The Greek and Eastern Churches/Part 1/Division 1/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
THE MOVEMENTS THAT LED TO THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON (A.D. 382–445)
With the tragic death of Valens and the accession of Gratian in the West and Theodosius in the East the long Arian tyranny comes to an end. Here then a new chapter opens in the history of the Eastern Church. Theodosius was more generous in conduct and more liberal in ideas than either his enemies have been willing to admit in the one case or his friends in the other. One frightful outbreak of his fiery Spanish temper has left an indelible stain on the emperor's memory in spite of the humble penance to which he afterwards submitted. Hearing of a riot at Thessalonica in which a general and other officers of the army had been killed by the populace, who were indignant at the punishment of a favourite charioteer, although this had been on account of a vile crime, Theodosius flew into a rage, ordered the citizens to be invited to the hippodrome as for an expected race, and set his soldiers on to an indiscriminate slaughter, which resulted in a massacre of 5000 men, women, and children. Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, after writing to the emperor to express his horror of the crime, though in courteous terms, stood at the door of his church when Theodosius presented himself for the Christmas festival, and would not permit his entrance till some time after he had humbled himself and confessed his guilt. It was an unheard of act of daring. We may note that it took place in the independent West, not in the obsequious East, and further that it was the deed of one who had the most exalted idea of the duties of the episcopate, and who held a very high place in the estimation of his people. For all that, although the dramatic event is often quoted as an indication of the growing power of the Church in its age-long conflict with the empire, in so personal a case as this much must be set down to the character of the sovereign who could thus humble himself in owning his wrong-doing before a minister of religion, like David when accused by Nathan. It was very different from the Norman Henry ii. doing penance at the shrine of Becket in superstitious terror and more practical alarm of insurrection.
In his ecclesiastical policy Theodosius ruthlessly expelled Arian bishops, treating them about as badly as his predecessor had treated the Nicene clergy. They would see that they were just paid in their own coin; and it was only what everybody expected. The emperor's measures against paganism have been misunderstood and their severity has been exaggerated. It is true that much happened during the reign of Theodosius to bring the tottering, crumbling fabric of the cult of the old gods to the ground. The failure of Julian's fanatical attempt at resuscitation combined with reformation was a plain proof that its days were over. It was like the case of Monasticism in the reign of Henry viii.; the passing away of the anachronism was inevitable. From the days of Constantius laws against sacrificing had been inscribed in the statute book; but, except with reference to magic—which people dreaded, the demons being reckoned dangerous—and obscene ceremonies, against which the growing sense of decency in a Christian community revolted, these laws had not been executed. Theodosius put the already existing and acknowledged laws in force. No statute of Theodosius ordered the destruction of temples—he was no vandal. The demolition went on merrily in some districts, but as the result of popular violence, which however found encouragement in the known fact of the emperor's activity in repressing pagan rites.
It was in this way that the destruction of the famous Serapeum at Alexandria was brought about, although Socrates states that "at the solicitation of Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, the emperor issued an order at this time for the demolition of the heathen temples in that city; commanding also that it should be put in execution under the direction of Theophilus, which occasioned a great commotion."[1] First we see the temple of Mithra cleared out and its abhorrent contents exposed to view. That was not an instance of temple demolition; the building was not destroyed. But in the case of the Serapeum, inasmuch as the pagan party was using it as their fortress, a riotous attack was made on it by the mob led by the monks, the image of Serapis was hacked to pieces, and the temple itself pulled to the ground. This act of violence provoked a counter movement from the pagan section of the population, and the result was a street fight in which many lives were lost. Socrates states that most of the victims were Christians, it being found afterwards that very few heathen were killed. We may gather from this fact that the pagan element in the city was still strong—at least in its anti-Christian activity, although it did not show much energy in support of its own religious rites. Other temples in Egypt and elsewhere were destroyed, probably in similar popular tumults, and nobody was punished by the government. Still, Theodosius himself had wished the buildings to be preserved and used as government offices.
