankind do to me?"

The Greek word sarx covers the same range of meanings as basar.  Flesh can be meat (Rev. 19:18), the whole body (Gal. 4:13ff.) or the whole man (II Cor. 7:5).  St. Paul spoke of Christ being descended from David "according to the flesh" as well as "Israel according to the flesh" (Rom. 1:3; 9:3; I Cor. 10:18).  When it is affirmed that Christ has been "in the flesh" (see Eph. 2:15; I Pet. 3:18; I John 4:2), flesh means a full, physical existence.

Yet human beings are impaired and diseased by sin, and thus often flesh is not merely physical existence, it is man in his rebellion against God.  In this context of thought, to set the mind on the flesh is to set the mind against God (Rom. 8:5-7).  The flesh, being the union of body and human nature, is a center of opposition to the will of God.  A dreadful list of the "works of the flesh" is provided by Paul in Galatians 5:19-21.

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In his Prologue to the Gospel, John declared that "the Word (Logos) became flesh (sarx) and dwelt among us" (1:14).  In the Epistles of John we read: "Every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God" (I John 4:2) and "Many deceivers have gone out into the world, men who will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh" (II John 7).

In the Prologue, John did not write "became man" or "took a body" but "became flesh."  The verb is in the aorist tense, indicating action at a point of time.  "Flesh" is an emphatic way, perhaps even a crude way in this context, of emphasizing the reality of the human nature which the Word assumed.  As he was probably facing some form of Docetism, in which Jesus Christ was said to look like and appear to be a man but not to have soiled himself with fleshly, bodily, physical human nature, John wrote "became flesh."

In the second part of verse 14, John uses more dignified language recalling Yahweh’s glorious presence in the Tabernacle (Ezek. 37:27; Ex. 40:34ff.).  Through the brief statement, "dwelt among us," and alluding to the Temple, he makes clear that God himself was present within the physical, human life of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But what kind of flesh is the flesh of the Logos, the Son of the Father, in his incarnate manhood?  Is it the human nature which we all share which suffers from the disease of sin?  Or is it the human nature of the first Adam, made in the image and after the likeness of God, and without sin?  Paul taught that Jesus Christ is the New and the Second Adam (Rom. 5:12-21; I Cor. 15:45-47), whose human nature is without the stain and guilt of sin (II Cor. 5:21).  In agreement, Peter declared that Christ "committed no sin; no guile was found on his lips" (I Pet. 2:22).  Therefore, while Jesus is truly a man with a full human nature, he differs from fellow human beings in that he has no sin and did not sin.

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The fact that Jesus Christ is without sin does not mean that he cannot fully identify with, and be the representative of, sinful humanity.  His full identification with the reality of the human condition in order to be their Savior is emphasized in the Letter to the Hebrews where we read: "He had to be made like his brethren in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make expiation for the sins of his people" (2:17), and, "For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning" (4:15), and "Looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame" (12:2).

Paul also speaks of Jesus Christ in terms of a theology of representation.  "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for our sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich" (II Cor. 8:9); and "Though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men" (Phil. 2:6-7); and "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (II Cor. 5:21).

As the Word become flesh, and as the eternal Son of God, born of a woman in the fullness of time and under the Jewish Law (Gal. 4:4), Jesus Christ had truly come "in the flesh."  For those with a Jewish background, to understand flesh as the fullness of human nature (body with soul) was relatively straightforward and unproblematic.  In contrast, for those in Greek culture, where a clear distinction was usually made between the flesh (= physical body only) and the soul or mind, it was easy to assume that the Logos took actual flesh, but not a rational soul, in Mary’s womb.  Some of the Fathers produced imbalanced or erroneous Christologies because they took flesh in its hellenistic rather than its biblical meaning.

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A careful reading of the four Gospels will disclose that Jesus Christ (whatever else he was) was a real male human being.  He was born of a human mother; he grew up as other boys did; he walked and he talked; he ate and he slept; he knew hunger, thirst, weariness, joy, sorrow, anger, God-forsakeness (on the Cross) and death.

Jesus was a first-century Palestinian Jew, sharing the physical and mental features of Jewish culture.  Furthermore, he had a penis and was circumcised; he spoke Aramaic (and maybe also Hebrew and Greek); he taught as a traveling rabbi, interpreting his people’s Scriptures; and he kept the Jewish festivals, engaged in prayer and offered sacrifice in the Temple.

Though the writers of the New Testament never explicitly state that Jesus as Man had a human mind-soul, they may be said to assume he did because they ascribe to him such mental acts and attitudes as joy and sorrow, compassion and anger, love and affection.  The fact is that the four Evangelists have little or no interest in what we would call today the psychology of Jesus of Nazareth, but they do assume, and then proceed on the assumption, that Jesus is a real Man.  Certainly, he is a unique Man and certainly he has a unique relation to Yahweh, the God of Israel.  Nevertheless, the Evangelists portray him as truly, really and vitally as a Man among men.  No person he ever met appears to have questioned whether he was truly a man – a male human being, not an angel or an embodied spirit!

Since he was a real man, Jesus must have passed through all the normal developmental stages of mind and body.  The late Dr. Eric Mascall explained:

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max in adult manhood, we must surely hold that the mentality of Jesus, like that of any other human being, developed pari passu with the development of the bodily organism.  To say this is not to imply that it was defective in the early stages; on the contrary, at each stage it was precisely what at that stage it is proper for human nature to be.  It is surely a valid insight that asserts that you must not try to put an old head on young shoulders.  It is not simply a discovery of modem anthropology that mental and physical (especially cerebral) functioning are intimately and intricately allied; it is inherent in the traditional Christian belief that a human being is not a pure spirit temporarily encapsulated in a body but is a bipartite psychological unity...  A modem discussion of Jesus’ human knowledge will need to take account of all that is now known about the psychophysical structure of the cognitive process and about the development of human mentality from its beginning in the fertilized ovum to its culmination in adulthood.

After noting that our modern scientific theories are always open to revision Dr. Mascall continued:

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perfects it.  (Whatever Happened to the Human Mind? (London: SPCK, 1980), p. 45.)

Jesus of Nazareth was certainly more than, but he certainly was not less than, a full-blooded, fully human, and psychologically mature Man – "of a rational soul and body."

Perhaps the most obvious way to appreciate the true and full humanity and manhood of Jesus as it is presented in the New Testament is to pay attention to the theme of the obedience of Jesus to the will of God.  Here we see the sinless humanity of Jesus in communion with the Father ever seeking to obey and please the Father, thereby acting as a true Adam and as a true incarnate Son.  Yet this obedience was not that of an automaton, programmed to do the will of heaven.  As the Letter to the Hebrews puts it: "Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered and being made perfect he became the eternal source of salvation to all who obey him" (5:8-9).  Paul speaks of Jesus Christ as the Suffering Servant who became "obedient unto death" (Phil. 2:8) and emphasizes that it is the free obedience of the New and Second Adam, Jesus Christ, which is the cause of human salvation – "As by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous" (Rom. 5:19).

