RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Monophysitism
refusal to approve the anathematizing, anti-Nestorian articles of Alexandrine Cyril, a compromise between them was eventually effected by his subscription of a formula of faith prepared by them for the consideration of the council. This dogmatic declaration defines the Logos as being of one essence (homoousion) with the Father as to divinity, and of ~ one essence with man as to humanity, for there was effected, say the Antiochene bishops, ‘‘a union of two natures; whereupon we confess
7. Unavail- one Christ, one Son, one Lord. And ing Com- according to the teaching of a union promise without confusion, we confess the holy between Virgin to be Theotokos, because God Antioch the Son was incarnate and made man, and Alex- and from his very conception united andria. to himself the temple assumed from her” (Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, ii.
228). If this concise Christological creed of 481 be compared with the earlier Antiochene confession of 251, it is evident that, excepting the Athanasian term homoousion and the later Alexandrian Theotokos, the traditional teaching of the former common faith appears unchanged in the latter. In the first formula, the characteristic Christological confession of the incarnation of Christ the Logos is ‘‘ one compound person of heavenly deity and human flesh ’’; in the second is seen ‘‘ a union of two natures . . . without confusion,” etc. The concluding declaration of the first formula, ‘‘ Now these things we correct and approve, not the dividing of one person indivisible, but the unconfused peculiar confession of the flesh, and of the Deity,” has no counterpart in the second, shorter symbol, although its causal connection with the attitude of the Syrians and, through them, of the Armenians, toward the Council of Chalcedon, which was soon to follow, will be shown below. This definite dogmatic declaration of the divine and the human natures in Christ the Logos was what the Antiochene bishops required of the Alexandrine Cyril as a test of his orthodoxy. But the compromise confession accepted by both parties neither conciliated nor satisfied the extremists of those two opposite Christological schools. Cyril had, after defining the natural distinction and necessary difference between the nature of God and the nature of man which before the incarnation are manifestly two natures and are combined in Christ, asserted that they are two only before the incarnation; in their union in the Incarnate Logos they cease to be two and become one. Thus Cyril, in deliberate defiance of the statement subscribed by himself, seemingly taught, as before, the indefinite earlier doctrine of the “ one nature of the Word made flesh” of Athanasius (q.v.). According to this traditional Alexandrine teaching, the two natures, distinct before, became one after their union in Christ. The one divine person acted in and through both, but it was a single and, therefore, the divine activity, that of the Logos. This was condemned by the Antiochene school as undeniably docetic in its tendency. The Alexandrine school, in answer to this accusation, charged that the Antiochenes taught the Nestorianism condemned by the Council of Ephesus. This ceaseless Christologica] controversy could not fail to force
another conciliar conflict between the two rival schools.
In that same imperial city in which the Antiochene presbyter Anastasius, by denouncing, in 428, the Alexandrine term Theotokos, had caused the convening of the third ecumenical council in the city of Ephesus, the Alexandrine partizan Eutyches, archimandrite of a monastery near the city, by denouncing, in 448, the alleged Antiochene teaching of Nestorianism, was likewise to become the cause of the convening of the fourth and final council of the united Christian Church in the East. But without warning Eutyches himself was accused of heresy concerning the incarnation of Christ. Cited
before the assembled synod of Con-
8. The stantinople, he was compelled to con- Eutychian fess teaching that the person of Christ Contro- was of, or out of, two natures, though versy. not in two natures; that the two na-
tures, distinct before the incarnation, after their union became one; that the human nature of the incarnate Son was changed, since the body of Christ, by union with divinity, became thereby different from that of other men. This docetic denial of the true humanity of Christ, evidently developed directly from the Alexandrine overemphasis of the divinity of the incarnate Logos, was condemned as: heretical by this same synod, and its author was deposed from his dignities. Then Eutyches, who had already accused the Antiochenes to Leo (q.v.), bishop of Rome, of teaching tenaciously the Nestorianism condemned by the Council of Ephesus, sought his support, assuming that Leo, like himself, was a partizan of the deceased Cyril of Alexandria. Flavian, bishop of Constantinople (see FLAVIAN OF CONSTANTINOPLE), however, hoping to avert the threatened conciliar conflict, was the one who really secured the support of Leo, who had already sent him his “Tome ”’ concerning the Christological controversy between the two opposite schools of doctrine. Now Dioscurus, the even more fanatical anti-Nestorian successor of Cyril of Alexandria, allying himself with the powerful political and the numerous monastic defenders of Eutyches against Flavian, and defeated in his attacks on the regularity and canonical course of the synod which had both denounced and degraded that aggressive partizan of his predecessor, secured from the emperor the summoning of a pseudo-council, which, assembling in 449 at Ephesus, was dominated by himself. The acts of the synod of Constantinople having been annulled and the teaching of Eutyches pronounced orthodox by the assembled partizans of Dioscurus, the accused archimandrite, Eutyches was restored to his monastery. The predominating power of the Alexandrine party seemed secure until the unexpected death of their imperial protector, Theodosius II., occurred. Then the succeeding rulers confirmed anew the original deposition of EKutyches by the first synod of Constantinople, and later, hoping to harmonize all dissent within the Church, convened, in 451, the fourth ecumenical council at Chalcedon. After the assembled bishops had deposed and degraded Dioscurus for his part in the repudiated proceedings of the Synod of Ephesus, the Christolog-
Monophysitism