Theodosius did not confine the distribution of offices to Christians; he granted them to pagan's when he saw merit. Thus he appointed Symmachus consul and the rhetorician Themistius prefect of Constantinople and even tutor to his son Arcadius—although both of them were pagans. Altogether it may be concluded that, while he did not restrain the growing popular violence directed against the buildings and images of pagan worship, and even took action to suppress the ritual, he bore no grudge against persons and was quite ready to appreciate the good qualities of adherents of the old religions. The empire which had been united for a time was divided at his death (a.d. 395) between his two weak sons, Honorius in the West and Arcadius in the East. The latter was a puppet in the hands of his unscrupulous minister Eutropius, who induced him to marry a beautiful Frank maiden Eudoxia.
Meanwhile the one really great man in the Eastern Church was being brought into public notice as much by his stern fidelity as by his unparalleled pulpit gifts. This was John, first known as a presbyter at Antioch and always described by this simple name during his lifetime, but now recognised by his posthumous title, Chrysostom. Antioch was the seat of a school of Bible study, the method of which was very different from that cultivated at Alexandria. Following the example of the grammarians in their treatment of Homer and of Philo in his adaptation of the Old Testament to current philosophical ideas, the Alexandrian Christian scholars took great liberties with the Scriptures—the New Testament as well as the Old—in freely allegorising them. The scholars of Antioch, on the other hand, pursued the method of grammatical and historical interpretation. For this reason, while we are often amused at the ingenuity of the Alexandrian interpretations of the Bible, we find Antiochian expositions of permanent value as guides to a correct understanding of Scripture. No commentator is of more use in this respect than Chrysostom. He is the prince of expository preachers. The modern expositor is a debtor to the great presbyter of Antioch for many suggestive ideas which he thinks he owes to Westcott, Lightfoot, Alford, or Matthew Henry, but which if he had the patience to trace the stream up to its source he would see to have sprung from the sound perceptions of Chrysostom. It must have been an age of Bible reading, at least in that chief centre of Bible study, Antioch; for Chrysostom assumes a knowledge of Scripture on the part of his hearers which few preachers of the present day would venture to take for granted in their congregations.
It was a crisis in the fate of his city that brought Chrysostom to the front as the greatest preacher of his age, perhaps of any age. There had been a riot, springing from popular irritation at the emperor's demand for a large contribution from Antioch towards a largesse for the army, in which the statues of the emperor and empress were destroyed. No sooner was this mad freak over than its perpetrators repented of their folly. In the despotic East the emperor and empress were flattered with almost divine honours and their statues treated with some approach to the veneration that the pagans professed for the images of their gods, that is to say, they were political idols, to insult which was more than treason, almost sacrilege. This was during the reign of Theodosius, whose hot temper and the ruthless vengeance he did not scruple to wreak on those who offended him were well known—though the incident was earlier than the massacre of Thessalonica. The reaction was appalling. The people were simply numb with horror. Then the old bishop Flavian set out on a journey across the mountains in the snows of winter to plead for his flock with the emperor, who could not but be justly offended. Happily, his mission was successful, and he was able to return with a pardon to be received by the city of Antioch on certain conditions that were not unreasonable. Meanwhile the people sat terror-stricken, awaiting the verdict on their crime and anticipating the worst. Then Chrysostom seized the opportunity to conduct a mission. Every day his church was thronged, while the preacher denounced the luxuries and lashed the vices of his fellow-citizens. Like Savonarola at Florence he daringly attacked popular sins, directly accusing the trembling people who stood spellbound under the scathing torrent of eloquence. The result was a revival of religion in the dissolute city.
