Seven Icons of Christ: An Introduction to the Oikoumenical Councils 9781463236939

Table of contents :
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABBREVIATIONS
TIMELINE OF EVENTS
PREFACE: MOMENTS IN THE SHAPING OF CHRISTIAN TRADITION
INTRODUCTION: THE OIKOUMENICAL COUNCILS AS ICONS OF CHRIST
CHAPTER 1: THE DIVINE CHRIST OF THE COUNCIL OF NICAEA: 325
CHAPTER 2: THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE I: 381. CHRIST’S DIVINE MAJESTY AND THE IMPARTIALITY OF HIS HUMANITY
CHAPTER 3: THE COUNCIL OF EPHESUS: 431. THE ONTOLOGICAL STATUS OF THE PERSONAL UNITY OF GOD AND HUMANITY
CHAPTER 4: THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON: 451. IN SEARCH OF A NUANCED AND BALANCED CHRISTOLOGY
CHAPTER 5: THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE II: 553. A CHRISTOLOGY SEEKING REFINEMENT AND SUBTLETY
CHAPTER 6: THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE III: 681. THE MORAL DYNAMISM OF CHRIST AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FREEDOM
CHAPTER 7: THE COUNCIL OF NICAEA II: 787. THE POWER AND SACRAMENTALITY OF CHRIST’S ICON
EPILOGUE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX

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Seven Icons of Christ

Gorgias Handbooks

Gorgias Handbooks provides students and scholars with reference books, textbooks and introductions to different topics or fields of study. In this series, Gorgias welcomes books that are able to communicate information, ideas and concepts effectively and concisely, with useful reference bibliographies for further study.

Seven Icons of Christ

An Introduction to the Oikoumenical Councils

Edited by

Sergey Trostyanskiy

9

34 2016

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2016 by Gorgias Press LLC

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC.

2016

‫ܒ‬

ISBN 978-1-4632-0572-0

9 ISSN 1935-6838

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Trostyanskiy, Sergey, editor. Title: Seven icons of Christ : an introduction to the Oikoumenical councils / edited by Sergey Trostyanskiy. Description: Piscataway : Gorgias Press, 2016. | Series: Gorgias handbooks, ISSN 1935-6838 Identifiers: LCCN 2015048670 | ISBN 9781463205720 Subjects: LCSH: Councils and synods, Ecumenical--History. Classification: LCC BR200 .S48 2016 | DDC 262/.5--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015048670 Printed in the United States of America

TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents ................................................................................................................... v Acknowledgments................................................................................................................. vii Abbreviations ......................................................................................................................... ix Timeline of Events .............................................................................................................. xiii Preface: Moments in the Shaping of Christian Tradition............................................. xix JOHN A. MCGUCKIN Introduction: The Oikoumenical Councils as Icons of Christ ....................................... 1 SERGEY TROSTYANSKIY Chapter 1: The Divine Christ of the Council of Nicaea: 325 ......................................... 9 JOHN A. MCGUCKIN Chapter 2: The Council of Constantinople I: 381. Christ’s Divine Majesty and the Impartiality of his Humanity........................................................................ 47 TODD E. FRENCH Chapter 3: The Council of Ephesus: 431. The Ontological Status of the Personal Unity of God and Humanity. .................................................................... 99 SERGEY TROSTYANSKIY Chapter 4: The Council of Chalcedon: 451. In Search of a Nuanced and Balanced Christology ................................................................................................. 159 MATTHEW J. PEREIRA Chapter 5: The Council of Constantinople II: 553. A Christology Seeking Refinement and Subtlety ...........................................................................................223 ANNA ZHYRKOVA Chapter 6: The Council of Constantinople III: 681. The Moral Dynamism of Christ and the Significance of Freedom ................................................................. 277 GREGORY TUCKER Chapter 7: The Council of Nicaea II: 787. The Power and Sacramentality of Christ’s Icon ................................................................................................................ 323 WILL BELLAMY Epilogue................................................................................................................................373 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 375 List of Contributors ............................................................................................................ 397 Index ..................................................................................................................................... 399

v

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This volume was commissioned by the Sophia Institute of Byzantine and Eastern Orthodox Studies (housed at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary) to fulfill the advanced student’s needs for a close encounter with the primary texts along with higher level critical analysis of the Seven Great Christian Councils of antiquity. In order to satisfy an ever increasing interest in the intellectual legacy of the Councils, already evident in today’s academy, various scholars of the early Church and late antiquity have come together in this volume to offer an accessible study of the Councils that presents refined historical coverage alongside sensitive theological analysis. The Sophia Institute graciously provided institutional and financial support to make this volume happen. I would like to express gratitude to the President of the Institute, the Very Rev’d. Dr. John Anthony McGuckin (the Nielsen Professor of Early Christian History at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Byzantine Christian Studies at Columbia University) for his help with this volume, to which he also contributed the preface and a chapter. This book is very much indebted to his creative input. I would like to thank Dr. Melonie Schmierer-Lee, Acquisitions Editor at Gorgias Press. Her invaluable suggestions regarding the content and structure of the volume was of an enormous significance, facilitating the search for a proper format so as to match the volume’s agenda with the Press’ facilities. I would also like to cordially thank Markos Foskolos of Athens. His benevolent support of the project and courteous presence made an immense impact on the course of events leading to the completion of the book. I also owe substantial thanks to the retired Head of Reference at the Burke Library in New York, Mr. Seth Kasten for his scholarly assistance helping to manage the extensive resources available through Columbia’s library system and the wider historical and theological reference network. Special thanks are also due to Dr. George Demacopoulos (the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University), Dr. Crina Gschwandtner (the Philosophy Department at Fordham University), Very Rev. Dr. John Behr (St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary), and Carole Wilkins (Union Theological Seminary), who have all offered gracious assistance in the production of this volume.

vii

ABBREVIATIONS ACO Acts AB AEG AH AHConc An Tard AUG Bsl Byzantion BZ CA CCSG CCSL ChHist CSCO DR DOP EEC EEOC EchOr ER GAG GCS HJ IJSCC JEH

Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, trans. R. Price and M. Gaddis Analecta Bollandiana Aegyptus Art History Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum Antiquité Tardive Augustinianum Byzantinoslavica: Revue Internationale des Études Byzantines Revue Internationale des Études Byzantines Byzantinische Zeitschrift Collectio Avellana Corpus Christianorum, Series Graeca Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium Downside Review Dumbarton Oaks Papers Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, ed. E. Ferguson Encyclopedia of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, ed. J.A. McGuckin Échos d’Orient The Ecumenical Review Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca Die Grieschischen Christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte Historisches Jahrbuch International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church Journal of Ecclesiastical History ix

x JOB JRS JTS Mansi

MScRel MEFRA ModTh NPNF OCP PG PL PO RHE RTA RTL SROC SCO SS TM URK VES VC ZAC ZKG ZNW

SEVEN ICONS OF CHRIST Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik The Journal of Roman Studies Journal of Theological Studies Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio, ed. G.D. Mansi Mélanges de Science Religieuse Les Mélanges de l’École française de Rome – Antiquité Modern Theology Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Philip Schaff Orientalia Christiana Periodica Patrologia Graeca Patrologia Latina Patrologia Orientalis Revue d’Histoire Écclesiastique Recherches Théologiques Anciennes et Médiévales Revue Théologique de Louvain Studi e ricerche sull’ Oriente cristiano Studi Classici e Orientale Scriptores Syri Travaux et Mémoires Urkunden zur Geschichte des Arianischen Streites, ed. H.G. Opitz Vestnik PSTGU Vigiliae Christianae Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft

Aristotle, DI. – Aristotle, De Interpretatione. ———. Cat. – Categories. Dexippus, In Cat. – Dexippus, On Aristotle Categories. Evagrius Scholasticus, HE – Evagrius Scholasticus, Historia ecclesiastica ———. Ep. – Epistula Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecc. Theol. – Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical Theology John Gram., Apol. – John the Grammarian, Apologia John Maxentius, Capitula CNP – John Maxentius, Capitula edita contra Nestorianos et

ABBREVIATIONS Pelagianos ad satisfactionem fratrum ———. Prof. brev. – Item eiusdem professio brevissima catholicae fidei. ———. Dial. – Dialogus contra Nestorianos Justinian, CM – Justinian, Contra Monophysitas ———. CF – Confessio fidei Leontius of Byz. CNE. – Leontius of Byzantium, Contra Nestorianos et Eutychianos ———. Epil – Solutiones argumentorum Severii (Epilyseis). ———. Epap – Triginta capita adversus Severum (Epaporemata). ———. CA – Contra Aphthartodocetas. ———. DTN – Deprehensio et Triumphus super Nestorianos. ———. AFA – Adversus Fraudes Apollinaristarum. Leontius of Jer. CM – Leontius of Jerusalem, Contra Monophysitas. ———. CN. – Contra Nestorianos Philop. Arb., Prol. – John Philoponus, Arbiter. Prolog. ______. In Cat. – On Aristotle Categories. Plato, Phd. – Plato, Phaedo. ______. Parm. – Parmenides. Plotinus, Enn. – Enneads. Simplicius, In Cat. – Simplicius, On Aristotle Categories. Theophanes AM – Theophanis Chronographia, Annus Mundi. Pseudo–Zacharias Rhetor, HE – Pseudo–Zacharias Rhetor, Historia Ecclesiastica.

xi

TIMELINE OF EVENTS 306

312 313

314 323

324

325

326 328 330 334

335 336 337 338

340

Constantine acclaimed as Emperor Augustus at York, initiating Roman Civil War. Constantine’s definitive victory in the Western Provinces. Constantine leads Licinius, ruler of the Eastern Provinces, to jointly issue “Edict of Milan” allowing universal religious toleration. Constantine arranges for Western bishops to meet in Council of Arles to resolve Donatist Crisis. Beginning of controversy at Alexandria between Bishop Alexander and the Priest Arius. Constantine defeats Licinius in the East to become sole ruler of the Roman Empire. Constantine writes Letter to Alexandria to order cessation of theological “quibbles.” Convocation of the Council of Antioch to resolve matters of succession there. The Alexandria question is raised. Council to be held in Ancyra to settle Arian question is moved to Nicaea to coincide with imperial vicennial celebrations. Exile of Arius. Death of Alexander. Athanasius elected bishop of Alexandria. Constantine establishes new Roman capital at Constantinople. Arius brought to Constantinople and released from exile. Council called in Caesarea Palestine over Athanasius’ doctrine. Council of Tyre: Arian sympathizers exile Athanasius to Trier. Basil made bishop of Ancyra. Death of Constantine, leaving Constantius, Constantine II, and Constans in control of his empire. Athanasius convenes large council in Alexandria. Eusebius of Nicomedia becomes bishop of Constantinople. Pope Julius calls council in Rome (meets in 341), affirming orthodoxy of Athanasius and Marcellus. Constantine II moves to unseat his brother Constans, ending in his own death. xiii

xiv 343 346 357 358

359 361 362 363

364 371 373 374 378

380

381

383 385 401 410 412 414 416 422

SEVEN ICONS OF CHRIST Western bishops at Serdica circulate doctrinal statement affirming Spirit as “Comforter.” Macrostich Creed, affirming notion of Trinity, produced and presented to Constans. Western Emperor Constans demands Athanasius be allowed to return to Alexandria. In the same year he is again exiled by Emperor Constantius and flees to the Egyptian desert rather than accept exile. Creed of Sirmium, promoting Homoian Arianism, promulgated. Gives rallying point for Nicenes and Homoiousians. Aetius banished to Phrygia by Constantius. Basil convenes council in Ancyra to respond to Sirmian Creed. Joint council of Seleucia and Ariminum called to examine Aetius’s usage of term ousia. Gregory of Nazianzus ordained by father to priesthood. Death of Constantius. Athanasius returns to Alexandria and convenes synod of reconciliation of various parties of Nicene adherents. In same year is exiled once more by Emperor Julian. Death of Julian. Accession of Jovian. Athanasius returns to Alexandria. Death of Jovian. Accession of Valentinian. Basil becomes bishop of Caesarea. Death of Athanasius. Gregory of Nazianzus retires to monastic life, only to be summoned to capital by Council of Antioch in 379. Death of Emperor Valens. End of Constantinian policy of suppressing Nicene homoousion. Arrival of Theodosius as Emperor in Constantinople. Theodosius issues the Edict of Thessalonica declaring Nicene faith. Meletius of Antioch then Gregory of Nazianzus preside over Council in Constantinople which elevates Nicaea 325 to high status. Apollinaris declared a heretic by Theodosius’ pan-heretical council. Theophilus elected bishop of Alexandria. Synod of the Oak. John Chrysostom deposed. Sack of Rome by Alaric. Cyril elected bishop of Alexandria succeeding Theophilus. Pulcheria proclaimed Augusta and assumes regency over Theodosius. Theodosius II declared Augustus, Pulcheria’s regency ends. Celestine elected bishop of Rome.

TIMELINE OF EVENTS 428

429

430 431

432 433

434 437 444 440 442 446 448 449

450

451

457 460 461 474 475

476

478

xv

Clement elected bishop of Rome. Nestorius elected bishop of Constantinople. Beginning of controversy over the title Theotokos. John elected bishop of Antioch. Lay theologian Eusebius of Dorylaeum presses charges against Nestorius. Celestine of Rome appoints Cyril of Alexandria as his representative in doctrinal matters. Theodosius II convenes the Council of Ephesus I. Nestorius deposed and condemned. Alexandria and Antioch break communion. Sixtus elected bishop of Rome. Formula of Reunion. Cyril of Alexandria and John of Antioch restore communion. Proclus elected bishop of Constantinople. Proclus of Constantinople promulgates his Tome. Death of Cyril of Alexandria. Leo I elected bishop of Rome. Domnus elected bishop of Antioch. Flavian elected bishop of Constantinople. Eusebius of Dorylaeum presses charges against Eutyches. Flavian of Constantinople and the Home Synod condemn Eutyches. Pope Leo I’s Tome to Flavian of Constantinople. Maximus II elected bishop of Antioch. Ephesus II (a.k.a. Robber Synod): Dioscorus of Alexandria presides over the condemnation of Flavian of Constantinople and Domnus of Antioch. Eutyches declared orthodox. Anatolius elected bishop of Constantinople. Emperor Marcian and Pulcheria succeed Theodosius II. Death of Nestorius. Council of Chalcedon: Eutyches condemned. Chalcedon provokes anti-Chalcedonian reactions in the East. Death of Emperor Marcian. Leo I succeeds Marcian. Exile of Timothy the Cat of Alexandria. Hilarius elected bishop of Rome. Zeno ascends to throne after the brief reign of Emperor Leo II. Basiliscus usurps Zeno and submits anti-Chalcedonian Encyclical from Timothy the Cat, condemning Chalcedon and Leo the Great’s Tomus. Emperor Zeno regains the throne and revokes all of the usurper Basiliscus’ decrees. The conflict between the anti-Chalcedonian monks and Martyrius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, is resolved by means of the Palestinian Henosis.

xvi 482 484 507

509 512

518

519 518–9 mid-520s 527

532

530s 533

540s

544 548

551 553 565 566 571

575 579 578

SEVEN ICONS OF CHRIST Emperor Zeno issues the Henoticon edict. Beginning of the Acacian schism. Onset of theological debates between Severus and the first neoChalcedonians, Nephalius and John the Grammarian. Severus flees to Constantinople, where in 510 he composes the Typos. With Emperor Anastasius’ support, Severus becomes Bishop of Antioch. Death of Emperor Anastasius. The new emperor, Justin, endorses the Fourth Council and initiates negotiations with Rome. End of the Acacian schism. A group of Scythian monks present their proposal of proper elucidation of Chalcedon as requiring the introduction of the theopaschite formula. John of Tella begins creating an alternative anti-Chalcedonian hierarchy. Justin and Justinian issue the edict De haereticis against antiChalcedonians. Conversations between pro- and anti-Chalcedonians held in Constantinople. Theological activity of the prominent neo-Chalcedonians Leontius of Jerusalem and Leontius of Byzantium. Justinian issues two edicts on faith employing neo-Chalcedonian conceptions. Theodosius of Alexandria and Jacob Baradaeus continue the development of an independent anti-Chalcedonian hierarchy in Syria. Justinian issues his edict against the Three Chapters. Pope Vigilius publishes his Iudicatum, in which he anathematizes the Three Chapters. Justinian issues the edict “On the Orthodox Faith.” Second Council of Constantinople. Death of Justinian. Accession of Justin II. Death of Theodosius, non-Chalcedonian Patriarch of Antioch. Chalcedonian/non-Chalcedonian dialogue at Constantinople. Promulgation of the Programma of Justin. Schism between non-Chalcedonians at Antioch and Alexandria. Synod of Grado confirming the Schism of Aquileia. Death of Jacob Baradaeus. Death of Justin II. Accession of Tiberius Constantine.

TIMELINE OF EVENTS 582

602 610 614 616

625 628

632 633 638 641 642 645 647 649 653 655 662 668 674 679 681 692 698 711

715

717

xvii

Accession of Maurice. John IV “The Faster” becomes Patriarch of Constantinople. Coup against Maurice. Accession of Phocas. Coup against Phocas. Accession of Heraclius. Sergius becomes Patriarch of Constantinople. Persian sack of Jerusalem. Healing of the schism between non-Chalcedonians at Antioch and Alexandria. Condemnation of the doctrine of Tritheism. Honorius becomes Pope of Rome. Byzantine defeat of the Persians. Restoration of the relics of the Holy Cross to Jerusalem. Death of Muhammad. Pact of Union at Alexandria. Promulgation of the Psephos by Sergius. Promulgation of Ecthesis of Heraclius. Fall of Jerusalem and Antioch to the Arabs. Death of Sergius. Pyrrhus becomes Patriarch of Constantinople. Death of Heraclius. Accession of Constans II. Fall of Alexandria to the Arabs. Disputation between Maximus and Pyrrhus. Promulgation of Typos of Faith by Constans. Martin becomes Pope of Rome. Lateran Synod convened. Arrest of Pope Martin and Maximus at Rome. Death of Pope Martin in exile. Death of Maximus the Confessor in exile. Assassination of Constans II. Accession of Constantine IV. Arab siege of Constantinople (until 678). George becomes Patriarch of Constantinople. Conclusion of the Third Council of Constantinople (Sixth Oikoumenical Council). Quinisext Council. Canons rejected by Pope Sergius of Rome. Healing of the Schism of Aquileia. Reign of Justinian II comes to an end. Revival of monotheletism under Emperor Philippicus Bardanes. Denunciation of Philippicus by Patriarch Germanus of Constantinople. Leo III ascends to the throne and lifts the Arab siege of Constantinople.

xviii 720s 730 741

754

775

780 787 800

813

815

815

815–20 816–9 843

SEVEN ICONS OF CHRIST Leo III initiates a policy of domestic reform which likely includes iconoclastic measures. The supposed incident of the removal of the Chalce icon occurs. St. John’s Apologia for images begins to circulate in the Empire. Patriarch Germanus either resigns or is forced to vacate the office. Constantine V ascends to the throne and reengages the Arabs on the Empire’s Eastern frontier. Imperial iconoclasm intensifies. Constantine V convenes the Council of Hieria, to formalize the Empire’s iconoclastic position and to give it theological validity. It is determined that icons are heretical by dividing Christ’s human and divine natures. Leo IV ascends to the throne and the intensity of the iconoclasm diminishes. Constantine VI ascends to the throne, but the Empire is functionally ruled by his iconodule mother, Irene. Empress Irene convenes the Seventh Oikoumenical Council to reestablish image veneration in the Empire. The layman Tarasius is elevated to Patriarch of Constantinople and presides over the proceedings. Charlemagne is crowned by Pope Leo III as “Emperor of the Romans,” effectively disavowing Rome’s political allegiance to Constantinople. Leo V ascends to the throne in Constantinople and a policy of iconoclasm is renewed. Theophanes the Confessor composes his Chronicle, a socio-political history of the Byzantine Empire from 284 to 813. The text fiercely criticizes Emperors Leo III and Constantine V and their iconoclastic policies. Emperor Leo V holds a synod to reestablish iconoclasm and overturn the Seventh Oikoumenical Council. Nicephorus, former Patriarch of Constantinople, composes a collection of documents in opposition to the iconoclastic synod of 815. Theodore the Studite composes his Refutatio, an apologetic text denouncing the iconoclasts in light of the second resurgence of iconoclasm. Iconoclastic sentiments have almost entirely vanished from public discourse and the Seventh Oikoumenical Council of 787 is affirmed as canonical. Image veneration is formally restored.

PREFACE: MOMENTS IN THE SHAPING OF CHRISTIAN TRADITION JOHN A. MCGUCKIN The Mystery of Christ has been a major focus, and a source of contention, for Christian theological discourse since the very beginning. It remains so even to this day. The very notion of “mystery” directs our thoughts to that which lies just beyond the range of discourse (necessitating what the ancients called apophatic modes of expression – those that “turned away from speech”). We thus witness the tension of discursive reasoning attempting to rationalize and conceptualize what is, more properly speaking, ineffable and mysterious. In some cases, theological discourse can even over-actualize itself (giving us the classic phenomenon of reductionism in religious studies) into avenues of argumentation which lead the commentator progressively up the ladder of logical nonsense. In other cases, however, a “coherent paradox” can successfully direct the readers’ attention to the subject so as to lead them to the insight-laden grasp of the ineffable by means of non-discursive reasoning. It is the chief thesis of this book of scholarly essays that the Seven Great Councils represent such integral “discursive icons” of high intellectual and historical moment in Christian thought. Such events, therefore, stand as milestones in the Christian epistemic assent to the mystery of God the Word Incarnate. Moreover, the role of “discursive icons” is crucial, as they provide a critical medium through which the transcendent can be satisfactorily expressed and transmitted horizontally in the public form of paideia or catechesis. The Christology of the Oikoumenical Councils, in the scope of this volume, is understood as a set of iconic representations of the mystery of the Incarnation. This mystery which gradually unfolded itself in theological discourse over several centuries is mirrored in the proceedings of these Councils and the work of their major protagonists. This book is designed, therefore, to present to a wide Christian audience interested in Christian doctrinal development, these seven key iconic moments of intellectual history that formulate the classical profession of Jesus Christ as the Word of God Incarnate. The critical essays in this book, specially commissioned for this project and prepared by advanced scholars of the Early Church, set out an exposition of the proceedings of the Seven Oikoumenical Councils; a review of the chief works of the major protagonists associated with the Councils; the immediate xix

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JOHN A. MCGUCKIN

intellectual aftermath; as well as a considered reflection or commentary on the theological Ekthesis (theological profession) of each Council. The end result is a book whose critical value should make it required reading by specialists, but also will allow it to serve as a solid and scholarly introduction to the subject for both undergraduate and graduate level students – thus filling a present day gap in the literature that is, frankly, scandalous in its proportions. So few books are currently available that can fulfill a serious student’s needs for a close encounter with the primary texts along with higher level critical analysis of the Seven Great Councils. This present volume aims to remedy this situation; finally offering an accessible study that presents good historical coverage alongside sensitive theological judgment.

INTRODUCTION: THE OIKOUMENICAL COUNCILS AS ICONS OF CHRIST SERGEY TROSTYANSKIY The question of how the Christian oikoumene understood Christ in the course of its most fertile and theologically subtle stages of development is one of the most important of all questions for the attention of Church historians and philosophers. The Christology of the Oikoumenical (Oecumenical, Ecumenical or world-wide) Councils tries to answer this pressing question by offering a set of arguments constitutive of the Church’s “science of Christ”, that is an exposition of the true faith in Christ as justified by reasoned argument (contrasting its method of procedure with what it sees as the deceptive mockery of Christian sophists). The necessity for such an oikoumenically endorsed knowledge in the first five centuries of the church’s existence was the result of a long and explicit prior quest for criteria of right judgment that would allow the Christian collective mindset (phronema) to classify any particular Christological hypothesis as either representing a genuine Christology, or as an illegitimate extension of sophistic speculations in the form of heresy (hairesis). In short the oikoumenical principle is set out so as to present a clear demarcation between commonly agreed doctrine and heresy: the church’s classical definition, that is, of Orthodoxy. Moreover, this oikoumenical Christology brings into prominence (in terms of history of ideas) certain valuable and interesting aspects of Christian intellectual tradition which also deserve a careful investigation on their own terms. Let us first define some key terms relevant in this context. What is an “Oikoumenical Council”? It is (1) a gathering of bishops and/or their chargé d’affaires, (2) representative of all or most of Christian oikoumene (world) of the time, (3) convoked by the Emperor, (4) commenced in order to take a stand on certain controversial issues disturbing the ecclesial peace (i.e. issues pertaining to doctrine, canon law, liturgical practices, and so on) so as to resolve the conflicts and make a judgment about the creative input of certain theologians influencing the present understanding of the Christian phronema, eventually to classify them as either orthodox or heterodox. Finally, (5) the judgments, endorsed by the council become the future standards of faith, thus establishing a set of criteria against which all further related matters shall be measured. What is more, this type of council sets up prescriptive rules of conduct for clergy and laity that will have universal effect over large stretches of 1

2

SERGEY TROSTYANSKIY

territory and periods of time. In other words, an “Oikoumenical Council” is an instrument of the Christian collective phronema: the lawgiving and unifying force of the Christian Church considered as a coherent international phenomenon. These are the features that distinguish the “Oikoumenical Council” from other types of councils or synods. For instance, a local council held by a specific church is such as is convoked to represent the debates and dialogues of the bishops of that particular province. It may have some representatives from other churches present, albeit without them being capable to affect the council’s decisions in any significant way. More importantly, a local council’s judgments may not extend the sphere of their application beyond the boundaries of the local church. A local synod cannot, normally speaking, be claimed to represent the universal mind of Christendom. As far as we know the Councils received their oikoumenical status postfactum, even if some of them were intended to be such in the first place and some did not have that intentionality. This peculiarity will illustrate for us another aspect of the signification of “Oikoumenical Council”, namely, the issue of receptionism. A council becomes revealed as oikoumenical if it is subsequently received as such by the Christian oikoumene. As we know, the participants of the Councils (including the emperor, court politicians, imperial family members and the episcopal body) may all have had various competing agendas in operation. Certain doctrinal and political rivalries were always among the factors that may have influenced the outcome of the Councils. This is why there was a need for a certain historical perspective to evaluate the deeds of the Councils as either manifesting a proper expression of the Christian collective mind, or as deviating from it. In other words, the conciliar results had to be measured against Scripture and Tradition, these being their ultimate judges. The normal practice was for succeeding councils to affirm or deny “oikoumenicity” to a particular synod. Thus, the evaluation of “oikoumenicity” is always a balanced decision which comes about with some time lapse. In order to be classified as oikoumenical a council, therefore, has to meet all (or most of) the criteria posited. If one (or more) of the criteria is not satisfied, the council may still be granted the title of oikoumenicity under special circumstances. Normally this meant that a less than universally representative body of bishops meeting produced important doctrinal or canonical pronouncements, which were subsequently seen as worthy of preservation. For instance, although Constantinople I (381) did not have a full oikoumenical representation (the Church of Rome not being part of it), it nevertheless received this appellation since Rome eventually gave its assent to this Council’s Ekthesis produced at a synod in the following year. The rational for indecisiveness on the side of Rome was not only the incompleteness of its representational schema but also the difficulties they had over Canon 3 of the synod of 381 which gave the imperial capital the status of “New Rome” and elevated its bishop above those in Alexandria and Antioch, thereby suggesting its role as an ecclesial arbiter for all Churches. Another way to override the formal criteria so as to give a synod oikoumenical status of was to re-write its legacy, so to say, reinterpreting its meaning in such a way as to bring it into greater alignment with the present theological needs and priorities

INTRODUCTION

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of the Church. An example of this is the exegesis of the pneumatology of the Creed of Constantinople I, which was in reality the triumph of soft-Arian terminology that refused ascription of “substantive” and “same” categories to describe the Holy Spirit, and preferred the earlier Arian designations (of Christ) as merely “co-worshipped and co-glorified” with the Father. St. Gregory Nazianzen exegeted this conciliar pneumatology in the aftermath of the Council (which explicitly refused his call to admit the homoousion of the Spirit when he was president of it) as ‘meaning the same’ as the consubstantiality of the Spirit. It is in this sense, and this sense only, that the Creed of 381 has been universally received in the Church. Another aspect of Constantinople I was associated with certain deviations it made from the classical Nicene Oikonomia of the origination of the Son of God. The Creed of 381 identified the origins of Christ as “from the Spirit and the Virgin”, thus to some extent weakening the strong divine-Incarnational statement of Nicaea. Even so, Chalcedon reaffirmed this Creed as Nicene, giving it the title was now commonly used (though in fact it has displaced the actual Nicene Creed). It is so, however, chiefly because we choose to read it in the light of Gregory’s post conciliar annotations of its meaning. A certain intellectual process of theologians bending the original historical meaning of the Councils was quite common during the fourth–eighth centuries. This concerned not only the meaning of its theology or canons but also the relative significance of the role of its main protagonists. For instance, some scholars (mainly Western) still think of Chalcedon as the triumph of Leo and his Tome, even though Leo’s theology was arguably incompatible with the statement of faith there introduced, that took all its impetus from the theology of Cyril of Alexandria. Another example would be the case of St. Maximus the Confessor. Though Constantinople III is traditionally thought of as Maximian in intentionality (that is if one reads it in the light of his fights for Orthodoxy), one must note that his own key concepts are totally absent from the conciliar proceedings, and his own person is not mentioned. What are we to make of this? In some instances the conciliar mindset is in harmony with the patristic consensus (such as Ephesus 431), in others less so, but even then reconciled with the patristic phronema in due course so as to nuance its ongoing exegesis. Another approach to assessing the reception of the Councils would be to accentuate a certain communal wisdom prevalent there, the work of collective mindsets (committee negotiations) which allows bifurcating statements to be co-present in the final proceedings which therefore balance out more generic and abstract principles with more particularised or regional intellectual horizons. History shows to us another way to elevate a council to oikoumenical status namely through the use of coercive force. For instance, Constantinople II received a full endorsement from the Pope (who originally refused to take part in it) only when he was physically forced to do so by the Emperor being carried bodily from Rome to Constantinople by imperial troops. If a council was retrospectively thought of as making some unlawful decisions it might be re-classified as or conciliabulum or conventiculum (roughly speaking, an unofficial conference), or even as latrocinium (a synod of bandits). For instance, a parallel “council” held by the Antiochenes in 431 in Ephesus was classified as conciliabulum

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and its canonical decrees annulled on the basis that they were posited illegitimately in the first place. A similar situation unfolded eighteen years later at Ephesus II which Jerome mockingly called a latrocinium. Though Ephesus II was intended to be oikoumenical in the first place, and despite the fact that its representation fully satisfied the criteria of oikoumenicity, it was nevertheless re-classified as illegitimate for certain political and doctrinal reasons, even though the bishops of the time gave their assent to its doctrinal statements. The massively implied criticism of Rome that went “unsaid” at Ephesus II along with the rejection of Constantinople’s chief bishop, meant, in the end, that Western acceptance of the decisions of this council as validly expressing the sentiment of the Christian oikoumene was going to be doomed from the outset, and would need radical revision (provided by Chalcedon 451). It should be noted in this context that different parts of Christendom still do not agree on the exact criteria for oikoumenicity, nor on their application. There are thus multiple classification issues surrounding the subject matter. As a result, the number of historical large scale Christian councils classified as oikoumenical varies significantly from one ecclesial region to another. For instance, the nonChalcedonian Churches normally come to rest intellectually at the number three (or four placing the period after Ephesus II). The Church of Rome, on the other hand, does not come to rest until it extends the number of Oikoumenical Councils to twenty one, with Vatican II in the middle of the twentieth century. In this volume the count is made according to the Eastern Orthodox convention: Seven Great Councils having world-wide significance. Seven Oikoumenical Councils has, historically speaking, been the surviving bond of catholicity between the Orthodox, Roman Catholics and Episcopal Churches. This volume will show clearly that in Byzantium, the very possibility of an oikoumenical gathering of the bishops was contingent upon the effectiveness of the imperial administration. During the first three centuries of its history Christianity was not yet institutionalized on any global level. Suffering under regular persecution it could not create an institutional infrastructure capable of sustaining its international needs, especially those associated with the unification of doctrine, ecclesial discipline, liturgical practices, and so on. Even so, local gatherings (synods or councils) could partially fulfill those needs. The tradition of local councils was quite ancient: starting at the time of the apostles if we take Acts as an indication. The Council of Jerusalem (mid-first century) is a primary example of it. But certainly by the early second century, as Tertullian testifies, episcopal synods were a regular part of life in the Eastern provinces of the Church. At this time the local councils were the only regulative instruments for a wider sense of Church polity. The proceedings of the local gatherings, however, were soon shared across the world so as to exchange ideas and to acknowledge some basic elements of Christian phronema operative at the time. The spread of good practice seems to have been the simple engine of development behind this; although the rise to prominence of great Christian centers and Churches such as the super cities of Rome, Alexandria and Antioch also plays a part. Even so, the extent of the utility of local councils was indeed quite restricted; a great

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impediment being the very small range of the publication of their conciliar decrees. These limitations become exceedingly apparent in the third century with the formation of local “schools” or traditions which soon show an increasingly dramatic “parting of the ways” (Alexandrian, Roman and Antiochene traditions becoming more particularised and discrete). Hence, the civil and ecclesial authorities of the fourth century finally came to realize that the absence of oikoumenically institutionalized structures functioning as the unifying force of internationally valid Christian doctrine and discipline increasingly made it impossible to resolve constantly emerging disputes, so as to judge certain opinions as either orthodox (right opinion) or heterodox (dissident opinion). Another option, of course, would have been to embark on the pluralist road, classify divergent accounts of Christ as equally legitimate theologies reflecting cultural peculiarities (idiomata). This road the ancient Church will not pursue readily. It would have meant that differing and sometimes clashing theological stances would have been given the coequal status of competing theologoumena (legitimate “opinions” concerning matters at stake but allegiance to which is not felt necessary to impose on anyone outside of the regional school that endorses that theologoumenon). The main crisis over the issues of theology, however, had broken out at an oikoumenical level (affecting all parts of Christendom) in the fourth century during the dispute over the divinity of Christ and his relation to the Father in the Arian dispute. The necessity of an oikoumenical gathering here was made explicit by the common sense that Arius’ proposals could no longer fit under the heading of a theologoumenon. It is then, no surprise that as soon as Christianity gained recognition as a state-protected religion, its first expression of its new status was the Council of Nicaea I (325). The new imperial patronage allowed for an introduction of Oikoumenical Councils as the highest ecclesial authority for all Christendom. The Seven Oikoumenical Councils were held in the course of the fourth–eighth when this patronal imperial unity was strong enough to assure an oikoumenical representation (before it started crumbling and fracturing). In the course of these centuries all the classic and fundamental aspects of Christology found their proper arrangements. The Councils thus laid down Christological foundations for generations to come. What exactly is the Christology of the Oikoumenical Councils? This question is a difficult one to answer simply. For instance, some Councils did not offer a particularly developed Christology. They aimed, rather, to set certain boundaries to theological affirmations, at times also pointing at diverging theologoumena that risked crossing the threshold of conventional language (those that the conciliar fathers classified as heresy). In other cases, the lack of explicit Christological doctrine was compensated by a following generation of theologians who actually supplied the conciliar definitions with a subtle retrospective theological exegesis. For instance, the Council of Nicaea I clearly did not offer an all embracing speculative account of the subject. Instead it provided clergy and laity with a digest statement of faith thus encapsulating its Christology within a confessional hymn. Even so, this bare creedal affirmation necessitated some sort of further, extensive, speculative exegesis and the following generation of theologians completed this task. Thus, the Christology of

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Nicaea, as we know it today, is the product of a later period and the result of a collective effort of various theologians on behalf of the fathers of the Council (not least indebted to the developmental work of St. Athanasius and the Cappadocian fathers). The same is true of Chalcedon. In this case, even though the sticking points of Chalcedonian Christology were very much amplified by the original ambiguity of its statements (made in politically correct and theologically neutral language so as to satisfy all parties) the result was that very few parties were satisfied in the end. In some other cases, however, very explicit Christological statements were provided by the conciliar fathers. Thus, the question of is there a coherent Christological doctrine in the Oikoumenical Councils is not an easy one to answer because of the complexity of the subject matter. It can be admitted, nevertheless, that each of these Councils is more than acutely aware of the agenda of its predecessors, and so we have a case of a deliberate set of “variations on a theme.” And so, if we approach the issue from a general perspective, we may suggest that such a “conciliar Christology” consists of seven discursive representations of the subject, answering questions related to the unity of the divine being and to issue of the nature/s, person/s, operation/s, will/s in Christ divino-human reality, along with the issues of Christ’s sacramental presence in the world. Our chosen title here, namely the Councils as “icons of Christ” has a particular purpose. It aims first of all to express the truth of Christian faith which consists in the confession that the mystery of Christ cannot be exhausted by processes of discursive reasoning. In other words, discursive reasoning cannot catch the Incarnate Christ in its nets. The arguments themselves can never be paradigms of faith. This is the significant point of discontinuity. But in addition to this our iconic title also implies that discursive reason facilitates the ascent to faith in the Incarnate Christ. Hence, even discourse here has an iconic status. Generally speaking, an icon is that which manifests or reveals its archetype, being bound to it by the relations of sameness and/or difference and likeness and/or unlikeness. The icon is the same and not same as its archetype, it is simultaneously both like and unlike it. It may or may not be of the same ontological status as the archetype. A discursive icon is that which can successfully manifest its paradigm by means of the discourse. And the paradigm here is simply faith in Christ. This is what is meant in our opening statement that the discursive icons of Christ are constitutive of the Christian “science of Christ”. Discursive icons are not given to us as the subject of contemplation in any sensible form (such as a visual icon). They rather represent a series of arguments normally running from premises to conclusions through the media of common middle terms. In a sense, they are not the ultimate end of theology. Even so, they facilitate the all-important ascent to the non-discursive level in which the divine can be seeing holistically, that is grasped immediately (for some sort of immediate acquaintance is at work in this episteme). This non-discursive level does not have discursive logoi as the medium during the actual process of cognition. It is, in one sense, unmediated. On the other hand, discursive logoi do facilitate the seer’s ascent on the ladder of knowledge thus representing a necessary condition for the intellective ascent to seeing. The same can be said, of course, in relation to “mystical union.” Speculative

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stretches of reasoning apparently have little in common with the processes of mystical unification. Even so, no Christian mystic can ever legitimately jump over the steps in that noetic ladder so as to be united with the source of their being without ever knowing (or professing) doctrine. We know that some of the early fathers did not think of classical philosophical thought as being akin to the allegorically leveraged and “categorically imprecise” language of the Bible due to the nature of its (divine) subject matter. Thus to capture this truly marvelous subject (reflected in confessional statements of the Bible) in the net of logoi was regarded as a deeply unreasonable exercise. Tertullian’s exclamation about what relevance Athens could have for those who belonged to Jerusalem, deserves some recognition in this context. Perhaps Hellenic rational logos compared to Judaic image-laden wisdom, at first appeared as irreconcilable modes of expression to many Church fathers. Even more to the point, the imposition of names, invention of terms, arguments, syllogistic figures, and so on, was thought of by the Hellenes as basic methods to facilitate an exploration of the deepest nature of our sublunar realm. At best these elements of rational thought could claim utility for the seven planetary spheres and those of moving and fixed stars. On the other hand, Christian theology from the outset extended its domain beyond these levels. Thus, its immediate subject was God and “intelligible natures” rather than sensible particulars. Meanwhile, the organon of logicians was thought of as having affinity with sensible particulars. What are the possible ramifications of this opinion for theology? An extreme position would have been to overthrow rational discourse (in the form of demonstrative knowledge) all at once (as not being akin to the subject matter). It would have meant a faith without recourse to rational argument. A more moderate attitude, however, would side with the core Biblical conceptions themselves (such as its doctrines of grace, election, sin, law, etc), especially those referring to the sphere of ethics and legal studies rather than nature. And so we witness in earliest Christian circles, an interest in the reasoned exegesis of its sacred literature. Theology is born out of this kind of exegetical imperative. It is of no surprise, also, that some of the earlier fathers thought of ancient philosophical categories, especially ousia (one of the key notions of Aristotle’s logic and philosophy) as simply inapplicable to the intelligible and divine beings. Even Athanasius of Alexandria at first expressed his doubts about the utility of categorical analysis for Christian Theologia (in the form of using the category of ousia and its derivatives – homoousion, homoiousion – to make sense of the ontological relation between the Father and the Son). The rationale for his doubt was the sphere of application of categorical analysis being so limited in former praxis to the realm of sensible particulars. Nevertheless, from the third century onwards, the sphere of the application of the categories had been increasingly extended across all realms, and had decisively entered the realm of divine being in late third century Greek theology. It was, thus, not unexpected that by the mid-fourth century categorical analysis would have permeated the organon of the Christian theologians too. In general, the link between ancient classical thought and Christian theology was very much intensified

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at this period (the very time when the Oikoumenical Councils first appear). The former biblically inspired issues of covenant, justification, law, grace, reconciliation, and so on, were replaced by the problemata of being, nature, energy, subsistence, and similar cognates. It is not so much that new ideas replace those of the older more biblical era, but that the biblical theology is exegeted using new categories of enquiry. Thus, the abundance of discursive tools for theology led the Christian mind towards its most subtle and oikoumenically significant results. In the end, this is what conciliar Christology amounts to. This volume will set out to elucidate the great seven iconic moments of Christian intellectual history. The present group of historians and theologians who join their intellectual efforts to come up with this volume represent various Christian traditions: Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Reformed. Their theological and historical perspectives vary accordingly. Even so, the general leitmotif of the work can be classified as Neo-Chalcedonian since all contributors belong to the (Eastern and Western) Chalcedonian branches of Christianity. This volume will, therefore, offer to the reader various interpretational schemata and hermeneutical stands along with diverging viewpoints on the role of certain oikoumenically significant theologians and ecclesiastical leaders. Hence, different theologoumena are made explicit in the various chapters. The book may thus serve as grounds for ongoing scholarly discussion in academic seminars where it can function as a common source-reading. We hope the volume may serve well in that capacity and reintroduce the neglected area of conciliar theological systematics to a new generation.

