§ 140. THE EUTYCUIAN CONTBOVERSY. 737
only one nature, the nature of God become jBesh and man.' The impersonal liuman nature is assimilated and, as it were, deified b v the personal Logos, so that his body is by no means of the same substance {6/LLoovaiov) with ours, but a divine body." All human attributes are transferred to the one subject, the humanized Logos. Hence it may and must be said : God is born, God suffered, God was crucified and died. He asserted, therefore, on the one hand, the capability of suffering and death in the Logos-personality, and on the other hand, the deification of the human in Christ.
Theodoret, in three dialogues composed in 447, attacked this Egyptian Eutychian type of doctrine as a beggar's basket of Docetistic, Gnostic, Apollinarian, and other heresies,' and advocated the qualified Antioohian Christology, i. e., the doctrine of the unfused union of two natures in one person. Dioscurus accused him to the patriarch Domnus in Antioch of dividing the one Lord Christ into two Sons of God ; and Theodoret replied to this with moderation. Dioscurus, on his part, endeavored to stir up the court in Constantinople against the whole church of Eastern Asia. Domnus and Theodoret likewise betook themselves to the capital, to justify their doctrine. The controversy now broke forth with greater violence, and concentrated on the person of Eutyches in Constantinople.
At a local synod of the patriarch Flavian at Constantino- /' , , ,
' Mlav (pvrrtv ■KpoTKuvetv, kolL ravr-qv ©eoC crapKcabtvTos koI evav^pwn'^ffai'TOS^ or aa he declared before the synod at Constantinople : '0/j.o\oya> iK Svo tpvaeav Yeyei/^ rf/irSai rhv Kvpiov T]fjict>i/ wph ttJs ivr\(Tiu>% • ixera. 5e r^v 'ivuiiriv fx'iav (piaiv bfxoXoySi Mansi, torn. vi. fol. '744. In behalf of his view he appealed to the Scriptures, to Athanasius and Cyril, and to the council of Ephesus in 431.
- The other side imputed to Eutychianism the doctrine of a heavenly body, or of an apparent body, or of the transformation of the Logos into flesh. So Theodore!^ Fab. hacr. iv. 13. Eutyches said, Christ had a (Ti>ixa ay^pdnrou, but not a awna kv^p^irivov, and he denied the consubstantiality of his aap^ with ours. Yet het expressly guarded himself against Docetism, and against all speculation : ^v(Tto\oyt'ir e/xavTt^ ovK iiriTpinai. He was really neither a philosopher nor a theologian, but only insisted on some theological ojiinions and points of doctrine with great tenacitjc and obstinacy.
' Hence the title of the dialogues: 'E,oai'i(rTT)y, Beggar, and naAi}^oo(por, the Multiform. Under this name the Eutychian speaker is introduced. Theodoret olflo wrote an h.iru\oyia uirlp t^Lohdipov KoX @eoSd'pov, which is lost. i1
788 THIBD PEEIOD. A.I). 311-590.
pie in 448 ' Entyches was charged with his error by Eusebi a, bishop of Doryla3nm in Plirygia, and upon his wilful refusal, after repeated challenges, to admit the dyophysitism after the incarnation, and the consubstantiality of Christ's body with our own, he was deposed and put under the ban of the church. On his way home, he was pnblicly insulted by the populace. The conncil confessed its faith that " Christ, after the incarnation, consisted of two natures^ in one hyjpostasis and iii one persorij one Christ, one Son, one Lord."
Both parties endeavored to gain the pnblic opinion, and addressed themselves to distant bishops, especially to Leo I. of Rome. Leo, in 449, confirmed the decision of the council in several epistles, especially in a letter to Flavian, which forms an epoch in the history of Christology, and in which he gave a masterly, profound, and clear analysis of the orthodox doctrine of two natures in one person.' But Eut^^ches had powerful friends among the monks and at the court, and a special patron in Dioscurus of Alexandria, who induced the emperor Theo"dosius II. to convoke a general council.
This synod met at Ephesus, in August, 449, and consisted of one hundred and thirty -five bishops. It occupies a notorious place in the chronique scandalease of church history. Dioscurus presided, with brutal violence, protected by monks and an armed soldiery ; while Flavian and his friends hardly dared open their lips, and Theodoret was entirely excluded. When an explanation from Eusebius of Dorylseum, who had been the accuser of Entyches at tlie council of Constantinople, was pre-
' "Zivooos ifBrj^ovtra. Its acts are incorporated in the acts of tlie council oi Chalcedon, in Mansi, vi. 649 sqq.
^ 'E(c Svo (pvaeut/, or, as others more accurately said, ev Svo (pva-eai, — an unessential difterence, which reappears in the Creed of the council of Chalcedon. Comp, Mansi, torn. \a. fol. 685, and Neander, iv. p. 988. The first form may be taken also in a monophysilp ?ense.
' This Epistc'.a Doginatica ad Flaviauuin (Ep. 28 in Eallerini, 24 in Quesnelj, which Iico transmitted, with letters to the emperor and the emperor's sister, Pulcheria, and the Robl)er Synod, by his legates, vraa afterwards formally approved at tho council of Chalcedon in 451, and invested witli almost symbolical authority. It may be found in the Opera Lconis, ed. Bailer, torn. i. pp. 801-838 ; in Mansi, tom. V. fol. 1359; and in Hcfele (Latin and German), ii. 335-340. Corap. on it alsa Walch, ^•i. p. 182 ff., and Paur, i. 809 ff.