ready to throw Eutyches overboard. We must remember that a man or a national Church is by no means proved innocent of Monophysism because of a declaration against Eutyches.[1]
As soon as the Archimandrite of the great Byzantine laura began to propagate these novel ideas he found indignant opponents, naturally first among the "Eastern" theologians. They had given up Nestorianism, they accepted the union of 433 between Antioch and Alexandria; but they were not prepared to admit the extremest form of anti-Nestorianism. It was one thing to acknowledge our Lord as one person, in the strictest sense; it was quite another to conceive his human nature so lost that he would not be a man at all. The Easterns were quite right. Monophysism is a much worse heresy than Nestorianism. Of the two errors it is less harmful to conceive our Lord as a moral union between two hypostases than to deny that he was really man at all. Theodoret of Cyrus in 447 published a dialogue which he called The Beggar, or the many-shaped one.[2] In this, without naming Eutyches, he attacks the new heresy. The title means that these Monophysites are people who beg their ideas from many old heretics, from Gnostics, Docetes, Apollinarists. The book is in the form of three dialogues between the "Beggar" and an orthodox Christian, who, of course, confutes all the beggar's arguments and exposes the viciousness of his theory. The parties were now formed. It is no longer a question of the orthodox who defend Christ's oneness against Nestorians, but of orthodox who defend his real human nature against Monophysites. The Egyptians, who see in Eutyches a defender of the teaching of Cyril and Ephesus, are for him; the Eastern (Syrian) school is for Theodoret.
Meanwhile Proclus of Constantinople was dead (447), and was succeeded by Flavian (447–449). This Flavian is the hero of the Catholic side in the Eastern Empire. He was not a man of any great parts; but he knew enough theology to under-
- ↑ For this reason it is convenient and not uncommon to distinguish between two heresies, Eutychianism (meaning the acceptance of all Eutyches' ideas), and Monophysism (meaning the assertion of one nature in Christ and the rejection of the Faith of Chalcedon). Hefele makes this distinction (ed. cit. ii. (2), 857–858).
- ↑ Ἐρανιστὴς ἢτοι πολύμορφος. (P.G. lxxxii. 27–336).