CHAPTER 1: THE DIVINE CHRIST OF THE COUNCIL OF NICAEA: 325 JOHN A. MCGUCKIN 1.1. A BRIEF PRE-HISTORY TO THE COUNCIL OF NICAEA In retrospect the Church has always looked back at the Council of Nicaea 325 as a watershed event: a clear and radiant moment that encapsulated its faith in God and Christ’s salvific work as the divine Logos incarnate. In all subsequent councils, especially those that were again retrospectively labelled the Oikoumenical Councils (notably Constantinople 1 381, Ephesus 431 and Chalcedon 451 – though it soon became the custom of all the successive ones to affirm the centrality of Nicaea in the same way) it was the conciliar practice to state that whatever work the conciliar fathers were doing, was not meant to go beyond Nicaea in any way, only to clarify it. Nicaea and its Creed were held up as the ultimate standard of the international Christian confession. For the Catholic and Orthodox Churches this is still the case. In its immediate aftermath, however, Nicaea did not seem at all that secure: either to its defenders or its enemies. A whole generation after the Council fought over its worth: as to whether it was all that clear to begin with, or whether a key set of terms in it (notably the idea of the Son’s “substantial generation” from the Father) were not better jettisoned. Of course, this battle over words and terms was more than something simply semantic, the quibbles of over-educated theologians. What was at stake was whether the Son Logos could be called God in a straightforward way, or whether the ascription of Godhead had to be fenced around with profound qualifications – whether, that is, divinity was largely an honorific ascription in reference to the Son-Logos because, after all, God the Father was the one and only God that Christians really believed in, as monotheists. Nicaea was, then, above all else a defense of the vision of the divine Christ-Logos: the Logos as God before the ages began, ontologically one with the Father; but also that same divine Logos seen to be personally assuming flesh so as to become the single divine subject of the Incarnate life of Christ. It can be noted, for example that after all the great metaphysical statements about the Son-Logos that the Creed makes (his eternal generation and union with the Father before time) the grammar of ascription in the Creed goes on without a pause to speak of the same Son-Logos’ descent to earth, virgin birth, sufferings, 9

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death and resurrection. There are not two personal subjects here: the eternal Logos, and the historical Jesus of Nazareth: only one. The Eternal Son personally assumes human life to effect the salvation of the world. This is the essence of Nicene faith: a twofold emphatic statement of the Son’s divine eternity and ontological relation with the Father on the one hand; and his selfsame identity as personal subject of the Incarnate Lord, on the other. It was the first axiom of that double asseveration that commanded the minds of the protagonists at Nicaea in 325. The arguments were fierce and demanded complete attention for a long time at the Council and for many years afterwards. The second part of the axiom (the personal identity of the Logos-Incarnate) was sidelined, in many senses, only to reemerge as the focus of the arguments about Nicaea that took place in the generation after it, leading up, in the end, to the reaffirmation of the Nicene Creed at the Council of Constantinople in 381. In that very conflicted period, the Nicene Creed was one of the most hotly contested statements Christians have ever produced. Its enemies, the various Arian factions who denied the generation of the Son “from the very being” of the Father, leveraged their arguments on the second part of the axiom: protesting that a divine Logos could not possibly adopt a human suffering lifestyle, since God (the very term itself) meant the infinite transcendent: and such historical and material fallibility was offensive to faith. The Nicene party countered that God is not a definition (infinite and undefiled transcendence) but a person; and that the Son-Logos had assumed historical limitation and suffering not in his being but in his person (hypostasis) because the God of absolute transcendence was the god of the pagan philosophers; not the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob who, in his loving humility and mercy willingly stooped down (synkatabasis) to humanity to share its suffering in the cause of healing it. The Nicenes were risking a lot in projecting no less than a new metaphysical starting point in considering how to speak about God (the humility of God). The antiNicenes felt safer staying with the terms of the older Greek metaphysics where natures, whether divine or human or animal, were felt to be definably delimited, closed, predictable. It is one of the great ironies of history that the anti-Nicenes accused their Nicene opponents of introducing a non-biblical metaphysical term (homoousion, consubstantial) into the debate illegitimately, when in fact it was they who above all others were suffocating the great freedom and daring of the scriptures by forcing it into Greek philosophical strictures they had learned from Plato and Aristotle. Nowhere in the archaic Greek mind could it possibly be conceived that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself,” as the Apostle said, 1 and certainly not by the method he tells us: “making him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 The Nicene Fathers are important, and 1 2

2 Cor. 5.19. 2 Cor. 5.21.

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remain paradigmatic, primarily because they forced Greek metaphysics to the service of biblical faith in order to preserve the understanding of that great mystery of God’s merciful salvation given in the suffering and glory of Jesus Christ. If the Cross scandalized the Greek metaphysician, it was the metaphysics that had to be justified in accordance with the scriptures, not the other way round. It took a great amount of personal and theological courage to set out on this path: virtues abundantly witnessed in the Nicene Fathers of the fourth century. They did not come to this point as from a vacuum, of course. The third century had long been setting up the argument that overtook them, like a large wave, at the beginning of the fourth. It will be necessary to curtail that description here for the sake of oikonomia, but to sketch it in a few words one can note the work of Tertullian, Hippolytus and Origen as being crucial to the prelude to the Nicene debate. These great theologians had brought Logos theology into the wider international consciousness of the Church. From being something that had scandalized several traditional communities that heard it at the start of the second century, with frightened thoughts that the Church maybe had erected two gods instead of one, if it confessed the divinity of the Son, many churches now understood the rich value of the Johannine Gospel, as well as its implied adaptation of Sophia (Wisdom) theology from the Old Testament. 3 The Gospel of John had been increasingly included into the canon of scripture the churches were internationally using. Logos theology moved from the fringes to the central arena. And there the great battle that preceded Nicaea took place. It has been called, in the text books, the struggle with Monarchianism. Monarchians of various stripes had difficulties seeing how ascription of divinity to the Logos (except as a vague honorific) could be reconciled with Monotheism. Their concept of God was a monolithic unicity. The vision of the Logos school was that unity was not necessarily unicity. A complex idea of unity was equally possible, one that understood God as a communion of act flowing from a communion of being: the Trinity as adumbrated in the evangelical records. Logos theologians had taught God’s being was communicated to the Logos as the essential outreach of the divine to the world, so as to bring it salvific life, and that the Logos served as God (the Father’s) medium of connectivity with the created world, which came into being through the Logos’ own expression of the Father’s power in making the world, which is why he wished to stand as its re-Maker in the act of salvation. They thus negotiated the first Christian expressions, in metaphysics, of how the Logos was one Sirach ch. 24, for example, which speaks of God’s Sophia (Torah) looking to see among which nation to “pitch its tent” and come down to earth, is profoundly rewritten so as to become the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel: this time identifying Sophia (the Hebraic Hokhma) with the Greek concept of Logos (the Platonic school’s mystical vision of the creative energy of God directed towards the present world order). 3

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with God the Father, and yet distinct. They elevated the terms for this as: oneness of essence (ousia) and threeness of person or subsistence (hypostasis). Now although this had set the terms for most of the uptake of the later Churches (that is Logos theology had become by the end of the third century a dominant way of exegeting the scriptures) by no means had all the dots and crosses been put into place in the semantic details. Origen had tried very hard to do this and actually gave to the Church of the fourth and fifth centuries most of the technical terms of theological confession. But his legacy had been clouded also by the manner in which he had adopted other elements in his schema (such as the temporal pre-existence of souls) and a growing reaction against Origen’s exegetical approach to the bible (highly symbolical) had also set in. But equally many monarchian attempts to explain their position had fallen down hopelessly. 4 The modalist idea that Father was just another word for Son: describing the “appearance” of the Father in history, while they were “really” one and the same thing, was universally rejected as a nonsensical way to speak of the Gospel. So too Paul of Samosata’s famous trial in the third century had censured ideas that Jesus was just another, albeit exceptionally good, human servant of God whom God raised up to special stature of holiness by endowing him with massive gifts of Holy Spirit at his baptism. His views were precise and seeking to protect monotheistic views with an “honorable” view of Jesus as “God’s Chosen One”: but Christian sentiment widely reacted against it, and with some antagonism. It did not speak to the sense of the scriptures they had prayed over; 5 nor did it resonate with the ethos of theology that their Eucharistic liturgies projected. These monarchian failures were well known but monarchian sentiment was by no means dead in the Churches. It lay uneasily alongside Logos theology. Many Monarchians just held an unresolved “feeling” that God the Father was really God, properly speaking, and God the Son was somehow a smaller sort of God, subservient to the Father: perhaps his agent and servant in the creation and redemption of the cosmos. How a “lesser god” could be God at all: or how this view of a declining trinity could really be said to protect Monotheism – was something that was more or less just swept under the carpet. It “seemed” to preserve the niceties of Monotheism and that was enough. Arguably it was a very mythological view of God, which allowed (as in the pagan polytheistic conceptions of their day) the sense of superior and inferior divinities. The Nicene crisis was a late efflorescence of this old uneasiness between Logos

Marcellus of Ancyra, who had begun as a great Nicene ally for Athanasius, ended up by embarrassing him and becoming a liability to the Nicene cause because of his deeply monarchian tendencies. His doctrine that God the Father would, in the end times, simply absorb the Son and Spirit back into himself and so return to his Monadic state, was explicitly refuted at the Council of Constantinople with the Christological phrase “Whose Kingdom shall have no end.” 5 It certainly seemed banal compared to the Christological hymns of Colossians and Ephesians, not to say the Fourth Gospel’s teaching. 4

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and Monarchian schools. But the theologians of the fourth century had much greater philosophical rigor than clergy of the generation before; and in the Arian crisis we see very much to the fore the extended presence of highly learned bishops and presbyter-theologians. Arius of Alexandria happened to be the one who triggered the last great battle between monarchian and Logos conceptions of God. Alexander the bishop of Alexandria was a Logos theologian of some stature. He had read and appreciated Origen’s work, and propagated it in a moderated, corrected form. Arius was a presbyter in his city, priest in charge of the dockland area of Baucalis. The latter had studied philosophy and theology with Lucian at Antioch, and was not so indebted to Origen, having been part of the Syrian school that felt the symbolism of that exegetical approach was de trop. He was much more inclined to read the bible on a flatter, even a more fundamentalistic level. If Proverbs 8.22 said (speaking of Wisdom-Sophia-Logos) “The Lord created me as the beginning of his work,” then that showed Logos was a creature, not of the Godhead proper. Arius was also not too enamored of his bishop. The Episcopal succession had been contested at Alexandria as one of the aftermaths of the bloody persecutions there, and Arius had been impressed by the claims of Melitius of Lycopolis and his minority party which had claimed the “rightful succession” to Alexandria on the grounds that the previous episcopate had compromised with persecutors (by going into hiding and not embracing martyrdom). Nevertheless, he had been reconciled with Alexander and was held in high esteem by his own local congregants. Alexander, as learned Archbishop of the city, had the custom then of calling theological symposia together where he would propose a topic and the assembly would debate it. All went well until the topic chosen was of such a fundamental nature that those who would deny the proposition found they had no common ground left with those who supported it. This is exactly what happened at the last symposium Alexander organized in 323. He took up some unresolved passages from Origen’s De Principiis and argued that the Logos was one with God the Father because he proceeded before all time from the very being of the Father. This meant that he was eternal (because his generation or birth preceded the making of time) and also that he was substantially the same as the Father since he emanated out of the Father’s own (singular) being (ousia). Because the Logos came from the very being of God, all that he possessed as characteristics of his own being, were, therefore, the attributes of the Father. What could be said about the Father – that he was eternal, omnipotent, all glorious, and so on – could thus be said about the Son. The trinitarian implications of this had not yet been filled out completely, 6 but it was enough to say And would not be so until the end of the fourth century: but the logical premise was stated accurately enough here that the Son and Spirit would have no other being than the Father’s being: not their own separate beings (which would make for tritheism) only the being of the single Father which was personally (hypostatically) gifted to them by the Father, 6

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that the Son was God from God: truly God from the true God: not an inferior deity. Arius intervened in the debate to make the points that many Monarchians had wished to keep alive, over and against the unstoppable rise of the Logos school, and also to represent his own school’s distaste for Origenian speculations of this deep metaphysical type that Alexander seemed to like. He may also have been trying to show up his bishop in public. He came at the issue of divine being from fundamentally a logician’s viewpoint. God the Word, it is said in Proverbs is made as the beginning of the Father’s works, and so his birth was a specific event, in a sequence even if not, arguably, within time. It followed then that there was a moment when the Logos did not exist: that is before God made him. In short, “There was when he was not.” Secondly, the Logos cannot come out of the substance of God because this sounded as if the Logos was being emitted as a kind of materialistic Godsubstance, an emission that the gnostics and Paul of Samosata had spoken of in earlier times, whose views had been had been condemned in earlier synods. Thirdly, if these two things are as logic demands, then the Logos cannot be God in the same way as the Father. This is demonstrated, Arius argued, in the following manner. God is a definable term that means: “that which is unoriginate” (agenetos). The Son Logos is obviously originated by God the Father. This means he cannot be unoriginated and thus cannot be God. What is left to say? The Church clearly calls him God, but surely only as a mark of the very high honor that the Father gave him in his exaltation. He was lifted up before time to be the Father’s great angelic agent in the making of the world. And he was lifted up, Arius says, within time because he was once more the Father’s great servant (as a kind of incarnated angelic being) in the work of redemption on earth. He can be called divine, as an honorific, but the Logos is not God in the “proper” sense of that term. The Christian God is one, and alone. When Arius sat down one can only imagine the look on Alexander’s face. The bishop ceased to be the philosophic head of a symposium conference at that point and reverted to his role as supervisory bishop. He drew his own conclusions: Arius, a senior presbyter of his own Church did not believe that the Son of God was divine, nor that he was eternal. How could he continue to celebrate the Eucharist in the church and preach before the people when he did not hold to the basic standards of belief in the divine Christ, and all his divine language, when referenced to Jesus, was so obviously only meant “as a matter of mere words”? Alexander suspended Arius from priestly service: started the process of deposition against him by calling a synod of the bishops of his region and a hundred of them agreed with him: censuring the “blasphemies of Arius.” But several other clergy, and two bishops in adjoining with them acting as two distinct instantiations (hypostases) of that single being. This is why God is one, in three instantiations in the single, yet triadic Godhead. The Cappadocian Fathers at the Council of 381 would clarify this classical trinitarianism of the Church.

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Libya, stated their agreement with Arius’ theology. They appealed to Arius’ friend, the imperial chaplain at Nicomedia. Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia sympathized with them, and thought that Alexander was pressing his Origenism too far, and that his deposition of Arius was an unlawful act. So the scene was set for a much larger airing of the issue, for if a presbyter or bishop at this period was canonically deposed, he had the right to appeal for another hearing at a different gathering of bishops. Eusebius of Nicomedia felt his own views were under attack from the large Egyptian Church, and he was determined to defend them. The argument was so polarizing that news of it flew around the Christian world, from East to West. It came to the ears of the Emperor Constantine who at that same moment was finalizing his victory over the Emperor Licinius, and asserting his monarchical rule over both provinces of the Empire. His strategic plan for occupying the East, as the Defender of Christian rights, depended on securing the wholehearted collaboration of the Christian bishops there. He intended to advance them to the position of local magistrates, and allow them to uphold the rights of the poor (rightly reckoning that this would vastly improve his reputation as noble emperor). These internal squabbles seemed to him to be scandalous for a church that had just emerged from the oppressions of its last tyrant. Constantine asked his advisor bishop Ossius of Cordoba, what the fight was all about, and when he was told replied that it was all a silly quibble over words, an opinion he put in a strongly worded letter to Alexandria in late 324, 7 telling Alexander and Arius to patch up their friendship and stop agitating. Ossius, however, was not so sure. Neither was the Pope at Rome. Like Alexander they thought a crack had opened up in the very fabric of Christian faith and the matter could not be swept away as easily as that. Constantine sent Ossius on a fact finding mission to the Egyptian capital, and when he returned to report on matters it was agreed that a great council, preferably of Western and Eastern bishops, should gather to adjudicate the dispute. At that moment, however, Philogonius the bishop of Antioch died, and Ossius took the opportunity to go there and preside over the new election (of bishop Eustathius). At the gathering of bishops that came for the event, he posed to them the “Alexandrian question” and received from them a strong indication of opinion in favor of Alexander. Armed with this intelligence he indicated both to the Roman papacy (whom Constantine had long regarded as a high arbitrator of Christian traditions) and to the imperial court that a larger meeting of bishops should be

“When I found that an intolerable spirit of mad folly had overcome the whole of Africa, through the influence of those who with heedless frivolity had presumed to divide the religion of the people into diverse sects, I was anxious to stop the course of this disorder.” Constantine, Letter to Alexander and Arius. 2. There is some speculation that this might have been written to Ossius’ Council of Antioch (in 325). See: S.G. Hall, “Some Constantinian Documents in the Vita Constantini,” in S Lieu and D Montserrat, edd. Constantine: History and Historiography (New York: Routledge, 1998), 86–104. 7

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called together very soon specifically to adjudicate the Alexander-Arius debate. Ossius worked hard behind the scenes to prepare for this coming “great synod,” and had the Emperor’s commission to ensure that all factions were set to rest in its aftermath. Concordia was to be the order of the day.

1.2. EARLY ATTEMPTS AT RESOLUTION Reports of the Council of Antioch indicate that the great council decided on by the Emperor, was at first intended to be held at Ancyra, but was moved to Nicaea in its later planning stages. This was probably because Constantine had decided to hold some of his imperial vicennial 8 celebrations in his private residence there. The city was also better placed for access to the Eastern capital at Nicomedia, while also offering greater ease of travel to any Western bishops who might attend. 9 Eusebius of Caesarea (who was there) records that there were more than 250 bishops present for Nicaea. 10 Eustathius of Antioch put the number at 270, 11 while the later historian Socrates Scholasticus counts attendance as more than 300. 12 Hilary of Poitiers, Evagrius, and Jerome 13 fixed the number at 318, along with Athanasius of Alexandria 14 and this is what has become the “traditional” enumeration of the bishops present. But the latter tally had a symbolical association with the figure of the Cross, 15 and a typological scriptural symbolism (for it was pointed to, symbolically, as the number of the faithful servants of Abraham); and it is probably this typology that accounted for the higher number’s common reception. 16 E. Honigmann, studying the Greek manuscripts related to the Council, concluded simply that the great majority of them concurred only on an attendance figure of “about 300.” 17 This is to count only the bishops, of course, and since each one was allowed Anniversary of his 20 years occupying the Imperial throne. V. Grumel, “Le siege de Rome et le Concile de Nicée: convocation, et présidence.” EchOr 24 (1925): 411–423. 10 Eusebius. Vita Constantini 3.8. 11 Cited in Theodoret, Church History 1.7. 12 Socrates, Church History 1.8. 13 Evagrius Scholasticus, Church History 3.31; Hilary, Contra Constantium; Jerome, Chronicon. 14 Ad Afros Epistola Synodica 2. 15 Alpha-numerically 318 was TIH – the Tau signifying the Cross, and the IH being the first two letters of Jesus’ name. 16 J. Rivière. “‘Trois cent dix-huit’. Un case de symbolisme arithmétique chez S. Ambroise.” RTAM 6 (1934): 361–367; M Aubineau. “Les 318 serviteurs d’Abraham (Gen. 14.14) et le nombre des Pères au concile de Nicée 325.” RHE 61 (1966): 5–43. 17 E. Honigmann, “La liste originale des Pères de Nicée.” Byzantion 14 (1939): 71; idem. “The original lists of the members of the Council of Nicaea, the Robber Synod and the Council of Chalcedon.” Byzantion 16 (1942–1943): 20–28. 8 9

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attendant deacons and presbyters (up to five per person) the real figure of the attending clergy and lay sophists would likely have been over a thousand: the biggest assembly ever held in Christianity to that time. The bishops world-wide had been summoned to Nicaea, and had been given the privilege of using the cursus publicus, state-provided transport, to get there. Most of the attendees came from the East. Very few Western bishops attended. The Latin-speaking provinces sent at least five representatives: Marcus of Calabria from Italia, Caecilian of Carthage from Africa, Ossius of Córdoba from Hispania, Nicasius of Dijon from Gaul, and Domnus of Stridon from the province of the Danube; to which we can add the two priests representing Pope Sylvester. Despite some older text books which claim it, there is no evidence to suggest the presence of any British bishops, though Athanasius records their assent to the decrees of Nicaea when they were finally reported to them. To have journeyed from Britain to Nicaea in that era would have been a six month transit, and have incurred an immense expense. The Westerners who were present probably regarded Nicaea as simply intended to be an affirmation of the Synod of Antioch from the year earlier.

1.3. EVENTS OF THE GREAT COUNCIL The bishops had been in residence in Nicaea for some time in May 325, prior to the emperor’s arrival, and must have held several preliminary soundings among themselves. From multiple stories that circulated afterwards, there seems to have been several arguments that are not reflected in the “official” account of the meeting which classifies it as a dignified and eirenic assembly. This may well be accounted for by the fact that different factions of bishops (and there were certainly widely opposed groups present) were more ready to express their views robustly before the Emperor arrived, than they were in formal sessions with him listening and pressing for concord. Concord was his constant theme, and he was not averse to demand it at the formal sessions with veiled threats. The later Christian historian Socrates refers obliquely and somewhat disapprovingly to these preliminary debates, where philosophers and sophists spoke in public, as well as clergy, in a way that suggests they formed an important part of the preliminary setting out of the main causes of theological controversy for the attendant bishops, who must have used these symposial occasions as a way of catching up with the homework. 18 Athanasius of AlexSocrates Scholasticus, Church History 1.8. “Now a short time previous to the general assembling of the bishops, the disputants engaged in preparatory logical contests before the multitudes; and when many were attracted by the interest of their discourse, one of the laity, a confessor, who was a man of unsophisticated understanding, reproved these logicians, telling them that Christ and his apostles did not teach us dialectics, art, nor vain subtleties, but simple-mindedness, which is preserved by faith and good works. As he said this, all present admired the speaker and assented to the justice of his remarks; and the disputants them18

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andria also notes, in his De Decretis, how the debates at Nicaea were convoluted and long drawn out. The Council opened on May 20th 325, according to Socrates, 19 with Constantine in attendance. The emperor had made a ceremonial procession there from the capital at Nicomedia where, the day before, he had been celebrating with great pomp his military conquests over Licinius. 20 On the day he arrived, the bishops were ranged down each side of the large reception hall of the palace. They stood in silence as the emperor entered, leaving his guards outside the door as a sign of respectful trust to the assembled clergy. Eusebius recalls the frisson of the moment years later: “[Constantine] himself processed through the midst of the assembly, like some heavenly messenger of God, clothed in raiment which glittered as it were with rays of light, reflecting the glowing radiance of a purple robe, and adorned with the brilliant splendor of gold and precious stones.” 21 He attended the session of the Council with three members of the imperial household and some senior advisors. A golden chair was placed in the middle of the hall and another seat to its side. Constantine sat on one (after a show of courtesy to the bishops about seating), and the bishop who would preside over the first session, took the chair next to him. Theodoret says that after Constantine had processed into the hall, it was Eustathius of Antioch who first presented a speech of welcome. 22 Who the clerical presiders were over the various conciliar sessions, which lasted into late July, is not known; although Ossius of Cordoba who held a commission from the emperor, and the two Roman presbyters Vitus and Vincentius who represented Pope Sylvester, are listed first in the extant list of signatories. The confusion over the details results because no surviving secretarial record has been preserved – a problem which also affects the record of the great Council of 381, and which later Emperors would ensure did not happen in the increasingly controverted great synods of the fifth century, for which they would provide numerous trained stenogselves, after hearing his plain statement of the truth, exercised a greater degree of moderation.” 19 Socrates, Church History 1.13. “This Synod was convened (as we have discovered from the notation of the date prefixed to the record of the Synod) in the consulate of Paulinus and Julian, on the 20th day of May, and in the 636th year from the reign of Alexander the Macedonian.” Recent scholarship makes an adjustment: E. Schwartz, Nachrichten von der königlichen. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. (Philosophische Historische Klasse, 1904), 395–398. 20 Defeated in the Easternprovinces in September 324, leaving Constantine as supreme monarch over all the Roman Empire, and ending a state of more or less 18 years of continuing Civil War over the imperial succession. 21 Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.10. 22 Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History 6. Some modern works have attributed this to Eusebius of Nicomedia, but there is no evidence for it.

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raphers. The only documents which we know came from the actual meeting of 325 itself are: the Creed, the Synodal Letter which the Nicene conciliarists sent out afterwards (with an accompanying letter from the emperor), and the twenty canons or rules for pastoral practice. Tanner 23 suggests that it is most likely that either Alexander of Alexandria exercised the presidency, or Eustathius of Antioch. Many think that it would have been Eustathius or Ossius taking the lead, although the decisions in favor of Alexander were to be emphatically underscored throughout. Ossius had assumed the presidency at the Council of Antioch in 324, because of the knowledge that he held the Emperor’s commission. It would only be later that “seniority of episcopal see” would become a standard way of resolving the issue of presidency in synods that were trans-provincial. Later councils would establish much more detailed protocols of precedence for such meetings but such protocols had not been determined as yet. Eustathius’ role after Nicaea was remembered such that he was one of the chief “defenders of the Nicene cause” in the years when Constantine’s heir, Constantius, turned against the Council of 325 and tried to supplant it with a version of Arianism. Ossius was known to be a close advisor and agent for the Emperor in ecclesiastical affairs, and was undoubtedly closely involved in the day to day management of the Council, as well as in its intellectual “governance” with an agenda to make the Eastern bishops harmonize as closely as possible with Western statements of faith (which already had heavily leaned towards supporting Alexander). This was probably why the term homoousion was eventually inserted into the Creed (line 14; see below). It caused some consternation among many Eastern bishops, but had been a traditional part of Latin Christological confession since the time of Tertullian, two generations before, who had set out the terms of Latin Christological confession of Christ as one person in two natures, and referred to the divine nature being in possession of unius substantiae deitatis (the single nature of the Godhead). The Greek term was seen by the Latins as merely a synonym of their understanding of consubstantialis – meaning that the Son of God in his divinity was divine as the Father is – that is “truly divine” (cf. Creed line 12) with a single numerical Godhead. The subtleties of the other meanings attributable to the homoousion in its Greek world largely passed the Westerners by. Greek philosopher bishops, and those who had historical memories, however, were alarmed by it – and not necessarily because they entertained Arian sympathies. The word was associated with Paul of Samosata, the monarchian modalist, and to many in the early fourth century it denoted a sense of confusion of personhood between Father and Son (the old Patripassianism Tertullian had fought against) or else a highly materialist way of speaking about the spiritual transcendence of God. If God was beyond all matter N.P. Tanner, ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. Vol. 1 (London: Sheed & Ward Limited, 1990), 2. 23

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and substances of this world, what good was it to use “substance” categories to qualify his being? The latter argument was especially one that moved the more intellectual Greek bishops of the Origenian school. Chief among them was Eusebius who presided over Origen’s school and library at Caesarea. At the first session, after Constantine received the panegyric of the bishops, he himself gave an address, in Latin (the official legal language of the Empire). In it 24 he urged the bishops assembled to have concord as their chief aim. Among his first business was to amass the numerous petitions the various Episcopal factions had sent him; demanding redress, or punishment of their foes, by a private imperial adjudication. These letters of denunciation Constantine ripped and burned in a brazier in the sight of everyone, indicating that the present assembly would serve as the judicial review of all cases: and that he was prejudiced against no one; nor would he settle the case of anyone without reference to the common consensus of all, as expressed in this present imperial comitia. In acting this way, showing remarkable respect to the Episcopal assembly, he was presenting himself in the role of the ideal Emperor, first citizen of the Romans, who took advice humbly from the Senate. Several ancient writers also mention how, as the recent conqueror of Licinius the persecutor, Constantine took deliberate care at Nicaea to single out for special honor those bishops who bore the physical marks of the persecution. Paul of NeoCaesarea who had been branded with a hot iron on both hands, rendering them paralyzed, and Paphnutius of Egypt who had also been facially disfigured, feature in several accounts. Once the main business affairs opened, the leading figures of the Council would be varied: Alexander of Alexandria, Ossius of Cordoba, Eusebius of Nicomedia, 25 Eusebius of Caesarea, 26 Eustathius of Antioch, Macarius of Jerusalem, and others. The details of the sessions that took place before the Council settled on its credal statement are no longer known to us except in the broadest outlines. After the Emperor’s arrival he attended several sessions personally and offered suggestions, but allowed a free debate. Since Alexander had already condemned Arius at the Council of Alexandria, and since this sentence had been provisionally confirmed by Ossius and the Synod of Antioch in 324, the next item of business was the presenting of his case for appeal, and this was done by Arius’ sympathizers among the Episcopal assembly: chief among them bishop Eusebius (N). A statement of faith was read out (meant to represent a broad consensus of those who found Alexander’s theology of the eternity of the Logos indefensible) and presented as not merely a belief statement of Arius himself, but an umbrella to preserve the wider movement. Already by this stage the bishops of this party ((Eusebius (N), Theognis of Text in: Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History 6; Eusebius of Caesarea, Life of Constantine 12. Henceforward Eusebius (N). 26 Henceforward Eusebius (C). 24 25

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Nicaea, Maris of Chalcedon, and the Libyans Theonas and Secundus)), were not willing to allow a presbyter to be their figurehead: and this is why Eusebius (N) was trying to take the position of a protagonist rather than serve as a mere defense counsel for Arius. If Eusebius (N) had thought this confession might win the approval of the assembly he was soon disabused of that belief. The confession was apparently rejected out of hand for not teaching the divine eternity of the Son. Probably at this juncture the learned Eusebius (C) came forward. His own provisional censure at the previous year’s Council of Antioch had to be dispensed with; and to rehabilitate himself in the best light he offered the creed of his Church 27 both as an example of his own faith, and to serve as a “traditional” confession for the conciliar Fathers. Eusebius (C) tells us that Constantine was pleased with his credal Orthodoxy. While we need to take such statements with a pinch of salt, since he was trying hard to rehabilitate himself with a Church at home who thought his behavior at Nicaea was particularly weak and vacillatory, there is nevertheless from this moment onwards a steady rise of Eusebius (C) to imperial favor. He had perhaps already been known to Constantine before his victory over Licinius, for he was not merely bishop of the metropolitan city of all Palestine and Arabia, but was the president of the Theological School at Caesarea which Origen had founded, and which now counted as the greatest Christian university in the world, with the best of all theological libraries and a tradition of Christian scholarship that was world renowned. The censuring of such a figure at the Council of Antioch in 324 had sent shock waves outwards. Constantine took a great liking to this bishop after Nicaea, as he did with several of the most learned Christian clerics of his acquaintance, and Eusebius (C) became one of his chief panegyrists and theological advisors. The fortunes of Ossius, by comparison, decline from this time onwards. He never seems to have been relied on much by Constantine again. So, in all probability, the rehabilitation of Eusebius (C) at Nicaea was a given. He was careful to distance himself from the machinations of his namesake, Eusebius (N), who was much more in sympathy with the thought of Arius, and indeed became the real political leader of the later Arianizing party of the East 28 in the generaAthanasius and Theodoret preserved it for the record. HG. Opitz. Athanasius Werke. Vol. 3, De Gruyter. Berlin. 1937. [Urkunde 27]; H.R. Percival, The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church: their Canons and Dogmatic Decrees, in NPNF, Vol. 14 (Oxford: James Parker and Co, 1900), 3; J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds (London: Longman, Green and Co, 1950), 220f. The Christological clauses read: “And in the Lord Jesus Christ, for he is the Word of God, God of God, Light of Light, Life of Life, his Only Son, the First born of all creatures, begotten of the Father before all time, by whom also everything was created, who became flesh for our redemption…” 28 The Son Logos for this school was (vaguely) “like the Father.” They have thus been called the Homoians. They abhorred the notion of consubstantiality or even “similar substantiality” or “substantially like in all things” which became the alternative common schools in 27

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tion immediately following Nicaea. But Eusebius (C) was far from being an ally of the Alexandrian party, and for this reason was never regarded by them as a friend outside the camp. Athanasius of Alexandria in the generation after Nicaea regards him with marked hostility. Eusebius (C) held to a strongly Origenistic theology, quite subordinationist in terms of Christology, and held the term homoousion in some disdain as an inappropriately “materializing” term for spiritual concepts. He also found the strongly monist, and deeply anti-Origenistic theology of Eustathius of Antioch, to be quite repulsive, and he served to bring about Eustathius’ fall from office in 327. 29 Since the Alexandrians regarded Eustathius as a champion of Nicaea, the attribution of anti-Nicene sentiments to Eusebius (C) was only the more confirmed by this action. It is probable that his creed, although it was accepted as “orthodox enough” to secure his rehabilitation, was not actually received by the Council as its working text. And yet, the idea may have been given by Eusebius (C) to use a traditional baptismal creed as a retrospective affirmation of faith at this important juncture. But the creed that was finally chosen was most likely that supplied by Macarius of Jerusalem on behalf of the mother Church of Christendom. The Council’s refusal to endorse Arius’ teachings or to rehabilitate him, along with the strong rejection of the credal outline of Eusebius (N) meant that most knew that a simple liturgical creed would not be enough to answer the specific points of query Arius had raised. What these were, would be addressed in quite specific additional clauses inserted into the creed, and to make doubly sure, a series of appendices lifting up and denouncing the key propositions of Arius’ teaching on the time-bounded generation of the Logos as the first within creation. These points will be more directly addressed in the commentary on the Nicene Creed which follows below. The critical Nicene “moment,” theologically speaking, was when the central Christological statements of the antique baptismal creed were buttressed by a series of repetitions of emphasis (God of God, light of light, true God of true God) and on top of these was added the philosophical definer “consubstantial” (homoousion). The Alexandrian position that the Logos was born eternally, and not within time, and that he was of the essence of the Father (ek tes ousias tou patros) and not a product (ktisma) of his will (that is a creature) were thus emphatically endorsed. the later time of dissidence after Nicaea. This Arianizing party also detested the radical Arians (Aetios and Eunomios) who called themselves Heterousians (the Son Logos was of a totally difference substance from the Father). 29 Eusebius (C) presided over a Council at Antioch in 327 (see, H. Chadwick, “The Fall of Eustathius of Antioch.” JTS 49 (1948): 27–35. Hanson dates this Council to 330: R.P.C. Hanson, “The Fate of Eustathius of Antioch.” ZKG 95. 2 (1984): 171–179; and Ibid., The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988), 208–210. The Council deposed Eustathius the city’s incumbent bishop on grounds of insulting Empress Helena and improprieties – five other bishpps were deposed at the same time.

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Two high ranking bishops Eusebius (N) and Theognis of Nicaea were far from happy that the homoousion had been inserted into an official Creed of the Church. These liturgical hymns sung at baptisms to represent the faith into which one was being initiated, had hitherto been pastiches of biblical phrases and represented the theoretical principle that Christian dogma was an extension of biblical exegesis. But homoousion was, apparently, not a scriptural term. This complaint against Nicaea would be raised many more times throughout the later fourth century. They gave their assent to the majority decision but expressed their unhappiness by refusing to endorse the Anathemata issued against Arius, on the grounds that they were inaccurate representations of his teaching. They issued a statement to that effect. 30 Although Socrates the historian 31 tells his readers that they were also exiled at the same time as Arius and bishops Theonas of Marmarica, and Secundus of Ptolemaïs, along with some presbyters, this is undoubtedly not the case. As bishops associated with the court who expressed intellectual reservations not to the substance of the common agreement, the emperor insisted that they should be allowed some space of time to adjust their view (basically a let-out for them). The bishops from the poorer classes, along the Libyan coast, he ordered to be sent, along with Arius, to exile in Illyricum. Nevertheless he kept his eye on things afterwards and when, a few months after Nicaea had concluded, Eusebius (N) and Theognis were caught in a conspiracy to assist some dissident clergy of Alexander’s in Egypt, Constantine also ordered them into exile and instructed their Churches to elect new bishops to replace them. 32 He was determined not to be scorned over his adopted religious policy of concord and broad agreement, even though, as one remembers from his initial letter to Alexander of Alexandria, he probably still thought the entire substance of the dispute was a quibbling over niceties, for which he had little patience. As long as he lived he would stand by the Nicene protocol, but he noticeably spent more and more time after 328, taking religious advisement from its theological opponents. When the major theological matters had been settled in the issuing of a creed, other items of business could now be attended. These are reflected in important canons or pastoral rules the Council adopted. These were matters which were just as high on the agenda of the Emperor’s advisors as the Alexandrian-Arian dispute. In wishing to establish Christianity as a major cohesion force in the Eastern Empire, Constantine knew that it was necessary to bring order and common discipline back into territories and local Christian communities which had been savagely disrupted by years of state persecutions and, more recently, oppressed and harried in the ravages of the Civil war Constantine was conducting against Licinius. The Council, therefore, produced twenty canons, or universal regulations that were to be binding Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History 1.21. Socrates, Ecclesiastical History 1.8. 32 Philostorgius, Ecclesiastical History 1.10. 30 31

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on all the Churches 33 and whose overall aim was to bring a firm and common discipline back into a very stressed sense of Christian inter-provincial cooperation. The chief matters of concern witnessed in the canons are the setting out of standards for the clergy; 34 regulating large zones of jurisdiction for the great Metropolitan city sees 35 (which Constantine thought would attract the most educated and preeminent bishops, and which could thereby serve as courts of appeal for lesser Churches) and controlling the movements of wandering bishops, presbyters and deacons (who had caused much theological dissension in the previous years). 36 A few of the canons deal with the issue of how local bishops might to deal with the reconciliation of apostates, schismatics, and heretics. 37 A notable nod in deference to Alexandria was the agreement that this Church should compute and announce the date for the universal observance of Pascha each year. It was to be set for the Sunday immediately after the first full moon following the Spring Equinox (though to be displaced even later if it ever threatened to coincide with the Jewish Passover). On July 25, 325 AD Constantine called for a rich and festive banquet to close the Council; one that would celebrate his Vicennalia (his twenty year anniversary of elevation as Emperor). Constantine had already gifted several bishoprics with funds and buildings prior to Nicaea, but now he showed more generosity, bestowing funds on many bishops in the great hall. Constantine went around the hall greeting bishops, kissing many on the very wounds that had been caused by Roman persecution. The bewilderment of many simple bishops, having passed from a long era of state persecutions and violent hostility, to being so rewarded and honoured in an imperial state party, must have been palpable. Although the Council closed on July 25th, 38 its last official business was for its secretariat to send a formal letter to the Alexandrian Church announcing its verdict – both Arius and Alexander, of course, being clergy of that church, and under scrutiny, it was felt necessary to announce the synodical endorsement of Alexander’s judgments. The Synodical Letter is the first and oldest summa of what were seen to be the chief achievements of the synod. It is a key historical document and reads: See J.A. McGuckin, The Ascent of Law (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2012), 193–203. 34 Canons 1–3, 9–10, 17–18, 20. See N.P. Tanner, ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 1–16. 35 Canons 4–7. Ibid., 7–9. 36 Canons 15–16. 37 Canons 8,11–14, 19. 38 Some scholars have thought that a second session took place two years after what was only an adjournment: but this has not commanded wide acceptance. See: C Luibheid. “The Alleged Second Session of the Council of Nicaea.” JEH 34 (1983): 165–174; R Lorenz. “Das Problem der Nachsynode von Nicaia (327).” ZKG 90 (1979): 22–40. 33

THE COUNCIL OF NICAEA: 325 1. To the great Church of the Alexandrians, 39 which is holy by the grace of God, and to our beloved brothers throughout Egypt, Libya, and the Pentapolis. We bishops assembled at Nicaea, constituting the great and holy Council, send greetings in the Lord. 2. Since, by the grace of God, a great and holy Council has been convened at Nicaea, after our most pious sovereign Constantine summoned us out of various cities and provinces for that purpose, we at the sacred Council thought it most necessary write you a letter, in order that you may know what subjects were considered and examined, and what was eventually decided on and decreed. In the first place, the impiety and guilt of Arius and his adherents was examined in the presence of our most pious emperor Constantine. 3. We unanimously decided that his impious opinion should be anathematized, with all the blasphemous expressions he has uttered, namely that “the Son of God came to be out of nothing,” that “there was a time when he was not,” and even that “the Son of God, because he possessed free will, was capable either both evil and good.” They also call him a creature (ktisma) and a work (poiēma). 4. The holy Council has anathematized all these ideas, barely able to endure it as we listened to such impious opinions (or rather manias) and such blasphemous words. You must either have been informed of the verdict of our proceedings against him already, or you will soon learn. We will omit relating our actions here, for we would not trample on a man who has already received the punishment which his crime deserved. 5. Yet his deadly error has proved so contagious that it has dragged Theonas of Marmarica, and Secundus of Ptolemaïs, into destruction; for they have suffered the same condemnation as Arius. But after the grace of God delivered us from those detestable heresies, with all their impiety and blasphemy, and from those persons who had dared to cause such conflict and division among a people previously at peace, the rash actions of Melitius and those who had been ordained by him still remained to be dealt with. 40 We now state to you, beloved brothers, what resolution the Council came to on this point. 6. The Council was moved with compassion towards Melitius, although strictly speaking he was wholly undeserving of favor, and decreed that he remain in office in his own city but exercise no authority either to ordain or nominate for ordination; and that he appear in no other district or city on this pretense, retaining no more than the normal level of authority. 7. The Council also decided that those who had been appointed by him, after having been confirmed by a more legitimate ordination, should be admitted to communion on these conditions: that they should continue to hold their rank and ministry, but regard themselves as inferior in every respect to all those who have been ordained and established in each place and Church by our most-honored fellow-minister, Alexander. Thus they will have no authority to 39 40

Text preserved by Socrates in Church History 1.9. Dissident rival bishop in Alexandria.