In the year 397 the death of Nectarius, who had been patriarch of Constantinople for the previous sixteen years, left the most important post in the Eastern Church vacant. It shows the good sense of the imperial minister Eutropius, worthless man as he was, that this de facto ruler persuaded his master to assign the episcopate to Chrysostom. Then, focussed in the blaze of publicity at the imperial capital, the wonderful preacher more than justified the discernment which had led to his appointment. The influence which he exerted from the cathedral pulpit excelled that of the court. Short in stature, unsociable in manners, living the life of a recluse in the patriarch's lordly palace, and so disappointing those who had enjoyed the princely hospitality of his predecessor, Chrysostom swayed the people of Constantinople as he chose, by the magic of his eloquence. Yet he was no flatterer of common habits and notions. He proved how the supremely great preacher can win the confidence of his congregation without ever stooping to the arts of popularity. Chrysostom was a John the Baptist in his stern denunciation of prevalent evils among all circles of society up to the very highest. He even anticipated the rude daring of John Knox in comparing the empress to Jezebel—and that at Constantinople, the city of subservient prelates. At the same time he was both just and generous, and it was his large-hearted sense of fairness that led to his first troubles in the city. The occasion was the attack on the teachings of Origen that was then being promoted by the narrower-minded monks.
The story is complicated. The most vehement opponents of Origenism were too ignorant to understand the teaching they decried. These men who came from the desert cells of Egypt were known as Anthropomorphists from their grossly materialistic conception of God as possessing a human body with physical features like our own, so that the Scripture references to His eyes, ears, hands, and feet were to be taken literally. When one of these simple souls was shown the error of such a notion, he exclaimed with tears, "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him." How could such people understand the profound ideas of the philosophic Origen? Unfortunately they regarded the spirit of Origen as the chief opponent of their own views, and it was in self-defence that they promoted the anti-Origen agitation. The movement swelled to dangerous dimensions, till Theophilus, the patriarch of Alexandria, who at first had opposed it, swung round, from fear or policy, and threw the aegis of his protection over it. Meanwhile the more spiritual monks were strongly opposed to this literalism, and the opposition was led by four old men in the Nitrian desert who were known as the "tall brothers" from their remarkable stature. Theophilus attacked these men, and they fled to Palestine and ultimately to Constantinople, where they sought the intercession of Chrysostom. The large-hearted patriarch would not undertake to judge the case; but he wrote to Theophilus begging the Alexandrian patriarch to receive the old men back. This brought into the field the ever-recurring jealousy between Alexandria and the upstart imperial city of Constantinople. Theophilus charged Chrysostom with interfering with a matter that was not within his jurisdiction. Then the emperor was persuaded to summon Theophilus to Constantinople. He came, but at his own pace and gathering adherents on the road, so that when he presented himself he was strong enough to hold a council in a suburb of Chalcedon called "the Oak," at which Chrysostom was condemned and deposed on the ground of a number of frivolous charges. But the rage of the people and an earthquake which alarmed Eudoxia, who took it for a supernatural portent, led the empress to persuade her husband to recall the patriarch. He was received back with wild joy, led into his church by his people, and compelled to preach to them there and then. This uncanonical act of resuming his ministerial office after deposition was made a ground of accusation against Chrysostom when he was again out of favour with the court. It was like the charge against Athanasius when he returned to Alexandria on the invitation of the civil government after deposition by a Church council at Tyre. But in both cases the defence was really unanswerable. The condemning synods were not fairly representative, and they had no jurisdiction over the bishops they presumed to depose.
Chrysostom's second offence was final. A silver image of Eudoxia had been set up opposite his church and the inauguration of it was celebrated with dances and buffoonery, which the patriarch detested as morally pernicious. He vehemently denounced the whole of the proceedings, an action which of course mortally offended the empress. There is extant a sermon attributed to Chrysostom on this occasion, beginning with the sentence, "Again Herodias is raging, again she is excited, again she is dancing, again she is seeking to obtain the head of John." The sermon as it stands is spurious, and Gibbon thought that this celebrated sentence in particular was certainly an invention; but the preacher who could call a woman "Jezebel" on one occasion might be imagined when more provoked on a later occasion to have designated her "Herodias." At all events, Chrysostom's offence was unpardonable. For a time he remained in seclusion at Constantinople, twice escaping assassination, while the city was in a great state of commotion. Then he was banished, a synod condemning him for having resumed his office without ecclesiastical permission since the synod of the Oak had deposed him. After three years of exile the hardships he had endured hastened his death (Sept. 14, 407).