The reality and content of this obedience of Jesus to the Father’s will is portrayed in the Gospels.  As a twelve year old boy, Luke tells us that Jesus said to Mary and Joseph when they found him in the Temple, "Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?" (2:47).  Then, according to the same Gospel, the last words of Jesus as he died on the Cross were, "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit" (23:46).  Not long before these last words from Calvary’s cross, Jesus had prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, "Father, if thou art willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done" (22:42).  And some months before his arrest, trial and crucifixion, knowing that the Father’s will was for him to be the Suffering Servant of Isaiah’s prophecies (52:13-53:12), Luke

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tells us that "when the days drew near for him to be received up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem" (9:51).  Jesus knew what he was to face in Jerusalem because at his Transfiguration, Luke informs us, Moses and Elijah "appeared in glory and spoke of his Exodus which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem" (9:31).  What the Father planned for the Incarnate Son was that he accomplish a new Exodus, the deliverance of his people from their sin, by his sacrificial, propitiatory and expiatory death at Calvary.  Jesus freely and readily took upon himself this unique vocation even though at times he strained his human capacities to their limit.

The inner reality of this obedience of the Incarnate Son to the invisible Father is conveyed most powerfully and movingly by the Gospel of John.  Jesus lives for the Father and to do the Father’s bidding.  His food is to do the will of the Father and finish the work that the Father gives him to do.  The will of Jesus is wholly and lovingly willing to do what the Father wills.  The Son is subordinate to the Father in that he does the will of the Father, because he loves the Father and is in continual communion with him.  In will, in love, in knowledge, the Father and the incarnate Son are one.  Thus, the last words of Jesus on the Cross were "It is finished" (John 19:30).  The Father has been glorified by the Son, who has completed the work that He gave him to do.

Reflecting upon the statements in the Gospels and Epistles concerning the obedience of Jesus to his Father, we quickly come to the conclusion that Jesus was endowed with reason and free will. In other words, he possessed a mind-soul.  Only a person with a full humanity can offer a voluntary obedience to God.  In the case of Jesus Christ the obedience and self-sacrifice is not merely that of a great prophet and godly man.  It is the self-sacrifice of the Word made flesh, the incarnate Son of the Father, and therefore it has a unique quality and efficacy – by his sacrifice he becomes the personal Mediator of salvation.  And this salvation is of God, from the Father through the Son and in the Holy Spirit, as we noted in chapter four above.

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The late Dr. Austin Farrer, Warden of Keble College, Oxford, reflected long on the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation of God and wrote:

We cannot understand Jesus as simply the God-who-was-man.  We have left out an essential factor, the sonship.  Jesus is not simply God manifest as man: he is the divine Son coming in manhood.  What was expressed in human terms here below was not bare deity; it was divine sonship.  God cannot live an identically godlike life in eternity and in a human story.  But the divine Son can make an identical response to the Father, whether in the love of the blessed Trinity or in the fulfillment of an earthly ministry.  All the conditions of actions are different on the two levels: the filial response is one.  Above, the appropriate response is a co-operation in sovereignty and an interchange of eternal joys.  Then the Son gives back to the Father all that the Father is.  Below, in the incarnate life, the appropriate response is an obedience to inspiration, a waiting for direction, an acceptance of suffering, a rectitude of choice, a resistance to temptation, a willingness to die.  For such things are the stuff of our existence; and it was in this very stuff that Christ worked out the theme of heavenly sonship, proving himself on earth the very thing he was in heaven; that is, a continual act of filial love.  (The Brink of Mystery (London: SPCK, 1976), p. 20.)

Thus it is that, while the filial response is one in heaven and on earth, "Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God ... is equal to the Father in respect of his divinity and less than the Father in respect to his humanity" (Athanasian Creed).

CONCERNING MARY

In today’s generally liberal climate of thought, we find it easy and perhaps normal to speak of the humanity and manhood of Jesus, with only the briefest of references to his mother, Mary.

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The accounts in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke make clear that in her conception of the fetus, Jesus, Mary did not have any sexual intercourse with a man, not even her betrothed, Joseph.  What the sperm of man normally supplies was given from the Father through the Son and by the Holy Spirit, who overshadowed Mary at her conception.  However, everything else as far as we know concerning her pregnancy and her giving birth to her Son, whom she called Jesus (= Joshua, "the LORD our salvation") was "normal," taking approximately nine months.

Therefore, it is clear that the human nature and flesh, or the body and soul, of Jesus came from his mother.  But his actual sex as a male came from elsewhere!  Obviously, Jesus was a male baby with all the physical organs and mental life which is part of maleness in the human species.  This means, in terms of modern knowledge of chromosomes, that Jesus had chromosomes which included theY chromosome, for it was this which made him male and not female.  At the genetic level, females consist of identical genes (XX) and males of diverse ones (XY).  Further, it means that the Holy Spirit supplied this Y chromosome because Mary, as a woman, only produced X type chromosomes.  (In normal human reproduction the male alone is the arbiter of an offspring’s sex.)

In early Christianity, the fact that Jesus had a real, biological, human mother was of great importance in teaching that Jesus was truly and really a male human being.  Furthermore, the fact that Mary wholly cooperated with the will of God and said, "Be it unto me according to thy word," provided the Church with an example, a model, of what the Church as the Bride of Christ is to be – loving and obedient.  As we shall see in chapter nine, the Church was to call her Theotokos not because she was God, but because she was, in a literal sense, the "God-bearer" or "the birth-giver of God;" her Son was the Word become flesh (her flesh!).

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To quote Dr. Mascall again:

It was male human nature that the Son of God united to his divine person; it was a female human person who was chosen to be his mother.  In no woman has human nature been raised to the dignity which it possesses in Jesus of Nazareth, but to no male human person has there been given a dignity comparable to that which Mary enjoys as Theotokos, a dignity which, in the words of the Eastern liturgy, makes her "more honorable than the cherubim and beyond comparison more glorious than the seraphim."  In Mary a woman became the mother of God, but to no man, not even to Joseph, was it given to be the father of God: that status belongs only to the Father in heaven.  The centrality of womanhood in redemption is shown by the fact that the incarnation itself waited for the courageous and obedient Fiat of Mary (Luke 1:38); the initial reaction of the man, Joseph, however great his contribution later on, was to be doubtful about his fiancee’s chastity (Matt. 1:18ff.).  ("Some Basic Considerations" in Peter Moore, ed., Man, Woman and the Priesthood (London: SPCK), pp. 23-24.)

In the early Church, the way one viewed and spoke of Mary was a very clear indication of how one viewed and spoke of her Son.

There are many books produced by modern biblical scholars, which attempt to present the Christology of the New Testament – e.g., by Oscar Cullman, Marin Hengel, C. H. Dodd, Howard Marshall, C. F. D. Moule, Raymond Brown and Joachim Jeremias.  Yet, to appreciate the search of the Fathers for the truth concerning the Manhood of the Son and Word of God, one needs most of all to be familiar with the actual content of the Gospels and if possible with the claims of the Apostles in the Acts and the Letters.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

Apollinarianism, Nestorianism and Monophysitism Rejected

If the Arian teaching had not been condemned because it failed to state truthfully the relation of Jesus Christ to the Father, it would have been condemned because it failed to confess the real and vital humanity of Jesus Christ.  The Arians taught that Jesus did not have a human rational soul (a mind) because there was no need for one; his mind was that of the Word who took flesh to himself.  In such teaching the Arians sounded like some of their opponents, who differed from them radically in the evaluation of the Word who took human flesh, but who actually believed with them that Jesus Christ had no human mind.  As we have seen, for the Arians the Word was a created being; for their opponents the Word was uncreated and homoousios with the Father.

In this chapter, it is our task to look at the major forms of Christological heresy which came on the scene in the fourth century and afterwards, so that we can appreciate (in the next chapter) the depth and quality of the orthodox Christology of the Ecumenical Councils of Ephesus, Chalcedon and Constantinople II and III.