25

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JOHN A. MCGUCKIN propose or nominate whom they please, or to do anything at all without the agreement of some bishop of the catholic Church who is one of Alexander’s subordinates. 8. On the other hand, those who by the grace of God and your prayers have not been found in schism, but have continued blameless in the catholic Church, shall have authority to nominate and ordain those who are worthy of the sacred office, and to act in all things according to ecclesiastical law and custom. 9. When it happens that those holding offices in the Church die, then these who have been recently admitted will be advanced to the office of the deceased, provided that they are found worthy, that they are duly elected, and that the bishop of Alexandria ratifies the decision. 10. This right is allowed for all the others indeed, but to Melitius personally we by no means grant the same permission, on account of his former disorderly conduct, and because of the rashness and fickleness of his character. We want no authority or jurisdiction to be given to him, for he is a man liable again to create similar disturbances. 11. These are the things which specifically affect Egypt, and the most holy Church of the Alexandrians. If any other canon or ordinance has been established, our Lord and most-honored fellow-minister and brother Alexander, who is present with us, will explain the more specific details when he returns to you, since he has participated in all we have done, and has in fact been the protagonist. 12. We also have good news for you that we have harmonized our opinions on the subject of the most holy feast of Pascha, which has been happily settled through your prayers. All the brothers in the east who have previously kept this festival when the Jews did, have agreed with the Romans, with us, and with all of you who have kept Pascha with us from the beginning, to follow the same custom as we. 13. So rejoice in these results and in the general agreement and peace, as well as in the cleansing of all heresy. Receive our fellow-minister and your bishop Alexander with great honor and abundant love, because he has greatly delighted us by his presence. Even at his advanced age, he has undergone extraordinary efforts in order that peace might be re-established among you. Pray on behalf of us all, that the things we decided were appropriate may be maintained without violation through Almighty God, and our Lord Jesus Christ, together with the Holy Spirit, to whom be glory to the ages. Amen.

As a security against continuing agitation, the Emperor was also asked to compose a similar Letter, making it clear that he too put his weight behind the synod. He agreed to do so, rather optimistically casting Arius as the solitary dissenter, cast out by a unanimity of bishops. The historian Socrates has preserved it: 41 Imperial Letter to the Alexandrian Church Concerning Nicaea 41

Socrates, Church History 1.9.17.

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Constantine Augustus, to the catholic Church of the Alexandrians. (1) Greetings, my beloved brothers! We have received a complete blessing from Divine Providence, namely, we have been relieved from all error and been united in a common confession of one and the same faith. (2) The devil will no longer have any power against us, since all the schemes he, in his hatred, had devised for our destruction, have been entirely overthrown from their foundations. At the command of God, the splendor of truth has dissolved all the poisons so deadly to unity: dissensions, schisms, commotions, and the like. We all now worship the One by name, and continue to believe that he is the One God. (3) In order to accomplish all of this, at God’s summoning I assembled a large number of bishops at the city of Nicaea, and I joined them in investigating the truth, though I am only one of you, who rejoices exceedingly in being your fellow-servant. (4) All points which seemed ambiguous or could possibly lead to dissension have been discussed and accurately examined. May the Divine Majesty forgive the unfortunately huge number of the blasphemies which some were shamelessly uttering against the mighty Savior, our life and hope, as they declared and confessed things contrary to the divinely inspired Scriptures. (5) More than three hundred bishops, remarkable for their moderation and intellectual keenness, were unanimous in their confirmation of one and the same faith, a faith which has arisen in agreement with the truths of the Law of God. Arius alone had been misled by the devil, and was found to be the only one set on promoting this unholy mischief, first among you, and afterwards among others as well. (6) Let us therefore embrace that teaching which the Almighty has presented to us. Let us return to our beloved brothers from whom we have been separated by an irreverent servant of the devil. Let us eagerly come together as one common body with those who are our fellow members. (7) This is fitting for such discernment, faith and holiness as yours, that you return to divine favor, since it has been proved that this error comes from a man who is an enemy of the truth. (8) This ruling, made by the collective judgment of three hundred bishops, cannot be other than the doctrine of God, especially where the Holy Spirit has illuminated the divine will by placing it upon the minds of so many dignified persons. (9) Therefore let no one sit on the fence or delay, but let everyone quickly return to the unquestionable path of duty, so that when I arrive among you (which will be as soon as possible), I may together with you return due thanks to God, who closely watches all things, for having revealed the pure faith and for restoring to you that love for which you have prayed. May God protect you, beloved brothers.

Eusebius (N) would not take long to bounce back into imperial favor. In the winter of 327, almost out of the blue, Arius received an official court letter, mildly rebuking him for not appearing at the palace to seek a filial pardon of his offences and be restored to his honoured position as presbyter at Alexandria. One has to see the hand of Eusebius (N) behind this, and his ability to appeal to the support of the Princess Constantia, Constantine’s sister. Eusebius had been her chaplain as long ago as when she was still wife to the then Eastern emperor Licinius. Her patronage

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sheltered Eusebius and advanced him on many occasions. When Constantine soon afterwards created his new capital city at Constantinople, on the site of Byzantium, it was Eusebius (N) whom he chose to be its first Episcopal incumbent. Eusebius (N) made it a point of honor to make that city a centre of resistance to the Nicene faith for the rest of his life, and always would try to persuade Constantine that it had been a mistake to insist on the homoousion. It is probably Eusebius’ successful lobbying of the Emperor that also caused Ossius to fall into disfavor. When the surprised Arius did finally present himself at court he offered a confession of faith that ostentatiously agreed with the Emperor’s theology that the Son had been eternally begotten of the Father. He carefully avoided any mention whatsoever of homoousion, and Constantine thought it was quite satisfactory enough to order his exoneration and restoration to his old duties in Alexandria. He called a synod at Nicomedia which (unsurprisingly) agreed to Arius’ ecclesiastical exoneration. Eusebius (N) at this time petitioned the court immediately on the heels of Arius’ success, and asked for similar pardon and clemency for himself and Theognis. They admitted that they had time to reconsider their position and what the homoousion doctrine meant, and they would not now disturb the peace in any way. Eusebius nowhere says he agrees with the homoousion. The pardon was also readily given to them. From that time onwards Eusebius (N) is the real activist and energy behind the anti-Nicene theologians. A chief pole of his policy was to move towards alternative credal statements to hold authority in the Eastern Church, to displace that of Nicaea. To bring this policy change about quickly, he set out to remove from office by means of charges and forced depositions, the leading Nicene defenders. His politicking was the cause of much trouble to Athanasius, including his trial at the Synod of Tyre in 335 and his subsequent exile to Trier. Eusebius also orchestrated the depositions of Eustathius of Antioch (on a specious charge of adultery) and of Marcellus of Ancyra. This imperial intervention, of course, meant the Alexandrian bishop had to accept Arius back, and Constantine wrote to Alexander to demand this. Alexander deliberately delayed responding so as to avoid having to do this. But in April of 328 he died, when Athanasius his nominated successor was away from the city. The elections to replace him had already started with a keen interest in the process from the clergy of bishop Melitius who had been restored (at least nominally) at Nicaea. His clergy were looking to a real reconciliation, perhaps by putting forward a candidate of their own to be the successor to Alexander. To scotch this plan the presbyters of Alexander called Athanasius back to Alexandria in a great hurry and arranged for his consecration by a party of bishops, in such a way that many clergy (certainly the Melitian faction) felt that it had been a slur to them. For this reason Athanasius, as a bishop, always had difficulties on his home front in governing Alexandria, as well as possessing many enemies outside Egypt who were set on breaking his passionate commitment to Nicaea. This problem of the readmittance of Arius to communion fell soon enough on bishop Athanasius’ shoulders, who was increasingly aware that Constantine’s mind on religious policy had shifted. Arius therefore became for him a powerful symbol

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and his refusal to readmit him became a way of saying that he would never allow any taint of Arianism back into Alexandria. Eusebius (N) took this as a deliberate insult to himself, and was determined at any cost to break Athanasius’ ecclesiastical career. Athanasius knew that from this rehabilitation of 328 onwards, the homoousion was starting to be swept under the carpet, and the actuality of the Nicene Creed was being blurred and exegeted away, and so he was determined not to demonstrate any political or theological compromise at all. He even moves his theological position from the once preferred confession that the Son-Logos is “of the selfsame substance of the Father” (tautotes tes ousias) to the insistence that the Nicene homoousion, and nothing less, is alone what is needed to defend against Arianism’s resurgence. He out and out refused to accept Arius back under any circumstances whatsoever – thus beginning a long series of personal clashes with the imperial household, and concomitant exiles.

1.4. THE THEOLOGICAL IMPORT OF NICAEA The theological doctrine (Ekthesis) of the Council Fathers of 325 is a short but rich confession based upon the consensus provided by the traditional baptismal creed of Jerusalem. 42 Creeds, or liturgical statements of faith in God (for in origin creeds are not so much statements of beliefs about God, but of prayerful trust in God) begin as acts of confession even in New Testament times. Their embryonic form can be seen in the earliest Christian communities 43 and on into the age of the Apostolic Fathers. 44 The liturgy of baptism, and the rituals attendant on the requirement of the catechumens to utter a statement of faith, formed the common core which gave creeds their overall familial resemblance despite many local differences. The Regula Fidei of the early Church, its triadic confession of faith in the Father as Maker, the Son as Redeemer, and the Spirit as Sanctifier and Inspirer, account for the original shape of all creeds; to which in later times other elements of confession were added; with controversy often providing the stimulus for extrapolation. So it is that the Christological clauses were first elaborated into several clauses naming the specifics of the manner of the Son’s redemptive work (the Virgin birth, the actuality of the suffering and death, the eternity of the Son’s reign); and the clauses describing the Spirit were elaborated later, along with other items added on to that initial triad (the nature of the Church, the nature of the General resurrection). The triadic confession remains: “Our faith is in One God known in the salvific act in creation and history of Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” but the shape of the confession decidedly alters from the first to the fourth centuries, with a clear and extenAs Cyril of Jerusalem tells his readers in his Catecheses. See for example: Rom. 1.3–4; 1 Cor. 8.6; 1 Tim. 2.5–6; 1 Pet. 3. 18–21. 44 Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Trallians 9; Polycarp of Smyrna, Epistle to the Philippi42 43

ans 2.

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sive elaboration of the Christological clausulae. When matters of deep theology, deeply controverted, had brought the Council of bishops together in 325, nothing was more understandable than that they should try to resolve profound divisions about basic matters of what “should have been” a common confession of traditional faith, by resorting to the forms of that most traditional of all hymnal theology: a catechumen’s prayer, albeit one closely tailored to the situation. To ask bishops of Churches whose doctrine had given grounds for anxiety, to restate their creed, had been a custom that had been employed in significant third century synods, notably the dialogue with the Arabian bishop Heracleides, conducted by Origen acting as peritus for the Palestinian bishops in the 240’s, and the synodical letter sent by the provincial bishops to Paul of Samosata at Antioch in 286. So, well before the fourth century the stage was set for requiring protagonists in theological controversies to submit to interrogation about their creed, and to affirm one in public. Creeds would also be a primary matter of forensic enquiry at Nicaea in 325, because the theologian Eusebius of Caesarea had refused to subscribe to the symbol the synod of Antioch 324 had proposed. This was not because Eusebius had disagreed with the general synodical “intent” (which had been to anathematize those who declared the Son of God to be a creature) rather that he was less than impressed by the theological formularies it had used to get there. 45 In any case Eusebius, in a cause célèbre had been censured at Antioch, and church custom required him to make a successful appeal and defense at another synod before he could resume his duties as bishop in Caesarea. For such reasons it was an inevitable thing that the Synod at Nicaea would, sooner or later, require a particular creed to be signed. The origin of what came to be the Nicene, creed was for a long time been thought to have been brought to the Council as part of Eusebius’ statement of self justification of his orthodoxy, and accordingly regarded as the customary creed of his local Church. Since the works of H. Lietzmann 46 and JND Kelly 47 in the latter part of the twentieth century, however, it has been argued more persuasively that the creed was more likely that of the Jerusalem Church as provided by its bishop Macarius. The text of the Creedal confession has been witnessed (with some slight variants) by numerous ancient sources; 48 and it is given below in the form that it was quoted and recited as a base-line of belief at the Council of Ephesus in 431. As for its historical main witnesses: Eusebius of Caesarea earlier quotes it in his account of

Text in H.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 209–210; and with critical annotations by L.Abramowski, “Die Synode von Antiochen 324/325 und ihr Symbol.” ZKG 86 (1975): 356–366. See also: DL Holland, “Die Synode von Antiochien (324/325) und ihr Bedeutung fur Eusebius von Casarea und das Konzil von Nizaa.” ZKG 81 (1970): 163–181. 46 H. Lietzmann, “Symbolstudien XIII” ZNW 24 (1925): 193–202. 47 J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 211–230. 48 The list is fully discussed by G.L. Dossetti, Il Simbolo di Nicea e di Constantinopoli. Edizione critica (Roma: Herder, 1967). 45

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the Council given to his Caesarean Church, a testimony repeated in Athanasius’ treatise De Synodis; 49 Athanasius repeats the words of the Creed again in his Letter to Jovianus; 50 Basil the Great cites it in his Letter 125; 51 Marcellus of Ancyra quotes it in his Apologia, which itself is cited in Epiphanius of Salamis’ Panarion; 52 the majority session of the Ephesian Fathers cites it in the first and sixth sessions of the synod of 431; 53 and the minority group of Antiochene bishops at Ephesus also cite it; 54 as do the conciliar fathers at the second session of Chalcedon in 451. 55 St. Cyril of Alexandria quotes it twice between 429 and 430, first in his Letter to the Monks, 56 and then in his Third Letter to Nestorius. 57 It is clear enough then, that we have the detailed words accurately presented. The Creed of 325, however, is clearly diverted from the normal progress of such credal hymns (reciting the story of creation and salvation) by specific additions in two places. The first concerns lines 9–14; which stress repetitively the “substantive” or “true and authentic,” that is divine and eternal “coming forth” of the Son from the Father: indeed from the very being of the Father. This is a traditional, liturgical and exegetical 58 way of maintaining Alexander’s original insistence on the eternity of the Sonship of the Logos of God. The second divergence from standard norms concerns lines 25–30 which verge into a kind of appendix, explicitly repeating five central propositions of Arius and the larger “Arianizing” movement, in order to anathematize them both singly and collectively.

1.5. THE TEXT OF THE NICENE CREED 1.

The synod at Nicaea set forth this creed. 59

2.

This is the Ekthesis of the Synod at Nicaea. 60

H.G. Opitz, Athanasius Werke. 3.1. Urkunden zur Geschichte des Arianischen Streites (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1934–1935), no. 22. 50 GCS. Vol. 44 (1954): 215. 51 Saint Basile, Lettres, ed. Y. Courtonne, Vol. 2. (Paris, 1961), 32f. 52 Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion. 72. 9. 2. ed. K. Holl. GCS 37 (1933): 266. 53 E Schwartz, ACO. 1.1.2.12; and Ibid., 1.1.7.89. 54 Ibid., 1.1.3.39. 55 Ibid., II. 1. 2. 79. 56 Ibid., 1.1.1.12. 57 Ibid., 1.1.1.35. 58 For it is my hope that the following commentary on the text will bring out just how deeply the credal terms of the Christology are made up from a cento of New Testamental citations and extrapolations. 59 The Creed is known as the Ekthesis (formal statement or definition) or Symbolon (credal statement of faith) of Nicaea. This line is the proemium given to it by the Acts of the Council of Ephesus 431. 49

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3.

We believe in (pistevomen) One God,

4.

The Father, All-Powerful Master (Pantokrator), 61

5.

The Maker (poieten) of all things that are visible and invisible;

6.

And in One Lord Jesus Christ,

7.

The Only-Begotten (Monogenes) Son of God (huion tou theou),

8.

Begotten of the Father (gennethenta ek tou Patros),

9

That is, of the being (ek tes ousias) of the Father,

10

God from God,

11. Light from Light, 12. True God from True God, 13. Begotten (gennethenta) not made (poiethenta), 14. The same in being (homoousios) as the Father; 15. And through him (di’hou) all things came to be (egeneto), 16. Things in Heaven, and things on Earth; 17. Who for us humans (anthropous) and for the sake of our salvation (soterian), 18. Descended (katelthonta), 19. And was incarnate (sarkothenta), 20. Being made man (enanthropesanta), 21. He suffered (pathonta), and on the third day he rose up (anastanta), 22. And he ascended (anelthonta) into the heavens, 23. And he shall come again to judge (krinai) both the living and the dead; 24. And [we believe] in the Holy Spirit; 25. Whosoever shall say that “there was a time when he was not” (en pote ote ouk en); 26. And that “before he was begotten he was not” (prin gennethenta ouk en); This is the proemium given to it by the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon. 451. Lord of all power: viz. in charge of what happens on this earth – not just a random victim of other forces of chaos and evil. A re-statement of the NT doctrine of the Kingdom. cf. Eph. 1.11. 60 61

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27. And that “he was made of things that once were not” (ex ouk onton egeneto); 28. Or that “he is of a different hypostasis or substance: (heteras hupostaseos e ousias); 29. Saying that the Son of God is subject to change or alteration (trepton e alloioton); 30. Such people – the Catholic (katholike) and Apostolic (apostolike) Church anathematises.

1.7. A BRIEF COMMENTARY ON THE CREED OF NICAEA 325 Lines 1 and 2: The Ekthesis of the Synod: are reminders of the historical ways we have received this critically important text, as introduced to us through the medium of the formal synodical record, that is from Ephesus (431), more than a century later, and from Chalcedon (451) which took place 128 years after Nicaea. Both of the latter Councils received Nicaea’s creed in the manner in which it was fought for, interpreted, and archivally insisted on by Athanasius of Alexandria and his successors, as well as other significant writers and episcopal chanceries, such as those of the Cappadocian Fathers and the Papacy in the West. Alexandria, Rome, and Constantinople (the latter after 381 only) formed the stable tripod on which the reception of Nicaea, as a cardinal moment and statement of Christian faith, was established for future ages. In assuming this status in the Eastern Church, after the final passing away of the Constantinian dynasty (with the death of Valens in 379) Nicenism became in actuality, not simply in the aspiration of some outstanding Christian fathers, the catholic faith of East and West, and was propagated as such by unanimous imperial legal policies in both parts of the Empire. The sustenance of the Nicene faith has since been the defining mark of what is meant, dogmatically at least, by “catholicity” in the Christian churches. The long years of flux and controversy that seemed to have been operative throughout so much of the fourth century, were over. Nicaea in this sense was a gateway of proportions similar to a monumental Roman triumphal archway; and this is the approach to it that dominated theological writing for centuries to come. Twentieth century historical writing has approached matters, perhaps, with less of an interest in defending Nicenism, and more of a detached set of questions as to what actually happened in the process of the Nicene settlement moving towards its late fourth century triumph. For our purposes in this present chapter the reception of Nicaea from 325 to 381 is not a major focus. The chief concern is to attempt to clarify a sense of what was going on at the actual Council itself, before we are able, then, to make sense of a distinction between what Nicaea might have represented, and what the several versions of later Nicenism (and anti-Nicenism) said it stood for. As we have seen earlier, when discussing our sources for the Council, this question is made difficult to analyze by the way in which no record of events was kept at the time, and how in subsequent years the “memory” of what went on became polarized among conflicting factions. There can be no doubt, however, that the creed which we have as attributed to Nicaea 325, is substantively the document that was issued. It turns around the affirmation of the homoousion, allied with a concerted ef-

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fort, semantically, to refute all attempts to subordinate the status of the Logos of God (by diminishment of eternity, power, or nature) and render the attribution of deity to him as, in some sense merely an honorific. Both things: what we might call the detailed syntax (use of key terms such as co-eternity and consubstantiality) and the wider argument about the process of the eternal relations of God (as Trinity) were at the core of the Nicene movement. It was never a matter, simply put, of schools claiming a few core slogans to identify each other: although this technique often served in the debates in order to round up and hem in perceived opponents. It was always a rhetorical strategy of Late Antique philosophical argument, to pin allegedly defective definitions to one’s intellectual enemies, so as to extrapolate from that point and show a widening ripple effect of error and implied stupidity. It was in this spirit of reductive apologetics that the anti-Nicenes tried to make the wider Nicene movement choke on the way homoousion carried with it “material” associations that were unfitting to the concept of spiritual divinity; and the same is true as to the way the Nicene parties regularly tried to pin down their (often widely disparate) opponents as “Arians,” or Anhomoians, or Homoiousians or such like. The rhetoric on both sides was often so vivid that many generations of later scholars have tended to take it as a straightforward map of the intellectual debate (read it over-literally, as it were) and as a result have thought mistakenly that there were more distinct and formed “schools of attachment” around such concepts, than was probably the case in the actualities of the fourth century episcopate. The Council of Constantinople in 381, explicitly tried to give a “Nicene” settlement to the fourth century theological crisis, and set forth its own Ekthesis (a year later, in the synod held in the capital in 382) so as to give some formal sense of conclusion to that much troubled synod of 381. When it did so, its creed was promulgated as “the Nicene Creed”; that is being the same creed in all significant respects. The confession of 382, therefore, has become in common parlance the “Creed of Nicaea” and it has come through all the catholic and apostolic Churches and is recited to this day in the Eucharistic liturgies. It is the confession which is commonly called the Nicene Creed – but in fact is significantly different from the original Nicene Creed we are studying here in many of its details (albeit the same in the tonality and import of its Christology). So, to some extent the Niceno-Constantinopolitan version of the Creed (which is its more accurate designation) supplanted the real Nicene version in the cause of exegeting it for a different generation. The fathers of Constantinople, in short, regarded their creed as “substantially the same as” Nicaea: but did not want to draw attention to the variations. But in propagating their form of the creed they returned it to a more suitable liturgical confessional form, more euphonic in character, and lacking the sharp precision of some of the condemnatory clauses at the end of the original Nicene statement, which were clearly aimed at the head of specific opponents (lines 25–30). A slow reading of the original historical text of the Nicene Creed (325) will be in order here. Line. 3. We believe in one God. Pistevomen is normally translated as “We Believe in,” though the verb is more accurately “Have trust in”; “rely on”; “make our stand by.” We begin, therefore, not with a general metaphysical statement, standing against

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incredulity as to the existence of a deity (as many modern contexts would have it), but rather with a commitment to allegiance to this God who is our God – a covenant commitment and allegiance statement; in other words a confession of worship (doxologia). The covenanting aspect prominent in the first line of statement alerts us to the probable use of the larger text (at least in its embryonic stage) as a baptismal creed. But when we look over the whole, we can see that the credal elements belong only to lines 3–6, 15, 17–19, 21–23 and perhaps 24. For the rest, we note the strong element of dittography of asseverance (saying the same things over again for emphasis) which suggests that these elements are “add-ins,” in the fashion of flying buttresses, being used to give particular reinforcement to a pre-existing statement. This repetitive re-stating of things in parallel forms surely manifests a controversial context (which we know to have been the case). At Nicaea the conflict was now not so much Alexander versus Arius, but rather the argument raging between the Alexandrian bishop and the court bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia who was ready to moderate Arius’ more objectionable claims, but had more specifically turned the attention to what he regarded as indefensible elements in Alexander’s metaphysics. The repeated asseverations represent the larger body of bishops wishing to resolve the impasse by bringing forward an old and unarguably venerable liturgical credal hymn at the Council (the established creed of the venerable Church of Jerusalem), but knowing even as they did so that such old and familiar formats of faith (Irenaeus had called these traditional baptismal hymns the “Rule of faith” – kanon tes pisteos) needed in this newly sharpened era to be given a much more rigorous and precise set of delimitations, even while retaining the familiarity of the antique genres. The baptismal creed is thus being imaginatively re-used, sharpened in force, and the dittographies are serving as commentaries on it – implying the position that the refined (and highly metaphysical) theology of the present Council is not representative of any new theological movement, as such, but simply a slightly extended commentary on the ancient and traditional faith statement of the commonly agreed liturgies of baptism. The various elements in this genre suggest the whole text is a thorough mix of (probably) second century baptismal hymnography, with third century controversial Christological extensions (aspects of what Origen had introduced into the Christological debate), along with fourth century specific synodical elements added on (namely the precise aspects of the Arian dispute). Already when it first appeared before the Council members, therefore, the Creed of 325 was nothing short of being a palimpsest. Line 3. In One God: The unity of the Christian God is a fundamental claim to have the Hebrew Scriptures as the Church’s heritage (see Dt. 6.4–9; Mt. 12.28–34; Mt. 23.9). The issue of the oneness of God had been much controverted by the gnostic theosophists of the second century. We can take as an example of this the Christian Valentinians, who made a radical distinction between the “Father” revealed in figure by Jesus Son of God, and the Demiurge, the dark spirit who made the visible cosmos as a place of twisted and compromised spiritual reality. This dichotomous view is represented in the fragments of Heracleon’s Commentary on the Gospel of John, for example. In this demiurgic view of the cosmos, spirit existed basi-

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cally as unhappily trapped within materiality. In this world-view, the Demiurge lay in the text of the Old Testament (“old,” for the Valentinians meaning archaic because it needed to be jettisoned from the Church) leading children of light astray, since he masqueraded as the Father of Light. To assert the Father’s identity with the Creator of the material cosmos and the Creator of the angelic orders (ranks of heavenly powers), was a major statement of the Great Church’s rebuke to gnostic theosophists of the second century. It was already an element of episcopal baptismal catechesis, and as such was lodged in the baptismal creed even by the third century. The “One God,” therefore, at the beginning of this creed, does not simply affirm a generic statement about monotheism. It more precisely declares the coherence of the scriptural testimony about God (that is, he is the single God spoken of in both Old and New Testaments). Herein the Creed from the outset establishes as the primary axiom of confessional theology, that biblical terms will be fundamental navigational points in all orthodox dogmatics. Almost all the remaining key terms of the Creed’s theology, it can be noted, are scripturally derived. The homoousion of line 14 is often said to be a famous exception in this regard – surely it is not in the scriptures – as many anti-Nicenes protested. But this is certainly not an exception to the Creed’s profound reliance on scriptural building blocks, for the homoousion here is a dittography (nothing more) of the basic statement in line 9 (ek tes ousias tou Patros), and the latter is indeed firmly rooted in specific scriptural passages, as a direct allusion, as we shall see when we come to that locus. Lines 4–5. The Father, Pantokrator, and Maker. Three primary titles of God are set out here. They are a sharp summa of early Christian theology proper. First, The Father, the chief New Testament designation of God, used in the original baptismal creed, to insist against the gnostics that the God who is the “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” 62 is one and the same as the God of the Old Testament – that the scriptures have an integral unity. This was a specific anti-Marcionite and anti-gnostic affirmation. Secondly, Pantokrator, or “Lord of all power,” signifying that this is the Creator God, and that the material order is not a conglomeration of random or evil things, but a beautiful cosmos deriving from the paternal love of God. Again the original context of the statements of theology related to God the Father seems to be rooted in the earlier struggle with the gnostics from the previous century. The Pantokrator as the Great Church defines Him is indisputably in charge of what happens on this earth, not just a random struggling victim of other forces of chaos and evil such as the gnostics’ Demiurge was held to be. Although the Creed has little more to say about the theology of God the Father, (and this itself is interesting to note – for the clauses dedicated to the Son of God give this hymn a massive Christological bias) what it does state, is a richly significant synopsis of the New Testament doctrine of the Kingdom of God, as especially iterated in the Pauline theology, such as 62

Rom. 15.6; 2 Cor. 1.3; Eph. 1.3; Col.1.3; 1 Peter. 1.3.

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instantiated in Ephesians 1.11. Thirdly, we have: Maker of all Things, visible and invisible. This title is the third re-statement (dittographic asseveration) of the same basic point about the fundamental theology of the Creator: a triple denial of a core gnostic belief system. It is not simply affirming that God is the Maker, that is fathering and mastering the cosmos; but here what is at specific issue is that he is the Lord of the angelic powers as well as of mortals (cf. Mt. 13.41; Eph. 1.4f & 20–23; Phil. 2.9– 11; and Coloss. 1. 15–20): for such is the primary reference to “invisible” realities – the bodiless, or angelic, powers. These Pauline proto-creeds mentioned above, which are the basis of this present statement of the nature of God’s creative agency, are themselves late first and early second century embryos for what we see here as the Nicene substrate. The relation of the Beloved Son (First-Born Logos) to the angelic powers is a crucial aspect in the New Testament texts concerning the victory of God over (evil) cosmic powers. The shorthand for this cosmic victory is the phrase “The Kingdom of God” (basileia tou theou). Using angelology (and the mirror aspect of daimonology) to elaborate the doctrine of the Kingdom was a very crucial development of the second and third century in its struggle with the Gnostics. 63 At this time angelology became an important medium of the restatement of New Testamental Kingdom theology in the Greek world of the generation following after the apostles. The Creed of Nicaea at this point has retained this ancient (angelogical) context and used it to serve as the doorway to its following, Christological, statements in line 6 onwards. This was because the Arian desire to keep the Logos within the broad category of “created subservient angel” was very much at the heart of the dispute under consideration. Arian thought consistently presented itself as a traditionalist biblical mindset, and the Nicene theologians equally insisted that this was not the evangelical tradition at all (merely an archaism of angelology contradicted by the Pauline materials yet retained in some parts of proto-Christian thinking) because the Gospels themselves as well as the later Pauline epistles had clearly shown that the First Born Son of God was only “lower than the angels” for a limited time in his earthly ministry, 64 but as Logos born of the Father’s own being was at one and the same time “Lord of the Angel Hosts.”

Nor was it unknown in the Gospel texts: see, for example, Mk. 1.21–28 where the title Hagios is an angelic implication, as is the title “Destroyer” (Apollyon) which refers to the eschatological angel of judgment. Many of the demoniac exorcism accounts depict the theology of the Kingdom as a clash between supernatural powers: the demons representing Satan, and the heavenly Son of God representing the power of the Most High (Pantokrator). the apostolic era continued this theme in such cardinal passages as Col.1. 15–20; Ibid., 2. 9– 10, 15, 18–19; Ephes. 1. 19–23. 64 Heb. 1.6–8; Heb. 2.9. 63

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Line 6. And in One Lord Jesus Christ. 65 This phrase equally is a derivation from scripture (Mt. 23.10; cf. Jn. 10.30; Rom.5.17–21; Rom. 10. 8–13; 1 Cor. 8.6), and represents a strongly repeated aspect of New Testament Christology. It is used here in a dynamic way to forge the bond between the titles of Son, Word, Lord, Jesus and Christ. What this means is that the selfsame being who was eternal Logos, is the Son of God on earth, Jesus the Christ. The same personal subject is eternal and historical, unlimited and limited. Unlimited in his divine being, and limited in his earthly incarnation. The singularity and continuity of the eternal and historical phases of the life of the Logos is thus accounted for by the singularity of personal subject who experiences both eternity and temporality: unlimited forms of being, and limited earthly ones. The conciliar fathers have implied a fundamental aspect of Christological teaching (one that comes again into conflict in the fifth century where Cyril of Alexandria will reiterate it masterfully) that the single personal subject of the Incarnate Lord Jesus is none other than the Eternal Logos. It is short-hand for insisting that there is no such “human person” as “Jesus who becomes Christ,” or a man who becomes god. There is One Son who descends to earth from heaven and assumes a human condition to effect salvation among creatures. The implication of this theology is, of course, profound. But here in the creed it is simply “assumed” in the manner in which eternal statements about the Son (God from God, light from light) are attributed to a single “Lord and Son” along with temporal ones (Suffered death and was buried). Line 7. The Only Begotten Son of God. The title Son of God is logically extrapolated from the title of God as Father. The One God is entitled Father and then MakerLord. Jesus Christ is first entitled Lord and then Son: the titles textually reflect those attributed to the Father, chiasmically. They accumulate in the following lines to a total of six in all: Son, Lord, Christ, Only Begotten, God, Light. Two of these are repeated twice (God and Son) and then the sonship image is used as an explication of the divine status in what are evidently fourth century philosophical glosses (begotten of the being, born not created, a status of co-being with the Father); obviously supplied into the pre-existing creed at the Nicene Council itself. The list of titles, therefore, shows how the argument turns on the precise notion of what the term “Son of God” means. Does it mean that Jesus is a heavenly power (elevated angelic being), or does it mean that he is God? This section of the Creed is a careful and closely argued exegesis of scripture emphasizing the second as the authoritative Christian reading. For a much more extensive discussion of this aspect of the Creed and the Christological issues concerned with it (more extensive in terms of both chronology and theological commentary) see: J.A. McGuckin, I Believe in One Lord Jesus Christ. Ancient Christian Doctrines: Vol. 2 (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Press, 2009). (Collation of patristic source texts interpreting the Christological aspects of the Nicene symbol). 65

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Line 8. The Only Begotten (Monogenes) of the Father. Here we see the strong reliance, overall, on the Fourth Gospel’s theology of the Only Begotten. Arius had taken the concept of “begetting” to pieces like a logician. It meant for him, generation, production, emanation. It was the critical term that signified the begotten Son’s creaturely status as a ktisma or poiema of God (something he had made up from nothing). The Nicene stress, however, is not that Begetting signifies generation or creation, rather that is signifies tender familiarity. He is not just “a son” in the sense of the archaic property of the paterfamilias, but he is rather the “Beloved Only Son” of the Father in the manner in which the Fourth Gospel used the term monogenes. It is, thus, a symbol of intimate ontological relation and love, not one primarily connoting inferiority. Line 9. Of the being of the Father. This is not the synonym (just yet) as Tautotes ousias (sameness of being) that Athanasius argued for as the critical metaphysical point of the eternal birth of the Logos. And it is inserted here as a powerful supplementary commentary (or elucidation) of line 8; as such it is a supportive biblical exegesis. It is, therefore, not entirely correct to regard the homoousion (see line 14), as is common among commentators, as the first non-biblical term ever to enter Christian confession. It is, to be sure, a philosophically precise keyword, but is used by the bishops, even when insisted upon by the Constantinian court, in the traditional mode of biblical exegesis. The way the Nicene fathers use the homoousion here, therefore, is as synonym for the (antique) use of hypostasis in Hebrews 1.3, which is itself evoking Wisdom 7. 25–26. As a cipher for this biblical doctrine of hypostatic closeness of the Father and Son (with the antique sense of hypostatic being “substantive” in this precise instance, though it will soon change to a different global signifier of meaning “distinctive” as its core definition). 66 And this means, of course, that the term consubstantial at Nicaea, at least in this part of the Creed, has its definition not supplied from Aristotle’s definitions of what constitutes primary and secondary substances: but from a reading of Paul. It is therefore not so much the first non biblical, philosophical, term used in Christian dogmatics at all, but rather a Paulinism. As to the meaning of the “Out of the being of the Father” (ek tes ousias) in situ: again is this to be sought in Greek philosophy or scripture? Does it mean “identity of essence” or insist on the real connotation of the image of divine paternity and sonship? This is a major issue of interpretation, and the key to understanding the entire “Arian” controversy of the fourth century. In my opinion, the matter lies in the line of development of ideas sketched out from Athanasius to Gregory of Nazianzen. Another way of putting that would be to say the theological development from the Chriscf. A de Halleux, “Hypostase et personne dans la formation du dogme trinitaire (ca. 375–381).” RHE 79.2 (1984): 313–369; Ibid., 79.3. (1984): 625–670; K. Corrigan, “Ousia and Hypostasis in the Trinitarian Theology of the Cappadocian Fathers.” ZAC 12 (2008): 114– 134. 66

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tology of Nicaea to the Trinitarian theology of Constantinople I is a logical and coherent development of Nicaea’s original theology. Athanasius had seen the implications of asserting one single substance of deity: which was thus common to Father and Son. It was to be Gregory Nazianzen, however, who would clarify that this meant the single being of the Father was that which was gifted to the Son, and again gifted to the Spirit ((by modes of filiation and by procession which constituted the distinct hypostases (persons) of Son and Spirit)) such that the single possession of the Father’s being was what made for the unity of the Trinity. Many Western theologians then (and now) held in preference to a vaguer understanding of “divine substance” as if it were a form of super-characteristics and qualities that all three divine personae had in common. But Alexander, Athanasius and Gregory certainly knew that this was not the case. The personal being (ousia) of the Father was that which was gifted to the Son and Spirit to hypostatise (personally instantiate) in themselves. They were one because they all had the Father’s single being: not a similar right to the same generic characteristics. 67 The Father is unique and has priority in the Trinitarian mystery because he alone is the Arche, the principal and cause. 68 Therein lies a great mystery and a continuing divergence in aspects of Christian traditioning between East and West, one that came out in the later Filioque issue, as well as (arguably) in the decline of Trinitarian spirituality in the West. Line 10. God from God. The Nicene concept of derivation from the Father’s own being allows one to profess the Godhead of the Son as the same “in Godhead” as that of the Father; not inferior even though derived. It is the end of Origen’s unsatisfactory solution when he implied, in the De Principiis, that the Father was God with a capital G and the Son was god with small g (Autotheos and Deuteros theos). “God from God” here means both have capital letters for both are the selfsame in Godhead, though distinct in person. Nicene Christology is thus the solemn profession of the coequal deity of Father, Son and Spirit. For those who still did not see the full implications of the selfsame ousia, and there were several of them still in the early part of the fourth century, it was enough to give the Christian confession confidence that the Son Logos was God and could be confessed as such without tortuous mental qualifications having to be made. Lines 11–12. Light from Light, True God from True God: is deliberately interposed between lines 10 and 12 and is meant to be read not in abstracto and not just as a dittographic asseveration of the preceding phrase, but also as an explanation and commentary on how the Son can be understood as divine of the Godhead, without compromising the divine unity which has already been professed as a most fundaFurther see J.A. McGuckin, “The Trinity in the Greek Fathers.” in P Phan ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Trinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 49–69. 68 Which is why later Orthodoxy found the Filioque to be so objectionable a doctrine: disturbing, as it does, this taxonomy and process. 67

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mental premise of Christian faith from line 1 onwards. Here the Son is God, and True God, issuing from the Godhead just as light emanates from the Sun as a single light. This image is ancient and fundamental in the early patristic theology of the Logos’ relation to the Father, and was well known to be associated with major Logos theologians such as Tertullian, Hippolytus and Origen. Line 13. Begotten (gennethenta) not made (poiethenta). Yet again all the series of explications of divine correlation between the Father and Son are related back to the biblical archetype of Father and Son relationship. It is highly indicative that although the Creed enshrines and elevates Logos theology in all its thinking, it steadfastly remains married to the semantics of Father and Son as the primary category of confession. Logos semantics are totally lacking from the Creed itself, whereas it was one of the leading engines of fourth century Christological debate all around the edges of the Creed, and a key term in dispute for the framers of the Creed. In the Council itself the title Logos, or Word, is subordinated to that of Son. The Fathers have refused to subject the personal relation to the metaphysics of substance. In a world of ancient Greek philosophy where the category of personal was seen only as an accidental character (not a substantive) this was a brave choice. It will take another century for the Christian theologians to remedy the defects of Greek philosophical semantics in this regard and advance personhood to the level of a substantive category. Cyril of Alexandria will be the major protagonist for this epochal movement of thought: 69 but Nicaea and its single subjectival references to the Eternal and temporal Son, are his direct inspiration, as he explicitly argues. Line 14. Homoousios with the Father. Here we note the appearance of the homoousion for the first time: after its implied introduction by line 10 (of the being of the Father) which itself stood as an exegesis of the term: Monogenes (Only Begotten Son). The term homoousion had first appeared among gnostic circles where it was used to signify common likeness. 70 There is a surviving fragment for his Commentary on Hebrews, where Origen used the word tangentially to mean that whatever the Father is, that is what the Son is too (what Alexander was professing). But most other parts of Origen’s work disapproved of materialist notions attributed to the deity and this strong motif in his writing was influential on many of his later followers (especially Eusebius of Caesarea), prejudicing them against the word in later times. 71 Many of the Nicenes (and most of their opponents) were also aware that the word had a some-

Further see J.A. McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy (Leiden; New York, E.J. Brill, 1994) and (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004). 70 Origen, Commentary on John 13.25; ibid., 20.20,24; Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 1.5.1; Clement of Alexandria, Excerpta Theodoti 50; Tertullian, Adversus Hermogenes 44 (consubstantialis). 71 See Fragment of Origen on The Letter to Hebrews in Migne, PG. 14.1308, which defines Homoousios as asserting a “communion of substance between the Father and Son”; also De Principiis 4.4.1. 69