Passing on now to the Christological controversies which followed the formal settlement of the Arian disputes at the council of Constantinople, we notice two opposite tendencies of thought, each of which had to be guarded against by those who would keep to the ever sharpening knife-edge of ecclesiastical orthodoxy. The Church having reaffirmed the primary facts of the perfect Divinity and the true humanity of Christ, the next question was as to how the two elements could co-exist in one and the same Person. Thus the discussion moved from the question of the Trinity, which had occupied the thoughts of theologians of the fourth century, to the consideration of the nature of Christ, which was to engage the minds of disputants during the fifth century, and beyond into the sixth and even the seventh. The controversies became more and more hard and narrow, unspiritual and purely polemical, as the weary process went on, till the Church woke up with a rude shock in the advent of Mohammedanism, to face the vital question whether Christianity was to continue to exist at all—in any form, orthodox or heterodox. The two heresies which rent the Eastern Church during the fifth century scarcely touched the West, although the bishop of Rome intervened from time to time to help towards a settlement. Therefore they belong essentially to the Oriental branch of Church history. Moreover, their effects are seen in the divisions of Eastern Christendom in the present day, one of them being represented by the Nestorians of the Euphrates and India, the other by the Syrian Jacobites and the Copts in Egypt. In the controversies of the fifth century we see the rise of both the movements which have perpetuated themselves in these two groups of Christians out of communion with the Greek Church, both of them denounced by "the holy orthodox Church" as heretical.
We saw how the Christological speculations began to appear even during the course of the fourth century in those two very original thinkers, Apollinaris and Gregory of Nyssa.[2] The former had been condemned by the council of Constantinople for denying the full humanity of Christ; and the latter had come to be looked on with suspicion on account of his sympathies with the ideas of Origen. After this, whatever new lines of thought are followed had to come within those laid down in the Nicene and Constantinopolitan settlement. Still, within the limits thus decided there was room for considerable variety of opinions. These turned in one or other of two directions according as the mind was directed to the distinction of the natures in Christ or to the unity of the Person. Emphasis on the distinction between the Divine and human natures in our Lord issued in Nestorianism. Insistence on the unity of His person pushed to an extreme led to the heresy known at the time as Eutychianism. In point of fact, however, another and a deeper tendency may be traced through each of these movements when we consider the motives that inspired them. The underlying motive of Nestorianism was interest in our Lord's humanity, His earthly life, His brotherly relations with mankind; the motive prompting to Eutychianism was the aim of exalting the Divinity of Christ in which the human nature was quite swallowed up and assimilated to the infinite, allcontrolling Divine. Nestorianism took its origin in the school of Antioch, where the Gospels were studied historically and the earthly life of Jesus Christ highly valued. Antioch was in close touch with Constantinople, and thus the influence of the Syrian city was readily felt in the great metropolis. The opposition to Nestorianism—which ultimately came over the fine edge of orthodoxy on the other side, in the form of Eutychianism—sprang from Alexandria, the home of Athanasius a century before, famed as the stronghold of the doctrine of the Divinity of Christ. But immediately we name these cities we are prepared to see how the age-long jealousies of the patriarchates of which they were the seats were roused to range themselves on one side or the other of the discussions, which thus obtained local colour and excited partisan passions quite irrespective of the claims of truth or the honour of Him about whose nature the rival disputants professed to be so deeply concerned.