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At the Council of Constantinople (381), Apollinarianism was declared to be a heresy and anathematized (Canon 1).  A year later the local synod of Constantinople, recalling the earlier Ecumenical Council, declared: "We preserve undistorted the doctrine of the Incarnation of the Lord, holding the tradition that the dispensation (economy) of the flesh is neither without soul nor without mind nor imperfect; and knowing full well that the Word of God was perfect before the ages and became perfect man in the last days for our salvation."

Apollinarianism takes its name from Apollinarius, Bishop of Laodicea (c. 310-390), who was a friend of Athanasius and a strong supporter of the Nicene homoousios.  At the same time, he was vehemently opposed to any presentation of the Incarnate Son which gave the impression that Jesus Christ was really not one Person but a union of two – the Son of God joined to the son of Mary.  He emphasized that Jesus Christ is a unity not a binity or duality.  He is One Person not two! Unless he is truly One Person, the Incarnate Son of God, how can he be the Savior of the world?

There is always the danger that in opposing one error the enthusiast will espouse another error simply by over-emphasizing an important truth.  In his opposition to what we may call a dualist or Word-Man Christology, Apollinarius spoke of the "flesh-bearing God."  His Christology belongs to the Word-flesh type, for he believed that the eternal Word took to himself a human body, that is human flesh and blood.  Significantly, he did not believe that the Incarnation included the taking of a human, rational soul, since he judged that the Word supplied all that which (in a normal man) is regarded as human psychology – the existence and activity of the mind, emotions and will.  The energy of the Word fulfills in Jesus Christ, said Apollinarius, both the role of life-giver to the flesh and of the activating of the human mind and will.  Thus, Jesus Christ does

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not have a rational soul and in this he is not truly a man – not even like Adam before the fall into sin.

So there is a unity of nature between the Word and his fleshly body, said the Bishop of Laodicea.  Further, since the Word supplies the vital force and energy within the one Lord Jesus Christ, he was able to raise the dead and heal the sick.  In no way, said Apollinarius, can the incarnate Lord be one Person with two natures: he is one Person with one nature because the flesh has no independence whatsoever – it is wholly energized and moved by the Word himself.  The flesh is truly the flesh of the Word and has no life apart from him.  As it was assumed and taken by the Word in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the flesh was deified and divinized, but it remained human flesh.

What Apollinarius refused to say was that in Jesus Christ there was not only a human body, flesh and blood, but also a human soul (mind, emotions and will).  To have said that the Incarnation involved the taking of a total human nature and body would have been for him to say that the eternal Son joined to himself a man – and such teaching was a horror to him.  Apollinarius solemnly believed that he was preserving the teaching of the Creed of Nicea, and that the Christ he proclaimed alone could be truly the Savior of the world and the true lifegiver through his sacramental body and blood in the Eucharist.

The heresy of Apollinarius consisted in the single affirmation that the divine spirit of the Word was substituted in the Lord Jesus Christ for a human mind.  When he said that God took flesh or God took a body, he meant exactly that and no more!  Apollinarius could not see how two minds and two principles of action could co-exist in an individual, living being.  If the Son of God did not supply the immaterial, spiritual and rational consciousness of the body/flesh, then, he concluded, Jesus Christ was two Sons.

Further, Apollinarius held that the spiritual, rational consciousness of mankind had been fatally diseased and corrupted through its association with, and subservience to, the sinful flesh.

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In short, a human mind is subject to change and is the captive of filthy imaginations.  Therefore, if there is to be redemption, a new type of mind had to become available within man, and it was this mind that came into the world in the Son of God.

Apollinarianism – the teaching of both Apollinarius and his varied disciples – was condemned by the orthodox Fathers and by the Council of Constantinople for several reasons.  First and foremost, the picture it presented of Jesus did not match what was being read in the churches from the Gospels each week.  As presented by the four evangelists, Jesus had real human nature and manhood.  He did not merely seem to be a man, he was a real man, who acted and talked as men do – even though he was without sin.  In the second place, the salvation this system offered was not a full and complete salvation because the Savior was not a full and complete man.  In the oft-quoted words of Gregory of Nazianzus: "What has not been assumed cannot be restored" (Epistle, 101, 7.).  A half-human Savior is only useful for a half-fallen Adam.  The mind of man needed redemption more than his body.  When Adam disobeyed God and thereby introduced sin into the human race, Adam sinned in his soul (mind and will) and then in his flesh.  Thus, the Incarnate Word as the New and Second Adam had to assume, and make his very own, a human soul if he were truly to be the Savior of sinful men.

At the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus (431), Nestorius and his teaching were condemned. Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople from 428, was an eloquent preacher, who spoke against the title, Theotokos, being given to the Virgin Mary because he believed that it led inexorably towards the heresy of Apollinarianism.  Though summoned to attend the Council in Ephesus he refused, and in his absence he was condemned.  Later, the Emperor Theodosius agreed to his removal from Constantinople and for his writings to be burned.

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The condemnation of Nestorius by the Council was made in the following words:

As, in addition to other things, the most honorable Nestorius has not obeyed our citation and did not receive the holy Bishops who were sent by us to him, we were compelled to examine his ungodly doctrines.  We discovered that he had held and published impious doctrines in his letters and treatises, as well as in discourses which he delivered in this city, and which have been testified to.  Compelled of necessity by the canons and by the letter of our most holy Father and fellow servant Celestine, Bishop of the church of the Romans, we have come, with many tears, to this sorrowful sentence against him – namely that our Lord Jesus Christ, whom he has blasphemed, decrees by this holy Synod that Nestorius be excluded from the episcopal dignity, and from all priestly communion.

Further, included in the decrees of this Council are a Letter of Cyril to Nestorius, which was approved; a Letter of Nestorius to Cyril, which was condemned; Twelve Anathemas against Nestorianism; and several paragraphs concerning Nestorianism in a Letter of the Council to all Bishops informing them of the condemnation of John of Antioch.

Whether Nestorius was actually a Nestorian has been often discussed by scholars this century – in much the same way as the discussion as to whether Calvin was a Calvinist and Luther a Lutheran!  What is clear is that Nestorius used much intemperate and ill-considered language in his preaching and writing against the use of Theotokos, giving the impression that Mary bore a mere man, not the Son of God incarnate.  As he was heard and read by those for whom the title, Theotokos, was precious and necessary, Nestorius appeared to be teaching that there were in fact Two distinct Persons and Sons in Jesus Christ – the Person of the eternal Son and the person of the son of Mary.  Thus, Nestorianism has been regarded as the heresy which split the God-Man into Two distinct Persons.

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Nestorius insisted that in Jesus Christ were two complete and full natures, the divine and the human.  Further, each nature was objectively real and thus, had its own external aspect or form as well as its own subsistence.  Thus, the Godhead existed in the man, and the man existed in the Godhead, and in this union there was no confusion or mixing of the two natures.  Jesus as the man actually lived a genuine human life, and the eternal Son also had his own genuine, divine and eternal life.  However, there was a perfect, exact, voluntary and continuous conjunction of the two natures.  That is, the eternal Son in gracious condescension, and the human nature in loving obedience, were drawn together and stayed together, according to the will and purpose of the Father and through the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit.  And as a result of this holy union, Jesus Christ was truly a single being with a single will and intelligence, indivisible and inseparable into two beings.

In terms of his outward appearance and form, Jesus Christ was and is one individual person (prosopon).  Though each nature has its own prosopon there is a common prosopon, existing because of the union of the divinity and humanity.  This common prosopon is neither the prosopon of the eternal Son, nor the prosopon of the manhood, but is a new prosopon existing because of the coalescence of the two natures.  Even as the eternal Word took upon himself the form of a servant and even as the humanity had the form of Godhead bestowed upon it, so as a result of this holy exchange there emerged the unique prosopon of Jesus Christ, the God-Man.