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what murky association with Paul of Samosata’s condemnation for modalism at the Council of Antioch in 268, 72 though the general Nicene party sentiment was that his usage was confused, and their present usage was now completely different: not implying a confusion of personhood but a sameness of essential being. 73 Dionysios of Alexandria had even once rejected the term as inappropriate because it had no biblical root, thereby attacking the rise to favor in the West of the Tertullianist term consubstantialis. The Latin Church always favored homoousion because they tended to read it in the light of Tertullian’s (Latin) definition. But when Pope Dionysius of Rome pressed his namesake on the matter, the Alexandrian hierarch admitted that he only disliked the concept, but that he was not a subordinationist in Christology and agreed with the Western viewpoint enshrined in consubstantialis that the Son was truly of the Father’s own Godhead. Athanasius had the record of this earlier exchange in his hand when he wrote about it. 74 Ossius seems to have understood the word to mean the numerical identity of nature shared between Father and Son (commonality of substantive categories as taught in Tertullian’s Adversus Praxean). He was glad enough to advise Constantine to push for the insertion of the word into the Creed, when it seemed to him and the Alexandrians, that the Arian party was working hard to re-translate all the other Christological statements the Creed was making in a sense compatible with their own positions. Homoousios was a bridge too far for them and this was its selling value to Ossius. Eusebius of Caesarea, in his Life of Constantine, says that the term was inserted into the Creed as one of the personal interventions of the Emperor himself. It is inconceivable he would have done this except on the prompting of Ossius. Eastern bishops always felt dissatisfied with Tertullian’s (and the West’s) idea of numerical identity of essence in the deity: thinking (rightly) that it left the sense of dynamic progress in the Trinity unaccounted for: that is the sense of the Trinity as the sending of the Son and Spirit out from the Father for a mission of salvation. The word made them grumble that the New Testament sense of the Son’s obedient mission had been occluded somehow, and this unease explains why so many of those who asserted the full divinity of the Son (not just the Arians who denied it) had misgivings about the homoousion. In the aftermath of the Nicene Council, Constantine’s son, Constantius II, would encourage a series of synods (Philippopolis 342; Sardica 343; Sirmium 357; Nike in Thrace 359; and Constantinople 360) that condemned and rejected the term and all those who defended it. Athanasius himself confesses to taking a long enough time to come to see that it

See I Ortiz de Urbina, “L’Homoousios preniceno.” OCP (1942): 194–209. See Athanasius, De Synodis 45; Hilary of Poitiers, Synods 81; Basil, Epistle 52.1. 74 Athanasius, Sentences of Dionysios 18. 72 73

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was necessary. Both he and Alexander before him, 75 had tended to prefer a confession of “identity of essence” (for Alexander ek tes ousias tou patros and for Athanasius tautotes tes ousias). Athanasius recommends sticking doggedly to homoousios in the end because it annoyed Arians so much, and because although it was not from scripture, it was nevertheless deeply “scriptural” in scope (skopos). 76 Line 15. And through him (di’ou) all things came to be (egeneto). Once again the strong influence of the late Pauline Christological confessions of the Son as prime agent of Creation is visible here. The phrase synopsises the New Testament theology of 1st Corinthians 8.6; also seen in Colossians 1.15. The same doctrine is also taught in the second verse of the Johannine Prologue. The Son’s creative power modelling the creation is why the Nicenes attributed to him the logic of incarnational humility: He who had made humanity in all beauty was particularly drawn to refashion it back to its immortal glory once it had fallen, 77 even if this involved him in the great kenosis of the Cross. Line 16. Things in Heaven, and things on Earth, parallels line 5. This is another dittography of emphasis where the statement of line 15 above is repeated in a slightly different form, to the effect that the (salvific) oikonomia of the Son mirrors that of the Father (who made things in heaven and earth). This implies the doctrine of the Son as the exact mirror-image (eikon) of the Father as suggested in Colossians 1.15– 16. It is also an explication of how the homoousion is understood to be witnessed by human beings (for the Arian party pressed hard for an avoidance of the word on the grounds that “no one could know the mysteries of God’s inner being anyway”). If the Father and Son share the same characteristics of creative philanthropy, it is a manifestation of their substantial unity: where the Son possesses all the power(s) of his Father. Line 17. Who for us humans (anthropous) and for the sake of our salvation (soterian). The functional purpose and motive of the whole Christological construct is given here (firmly stated to be soteriological), namely the initiation of the Economy (Oikonomia) of salvation. Ancient Christian thought about God turns largely on the distinction between Theologia and Oikonomia. We might call that the doctrine of God in Himself, and God as reaching out into the created order. The Creed can fruitfully be “charted” in the way its premises begin from Theologia and explain that (essential mystery) by its “epiphany” in Oikonomia or salvation history as recorded in the scriptures. The Oikonomy of Creation becomes the pattern (type) for theology proper. In other words, Soteriology becomes the pattern for Christology. This is a decisive mark of cf. M. Edwards. “Alexander of Alexandria and the Homoousion.” VC 66. 2012. 482– 502. Alexander only uses Homoousios at the Council of 325, and applies it afterwards when he sees the Arian reactions against it. 76 Athanasius, De Decretis 21. 77 The overarching thesis of Athanasius’ De Incarnatione. 75

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the Nicene theology and an essential character of all catholic Christianity to this day. Christology is an exercise in soteriological thought. If it is not, it is an impudent prying into the mysteries of God’s transcendently unknowable life. Lines 18–20. Descended (katelthonta), And was incarnate (sarkothenta), Being made man (enanthropesanta). The word “coming down” here reflects the biblical doctrine of the Synkatabasis of God to Israel – his “stooping down in pity.” It is a divine term related to the act of compassionate salvation. The one who does this is thus given (in epiphany) as Soter or saviour to Mankind. This acclamation as Soter was the ultimate “divine” title for Hellenistic Late Antiquity, 78 and here in the Creed it has been seamlessly “translated” into biblical terminology. This is a gracious and supremely stylistic example of what patristic theology constantly strove to do: the ongoing “Christianisation of Hellenism.” In lines 18–10 we see a literary triad of emphases: descended, incarnated, enhominised. This once more puts great stress on the idea of the single subject operative in all the actions. It is the Logos who descends (it would be ridiculous to speak of a human baby descending). It is the Logos who incarnates. But it is the same subject who becomes Man. The selfsame identities of the Son and Logos and Christ are thus restated as earlier in the Creed. The concept of enfleshment (Jn.1.18) is affirmed, but not as the sole image of incarnation. The triadic repetition notably runs up to a climacteric in “en-hominisation” (enanthropesis) which speaks volumes about how the Nicene fathers wanted to insist that the Incarnate Logos (God of God) was also (in this act of incarnation) now also truly Man. Lines 21–23. He suffered (pathonta), and on the third day he rose up (anastanta), And he ascended (anelthonta) into the heavens. And he shall come again to judge (krinai) both the living and the dead. Lines 18–20 were a triad of descent, pivoting chiasmically around pathos (the idea of “and he suffered.” There, the “He” who is the Logos himself initiates the clashing and scandalous idea (for the ancient world) of the suffering God. This dramatic and epoch-making innovation takes its authority from Paul. 79 Now, the following lines 21–23, form a mirror image of that first triadic half of the chiasm. In this case, however, we have the opposite dynamism: a triad of ascents. This culminates in the confession of the Second Coming, the Parousia of judgement as victorious Lord of the Cosmos, which balances out the earlier statement of the suffering of the Man of Sorrows. This very elegantly balanced confession in double-triadic format is surely based on the hymn of divine kenosis in Philippians 2. 6–11. In line 22 of the Creed we can also note, in passing, the plurality of the heavens (not just ascended “into heaven”). This has significant angelogical implications; for the Ascending Christ-Son-Logos-Victor ascends through all the seven heavens, to the side Further see J.A. McGuckin. “Soter Theos: The Patristic and Byzantine Reappropriation of an Antique Idea.” in D.V. Twomey, ed. Salvation According to the Church Fathers (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010), 33–44. 79 That bold and majestic statement in 1 Cor.1. 23–25, “We preach Christ Crucified.” 78

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of the Father. It asserts in the classic terms of previous angelology, that the Son Logos is “higher than the angels.” As in Hebrews 2.9, his status as man of Sorrows only “for a short while” made him lower than the angels in his incarnate life. In his status as Logos he is incomparably higher than any angelic being. This is the import of this line of the Creed. Line 24. And [we believe] in the Holy Spirit. Lines 21–24, notably, are devoid of the dittographies that have characterised much of the earlier phrases of the Creed. It is as if the theological argument is relaxing, going back to the simpler asseverations that characterised its earliest statements about the Father. Neither is there any form of scholiast commentary added to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. This can hardly be because the matter was fully clarified at the period. The relative flatness of the statements about pneumatology were either because they were evidently felt to be unarguable (or at least not at the controversial centre of the present debate) or because of the traditional reserve in all early Christian circles about speaking explicitly about the nature and work of the Holy Spirit of God. This can be mentioned only briefly here, but the secret doctrine, the arcanum, of the person and operation of the Spirit was traditionally only given to catechumens at the last moment before their baptismal initiation. 80 The baptismal rite was thus seen as the proper place for the catechesis of the Spirit. But the initiates were strictly instructed not to bandy about words about the Holy Sprit to the uninitiated pagans. It was part of the “mystery,” a word which derives from its root of “not speaking” (muein) about the secret rites to anyone outside. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is therefore left in this dramatically “unspoken” form. In the developing crisis after Nicaea, it was finally realized that the Christology of the self-same being of the Father and Son, implied the same with relation to the Holy Spirit. Christology could neither be separated from the Church’s understanding of God the Father, nor from its profession of faith in the Trinity. The entire logic of trinitarianism then had to be expounded. The task was first seen as entirely necessary by Athanasius in his later career, and he started the process to articulate the theological issues in his Letters to Serapion; but it fell to the Cappadocian fathers, especially Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil the Great, at the end of the fourth century, to prepare the groundwork for this fuller statement about the divinity of the Spirit; most notably at the Council of Constantinople in 381, in Gregory’s Oration 31 On the Deity of the Spirit of God, and in Basil’s treatise On the Holy Spirit. Lines 25–31. Whosoever shall say that ‘there was a time when he was not’ (en pote ote ouk en); And that ‘before he was begotten he was not’ (prin gennethenta ouk en); And that ‘he was made of things that once were not’ (ex ouk onton egeneto); Or that ‘he is of a different hypostasis or substance (heteras hypostaseos e ousias); Saying that the Son of God is subject to change or alteraFurther see H.B. Swete, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church (London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1912); E. Yarnold. The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 1994). 80

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tion (trepton e alloioton); Such people the Catholic (katholike) and Apostolic (apostolike) Church anathematizes. These syllogistic phrases are added as an obvious appendix to the biblical hymnal part of the Creed which precedes them. The sentiments in verse 29 were falsely attributed to Arius (who denied this in his teaching) but the import was the same anyway: the rest of the material summarizes his doctrine. The appendices culminate in an Anathema: a solemn form of denunciation and censure of blasphemy. For a thing to be Anathema in ancient Greek religion meant it was so sacred that it was “untouchable.” By the Christian period this became a technical word for “excommunicate,” or sacrilegious behaviour worthy of expulsion from the elect body of believers. This is the first formal Christian statement that deviance in belief can be, if sufficiently extensive on central matters, enough to separate dissidents from any claim to catholicity or apostolicity – ancient terms for universally recognized harmony with the apostolic (i.e. biblical) faith. This final broadside blast against all that Arianism stood for, wants to sink the whole school as a continuing argument, not just censure Arius and a few dissident individuals personally. The appendices isolate six main propositions. It is implied, though left unstated, that the six Arian axioms contradict the patent sense of lines 6–23 of the Creed.

1.8. THE RECEPTION OF NICAEA The initial reason Nicaea needed to be called, that simmering dispute that had broken in Alexandria and spilled out over the Eastern Church, was certainly addressed at the Council, and quite decisively so; but the political and theological aftermath of 325 showed abundantly clearly that the dispute would not simply go away as easily as the Anathematisms seemed to wish. Indeed, soon after the Council was over the larger terms of the argument over the divine status of the Logos (and how this impacted Incarnational theology) entered its most complex stage of diffusion. Successive fourth century synods in the East that tried to reverse, marginalize and contradict Nicaea, meant that at many times the Nicene cause seemed on the point of being a lost cause. A few renowned teachers, men who entered Christian history as great “fathers and confessors,” such as Alexander, Athanasius, Eustathius, Meletios, Eusebius of Samosata, and the Cappadocian fathers, were the ones who kept the issues alive until the eventual reiteration of the Nicene faith at Constantinople in 381. All in all, it would take a generation before Nicaea and “Nicenism” would be a common standard for rallying all the Churches. But the process of defending the faith of Nicaea was something felt to be more important than mere attachment to a passing synodical statement. By the end of the fourth century the Council and its Creed had assumed an almost legendary status. It has retained that place in the catholic and apostolic confession of Christianity to this day. Many of the faithful may casually recite it, just as they may casually hear the Gospel stories read week by week in the liturgy. But like the Gospels themselves, this Council is truly a living and mysterious Icon of Christ, which contains treasures within of inestimable worth, and undoubtedly worthy of the closest attention.

CHAPTER 2: THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE I: 381. CHRIST’S DIVINE MAJESTY AND THE IMPARTIALITY OF HIS HUMANITY TODD E. FRENCH 2.1. PREAMBLE The Council of Constantinople in 381 had no extant proceedings, affirmed the Creed of Nicaea that was unused for almost seventy years, was rife with politically motivated leadership changes, and saddled with the hope of reconciliation of an ever-expanding intellectual and physical Church body. It is not difficult to see why this is one of the most complicated Church councils. Its subsequent history has been burdened by numerous interpretations, both ancient and contemporary, that see in this Council a perfectly mute placeholder for several theological and political ends. Without historical proceedings, the student and scholar are left with the challenge of how to reconstruct its history and Christology in a manner that is faithful to the moment and its important traditions. This chapter will begin with a short treatment of the preceding history leading up to 381. It will then transition to some of the problems surrounding the meeting of the Council, particularly the interactions between the ideas of Apollinaris and the Antiochenes, culminating in the Cappadocian response. 1 Finally, it will posit some ideas about reception, based on the years leading up to Chalcedon in 451. The lingering questions about whether this Council deserves to be called oikoumenical and how one can fruitfully interpret its surrounding history remain a significant issue in any treatment of this period. We should be careful designating these in a facile way as schools or cities. The lines of division often ran in far more complicated directions. Hanson notes that his work has resisted the tendency to read “a schema of Alexandrian or Antiochene ‘schools’ into the first half of the ivth century.” R.P.C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318–381 A.D. (London: T. & T. Clark Ltd, 1988), 646. 1

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T H EOLOGIA

2.2. THE AFTERMATH OF NICAEA: IMPLICATIONS OF THE NICENE We will begin with a close view of the years directly following 325, up through 341. These are particularly significant because they set the stage for the diversification of Christian thought in the coming decades. It would be impossible to capture every creed and synod in this intervening half century between the Councils with any sort of clarity in this short chapter. What one can do is choose particular vignettes that represent the flavor of various movements in the period. After a close treatment of the period up through 341, this chapter will zoom out to capture the broader developments in theological thought and community. The people of this newly minted “Christian” Empire in the fourth century were facing all sorts of questions that had never seemed important to consider – or at least had never been more pressing than the preservation of life and community in an era of persecution. The remainders of unsolidified doctrines about the nature of Christ were still circulating, holding the Christian world in a state of flux. Arius had done more than raise a thought provoking theory; he had managed to put a tiny crack in the foundation of theoretical Christology that continued to spread, crumbling off chunks of what most early Christians thought was a solid and agreeable nomenclature for the nature of God’s Son. The subsequent years brought significant change by way of political and theological development. Constantine’s shifting position concerning Arius was exemplified in his recalling of the controversial figure to Constantinople for reconciliation. Although Constantine’s own position on the issue of Arianism was murky, one might posit Constantine’s sons inherited their father’s interest in a unified Christian Church that matched a unified Roman Empire. Just five years after the momentous occasion of the first Church Council (325), Constantine dedicated his “new” Roman capital on the shores of the golden horn (May 11, 330). If Constantinople’s most attractive quality was its natural harbor, now embracing the newly christened ship of imperial Christianity, we may rightly inquire how sturdy this vessel was and whether it was up for the rough theological seas of the fourth century? Perhaps the image is better represented as a flotilla of sorts, rather than any single vessel, since the period between 325 and 381 was home to several movements clashing over the issues of Theologia. The Arian leaning bishops and communities were hardly fading into the background after Nicaea’s proclamations. It is clear that Constantine forced a fix that proved facile and unfitting to the burgeoning questions of Christology. Constantine thought these were little more than petty concerns that could be solved with some golden gifts and a dose of regal fear mongering. In reality they were deeply troubling and deeply dividing philosophical ideas that proved far too significant to overlook.

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When Constantine died in 337, he left a wake of political and religious turmoil that would prove unsettling to bishop and citizen alike. Between 337 and 361 numerous Councils would convene on a range of subjects concerning the nature of Christ as well as the proper practice of his Church. 2 No treatment of this period would be adequate without detailing Athanasius’s profoundly controversial and influential tenure as Patriarch of Alexandria. Athanasius had attended Nicaea as deacon and secretary to Alexander, under whose watch the entire Arian controversy had emerged. 3 Upon Alexander’s death in 328, Athanasius took control of the Alexandrian Church and proceeded to drive forth Alexander’s strict Nicene theology. What Athanasius could not have predicted was the emperor’s evolving political stance that in turn would have real implications for his theological alignment. As the world slowly turned more and more Arian, Athanasius found himself at odds with the powers of Constantinople. Athanasius was not one to discreetly bow to imperial authority; the numerous extant stories of his escapades in the Egyptian hinterland bespeak his cavalier attitude. 4 When Athanasius took control of Alexandria, his power was challenged by Eusebius of Nicomedia through a tangential issue predating Nicaea. The priest Melitius of Lycopolis had renounced Alexandrian authority under Bishop Peter during the Diocletianic persecutions and led a group of clergy with rigorist views on the restoration of lapsed Christians. Although Melitius was deposed in 306, the issue was still of some importance through Nicaea, where his status was again limited by Alexander and the Council. During the Council his ordained clergy were given the status of “country bishop” chorepiskopoi and matters appeared to be settled. Eusebius of Nicomedia, a prominent Arian, fomented discord against Athanasius, hoping to make allies against a common enemy in Egypt. It is likely that Athanasius had been called upon to readmit the Melitian bishops by Constantine – although there is some disagreement as to whether Constantine’s letter was calling for the readmission of Melitians or Arians, since they are not explicitly named in the letter. 5 His subsequent refusal brought about a Council in Caesarea Palestine in 334 that was aimed more at his conduct than doctrine. 6 Athanasius did not attend and the intention of the first Council was revisited at the Council of Tyre (335). The convened bishops, some 60 or so, were stacked heavily against Athanasius and it was only the compulsion of W. H. C Frend, The Early Church (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1966), 522. John Anthony McGuckin, The Westminster Handbook to Patristic Theology, 1st ed. (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 35. 4 There are many examples to choose from, including the moment when Athanasius slipped through the fingers of the Roman military who stormed the church doors. Sozomen, The Ecclesiastical History, Book IV, Chapter IX in NPNF 2, 2. 5 Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 250–251, n. 61, and 258. 6 Ibid., 258. 2 3

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Constantine that made him finally attend. 7 After witnessing the Eusebian leaning nature of the leadership and participants, Athanasius fled under secrecy to Constantinople. The Council, not surprisingly, deposed Athanasius. He later represented the participants at Tyre as a “gang of disreputable conspirators.” 8 Tensions and rhetoric would always run high when livelihood and position were at stake. As we will see, Athanasius’s outlook was considerably less stable than a Patriarch would hope. After attaining an audience with Constantine, some Eusebian bishops were recalled to the capital in order to sort out the mess in the Alexandrian Church. We should keep in mind that while this conflict appears to be rooted entirely in the political, the underlying concerns of Athanasius and Eusebius were deeply entrenched encampments on how one should understand the Christ. Something, perhaps the influence of first hand accounts of Athanasius and his supporters’ behavior at Tyre, caused Constantine to banish him to Trier on the other end of the Empire. Other scholars have concluded that it was Athanasius’s threat to delay grain shipments from his Egyptian ports, which had long served as the breadbasket of both Roman capitals, that made Constantine less inclined to acquiesce to the bishop’s wishes. 9 A new Arian leaning bishop was selected in Alexandria, and Athanasius moved on to Rome and Trier, during his first exile. Arius, whose simple question had begun so many of these issues, made his way back into the graces of the imperial court and his enemies were called upon to admit him back to communion. 10 It is possible that Athanasius made some solid relationship with Constantine II, Constantine’s son, while in exile at Trier. 11 After Constantine’s death in 337, the landscape of controversy quickly shifted. Athanasius returned to his home city later that year, after touring widely for support, with the blessing of a letter from the coEmperor Constantine II declaring his rights. A standing committee in Antioch sent a letter to the Augusti reminding them of the Council of Tyre and its findings. 12 Athanasius responded to these actions with a large Council, which met in Alexandria in 338. The Council resulted in a circulating letter that accused his opponents in the imperial court, emperors and Eusebian supporters alike, of trying to overturn Ibid., 259. Ibid., 262. 9 Hanson is careful to point out that it is “unlikely that Athanasius was fool enough to make such a threat when he was in the Emperor’s power, a defeated man, struggling to salvage his status and career.” Ibid., 263. 10 The details of this are not firm. Some have held that he was called back to Constantinople to be held reaffirmed by Alexander, as Athanasius writes in his De Morte Arii (358), but Opitz acknowledges that Alexander would have been long dead by 335/336, when it is thought Arius died. Ibid., 265. 11 Ibid., 264. 12 Ibid., 266–267. 7 8

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Nicaea, which at this point had become a serious touchstone of orthodoxy for Athanasius and his party. When Eusebius of Nicomedia became bishop of Constantinople in 338 and was firmly in charge of this Eusebian party, hoi peri Eusebion, he further pushed their agenda by employing violent tactics reminiscent of Athanasius’s own political moves. Most notably, he placed Gregory, a Cappadocian sympathizer, in the see of Alexandria. The prefect, Philagrius, cooperated by driving Athanasius from his home with soldiers; two churches were burned in the ensuing riots. 13 Constantius, for his part, supported the Nicene party’s perspective that the truths of the first general Council were being overturned by an intruding junior politician and his confused Patriarch, Eusebius. The question of class influence is also worth noting in the later developments of this controversial period. Whereas Arius’s theological songs could certainly be seen as a movement of the people vis-à-vis the hierarchical governing bodies of the Church – a priest (Arius) vs. a Patriarch (Alexander/Athanasius) – had now been re-envisioned as a mistreated bishop who was champion of the poor desert ascetics vs. the misguided emperors. 14 Athanasius produced his Encyclical Letter of the Egyptian Bishops in response to the new bishop of Alexandria and placed his hope on Pope Julius in Rome, who called a Roman council in 340. The council was unable to meet until 341 due to Constantine II’s move to unseat his brother Constans and control his territory. When it finally did meet, the council affirmed the orthodoxy of both Athanasius and Marcellus of Ancyra, and Pope Julius wrote to the Eusebian bishops in Antioch, critiquing their practices in bringing Gregory in as Patriarch under force and without the normal consecration practices. 15 He complains of the “Easterners’ practice of translating bishops” between sees, which was perfectly aimed at Eusebius, now bishop of Constantinople. 16 This practice of moving bishops, earlier condemned at Nicaea, and its subsequent application would haunt the Council of Constantinople some forty years later as Gregory of Nazianzus found himself in a battle with deep-seated precedence that would eventually result in his resignation from the Patriarchy. Zooming out now for the remainder of Athanasius’s life, our story begins to intersect with several of the communities and figures that make up the march toward necessity of another oikoumenical council. Athanasius’s rehabilitation did not come until a new imperial champion, Constans had succeeded in securing his rule over his elder brother’s territory. In 346 Ibid., 268. Hanson cites Simonetti’s treatment of the moment when Anthony visited Athanasius for two days. Simonetti sees this as a significant event in how Athanasius would be portrayed and envisioned in later decades. Ibid., 267–268. 15 Ibid., 271. 16 Ibid., 270–271. 13 14

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Athanasius returned to Alexandria only to be re-exiled by Constantius. It was in this period that Athanasius engages deeply with monasticism and utilizes its obscure world of caves and anonymity. It would take the death of Constantius to finally bring Athanasius back to his city. The subsequent emperor Julian’s own program of theological reformation – a resurgence of the pagan golden years – would push Athanasius again into exile for his short reign until 363. 17 In December of 361, not long after Julian’s triumphal entry into Constantinople, George, Arian bishop of Alexandria, was lynched by a mob. Julian recalled all exiled bishops to their sees in February, including Athanasius, but it only took until October for Julian to decide that he should again be exiled. Before this exile, however, a synod was called sometime between March and October of 362 at Alexandria that sought to solve again the rift that was becoming ever more diverse as the language of Christology became ever more specific. 18 The synod of 362 was significant for its attempt to “harmonize” the alliance between various branching factions of Arian extraction (which by this point was made up of Homoiousians, Homoians, Meletians, Neo-Arians, etc.) against the Eusebians. 19 The issue was certainly one of language in Athanasius’s mind and to this end he attempted to discharge some of the disagreement by way of acknowledging that the terms ousia and hypostasis had different meanings and could not simply be used interchangeably in creedal statements. To this end, he acknowledged in his Tomus ad Antiochenos, the letter circulated after the synod, that one could speak of three hypostases and still be orthodox. This was a significant step toward integration of the parties since prior to this there was no hope in convincing the Nicene leaning bishops that God could maintain his unicity amidst the claim of separate hypostases. If the term hypostasis remained synonymous with that of “essence” or “being” represented by ousia, then one was slipping ever closer toward a divinity that was divided and rendered the long tradition of monotheism a mistake. This was not a simple fix for the traditions that, as we have noted, were divided along far more complicated political and social lines than the simple terminology of current theologies. This moment is, however, significant for having acknowledged that much of the confusion was

17

his see.

One more exile in 365–366 would be the only other time Athanasius was away from

Ibid., 639. The Eustathians were also a significant party. They were those who recognized no bishop of Antioch since Eustathius was removed from office in 327 by Eusebius of Caesarea. They were deeply Nicene, rejecting the Eusebians, Homoiousians, Homoians, Meletians, and Neo-Arians. Hanson notes that the synod of 362 was likely instrumental in pushing them from the “one hypostasis in the Godhead” phrase of Nicaea, to “three hypostases.” Ibid., 643. 18 19

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due to terminology and that these sites of misunderstanding were now identified and capable of further work by the younger generations of theologians. 20 This brief but rather complicated history of the years following the first Council gives some sense of the mash-up of political, theological, and social concerns that influenced the coming deliberations of the 381 Council in Constantinople. If Athanasius’s Nicene Christology was one ship in the flotilla, it was already battered and would be turned by the wind many more times before sailing into the harbor of later Councils. Whether 381 can even be considered a harbor is worth considering as we further explore the many parties and figures that make their voices heard in the fourth century. Several names can be applied to a theory that seemed advantageous for making sense of a God that had to remain one but still operate in three distinct ways. Modalism, perhaps the most descriptive of the terms, frames this theory into a theological schema in which a single God acts in distinct modes as the Father, Son, and Spirit. This theory dates back to a group of theologians centered in Rome in the early third century that included Praxeas/Pope Callistus, Noetus, and Sabellius. 21 The notion of homoousios itself, which was affirmed at Nicaea – if only cursorily – lent itself to a Monarchian viewpoint. If the Son and Father were the same ousia, then that being or substance could operate in different modes to accomplish discrete acts and powers. It could act as Creator (Father), Savior (Son), and Sanctifier (Holy Spirit), all while maintaining its unicity of power or being. Theological consensus, however, was shifting away from an affirmation of one power in three modes, and toward an idea of one ousia made known in three persons (or hypostases). The question of how indeed God could be both the Father and the Son, was only to be further complicated by whether and how the Spirit should be included. A similar question regarding the role of the Holy Spirit was present in the minds and arguments of many third and fourth century bishops and theologians. Some considered the problem of the Father and Son to be unique, with the Holy Spirit playing a sideline role as God’s Spirit, making things happen like the Day of Pentecost or Mary’s conception, but not worthy of being called an individual aspect or personage of God. 22 On one hand, it is easy for the modern reader to assume the Spirit was a separate third entity, given the enormous weight of tradition behind Ibid., 645. A second group of Monarchians, called the Dynamic Monarchians and associated with Paul of Samosata, held that the Father’s power possessed Jesus of Nazareth and could be called God but was not confused as a second divinity. Note that Praxeas may simply refer to Callistus, in that it can simply mean “busybody.” McGuckin, The Westminster Handbook to Patristic Theology, 226–227. 22 This led to some declaring a phase of binitarianism, but Hanson argues otherwise, citing Novatian, who held the Spirit as separate and divine even though “radically subordinated.” Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 738. 20 21

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Trinitarian theology. It is, however, helpful to consider the raw, unworked facts of the New Testament and place them in conversation with the leading thinkers of the day. One of the most prominent and influential thinkers was Eusebius of Caesarea (d. 340). Well known for his ecclesiastical histories, panegyric of Constantine, and devotion to Origen, Eusebius was also known to have defended Arius prior to Nicaea and been at odds with the Nicene party over his inability to accept ousia as a proper term for the transcendent deity. 23 Eusebius states in his Ecclesiastical Theology, “But the Spirit the Paraclete is neither God nor Son, since he has not received his origin (genesis) from the Father in the same way as the Son has, and is one of the things which have come into existence through the Son.” 24 With the affirmation of Nicaea, the spirit was included but not strictly dealt with or understood. Given the terse statement “and in the Holy Spirit,” it seems more of an afterthought or acknowledgment that all aspects of the divine should be included. But was God’s self a spirit, or rather a being which had a spirit? The realization that these details had not been sorted begins to emerge in the multiplicity of creeds developed in the period after 325 and leading up to 360. The second of the four creeds recorded at Antioch in 341 holds that the Spirit was “given to those who believe for comfort and sanctification and perfection,” and “the names [Father/Son/Holy Spirit]… signify exactly the particular hypostasis and order and glory of each of those who are named, so that they are three in hypostasis but one in agreement.” 25 Hanson notes that this creed is not specific as to whether the Spirit is God or not, but simply is one of the hierarchy. In 343 the Western bishops at Serdica circulated a doctrinal statement that reaffirmed that the Spirit was sent as “Comforter” and “adders” like Valens and Ursacius, from the Arian asp, had tried to say that the “Logos and the Spirit was pierced and wounded and died and rose again…and…that the hypostases of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit are distinct and are separate.” 26 The invective goes on to say that the Spirit “did not suffer, but [rather] the man whom he put on, whom he assumed from the Virgin Mary, the man who was capable of suffering, because man is mortal but God is immortal.” 27 Eusebius was condemned at the Council of Antioch in 324, but defended himself at Nicaea, maintaining his orthodoxy alongside his reservations about applying the term ousia. His allegiance to Origen, like his teacher Pamphilus, as well as his intermittent alliances against Athanasius with Eusebius of Nicomedia – a staunch supporter of Arius – renders a fascinating politicized picture of the theological debates in this period. McGuckin, The Westminster Handbook to Patristic Theology, 128. 24 Eccl. Theol. III.5.159–163; 6.164, in Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 740. 25 Athanasius, De Synodis 23 in Ibid., 286, 741. 26 Ibid., 301. 27 Ibid., 302. 23

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It is clear that the Church was at odds with how to understand the Spirit in the context of the incarnation since it was given from God to Jesus at his baptism, but also was instrumental in Christ’s incarnation in Mary’s womb. Was the Spirit sent to rest on Jesus of Nazareth, much like the Logos had been thought to rest in the flesh of the human being, or was the Spirit the comforting agent that would continue to operate with God from above – or was it both, since Christ was also “truly” God, the Spirit would not be estranged from him. This, of course, begs the question of why God saw it necessary to send his Spirit down to Jesus at his baptism. The documents from Serdica gave way to a creed known as the Macrostich, or long-liner, which was produced in 343 or 344 and was presented to Constans. The Macrostich affirms the notion of the holy Trinity, but in its explanation of the Godhead leaves out the Spirit. Hanson thinks this omission is not an accident, citing the following language: “the wholly perfect and most holy Trinity, that is in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, calling the Father God and the Son God, but these are not two gods, but we confess one rank of Godhead and close harmony of sovereignty.” 28 Later writers would be far more explicit about the role of the Spirit. The “Letter of George of Laodicea” from 359 is one of the first to include the Holy Spirit in the Godhead, stating, “they confess the Holy Spirit also, whom the Scripture names the Paraclete, recognizing him as subsisting from the Father through the Son.” 29 Hilary of Poitiers (c. 315–367) adds a significant voice to the chorus of theologians in the fourth century. Similar to Athanasius in his affirmation of the Nicene Creed and facing the same exiled status that he did after facing off with Constantius, Hilary was instrumental in thinking about how the Holy Spirit related to the Godhead. Whereas his pneumatology has been called “undeveloped,” others have noted that he “goes farther, indeed, than Basil of Caesarea ever went, more than a decade before Basil wrote his great work on the Holy Spirit.” 30 Hilary made a significant addition to the confusing proliferation of Councils in the East by treating them in his De Synodis. In this text he claims that, “I have set down all the creeds which have been promulgated at different times and places since the holy Council of Nicaea, with my appended explanations of all the phrases and even words employed.” 31 In the end, he explains that “To approve of ὁμοιούσιον, we need not disapprove of Ibid., 742. Ibid., 743. 30 McGuckin notes that although he renders the Holy Spirit as divine, in contradistinction to the Arian movement, he “conceives it as a dynamic power of God more than a distinct person or hypostasis.” Hanson holds that Hilary fails to make a satisfactory distinction between the Son and the Spirit, but perhaps has the original idea of structure in his usage of the phrase “the voice of a voice,” that perhaps later translates into “the image of an image” in the Cappadocian’s treatment. McGuckin, The Westminster Handbook to Patristic Theology, 163–164; Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 748. 31 Hilary of Poitiers, De Synodis, NPNF 2–9, 146. 28 29

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ὁμοούσιον,” thus signifying his own affinity for the Homoiousians. 32 We will now turn to that one letter of distinction that carried far more weight than the diminutive script it indicated. Two main schools of Arianism emerge as contenders after the first Council. The first, which is associated with Aetius and Eunomius, can be addressed as NeoArianism. The second, which we might label Homoian Arianism was championed by Philostorgius and later was challenged by the Cappadocian theologians. 33 As the fourth century rolled away from Nicaea and the consummate moment of enforced theological agreement, it was clear that the “Arians” were not simply going to give up their claims because a converted emperor and his advisor saw fit to force consensus. As the movement gained energy and followers, the upholders of Nicaea, led often by Athanasius, found themselves struggling to articulate just exactly what was meant by homoousios or “of the same substance.” Even though they had Constantine’s approval and the weight of the Council behind them, the burden of proof was always on their shoulders. On the Arian side of things it was much simpler. A few simple questions could send the Nicene party into a tailspin trying to affirm a creedal term that was found nowhere referring to Christ in the New Testament. The Arians had distanced themselves from the simple questioning of Arius and morphed into a community best described as Homoians. It is wrongheaded to think that the Arians were heretics and could be simply routed out of the Churches. Like any historical haeresis, or school of thought, they were making the same claims to ownership of the Christian Church that the proto-Orthodox were. 34 Homoios, the Greek term meaning “like” seemed a much more appropriate treatment of the relationship between Father and Son than did homos which meant they were the same. Indeed, from the Arian perspective, how could they be the same if they were separated at times and embodied different aspects of varying levels of divineness throughout time? Rather than affirming homoousios, particular Arian factions preferred a variety of other terms, including homoios, homoiousios, and even heterousios. If one disengages from the mountain of historical tradition, it is quite interesting to consider the problems these seekers of middle ground, like the Homoians, were trying to solve. They refused sameness as readily as they did radical difference. In many ways making Christ like the Father solved certain glaring issues like Christ’s seeming absence leading up to the incarnation, the dialogue in which Christ calls him Father

Ibid., 185. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 557. 34 With many, I would problematize the facile nomenclature of “orthodox” being applied too early to these movements, since given the size and influence of the movement of “Arians” it was hardly clear who would end up claiming the banner of “Orthodox.” 32 33

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– thus subordinating himself, and the thorny problems surrounding his birth and death. 35 Homoian Arianism can be distinguished from Neo-Arianism along a few lines of argument. Whereas Homoian Arianism was a “diverse phenomenon” encompassing both Greek and Latin-speaking communities, Neo-Arianism was specifically that brand of belief stemming from Aetius and Eunomius, affirmed by Philostorgius, deeply indebted to Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy, and which was attacked by Gregory of Nyssa and the Cappadocians. 36 Homoian Arianism is linked to the creed of Sirmium in 357 and according to Hanson begins sometime around this date. 37 In total, 12 creeds from this period can be taken as Homoian Arian renderings of Christology. The text from the Sirmium Creed, as recorded by Hilary of Poitier, is worth looking at in some detail here to get a sense of what was at stake: But since some or many persons were disturbed by questions concerning substance, called in Greek οὐσία, that is, to make it understood more exactly, as to ὁμοούσιον, or what is called ὁμοιούσιον, there ought to be no mention made of these at all. Nor ought any exposition to be made of them for the reason and consideration that they are not contained in the divine Scriptures, and that they are above man’s understanding, nor can any man declare the birth of the Son, of whom it is written, Who shall declare His generation? For it is plain that only the Father knows how He begot the Son, and the Son how He was begotten of the Father. There is no question that the Father is greater. No one can doubt that the Father is greater than the Son in honour, dignity, splendour, majesty, and in the very name of Father, the Son Himself testifying, He that sent Me is greater than I. And no one is ignorant that it is Catholic doctrine that there are two Persons of Father and Son; and that the Father is greater, and that the Son is subordinated to the Father, together with all things which the Father has subordinated to Him, and that the Father has no beginning and is invisible, immortal and impassible, but that the Son has been begotten of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, and that the generation of this Son, as is aforesaid, no one knows but His Father. And that the Son of God Himself, our Lord and God, as we read, took flesh, that is, a body, that is, man of the womb of the Virgin Mary, of the Angel announced. And as all the Scriptures teach, and especially the doctor of the Gentiles himself, He took of Mary the Virgin, man, through whom He suffered. And the whole faith is summed up and secured in this, that the Trinity must always be preserved, Several issues emerge in later debates concerning whether Christ could be considered God in swaddling clothes, and how Christ could have been God and still beg God to let the cup pass from him at the passion. 36 Hanson argues that it “precipitates a crystallization of a number of different theological positions which had till that point been confused or no more than latent.” Ibid., 557. 37 Ibid., 558. 35

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TODD E. FRENCH as we read in the Gospel, Go ye and baptize all nations in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Complete and perfect is the number of the Trinity. How the Paraclete, the Spirit, is through the Son: Who was sent and came according to His promise in order to instruct, teach and sanctify the apostles and all believers.” 38

Close readers will notice that the Homoian Arians were rather in line with the protoorthodox Church on many points, except for their acknowledgment that the Father is greater than the Son. To this point they apply a scriptural quote from Jesus in John 14:28. A stream of proof texts that the Homoians used in their proofs of their position were generated, including their “trump card” in Proverbs 8:22 where Wisdom (Logos?) states, “The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago.” 39 The main sticking point is exemplified here in the word “created.” If this Wisdom figure was the Logos, just what was meant by the detail that God created him; should it suggest subordination as much as subsequence? While this text might suggest that the Logos came later in sequence, factions interpreted this in varying ways as proof for or against subordination. The Homoian Arians would render this as proof of subordination, while the Homoiousians, championed by figures like Hilary, would consider the subsequent Logos as maintaining some distinction of origination while affirming unity or mutual interpenetration. 40 A further issue was the problematic terminology surrounding these debates which had been a point of contention since someone – perhaps Ossius of Cordoba (see chapter on Nicaea) – proposed the term homoousios. The Homoians cite the fact that the terms ousia and homoousios are not found in the divine scriptures and thus have no business being used in the determination or description of Christ. We can see here a reliance on the literal scriptural interpretation that these Homoians supported. 41 Hanson points out that both the Nicenes and the Homoians shared an aversion to any teaching that would affirm that God had suffered in the crucifixion. The Homoians could avow that God the Son had undergone suffering, albeit with qualifications. The Nicenes were limited to thinking about suffering only within the economy or plan (Oikonomia) of salvation, as it was mysteriously represented by Paul (Eph. 1:3–14, Col. 1:25–26). Hanson notes that the Homoians were on “stronger ground” than their opponents since an acknowledgment of Jesus as the full authentic Godhead would require an answer to how he was able to undergo the crucifixion. Here Hilary of Poitiers, De Synodis, NPNF 2–9, 11, 148–149. Hanson notes Hilary’s multiple other scriptural citations in use by the Homoians, including Exodus 7.1, Psalms 82:6, Isaiah 53:8 and 65:16, Deuteronomy 6:4, Mark 5:30, 9:32, 10:18 and 12:29, I Timothy 2:5 and 6:15, Romans 16:25–27, John 11:14, 11:34, 16:30 and 17:3, Malachi 3:6, James 1:17, Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 559–560. 40 McGuckin, The Westminster Handbook to Patristic Theology, 163. 41 Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 561. 38 39