The originator of the Nestorian line of thought was Theodore of Mopsuestia, and his mind was set going in this direction in opposition to the Apollinarians. He urged that for the restoration of the shattered unity of the cosmos it was necessary that God the Word should become a perfect man. Theodore developed his ideas of the moral perfection of Jesus as a man, resting this partly on the Virgin birth and the baptism, and partly on His union with the Divine Word.[3] He held that there was an indwelling of God in Christ, generically the same as in the saints, but specifically different. "I am not so mad," he says, "as to affirm that the indwelling of God in Christ is after the same manner as in the saints. He dwelt in Christ as in a son."[4] It will be seen that such language finds the actual personality of Christ in His human nature, however closely and in however unique a way the Divine may be united to it. Thus the tendency of thought will be towards a separation into two persons—the Divine Person of the Logos and the human Person Jesus. That will not be so far from Paul of Samosata's idea of the God-influenced man, except that as regards the Divine, the Logos, the Trinitarian conception is preserved.
Theodore's views were introduced to Constantinople by Nestorius, who was appointed patriarch in the year 428, like Chrysostom after having been a presbyter at Antioch. He was blameless in personal character, and he had gained some reputation by his fluent, sonorous eloquence. And yet he commenced with a false step, for in his first sermon, addressing the emperor, he exclaimed, "Give me the earth cleared of heretics, and I will give you the kingdom of heaven in exchange; aid me in subduing the heretics, and I will aid you in vanquishing the Persians."[5] Such an untimely boast of bigotry disgusted sober minds, and Nestorius came to be branded as an "incendiary" in consequence. Not long after this the heresy-hunter was denounced as a heretic—a just retribution of which history furnishes many instances.[6] The trouble began with the sermon of a presbyter Anastasius, who had accompanied Nestorius from Antioch and shared with his bishop the ideas of Theodore, in which the preacher attacked the title Theotokos ("Bearer" or "mother of God") as applied to the Virgin Mary. The term had long been in use, and it had the sanction of Athanasius and other trusted Fathers. Nevertheless Nestorius defended his friend and adopted the same position with reference to the title. The famous Cyril, a man of intense, fierce determination, now patriarch of Alexandria, took up the case against Nestorius. His record was not unblemished. Even if he had taken no part in the outrageous murder of the beautiful, learned, and refined Neo-Platonist lecturer Hypathia, when the monks seized her in the street, dragged her from her carriage, tore off her clothes, scraped the flesh from her bones with oyster shells, and flung her mangled remains on a fire, the cruel patriarch cannot be exculpated from acquiescence in the awful crime.[7] Such was the self-appointed champion of the faith in opposition to the "blasphemer" Nestorius. The pope Celestius held a council at Rome (430), which condemned Nestorius. Cyril was to execute the sentence of deposition, but Nestorius took no notice of it.
The quarrel became so serious that the emperor Theodosius ii. summoned a council which met at Ephesus the next year (431), and is known as the Third General Council. Cyril and his party arrived before the friends of Nestorius from Antioch with John the patriarch of the church in that city at their head. It was assumed that he had purposely delayed. Anyhow, Cyril's haste in procuring the condemnation of Nestorius before the council was complete, and in the absence of the defenders of the accused, was scarcely decent and certainly not fair. Naturally enough Nestorius declined to appear before so one-sided a tribunal. When John arrived he and his bishops replied by voting the deposition of Cyril. Neither decision was effective at the moment. Nestorius relied on the protection of the emperor; but this did not long save him. Theodosius yielded to the powerful court intrigues that were brought to bear upon him—for unlike his grandfather he had more piety than power—and Nestorius was banished first to Petra in Arabia and then to the oasis of Ptolemais in Egypt. After being captured by Arab brigands and suffering many other hardships for which the orthodox authorities showed no pity, he died from the effects of ill-usage in the year 439. Meanwhile his followers were hounded out of the empire, being driven over into Persia. And yet the influence of Theodore and Nestorius lived on, chiefly owing to the hold it got on the important school of theological scholarship at Edessa.
