The Christological Issue.

Throughout the millennium between the Council of Chalcedon and the fall of Constantinople, Byzantine the theological thought was dominated by the Christological problem as it was defined in the dispute between Cyril and Nestorius and in the subsequent discussions and conciliar decrees. It must be remembered however that the central issue in these debates was the ultimate fate of man.

Western Christological thought since the early Middle Ages has been dominated by the Anselmian idea of redemption through “satisfaction;” the idea that Jesus offered to the Father a perfect and sufficient sacrifice, propitiatory for the sins of mankind, has been at the centre of Christological speculation playing a prominent role in modern historical research on the patristic age. The result is that Christology has been conceived as a topic in itself, clearly distinct from pneumatology and anthropology. But if one keeps in mind the Greek patristic notion that the true nature of man means life in God realized once and for all through the Holy Spirit in the hypostatic union of the man Jesus with the Logos and made accessible to all men through the same Holy Spirit in the humanity of Christ and in His body, the Church, Christology acquires a new and universal dimension. It cannot be isolated any longer from either the doctrine of the Holy Spirit or the doctrine of man, and it becomes a key for the understanding of the Gospel as a whole.

The issue of “participation in God’s life” and “deification” stands as a necessary background to the clash between Alexandrian and Antiochian Christology in the fifth century. When the great exegetes of Antioch — Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Nestorius, and even Theodoret of Cyrus — emphasize the full humanity of the historical Jesus, they understand this humanity not merely as distinct from the divinity but as “autonomous” and personalized. If “deified,” Jesus could no longer be truly man, he must simply be the son of Mary if he is to be ignorant, to suffer, and to die. It is precisely this understanding of humanity as autonomous, which has attracted the sympathies of modern Western theologians toward the Antiochians, but which provoked the emergence of Nestorianism and the clash with Alexandria. For the concept of “deification” was the very argument with which Athanasius had countered to Arius: “God became a man, so a man may become God.” The great Cappadocian Fathers also shared this argument, and by it, they were convinced, as were the vast majority of the Eastern episcopate, of the truth of the Nicaean faith in spite of their original doubts concerning the term “consubstantial.”

Thus, the essential “good news” about the coming of new life — human because it is also divine — was expressed by Cyril of Alexandria and not by the more rational scheme defended by Nestorius. Cyril lacked the vocabulary however and the flexibility to satisfy those who feared the Monophysite temptation of seeing in Jesus a God who ceased to be also man. Cyril’s formula of “one nature [or hypostasis] incarnated” was still polemical in leaving the door open to the Orthodox distinction between the divine nature per se and the “divine nature incarnated” and therefore recognizing the reality of the “flesh;” it was anti-Nestorian not balanced formula and positive definition of who Christ is. The Chalcedonian definition of 451 — two natures united in one hypostasis yet retaining in full their respective characteristics — was therefore a necessary correction of Cyril’s vocabulary. Permanent credit should be given to the Antiochians — especially to Theodoret — and to Leo of Rome for having shown the necessity of this correction, without which Cyrillian Christology could easily be, and actually was, interpreted in a Monophysite sense by Eutyches and his followers.

But the Chalcedonian definition balanced and positive as it was lacked the soteriological charismatic impact, which had made the positions of Athanasius and Cyril such appealing. Political and ecclesiastical rivalries, personal ambitions, imperial pressures aimed at imposing Chalcedon by force, abusive interpretations of Cyril in the Monophysite sense as well as misinterpretations of the council by some Nestorianizing Antiochians who saw in it a disavowal of the great Cyril — all provoked the first major and lasting schism in Christendom.

Understandably, the Byzantine emperors tried to restore the religious unity of the empire. In the second half of the fifth century, they made several unhappy attempts to heal the schism by avoiding the issue. But the issue proved to be real, and the passions — high. Thus, Justinian I (527-565), the last great Roman emperor, after several attempts to achieve unity by imperial decree again turned to conciliar procedure.

In the age of Justinian, four major theological positions can be easily discerned:

The Monophysites.

Although most of the Monophysites were ready to anathematize Eutyches as well as the idea that Christ’s humanity was “confused” with His divinity, they held steadfastly to the theology and terminology of Cyril of Alexandria. Just as the “old Nicaeans” in the fourth century had refused to accept the formula of the three hypostasis introduced by the Cappadocian Fathers because Athanasius had not used it, so the leaders of fifth- and sixth-century Monophysitism — Dioscoros of Alexandria, Philoxenus of Mabbugh, and the great Sever us of Antioch — rejected the Council of Chalcedon and the Christological formula of “one hypostasis in two natures” because Cyril had never used it and because they interpreted it as a return to Nestorianism. The danger of Eutychianism that they claimed was not serious enough to justify the Chalcedonian departure from Cyril’s terminology. They objected most violently — and this objection may be the real serious difference between their Christology and Chalcedonian orthodoxy — to the idea that the two natures after the union “retain in full their proper characteristics.”

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 456