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one finds the Nicenes backed up to the question of Patripassianism and the notions of Modalism. A distinction can be made here between the suffering of the father and the suffering of God (theopassianism), which was a far more palatable model. Rather than the claim that the Father/God suffered on the cross, this model suggested that God chose to allow suffering of the Christ through the economy of salvation. This same “oikonomic” language would later prove helpful in the debate between Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius as to whether and how certain attributes could be ascribed to Jesus. Perhaps most eloquently charged are the words of Palladius to Ambrose, where he asks, “Why do you speak of the Father, whose relation to the Son you attack as not consisting in goodwill, whereas in fact he begat a Son rather subordinated, as he chose, than equal, as you wish?” 42 The Nicenes were in the unenviable position of affirming the Nicene Council’s creedal statements, while making sense of scripture and tradition that was marked by a flavor of Monotheism. A further delineation of the “Arian” position is helpful here, which is regularly described as Neo-Arian. Although nomenclature varies on this group, they are in essence the community that picked up on the more radical ideas of Arianism and promoted them throughout the fourth century. Rather than consider Christ like the Father or the same the Neo-Arians affirmed that it would be wrongheaded to think that a generated being, like Christ, could approximate the ingenerate Father. It is a further simplification of the Nicene position leading to a concept that the Son was simply dissimilar to God, or anhomoios. This term and the resulting sobriquet of Anomeans (and its variants) for this community have been critiqued along the lines that Neo-Arians repudiated the concept of “unlikeness” on numerous occasions. 43 Aetius, the intellectual leader of this movement, was by trade a bronzesmith or metal worker who rose up to renown as a logician and sophist in Alexandria. 44 After a few years practicing medicine, Aetius turned his attention to theology and by the mid 340s was moving in circles that put him in contact with powerful bishops and Caesars such as Gallus. He was eventually banished to Phrygia in 358 by Constantius who was not fond of Aetius’s teaching or his association with Gallus. 45 When the joint Council of Seleucia and Ariminum was called in 359, Aetius returned and engaged in a debate held later in Constantinople. Four accounts render Aetius’s position differently, Gryson, Scolies Ariennes 272.85. in Ibid., 567. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 598; Manlio Simonetti, Studi sull’arianesimo (Editrice Studium, 1965); Henry Melvill Gwatkin, The Arian Controversy (Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908). 44 Given the abbreviated treatment of this topic, I have chosen to focus on Aetius to give a vignette of the movement. The necessary omission is the work and life of his secretary Eunomius. McGuckin, The Westminster Handbook to Patristic Theology, 2; Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 599. 45 Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 600. 42 43

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ranging from espousing the anhomoion (Theodoret of Cyrrhus) to upholding the doctrine of the Son’s unchangeable likeness to the Father (Philostorgius). 46 Aetius’s position was probably not so geared toward discrediting the likeness of the Son to the Father, but affirming that the Son was of a different substance (heterousios) from the Father. Although “unchangeably like” the Father, this was perhaps never affirmed in the category of substance (ousia). 47 It is possible that Constantius was upset by Aetius’s usage of the term ousia, since the Homoian Arians had lobbied hard against its usage, or perhaps the term “unchangeably” was the sticking point, since they had posited the Son must be able to change and become incarnate. 48 When Julian came into power, Aetius also returned to fairer circumstances, reclaiming an estate in Lesbos and possibly even becoming governor, according to Philostorgius. 49 Aetius’s sole extant work is the Syntagmation, which holds 37 propositions in answer to Athanasius’s De Decretis, or Defense of the Nicene Faith. Several important points in this work center around the question of whether God could be called ingenerate – that is not created – and go on to create himself again in a Son that should be called ingenerate. To say they were the same ousia, would require that the Son also be ingenerate. This movement from ingenerate to generate and perhaps the possibility of moving from generate back to ingenerate was a sticking point for Aetius and his Neo-Arians. He explains: If God, he says, is ingenerate in his ousia, then that which he begets is not begotten by a difference of ousia, but of the ousia which gives it existence. But it is impious to say that the same ousia can be both ingenerate and generate…. If the ingenerate is generated, why should not the generate become ingenerate? But every nature tends toward what is proper to it and away from what is not proper. 50

The issue is of course how to render the incarnation as the same ousia and also something generated from the ingenerate. If it were to be the same ousia, Aetius would question how it could be anything other than ingenerate, though generated. He goes on: If God can really turn himself into a generating agency, what he generates cannot possibly possess his whole ousia because it is generated and not generator, and anyway this implies that this ousia is not beyond transformation. But if God is beyond transformation and greater than cause, then “talk of a Son” must be confessed to go no further than the name. 51 Epiphanius and Sozomenus also give accounts. Ibid., 600–601. Ibid., 601. 48 Ibid., 601. 49 Philostorgius, Ecclesiastical History IX.4, Ibid., 603. 50 Epiphanius, Panarion 76.12.8 (353, 354) in Ibid., 607. 51 Epiphanius, Panarion 76.12.5–6 (353). in Ibid., 608. 46 47

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The Son is God in name alone but not in reality, sharing this appellation with the Father at best honorifically. The notion of a name or title in juxtaposition to an essence or expressed reality is significant for understanding the Neo-Arian and Nicene positions. For the Neo-Arian, calling God ingenerate was not simply one of several other descriptions that could be used to get at an understanding of God, it characterized God’s essence. The Nicenes held “ingenerate” as just one of several applicable names for God. 52 The difference between these two platforms is evident in whether a name or description exemplifies the essence of the being, or is a signifier, used simply as a way of understanding or describing that being. When the NeoArians call God ingenerate, they are pointing toward an essence that is impossible to separate from God as God, and is not transferable to any other being. The Nicenes were willing to divorce themselves from this formula and affirm that the name “ingenerate” could be applied to both Father and Son, especially if the Son were the same ousia as the Father. Aetius’s careful treatment of what he sees as the major issue with the Nicene position comes near the end of his treatise. The ingenerate being, God, has to be one and indivisible. It is not possible in Aetius’s worldview for God to act as creator of another ingenerate being that is himself and yet retain the ability, as infinite, immutable, ingenerate being, to look on both created and uncreated ousiai. He explains: How can the ingenerate God, since he is free from all finiteness in contrast to everything else which is finite, and since he cannot transcend his own source, observe at one time his second ousia in the issue and at another time his first ousia in the ingenerate, preserving the order of first and second?… If the ingenerate is independent of all cause and there are many ingenerate things, they will all have an immutable nature. It is impossible to imagine them having two natures, one creative, the other having experienced becoming. 53

Aetius’s work did much to sharpen the Nicenes’ arguments on the philosophical end of things. Whereas the Nicenes had opened the door to philosophy by bringing in the term ousia, rather than sticking to scriptural phraseology, Aetius was happy to go along, focusing mainly on arguments that had little grounding in scriptural proofs. 54 This is not to say that they were without value or proficiency. Basil of Caesarea, one of the great architects of Trinitarian thought, is known to have retreated from an intellectual showdown with Aetius. 55 Aetius was instrumental in bringing together the second Council of Sirmium that met in 357 and produced a creed that gave the Nicenes and Homoiousians both Ibid., 608. Epiphanius, Panarion 76.12.31, 33 (358). in Ibid., 609. 54 Ibid., 610. 55 Ibid., 610. 52 53

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something to rally against. The creed was readily accepted by Eudoxius the new bishop of Antioch, and also was signed by Ossius who was at this point one hundred years old, and perhaps less mentally sharp than in his youth. It was not long before oppositional communities were incited to movement against these claims of subordination of the Son. With the Neo-Arians and Homoian Arians in place, it is worth looking closely at the Homoiousian party that served in some ways to bridge the gap to the Nicenes. To get a sense of the Homoiousian party, we turn now to a man named Basil who was appointed bishop of Ancyra in 336 and set about delineating a medial position between the Arian leaning groups and the Nicene party. He intended to uphold the ousia terminology while governing any facile usage of the term homos. While ousia worked for Basil to think about the substance of God, he was wary of accepting that these two substances could be the same. His argument centers on the relationship of the Father to the Son, and continually relates it back to the conception of how Fathers and Sons relate. They are not the “same” but are surely “like” each other in substance, carrying similar genes, traits, powers, etc. The term homoiousion took root here and a following was quickly generated. When the bishops led by Basil of Ancyra met in Ancyra in 358 to respond to the homoian-oriented creed developed and promulgated from Sirmium the previous year, the outcome was a creed and list of anathemas that clearly distanced itself from Homoian and Nicene alike. As recorded in Epiphanius’s Panarion, Basil explains: We are not baptized into a “creator and a created” but into a Father and a Son, and creator/created is one thing and Father/Son another. If we argue from our human experience of fathers and sons we can observe certain points: i) we notice that the Son is like the Father; ii) we must not allow the thought of passibility to enter this relationship (as we must in the case of human fathers and sons), nor of corporeal existence; but with these safeguards we can apply the words “creature” and “creator” to Son and Father. Thus, when all proper eliminations and allowances have been made, “there shall be left the single concept of likeness”… We must distinguish between the relationship of creator/creature and that of Father/Son. The salient irreducible element in the latter is “the begetting of a living being that is like in ousia, because every father is thought of as a father of an ousia which is like his.” 56

The concern Basil had in only registering creator/creature was that there was no link between the two other than the virtue of having been created by God. 57 By applying the term “like” in the context of the Father/Son, Basil affirms that there is more in common by way of substance. Although they may not be the same, they are alike in 56 57

Epiphanius, Panarion 73.3.1–73.4.3 in Ibid., 352–353. Ibid., 353.

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ways that put the relationship in a special status, outside of comparison to humanity’s relationship to the divine as created being. Within Basil’s attached series of anathemas, recorded by Epiphanius and Hilary, he distinguishes his belief from those who say the likeness of ousia means they are identical. On the other end of the equation, he critiques those who posit they are unlike each other. Many followers of Basil’s position were happy to have the less materialist option in speaking about God’s substance. 58 If there was a glaring problem with Basil’s treatment, it was that it did not solve the problem of Arian subordination, from which the entire question was generated. 59 Being the “same” substance was the attempt on the part of the Nicenes to register the Son as equal to the Father and steer clear of any duality of Gods. Basil’s work was communicated to Constantius and a general consensus began to build against the Neo-Arians along the lines of the Homoiousians. With the agreement of Pope Liberius, Constantius, and the mitigating tones of letters from Athanasius and Hilary regarding the homoiousian terminology, Basil surely saw this as the moment to seal the language for posterity. 60 Basil called an oikoumenical council that was to meet in two sections, Rimini in the West and Seleucia in Asia Minor. In Sirmium in 359, prior to the Council, a group of bishops met to sort out the particulars of the coming Council. Here the “Dated Creed” was produced, sidestepping Basil’s terminology and reverting to the simple usage of homoian, rather than homoiousian. 61 We see again here the complicated nature of theologies in the political sphere. While some wanted the simplest creed possible, casting out any language that might trip up a group, others were looking for the most specific and accurate creedal language they could muster by way of scripture, theology, philosophy, and of course that sticking point of Nicene language and the traditions of the Church in which it was now entrenched. The Rimini Council had a large attendance of some 400 bishops and with serious coercion saw the Dated Creed signed by all. 62 In the East, 150 bishops gathered in Seleucia in 359 but came to no consensus. Constantius was enlisted by the homoian leaning Acacius later that year and at the turn of the year 360 in Constantinople, the emperor pushed forward a creed no less forcefully and no more ill-conceived than his Father had thirty-five years earlier. It was to be a simpler, more agreeable statement about the nature of Christ to which everyone could agree. Christ was like the Father, indeed from Constantius and the other Homoian’s perspective this was a baseline that could hold all in communion without alienating one or the other parMcGuckin, The Westminster Handbook to Patristic Theology, 171. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 355. 60 Frend, The Rise of Christianity, 540. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid., 540–541. 58 59

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ties. In reality, the Nicenes – still struggling to make the first Council stick – and the Homoiousians – believing that to say nothing of the substance was to say nothing at all – were both disappointed with the outcome. The Creed of Nicaea, promulgated by Constantius stated, “We declare that the Son is like (homoion) the Father.” 63 Bishops were exiled and replaced in many major sees and it appeared that the battle troop fighting for Nicaea was being dealt its final blow. The famous phrase from St. Jerome encapsulates the feeling of the losing factions, “Down with the Faith of Nicaea was the cry. The whole world groaned, astonished to find itself Arian.” 64 But that was not the only predicament in which they found themselves, they were also soon to find themselves under the leadership of someone with views far more distasteful than Homoian Arianism. Julian, the pagan Caesar, had been raised to the purple in Gaul and a little more than a year later was marching toward his cousin Constantius who was battling the Persians with limited success. 65 One wonders if the Nicenes would have been able to muster the political power necessary to overturn Constantius’s moves in 360. In many ways, Julian’s hands-off approach to the conflicts over who legitimately held sees allowed the Nicenes to gain back much of the ground they had lost under Constantius. Julian’s attention to pagan revival and his abbreviated reign played favorably for the Nicenes, who could return from exile – like Athanasius had – and regroup. In 362 Athanasius called his very important conference at Alexandria to discuss peace and work toward a shared understanding of the factions’ terminologies and underlying meanings. Athanasius covers many important points in his Tome to the Antioch community, including an initial treatment of the Holy Trinity and a call for peace among those who fight against common enemies. On the question of whether the Holy Spirit should be considered subordinate to the Father and Son he states, “For this is in truth a complete renunciation of the abominable heresy of the Arians, to refuse to divide the Holy Trinity, or to say that any part of it is a creature. For those who, while pretending to cite the faith confessed at Nicaea, venture to blaspheme the Holy Spirit, do nothing more than in words deny the Arian heresy while they retain it in thought.” 66 Athanasius gets down to the most basic questions at play in this Tome, playing out scenarios in which communities are asked about what they mean by certain terms. He gives an example for his readers to follow in their own, future theological discussions in section five: For as to those whom some were blaming for speaking of three Subsistences [hypostases], on the ground that the phrase is unscriptural and therefore suspicious, we thought it right indeed to require nothing beyond the confession of Nicaea, Hanson, Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 380. St. Jerome, Dialogus Contra Luciferanos, NPNF 2–9, 19, 329. 65 Frend, The Rise of Christianity, 599–601. 66 Athanasius, Tomus Ad Antiochus, NPNF 2–4, 3, 1189. 63 64

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but on account of the contention we made enquiry of them, whether they meant, like the Arian madmen, subsistences foreign and strange, and alien in essence from one another, and that each Subsistence was divided apart by itself, as is the case with creatures in general and in particular with those begotten of men, or like different substances, such as gold, silver, or brass; – or whether, like other heretics, they meant three Beginnings and three Gods, by speaking of three Subsistences. 67

He continues: Having accepted then these men’s interpretation and defense of their language, we made enquiry of those blamed by them for speaking of One Subsistence, whether they use the expression in the sense of Sabellius, to the negation of the Son and the Holy Spirit, or as though the Son were non-substantial, or the Holy Spirit impersonal. But they in their turn assured us that they neither meant this nor had ever held it, but “we use the word Subsistence thinking it the same thing to say Subsistence or Essence [ousia];” “But we hold that there is One, because the Son is of the Essence of the Father, and because of the identity of nature. For we believe that there is one Godhead, and that it has one nature, and not that there is one nature of the Father, from which that of the Son and of the Holy Spirit are distinct.” Well, thereupon they who had been blamed for saying there were three Subsistences agreed with the others, while those who had spoken of One Essence, also confessed the doctrine of the former as interpreted by them. And by both sides Arius was anathematised as an adversary of Christ, and Sabellius, and Paul of Samosata, as impious men, and Valentinus and Basilides as aliens from the truth, and Manichaeus as an inventor of mischief. And all, by God’s grace, and after the above explanations, agree together that the faith confessed by the fathers at Nicaea is better than the said phrases, and that for the future they would prefer to be content to use its language. 68

Although Athanasius certainly hopes that all will eventually come around to the old affirmation of the Nicene Creed, he is also realistic about attaining a middle ground and hopes that peace will carry the day. A final section brings this forward nicely and is worth quoting in the midst of the profusion of vitriolic language of this century: These things then being thus confessed, we exhort you not hastily to condemn those who so confess, and so explain the phrases they use, nor to reject them, but rather to accept them as they desire peace and defend themselves, while you Ibid., 1190. I have updated some language from the NPNF series. Athanasius, Tomus Ad Antiochus, NPNF 2–4, 6, 1191. 67 68

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TODD E. FRENCH check and rebuke, as of suspicious views, those who refuse so to confess and to explain their language. But while you refuse toleration to the latter, counsel the others also who explain and hold aright, not to enquire further into each other’s opinions, nor to fight about words to no useful purpose, nor to go on contending with the above phrases, but to agree in the mind of piety… But do ye, as good men and faithful servants and stewards of the Lord, stop and check what gives offence and is strange, and value above all things peace of that kind, faith being sound. Perhaps God will have pity on us, and unite what is divided, and, there being once more one flock, we shall all have one leader, even our Lord Jesus Christ. 69

Under Emperor Jovian, the successor to Julian, this peace seemed attainable. With his death a year later (364), Valentinian took power in the West and orchestrated power for his brother Valens in the East. The dynamic had quickly changed. Although Valentinian was Nicene leaning, he maintained a very hands-off approach, stating, “I am a layman and should not interfere in these things [definition of the faith]. Let the priests whose concern these matters are, assemble as they please.” 70 Valens, for his part picked up where Constantius had left off, forcing bishops to agree to homoian terminology. 71 This often took the form of severe persecution resulting in exile, prison, and death. 72 Things looked grimmer than ever for the ProNicene community. They were in desperate need of new leadership that could carry on the work of Athanasius in the East. Not surprisingly, attention turned toward an astute theologian named Basil, from Cappadocia. Together with their friend Gregory from Nazianzus, Basil of Caesarea and his brother, Gregory of Nyssa, made up a powerhouse of intellectual acumen, rigorous Christian practice, and political power. 73 Lewis Ayres proposes using caution, however, in speaking of them as a unified group in any format other than geographical and familial relations. 74 Indeed, at times their theologies seem more akin to others Ibid., 1192. Frend, The Rise of Christianity, 617–618. 71 Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 791–792. 72 Hanson notes that when “a delegation of clergy from the capital of the ‘Homoousian’ or ‘Homoiousian’ persuasion sent to Valens at Nicomedia was rebuffed by the Emperor…he is alleged to have put them on board a ship to transport them across the strait. The ship caught fire and they all perished. Whether the fire was accidental or deliberate we cannot tell.” Ibid., 791. 73 We should not overlook the valuable contributions his sister Macrina certainly must have made to this cohort, although her literary contributions are non-existent, like most women in antiquity. 74 Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 251. 69 70

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than to each other. 75 Although from deep within Asia Minor, not commanding the power of ports or historical legacies, the Cappadocians made a lasting impression on orthodoxy through their writings leading up to and presence in the Council of Constantinople. Basil was a masterful Churchman, exhibiting skills that rivaled the great Athanasius. He spoke with authority, and had the intellect to match it. 76 After pursuing studies in rhetoric at the most prestigious sites in Constantinople and Athens, he returned to Caesarea to teach. He was present with Basil of Ancyra at the 359 Council in Constantinople and took part in debates there with the Neo-Arians. 77 Basil bided his time under Eusebius of Caesarea and eventually became bishop around 371. It was not an enviable situation. Valens was in power and was keen on removing bishops that were Pro-Nicene. Valens visited Caesarea with little outcome, except to eventually split the see in half, thereby reducing the number of Churches Basil oversaw by half and causing a bishop in Tyana named Anthimus to quickly claim the role of Metropolitan, given the shift in the number of Churches he oversaw. Basil worked quickly to adjust the numbers, creating new sees and consecrating his friends as bishops of the towns. Most notably for our purposes was the placement of Gregory of Nazianzus in the see of Sasima, a small, worthless town that Gregory described as an “Utterly dreadful, pokey little hole; a paltry horse-stop… a Ibid., 250–251. In Oration 43, Gregory of Nazianzus describes a situation that exemplifies Basil’s resolve: “Then indeed the prefect became excited, and rose from his seat, boiling with rage, and making use of harsher language. “What?” said he, “have you no fear of my authority? “Fear of what?” said Basil, “How could it affect me?” “Of what? Of any one of the resources of my power.” “What are these?” said Basil, “pray, inform me.” “Confiscation, banishment, torture, death.” “Have you no other threat?” said he, “for none of these can reach me.” “How indeed is that?” said the prefect. “Because,” he replied, “a man who has nothing, is beyond the reach of confiscation; unless you demand my tattered rags, and the few books, which are my only possessions. Banishment is impossible for me, who am confined by no limit of place, counting my own neither the land where I now dwell, nor all of that into which I may be hurled; or, rather, counting it all God’s, whose guest and dependent I am. As for tortures, what hold can they have upon one whose body has ceased to be? Unless you mean the first stroke, for this alone is in your power. Death is my benefactor, for it will send me the sooner to God, for Whom I live, and exist, and have all but died, and to Whom I have long been hastening.” Amazed at this language, the prefect said, “No one has ever yet spoken thus, and with such boldness, to Modestus.” “Why, perhaps,” said Basil, “you have not met with a Bishop, or in his defence of such interests he would have used precisely the same language.” Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration XLIII: Funeral Oration on the Great S. Basil, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, NPNF 2–7, 812. 77 Hanson notes that these might not have been so successful. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 680. 75 76

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place wholly devoid of water, vegetation, or the company of gentlemen.” 78 Gregory was certainly happy to help out his beloved friend, but could not have foreseen the terrible consequence of his consecration as bishop in this small town. 79 There are numerous extant works and letters attributed to Basil, but perhaps the most important is his work on the Holy Spirit (De Spiritu Sancto). In his treatment of the Trinity, he is careful to use numerical terminology about only those things which can be understood, like the hypostases of God. To say that God is three in number would be to say that God’s ousia could be split into three different essences. He explains in detail: When the Lord handed over “Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit,” he did not hand it over with number, for he did not say “into the first, second, and third,” and he did not say “into one, two, and three.” Rather, through the holy names, he gave the knowledge of the faith that leads to salvation. And so, what saves us is faith. Number has been invented as a sign that indicates quantity of substances, but they use even the ability to count against the faith and thus bring harm on themselves from all sides. Even though nothing else is changed when number is applied to it, these men are the sort who, when it comes to the divine nature, carefully use number so that by it they should not exceed the measure of honor that is owed to the Paraclete. O most clever of men, it is best to let what is unattainable remain beyond number. … Either let the unspeakable be honored by silence or let holy things be counted piously. There is one God and Father and one Only-begotten and one Holy Spirit. We proclaim each of the persons singly. Now, when we must count them together we are not carried away to the concept of polytheism by uneducated counting. We do not count them as a group, making for ourselves an increase from one to many and saying “one, two, three.” Neither do we say “first, second, third”: For, “I God am the first and I am hereafter” (Is 44.6). Still we have not yet, even to this day, heard of a second God. By worshipping God from God, we confess the particularizing property of the persons and we stay within the monarchy. We do not scatter the divinity among a separated multitude because one form, as it were, has been imparted in the unchangeability of the Godhead and is contemplated in God the Father and God the Son, for the Son is in the Father, and the Father, in the Son. They have unity in the fact that the latter is whatever the former is and the former is whatever the latter is. And Eleutheroi. De Vita Sua, v. 441, PG 37, 1059 in John Anthony McGuckin, St. Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 197. 79 Hanson indicates that numerous historians have commented on the seeming selfpromoting moves that Basil engaged in as bishop. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 685–686. 78

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so, with regard to the particularity of the persons, they are one and one, but with regard to the common nature, both are one thing. 80

Basil’s death on January 1st, 379 would preclude him from participation in what would be looked back on as the greatest Council of the last five decades and the culmination of many of his ideas. He was extremely important for his influence on the outcome of Trinitarian thought. By distinguishing between the ousia and hypostases in his treatment of the Godhead, he paved the way forward for the Eastern bishops to accept the language of Nicaea and square it with their own theological leanings. 81 The distinction of persons with the same essence would eventually win the day in the language of homoousios with three distinct hypostases, although Basil thought that the term homoiousios was a more appropriate term. Gregory of Nyssa took Basil’s notion of the three hypostases of Fatherhood, Sonship and Sanctification, and tweaked it slightly further from mode to direction, holding the operations of the Godhead “extending from the Father, through the Son and in the Holy Spirit.” 82 When the Huns invaded Gothic territory, the Goths sought refuge from Rome and were allowed to cross into the Northern territories. This situation quickly turned sour and revolt of the refugee Goths turned rapidly into a situation in need of correction. The Emperor Valens responded in what would become his final campaign. In 378 he died at battle in Adrianople. Theodosius was sent as emperor to the East by the Western Emperor Gratian. Again, one should not underestimate the power of the Emperor in determining the final outcome of theological debates. Theodosius became ill at Thessalonica and like his Christian predecessors was baptized not knowing whether he would recover. At his baptism he professed the faith of Nicaea. Theodosius allowed all exiled bishops to return to their sees, setting the stage for a major shift in the power relations of the Eastern provinces. The cacophony of voices in the post-Nicene theological landscape of the fourth century was far less harmonious than Constantine and the Nicenes had envisioned. A few chords, began to blend, however, around the notion of God as a trihypostatic union of constituent parts. Moreover, the majority of proto-orthodox thinkers could now assert that the Father and Son were of the same or similar ousia, sharing operations, properties, and being. How these hypostases could be distinguished would require the sophisticated language of generational characteristics. The Father could be distinguished from the Son and Spirit by virtue of his paternity, while the Son was characterized by his filiation. In like manner, the Spirit would be distinguished by its procession from the Father. Christ could now be considered Basilius Magnus and Saint Basil, St. Basil the Great on the Holy Spirit, trans. David Anderson (Crestwood, N.Y: St Vladimirs Seminary Pr, 1980), 18. 44–45, 79–80. 81 Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils (325–787), 112. 82 Ibid., 114. 80

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God of God. All of these claims would be further nuanced and sharpened through the intellectual rigor of figures like Apollinaris, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Gregory of Nazianzus. It is to these figures that we now turn. A significant shift took place when Theodosius came into power in 379, following his father’s execution by Valentinian for suspicions of usurping power. 83 Gratian, who was Theodosius’s co-emperor in the West, revoked the edict of toleration he had issued from Sirmium that year, and together the emperors issued an edict that suppressed all heresies “under the terms of divine as well as imperial law.” 84 Theodosius’s family was Nicene, and it was clear with his baptism that the winds were changing, pushing the influence of the Western Nicenes back to the seats of power in the East. Gregory of Nazianzus happened to find himself on the front end of this movement with his new position in Constantinople and a proper pulpit from which he could begin promulgating the ideas he had been crafting in secluded collaborations with his Cappadocian cohort. As mentioned above, the relationship between him and Basil had deteriorated, given Basil’s relentless selfinterests. The intellectual ground the two had covered with Gregory of Nyssa, was solid and would eventually show the way forward to Trinitarian accord. It is fruitful to consider the work of Gregory of Nazianzus in two main divisions. On one hand he is skillfully assessing the theological aspects of God as God, while at other times exploring the oikonomic aspects of God in relation to humanity. Gregory shows his best theological work in his multiple works treating the Trinity. His language is philosophical yet clear, faithful yet well-examined, and is a culmination of nearly a century of speculation on how the divine persons related to each other as God. In Oration 29 on the Son, he began by acknowledging that there had always been different opinions concerning God. In particular: Anarchia, Polyarchia, and Monarchia. He argued that the first two categories were the stuff of “sport of the children of Hellas,” but the final one was the one he held in highest order, even if it is a Monarchy “not limited to one Person.” 85 He explains, this Monarchy is “made of an equality of Nature and a Union of mind, and an identity of motion, and a convergence of its elements to unity – a thing which is impossible to the created nature – so that though numerically distinct there is no severance of Essence. Therefore Unity having from all eternity arrived by motion at Duality, found its rest in Trinity.” 86 Gregory’s concept here is that it is both out of reach of our minds, but also possible to partially understand aspects of it by way of philosophical language. The Unity moved, not changed, toward Duality and found rest in the Trinity of persons with identical ousia. Ibid., 234. Ibid., 234. 85 Gregory of Nazianzus, Five Theological Orations, in NPNF 7, 2, Oration 29.2, 607. 86 Ibid., 607–608. 83 84

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Gregory went on to address the lingering question of the Arians which was still plaguing the Nicene theology: “When was the Son begotten?” To this he cleverly answers, “When the Father was not begotten. And when did the Holy Ghost proceed? When the Son was, not proceeding but, begotten – beyond the sphere of time, and above the grasp of reason.” 87 Distancing himself from any language that is rooted in time, such as “before,” “after,” and “from the beginning,” Gregory asserts again that these are not “timeless” as God is. The next issue he tackled was the question of why the Son is not unoriginate, but still eternal. To this he applied the logic that things that are unoriginate are eternal, but not all eternal things are unoriginate. Moreover, he argued that the causal relation does not always imply priority and posteriority, adding the example of the Sun which is not prior to its light, yet the light originates from it. 88 In section 12 of his Third Theological Oration, Gregory addressed the question of whether being the same essence, requires the same attributes, like personality and ingenerateness. I will quote the full argument in this section: But, they say, if the Son is the Same as the Father in respect of Essence, then if the Father is unbegotten, the Son must be so likewise. Quite so – if the Essence of God consists in being unbegotten; and so He would be a strange mixture, begottenly unbegotten. If, however, the difference is outside the Essence, how can you be so certain in speaking of this? Are you also your father’s father, so as in no respect to fall short of your father, since you are the same with him in essence? 89 Is it not evident that our enquiry into the Nature of the Essence of God, if we make it, will leave Personality absolutely unaffected? But that Unbegotten is not a synonym of God is proved thus. If it were so, it would be necessary that since God is a relative term, Unbegotten should be so likewise; or that since Unbegotten is an absolute term, so must God be… God of no one. For words which are absolutely identical are similarly applied. But the word Unbegotten is not used relatively. For to what is it relative? And of what things is God the God? Why, of all things. How then can God and Unbegotten be identical terms? And again, since Begotten and Unbegotten are contradictories, like possession and deprivation, it would follow that contradictory essences would co-exist, which is impossible. Or again, since possessions are prior to deprivations, and the latter are destructive of the former, not only must the Essence of the Son be prior to that of the Father, but it must be destroyed by the Father, on your hypothesis. 90 Ibid., 29.3, 608. Ibid., 609. 89 He earlier asserts that “the nature of the relation of Father to Child is this, that the offspring is of the same nature with the parent.” Ibid., 29.10, 613. 90 Ibid., 29.12, 614. 87 88

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We witness here the logical depths of Gregory’s argument for an ingenerate Father, and a begotten Son, who is of the same essence as his Father while being hypostatically or personally distinguished from the Father. Gregory argues here that peculiar “generational” characteristics of the hypostases of the Trinity should not be confused with common “essential” characteristics (i.e. immutability, omnipotence, etc.). Generational characteristics do not relate to essence, and the terms that describe them are not absolute (substantive) but relative. Hence, paternity, filiation and procession do not signify essence but relation. Yet, these “relational characteristics” are of a special order, not being akin to earthly familial relations of the son to the father and grandfather in this instance. He explains, “He, Whose Existence is not the same as ours, differs from us also in His Generation.” 91 All the while, Gregory maintains that the distinction between the father and the son does not annihilate their sameness of being or nature. 92 Gregory now shifts to the problem that will trouble the next generation of Christian thinkers, one associated with the confusion of levels of inquiry and of semantic structures in Christological analysis. He notes that one must not apply to the Word Incarnate (ensarkos) meaningful expressions designed for the Word Naked (gymnos) and vice versa. He aims to delineate proper modes of inquiry, distinguishing between Theologia whose subject is God qua God, and Oikonomia whose subject is God in relation to humanity (i.e., in his salvific actions). The terms applied to the Word in the mode of Theologia are not semantically akin to those that describe his composite conditions associated with the Incarnation. How indeed could immutable God be described as “greater, or created, or made, or sanctified… [or] Servant and Obedient and [that God] Gave and Learnt… [or] commanded…sent, can do nothing for Himself, either say, or judge, or give, or will… [or speak about] His ignorance, subjection, prayer, asking, increase, being made perfect… sleeping, hungering, being in an agony, and fearing”? 93 Gregory explains that each one of these biblical citations as stumbling blocks could be cleared away, “if your stumbling be honest, and not willfully malicious.” 94 His simple answer is that “What is lofty you are to apply to the Godhead, and to that Nature in Him which is superior to sufferings and incorporeal; but all that is lowly to the composite condition of Him who for your sakes made Himself of no reputation and was Incarnate.” 95 In a powerful section following this, Gregory exemplifies his point: While His inferior Nature, the Humanity, became God, because it was united to God, and became One Person because the Higher Nature prevailed in order that Ibid., 609. Ibid., 616. 93 Ibid., 29.18, 618. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid., 29.18, 618–619. 91 92

THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE I: 381 I too might be made God so far as He is made Man. He was born – but He had been begotten: He was born of a woman – but she was a Virgin. The first is human, the second Divine. In His Human nature He had no Father, but also in His Divine Nature no Mother. Both these belong to Godhead. He dwelt in the womb – but He was recognized by the Prophet, himself still in the womb, leaping before the Word, for Whose sake He came into being. He was wrapped in swaddling clothes – but He took off the swathing bands of the grave by His rising again. He was laid in a manger – but He was glorified by Angels, and proclaimed by a star, and worshipped by the Magi. Why are you offended by that which is presented to your sight, because you will not look at that which is presented to your mind? He was driven into exile into Egypt – but He drove away the Egyptian idols. He had no form nor comeliness in the eyes of the Jews – but to David He is fairer than the children of men. And on the Mountain He was bright as the lightning, and became more luminous than the sun, initiating us into the mystery of the future. He was baptized as Man but He remitted sins as God – not because He needed purificatory rites Himself, but that He might sanctify the element of water. He was tempted as Man, but He conquered as God; yea, He bids us be of good cheer, for He has overcome the world. He hungered – but He fed thousands; yea, He is the Bread that giveth life, and That is of heaven. He thirsted – but He cried, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. Yea, He promised that fountains should flow from them that believe. He was wearied, but He is the Rest of them that are weary and heavy laden. He was heavy with sleep, but He walked lightly over the sea. He rebuked the winds, He made Peter light as he began to sink. He pays tribute, but it is out of a fish; yea, He is the King of those who demanded it. He is called a Samaritan and a demoniac; – but He saves him that came down from Jerusalem and fell among thieves; the demons acknowledge Him, and He drives out demons and sinks in the sea legions of foul spirits, and sees the Prince of the demons falling like lightning. He is stoned, but is not taken. He prays, but He hears prayer. He weeps, but He causes tears to cease. He asks where Lazarus was laid, for He was Man; but He raises Lazarus, for He was God. He is sold, and very cheap, for it is only for thirty pieces of silver; but He redeems the world, and that at a great price, for the Price was His own blood. As a sheep He is led to the slaughter, but He is the Shepherd of Israel, and now of the whole world also. As a Lamb He is silent, yet He is the Word, and is proclaimed by the Voice of one crying in the wilderness. He is bruised and wounded, but He healeth every disease and every infirmity. He is lifted up and nailed to the Tree, but by the Tree of Life He restoreth us; yea, He saveth even the Robber crucified with Him; yea, He wrapped the visible world in darkness. He is given vinegar to drink mingled with gall. Who? He who turned the water into wine, who is the destroyer of the bitter taste, who is Sweetness and altogether desire. He lays down His life, but He has power to take it again; and the veil is rent, for the mysterious doors of Heaven are opened; the rocks are cleft, the dead arise. He dies, but He gives life, and by His death destroys death. He is buried, but He rises again; He goes down into Hell, but He brings up the souls; He ascends to Heaven, and shall

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Gregory was a rhetorician of the first order, able to slide easily from cosmological and philosophical arguments to intense theological deliberations based on scripture, and even ad hominem attacks. These skills propelled Gregory from his temporary chapel, which he called Anastasia, located in a residence found in a very high-class part of town, to the most powerful ecclesiastical throne in the Empire. 97 McGuckin notes that while Gregory insists on true theology as “a matter of ‘simple economy’ of words,” he was “elaborating this point in public with extensive, and highly elaborate, words. 98 Gregory would shortly attain the pinnacle of ecclesiastical power. His high position, however, would last only a fractional moment in comparison to his theological impact. Gregory’s ability to move from great complexity as Greek rhetorician, to simplifier of complexities is unparalleled in his Orations. In Oration 20, he clearly sets forth the doctrine of the Trinity: “In short we must hold that there is One God, and we must confess that there are three hypostases (or three prosôpa if you wish) each one with its own characteristics.” 99 Moving away from the Unity of God as a result of “dynamic power,” as seen in Marcellus and the Logos theologians, or as a result of “conformity of will,” as seen in the Arian arguments, Gregory posited that the Unity resulted from the single causality of the Father as divine essence. 100 In February of 380 Theodosius issued the edict of Thessalonica declaring the Nicene faith, as defined by Damasus, bishop of Rome, and Peter, Athanasius’s successor in Alexandria, to be orthodox. Ayres points out that Thessalonica had a tradition of supporting old-Nicene/Athanasian theological lines, and that they were under the control of Damasus. 101 Theodosius’s baptism was performed by Acholius of Thessalonica, where the emperor had his temporary headquarters and happened to fall ill. Later Theodosius would shift his definitions more in line with the traditions of Basil and the Meletian Bishops of Antioch. 102 In the edict of 380, Theodosius is able to affirm: “we shall believe in the single deity of the Father, the Son, and the

Ibid., 29.19–22, 619–622. McGuckin, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, 243; Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils (325–787), 117. 98 Ibid., 244. 99 Oration 20.6, PG 35.1072, in McGuckin, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, 246. 100 McGuckin, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, 246–247. 101 Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, 251. 102 Ibid., 251. 96 97

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Holy Spirit, under the concept of equal majesty and of the Holy Trinity.” 103 This affirmation, coupled with the language of Nicaea, which finds its way into a January 381 decree, quickly became the standard by which communities were judged to be orthodox. The text reads, “That man shall be accepted as a defender of the Nicene faith…who confesses that Almighty God and Christ the Son of God are one in name, God of God, light of light, who does not violate by denial the Holy Spirit…that man who esteems…the undivided substance of the incorrupt Trinity, that substance which those of the orthodox faith call, employing a Greek word, ousia.” 104

2.3. THE OIKONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD: THE DEBATE OVER THE ISSUES OF THE INCARNATION Tertullian (d. 220) in his work Against Praxeas, explains how the Logos took on flesh not as a transfiguring of the single power or monarchy into flesh, but as a clothing of Himself: Besides, the flesh is not God, so that it could not have been said concerning it, “That Holy Thing shall be called the Son of God,” but only that Divine Being who was born in the flesh, of whom the psalm also says, “Since God became man in the midst of it, and established it by the will of the Father.” Now what Divine Person was born in it? The Word, and the Spirit which became incarnate with the Word by the will of the Father. The Word, therefore, is incarnate; and this must be the point of our inquiry: How the Word became flesh, – whether it was by having been transfigured, as it were, in the flesh, or by having really clothed Himself in flesh. Certainly it was by a real clothing of Himself in flesh. For the rest, we must need believe God to be unchangeable, and incapable of form, as being eternal.” 105

Tertullian is attempting to protect his hearers from the error of Theopassianism, which was linked to the notion that the flesh on the cross was God and was thus subjected “Cunctos populos, quos clementiae nostrae regit temperamentum, in tali volumus religione versari, quam divinum petrum apostolum tradidisse Romanis religio usque ad nunc ab ipso insinuata declarat quamque pontificem Damasum sequi claret et Petrum Alexandriae episcopum virum apostolicae sanctitatis, hoc est, ut secundum apostolicam disciplinam evangelicamque doctrinam patris et filii et spiritus sancti unam deitatem sub parili maiestate et sub pia trinitate credamus.” Codex Theodosianus XVI, 16.I.2, in Theodor Mommsen et al., Theodosiani libri XVI cum Constivtionibvs Sirmondianis et Leges novellae ad Theodosianvm pertinentes; consilio et avctoritate Academiae litterarvm regiae borvssicae (Berolini, apvd Weismannos, 1905), 833, in Ibid., 252. 104 Ayres notes the usage of language directly lifted from the creed of Nicaea. Codex Theodosianus 16.5.6.2, in Ibid., 252. 105 Tertullian, Against Praxeas, NPNF 27, 1396–1397. 103

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to suffering and death. One may not assume that the Logos simply enfleshed itself, being transfigured into flesh, since that would imply passibility and perishability (a notion totally subversive to the classical conception of God). Tertulian, rather argues that the Logos could sidestep the suffering that its flesh undertook and remain impassible. The Monarchian response to Tertullian and the other Logos theologians (Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen of Alexandria) was to accuse them of ditheism, or the affirmation of multiple Gods, one immutable and another one susceptible to change and mutation. Hence the issues of Oikonomia were introduced perhaps for the first time explicitly. In the following, that is the third century, these issues were discussed in depth by Origen of Alexandria. Origen assumed that God can neither change nor be acted upon. What then shall we make of the Johannine account of descent and Pauline account of self-emptying? Are they coherent? Can one conceptualize immutable God as being the subject of descent and incarnation? In order to solve this aporia Origen posited the soul of Jesus as the medium for the Incarnation, arguing that the Logos cannot come to be in flesh whereas it can come to be in soul and the soul can come to be in flesh. A new entity was introduced, the soul of Jesus. This line of thought was rejected as unbiblical and conceptually unwarranted soon after its inception. Regardless, incarnational thought was by no means set aside in the scope of the oikoumenical phronema (i.e. mindset). The Council of Nicaea re-affirmed it, stating that it was the same Logos/Son who in the beginning created all things (with the Father and the Spirit) and in the last days became incarnate in order to save his people. By the mid fourth century the subject of Oikonomia burgeoned in various ecclesial domains of Christendom now being conceptually framed within the schema of regional intellectual horizons (in particular Alexandria and Antioch). Various solutions to the aporia of descent and self-emptying were posited, offering a wide range of choices in the spectrum of oikonomic thought, ranging from incarnational to non-incarnational doctrines. Athanasius wrote a letter circa 372 to Epictetus, Bishop of Corinth, in which he summarized the intellectual landscape of the late fourth century. Of particular interest are the corrections that Athanasius offers to two sides of a debate that was held in a synod presided over by Epictetus. The two main parties in the discussion argued that Christ was an instrument of the Logos, indwelling the man Jesus, while their opposition argued that Christ’s body was fully divine, not earthly, and coessential with God. 106 These positions became precursors to the later divide between the Oikonomia of Diodore and Nestorius, and Apollinaris and Eutyches. 107 Since both parties affirmed Nicaea, Athanasius used it as the rallying point for his argument, and notes that the Arians were mustering evidence through their own

106 107

McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria, 380, n. 2. Ibid.