The opposite tendency of thought which ripened into Eutychianism was just the emphasising and perhaps carrying further forward of the ideas of Cyril. Although this notorious Alexandrian dogmatist has been canonised and although his writings are now prized among the most highly honoured works of the Fathers, it is not easy to distinguish his position from that of the heresy that came under condemnation at the next general council He held that Nestorianism involved a duality of persons in Christ—the human Jesus being one person, the Divine Logos another. And yet he was not content to assert a unity of persons; he maintained that there was a unity of nature.[8] Nor would he allow of any real kenosis in the incarnation. While Jesus lay in the cradle, to all appearance a helpless infant, He was actually administering the affairs of the universe. When as a man He appeared to be ignorant of anything, this was only in appearance. Even when He said He did not know the day or hour of the Parousia, that only meant that He had no knowledge for the disciples which he could communicate to them.
But it was the pronounced expression of such views, carried perhaps a little further by Eutyches, the archimandrite of a large monastery near Constantinople, that drew down on them the disapproval of a lynx-eyed orthodoxy. Eutyches was an obstinate, narrow-minded old man who had spent several years in retirement when he came forward to contest the error of Nestorianism. He did this so extravagantly that to his amazement he found himself charged with heresy in an opposite direction. He maintained that the two natures in Christ were fused together in the incarnation, so that there became "one incarnate nature of God the Word." His opinions were condemned at a local synod; but Eutyches would not submit and demanded a general council, which was convened at Ephesus by Theodosius ii. and met in August 449. It was grossly packed by the friends of Eutyches. Those bishops who had taken part in the condemnation of the archimandrite at Constantinople, as well as others coming from the East, and therefore suspected of Nestorianism, were not allowed to vote. All reporters except those of the Eutychian party were expelled. If any one who had taken part in the obnoxious Constantinople synod ventured to open his mouth in favour of "two natures," he was immediately shouted down with cries of "Nestorian!" "Tear him asunder!" "Burn him alive!" "As he divides, so let him be divided!" The orthodoxy of Eutyches was vindicated, and an anathema was pronounced against Nestorius amid shouts—"Drive out, burn, tear, cut asunder, massacre all who hold two natures!" Dioscurus, Cyril's successor at Alexandria, was not satisfied with a mere discussion and its vote. "Call in the counts," he shouted. Thereupon the proconsul of Asia entered, attended by soldiers and monks armed with swords and clubs and carrying chains. The panic-stricken bishops tried to hide under the benches, in dark corners of the church, wherever they could creep out of sight. But they were dragged forth, threatened, even struck, and ultimately forced to sign the condemnation of Flavian, the patriarch of Constantinople, who was leading the opposite party.
It is said that Dioscurus, Cyril's successor, the patriarch of Alexandria, struck Flavian in the face, kicked him, stamped on him. Be that as it may, Flavian died a few days later from the ill-treatment he had received at the council. The emperor confirmed the decisions of this disreputable council. But Leo i., bishop of Rome, the first of the great popes, repudiated it as invalid and sternly denounced its proceedings, designating it Latrocinialis—the "Robber Council."[9]
The Eastern Church was now miserably divided. Egypt, Thrace, and Palestine held to the Eutychian side, while Syria, Pontus, and Asia supported the opposite position, which Flavian had championed, but which was now maintained by the most powerful man of his age, the great Leo. The next year (a.d. 450) Theodosius ii. died through a fall from his horse. His sister, Pulcheria, was already exercising great power in the State, and she now married a senator Marcian, sixty years of age, who thus becoming emperor, at once reversed the policy of his predecessor and entered into communication with Leo for the settlement of the troubled state of the Church. An indirect proof of what this condition was may be gathered from the fact that the following year Marcian issued a law against brawling in church and forbidding meetings in private houses or in the street. The same year he banished Eutyches. The result of the emperor's correspondence with the pope was that Marcian summoned a general council which was to have met at Nicæa, the now venerated site of orthodoxy. Subsequently, to suit the convenience of the emperor, the place of assembly was changed to Chalcedon on the Bosphorus, as that was near Constantinople.
