THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
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ical controversy between Antioch and Alexandria was debated. Although both the declarations of the Alexandrine Cyril against the alleged heresy of the Antiochene Nestorius and the ‘“ Tome” of Leo [I. (q.v.)] against that of Nestorius and Eutyches combined had been accepted by the bishops, who at first asserted that the canon of the Church (canon VII. of the Council of Ephesus) forbade them to add to the
existing conciliar creed, they were
g. Adop- eventually compelled by the secular
tion of the rulers to declare the decision of the
Creed of council on the controverted question
Chalcedon. in the dogmatic definition called the Creed of Chalcedon (see CHRISTOLOGY, IV., § 2). The “Tome” of Leo, whose doctrinal declarations had undeniably been deduced directly from the several opposite statements submitted to him, first by Nestorius and Cyril, and later by Eutyches and Flavian, had consistently condemned both the crypto-Ebionitism inferred from the alleged Antiochene teaching of Nestorius, and the docetic heresy evident in the Alexandrine teaching of Eutyches. The Council of Chalcedon, in formulating its own creedal statement, not only thereby reaffirmed the truth of the traditional apostolic teaching contained in the Antiochene formula of 251, the Niceeno- Constantinopolitan Creed of 381 (see ConsTantTI- NOPOLITAN CREED), and, indirectly, the compromise Antiochene confession subscribed by Cyril (431), but it developed these comparatively simple doctrinal statements into a complex dogmatic formula of Christological faith, deduced directly from the “Tome” of Leo, the theological terms of which were clear and comprehensible only to bishops whose language was the Greek of the dominant division of the Church in the East.
Il. The Separated Syrian Churches: But there were also the two allied non-Greek divisions, whose participation in the ecumenical councils of the Church was necessarily limited, since their ecclesiastical languages were Syriac and Armenian. The Syrian-speaking bishops throughout the East, because of this diversity of language, were free from the immediate influence of the incessant Christological controversies between the Greek schools of Antioch and of Alexandria. In the dissension evoked by the errors of Eutyches, their history tells freely and fully why the Creed of Chalcedon was rejected, and indirectly explains how the stigma of defending Eutyches and accepting his heresy was unjustly affixed to them by the Chalcedonians or Greek partizans of the fourth ecumenical
council, whose dogmatic declaration 1. Creed of was repeatedly confirmed or ignored, Chalcedon according as the emperors of the East
Rejected were swayed by the political and eccleby the siastical defenders or opposers of its Syrians. course and of itscanon. After reciting
how Flavian and Eusebius had “ insisted to the wicked Eutyches that the body of our Lord was a partaker of our nature, he confessed this which before he would not confess. They also urged him to confess that there are two (i.e., separate) natures in Christ. And because he would not confess this, they made this deposition. This cause forced Theodosius to assemble the second synod of
Ephesus. And when that was read before them which was done in the imperial city, they found that Flavian required Eutyches to confess two (i.e., separate) natures; and they made the deposition of Flavian and Eusebius. Eutyches presented a document in which was the creed of Nicea, and the Godclad fathers anathematized all who had accused him, ‘by this which deceived them as men, that wicked matter of ungodly heresy which was in his soul’; for it isywritten that man sees into the eyes, and the Lord sees into the heart ’’ (Cowper, ut sup., pp. 89-91). The ceaseless controversy between the Greek defenders of the Council of Chalcedon and the anti-Chalcedonians was precisely this question of the two natures in Christ, whether they existed separately after, as Nestorianism seemed to say, or became united in and through his incarnation in the flesh, as taught by all the accepted confessions of the Church. That the anti-Chalce- 2. Reasons donians—the Syrians, Copts, and Arfor this menians—rejected consistently this Rejection. Eutychian error of an absorption of Christ’s humanity into his divinity is conclusively proved by the assertion, already cited, that Eutyches’ deceptive confession of faith (like the equivocal creed of Arius) had actually deceived his own defender, Dioscurus, and the entire synod of Ephesus. Only because of this were they misled in declaring him orthodox, not heretical. The term “ Kutychianism ”’ therefore, must be accepted as synonymous with ‘‘ Monophysitism,”’i.e., the docetic denial of the reality of the human nature of Christ. It can have, historically, no other or added meaning; to deny this is to assert that the entire ante-conciliar Church, which had accepted the Antiochene confession of 251, was then and thereafter also Monophysite, and, therefore, heretical in its traditional Christological teaching. The difference between the anti-Chalcedonians and the Chalcedonians was, as they state themselves, whether the disputed dogmatic declaration of this council, in condemning the evident error of Eutychianism, had not inclined instead to the alleged opposite teaching ascribed to Nestorius. The traditional Christological term of the first Antiochene formula is “‘ one compound person of heavenly deity and human flesh ’’; the definition of the second compromise formula is similar in statement, “‘a union of two natures, wherefore we confess one Christ.”’ Furthermore, the first formula asserts, finally, “‘ 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.” This, then, was the justification of the anti-Chalcedonians for charging the Chalcedonians with teaching, in their dogmatic conciliar declaration, a seeming separation of the two natures, in opposition to the confessions asserting a union of the two natures in Christ.
To a Greek bishop, the Greek terms of the Creed of Chalcedon were clear and convincing. To a Syrian bishop speaking Syriac, with its one word for the two Greek terms physis (“nature ’”’) and prosopon (“person”) or hypostasis, these same terms were debatable, unorthodox, and doubtful. Even in orthodox Greek Alexandria, the anti-Chalcedonian partizans of their former patriarch Dios-