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councils. 108 Athanasius feigns temptation toward not giving these problems credence by wasting time addressing the arguments, then launches into his refutation. He begins by arguing that there is nothing in scripture or at Nicaea that would affirm a position of con-substantiality of Jesus’ body with the Godhead. The claim was simply that the “Son himself, not the body, was co-essential with the Father… but that the body, on the other hand, was from Mary.” 109 His argument is that there would be no need for the Word to dwell on earth among humans, or to put on “what is co-essential with himself,” if he was already human body. 110 Mary was strictly necessary because she gave Christ his body, he was not born “in” her, but “from” her, so that there would be no confusion about his humanity. 111 Athanasius opens the door to the issue of suffering predicated of God the Word. When Athanasius raises examples of the most base human actions, such as being wrapped in “swaddling bands” by Mary (Lk. 2:7), or undergoing any type of suffering, he is considering them oikonomically, asserting that God the Word did not undergo them in nature but in body. Athanasius argues that when any action was taken, whether circumcision or breastfeeding, on or by Jesus, it was happening to the body, not the immutable God. He explains, “It was impassible and incorporeal Word of God who dwelt within that body which was circumcised, carried about, which ate and drank, and labored, and was nailed to the cross, and suffered.” 112 The necessity of such a bold claim seemed naturally obvious to Athanasius, who argued that if Christ had not become man, he would not have been able to raise man up to heaven, which was a quality only possible by the Word. He explains, “Our salvation is no imaginary thing; nor is it the body only, but in reality the whole man, both body and soul, which has attained to salvation in the Word himself.” 113 With this argument, and its coherent treatment of sufferings of the corporeal nature Athanasius hoped to articulate a unifying position for those who were struggling to make sense of the oikonomic aspects of the incarnation. The first oikoumenically significant attempt to make sense of the issues of Oikonomia, that is of the salvific presence of the Logos to humanity, was made in the second half of the fourth century by such thinkers as Apollinaris of Laodicea, and Diodore of Tarsus, among others. Apollinaris of Laodicea (c. 315–392) had a great impact on the development of Christology during the fourth century. His defense of the Nicene viewpoint and subsequent affirmation of Christ as fully God, led him to Athanasius of Alexandria, Letter to Epictetus (LIX), NPNF 2–4, 1, 1390. Ibid., 4. 110 Ibid. 111 Ibid., 5. 112 Ibid., 5. 113 Ibid., 7. 108 109

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claim that the Logos supplanted the human mind (nous) of the Christ figure. 114 The model, which was compatible in many ways with the Platonic perspective on the constitutive parts of human existence, posited a nous which was distinct from the soul (psyche) and the body (soma). 115 In a sense, Apollinaris had accomplished a neatly defined formula for the incarnation; it allowed the Logos to remain whole and act as the intellectual center of the Christ figure, while still embodying those aspects of human existence that one would have to acknowledge given Christ’s bodily appearance and existence attested in the gospels. This position was appropriately Nicene, given its attention to affirming the sameness of the Logos and the Father. There was no mixture of the Son that would raise concerns about God’s essence being mixed with creation, or the natural conclusion that lies in Christ being subordinate because he had corrupted his nature by joining it to that which was not ingenerate. The Logos had always existed with God and as God (John 1.1–2). The Logos could operate as the seat of power in the Christ figure and then whisk itself away again after accomplishing the necessary feats of soteriological gain. Apollinaris and his father were devoted to an intellectual Christianity that worked with the best of Hellenistic literature. It comes as no surprise then that Apollinaris could utilize Platonic philosophical anthropology. 116 When Athanasius visited them in 346, during his return from exile, they emerged as promoters of the Nicene faith. 117 Their position, however, would come under scrutiny at Councils preceding Constantinople 381, and eventually be formally banned in 383. 118 Apollinaris’s argument ultimately challenged the Nicene community to sharpen their language on how the Logos related to the human being. Apollinaris’s argument in Demonstration of the Divine Incarnation in Human Likeness (Apodeixis) is extant by way of Gregory of Nyssa’s commentary in his Antirrhetikos. Here Gregory records Apollinaris’s perspective, “If the Lord is not enfleshed mind (νους ένσαρκος), he must be wisdom enlightening the mind of a human being; but that is in all people. And if that is so, then the coming of Christ was not the presence of God (επιδημία θεού), but the birth of a human being.” 119 Apollinaris believed that making Christ into a Stephen W. Need, Truly Divine and Truly Human: The Story of Christ and the Seven Ecumenical Councils (Baker Academic, 2008), 65. 115 Ibid., 71. 116 There is some question as to whether he was working from a Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, or Neo-Platonic framework. See T. J. Carter, The Apollinarian Christologies (London: lulu.com, 2012), 22. 117 McGuckin, The Westminster Handbook to Patristic Theology, 2004, 22. 118 Codex Theodosianus 16.5.12, Carter, The Apollinarian Christologies, 38. 119 Gregory of Nyssa, S. Gregorii Episcopi Nysseni Opera, Ex Recens. F. Oehler, ed. Francisci Oehler (Halis Saxonum, 1865), 36 (188.23–27) in Brian E Daley, “Divine Transcendence and Human Transformation: Gregory of Nyssa’s anti-Apollinarian Christology,” ModTh 18, no. 4 (2002): 500. 114

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divinely inspired man would mean he was little different from any other divinely inspired human in the world and perhaps all could claim to be such on the basis that humans were made in God’s own image. The uniqueness of the divine Logos existing in the flesh of humanity was essential for addressing questions of how salvation worked. Could the death of a human that was inspired or graced by the Logos sufficiently accomplish the salvation of all humanity? Apollinaris believed the formula of salvation was contingent on the unmixed Logos enfleshed as mind. But how could God be truly joined to the flesh and still be God? As with most fourth century theologians, it is difficult to pinpoint exact views, given that many of the extant writings are recorded in their opponents’ literature and subsequent historical accounts. This is certainly the case with Apollinaris. His unique and challenging perspective on the nature of Christ’s incarnation within the Nicene camp was both condemned and misunderstood by various parties. T.J. Carter notes that there are indications that when the Church finally condemns his “heresy” “it does not fully comprehend what it has condemned, and that this is because Apollinaris’ doctrine is not, or was not always, bound to one consistent and ‘heretical’ conception of Christ.” 120 Various historians have concluded, according to Carter, that Apollinaris either developed and changed his views over time, either with attention to changing theological or anthropological views, or simply was either dichotomic (psyche/sarks) or trichotomic (nous/psyche/sarks), depending on the particular texts. 121 Depending on the way he is read, detractors such as the Cappadocian Gregorys can be reinterpreted as misunderstanding his viewpoint. Carter notes; The early “orthodox” polemicists, like the Cappadocian Gregorys, focus their criticism upon Apollinarius’s denial of the human nous in Christ, but they also accuse him of errors which are not obviously related to this (“trichotomic”) conception of the union: heavenly flesh and theopaschitism. A careful reading of the fragments from the Apodeixis reveals that one of Apollinarius’ main reasons for insisting on the (pre-existing) divinity of Christ’s nous is that this allows the ensouled flesh to be human and to suffer like ours and to be from Mary and not from heaven. 122

The issue of how an immutable or unchangeable God could become human and still retain God’s properties was a difficult one that would not be quickly diffused. In the event of incarnation, God had to remain unchanged by humanity, yet fully united with humanity. The major thinkers were trying to parse out a formula by which the Logos could be fully human and fully God. Detractors of the Apollinarian position pointed out that God could not fully redeem that which it did not assume, thus Carter, The Apollinarian Christologies, 43. See his review of literature in the Introduction. Ibid., 10–34. 122 Ibid., 43. 120 121

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calling into question a Logos that only displaced the nous rather than joining God and the psyche or soma. The second pressing issue was whether it was sufficient for the Logos to exist in the form of a man, or if God had to truly mix God’s being or ousia with humanity’s being? The question brought the argument back again to the problem of creating and mixing the Word with humanity. The Nicene community wanted to carefully avoid language that imagined a Christ who was anything less than co-creator. If He mixed with creation would He consequently be subordinate to the Father? The terminology of mixture is in itself a complicated and complicating aspect to the development of Christology. It is one thing to say that Christ lived as a human being on earth in order to provide salvation. Just how that salvation occurs and how indeed it was possible for Christ – as the ingenerate God – to live as a man is a question that grows exponentially with inquiry. When one stops to consider how the Son lived as a human, several possibilities emerge. Was it a mixture of substance, or elements, and if so, then to what extent did the mixture take place? We can bring several notions of mixture to bear on this particular moment of history. Carter, recapitulating Wolfson’s classification of mixture, acknowledged Aristotle held three primary types of mixture in his De Generatione et Corruptione, (1) Synthesis (σύνθεσις) or “an ‘inert mixture’, a juxtaposing of small parts of the constituent elements. 123 These elements do not interact or change each other and retain their distinctive properties;” (2) Mixture (κρᾶσις or μῖξις) or a “blending in which the two elements involved reciprocally change each other to an equal extent so that a tertium quid is formed;” (3) Mixture/Union – of Predominance (κρᾶσις or μῖξις) or when one element “dominates the weaker transforming it into itself.” 124 These Aristotelian aspects can be coupled with similar Stoic related concepts found in Alexander of Aprhodisias’s De Mixione, including (4) Juxtaposition (παράθεσις), or the equivalent to Aristotelian Synthesis; (5) Mixture/Confusion (σύγχρασις), or a “stronger version of Aristotelian Mixture” in which its parts “cannot be resolved again into its elements;” 125 (6) Stoic Mixture of Wholes (κρᾶσις δἰ ὅλων), or “a mutual and total interpenetration of two material substances in which each maintains all its characteristic properties unaltered so that even in their intimate union the two substances remain distinct;” 126 (7) NeoPlatonic Incorporeal-Corporeal Mixture or a mixture “which can exist between something immaterial and something corporeal. The former is able to interpenetrate the latter at every point, making itself present whilst remaining unchanged by a volitional acHarry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Church Fathers, vol. 1: Faith, Trinity, Incarnation (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1956), 372–385, in Ibid., 53. 124 Ibid. 125 Here Carter is citing R. A. Norris, Manhood and Christ. A Study in the Christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 69. 126 Again he cites Norris, Manhood and Christ, 69–70. 123

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tion.” 127 While these categories may seem nuanced to the point of ridiculousness to the contemporary reader, to the logician of Christology they were extremely important. They give some indication of the level of inquiry that was being attempted into exactly how Christ could have joined/become/mixed with humanity in the incarnation. Carter maintains that the earlier dichotomic works of Apollinaris represent the incarnation as primarily a “compositional” action (synthesis, synkrasis) which sees the human and divine elements coming together “as parts to constitute one living, monoenergetic, physical whole.” 128 The parts could not be said to be equal in importance since it is essential that the divine part be the part that controls the human part. The formulation is of the Father providing the soul/vital energy while Mary provides the passive flesh. 129 Salvation in this dichotomic model is brought about by the reunion of humanity to divinity in the Christ figure, wherein the sanctified body of Christ passes on “advantages” to the community by way of the sacraments. 130 The later trichotomic writings of Apollinaris are more geared toward divine assumption in which “a divine descent, coming, possessing, wearing, bearing, takingon-in-addition of truly human flesh” occurs. 131 Most significant here is Apollinaris’s notion that Jesus is identified as the divine subject, the “Word himself, who persists in his own singular and fully divine nature and yet, somehow, includes the human flesh in himself by means of this unique unitive action towards it (πρόσληψις)” or assumption. 132 This argument maintains that the spirit (mind/νοῦς) of God as the Word became enfleshed (ἔνσαρκος) by taking the animal ψυχή and body from Mary. 133 The result was a departure from the more monoenergetic, Dichotomic teaching in which the soulless flesh from Mary mixed (σύνθεσις or σύγχρασις) with the divine energy of God to form a single composite being that would go on to have salvific capabilities in the redemption of humanity. The Trichotomic model was one in which the nous took on soul and body in a compositional mode but remains distanced from a mixture approximating a unity composed of two complete entities. Carter notes, “This asymmetrical Apollinarian conception of the assumption and completion of what is partial by and in one who is perfect to some extent ‘anticipates’ in concrete (and therefore paradoxical) terms the more metaphysical idea of the divine hypostasis of the Word hypostatizing a non-hypostatic human nature.” 134 Carter, The Apollinarian Christologies, 53–54. Ibid., 237. 129 Ibid., 238. 130 Ibid. 131 Ibid., 239. 132 Ibid. 133 Ibid. 134 Ibid., 240. 127 128

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We are left with the question of why a figure like Apollinaris would make a transition in his teaching and theology such as this. Carter gives us several points of criticism with which the dichotomic notion of mixture had to contend. 135 If the Word became truly mixed with the human, then this would open up the door to divinity suffering or changing. This line of reasoning was also problematic in that it made human flesh into something divine or ingenerate, which as mentioned above was thought impossible to do. The mixture of the two would also suggest that God’s immutability was undermined. Apollinaris also affirms the notion that divinity and humanity share a substance, synousia (συνουσία). 136 This was particularly unnerving for his opponents who had worked so hard to affirm and classify the divine ousia as radically different from that of created ousiai. Carter maintains that Apollinaris in his dichotomic works perhaps is offering not so much of a thesis as an antithesis to Diodore of Tarsus who Apollinaris was amazed to find believing in two natures. Apollinaris’s initial works are more “reactionary” than they are a careful treatment of the incarnation, causing him to push the direction of a miaphysite (or a single nature) defense that tended “towards another sub-incarnational fallacy, as soon demonstrated by overenthusiastic advocates and certain critics and consequently recognized by Apollinarius himself.” 137 At this point, Apollinaris was in opposition to both Athanasius, that champion of the Nicene faith, and Diodore. It is safe to say that the interaction with Diodore and Athanasius did much to improve Apollinaris’s theology. If one accepts Carter’s compelling argument that Apollinaris develops from a dichotomic to trichotomic theology after realizing the shortcomings of his compositional theories of Christ in conversation with Diodore and Athanasius, his later writings and subsequent turn toward a theory of enfleshed mind (νοῦς ἔνσαρκος) can be seen as a natural progression from a compositional theory that still espoused assumptional conceptions in his earlier dichotomic works. 138 In his proof to the emperor (Ad Jovianum 1), Apollinaris chooses “not to emphasize the continuity of the divine subject and his nature, preferring to use the more ambiguous spirit-flesh dichotomy.” 139 He ultimately appears to move “away from the idea of the human individual/Christ as a composite substance towards the idea of a man/Christ as a rational substance who possesses flesh with an irrational essence.” 140 Apollinaris redefines the term psyche ψυχή as distinct from nous νοῦς “attributing the former to Christ’s carnal acquisition, thereby clearly establishing the more ‘spiritualist’ understanding of the [pneuma-sarks] πνεῦμα-σάρζ The following points are found in Ibid., 246–256. Found in Fragment 116. Ibid., 254. 137 Ibid., 242. 138 Ibid., 256. 139 Ibid., 257. 140 Ibid., 258. 135 136

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formula as the intended interpretation.” 141 Carter argues that when Apollinaris moves the direction of the trichotomic Christ, he has to let go of certain aspects of the Dichotomic Christ that would support a singularity of energy or nature in the incarnate Word. He explains that the trichotomic anthropology “marks a departure from the monoenergetic, monophysite, psychosomatic understanding of the [pneuma-sarks] πνεῦμα-σάρζ dichotomy which is basic to Apollinarius’s account of the union” in his earlier works. 142 Carter notes that the shift toward an enfleshed nous model was due to Diodorean criticism and Apollinaris’ own realization of “the negative impact of the dichotomic theory of union upon the Word’s immutable divinity, but in particular by the Nicene criticism about the negative implications of his theory for the homoousion.” 143 The other extreme on the spectrum of thinking concerning the oikonomy of salvation was centered in thinkers closely associated with the Antiochene tradition. Established in many ways by the long career of Eustathius, who was instrumental in the Council of Nicaea and continued the anti-Arian fight in the 370s, the Antiochene Christological community produced a steady stream of influential figures. Diodore of Tarsus (d. c. 390) was an extremely intelligent Syrian theologian from Antioch. Educated in Athens, he returned to Syria to become head of a monastery outside of Antioch. When Meletius (d. 381), the bishop of Antioch, was out of office, Diodore ran things in his absence. Meletius was originally an Arian bishop of Sebaste before converting his allegiance to the Nicene party. Upon converting his perspective, he was placed in power as bishop of Antioch and in his inaugural address alienated the Arians to such an extent that Constantius immediately exiled him. 144 Diodore was eventually appointed bishop of Tarsus during the ascendancy of Nicene power leading up to the Council of 381. His response to Apollinaris’s viewpoints is particularly informative for understanding how “assumption” could work in a non-compositional manner. Diodore’s concern was to protect the individual natures of the human and divine in Christ. Whereas Apollinaris saw a single nature (μία φύσις) operating as a compositional unity in the Christ figure, Diodore relied on a notion of assumption driven by grace rather than physical integration. 145 The sticking point between this faction at Antioch and Apollinaris was the numerical question of natures. Diodore and his disciple, Theodore, were intent on maintaining two natures in Christ, rather than one. In many ways, this move made sense given the history of discussion over whether God in Christ the Word was immutable. If it Ibid., 259. Ibid. 143 Ibid. 144 For the details of these figures I am indebted to McGuckin, The Westminster Handbook to Patristic Theology, 222–223, 102. 145 Carter, The Apollinarian Christologies, 256. 141 142

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was true that the Word could not change or grow then how could he grow “in age and wisdom” as the man Jesus? 146 At the same time, Apollinaris and others had historically found difficulty in the Word and His body as two different – and perhaps competing – natures at work. Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 428) inherited the problem of a strictly protected “Word” from “man” “with no apparent solution to the question as to how these two are united.” 147 In many ways the argument was similar to the now very old argument of the Arians, how could God, as Word, be both human and immutably ingenerate at the same time? 148 Theodore focuses his attention on what can be said about the Word and alternatively what can be said about the “Christus-in-carne.” 149 This took the form of expressing disapproval over the usage of certain idiomatic expressions that mixed the activities of the Word with that of the man. Examples of these included, “God incarnate was born of the Virgin,” and “He who is born of the Virgin is consubstantial with the Father.” 150 Both of these were refuted by Theodore in his Contra Apollinarem, based on the notion that they confused the divine with the human natures. Theodore affirmed the notion of two natures in Christ’s one person, but here he did not use the term hypostasis, but rather prosôpon, to define that personage. This became rather complicated when Theodore began using the two terms interchangeably in his work on the Trinity. As Sullivan points out, “Now the question is: when he speaks of the two natures being united in one prosôpon, does Theodore mean that they are united in the one Divine Prosôpon: in the eternal Person of the Word? Is the Trinitarian prosôpon likewise the prosôpon in whom Word and man are united?” 151 Theodore’s doctrine is ultimately organized around the principle that two natures came together to form a prosôpon, but that this prosôpon is not the Divine Person of the Word. 152 It appears that “the Word is just one of the two natures, standing in symmetrical relation with the homo assumptus to the one person who is the effect of their union.” 153 To see how these theories were tested in the company of bishops it is now, at last, time to turn to our last influential figure and the drama that played out around him at the Council of Constantinople. See Luke 2:52 and W. H. C Frend, The Rise of Christianity, 1st edition (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 642. 147 F. A. Sullivan, The Christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia (Rome: Analecta Gregoriana, 1956), 198. 148 Sullivan notes that Theodore saw the founding figures as his adversaries. Sullivan, The Christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia, 198–199. 149 Ibid., 200. 150 Ibid. 151 Ibid., 260. 152 Ibid., 282. 153 Ibid., 282. 146

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One of the most important protagonists of the controversy was Gregory of Nazianzus, a dynamic thinker and remarkable rhetorician. The life of Gregory has been artfully explored by McGuckin in his intellectual biography published in 2001. The amount of extant material on this fascinating figure is worthy of far greater studies than this chapter allows. We are fortunate, however, to have a personal account of the proceedings of Constantinople I from Gregory’s perspective. 154 His viewpoint is particularly important given his role as a theologian, President of the Council of 381, and Patriarch of Constantinople. Gregory was born into a wealthy landowning family, with a father who was bishop of Nazianzus. He received excellent schooling in Alexandria and Athens, before returning with his friend Basil of Caesarea to Cappadocia in 358 to live out his years on a family estate writing and working in philosophical venues that interested him. This was interrupted by his father’s forcible ordination of him to the priesthood in 361. Gregory helped to secure the episcopal seat for Basil at Caesarea and shortly thereafter had a falling out with him. He was later ordained bishop of Sasima, a post he hated with vigor. In 374, after his father’s death, he retired to a monastic life, but was summoned a few years later after Valens died to a post in Constantinople as apologist for the Nicene cause by the Council of Antioch (379). When Theodosius became emperor in 380, Gregory was confirmed as the Patriarch of Constantinople after Demophilus, the Arian Archbishop, was removed from power. 155 Gregory was an intensely fruitful theologian, producing everything from poetry, to sermons, to theological treatises. He saw it as his job, as an educated bishop, to think through the finer points of faith for the broader community of Christianity. In relation to the theological landscape, he regarded the work of Apollinaris and Diodore as two “extremes” on the spectrum of belief within the Nicene party. 156 McGuckin sees Gregory’s actions, in conjunction with the wider Nicene party, as a distancing from “Judaising” or “Sabellianising” (Gregory’s terms) factions, represented by Marcellus of Ancyra and Apollinaris. It was not that they were Sabellian, but they had affirmed too strongly a theological monism, exemplified in an economy of salvation that was worked out by God acting as the Word in one hypostasis. Shifting now to the oikonomic oriented works of Gregory, we will examine how Gregory viewed the mystery of salvation taking place through Christ’s humanity. In his letters to Cledonius, Gregory juxtaposes his community with that of Apollinaris, highlighting the fallacies he sees in their propositions. The tone of the letters is particularly sharp, with a refrain of backhanded judgment running throughout. Perhaps most pointed is Gregory’s assertion that Christ’s humanity had to be comDe Vita Sua, PG 37. This brief history of Gregory’s life is taken from John Anthony McGuckin, The Westminster Handbook to Patristic Theology, 151–152. 156 McGuckin, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, 231. 154 155

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plete, not partial like Apollinaris had proposed. The argument works within the framework of salvation that highlighted Christ’s redemption and resurrection of his own human body as an example and precursor of all human bodies. If the Word had simply displaced the mind or soul of the human Jesus, when salvation occurred, the redemption and resurrection would resultantly not redeem and resurrect those parts of the human that were not connected to or assumed by the Logos. Gregory pointedly explains: If anyone has put his trust in Him as a Man without a human mind, he is really bereft of mind, and quite unworthy of salvation. For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved. If only half Adam fell, then that which Christ assumes and saves may be half also; but if the whole of his nature fell, it must be united to the whole nature of Him that was begotten, and so be saved as a whole. Let them not, then, begrudge us our complete salvation, or clothe the Savior only with bones and nerves and the portraiture of humanity. 157

The phrase, “that which was not assumed, was not healed” had a long history before Gregory, having been introduced by Origen of Alexandria. It would have a significant subsequent history in combating Apollinaris due to its persuasive simplicity. It quickly discharged any argument that the humanity of Christ was incomplete, his rational soul being replaced by the Word. Instead Christ had to be fully God and fully man, assumed in entirety for the appropriate purpose of soteriological effect. Gregory drives the point further by considering a Christ that redeemed all but human mind. If the mind was the seat of human understanding and generated the human will, what could be in more need of salvation than the very site of transgression? Gregory explains, “For that which received the command was that which failed to keep the command, and that which failed to keep it was that also which dared to transgress; and that which transgressed was that which stood most in need of salvation; and that which needed salvation was that which also He took upon Him. Therefore, Mind was taken upon Him.” 158 Christ needed a human mind as much as he needed a human soul and human flesh, none of the three could be saved except by “sanctifying like by like.” 159 Reaffirming his stance that the Word of God was not always man, but undertook the salvific plan of assuming Manhood in these “last days,” Gregory describes a unified “Identity of Person” who was “passible in His Flesh, impassible in His Godhead; circumscript in the body, uncircumscript in the Spirit; at once earthly and My italics. Gregory of Nazianzus, To Cledonius the Priest Against Apollinarius (Epistle CI), NPNF 2–7, 861. 158 Ibid., 863. 159 Ibid. 157

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heavenly, tangible and intangible, comprehensible and incomprehensible.” 160 It was through this Person, that all of humanity would be “created anew.” 161 A final point worth noting from the Letters to Cledonius is Gregory’s treatment of the two natures of Christ represented in the plan of salvation. As seen earlier in the fourth century, any attempt at understanding God as incarnate, required an assessment of the problematic moments represented in the gospels. Did God weep for a lost friend, or in fear of his imminent death? Did he behave like most babies, exercising ordinary functions of humanity? 162 In response to Gregory’s claim that Christ had two natures, fully united, was the nagging question of whether two natures could fit in a human life. Gregory explains: For Godhead joined to flesh alone is not man, nor to soul alone, nor to both apart from intellect, which is the most essential part of man. Keep then the whole man, and mingle Godhead therewith, that you may benefit me in my completeness. But, he [Apollinaris] asserts, He could not contain Two perfect Natures. Not if you only look at Him in a bodily fashion. For a bushel measure will not hold two bushels, nor will the space of one body hold two or more bodies. But if you will look at what is mental and incorporeal, remember that I in my one personality can contain soul and reason and mind and the Holy Spirit; and before me this world, by which I mean the system of things visible and invisible, contained Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. For such is the nature of intellectual Existences,

Ibid., 859–860. Ibid., 860. 162 Gregory explains, “And who will not marvel at their learning, in that on their own authority they divide the things of Christ, and assign to His Manhood such sayings as He was born, He was tempted, He was hungry, He was thirsty, He was wearied, He was asleep; but reckon to His Divinity such as these: He was glorified by Angels, He overcame the Tempter, He fed the people in the wilderness, and He fed them in such a manner, and He walked upon the sea; and say on the one hand that the “Where have ye laid Lazarus?” belongs to us, but the loud voice “Lazarus, Come Forth” and the raising him that had been four days dead, is above our nature; and that while the “He was in an Agony, He was crucified, He was buried,” belongs to the Veil, on the other hand, “He was confident, He rose again, He ascended,” belong to the Inner Treasure; and then they accuse us of introducing two natures, separate or conflicting, and of dividing the supernatural and wondrous Union. They ought, either not to do that of which they accuse us, or not to accuse us of that which they do; so at least if they are resolved to be consistent and not to propound at once their own and their opponents’ principles.” Gregory of Nazianzus, Against Apollinarius; The Second Letter to Cledonius (Epistle CII), NPNF 2–7, 869–870. 160 161

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Gregory maintains a sense of the mystery involved in this oikonomy of salvation, at times acknowledging the ambiguity in human expression the situation begets. He continues: For God and Man are two natures, as also soul and body are; but there are not two Sons or two Gods…the Savior is made of elements which are distinct from one another (for the invisible is not the same with the visible, nor the timeless with that which is subject to time), yet He is not two Persons. God forbid! For both natures are one by the combination, the Deity being made Man, and the Manhood deified or however one should express it. And I say different Elements, because it is the reverse of what is the case in the Trinity; for There we acknowledge different Persons so as not to confound the persons; but not different Elements, for the Three are One and the same in Godhead. 164

Whereas Gregory could speak definitively in his theology of the trinity, affirming the same ousia in three persons, the rendering of the natures brought into unity of Deity and Man remained somewhat more contentious. This very debate would carry on through the next two Councils, long after the Council of Constantinople was declared complete. Nevertheless, it was Gregory’s Oikonomia that subsequently commanded the field. And indeed it found its proper manifestation in the oikonomic thought of Constantinople I. To this, at last, we now turn.

2.4. THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE 381 It is unclear whether Theodosius intended to call an oikoumenical council on the order of Nicaea. 165 It is entirely possible that it was meant to settle matters in the Eastern Empire, as attested by Sozomen, Socrates and Theodoret (the main Church historians of the period) who tell us that a key purpose for the council was to select a bishop for Constantinople. 166 As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, the council is extremely difficult to reconstruct, due to the fact that none of the acts are extant, and the actual creed is not accounted for until the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Gregory of Nazianzus was in a sea of turmoil in the capital, having alienated

Gregory of Nazianzus, To Cledonius the Priest Against Apollinarius (Epistle CI), NPNF 2–7, 861–862. 164 Ibid., 860. 165 Ayres thinks it unlikely. Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, 253. 166 Ibid., 253 fn. 35. 163

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all parties but the Nicene in the Capital, and losing support of the Alexandrian bishops. His support in Antioch would soon diminish with Meletios’s death. 167 Gregory and Theodosius made their procession through the capital with all the pomp and circumstance one might imagine. The crowd was “half protesting and half begging the emperor not to change their city’s (Arian) faith.” 168 The day was overcast and gloomy, a rather inauspicious beginning to their partnership. As Gregory made his way to the church of the Holy Apostles, built by Constantine, the sky opened up and sunlight flooded the area. Gregory and his community saw this as a sign that “God had sent his blessing on their work, and the psalms of praise commenced for morning service.” 169 The congregation was overtaken with this sign in the heavens and a cry began to spread among the people, proclaiming that Gregory should be bishop of Constantinople. McGuckin correctly notes that this sign in the heavens can be related to Constantine’s “sign in the sky” making a parallel between Constantine’s momentous work and Theodosius’s developing agenda. 170 Gregory proceeded to quiet the crowds with one of his officers, putting off the decision with all the sublime urbanity of a regal bishop. 171 On January 10, 381 Theodosius issued a decree banning Eunomians (NeoArians), Photinians (a group associated with Photinus, Bishop of Sirmium, who were characterized by the claim that Jesus was perhaps just an inspired human being), and the remainder of Demophilos’s loyalists (those still in positions of power who remained after Demophilos was deposed for not subscribing to Nicaea) from using churches in the city. 172 The empty seats were filled with Nicene clergy. The tone was set for the council later that year. This was not going to be an equitable discussion of the nature of Christ, but something more akin to the Council of Nicaea, in which those who did not want to sign were made to, or excommunicated, and those who did sign against their wishes, neglected to uphold their commitments to the creed. The Council of 381 was planned as an opportunity to formally endorse the reconciliation that Meletios had achieved in his Council in Antioch of 379. 173 It was comprised mainly of bishops from the East, excluding the bishops from Illyricum and Alexandria. Gregory’s only concern for the Council, that Maximus would be For a solid description of the intricacies of these events, and the fallout over Maximus, see McGuckin, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, 311–325. 168 Ibid., 327. 169 De Vita Sua vv. 1344–1346, PG 37.1121, Ibid., 328. 170 McGuckin, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, 328, n. 89. 171 It is an open question whether Gregory was angling for the Patriarchy or not, he says he refused the position from Theodosius, indicating that the Council should formally recognize Demophilos’s successor. Ibid., 312. 172 Ibid., 348. 173 Ibid. 167

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made Patriarch in his place through the influence of the Alexandrian bishops, was allayed with this limited invitation. 174 When the first session of the Council met in May of 381, Gregory was officially recognized as the Patriarch of Constantinople. 175 A lingering issue over the bishopric of Antioch continued to weigh politically on the minds of those who wanted Nicene agreement. Meletios, appointed initial president of the Council in 381, died in the first few months of the proceedings. The see of Antioch was now open and highly contested. Gregory promoted Paulinus as a replacement for Meletios since he was the head of the Nicene/Eustathian party in Antioch. 176 Ordinarily, Gregory was opposed to using force to secure his party’s aims. This put him at odds with Theodosius, Diodore of Tarsus, and the other Antiochenes who would attend the Council. He preferred “persuasion to repression.” 177 To this end he used his pulpit in the church as a platform to display his rhetorical skill, imbued with the message about which he cared so deeply. His orations continue to develop up through and into his Trinitarian position in Oration 39. The language is clear and common enough for a church audience, “God is three in hypostasis, or propriety, or prosôpon (the words, he says, do not matter) and one in substance.” 178 The three lights add up to a single light “divided without division, and united in distinction, if I may put it like this, for the Godhead is one in three, and the three are one in whom the Godhead is; or to speak more precisely, the three are the single Godhead.” 179 Gregory’s church was still deeply divided. The younger clergy were probably still Arian by most standards, having been groomed by Demophilos prior to Gregory’s ascension. 180 Gregory was the new leader of a not-so-willing Church hierarchy. Gregory’s tone in his Orations comes through accordingly. You can hear his persuasive language yearning for the community to come together in unity despite the shared divisive history. In the end, political and theological divides would make his goals impossible. Meletios had quashed the claims of Maximus to the Patriarchate at an early session of the Council, affirming Theodosius’s appointment of Gregory to the posiIbid. Socrates, HE I.5.8, Ibid., 350, fn. 204. 176 Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, 254. 177 McGuckin, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, 329. 178 Ibid., 342. 179 Oration 39.11, PG 36.345–348, Ibid., 342. 180 McGuckin notes that this is the reason for his insistence in Oration 39 “that they should conform themselves to the bishop’s doctrine and leave aside their insolence” prior to his undertaking the baptism of the catechists from Demophilos’s rule. McGuckin, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, 343. 174 175

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tion. 181 The blocking of Maximus is recorded in the fourth canon but without the affirmation of Gregory as replacement since Gregory would have already left the capital by then. 182 The remaining business of affirming Meletios’s settlement was set about with gusto, given Meletios’s position as president of the Council. At this point in the proceedings, Gregory could not have guessed the unfortunate outcome that this Council would produce for his own career. When Meletios died suddenly, cracks in the Antiochene agreement of 379 began to show. The deal was that Meletios and Paulinus would both act as valid bishops and when one died, the other would assume leadership of the city. 183 This seemed like an agreeable option when Meletios’s party thought he had a bit more longevity in him. 184 When he died a few years into the agreement, the underlying distaste for Paulinus came to fruition. A plan was hatched in which Flavian, a priest from Paulinus’s party, would usurp his power in exchange for the support of Meletios’s community in his bid for the bishop’s throne in Antioch. Gregory, and perhaps Theodosius, were deeply disturbed by this turn of events. With no president of the Council, it was decided that Gregory, as bishop of the hosting city, would assume leadership of the meeting. Diodore of Tarsus quickly became a force in the remainder of the proceedings. He had administered the see of Antioch in Meletios’s stead, when he was exiled, and was likely instrumental in bringing Flavian into contention. As leading spokesman for the Antiochene metropolitanate he held enormous sway at the Council. 185 Gregory refused to give in on the point that Paulinus should assume responsibility of Antioch and in so doing attached the fate of his position to the outcome by declaring, “Give me a life, however that is free of a bishops throne… I will go off and settle far away from all these troubles, for it would be preferable than to stand in the midst of all this crowd, and be unable to win over any support. Let someone skilled in episcopal affairs come in my place. He will find himself in charge of a great crowd, including the worthy as well as wicked. Make up your minds. I have said all that I intend to say.” 186 McGuckin notes that this move at best would gain “unwilling and sullen agreement; at worst… makes everyone, even one’s moderate supporters, tempted to take the speaker at face value.” 187 When the Macedonians, a group of 36 bishops who accepted homoousios, but would not apply it to the Holy Spirit, walked out on the Council, Gregory’s perIbid., 350. McGuckin notes that by this point Gregory would have already taken leave of the Council. Ibid., 350. 183 Ibid., 351. 184 Ibid., 353. 185 Ibid., 329. 186 De Vita Sua, vv. 1663–1679, PG 37.1145–1146, in Ibid., 353. 187 Ibid., 354. 181 182

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ceived ability at reconciliation was certainly hurt further in the eyes of Theodosius and others. 188 As he watched the theological discussions proceed, he could not help but feel that the truth was being mishandled by novice minds with servile tongues. He did not want to see this Council turn into another soft creed that all could accede to, but he had little control in changing its course. He explains later, “I stood and watched as the sweet and pristine spring of our ancient faith, which had joined that sacred and adorable nature of the Trinity in one, as formerly professed at Nicaea, was now wretchedly polluted by the flooding in of the brine of men of dubious faith.” 189 Gregory, seeing that he had no control over the Council, and realizing his own position as bishop was becoming shakier by the day, knew what had to happen. Coupled with this was a creeping sickness that caused him to draw up a will shortly afterwards. 190 People had been circulating gossip about their revelatory dreams, calling Gregory to abdicate his positions as president and archbishop. Gregory, firmly believing his role and theology were based on the divine Word, got his rhetoricallystyled wish of a “life…free from a bishop’s throne,” rather than compromising. 191 McGuckin notes that Gregory perhaps had hoped to turn the tide by engaging in a sham resignation, a technique learned from his rhetoric professor, Himerios. He coupled this threatened resignation with silent withdrawal, however, sealing his fate among “lowborn ecclesiastical leaders who could not be expected to recognize the forms of subtle persuasion, or to follow the etiquette of polite behavior appropriate to those educated together in the higher echelons of society.” 192 It was true that Gregory had been ordained bishop of Sasima, and had acted as Bishop of Nazianzus with his father, regardless of how much he hated Sasima, or how “familial” his role was in his hometown, he was in direct conflict with the fifteenth canon of Nicaea, which said bishops shall not be translated from see to see. Theodosius wanted to solve the Antiochene schism as much as secure his Nicene position and called for help from Illyricum and Alexandria. Peter of Alexandria had recently died and his successor Timothy carried on Peter’s cause in attempting to press the nomination of Maximus to Gregory’s throne. 193 With the opposition party of Timothy of Alexandria and Acholius of Thessalonika, and the backing of Damasus of Rome, Gregory’s opponents had enough power to secure his resignation. Gregory’s supporters claimed that the canon from Nicaea had not been practiced in Ibid., 354–355. De Vita Sua, vv. 1704–1708, PG 37.1148, in Ibid., 355. 190 Ibid., 357. 191 Ibid. 192 Ibid. 193 McGuckin notes that it was either this, or his desire to have rights of primacy to nominate a successor in Constantinople. Ibid., 358. 188 189

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the East and that Gregory had never formally occupied the see of Sasima, but the push was politically sufficient to make Gregory step down. 194 Gregory requested an audience with Theodosius and asked to be given permission to resign his post. At the end of his speech, Theodosius applauded him and with feigned reluctance granted him his resignation. 195 Gregory spent a few more weeks in the capital and gave a final Oration in the church of the Holy Apostles, recorded as his farewell speech. It was clever and forceful, and laid out again, finally, his hope for the Council in achieving the Trinitarian solution. He displayed his theology one last time: That which is without beginning, and is the beginning, and is with the beginning, is one God. For the nature of that which is without beginning does not consist in being without beginning or being unbegotten, for the nature of anything lies, not in what it is not but in what it is. It is the assertion of what is, not the denial of what is not. And the Beginning is not, because it is a beginning, separated from that which has no beginning. For its beginning is not its nature, any more than the being without beginning is the nature of the other. For these are the accompaniments of the nature, not the nature itself. That again which is with that which has no beginning, and with the beginning, is not anything else than what they are. Now, the name of that which has no beginning is the Father, and of the Beginning the Son, and of that which is with the Beginning, the Holy Ghost, and the three have one Nature – God. And the union is the Father from Whom and to Whom the order of Persons runs its course, not so as to be confounded, but so as to be possessed, without distinction of time, of will, or of power. … Let us then bid farewell to all contentious shiftings and balancings of the truth on either side, neither, like the Sabellians, assailing the Trinity in the interest of the Unity, and so destroying the distinction by a wicked confusion; nor, like the Arians, assailing the Unity in the interest of the Trinity, and by an impious distinction overthrowing the Oneness. … But we, walking along the royal road which lies between the two extremes, which is the seat of the virtues, as the authorities say, believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, of one Substance and glory; in Whom also baptism has its perfection, both nominally and really (thou knowest who hast been initiated!); being a denial of atheism and a confession of Godhead; and thus we are regenerated, acknowledging the Unity in the Essence and in the undivided worship, and the Trinity in the Hypostases or Persons (which term some prefer.) And let not those who are contentious on these points utter their scandalous taunts, as if our faith depended on terms and not on realities. … But, to resume: let us speak of the Unbegotten, the Begotten, and the Proceeding, if anyone likes to create names: for we shall have no fear of bodily conceptions at194 195

Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils (325–787), 120. McGuckin, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, 360.