Nestorius’ teaching was received by his opponents and interpreted as a doctrine which assumed that Jesus Christ is the union of two Sons and is not therefore a genuine Person.  This rather simplified and mistaken account of Nestorius’ position was what was known as Nestorianism and condemned by the Council of Ephesus.  Between Nestorius and his opponents (militantly led by Cyril of Alexandria), there was a gulf of misunderstanding which included the continual use of the same

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key words, but with differing meanings (e.g., hypostasis, prosopon and theotokos), as well as, a different approach to the problems of Christology.  This said, the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus has been judged right, both to condemn what it defined as Nestorianism and to uphold the proper use of the title, Theotokos, of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

In his excellent account of Nestorius and Nestorianism, G. L. Prestige wrote:

In principle, Nestorius taught nothing new.  His views on the Person of Christ were, as his critics rightly judged, taken in substance from Theodore of Mopsuestia, who died in 428, when he was just embarking on his controversial episcopate [in Constantinople]; and Theodore had only developed the thoughts of Diodore of Tarsus, the enemy of Apollinarius; and Diodore himself had built upon a foundation laid by Eustace of Antioch, who was deprived in the early days of Arianism because he supported Athanasius and the Nicene Creed too vigorously...  The characteristic tendency of the whole school was to lay stress on the entire reality and completeness of Christ’s human nature...  Their recurrent difficulty, which came to a head in the course of the Nestorian controversy, was to reconcile their habitual manner of talking about the God and the man in Jesus Christ with a convincing statement of the union of both in a single person. (Fathers and Heretics, p. 131.)

In other words, Nestorius belonged to what has been called the Antiochene Word-Man Christology and gave the impression to his critics that he approached the definition of Jesus Christ only from the duality and never from the unity of his being.  In fact, all that Nestorius did was,

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Further,

the real theological bond between all the Antiochenes was their clear perception of the full and genuine human experience which the incarnate Son historically underwent; they shrank in horror from the idea that he was not in all respects as truly kin to us as he was kin to God; they emphasized the Gospel evidence of his human consciousness and moral growth, and would not have it thought that his human life was merely the illusory exhibition on earth of an action which in sphere and method was exclusively celestial (Ibid., p. 133).

So it was that the Antioch school of theology emphasized that there is a single Redeemer, but they were unable to give a satisfactory account of him as a whole.  They were heard by others, especially the Alexandrines, as saying that the sum of God and of man is a partnership rather than a single personality (and, in layman’s terms, this was the heresy of Nestorianism condemned by the Ecumenical Councils).

Nestorianism was condemned as heresy when Nestorius was alive and well (at Ephesus in 431), but Theodore of Mopsuestia (c.350-428) was condemned by an Ecumenical Council (Constantinople II in 553) as a heretic when he was dead and long buried as a Bishop of the Catholic Church.  The fourteen anathemas of the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople were directed in general against Nestorianism and specifically against "The Three Chapters" (or "the three headings" or "topics"), the first of which was the person and the writings of Theodore.  Politically, the condemnation of "The Three Chapters" was intended by the Emperor Justinian to appease those churchmen who clung tenaciously to the "one incarnate nature" doctrine of Cyril (for which see below) and who are called Monophysites.  This, however, did not stop the Nestorians who were now found primarily in Persia looking upon Justinian as "the tyrannical emperor."

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A leading theologian of the Nestorians was Babai the Great, who was known as the creator of Nestorian dogmatics.  The formula he developed to speak of the Unity and Duality of Jesus Christ, the God-Man, was "two natures, two hypostases, one person of the sonship."  Babai was seeking to preserve the dogmatic language of the Holy Trinity where there are three hypostases and one of them is the hypostasis of the Son.  The union of the hypostasis of the Son with his divine nature to the manhood (a human hypostasis with a human nature) brings into being the one, and only one, Person of the incarnate Son.  Obviously, in using such language the Nestorians were going to find it impossible to agree with either the Chalcedonians or the Monphysites.

Eutyches was Archimandrite (monastic superior) of a large monastery in Constantinople and he had influence at the court of the Emperor through the eunuch, Chrysapius.  Around 448, he became the focal point of opposition to what was seen as the continuation of Nestorian teaching – that is, Jesus Christ was not only "out of two natures" but also, as the Incarnate Word, he is "of two natures."

Eutyches claimed to hold to the position which Cyril of Alexandria had espoused at the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus (before he accepted from John of Antioch the Formula of Union which stated that Jesus Christ as One Person had two natures); and he knew that his views were shared, and militantly set forth, by the Patriarch of Alexandria, Dioscorus.  In a sentence, Eutyches held that "after the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ I worship one nature – that of God made flesh and become man."  Thus he had great difficulty in conceding that, as Man, Jesus Christ is "consubstantial with us."  In truth, he did not teach Docetism (that Jesus only seemed to be a man) or Apollinarianism, but he did militantly insist that there was only

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one nature in the one Person, Jesus Christ, after his conception by the Virgin Mary.  His unbalanced and erroneous statements came about because he was too zealous in his desire to avoid all stain of Nestorianism, and because he wanted to be faithful to what he believed were the right concepts and vocabulary of the orthodox Cyril.

After examination of his views, Eutyches was condemned and deposed by the Patriarch Flavian and the Synod of Constantinople in November 448.  Not unexpectedly, the Archimandrite immediately used his good connections at court to defend himself.  He received support from Dioscorus and with his cooperation persuaded the Emperor Theodosius II to summon a Council to examine his condemnation by Flavian.  This met at Ephesus in August 449 and was dominated by Dioscorus.  Eutyches was acquitted of heresy and reinstated as Archimandrite; the Formula of Union from John and Cyril of 433 was set aside; and the doctrine that the Incarnate Son was of two natures was anathematized.  At best, the Church had by official action in a Council gone back to the position held by Cyril before his dialogue with John of Antioch in 431-433; at worst, the Church had by official action in a Council formally rejected an important development of doctrine concerning the Person of Jesus Christ.

It is not surprising that at a Council at Chalcedon two years later, known as the Fourth Ecumenical Council, the decisions of the "Robber Council" of 449 were annulled, and Eutyches was formally condemned.  Further, the teaching of the Church that Jesus Christ is "One Person in Two Natures" was clearly set forth (for which see the next chapter).  The Bishops clearly rejected both Nestorianism and Eutychianism when, concerning the mystery of the Incarnation, they declared:

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resists those who imagine a mixture or confusion of the two natures of Christ; and it drives away those who fancy that the form of a servant taken by him of us is of a heavenly or any other substance (ousia); and it anathematizes those who, first idly talk of the natures of the Lord as "two before the union" and then conceive but one "after the union."

The last part is, of course, directly aimed at Eutychianism, which was seen by the Council as a false interpretation of the teaching of Cyril of Alexandria of blessed memory.  The latter’s position was that "after the union" there is "one incarnate nature of the divine Word."  Eutychianism as such did not include the incarnate before the word "nature," or if it did, it failed to see that this expression was only valuable (strictly speaking only true) when used against Nestorianism; further, Eutychianism rejected the clarification of terms and development of doctrine accepted by Cyril and set forth in his agreement with John of Antioch (see chapters two and nine for the text of the Formula of Union).

The decrees of the Council of Chalcedon certainly did not cause those who, since that time, have been called Monophysites (from monos, one, and physis, nature) to cease to teach Monophysitism.  The latter term covers both a moderate and an extreme form of the teaching (and all points in between) that the Incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, is "one incarnate nature."