The council of Chalcedon is the last of the four general councils recognised both by the Churches of the West—Protestant (i.e. Lutheran and Anglican) as well as Roman Catholic—and by the main body of the Eastern Church. It met in the church of St. Euphemia, holding its first session on 8th October, a.d. 451. There were some five or six hundred bishops present, most of them from the Oriental provinces of the empire. Thus this council, like each of its three predecessors—at Nicæa, Constantinople, and Ephesus—was not only held in the East, but was also almost entirely Oriental in composition. Leo was very desirous to have the council at Rome. But that was not to be. All the councils were summoned by emperors, and it was in the East that the imperial government held supreme sway over the Church. No emperor with any concern for his authority could have consented to the assembly of a general council of the Church at Rome, especially under so important a person as Leo i., who was really much more influential in the West than Marcian himself. Leo was not present; but he exerted a weighty influence on the proceedings of the council. The papal delegates insisted that Dioscurus should not be allowed to sit as a judge in a case where his own conduct was on trial He was condemned, and deposed, and subsequently banished to Gangra in Paphlagonia, where he died three years later (a.d. 454). Although this was on the ground of his misconduct at Ephesus and his having dared to excommunicate "the most holy and most blessed archbishop of Rome," the heresy he had defended was condemned. Having first confirmed the decrees of the three earlier councils, the council of Chalcedon anathematised Nestorianism on the one hand, and Eutychianism on the other. Leo's "Tome," an important doctrinal statement contained in a letter which the pope had addressed to Flavian, was adopted as the standard statement of orthodoxy; and to this was added a minutely discriminating definition of doctrine. The "Tome" is an admirably balanced statement of the Church's position with regard to the unity of the Person and the distinction of the two natures in Christ, and the formula of Chalcedon which accepts and confirms this statement carefully recapitulates the ideas contained therein. It is to be observed that neither document attempts any explanation of the incarnation, nor does either really attempt to resolve the apparent paradox propounded by its definitions. Each is content to define the orthodox position, clearly, unmistakably, finally. In these two documents we have the Church's authoritative declaration of the incarnation. The settlement of Chalcedon declares that, "We, therefore, following the Holy Fathers, confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ; and we do with one voice teach, that He is perfect in Godhead and that He is perfect in Manhood, being truly God and truly Man; that He is of a reasonable soul and body, consubstantial with the Father as touching His Godhead, and consubstantial with us as touching His Manhood … acknowledged to be in two natures without confusion, change, division, separation,"—and more to the same purport. This then is the final orthodoxy, to defend which has been the main business of the theologians of the Greek Church for all subsequent ages. Those who want more than statement and defence; those who desire metaphysical explanation, must look elsewhere than to the orthodox confession of the Eastern theologians.
- ↑ Hist. Eccl. v. 16.
- ↑ P. 79.
- ↑ De Incarn.
- ↑ ὡς ἐν υἱῷ.
- ↑ Socrates, vii. 29.
- ↑ It will be recollected that Arius began by denouncing the heretical teaching of Alexander his bishop.
- ↑ Socrates, vii. 15; Philostorgius, viii. 9.
- ↑ ἕνωσις τῶν προσώπων will not suffice; there must be ἕνωσις καθ' ὑπόστασιν. This was quite in accordance with the idea of ὑπόστασις in the Cappadocian theologians, so that there is nothing peculiar to Cyril so far as Dorner seems to imply (Person of Christ, Eng. Trans., Div. ii. vol. i. p. 57). But Cyril goes further and has the expression μία φύσις (Ep. ad Acac. p. 115, quoted by Dorner, op. cit.), verbally at any rate an anticipation of Monophysitism, also ἑνότης φυσική, Ep. ad monarchas Aeg. p. 9.
- ↑ Leo, Epis. 95, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. xii. p. 71.