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A more sparsely worded version would ultimately be affirmed in the creed of the Council, which after Gregory’s departure affirmed Flavian and found a replacement for the see of the capital. Diodore exerted influence to achieve both of these placements, selecting Nektarios, a “rich, and so far unbaptized, married senator” to accede the bishop’s throne. 197 McGuckin notes that Nektarios would do anything Theodosius asked, as a proper politician, and would also promote Diodore’s theology, as one who was not at all versed in the finer points of the Council’s proceedings. 198 The die of the Council had been cast; no amount of lamentation on the part of Gregory, the Homoian Arians, Apollinarians, or otherwise would change its stamp of orthodoxy now. On July 9th of 381, the Council concluded and a creed was likely recorded, acknowledging the coming together of the bishops for this Council of the Church. Many believe that this creed is the same creed that is affirmed later as the NicenoConstantinopolitan Creed. Its text reads as follows: We believe in one God the Father all-powerful, maker of heaven and of earth and of all things both seen and unseen. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten from the Father before all the ages, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father, through whom all things came to be; for us humans and for our salvation he came down from the heavens and became incarnate from the holy Spirit and the virgin Mary, became human and was crucified on our behalf under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried and rose up on the third day in accordance with the scriptures; and he went up into the heavens and is seated at the Father’s right hand; he is coming again with glory to judge the living and the dead; his kingdom will have no end. And in the Spirit, the holy, the lordly and life-giving one, proceeding forth from the Father, co-worshipped and co-glorified with Father and Son, the one who spoke through the prophets; in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. We confess one baptism for the forgiving of sins. We look forward to a resurrection of the dead and life in the age to come. Amen. 199

Before we speculate on the provenance of the Creed, or the reason it went unmentioned for nearly three quarters of a century, it is helpful to point out a few of the differences this creed of Constantinople (C) brings to the Nicene (N) affirmation of Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 42: The Last Farewell in the Presence of the One Hundred And Fifty Bishops NPNF 2–7, 15–17, 776–778. 197 McGuckin, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, 366. 198 Ibid., 366. 199 N.P. Tanner, ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 24. 196

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faith. The italicized text is language that was added to the Nicene Creed. 200 The creed as stated above is first found in the proceedings of the Council of Chalcedon 451, during the second session on October 10th. 201 This represents a major gap in years and most notably skips the Council of Ephesus, which met in 431. With regard to the theological content of the Creed, we are left to wonder just how Trinitarian this creed was considered to be? The language is hardly affirming of the Holy Spirit as equal to the Father and Son. This is particularly so if the language of same or similar ousia were to be held even fractionally as important as it was in the previous five decades of debate. In the place of “Light from Light,” “true God from true God,” “through whom all things came to be,” and “consubstantial,” we have “proceeding forth from,” “co-worshipped,” and “co-glorified.” The critic would say that we are back to square one, facing similar debates for the Spirit, that the Son had just endured. Indeed, one could argue that even though the Spirit is coworshipped, that does not make it co-equal to the ones from which it proceeds. Advocates for this form would certainly cite that lack of any scripture where the Holy Spirit is worshipped or acknowledged as God, like there is for Jesus when he says that he and the Father are one (Jn. 10:30). The early Nicenes had argued that a creed which only affirmed that Jesus was like God and thus worthy of being con-glorified with God, was insufficient in capturing the relationship. 202 They were co-equal and in this sense glorified together. Gregory would argue that the creed did not go far enough, overlaying the same vague language of co-glorification, which many Arian sympathizers would have embraced, on the Spirit of God. 203 In his Second Letter to Cledonius, we get a sense of his stance on the Nicene Creed’s claims. He states, “I therefore write to your Reverence, what indeed you knew before, that I never have and never can honour anything above the Nicene Faith… but am, and by God’s help ever will be, of that faith; completing in detail that which was incompletely said by them concerning the Holy Ghost; for that question had not then been mooted, namely, that we are to believe that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are of one Godhead, thus confessing the Spirit also to be God.” 204 Although Gregory would never again preach these things to so grand a collection of bishops as in his final I have followed Stevenson and Frend’s italicization here. Omitted material includes “from the substance of the Father: God from God,” after “Son of God” in the second section, and “things in heaven and things in earth,” which followed “came into existence.” Creeds, Councils and Controversies: Documents Illustrating the History of the Church, AD 337–461, ed. J. Stevenson & W. H. C. Frend (London: SPCK, 1989), 133–134. 201 J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds (Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006), 296. 202 McGuckin, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, 368. 203 Ibid., 368. 204 Gregory of Nazianzus, Against Apollinarius; The Second Letter to Cledonius (Epistle CII), NPNF 2–7, 867. 200

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oration, he committed himself to writing enough Trinitarian literature in the final years of his life to persuade subsequent generations of the veracity of his claims. While countless subsequent medieval thinkers would marvel at these, “the Theologian’s,” compelling arguments, contemporaries also remained aware of his forceful arguments. As for Apollinaris, the way forward became increasingly difficult for he and his community. Although his disciples would hold on to their sect with vigor until sometime in the 420s, he had been formally censured for his position on Christ’s humanity. 205 He had been questioned at the Council of Alexandria in 362, and condemned in Rome 377, Alexandria 378, and Antioch 379, before being added to the list of those Anathematized by the Bishops in 381. 206 He was finally hereticized in 383 by Theodosius’s pan-heretical Council. 207 The Council rejected Apollinaris’ stance on Oikonomia. In hindsight it seemed to make more concessions to the Antiochenes in emphasizing the origins of Christ from the Virgin and the Spirit (hence acknowledging his human side).

2.5. CONCLUSIONS AND QUESTIONS Since there are no extant acts of the Council, we have little data to go on besides some canons, the supposed creed, the histories of Socrates and Sozomen and the works of Gregory of Nazianzus. Later, during the proceedings of Chalcedon, the Council was looked back upon as a foundational moment, but we are left to wonder how the Council was viewed in the intervening years. Some have seen it as a pivotal moment, in which a significant change took place in the Christian Church. This is certainly the case, given the significant theological developments that occurred in this period and would shape the rest of Christian history. One development in particular was Canon 3 which stated, “As for the bishop of Constantinople, let him have the prerogatives of honor after the bishop of Rome, seeing that this city is the new Rome.” 208 One can imagine the multiplicity of ways this statement could be interpreted by the various sees. Was it after Rome temporally, or in terms of power? If the city was the “new Rome,” did this newness indicate a rivaling and triumphant character in the Church as it had politically, given Constantine’s original intent? It would be hard to interpret this Canon as affirming anything less than the ascension of Constantinople over Alexandria and Antioch. These issues would come to a head

Peter L’Huillier, The Church of the Ancient Councils (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996), 111–112. 206 Ibid., 115, and Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 335. 207 Frend, The Rise of Christianity, 639, 649 n. 121. 208 Peter L’Huillier, The Church of the Ancient Councils, 119. 205

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when John Chrysostom began intervening in the dioceses of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch. 209 On the other hand, some have wondered what type of council would be so poorly recorded, and only recalled decades later as a placeholder for a creed that was most likely adjusted in the intervening years? 210 We might speculate that it was a council, like most Christian councils, that was meant to achieve consensus and solve theological and oikonomic problems, but that missed its mark widely, causing subsequent generations to ponder its efficacy and status as oikoumenical. There were certainly larger gatherings of bishops, and councils that achieved deeper theological findings and wider consensus, but the fact that the emperor had called it, and that its creed subsequently gained – or was colored with – foundational significance, raised its status to equality with the greatest councils of the Church. Would its status, proceedings, and creed, have been more quickly affirmed and retained if there had not been such a wealth of division, as exemplified throughout this chapter? Do the lost proceedings and creedal documents bespeak harmony or subtle discontent? In other words, did the disparate parties and political factions that certainly remained long after the Council ended, silently agree to seek contentment in trying to forget this council’s futile attempt at achieving unity? We are left to ponder just how much Theodosius was to Constantinople, what Constantine was to Nicaea, and how orthodoxy and the several subsequent councils of the Church might have been altered, if Gregory, or some other party had managed to win the day, or by some miraculous stroke, unify the Christian Church on the issue of Christ’s identity.

209 210

Ibid., 121. See Kelly’s interesting arguments. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds.

CHAPTER 3: THE COUNCIL OF EPHESUS: 431. THE ONTOLOGICAL STATUS OF THE PERSONAL UNITY OF GOD AND HUMANITY. SERGEY TROSTYANSKIY 3.1. THE HISTORICAL CONTEXTUALIZATION OF EPHESUS I In the year 431, a great Council was convoked by Emperor Theodosius the Younger 1 to resolve matters of dispute between the Churches of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Rome that had reached a critical point and could no longer be ignored. At the Emperor’s command, delegates gathered in the city of Ephesus, the provincial capital of Asia Minor. The immediate subject of contention in the years preceding the Council revolved around the issue of the use and attribution of Mariological titles to the Virgin. What kind of appellations could one attribute to her? At the time, the traditional titles used almost exclusively in some ecclesial domains of the Empire (especially in Alexandria) were “The Birthgiver of God” (Theotokos) 2 and the “Mother of God” (Meter Theou). 3 These titles were deeply rooted in prior liturgical and doxological tradition and had been used extensively by various Church fathers. 4 What was then the source of contention? The root cause of the fifth century Christological debate concerned the exact meaning of these appellations. Can one conceptualize the Virgin as the source of the being of God the Word so that she may be referred to as God’s Birthgiver or Mother of God? If the answer to this question is affirmative, the titles given to Mary by tradition are of a great utility for theologians and their use is justified. On the other And, technically speaking, Valentinian, the emperor of the Western provinces. However, the extent of Valentinian’s involvement with ecclesiastical affairs seems insignificant; the Council is mainly associated with the name of Theodosius. 2 Θεοτόκος. 3 Μήτηρ Θεοῦ. 4 Including Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Gregory the Thaumaturgus, Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius of Alexandria, Ambrose of Milan, Jerome, etc. 1

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hand, if one was to assume that the Virgin gave birth, speaking more exactly (akribos) to a human being, Jesus from Nazareth, whose person, life and ministry was distinct from, though intrinsically associated with, the Word of God, then the title “Mother of the human being” (Anthropotokos) 5 would be a proper title. Theodore of Mopsuestia, for instance, suggested that the Virgin is indeed both, the mother of God and the mother of a man, the latter by nature and the former by relation (kata ten schesin). 6 By which he meant the Son of Man’s relation to the Word. 7 Nature has ontological priority over things that exist “in” it, including various relations. Thus, speaking “in all exactness,” argued several Antiochene theologians (en akribeia) the Virgin is “naturally” the mother of a man. She receives the other “honorific” titles because of an intimate relation between Jesus and the Word of God. Already the typical style of theology to speak of two (Jesus and Word) as relationally bonded, is apparent in this line of reasoning. This style of Antiochene Christological rhetoric was to cause great offence in Alexandria, which read it as implying two discrete subjects (persons) in the Incarnate Lord. On the other hand, in reference to the logic of titles, one can also think of the Christ of the Gospels as the subject of Scriptural predications; the title of “the Mother of Christ” (Christotokos) 8 will then exhibit a great utility for theologians. In general, the status of the Virgin in the grand schema of beings determines proper theological titles and their allocation to the subject. And this status is conditioned by the being of one whom the Virgin gave birth to. In his sermon delivered in 428 the newly appointed Syrian Patriarch of Constantinople, Nestorius (386–450), launched his attack on the use of the title Theotokos 9 in his capital, suggesting the title of Christotokos in its stead as a legitimate name whose conceptual content is fully consonant with reality and thus more “exact.” He argued, following ancient philosophical tropes, that the title Theotokos is predicated of the Virgin at best homonymously. Thus, while we predicate the name Theotokos of the Holy Virgin we do not predicate the account of substance, λόγος τῆς οὐσίας, corresponding with the name, since Mary did not give birth to the divinity of Christ. To affirm the opposite amounts to the claim that the Virgin is consubstantial with God. 10 But God the Father is the sole source of the being of the Son, the Word of 5

Άνθρωποτόκος. κατὰ τὴν σχέσιν. 7 Theodore of Mopuestia, Fragmenta Dogmatica (Ex libro XV), PG 66, 991–2. 8 Xριστοτόκος. 9 Socrates Scholasticus in Book VII, Chapter 32 of his Ecclesiastical History gave us a full account of the state of affairs. 10 As “what is born is properly consubstantial with the parent.” Nestorius, The First Letter to Celestine, in Friedrich Loofs, ed., Nestoriana: die Fragmente des Nestorius (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1905), 167, 16. English translation in Edward R. Hardy, Christology of the Later Fathers (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1954), 348. 6

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God. 11 Hence, the title Theotokos can be predicated synonymously of the Father alone. This title properly belongs to the domain of Theologia (i.e. God qua God); it can be used in the scope of Oikonomia (i.e. God’s care for creation) with an extreme caution (that is, its “honorific” application indicating its homonymous origins). It will follow then that, for Nestorius, the Virgin is the Mother of God “in name alone.” Following Theodore’s conjecture, Nestorius found the ground of legitimacy of the title in its relational application (kata ten schesin). Even so, he was ultimately not in favor of its oikonomic application, believing that it suggested too much. The rational for the denial of such application was the lack of correspondence between the conceptual content attached to the name and the name’s referent. This was suggestive of homonymy and deception that may come about if one is to confuse the levels of analysis, i.e. shift the issue from oikonomic to theological domain, and think of the Virgin as of some sort of Goddess. More importantly, if the title’s oikonomic utility is extended beyond a mere relational schema, if one is to conceptualize the Word of God as capable of experiencing the “second birth” from the Virgin, it would necessarily follow that God the Word is susceptible to mutation. 12 The possibility of this impermissible extension, along with the necessity of mingling of divinity and humanity, consequent upon the assumption that the Word can experience the second birth, according to Nestorius, was sufficient to rule out the title as illegitimate. He concluded that “strictly speaking” (akribos) the Virgin is not the Mother of God or God’s Birther. Perhaps he meant that one can then predicate the title Theotokos of the Virgin metaphorically? Yet, does not the imprecision of such a claim compromise its usefulness for the Church? 13 On the contrary, the title Anthropotokos, though it substanThe Son’s generation from the being of the Father, according to a long lasting tradition starting with Origen of Alexandria, is eternal and everlasting (aeterna ac sempiterna generatio). Hence, Nestorius exclaims that “Θεοδόχον dico, non Θεοτόκον, litteram, non exprimi volens; unus est enim, ut ego secundum ipsos dicam, pater deus θεοτόκος qui hoc nomen compositum habet.” Nestorius, Sermon 11, in Loofs, Nestoriana, 276, 5–8. He calls the Virgin “the one who received God,” i.e. Θεοδόχος and reserves the title Θεοτόκος for God the Father. 12 The argument here is rooted in the idea that the divinity of Christ is eternal and omnipresent; it could not “come-to-be” at a specific place during the earthly ministry of Christ. Thus, the only significance of this appelation is relational. Its justification is established by the reference to a wonderful connection between the Word of God and his human concomitant, the temple in which he “indwelled.” Hence, at this level the language necessarily becomes metaphorical (i.e. of indwelling, incarnation) pointing towards a very special connection or relation between God the Word and a human being Jesus of Nazareth. 13 Since, according to late antique philosophers, a metaphorical expression does not have “a distinct objective reality specifically corresponding to it;” hence neither truth nor 11

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tiates the humanity of Christ, 14 is suggestive of another extreme as it deprives him who was born of the Virgin (i.e. Christ) of his divinity and turns him into a mere man (psilanthropos). Perhaps the title Theodochos, the one who received God, is more suited as it takes into account the divinity of Christ. Yet, the best and most appropriate title, Nestorius argued, is surely Christ-Birther (Christotokos). This title classifies Mary as the one who brought to life a common prosôpon, i.e. a sort of unified manifestation, of divinity and humanity conjoined in the Christ. Nestorius argued that this title is rooted in Scripture which appeals to the Virgin as Mother of Christ, or of the Son, or of the Lord (the titles also applicable to the common prosôpon). 15 Moreover, the patristic tradition, according to Nestorius’ understanding of it, testified to the same. 16 This was the essence of Nestorius’ argument which provoked uproar among many Christians. 17 The major mistake apparent in Nestorius’ pursuit of the above set of arguments was to downgrade without sufficient warrant the liturgical and doxological significance of the title Theotokos (perhaps thinking of it at first as an innovation) and to dismiss its theological validity as not being rooted deeply enough in the tradition of the fathers. 18 Even his friends and close acquaintances, including John, the bishfalsity is involved in such utterances. Dexippus, On Aristotle Categories, trans. by John Dillon, (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), 12, 20–28. 14 As he argued, that which is born of flesh is flesh; thus, he continued, she did not give birth to God the Word but to a human being who is God’s instrument ((non peperit creatura eum, qui est increabilis; non recentem de virgine deum verbum genuit pater (in principio erat enim verbum, sicut Joannes ait); non peperit creatura creatorem, ἀλλ’ ἔτεκεν ἄνθροπον, θεότητος ὄργανον)). Nestorius, Easter Sermon, Loofs, Nestoriana, 252, 7–11. 15 Οὐδαμοῦ τοίνυν ἡ θεία γραφὴ θεὸν ἐκ τῆς χριστοτόκου παρθένου λέγει γεγεννῆσθαι, ἀλλὰ «Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν» καὶ «υἱὸν» καὶ «κύριον», Nestorius, Sermon 11, in Loofs, Nestoriana, 278, 5–7. Hence, the Scriptures refer to the one born from the Virgin not as God but as Jesus Christ, Son, and Lord. In the Third Letter to Celestine Nestorius argued that the title Christotokos is superior to Theotokos because it is mentioned in the gospels. Loofs, Nestoriana, 181–182. 16 For instance, in the First Letter to Celestine Nestorius argued that “They dare to treat the Virgin Mother of Christ as in some kind of way divine, like God. I mean, they do not shrink from calling her Mother of God, although the holy fathers of Nicaea, who are beyond all praise, said nothing more of the holy Virgin than “our Lord Jesus Christ was incarnate of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary.” Ibid., 167, 4–9. English translation in J.F. BethuneBaker, Nestorius and His Teaching (Cambridge: at the University Press, 1908), 17. 17 Nestorius gave us his own account of the events in the Bazaar (Book) of Heraclides, obviously apologetic. 18 Socrates noted in this context that “[i]n fact he contemned the drudgery of an accurate examination of the ancient expositors: and, puffed up with his readiness of expression, he did not give his attention to the ancients, but thought himself the greatest of

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op of Antioch, tried to persuade him to recant and withdraw his sermons against the Theotokos title since they were causing too much trouble. However, not having realized his assumptions were unwarranted, Nestorius decided to pursue his argument contentiously thinking he stood in the right for opposing a bad theology. 19 Later, it is true he softened his language and accepted the title with some reservations, saying that “I have nothing to say against it – only do not make a Goddess of the Virgin.” 20 Nevertheless, this ultimate concession was too late since the controversy had already broken out internationally. One significant dilemma came about as the result of this issue. Should the traditional and custom-approved appellations (such as “the Mother of God”) claim primacy in the Church’s theological predication, or should newly introduced but ostensibly “categorically precise” titles be preferred to describe the subject under consideration? What is the ground of their theological justification? Nestorius argued in this context that terminological precision (ἀκρίβεια) is the proper foundation of predication and categorical classification. Thus, one may call the Virgin “the Mother of God” homonymously, though, strictly speaking, she is not the mother of God. Some other theologians, on the contrary, thought that traditional titles were not matters of “mere words” but rather perfectly reflected the truth of faith and thus should be used instead, with the weight of custom behind them, demonstrating liturgical tradition (paradosis). 21 Nestorius objected to such a procedure. He insisted that doxological tradition should never override reason. In another context, in his Bazaar of Heracleides where he discusses Eucharistic theology, he analyzed the procedure and disclaimed: “if it is [a question of the] being (ousia), what is the faith all.” Socrates, Ecclesiastical History, NPNF, 2, 171. Nestorius apparently thought that the title was introduced by the heretics; thus, he argued, “to speak clearly and more intelligibly to all, it is the aim of the party of Arius and Eunomius and Apolinarius and of all who are of like brotherhood, to bring in Theotokοs.” Nestorius, Sermon 10, in Loofs, Nestoriana, 273, 6–8. English translation in Cyril of Alexandria, Five Tomes against Nestorius, ed. E.B. Pusey (Oxford: J. Parker and Rivingtons, 1881), 44. 19 Though the rational for rejecting the title seemed conceptual, Socrates argued that there was a degree of non-rational attitude in Nestorius’ distain of the term since “he seemed scared at the term Theotokos, as though it were some terrible phantom.” Socrates, Ecclesiastical History, 171. 20 Nestorius, Sermon 8, Fragment 3. in Loofs, Nestoriana, 353, 19–20. English translation in R. Norris, The Christological Controversy (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), 131. 21 A theological justification of such a conjecture was that the imposition of names and their allocation to the subject implies that the nature of such names is conventional. Whereas all titles handed to us by scripture and tradition are of divine origins. Hence, they should not comply with the rules of predication. However, this argument was already rejected by Basil the Great.

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worth?” 22 When it became obvious that a deep philosophical and theological dispute lay behind this apparently surface level issue of the use of Marian titles, it became abundantly apparent that a large-scale synodical resolution of the dilemma was necessary. At first the dilemma itself and the proposed solution to the issue of the names predicated of the Virgin seemed easily resolvable by the means of theological discussion clarifying subtleties associated with the issue of what were meaningful and valid expressions and their respective applications. Even so, the matters of fact were not as simple as first appeared. The titles allocated to the Virgin had primary Christological significance. Hence, the being and identity of Christ was as stake. How can one conceptualize the being of an entity designated in Scripture by various appellations, i.e. Word, Christ, Lord, Son, etc.? Apparently, the fifth-century theologians did not have a single answer to this question. The controversy over names thus was rooted in the “science of Christ,” in particular in that aspect of it which relates to God’s maintenance of God’s household, i.e. that of Oikonomia. The question about the conceptual content of the aforementioned titles and of their applicability to the Virgin was, in a sense, its byproduct. Even so, the issue of names was complex and demanded a thorough theological investigation. Meanwhile, the news about Nestorius’ “impiety” started circulating within the Empire. His published sermons soon became available to the great minds of the Christian oikoumene. As soon as the news reached Alexandria, Cyril (376–444), the Patriarch of the city, immediately noted that Nestorius had seriously transgressed the conventional boundaries of theological language and had thus introduced a dangerous “innovation” in the form of hairesis (i.e. diverging opinion). 23 He also noted certain similarities between Nestorius’ speculative endeavors and the Arian effort to elevate logic above faith and liturgical doxologies, thereby lifting up categorical precision in theological predications. 24 He then connected Nestorius’ theology with the heresy of Arianism which was then a common rhetorical method of charging an opponent with heretical inclinations. In the meantime, Cyril himself was accused by some of his Alexandrian clergy, who had to flee to Constantinople, of violating the norms of ecclesiastical discipline by extending his ecclesiastical power to civil domains. They sought protection and right judgment from the Patriarch of Constantinople, effectively laying Cyril open to Nestorius’ tribunal, just as Cyril was seeking to lay Nestorius open to his own tribu-

Nestorius, The Bazaar of Heracleides, trans. by G.R. Driver & L. Hodgson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1925), 328. 23 It should be noted in this context that “innovation” for the fifth-century minds was a pejorative term (just an opposite of what we understand by it now). 24 This was precisely what the Arian did thus arguing that designation (τὴν προσηγορίαν) should be used in the strict sense in theology; cf. Richard P. Vaggione, ed., Eunomius, Bishop of Cyzicus, Extant Works (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press, 1987), 44. 22

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nal. Unfortunately, we know very little about this matter and the nature of charges pressed against Cyril, though he briefly mentions them in his prologue to the Second Letter to Nestorius. What we know for sure is that Nestorius took part in this ongoing investigation and favored Cyril’s accusers. Cyril became aware of it immediately through his agents in Constantinople. This investigation on behalf of Nestorius in Cyril’s mind would indicate an illegitimate and non-canonical extension of the ecclesiastical power of Constantinople, something that Alexandria had been resentful of since the previous generation when Constantinople began to extend its jurisdictional remit over the Churches of the East. Once monitory letters were exchanged between the two Patriarchs, all communications between Alexandria and Constantinople were colored with bitterness, at times sliding into explicit ad hominem attacks. It is important to note in this context that Nestorius, a native of Germanicia (near the city of Antioch), was a monk who, arguably, had little or no experience in ecclesial affairs of a grand scale. It happened that after the death of Sisinnius, the Patriarch of the Imperial capital, multiple attempts to elect the bishop of Constantinople failed since various factions could not come to agreement about a possible candidate. As a result, the emperor decided on a neutral candidate with a good reputation in rhetoric and purity of personal conduct. 25 Nestorius was chosen and called by the emperor out of his monastery to take the chair of the bishop of Constantinople. 26 By no means can one think of Nestorius as peaceful thinker and Churchman. As soon as he was consecrated bishop, he announced a radical agenda of fighting heresy in the capital so as to purge the city of Constantinople of its sects, thus alienating himself from a large section of the city. 27 Combined with the lack of expertise Socrates gives us the following description of Nestorius’ ordination, “[a]fter the death of Sisinnius, on account of the spirit of ambitious rivalry displayed by the ecclesiastics of Constantinople, the emperors resolved that none of that Church should fill the vacant bishopric, notwithstanding the fact that many eagerly desired to have Philip ordained, and no less a number were in favor of the election of Proclus. They therefore sent for a stranger from Antioch, whose name was Nestorius, a native of Germanicia, distinguished for his excellent voice and fluency of speech; qualifications which they judged important for the instruction of the people.” Socrates, Ecclesiastical History, NPNF, 2, 169. 26 Nestorius also gave us an account of the state of affairs in Constantinople on the verge of his election. See Nestorius, Bazaar, 274–5. 27 Socrates tells us that, having been ordained, Nestorius “immediately uttered those famous words, before all the people, in addressing the emperor, ‘Give me, my prince, the earth purged of heretics, and I will give you heaven as a recompense. Assist me in destroying heretics, and I will assist you in vanquishing the Persians.’ Now although these utterances were extremely gratifying to some of the multitude, who cherished a senseless antipathy to the very name of heretic; yet those, as I have said, who were skillful in predicating a man’s character from his expressions, did not fail to detect his levity of mind, and violent and vain25

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in ecclesiastical management this feature of Nestorius’ personality in a many ways predetermined his downfall. His “puritanical” mindset resulted in a major tension with the Princess Pulcheria, a prominent political figure and the sister of Theodosius II whose renowned dedication to virginity (to protect her brother’s minority when she served as Regent) was now being disparaged ironically by the new Patriarch who expected Christian virgins to be cloistered, not holding court dressed in silk. 28 Nestorius’ sermons, blasting out his anger at the title Theotokos, made the monks of Constantinople (who had a special reverence for the Holy Virgin) feel uneasy about their newly enthroned Patriarch. They also did not much care for his legislation recalling them from the city streets and their court employments to the cloisters of their monasteries. The military aristocracy was equally dismayed by Nestorius’ closure of a Gothic Arian church in the town centre. It was the garrison where many of the Gothic mercenaries used in the army had customarily worshipped. All these disparate parties would soon make a significant impact in a home-front agenda of condemning and deposing Nestorius. Consequently, right from the beginning Nestorius made many enemies in the city and throughout the Empire, certainly at Alexandria and Rome. One grave mistake which perhaps predetermined the course of events during the controversy was associated with the itinerant group of Pelagians who were recently condemned by Rome; they fled to Constantinople and asked Nestorius for protection and accommodation. Nestorius was not careful enough and handled this affair badly by providing accommodation to the heretics and by demanding the bishop of Rome to justify their condemnation in writing to him. He asked Celestine to supply the proceedings of the local council that had anathematized this group, a gesture which could be easily considered as Nestorius’ attempt to override the Roman jurisdictional authori-

glorious temperament, inasmuch as he had burst forth into such vehemence without being able to contain himself for even the shortest space of time; and to use the proverbial phrase, ‘before he had tasted the water of the city,’ showed himself a furious persecutor.” Socrates, Ecclesiastical History, 169. See J.A. McGuckin. “Nestorius and the Political Factions of 5th Century Byzantium: Factors in his Downfall,” in J.F. Coakley & K. Parry, eds, “The Church of the East: Life and Thought” (Special Issue), Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library 78, 3 (1996): 7–21. 28 Later, while exiled, Nestorius classified her as “a contentious woman, a princess, a young maiden, a virgin, who fought against me [viz. Nestorius] because I was not willing to be persuaded by her demand that I should compare a woman corrupted of men to the bride of Christ. This I have done because I had pity on her soul and that I might not be the chief celebrant of the sacrifice among those whom she had unrighteously chosen.” Nestorius, Bazaar, 96–7.

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ty, and place Constantinople above Rome in the position of universal ecclesiastical arbiter. 29 Concurrently, Nestorius’ itinerant monks and priests traveled across the imperial domain and preached “strange doctrines” thus apparently introducing new formulas of faith. This expansion of Antiochene doctrinal stances throughout the Empire caused a great deal of irritation, especially in Alexandria. Cyril, the bishop of Alexandria, not unexpectedly took an active part in the controversy since there was too much at stake for him in both ecclesiastical and theological terms. Cyril, one of the great minds of early Christendom, was born into a noble family of Alexandria. His uncle Theophilus, notably the Patriarch of Alexandria at the time, took care of his young and promising nephew. From the early stages of his career Cyril was involved in ecclesial affairs of an oikoumenical significance. For instance, he participated in the synod of Oak (403) near Constantinople as Theophilus’ associate, thus taking an active part in the deposition of John Chrysostom. He became the bishop of Alexandria in 412, succeeding Theophilus. Being a representative of one of the three ancient Churches, Cyril thought of his role as the protector of ecclesial peace. His network of agents spread all across the Empire was remarkably efficient overseeing other ecclesial domains and supplying Cyril with all necessary information to stay abreast. Hence, he knew everything that was taking place in any part of the Empire. Cyril received a great theological and philosophical training in Alexandria. 30 Arguably, he may have had a direct access to the Academy of Alexandria through There is no unanimous scholarly opinion regarding the effect of the reception of the Pelagians on the course of the controversy. For instance, Loofs argued that the reception of the Pelagians in Constantinople could have hardly been a sufficient ground for prejudice against Nestorius in Rome. “For as regards these Pelagians Nestorius demanded advice of the Roman bishop in his very first letter. He would doubtless have sent them away if the pope had asked this.” Friedrich Loofs, Nestorius and his Place in the History of Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: University Press, 1914), 43. However, Loofs also noted that “Celestine of Rome had left unanswered at least three letters of Nestorius. The reason he afterwards gave, viz. that the letters of Nestorius had first to be translated into Latin, deserves to be met by us with an incredulous shake of the head.” What was then the reason according to Loofs? He suggested that most likely such reason was “plotting of Cyril.” Ibid. Even so, Loofs suggested that “Nestorius’ behavior towards the Pelagians had not been cautious, and the tone of his letters had perhaps displeased the pope.” Ibid, 45. The language of Nestorius indeed suggests that he dismisses canonical installments of the Council of Rome and wants to interfere in order to make a judgment on his own. Thus, he asks for the proceedings of the council so as to form his own opinion on the subject. Loofs, Nestoriana, 170. 30 Though du Manoir noted that « qu’il n’a pas été exercé à l’élégance du discours attique. » H. du Manoir, Dogme et Spiritualite chez Saint Cyrille D’Alexandrie (Paris: J. Vrin, 1944), 17. 29

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Synesius of Cyrene, a close friend of Theophilus and a disciple of Hypatia. The unfortunate death of Hypatia, the head of the Academy of the time, at the hands of a Christian mob left an impression on the members of her sect. In the following century, Damascius, the last head of the Academy of Athens, would present Cyril as an ignorant and irascible fellow and as the head of the rival sect who stood behind the murder of Hypatia and was thus to a great extent responsible for it. 31 Though the picture painted by Damascius was a caricature which significantly downgraded Cyril’s moral and intellectual features, it became a part of a literary tradition. 32 Certain aspects of Cyril’s personality and of his management of the Council of Ephesus I also made for grim reading among some ancient historians. As the result, the quality of Cyril’s ecclesial conduct has remained a subject of scholarly contention for centuries. Alexandria and Constantinople stood at the frontiers of Christian theological thought presenting rival approaches to theology. One may even say that this rivalry was in a sense predetermined. Since the establishment of the see of Constantinople its bishops were appointed according to the imperial policy which favored the soft Arianism prevalent at the time. Not unexpectedly, such policy encountered great opposition in Alexandria whose theological and philosophical tradition was so intellectually refined that it felt itself as the real capital of Christendom. The Alexandrian bishops acted accordingly, clashing with the theologically feeble (by which they meant susceptible to hairesis 33) and politically unstable patriarchs of Constantinople. The enmity became exacerbated in the late fourth century (381) during the Council of Constantinople I which gave higher primacy of honor to Constantinople (Canon 3) than Alexandria. It was then carried over to the fifth century. 34 Meanwhile, such remarkable ecclesiastical leaders of the Church of Constantinople as John Chrysos“It happened one day that Cyril, the man in charge of the opposing sect (τὸν ἐπισκοποῦντα τὴν ἀντικειμένην αἵρεσιν Κύριλλον), was passing Hypatia’s house and seeing a great crowd at the door ‘a mix of men and horses,’ some going, some coming and some standing around, he asked what the crowd was and why there was this commotion in front of the house. His attendants told him that honors were being paid to the philosopher Hypatia and that this was her house. When he heard this, envy so gnawed at his soul that he soon begun to plot her murder – the most ungodly murder of all.” Polymnia Athanassiadi, ed., Damascius: The Philosophical History (Athens: Apamea, 1999), 130–1. 32 Charles Kingsley’s novel Hypatia took this tread from the same tradition; thus it entered popular culture which still excursuses a great influence on historians. 33 Throughout most of the fourth century Constantinople had been occupied by Arian hierarchs. 34 Prestige argued in this regard that the division and broken unity was caused by “a double intellectual delusion, fathered by autocratic impatience and mothered by ecclesiastical jealousy.” George L. Prestige, Fathers and Heretics (London: Society for promoting Christian knowledge, 1963), 128. 31

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tom, Nestorius of Constantinople, and Flavian of Constantinople were each stripped of their dignity and deposed. The Church of Rome, on the other hand, also perceived Constantinople as a rival, having serious objections to Canon 3 of the Council of Constantinople I which classified the imperial city as “New Rome,” not only elevating the status of its bishop above those in Alexandria and Antioch, but perhaps also suggesting its role as arbiter in ecclesiastical matters. As a result, political and ecclesial rivalries along with some subtle issues of theology and ecclesial discipline in the fifth century started challenging the international unifying role the imperial Church claimed for itself. 35 In early 429, Eusebius, a lay theologian and lawyer, who would later become the bishop of Dorylaeum, publicly pressed charges against Nestorius blaming him for being a proponent of the thought of Paul of Samosata, a third century thinker, an adherent of Psilanthropism 36 and a proponent of Adoptionism. 37 The monks of Constantinople, in turn, prepared a document entitled, “A deposition put forth in public by the clergy of Constantinople and published in church: namely that Nestorius is of the same opinion as Paul of Samosata who was anathematized a hundred and sixty years ago by the orthodox bishops.” 38 The document gave “a list of sayings of Paul and of Nestorius, placing them side by side, to show that Nestorius agreed with Paul in regarding Him who was born of the Virgin as a mere man, and that he taught that the Lord Jesus Christ was not at once the Only-begotten Son of the Father, born before all ages, and also born of the Virgin Mary, but that the Only-begotten Son was one and He who was born of the Virgin another.” 39 Cyril’s attack on Nestorius immediately followed after this in the form of doctrinal treatises which he sent to the Monks of Alexandria, to Nestorius himself and Moreover, the Christology of Constantinople I had some traces of non-Incarnational thought (adducing the notion of begetting from the Spirit and the Virgin which in a sense weakened the strong affirmation of the subject of Christ as God from God by Nicaea I). Cyril’s exclamations explain the source of tension “Come now therefore, noble sir, where (tell me) have they put of the Son, Incarnate of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary? But this he can by no means show. But consider this. They say that the Word out of God, the OnlyBegotten, He that is from forth the Essence of the Father.” Cyril of Alexandria, Five Tomes against Nestorius, Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum: Concilium Universale Ephesenum, Edward Schwartz, ed. (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1927-30), Tome I, Vol. I, Part 6, page 29, lines 11–13 [English translation by E.B. Pusey, pages 31–32]. 36 A Christological theory which understood Jesus of Nazareth as a mere (psilos) human being (anthropos). 37 A Christological conception of Jesus as a human being who, on account of his merits, became pleasant to God and was adapted as God’s Son a certain point of his ministerial career (baptism) or posthumously (resurrection, or ascension). 38 Bethune-Baker, Nestorius and His Teaching, 42. 39 Ibid., 42–3. 35

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to Celestine, the bishop of Rome. In these treatises Cyril implored Nestorius to withdraw his “blasphemous” sermons and repent. Cyril took as a starting point a widespread anecdote about Nestorius’ teaching (inferring consequences from his critique of the title Theotokos) that if the Virgin, “strictly speaking,” is not the Mother of God then the one who was born from her, “strictly speaking,” is not God. Cyril’s own “syllogism,” elaborating on the collective phronema of Alexandrian Church, stated that if Christ is God (and if the Virgin gave birth to Christ’s humanity) then the Virgin must be God’s Birther. He charged Nestorius with making Christ into a human being separate from God the Word (and united with the Word by mutual honor and adoration) thereby accusing him of washing away the entire oikonomy of salvation, the main soteriological axiom being that only God can save. Thus, to present the savior as a human being endowed with virtue is to eliminate the necessity of the Incarnation all at once, offering a simple ethical-exemplary model of salvation in its stead. Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius included the anathema against those who do not confess the Virgin as the Mother of God, and another anathema against those who divide one Christ, thus taking an apologetic thread from Gregory the Theologian who in his Letter to Cledonius anathematized certain (Antiochene) proponents of “double-subjectivity” in Christ. Cyril’s argument, as John McGuckin has clearly demonstrated, 40 was premised on his general soteriological concern. In turn, John Cassian, a Latin theologian who lived in Constantinople for an extended period of time and was fluent in Greek was commissioned by Archdeacon Leo of Rome, on behalf of Pope Celestine to compose a treatise against Nestorius. 41 Marius Mercator, a North African ecclesiastical writer and heresiologist, in his turn, translated Cyril’s and Nestorius’ letters and sermons into Latin and himself also wrote a refutation against Nestorius. 42 The Roman ecclesial authorities carefully investigated these treatises and translations of Nestorius’ and Cyril’s sermons. Finally, a synod in Rome took place under the presidency of bishop Celestine in 430. The synod classified Nestorius’ teachings as erroneous and asked him to recant. Celestine appointed Cyril as a representative of the see of Rome in handling this doctrinal dispute. Cyril communicated the pronouncements of the synod to the royal family in his letters to the Emperor Theodosius II, his wife Eudoxia and his sister Pulcheria. He also held a synod in Alexandria condemning Nestorius. By this time, however, Nestorius had imperial protection and unconditional support from his fellow J.A. McGuckin. St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Press, 2004), 184. 41 See John Cassian, De Incarnatione Christi Contra Nestorium Haereticum Libri Septem. PL 50, 9–272. 42 See Epistola de discrimine inter hæresim Nestorii et dogmata Pauli Samosateni, Ebionis, Photini atque Marcelli, PL 48, 773–774, and Nestorii blasphemiarum capitula XII, PL 48, 907–932. 40

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Antiochene theologians, among whom we can note John, the Patriarch of Antioch and Theodoret of Cyrrhus, a very able theologian and Church historian with an internationally acclaimed reputation. To them he had portrayed Cyril’s opposition as an out and out attack on the traditional formularies of the Antiochene churches. So it was, that the issue of names and predication was the most immediate reason for the council to be convoked. Even so, on the grand schema of theological developments the issues of Oikonomia were at stake. As Basil the Great had earlier suggested, if we look at God from one perspective, namely as God, the mode of our inquiry is God qua God. However, if we look at the subject from a different perspective, i.e. from the perspective of God’s providential care for the kosmos, the mode of our investigation would concern God in relation to the world. Thus Christology in the mode of Theologia differs from Christology in the mode of Oikonomia. 43 The same God is the ultimate subject of our research, i.e. its underlying reality (hupokeimenon); yet, the modes of our intellectual endeavors differ according to the aforementioned perspectives. These areas of theological inquiry (or modes of investigation) were at the core of the fifth-century Christological debates and the theologians greatly appreciated their utility. Thus, Theologia was associated with the procedure of loosening up the unity of divine being so as to reduce it to its most basic intellectually discernable constituents. Here, the mode of investigation concerned God qua God; that is, God itself by itself and in relation to God-self. On the other hand, God takes care of the world and reaches out to all corners of the universe leaving nothing unattended. Hence, God’s eternal stasis actualizes itself in the series of processions so as to allow God to take care of the world. The topics associated with God’s care for the world belong to the domain of Oikonomia; indeed the leitmotif of Christian oikonomic thought was the salvific “qualified coming-to-be” of the Word of God, i.e. “coming-to-be in human conditions.” The conciliar development of Christian Theologia in the course of the fourth century aimed to reconcile two seemingly contradictory agendas, the commitment to monotheism and the confession of Christ as the Lord (that is, God from God, and so on as the Nicene Creed stated). It consequently endeavored to lay hold of the issue of the unity of divine being so as to harmonize it with the theme of “unqualified coming-to-be” of God the Word out of Father’s being. As a result, the conception of tri-hypostatic unity, delineated through the set of common characteristics (immutability, ontological stability, omnipresence, etc.) and internally differentiated by peculiar “generational” characteristics (paternity, sonship, and procession), became a solid basis of ecclesial peace centering its intellectual projections around the faith of Nicaea. St. Basil of Caesarea, Against Eunomius, PG 29 576.45-577.30. English translation in Mark DelCogliano and Andrew Radde-Gallwitz (Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press 2014), 133–4. 43