Apart from Eutychianism in the fifth century, the most extreme form of Monophysitism was that taught by Julian, Bishop of Halicarnassus in Caria, and his supporters, the "Julianists," in the first part of the sixth century.  These held that from the moment of conception the body of the Incarnate Word was both incorruptible and immortal and so they were also called "Aphthartodocetae" ("teachers of the incorruptibility of the Body of Christ") and "Phantasiastae" ("teachers of a merely phenomenal Body of Christ").

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A more moderate form of Monophysitism was taught by Severus, Patriarch of Antioch, in the early sixth century.  He appears to have been opposed primarily to the language of the Council of Chalcedon and desired to do justice to the humanity of Christ without speaking of it as a distinct and separate "nature."

What most of those who rallied to the monophysite cause after the Council of Chalcedon held in common was a criticism of the Definition of Faith from that Council under three headings.  They believed that the Definition should have included the formula of Cyril, "one incarnate nature of the divine Logos."  They also held that the Definition should have spoken clearly of "the hypostatic union" in the One Christ; and, finally, they held that the Definition should have declared that the Incarnate Son is "out of two natures" but not of, or in, two natures.  The fact that it did not state these "received truths," they further held, showed that it was both Nestorian and out of line with holy Tradition from Athanasius and Cyril.  In short, it was in error!

We must realize that there was a real problem with terminology which exacerbated the differences in understanding.  "Two natures" was an impossible phrase for the Monophysites.  Timothy, the Patriarch of Constantinople (511-517), and a moderate Monophysite, wrote A Refutation of the Synod of Chalcedon, in which he asserted:

There is no nature (= substantia) which has not its hypostasis, and there is no hypostasis which exists without its prosopon; if then there are two natures, there are of necessity two prosopa; but if there are two prosopa, there are also two Christs, as these new teachers [the Chalcedonians] teach.  (Cited by R. V. Sellers, The Council of Chalcedon, p. 260.)

In other words, for Monophysitism there is no nature without a distinct person and neither is there a distinct person with-

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out a nature.  Thus, if there are two real natures there must be two distinct Persons and thus Two Sons, the Son of God and the son of Mary. Timothy also wrote:

No one, whose heart is sound in the Faith has ever taught or upheld two natures before or after the union.  For the divine Logos, not yet incarnate, was conceived in the womb of the holy Virgin, and was then incarnate of the flesh of the holy Virgin, in a manner which he alone knew, while remaining without change and without conversion as God; and he is one with the flesh. In fact the flesh had neither hypostasis nor ousia before the conception of God the Logos, that it equally could be called a nature, separate and existing by itself. (Ibid., p. 262.)

Before the union there was one hypostasis of the Logos and after the union there was one hypostasis, though now it is the incarnate hypostasis of the Logos.

At the Fifth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 553, certain Monophysite ideas and phrases were given a place in the Orthodox tradition, but only within the preservation of the teaching of Chalcedon.  Here is the eighth anathema where "out of two natures" and "one incarnate nature of God the Word" occur in a positive sense:

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as united with flesh, each remaining what it is.  Therefore Christ is one, God and man, the same consubstantial with the Father in Godhead, and the same consubstantial with us in manhood.  Equally, therefore, does the Church of God reject and anathematize those who divide into parts or cut up, and those who confuse, the mystery of the divine dispensation of Christ.

The anathema closes by condemning not only extreme Monophysitism, but also Nestorianism.

In the seventh century, there arose a new form of Monophysitism, produced with the intention of allowing the moderate Monophysites to unite with the Chalcedonians when the Empire was under threat from invasion by Persians and Muslims.  In 624 in the reign of the Emperor Heraclius, theologians came up with what seemed a compromise acceptable to both sides – that the Incarnate Son had two natures but only one mode of activity (Greek mia energeia).  This new approach seemed to be very successful, being approved by Sergius, Patriarch of Constantinople, and the Bishop of Rome, Pope Honorius, who actually wrote that in Jesus Christ there is "one will."  So Sergius went ahead and composed a document known as the Ekthesis ("Statement of Faith") in which it was asserted that the two natures were united in a single Will in the One Christ.

Thus Monothelitism (from monos, one, and thelein, to will) was born and the Ekthesis was its Charter!  It was approved by two Councils held in Constantinople in 638 and 639.  Later, however, the Ekthesis was disowned by leading bishops and so in 648 the Emperor Constans II withdrew it and replaced it with another document, an imperial edict known as the Typos ("Example" or "Figure"), in which he forbad anyone to speak

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either of "One Will" or "Two Wills" (Dyothelitism) in the Incarnate Son, and to keep to the terminology of the five Ecumenical Councils.

The controversy, however, proceeded for another thirty or so years until the Sixth Ecumenical Council, held in Constantinople in 680-681.  This Synod clearly stated that the orthodox faith is that there are not only two natures but also two wills in the one Lord Jesus Christ.  Honorarius, the Pope who had first used the expression "one will," Sergius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, and others who had taught that there is only one operation (energy) and only one will in Jesus Christ, were anathematized by this Council.  They had attempted, said the Bishops in Council, to "destroy the perfection of the Incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ, our God, by blasphemously representing his flesh endowed with a rational soul as devoid of all will or operation."  Thus, they had effectively made his manhood into an imperfect manhood.

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J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev, ed. (San Francisco: Harper, 1981) is always valuable for teaching of the first five centuries.  G. L. Prestige, Fathers and Heretics (London: SPCK, 1948) provides excellent expositions of Apollinarianism and Nestorianism.  John Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1975) provides important insights into Christology in the East after the Council of Chalcedon (451).  Also Jaroslav Pelikan, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974) has a long and valuable chapter on Christology (Chalcedonian, Nestorian and Monophysite) from the fifth to the seventh century (pp. 37-90).  For the story up to the fifth century there is the splendid work of Aloys Grilimeier, Christ in Christian Tradition: From the Apostolic Age to Chaicedon (451) (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1975).  Then there is W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972) whose history of the early Church, The Rise of Christianity, we have already commended for general introductory reading.  For more detail on the Christology of Monophysitism see Robert C. Chesnut, Three Monophysite Christologies: Severus ofAntioch, Philoxenus of Mabbug and Jacob of Sarug (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976).

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CHAPTER NINE

Orthodoxy Affirmed – One Person in Two Natures

St. Paul declared that "God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself," (II Cor. 5:19).  The central problem of Christology in the early Church was to maintain the true humanity and manhood of the Savior, without in any way obscuring the fact that the Second Person of the Trinity, the eternal Son, homoousios with the Father, was truly present and active on earth as Jesus Christ.

Athanasius, whose crucial contribution to the development of the dogma of the Holy Trinity we have noted, interpreted John 1:14 ("the Word became flesh") to mean that the Logos actually became man, not that the Logos entered into a man.  His exposition of the identity of Jesus Christ is wholly of the Wordflesh rather than Word-Man type.  Thus it has sometimes been supposed that, like Apollinarius, he did not recognize in the "flesh" of Jesus Christ a human soul.  However, as the chair-

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man of the important Synod of Alexandria in 362, which provided clarity of terminology for the doctrine of the Trinity, he did agree to this formula:

The Savior did not have a body lacking a soul, sensibility or intelligence.  For it was impossible that, the Lord having become man on our behalf, his body should have been without intelligence, and the salvation not only of the body but of the soul as well was accomplished through the Word himself.  (Cited by Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, p. 288, from the Tome to Antioch, 7.)

