§ 140. THE EUTYCHIAN CONTROVERSY. 735
Christ to double personality ; so tlie Alexandria! theology begot the opposite error of Eutychianism or Monc»physitisni, which urged the personal unity of Christ at the expense of the distinction of natures, and made the divine Logos absorb the human nature. The latter error is as dangerous as the former. For if Clirist is not true man, he cannot be our example, and his passion and death dissolve at last into mere figurative representations or docetistic show.
A large portion of the party of Cyril was dissatisfied with the union creed, and he was obliged to purge himself of inconsistency. He referred the duality of natures spoken of in the symbol to the abstract distinction of deity and humanity, while the two are so made one in the one Christ, that after the union all separation ceases, and only one nature is to be recognized in the incarnate Son. The Logos, as the proper subject of the one nature, has indeed all human, or rather divine-human, attributes, but without a human nature. Cyril's theory of the incarnation approaches Patripassianism, but differs from it in making the Son a distinct hypostasis from the Father. It mixes the divine and human ; but it mixes them only in Christ, and so is Christo-theistic, but not pantheistic'
On the other side, the Orientals or Antiochians, under the lead of John, Ibas, and especially Theodoret, interpreted the union symbol in their sense of a distinction of the two natures continuing in the one Christ even after the incarnation, and actually obtained the victory for this moderate Kestorianism, by the help of the bishop of Rome, at the council of Chalcedon.
^ Cyril's true view is most clearly expressed in the following propositions (comp. Mansi, v. 320, and Niedner, p. 364) : The ivcfipKwffii was a (pvaiKi) evaxris, or becoming man, on the part of God, so that there is only ^^.ia (recrapKoj/xevr) <pvais rod Xoyov. 'O @ehs \6yos, erct'&fls aapnl Ka^' vir6aTa(nv, iy ever o 6.vd poo t os , oh {rvvr](pdrj kv^pwinc. Mia ^Stj voitrai (pi a is /xfra ti]!/ eVaxric, rj ahrov tov XSyov aeaapKoiyiivr). 'H tov kvi'iov ffdp^ ioTiv iSia too Qiov \6yov, ovx erepov nvhs Trap' avr6v. The evbiai'; rSiv (piaicav is not, indeed, exactly a crvyxv<ns twv (picreccv, but ftt all events excludes all Siaipeais, and demands an absolute co-existence and interpenetration of the \6yos and the adp^. The consequence of this incarnation ia the existence of a new entity, a diviue-humau subject, which is in nothing onli/ God or oniy man, but in everything is both in one, and whose attributes (propriet ates, idiomata) are not, some divine and others human, but all divine-human.
736 THIED PERIOD. A.D. SJ 1-590.
The new controversy was o])ene(l by the party of monophj'site sentiment.
Cyril died in 444. His arch-deacon, Dioscurus (Ai6o-Kopo<i), who had accompanied him to the council at Ephesns, succeeded Lini in the jiatriurchal chair of Alexandria (444-451), and surpassed him in all his bad qualities, while he fell far behind him in intellect and in theological capacity.' He was a man of unbounded ambition and stormy passion, and shrank from no measures to accomplish his designs and to advance the Alexandrian see to the supremacy of the entire East ; in which he soon succeeded at the Council of Robbers. He put himself at the head of the inonophysite party, and everywhere stirred the fire of a war against the Antiochian Christology.
The theological representative, but by no means the author, of the monophysite heresy which bears his name, was EuTYCHES,'' an aged and respected, but not otherwise important presbyter and archimandrite (head of a cloister of three hundred monks) in Constantinople, who had lived many years in monastic seclusion, and had only once appeared in public, to raise his voice, in that procession, for the Cyrillian council of Ephesus and against N^estorius. His relation to the Alexandrian Christology is like that of Nestorius to the Antiochian ; that is, he drew it to a head, brought it to popular expression, and adhered obstinately to it; but he is considerably inferior to Nestorius in talent and learning. His connec iion with this controversy is in a great measure accidental.
Eutyches, like Cyril, laid chief stress on the divine in Christ, and denied that two natures could be spoken^-of after the incarnation. In our Lord, after his birth, he worshipped
' Towards the memory of Cyril he behaved very recklessly. ITe confiscated hia considerable estate (Cyril was of wealthy family), accused him of squandering the church funds in his war against Nestorius, and unseated several of his relatives. Ho was himself charged, at the council of Chalcedon, with cmljczzlemcnt of the moneys of the church and of the poor.
* That is, the Fortunate. His opponents said he should rather have been named Atyclics, the Unfortunate. He must not be confounded with the deacon Eutyche.^, who attended Cyril to the oouncil of Ephesus. Leo the Great, in his renowned letter to Flavian, calls him "very ignorant and unskilled," multum imprudens et uimii2 imperitus, and justly attributes his error rather to imperitia than to ver9i:tia. Se also Petavius and Uefele (ii. p. 300).