RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Monophysitism
ently by their anti-Christian rulers, who sought to compel them to abandon their traditional faith and teaching, and accept the Zoroastrianism of their Persian oppressors. For this reason it was impossible for the Armenians to send representatives to the council, of whose deliberations and decisions, unlike that of the previous council of Ephesus, they were left in ignorance by the assembled Greek bishops.
But soon after this, the many monastic and other opponents of the council of Chalcedon began to spread themselves farther and farther over Asia, asserting continually that the Greeks had accepted the errors of Nestorius which had been rejected by the preceding council of Ephesus. Later the followers and partizans of EKutyches came to Armenia, seeking to secure Armenian sympathy by defending his teachings and denouncing the Creed of Chalcedon, while, at the same time, the supporters of Nestorius, seeking also to influence the Armenians in his favor, asserted that this council was compelled to accept his teaching even though the Council of Ephesus
had condemned him, since only thus
2. Hesita- could they controvert the heresy of tion to Eutyches. During this time, when Accept the these opponents of the Greeks were Creed of seeking to secure the support of the Chalcedon. Armenians, a very defective translation of the letter of Leo to Flavian, concern-
ing the errors of Eutyches, was brought to their attention. The bishops, in examining its teaching concerning the two natures of Christ, one of which was divine and the other human, could not fail to perceive that the phrase “ the one and the other ” had been translated by a term used only of persons but not of attributes. Thus it was that, although Leo spoke of two natures, the Armenian translation referred instead to two persons. And although the Greek defenders of the Creed of Chalcedon asserted its undoubted orthodoxy, the counter-claims of the defenders of Nestorius and his teaching seemed to be supported by the dubious doctrine of Leo’s letter, which had been used in the formulation of this disputed conciliar declaration of the faith. While the Armenian bishops were deliberating year after year whether to reject or to accept this decision of the Council of Chalcedon, a copy of the proclamation of the Greek Emperor Zeno, imposing the acceptance of his Henoticon, which had already been signed by many Byzantine bishops, was brought to their attention. Babken, the patriarch of the Armenians, having examined the Henoticon with its many subscriptions, which, although condemning both the asserted errors of Nestorius and the evident heresy of Eutyches, had passed over without notice the disputed dogmatic declaration of the Council of Chalcedon, approved and accepted it as orthodox, since it undeniably agreed with the teaching of the three first councils of the Church. Then, after these dissensions over this disputed council had continued year after year, the patriarch convened, in 491, a synod of all the Armenian bishops, including the primates and suffragans of the Albanians and the Georgians, to determine finally whether to reject or accept as ecumenical the Council of Chalcedon. After they had again anathematized the errors of
Nestorius and Eutyches, the Henoticon was read, approved, and accepted as orthodox throughout; and since it was known to all that the Greeks themselves were divided on the question of recognizing their own council, they also refused to consider it as an ecumenical council of the Catholic Church (see ArmeEntA, III., §3). Then, when later in that same year the successor of Zeno, the Emperor Anastasius, issued a decree forbidding all further discussion concerning the Council of Chalcedon and its creed, the Armenian bishops were confirmed in their decision to refuse it recognition. And, although doubting the entire orthodoxy of the dogmatic conciliar declaration, in view of the apparent heterodoxy perceived in the translation of the Letter of Leo which they had already examined, they admitted and accepted the teaching of the Creed of Chalcedon in so far as it had reasserted the traditional apostolic teaching of the three first, and undisputed, councils of the Church.
But the expression used in Leo’s letter, “‘ the two natures in Christ,’’ continued to confuse the Armenians, since the Syrians, who were also active anti-Chalcedonians, asserted that it had inclined to the error ascribed to Nestorius, and by the term “two natures ”’ it seemingly taught a separation of the two natures in the one Christ. The Armenians, therefore, to contradict the asserted error of the Chalcedonians, adopted as their own the expression
of Cyril of Alexandria against Nesto- 3. Armenian rius, ‘‘the one nature of the Word Doubts on made flesh”; and in using this term
Leo’s ‘one nature in Christ,” they taught Letter to and believed it to be equivalent to Flavian. one personality (Armenian, like Syr-
iac, must use its one term, where the Greek can alternate physis with hypostasis or prosopon) resulting from the indivisible union of the two natures. This expression later became the cause of many controversies which continued for centuries between the Armenians and the Greeks, the latter seeking, through the secular authority of the emperors of the East, to secure Armenian acceptance of the disputed Creed of Chalcedon, thus compelling their theologians to write defenses of their orthodox doctrine of the person of Christ to counteract the claims of their Greek opponents that they taught the Monophysite heresy of Eutyches. In these declarations, they state definitely that the formula ‘‘two natures in Christ” signifies that “Christ is one,” true God and true man, possessing perfectly both the divine and the human natures united in him without confusion and without division; having suffered the passion and death in his humanity, but impassible and immortal in his divinity.
The Armenian Church, as a result of its contact with the Latins during these centuries before and after the final separation, in 1054, of the Greek and Latin churches, unlike the other divisions of the Christian Church in the East, accepts the Apostles’ Creed and the Athanasian Creed (i.e., without the Filioque) in addition to the Niceno-Constantinopolitan, which is imposed on all divisions of the Catholic Church throughout the entire East and the entire West. The teaching of the Armenians on those disputed
Monophysitism Nestorius