It is possible that, towards the end of his life, as his mind turned from the exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity to the consideration of the truth concerning the actual Incarnate Son, that Athanasius began to take more seriously the need to do full justice to the actual and real manhood of the Savior.

Dr. Prestige has remarked that Athanasius "was so thoroughly preoccupied with the thought of God in Christ reconciling the world to himself that he retained little interest in Christ as a distinctive human being, and disregarded the importance of his human consciousness" (Fathers and Heretics, p. 115).  Of course, this is not to say that Athanasius was an Apollinarian!  The general flavor of the Christology of Athanasius may be seen in this extract from his fourth Letter to Serapion (chapter 14), where after citing two oft-quoted texts (John 1:14 and Phil. 2:6-7), the great stalwart of Trinitarian Orthodoxy wrote:

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the Father?"  But these facts did not occur in dissociation, on lines governed by the particular quality of the several acts, so as to ascribe one set of experiences to the body apart from the deity and the other to the deity apart from the body.  They all occurred interconnectedly, and it was the one Lord who did them all wondrously by his own grace.  For he spat in a human fashion, yet his spittle was charged with deity, for therewith he caused the eyes of the man born blind to recover their sight; and when he willed to declare himself God it was with a human tongue that he signified this saying, "I and the Father are one."  And he used to perform cures by a mere act of will.  But he stretched forth a human hand to raise Peter’s wife’s mother when she was sick of a fever, and to raise up from the dead the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue when she had already expired.  (translated by G. L. Prestige, Ibid., p. 179.)

It was for Cyril, a later Patriarch of Alexandria, to refine this Word-flesh Christology so that it could become Church dogma at the Council of Ephesus (431).

Those who taught the Word-flesh Christology did not approach the identity of Jesus Christ by beginning from the union in him of two different natures, human and divine – as the Antiochene school tended to do.  They thought of two phases within the existence of God the Word – one before and one after the Incarnation.  The Logos who existed outside and apart from flesh became enfleshed and embodied by his Incarnation.  Therefore, Cyril and many others after him spoke of "one nature, and that incarnate, of the divine Word."  It is important to appreciate that, as used in this statement, "nature" (physis) is being used to mean "concrete, individual, independent existent" or, as Dr. Prestige suggests, "a concrete personality."

The basic meaning of physis is the way in which a thing grows and functions – hence its nature.  Also it can mean, as a development from this, the actual thing that grows and functions. Cyril used physis in the latter sense, meaning a concrete

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personality.  The physis of God the Word is for Cyril the Word himself, the personal subject of all his actions, words and experiences.  [In contrast, as used by the Antiochenes (with whom Cyril did theological battle), physis takes as its primary meaning the way in which a thing grows and functions – hence for them physis is "a concrete assemblage of characteristics and attributes."  So they could happily speak of two natures, one divine and one human, in the One Lord Jesus Christ and in so doing could horrify the Alexandrians.  It hardly needs to be added that they also were horrified to hear from Cyril that the Incarnate Son was of only one nature!]

Cyril was careful to avoid falling into the error of Apollinarius and thus he always insisted that "flesh" means "human nature with a soul" and thus, the Logos as enfleshed had a human soul.  As he told Nestorius in his Second Letter, which is part of the Decrees of the Council of Ephesus (431):

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For Cyril, as he emphasized later in this Letter, it was the Logos who took and was made flesh.  Therefore, Christians must not divide the One Lord Jesus Christ into Two Sons!

This expression, "The Word was made flesh," can mean nothing else, said Cyril, but that he partook of flesh and blood like to us; he made our body his own, and came forth man from a woman, not casting off his existence as God, or his generation of God the Father, but even in taking to himself flesh remaining what he was.

In this light, he insisted that the Blessed Virgin is truly Theotokos, the "God-bearer," since her Son is none other than God the Word.  In fact, the first anathema of the twelve contained in his Third Letter to Nestorius states:

If anyone does not confess that Emmanuel is God in truth, and therefore the holy Virgin is Theotokos – for she bore in the flesh the Word of God become flesh – let him be anathema.

From this perspective of the Logos-flesh Christology, wherein there is one incarnate nature of the God the Word, Cyril could neither appreciate nor tolerate what is known as Nestorianism.  He used the same fervor to attack it as his predecessors had employed to attack the essentially paganized doctrine of Arius.  Thus, he was primarily responsible for the anathematizing of Nestorianism at the Council of Ephesus (431).  The fourth anathema goes to the heart of what was deemed to be the error of Nestorianism:

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The final anathema shows both how Cyril understood the sufferings and death of Christ and how, by implication, he understood Nestorius and what some Antiochenes were teaching:

If anyone does not confess that the Word of God suffered in the flesh and was crucified in the flesh and tasted death in the flesh, and became [by Resurrection] the first-born from the dead – although he is as God Life and Life-giving – let him be anathema.  He who was crucified was not a Man conjoined to the Word but the very Word himself in his human nature and body.

At first John, Patriarch of Antioch, supported Nestorius but later, when he realized that the Emperor as well as the Bishop of Rome accepted the Word-flesh Christology of Cyril approved by the Council of Ephesus (431), he changed his approach.  He wrote a doctrinal statement, which has been called "The Formula of Union," which was taken from Antioch to Alexandria by Bishop Paul of Emesa.  Here it was accepted by Cyril and copied into a Letter which Cyril then wrote to John. Here is the substance of it:

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and apostolic statements about the Lord, we recognize that theologians employ some indifferently in view of the unity of person, but distinguish others in view of the duality of natures, applying the God-befitting ones to Christ’s divinity and the lowly ones to his humanity.

Obviously, this Formula seeks to preserve certain Antiochene insights (e.g., the calling of the human nature "the temple taken from her" and the acceptance of "a duality of natures") within a general Alexandrine theology (e.g. the Virgin is Theotokos).  As a theological Statement it certainly paved the way for the Definition on the Person of Christ from the Council of Chalcedon (451), but it also angered those of the Word-flesh school for whom there was no negotiation over their fixed belief in "the one incarnate nature of God the Word."

What Pope Leo I saw as the exaggerated Monophysitism of Eutyches, led to his writing what is called The Tome of Leo (= his twenty-eighth Letter) addressed to Flavian, Patriarch of Constantinople.  Though this masterful Letter was rejected by the "Robber Council" of Ephesus in 449, it did become part of the decrees of the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon in 451.  We must note its theological content, using the translation of William Bright in Select Sermons of St. Leo...with his TwentyEighth Epistle, called the Tome (1886).

Leo began by pointing out that if Eutyches had truly understood the meaning of the baptismal Creed, he would not have espoused and taught the grievous error that the body of the Savior was not derived from his mother’s body.  Then he continued:

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and when "Wisdom was building herself a house" (Prov. 9:1), "the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14), that is, in that flesh which he assumed from a human being, and which he animated with the spirit of rational life.

Leo is clear that the flesh of the Savior is full human nature.  It was not a nature brought down from heaven or a diluted or depleted form of human nature taken from the Virgin Mary.

In chapter 3, Leo explained how Jesus Christ is One Person with Two Natures:

Accordingly, while the distinctness of both natures and substances is preserved, and both meet in one Person, lowliness is assumed by majesty, weakness by power, mortality by eternity; and in order to pay the debt of our condition, the inviolable nature has been united to the passible, so that, as the appropriate remedy for our ills, one and the same "Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (I Tim. 2:5) might from one element be capable of dying, and from another be incapable.  Therefore, in the entire and perfect nature of very Man was born very God, whole in what was his, whole in what was ours.

In taking what was ours he did not take our sin, but human nature as it existed in Adam before his disobedience and sin.  That is, he took on him "the form of a servant" without the defilement of sins.  As the Invisible he made himself visible, and as the Lord of all, he willed to be one among mortal men.

In chapter 4, the meaning of the Incarnation is further developed in this manner:

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Chapter 4 ends with this important sentence concerning the unity of the Person of Jesus Christ, God and Man.

For although in the Lord Jesus Christ there is one Person of God and man, yet that whereby contumely attaches to both is one thing, and that whereby glory attaches to both is another: for from what belongs to us he has that manhood which is inferior to the Father; while from the Father he has equal Godhead with the Father.

And chapter 5 begins with another statement concerning the reality and mystery of Jesus Christ, who is One Person with two natures.

Accordingly, on account of the unity which is to be understood as existing in both the natures, we read, on the one hand, that "the Son of Man came down from heaven" (John 3:13), inasmuch as the Son of God took flesh from the Virgin of whom he was born; and, on the other hand, the Son of God is said to have been crucified and buried (I Cor. 2:8), inasmuch as he underwent this, not in his actual Godhead, wherein the Only-begotten is coeternal and consubstantial with the Father, but in the weakness of human nature.

Here we have Leo’s use of what in theology is called the communicatio idiomatum ("interchange of the properties").  In this approach, Leo was identifying with Cyril of Alexandria and teaching that while the divinity and humanity of the Lord Jesus are separate, the attributes of one may be predicated of the other in view of their union in the One Person of the Savior.

The Christology of Leo may be summarized in four points.  First of all, the Person of the God-Man is identical with the Person of the Word of God. Secondly, in this One Person, the divine and human natures exist without mixture or confusion.  In the third place, each nature is a separate sphere of operation although the two natures always act in perfect unity.  Finally,

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the oneness of the Person legitimates and requires the communication of idioms or properties between the two natures.

It may be said that Leo’s theology is in agreement with the best intentions of the Antiochene Word-Man theology, but is more exact.  Leo used the word "nature" (Latin, natura) not in the way used by Cyril and the Alexandrine School as synonymous with hypostasis, but with the general meaning of "a concrete assemblage of characteristics or attributes" as used in Antioch.  On the other hand, Leo was one with Cyril and Alexandria in insisting on the identity of the Person of the pre-existent, eternal Word and the Word incarnate.

In the Council, the Bishops reaffirmed both the Creed of the 318 Fathers (325) and the Creed of the 150 Fathers (381).  They canonized Cyril’s Letters to Nestorius and John of Antioch (found in the decrees of Ephesus, 431) as containing orthodox teaching and rejecting Nestorianism.  Also, they canonized Leo’s Tome as overthrowing Eutychianism and confirming the true doctrine of Jesus Christ.

Further, after much debate and research, the Bishops produced their own Definition of the Faith, of which the central portion is itself usually called by the name which belongs to the whole.  To understand this central portion we shall divide it into two paragraphs.  The first is primarily concerned with the unity of the Person of Christ, while the second sets forth the reality of his two natures.

The literary and doctrinal sources of the first paragraph are the Formula of Union between Cyril and John from 433 and the Archbishop Flavian’s confession of faith to the Home Synod in Constantinople in November 448.

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Godhead, the Same perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man, the Same consisting of a rational soul and body; consubstantial [homoousios] with the Father as to his Godhead, and the Same consubstantial [homoousios] with us as to his manhood; in all things like unto us, sin only excepted; begotten of the Father before the ages as to his Godhead, and in the last days, the Same, for us and for our salvation, of the Virgin Mary, Mother of God [Theotokos], as to his manhood.

What is important to notice here is the repeated occurrence of "the Same," by which the truth that the Son, who was with the Father in all eternity is the one and the same Son who was with us as the Incarnate God, is underlined.  In fact, in their differing ways both East and West had emphasized this truth.  Further, both East and West had also insisted that the Son of God in his Incarnation really and truly became Man.

It would be wrong, however, to assume that this Statement outlawed and condemned the phrases of the orthodox Alexandrines – that is, "one incarnate nature" and the "hypostatic union."  Since these phrases are in the Letters of Cyril canonized by the Council, it is to be assumed that they are legitimate expressions, if interpreted via this Definition of Faith.  Certainly, this is the approach taken by the defenders of orthodoxy in later centuries.

We turn now to the second paragraph where the general influence of Cyril’s Letters and Leo’s Tome are also to be recognized.

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not parted or divided into two Persons [prosopa], but one and the same Son, Only-begotten, the divine Word, the Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from of old have spoken concerning him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ himself has taught us and the Creed of our Fathers has handed down.

He who is "one and the same Son" is "made known in two natures."  That is, the One Lord Jesus Christ is shown forth, declared, and presented as well as recognized, understood and acknowledged in the two elements of real Godhead and real manhood.  And each of these natures or elements in him has its own properties.  Further, each exists in integrity – as the four "withouts" make very clear.  The use of the preposition "in" with respect to the two natures reflects the contribution of the West as to the reality of the two natures in the One Christ.  However, its use does not automatically or necessarily exclude the Alexandrine emphasis that the incarnate Son is "out of" two natures, when the "out of" is expounded in right relation to the "in."

To express the oneness of the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ the two words, prosopon and hypostasis, are used.  To express the elements or natures of Godhead and manhood, the word physis is used.  Thus, Christ is One Person in two natures.  The Incarnate Son is a single Person and a single subsistent Being; he is not parted or divided into two persons or beings even though he has two natures.  Here the terminology is clear, even though it will not be accepted by all in the East in the centuries after this Council.  The distinctive theology of this Definition is the equal recognition it gives both to the unity and the duality of the Incarnate Word, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Perhaps a few words of explanation at this point concerning prosopon and hypostasis will be useful.  Originally prosopon meant "face" or "countenance" and is used in the Septuagint of the face of Yahweh.  Also, it had the meaning of the actor’s mask and the role he plays.  Obviously, as used in Theology

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and Christology the word has a developed meaning of a distinct person (Latin persona), who has a genuine role and who is in relations with others.  Modern notions of personality are, of course, not contained within the word at this stage.  They came much later.

Hypostasis, which once approximated to ousia in meaning, pointed in later Christian discourse to specific realization or expression as a particular reality.  It was a concrete realization of that which is.  As used by the Cappadocians in the fourth century, it pointed to concrete, perceptible unity – the unity of the complex of individual and particularizing characteristics.  So it closely approached the term prosopon in meaning and is used alongside it in statements of faith.  Its Latin equivalent was subsistentia (subsistence).

In his summary of the achievement of the Council of Chalcedon, J. N. D. Kelly comments on the common charge that the content of the Definition was a triumph of Antiochene and Western teaching:

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man with that of the Logos.  It also overlooks the fact that Cyril’s Synodical Letters were given just as honorable a position as the Tome, and greatly exaggerates the theological difference between the two.  (Early Christian Doctrines, pp. 341-42.)

It can only be claimed that the Antiochene Christology was victorious at Chalcedon if it is understood as an Antiochene Christology which has taken into itself and been modified by the teaching of Cyril.

With Nestorianism pushed beyond the frontiers of the Empire, those who defended the teaching of Chalcedon as the authoritative teaching of the Catholic Church had to do long battle with those who accepted only the first three Councils. Their opponents, the Monophysites, were, of course, fully committed to the orthodox doctrine of the Holy Trinity.  However, they could not be persuaded, despite many efforts by emperors and ecclesiastics, that the Definition from Chalcedon was anything but a rejection of the teaching of the authentic Three Councils (Nicea, Constantinople and Ephesus).  In their Christology, they clung to the concepts and terminology which they believed were required by the true tradition of the Fathers, and by the need to avoid all taint of Nestorianism with its "Two Sons" theology.  Thus, they insisted on using the three expressions – "one incarnate nature of the divine Logos;" "the hypostatic union" and "out of two [natures]" – and seeing in the teaching of Chalcedon the false Antiochene doctrine of the Two Sons.

Chalcedonians attempted to give coherent expositions of the meaning of "One Person in Two Natures."  One theologian, whose explanation became part of the tradition of eastern, Orthodox theology, was Leontius of Byzantium (d. 544).  His chief work is Three Books against the Nestorians and Eutychians.  He faced the question of how if there is only one hypostasis in

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Christ there are two natures in him. Monophysites argued that each hypostasis has one and one only physis.  The answer of Leontius was that the manhood or humanity of Christ is neither anupostatos (= "uncentered") nor self-centered, but is enupostatos (= "encentered") in God.  This teaching is called the doctrine of the enhypostasia.

The teaching of the Council of Constantinople (553), with its emphatic rejection of Nestorianism and of the Word-Man Christology of Antioch, was in part an attempt to bring on board the ship of Chalcedon the Monophysite leaders.  This aim of reconciliation is most obvious in Anathemas 12, 13 and 14 against "the Three Chapters."

Significantly, the first anathema of Constantinople II is against those who deny the received dogma of the Holy Trinity.  There is, of course, a clear relation between Theology proper (the doctrine of the Holy Trinity) and Christology (the doctrine of the Person of Christ).  As we have observed, the latter was only developed in the Church when the former had been clarified.  Further, in the attempt to win over Monophysites, it was good to emphasize first of all what was held in common.  Thus the first anathema reads:

If anyone does not confess one nature or substance, one power and authority, of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, consubstantial Trinity, one Deity worshipped in three hypostaseis or prosopa, let him be anathema.

Here we find that the same two words, used of the "one and the same Jesus Christ" at Chalcedon are used of each of the Three of the Holy Trinity.  Each is a hypostasis and a prosopon.

It will be useful to print several of the anathemas (not already printed in chapter eight) to show how the Chalcedonians were accommodating to certain expressions and aspects of the theology of the Monophysites in order both to serve the Truth and to invite reconciliation.

If anyone does not confess that there are two generations of the God the Word, the one before all ages of the Father, without time and without body; the other in these last days when the Word of God came down from heaven and was made flesh of the holy and glorious Mary, Mother of God and ever-virgin, and was born of her: let him be anathema.

If anyone declares that the Word of God who worked miracles is one Person and the Christ who suffered another, or alleges that God the Word was together with the Christ who was born of woman, or was in him in the way that one might be in another, but that our Lord Jesus Christ was not one and the same, the Word of God incarnate and made man, and that the miracles and the sufferings which he voluntarily endured in the flesh were not of the same Person: let him be anathema.

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If anyone does not confess that our Lord Jesus Christ who was crucified in the flesh is true God and the Lord of glory and one of the Holy Trinity: let him be anathema.

Again and again in these anathemas (in 4, 6, 8, 13) it is insisted that the union is truly an "hypostatic union."  Further, in this connection, the expression "one incarnate nature of the divine Logos" is allowed.

If there had been any ambiguity in the decrees of Chalcedon (451) about the common subject of the two natures and whether this common subject is to be described as a person before the actual union of the natures had taken place, then that ambiguity was taken away by Constantinople II.  The Person, the prosopon or hypostasis of Christ, is the pre-existent Son and Word of the Father.

If the Second Ecumenical Council to be held in Constantinople (553) had clearly stated the unity of the Person of Christ, then it was the task of the Third Ecumenical Council to be held in Constantinople (680-681) to underline and clarify the duality of natures in the One Person.  The theological background to this Council is once again various attempts to reconcile the Monophysites to the Catholic Church.  It had been said in these (to which we referred in chapter eight above) that there was in the one Christ only one energy or operation and only one will.

The Bishops in Council stated their commitment to the Creeds of Nicea and Constantinople and to the teaching of all five Ecumenical Councils (Nicea I to Constantinople II), including the Definition of Faith of Chalcedon (451).  Then they proceeded by saying:

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Lord Jesus Christ must be confessed to be very God and very man, one of the holy and consubstantial and life-giving Trinity, perfect in Godhead and perfect in humanity, very God and very man, of a reasonable soul and human body subsisting; consubstantial with the Father as touching his Godhead and consubstantial with us as touching his manhood; in all things like unto us, sin only excepted; begotten of his Father before all ages according to his Godhead, but in these last days for us men and for our salvation made man of the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary, strictly and properly the Mother of God according to the flesh; one and the same Christ our Lord, the only-begotten Son to be acknowledged of two natures which undergo no confusion, no change, no separation, no division, the peculiarities of neither nature being lost by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, concurring in one Person and in one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons but one and the same only-begotten Son of God, the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, according as the prophets of old have taught us and as our Lord Jesus Christ himself hath instructed us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has delivered to us.

Thus far they repeat the teaching of Chalcedon and of Constantinople II.  Then they turn to speak of the concrete, acting personality of the Incarnate Son and state:

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brief: Believing our Lord Jesus Christ, our true God, to be one of the Trinity even after the taking of flesh, we declare that his two natures shine forth in his one hypostasis (subsistence), in which he both performed the miracles and endured the sufferings through the whole of his providential dwelling here, and that not in appearance only but in very deed, the difference of nature being recognized in the same one hypostasis, by the fact that each nature wills and does the things proper to it, in communion with the other.  Wherefore, we glorify two natural wills and two operations, combining with each other in him for the salvation of the human race.

We may note two things in this development of the Chalcedonian doctrine.  First, there is the roll-call of the four theologians most obviously associated with the first four Councils – Athanasius, Gregory, Cyril and Leo.  Secondly, the union of the two natures and wills in Christ is not presented as a "parallelism" but more of a "synthesis" of the two, which concur in the one prosopon of the God-man.  As it was later expressed by John of Damascus in his The Orthodox Faith (iii. 18), the human will of Christ willed of its own free will those things which the divine will willed it to will.

The Orthodox dogma of the Person of Christ is to be sought in the decrees of the Councils of Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451) and Constantinople (553 and 680) as these are seen in the context of the dogma of the Holy Trinity set forth at Nicea (325) and Constantinople (381).  In today’s terms, it is a "Christology from above," for it begins from the assumption that "the Word was made flesh" and "God sent forth his Son, born of a woman."

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To the books by Meyendorff, Prestige, Kelly, Grillmeier and Pelikan mentioned at the end of chapter eight, one needs to add two books by R. V. Sellers, The Council of Chalcedon (London: SPCK, 1953), and Two Ancient Christologies (London: SPCK, 1954).  The latter compares the Christology of the Schools of Alexandria and Antioch. E. R. Hardy, ed., Christology of the Later Fathers (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954), is also very useful for its variety of texts.  Leontius and his Chalcedonian doctrine of the Enhypostasia is studied in H. M. Relton, A Study in Christology (London: 1917).  For Eastern Christianity in general, there is A. S. Atiya, History of Eastern Christianity (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1968) and Donald Attwater, The Christian Churches of the East, 2 vols. (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1947-48).  Anyone who is particularly interested in the period after the Council of Chalcedon (451) in the East will find fascinating articles on a variety of topics in the journal The Greek Orthodox Theological Review.