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The question posited in the late fourth century, in turn, concerned an intellectual discernability of God in the mode of Oikonomia. This question primarily aimed to inquire into the possibility of the Incarnation in the light of divine stasis. How is it that God the Word (i.e. God from God, immutable, ontologically stable, etc) “comes-to-be” in human conditions, that is, becomes Incarnate while administering the entire kosmos? How is it possible for God to be everywhere, and in a particular? What is the meaning of the Pauline kenotic utterances (Phil. 2 6–11)? These issues started challenging the unifying force of the Nicene faith. By the early fifth century the entire Christian oikoumene suddenly realized that its different parts no longer had a common understanding of Oikonomia. At this time two radically diverging visions of Oikonomia commanded the field, thus marking off the intellectual landscape of Christendom. They were both rooted in an agreed Nicene Theologia offering conceptual extensions of the doctrine of God (formed in the aftermath of Nicene reverberations) now embracing the doctrine of Christ into its intellectual milieux. Even so, the mode of inquiry shifted from God qua God to God’s salvific presence to the world. Both visions aimed to bring to concord the subtleties of post-Nicene Theologia and oikonomic speculations. One vision, common to the thinkers of the “school of Antioch” in particular (albeit extending its intellectual influence over the whole Syria and seeking to gain Constantinople), sought to protect the confessional pillars of the Nicene faith rooted in the confession of the Son, the Word of God as equal in being with the Father, thus being immutable, omnipresent, and so on. This confession ruled out the possibility of predicating motion and change of the Immutable God so as to protect divine immutability. Moreover, it restricted an application of the conception of embodiment to created natures thus stripping away the notions of being in place and in the body from oikonomic inquiries so as to protect the principle of divine omnipresence. One can draw other possible ramifications of the same theological commitment such that a divine embodiment is inconceivable because it would compromise divine omniscience. In general, embodiment was classified as a characteristic feature only of created natures. This oikonomic vision sought to avoid the conceptual pitfalls of Incarnational thought. As an alternative, it introduced a human being of a virtuous conduct as the subject of biblical stories. This “Son of Man,” the one well pleasing to God, was oikonomically lifted up and seated at the right hand of the Father, thus becoming a demi-God of some kind. The mode of connection between the two Sons (the divine Son of God and the human Son of Man) was found in free deliberation, that is, in fulfilling the divine commandments thus making a particular human being, and potentially the total sum of human beings well pleasing to God in order to ensure salvation. As a result, the “theology of two sons” along with an exemplary model of salvation was presented so as to bring Nicene Theologia in concord

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with oikonomic thought. 44 Indeed, the Incarnation according to this oikonomic thread had a mere allegorical significance, turning John’s account of kenosis into a simile of obedience. A byproduct of this theology was the rejection of certain appellations of the Virgin and reclassification of them as merely “honorific,” telling us something about her relation to the subject rather than about the mode of her distinctive being. Hence, such Oikonomia is non-Incarnational. Nestorius was a classical proponent of this form of Oikonomia. The other vision of Oikonomia prevalent among the Alexandrian and Cappadocian fathers, which was destined to gain an oikoumenical recognition in Ephesus, presented the Word of God as the sole subject of Christ, thus predicating the motion, self-emptying, sufferings, etc. of the Word of God considered in the mode of his salvific care for the world (hence, not by nature but oikonomically). This vision sought to harmonize Nicene Theologia with the conception of the Incarnation of God the Word affirmed by the Nicene Creed. The task was to discursively substantiate the confession of God as the savior and the possibility of bridging the immutable and transcendent God and the low and disgraced humanity (thus positing some sort of divine intervention in the realm of sensible particulars). Cyril’s Oikonomia represented a classical version of this Incarnational thought, indeed one that was elevated to its heights. Apparently, the diverging visions of Oikonomia could no longer coexist within the boundaries of the imperial Church. An “exclusivist” approach of the ancients to the nature of truth assumed that there is only one “true doctrine” and not two or more. Albeit, this “true doctrine” was not a mere compendium of intellectual projections; rather it was the “ladder” to heaven for the faithful, lifting up their souls and facilitating their ascent to God (being thus salvific). Its anagogic quality was clearly emphasized. A wrong opinion assumed in the place of “true doctrine” was perceived as necessarily preventing that ascent to truth and ultimately annihilating the entire oikonomy of salvation. Hence, an ongoing oikonomic dispute clearly needed an oikoumenical council to sort out problematic issues and restore ecclesial peace. A lack of mutual understanding of Oikonomia was also perceived as a potential threat to imperial unity. The following statement from the imperial degree convoking the Council, and read during the first session in Ephesus explains the situation well: [t]he condition of our Empire has been made dependent on piety towards God; and there is much that is cognate and connected between them. For they are upholders of each other, and each is increased by the advance of the other; so that the True Religion shines forth by right doing, and the State shines forth welded For a classical account of two competing oikonomic agendas see F.A. Sullivan’s The Christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia (Rome: Analecta Gregoriana, 1956), 159–296. 44

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It follows that Church and State represent the integral parts of the whole societal kosmos, its structurally relevant elements whose position within the whole makes a difference for the being of the whole; thus, if the constellation of parts is to be changed, the unity and peace of the whole would necessarily be put into trouble. In fact, neither Church will lead the parishioners towards salvation nor would their communal life in the state be blessed by steady and prosperous subsistence. The place of gathering was chosen purposely, not without help from Pulcheria, the sister of Theodosius II whom Nestorius had earlier humiliated for covering her lively socialite existence under the veil of consecrated virginity. Now it was her turn to set a trap. In ancient times Ephesus was famous for its shrine of Great Artemis, the goddess of virginity, child birth and motherhood. It was thus not unexpected that when Christianity became an official religion of the Empire the population of Ephesus immediately chouse the Holy Virgin as the protector of their city. Thus in Ephesus, Mary was venerated as the Mother of God and a significant section of its population, including Memnon, the bishop of Ephesus at the time, turned into staunch supporters of the tradition against “the blasphemies of Nestorius.” It should be noted in this context that some Church historians thought of the subject at stake as theologically subtle and properly academic. They argued that it should have been settled within the scope of a small study group focusing its intellectual energy on the subject and projecting conceptions in accord with reality. 46 Unfortunately, this was not how the state of affairs actually turned out. The “divided Council” having proclaimed the Undivided Son, nevertheless, initiated a significant fracture of Christendom in the cause of substantiating the inseparability of humanity from the divine Word. Its radical partiality made explicit the impartiality of Christ. The most subtle and theologically acute discourse of the main protagonists of the Council had an unpleasant admixture associated with the spirit of contention, mutual hatred, violence, and tyranny. Ironies, therefore, on all fronts. Indeed, the Council of Ephesus, one of the great oikoumenical councils of the ancient Church, led by Cyril while he was the bishop of Alexandria, at first seemed J. Chrystal, Authoritative Christianity. The Third World Council… which was held A.D. 431, at Ephesus in Asia (New Jersey: James Crystal Publisher, 1895), 33. 46 As Prestige argued, “Nestorius posed academic difficulties and delivered himself of epigrammatic paradoxes.” As a result he was unjustly accused of heresy by his theological rivals who misunderstood the imperial intention of Theodocius “who wanted a serious theological conference to be undertaken;” and instead of pursuing an intellectual debate in a proper fashion demonstrated “the folly of discharging intellectualist wisecracks at opponents who are talking a different theological language.” Prestige, Fathers and Heretics, 128–9. 45

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to end in disaster because a significant number of bishops did not take part in it since the Council was convoked without them being present. The Antiochene bishops delayed their arrival and could not express their opinion during the conciliar sessions. Equally, some Constantinopolitan bishops, on account of their close affiliation with Nestorius, were ostracized at Ephesus and did not have a chance to raise their voice at the general convention of bishops. Nestorius himself, once it became clear that Cyril was claiming the presidency, refused to attend to any of the deliberative meetings. Albeit Cyril’s theology and ecclesiastical conduct were among the reasons to convoke the Council in the first place, he, nevertheless, secured his position by taking the initiative to preside. Celestine’s personal commission of Cyril to represent the Bishop of Rome along with an unconditional support on the side of the bishops of Ephesus and Jerusalem (who, among many other notable figures, were staunch supporters of Cyril) helped Cyril acquire sufficient power to ensure the outcome he sought in the debate against Nestorius and the Easterners. During the conciliar sessions Nestorius was charged with heresy for dividing the one Christ, thereby making his humanity into a self-subsistent entity and the Virgin into the mother of a mere man like us though endowed with some special merits. Nestorius was summoned three times, as in accord with due canonical process, but refused to come and defend himself against the charges pressed. In a private conversation with some bishops Nestorius was not careful enough and uttered, among other things, a phrase that was used to justify his apostasy, namely, that he refused to confess a two or three months old baby as God. 47 This phrase, along with “other things more outrageous than this” as the conciliar bishops expressed it, and the fact that he refused to appear at all in front of the judges, was sufficient to ensure his canonical deposition. Even so, there was no investigation of doctrine in the formal sense. Canon 7 (stating that “it is unlawful for any man to bring forward, or to write, or to compose a different Faith as a rival to that established by the holy Fathers assembled with the Holy Ghost in Nicaea”) was issued so as to rejuvenate the unitive force of Nicene faith and arguably to protect it against the Antiochene itinerant missionaries. When the Eastern (Syrian) bishops finally arrived at Ephesus, months late, they realized that the main drama had already taken place. They then summoned their Theodotus, bishop of Ancyra, says: “I am grieved indeed for a friend, but verily I value the fear of God more than all love, and consequently it is a necessity for me, although with great sorrow, to speak the truth regarding those things of which there is question; I think not, however, that our own testimony is required, since his opinion has been made known in the letters unto thy Godliness; for those things which he there said are not to be said of God, that is, of the Only-begotten, counting human qualities a degradation unto him, he says also in conversation here that it is not right to say of God that he has been suckled nor that he was born of a virgin; thus here also he has many times said “I say not that God was two or three months old.” Nestorius, Bazaar, 137. 47

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own separatist council. The Council of Ephesus I was thus split into two parts, one representing purely the Antiochene mindset (which exonerated Nestorius and condemned Cyril and Memnon), and the other main conventicle representing the theology of Egypt with the bishop of Rome on the side of Alexandria. Mutual excommunications and anathematization then followed in rapid succession from all sides. The Council, so brought into turmoil, was finally suspended by the emperor and its main participants placed under house arrest at Ephesus, while investigations could be started back in Constantinople. Nestorius’ extensive exclamations, lamenting the lack of freedom of speech and judgments pronounced without investigation, give us some sense of the theological environment of the time. “Who was judge? Cyril. And who was the accuser? Cyril. Who was bishop of Rome? Cyril. Cyril was everything.” 48 In the eyes of contemporary scholars Cyril violated the most foundational premise of free society, the freedom of speech which is the most basic right of the citizens. It was thus no surprise that Nestorius’ lamentations reached out to the minds and hearts of contemporary scholars and left a deep impression on them. Ancient mindsets and behavioral patterns also greatly disappointed many Church historians. 49 Why did the Egyptians and Syrians turn upside down the entire theological oikoumene? The usual answer given is – because of their feistiness. Such a “critical assessment” of the Council’s participants was typical in the nexus of great ancient Church historians. For instance, Socrates Scholasticus of Constantinople’s argument about the Council was structured around the themes of the lack of moderate attitude to things on behalf of the Egyptians and Syrians. He, along with other imperial historians, for a long time contemplated an ongoing drama in which the patriarchs of Constantinople (at the time mainly of Syrian origins) were deposed and anathematized by those in Egypt. 50 It is of no surprise for us, as John McGuckin notes, that Socrates Scholasticus’ “gloomy picture” of Cyril’s administration and his conduct at Ephesus was “far from unbiased” since Socrates was deeply immersed in ecclesiastical affairs of the Church of Constantinople, contemplated an ongoing drama of rivalry between the major seas, and took personal sides in it. 51 The constant rivalry was perhaps truly disturbing (and definitely left a bad impression on Socrates). More important is the fact that their “feistiness” resulted in unfortunate outcomes which affected the entire Christendom, ultimately leading to its schism into parts in only a few decades. Nestorius, Bazaar, 132. The same effect is detected in some recent historical articles as well. Cf. Susan Wessel, Cyril of Alexandria and the Nestorian Controversy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 50 The event of John Chrysostom’s deposition by Cyril’s uncle Theophilus was especially problematic and caused an ongoing tension between the sees. 51 John McGuckin, St. Cyril, 7. 48 49

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Even so, despite the political turbulence distorting the harmony of ecclesial peace, the triumph of true doctrine (and its anagogic significance) was made explicitly manifest to the ancients and clearly accentuated by the ancient Church historians, including Socrates. Hence, the Council’s oikoumenically sealed judgments and legislations were understood as the word of the Spirit and became the standards of Orthodoxy once and for ever. 52 As a result we have a bifurcating assessment of the legacy of Ephesus I on behalf of ancient historians; at times it stresses certain peculiarities of personalities involved in ecclesiastical conduct, which perhaps appeared inadequate to the historians of ancient time who had a stake in ecclesiastical battles (as well as to the historians of our time trained in the religiously ambivalent and politically correct environment of the modern academy); and at other times it lays its emphasis on the subtleties of their thought and on the issue of the abstract ascent to truth. Modern historians, on the other hand, carefully scrutinizing the subject, did not assume the same set of premises. Rather, they thought of the matter at stake as being subject to time, place, and context. In other words, they thought of the theology of the main protagonists of the controversy as being essentially marked by their proper “existential conditions” determined by cultural horizons of their cities along with some aspects of their personal growth and development (determined by their psychic balance, social/financial status, and so on). Indeed Cyril’s “theology in an Alexandrian context” was perhaps quite different from that of Nestorius (who grew up in Antioch and whose theology should be properly contextualized within the boundaries of Antioch). 53 Taking into account these variables, they argued, one cannot but come up with diverging theological vocabulary, conceptual contents, comprising “parts” of a wider sense of authentic tradition. And so, it was often argued, what they (i.e. Cyril and Nestorius) said was in reality the same thing, just phrased differently (owing sameness to faith and intuition and difference to intellectual horizons). 54 We can use here Cyril’s own words about the purity of doctrine inspired by Scripture as “τουτέστι τὸν ἀμιγῆ τῶι ψεύδει διειδῆ τε καὶ καθαρώτατον τοῦ πνεύματος λόγον” “the unmixed with falsehood, translucent and most pure word of the Spirit.” Cyril of Alexandria, Five Tomes, ACO 1,1,6. 44, 3 [63 in translation]. 53 Not unexpectedly, Prestige described the interaction between Cyril and the Antionhenes as “a chasm of mutually omitted contexts.” Prestige, Fathers and Heretics, 157. 54 For instance, as we learn from Prestige, “[n]ever have two theologians more completely misunderstood one another’s meaning. They approached the subject from widely different angles, but in substance they were not wholly and irreconcilably opposed; the trouble arose chiefly because, instead of conferring together on the purpose, meaning, and association of their terms, each drew his own inferences, and assumed that the other meant what he himself might have intended to convey, had he himself employed similar language.” Ibid., 127; cf., 143. Thus, they in fact meant the same thing but phrased it differently, interpreted 52

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More importantly, they argued that since the subject is properly speaking ineffable, it cannot be described in the first place. It follows then that our feeble linguistic and conceptual structures cannot perform the intended task. Even more, since the subject is incomprehensible (either as a quality of its being, i.e. its simplicity, or because of our limited epistemological capacities) we are not allowed to make any definitive judgment about the subject at the expense of another equally valid judgment. But perhaps “true academics” and “gentlemen” can overcome difficulties and arrive at a solution acceptable to all parties. 55 Again, we can surely see that the fifthcentury Egyptians and Syrians did not really resemble “real gentlemen” for early twentieth century European commentators. Even in the eyes of contemporary scholars they rather appear as megalomaniacs, whose task it was, unfortunately, to decide on the matters of faith regarding Christian Oikonomia. Despite this cheerless assessment by most moderns, this Council made an overwhelming impact on theological milieu of Christendom. The Council was designed by Theodosius II to become oikoumenical in the first place. It formally received such an appellation in 451, just twenty years after its convocation. Although the Council ended disastrously, the post conciliar process of reconciliation restored peace and unity. In the course of the following years the conflicting parties came to an agreement. By this time Nestorius’ theology and personality were already anathematized. He had already been stripped of priestly dignity and sent to exile. Now even his close associates anathematized him. Thus, Cyril’s agenda was successfully completed. An agreed statement (the Formula of Reunion – “Let the Heavens Rejoice”) was issued in 433. It represented a compromise between Alexandria and Antioch which seemed acceptable to all parties. The formula stated that Christ is complete God and complete man (θεὸν τέλειον καὶ ἄνθρωπον τέλειον). The phrase, introduced by the Antiochenes, aimed to combat Apollinarius’ axiom of the impossibility of uniting two complete natures (that is, making one out of two) with its corollary of incompleteness of Christ’s humanity. 56 This phrase thus may seem to merely indicate the fact that the divinity of Christ is a full divinity (sharing all generic characteristics with the Father and the Spirit) and that his humanity is full, i.e. missing nothing on its part and consisting of body endowed with rational soul. But that is not the whole story. It can also signify two self-subsisting beings united by some sort of connection. On the other side of the hermeneutical spectrum of choices one each other’s discourses incorrectly, and thus arrived as smilingly contradictory theologies. More important is Prestige’s critique of the common ancient practice of drawing all implications from a given statement. McGuckin responded to this by saying that this was a legitimate argumentative strategy at the time and as such should not be judged as an intellectual misconduct. McGuckin, St. Cyril, 129. 55 Cf. Prestige, Fathers and Heretics, 129. 56 See Apollinaris of Laodicea, Ad Iulianum (Προς Ιουλιανον) in Apollinaris von Laodicea undseine Schule: Texte und Untersuchungen, ed. H. Lietzmann (Tubingen: Teubner, 1904), 247–8.

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may also consider that an affirmation of fullness or completeness could mean that the characteristics classified as complete are essential to their possessor. Divinity and humanity and their proper characteristics could be also thought of as the natural completers (συμπληρούσαι) of the Word Incarnate, the parts of the whole subsuming characteristics of the whole and being predicated synonymously of the subject. The issue of interpreting the statement was never really resolved since its original ambiguity was intentional, meant to be broad enough to satisfy all. But it happens at times that what is supposed to satisfy all, in reality satisfies none. Indeed, a battle of interpretations immediately followed, each side of the controversy (that is Alexandrians and Syrians) trying to present their own interpretation as intrinsic to the semantic structure of the Formula of Reunion. This Council was arguably the last one in the sense of all embracing oikoumenicity because of its representational schema and because it was endorsed by all the ancient Churches (including the Church of Antioch) during the process of reconciliation which immediately followed. Now what is the Christology of Ephesus I? This question is not an easy one to answer. The difficulty lies in the fact that the conciliar proceedings do not tell us much about Christology. We learn that Nestorius was deposed and excommunicated because of his “ungodly doctrines” which he chose not to defend. Hence, we may assume that the charges against Nestorius (such as of being a proponent of Paul of Samosata, of dividing one Christ into two and, as a result, of classifying the Virgin as the mother of a mere man, etc.) were accepted by the Council. We also have various treatises (letters, and sermons) read during the Council and accepted as orthodox. But that is apparently not enough for us to form an opinion about the matters at stake since there was no formal investigation of doctrine conducted there. Consequently, in order to find out the Christological core of the Council we need to go beyond the set of documents which constitute the conciliar proceedings by investigating precisely those documents absent from the proceedings, especially those written by Nestorius and re-discovered in modern times. We thus have to take a close look at the Christology of its main protagonists. This will give us some sense of the scope and content of the Council and of its Christology which is not clearly stated in the proceedings. Perhaps it would be safe to say that the Christology of Ephesus I is the Christology of its main protagonist, Cyril of Alexandria. The Christology rejected by Ephesus I was the Christology of Nestorius. Let us now consider their speculations so that we may grasp their basic elements and compare them to find out whether the charges against Nestorius were legitimate. In order to make the review concise I shall dismiss all wild ad hominem arguments made by both parties (for instance, that Cyril was an Apollinarian, and Nestorius an Arian).

3.2. NESTORIUS AND HIS THOUGHT Our knowledge of Nestorius comes from the following sources:

1. Fragments of Nestorius’ works. Important source is Friederich Loofs’ Nestoriana, die Fragmente des Nestorius.

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Here we have a collection of Nestorius’ fragments primarily in Latin along with a critical introduction.

2. Nestorius’ own work preserved in Syriac (written after his deposition during his exile in Oasis), i.e. the Bazaar [book] of Heraclides. Syriac text ed. by MM. Bedjan and F. Nau. Translated into English by G.R. Driver and L. Hodgson, and into French by Nau. This work, discovered in 1895 in the library of the Nestorian Patriarch at Konak is of an extraordinary importance for our understanding of Nestorius’ thought.

3. Proceedings of the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon.

Greek text: Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum by Eduard Schwartz, Concilium Universale Ephesenum AD 431.

Modern Langage Translations :

French: Éphèse et Chalcédoine : Actes des Conciles by André-Jean Festugière. English: Authoritative Christianity. The Third World Council: Which was held A.D. 431, at Ephesus in Asia by James Chrystal; Vols. I–III. 4. Church historians: mainly Socrates and Evagrius.

5. Early Church theologians and heresiologists: starting with the treatises of Cyril of Alexandria, John Cassian, Marius Mercator, and so on. 6. Theological and historical treatises of the (Nestorian) Church of the East.

Nestorius received a significant scholarly attention in “modern” scholarship. F. Loofs’ Nestorius and his Place in the History of Christian Doctrine along with J.F. BethuneBaker’s Nestorius and his Teaching are the classical examples of scholarly input into the subject. The best contemporary monograph on the subject, in my opinion, is J.A. McGuckin’s St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy. This chapter is indebted to McGuckin’s exposition and analysis of Nestorius’ theology. There has been a certain tendency in recent scholarship to present Nestorius’ thought as a digest of Theodore of Mopsuestia’s theology, albeit debased and convoluted. I too agree that Nestorius’ discourse was certainly predicated on that of Theodore and can thus be classified as its extension. Hence there is an explicit continuity in the thought of both thinkers which is manifest in conceptions and terminology. Even so, a reductionist procedure of loosening up Nestorius’ thought so as to describe it according to its simple constituents inherited from Theodore is illegitimate. Nestorius, apparently a disciple of Theodore, and, definitely, someone who came out of the school of Antioch, also had his own conceptions (quite sophisticated in my opinion), which are worthy of being reviewed in detail. This section will give the reader a concise exposition (in a propositional form) of the most relevant (in the scope of this chapter) units of Nestorius’ thought.

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Nestorius’ discourse, as far as Christology is concerned, has at least three dimensions: metaphysical, logical, and oikonomic. These units of his thought are in many ways unique (taking into account the general distaste for metaphysics in the school of Antioch) and have little or no equivalent in the thought of his predecessors. Let us look at each unit so that we can have a good grasp of his thought. At this point it is necessary to make one note. It may seem from the exposition to follow that all terms of Nestorius’ thought are well defined. This is indeed not precisely the case. Albeit Nestorius’ quest for precision was quite explicit, he himself allowed for a certain terminological flux leaving some space for ambiguity. Thus, the “definitions” extracted from Nestorius’ discourse represent only approximations to any sensible precision. In many cases, however, the terms used allow for diverging interpretations of the propositions. For instance, such difficult terms as ousia and nature at times are used in their conventional (at least within the scope of Antioch) meaning but at other times experience semantic shifts so as to designate their contraries. For instance, at times ousia may indicate a universal being and at times a particular being. This is not an insignificant shift. At any rate, the student of patristic thought should take into account some degree of tolerated terminological imprecision and not to think of the ancients as being committed to Anglo-American analytical philosophy.

3.2.1.

NESTORIUS’ METAPHYSICS

Substance (ousia) is that which delineates characteristics constitutive of a type of being. It is expressed in the account of substance (i.e. definition or description). The word substance is thus primarily indicative of a universal being. Nature is substance made manifest and subsistent. Hence, nature is a substance which has its own hypostasis (i.e. subsistence) and prosôpon (i.e. that in which nature is made known). “The definition and circumscription of all nature is that in which it has to be.” 57 To be a nature in truth is to have all the characteristics of the substance made subsistent and manifest. Hence, the word nature is primarily indicative of a particular being. Even so, at times nature also designates the total sum of particular beings bound by the class membership (e.g. the human nature is the totality of rational and animated beings which ever lived). A substance without subsistence manifests itself in the schema or illusion alone. Hence, it in no way has nature or can be designated as such. Natures are either henadic or unified. The henadic nature is uncreated. The Holy Trinity is the henadic nature uncreated, eternal and simple. Its substance is made manifest in three prosôpa, i.e. the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. They are real and thus self-subsistent. The unified natures are created by God the Word. They are complex (wholes made of parts). They constitute the content of the world which is 57

Nestorius, Bazaar, 38.

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properly structured (hence, the position of each part of the world makes a difference for the being of the whole). Unified natures represent the work of the first creation. Henadic and unified natures are mutually exclusive since they have incompatible sets of properties. All natures are complete. Incomplete natures are not natures per se. Complete natures cannot be united “naturally” without creating a new “in-between” nature. However, no new nature can be introduced after the work of creation has been completed (since that would change the constellation of the parts and would affect the being of the whole created world). Only incomplete natures can be united “naturally” to create one complete nature. For instance, soul is united to body to create the nature of man. Without having been united they are incomplete and cannot subsist. The second creation thus unifies incomplete natures into a complete nature. The natural union is the work of the second creation. Such a union is “by necessity” and is involuntary. Natures participate in one another. Fullness and completeness belongs to participated natures; no participant is full and complete in that in which it participates but remains deficient. The fullness of God consists of being deficient in nothing since it is simple and indivisible. 58 Nothing can be added to it or subtracted from it. It is immutable and unchangeable. Hence, God can be participated in but cannot participate in another nature. Other natures can participate in God and in one another. They are mutable and changeable. They can allow other natures to reside in them accidentally without changing their substance. Hypothesis: Let us assume that the Word of God accepts an addition (of the human nature) and God the Father does not. It will then follow necessarily that the nature of the Word is not the same as that of the Father; it will be unified by the creator (that is, would be the work of the first creation) and not a henad on its own. Thus the Word of God would be degraded to at best the level of a demi-god (but more likely a creature, a thing made). This would be a revival of the opinion of the Arians. A nature is either simple or is a whole made of parts. Parts subsume characteristics of the whole (“whatever all of it is the same also is in its part” 59). If we hypothetically assume that a nature is “naturally” united to another nature, it should become a part of the host nature. To be united to the nature is to be “in” the nature as a part is in the whole. Thus, there is an addition to the host nature which consequently changes the constellation of parts within the whole; the change of the parts, in turn, effects the change of the whole. And such change is essential. “[o]f his fullness have we received but not his fullness; for his fullness consists in being deficient in nothing, as God.” Nestorius, Bazaar, 50. 59 Ibid., 27. 58

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Hypothesis: Let us assume that the Word of God is naturally united to the nature of man. An addition of humanity to the divine nature will change the nature of the Trinity and will introduce a new set of properties (those of human nature, e.g. passibility, mutability, etc.) to the divine nature (which set of properties includes those of impassibility, immutability, etc.). First, then the Trinity will become a whole made of two parts, i.e. divinity and humanity. Thus, it will lose its simplicity. 60 Second, it will change its characteristics (from being immutable to becoming the subject to change; from being complete to being incomplete). But this is impossible since the nature of the divine henad is simple, complete and immutable and in no way can it become the subject of second creation. Finally, such a combined nature (hypothetically posited) would be incoherent as uniting mutually exclusive sets of properties. 61 Now there are various types of natural union, namely: mixture, fusion, confusion, and the union of soul and body. The difference is due to the constitution of the ingredients entering into natural union and of their fate. In general, the natures entering into such a union are incomplete. In the natural union both natures are limited by one another and accept the sufferings of one another (by being acted upon one another); even so, one nature is always supreme and another is under supremacy, one controlling and another controlled. The qualities of the united natures intermingle and may not be preserved in the union; in some cases thus their characteristics are confused. Finally, natural union is corruptible and thus dissolvable. Hypothesis: Let us assume that the Word of God has been “naturally” united with the soul and body. He will then be a subject to the second creation; and thus incomplete and not without needs. Moreover, the divine nature entering into a natural union with the human nature will be limited by the human nature and will accept sufferings of the human nature by being acted upon. This is the opinion of Apollinarius and his followers. Complete natures, however, can unite “voluntarily.” Voluntary union is not by nature but by relation. 62 The natures entering into such a union must have will or some sort of free deliberation. In order to enter into voluntary union the natures must be hypostatic (i.e. self-subsistent and thus particular) and prosopic (i.e. properly manifest); thus they must be complete. A mere substance (i.e. an essential universal being or a set of properties without subsistence) cannot enter into such a union

Unless we accept “absurdities as well-pleasing, [if] a part being mentioned in speaking of a nature simple and indivisible.” Ibid., 27. 61 Thus, “[i]t is not possible that the unmade [should become] made and the eternal temporary and the temporary eternal and that the created [should become] uncreated by nature.” Ibid., 27. 62 Thus, “[t]he natures indeed which are united voluntarily acquire the union with a view to [forming] not one nature but a voluntary union of the prosôpon of the dispensation.” Ibid., 38. 60

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(with another substance or a nature). Voluntary united natures are hypostatically separated while existing in close conjuncture. Voluntarily means prosopically. Natures reveal themselves in their proper prosôpa or in the prosôpa of other natures (while being in a particular relation to other natures). For instance, a king may reveal himself in the prosôpon of a royal dignity; even so, at times he may also reveal himself in the prosôpon of a solder by wearing solder’s robe. Voluntarily united natures can exchange prosôpa, at times appearing in their proper prosôpa and at times being closed in the prosôpon of their correlatives. For instance, a bishop in the pulpit (voluntarily united with the Church) is closed in the prosôpon of the Church, since Church is made known in him, albeit under other circumstances, a bishop (say, resting at home) is revealed in the prosôpon of man (which is his proper prosôpon). Natures voluntarily united can also exchange prosôpa so as to create a common manifestation. A common prosôpon is that in which both united natures are made known; the properties of natures are also made manifest by the common prosôpon without being mixed (either working diachronically in diverging series of temporal manifestations, or simultaneously). 63 The natures entering into prosopic union must be on equal footing. One nature is thus not suppressed by the other one. They subsist in close conjuncture. The prosopic union of natures is indivisible, since prosôpon is a sort of undivided manifestation of its underlying nature/s. It does not effect the change in natures, since the natures remain within their proper boundaries. The union of natures within a shared prosôpon is thus impassible and incorruptible. The human substance (ousia) is characterized by animality and rationality. Human rationality is such as to have the capacity for free deliberation. Human nature makes manifest these characteristics by exercising reason, etc. Its inherent goodness is an image of the goodness of its creator (i.e. of God the Word). It relates to God as image relates to the paradigm. Even so, the human nature (firstly, in the prosôpon of Adam, and then in its total sum) succumbed to the Devil, God’s adversary. Hence, its original goodness is overshadowed. It can no longer know things the way they are but became rather ignorant of reality. Its free deliberation is perverted so as not to follow God’s will (expressed in the law). As such it cannot be reconciled with God or justified. Thus, its natural fate is to perish. But God loves his creation and does not allow it to perish. The works of creation have to be saved. Salvation is effected by the mutual work of God the Word and human beings. In order for a human being to be saved it has to have the prosôpon of God. Thus, “we understand severally in nature the several qualities of each one of the natures and the natural distinctions of each single one of the natures; and the [properties] of the union we understand [as belonging] uniquely to the union and not to the ousia.” Ibid., 167. 63

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To have the prosôpon of God is to will what God wills. To have the prosôpon of man is to will and act as a human being. The prosopic union of God and the human nature is the union of wills in which both wills are made manifest in concord. God the Word was prosopically united with his human concomitant, a man Jesus of Nazareth. This man, being in close relation to the Word of God reconciled his will with the will of God and thus made himself justified. He also became an example for all of humanity. This “Son of Man” was named the “Son of God” and is seated at the right hand of the Father. This is the opinion of the “Orthodox.” Hypothesis: Let us assume that the Word of God made himself manifest in the prosôpon of a man and that the union of natures has not been effected. Such manifestation will be in schema alone, since “the humanity” of the Word would not have any underlying reality. A prosôpon without subsistence (namely an-hypostatic) is a mere schema. The Word of God thus would appear in the schema of man (without an underlying reality). 64 As a result, our salvation would be also in schema alone; thus the whole divine dispensation would be turned into an illusion. This is the opinion of the Manichaeans. 65 The starting point of oikonomic investigations is a common prosôpon. This prosôpon is made manifest in a set of shared names delineating features common to both divinity and humanity, i.e. Christ, Son, and Lord. This prosôpon is the seat of unity of natures (in the form of unity of their manifestations). Hence, Christ is one because both the divine nature and the human nature are united in it in one common manifestation. The divine and human natures are separated without the common prosôpon and confused/corrupted without them being hypostatically distinguished. 66 Thus, the sole seat of unity of both the divine and the human manifestations is Christ (of whom we learn from the Scriptures), the prosôpon of unity common to both divinity and humanity (this knowledge we received from the “Fathers”), and not the Word of God (as some “heretics” believe). However, “God is not indeed among the things which are represented in effigy for there things can be said to exist only in the visible shape, by visible shape and by likeness while far distant from the ousia.” Ibid., 57. 65 “[t]he Manichaeans…say that the change of likeness resulted in a schema without hypostasis …” Ibid., 16. 66 Nestorius argued, the fathers “have placed first ‘Lord’ and ‘Jesus Christ,’ and ‘onlybegotten’ and ‘Son’, common names of the divinity and of the humanity, as the foundation, and next build thereon the tradition of the Incarnation and the sufferings and the resurrection, in order that, placing first the names of the two natures which are indicative of the common [functions], the sonship and Lordship might not be separated and the natures in the union of the sonship might not come into danger of corruption and of confusion.” Ibid., 168–9; also in the Second Letter to Cyril. 64

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3.2.2.

NESTORIUS ON NAMES AND PREDICATION

It seems that Nestorius thought of the origins of names (significant expressions) as mainly conventional. An imposition of names (that is, of theological appellations to their subject) is thus the primary task of a theologian. At times, however, names (inherited by a theologian from scripture and doxological tradition) are allocated to multiple referents whose account of substance differs. Thus, names are subject to homonymy (that is, they are used homonymously). 67 Homonymy is inherent in the structure of our intellection and in that context is totally normal (for instance, such basic notions of our intellect as being, goodness, etc. are subjects to homonymy). For instance, “being” is predicated homonymously of various referents. Even so, it may also distort our discourse in various ways. In order to bring discourse to the state of clarity all names should be defined and their contextual application should be specified. The account of substance corresponding with the name links the name to its proper (i.e. contextually specified) conceptual content. To allocate a name to the subject is to “accuse” the subject of having a characteristic. This allocation is predication. Names properly defined are predicated of their subjects and thus inform us about their referents (i.e. about their place in the schema of beings). A rule of scriptural predications: scriptural predications should have a quality of being precise. Otherwise one’s discourse produces conceptual muddle being susceptible to the fallacy of equivocation. The notion of akribea (precision) was thus As we learn from Aristotle, things are called homonyms of which only the name is common but the account of substance in accordance with the name is different. For instance, a man and the picture of a man are called animals. Whereas the appellation is the same (since we may call both a man and his picture “animal”), their account of substance differs (since the definition of animal is “sentient living substance” and that of a picture is “a copy of a sentient living substance”). As Philoponus rightly noted, if one is to say what it is to be an animal for each of them, one will give distinct accounts for each. In Cat. 1–5, 22 15– 19. English translation in John Philoponus, On Aristotle Categories 1–5; with a Treatise Concerning the Whole and the Parts, trans. R. Sirkel, M. Tweedale and J. Harris (London: Bloomsbury, 2015). Homonyms are thus thing related to one another by the community of names. The name “man” therefore has multiple referents whose accounts of substance differ. On the other hand, things are called synonyms if they share in both, the name and the account of substance in accordance with the name. For instance, both a human being and an animal are living beings; thus these two things share in both, the name and the account of substance. Therefore, synonyms are thing related to one another by both, the community of name and the account of substance. Predication is called homonymous if only the name is predicated of the subject but not the account of substance. Predication is called synonymous if both the name and its account of substance are predicated of the subject. For instance, we predicate man of a picture homonymously and we predicate man of a man synonymously. Finally, “[h]omonymy is the relation itself in virtue of which the things share a name.” Ibid., 16, 12– 14. 67

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foundational for Nestorius. It tells us that predication should not be established upon homonymy. For instance, we can predicate “animal” of the picture of a man. This predication is legitimate; even so “speaking precisely,” the picture is not “animal.” “Animal” is predicated of the subject (a picture) homonymously, that is, the name alone is predicated of the subject (but not the account of substance corresponding with the name). So it is the case when we predicate “god” of a man. What was at stake here for Nestorius? Apparently, the issue at first was that of classification; even so Nestorius was also very much concerned with theological affirmations (complex sentences affirming and denying something of something “with the reference to times that lie outside the present” 68 and thus with the possibility of quaternio terminorum, semantic shifts and switch-referencing in theological affirmations. Especially in the light of some simple-minded fellow country bumpkins who may have assumed, due to the lack of proper training, some pagan mythical fables as legitimate expressions of Christian faith. For instance, one may think about God’s theophanies of the pagans as suggestive of the Incarnation. However, “[h]e then [i.e. God] who is not the human ousia of the flesh and is called flesh is so called by homonymy, even as a man of gold or silver or of another ousia of whatsoever material is not man by nature, since he has not the nature of man.” 69 Then one may be asked to specify the meaning of “flesh” and the rational for its application to God. It follows then that the role of homonymy (as the possible source of ambiguity and deception) in theology has to be diminished so as to prevent multiple fallacies from creeping in and corrupting discourse. The issue of homonymy was thus not unexpectedly crucial for Nestorius. Overall, Nestorius’ logic was certainly an Aristotelian form of logic received through the tradition of the later commentators on Aristotle. Predicates are said-of the subject. To have subjectivity is primarily to be a nature. Nature is the subject of predication. Even so, the subject of predication can also be a concept or a name. When each nature is considered itself by itself it functions as the subject of predication. However, when natures unite voluntarily they preserve their hypostases and thus subjectivity; there are thus two subjects of predication as far as nature is concerned; even so, as far as the union is concerned there is one common prosôpon which functions as a quasi-subject of predication. Nothing is predicated of it synonymously since it is not nature and does not represent a kind of being. Nature is also the subject for existence. To be a hypokeimenon means primarily to be hypostasized. All natures are hypostasized. On the other hand, to be “in” the subject means to be unhypostatic (thus lacking self-subsistence). The meaning of the “in” here is not that of a part of the subject. To reside “in” the subject is to be unaAristotle, On Interpretation. in L. Minio-Paluello, ed., Aristotelis categoriae et liber de interpretatione (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949; repr. 1966), 17a, 29–30. 69 Nestorius, Bazaar, 25. 68

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ble to exist apart from the subject. Things that are “in” the subject are inseparable from the subject since their mode of existence is to reside within the subject. Such things, according to Nestorius, are not natures. They are distinct from their subjects in schema (or un-hypostasized prosôpon) alone. Hence, they are accidents inhering in their subjects (i.e. things that have nature). Nestorius argued that “[t]hose things which have no distinction in nature and are distinct, are said to be distinct in the prosôpon. But [to be distinguished] by the prosôpon without nature is a schema without hypostasis in another schema.” 70 This complicated phrase is apparently quite tricky. Even so, it is important in the scope of this chapter. Let us look at it more closely. Here Nestorius is saying that there are things distinguished in prosôpa but indistinguishable in nature. There are two types of things that can be described in such terms. Nestorius makes an explicit emphasis on the importance of distinguishing those things. (1) Things which ousia is properly hypostasized and manifest, e.g. the prosôpa of the Holy Trinity, the prosôpa of human beings, etc. (2) The unhypostasized things distinguished from the hypostasized subject in which they inhere. Here to be distinguished from the subject is to have an unhypostasized manifestation, i.e. to be an accident inherent in the subject and manifest in the subject’s prosôpon. For instance, the whiteness of a swan is an accident subsisting in the subject. Hence, it is a schema in another (hypostasized) schema (i.e. the prosôpon of nature of a swan). A mere schema which has no relation to the subject cannot be thought of as existing “in” the subject (as its accident). Nestorius designated it as “fiction” and “illusion.” An example of the third meaning is the view of the Manichaeans “concerning the flesh and the things of the flesh that [they came about] in fiction and illusion, alleging that the incarnation took place by deception.” 71 Hence, the third type is indicative of deception. In general all essential predication is synonymous and all non-essential predication is homonymous. For instance we predicate the name “animal” of a man and we also predicate “living sentient being” (the account of substance in accordance with the name) of a man. On the contrary, we predicate the name “animal” of a picture of man but we do not predicate “living sentient being” of the picture of a man. A significant expression indicating ousia is predicated synonymously of its proper subject and homonymously of the subject which participates in it. For instance, “the man is only man and God is only God.” 72 Even so, a man is said to be “god” (or godly) through participation, in which case he does not become immutable and omniscient, etc.; rather the homonymy is substantiated by the fact that a godly man is

Ibid., 15. Ibid. 72 Ibid., 22. 70 71

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virtuous, holy, etc. (characteristics that make man an image of God). 73 Hence, these characteristics do not concern ousia but dispositions and actions in relation to God and the neighbor. Each nature has a set of properties constitutive of its being. For instance, the divine nature is immutable, omniscient, etc. These properties are constitutive of the divine nature; they are its “natural completers” structurally significant for the being of God. Hence, they are parts of the subject (indeed here the notion of parts and whole does not have any material connotation and thus does not violate the rule of simplicity of the divine nature). They are predicated synonymously of their subject (i.e. God). So it is with the human properties predicated of a man. These properties are, according to Nestorius, non-participable; hence they cannot reside in another subject accidentally; the names of these properties cannot be allocated to other natures homonymously (a type of illegitimate homonymy). Some things cannot be homonyms since they do not share a name in common with other things. For instance, “God the Word is one by nature and is [so] named and that there are not many who have been [so] named by homonymy.” 74 So it can be said of all hypostases of the Trinity. Other things can share appellations (by participating in one another) without sharing the account of substance; they can thus be classified as homonyms. If we look at two voluntary united natures, i.e. God and a man, Godhead is predicated of God synonymously and of a man homonymously (since godhead is acquired by participation and resides in the subject accidentally). The same can be said of a picture of man since a picture has manhood as its accidental characteristic. Yet, “speaking precisely,” a man is not God (and a picture of a man is not “man”). Names or significant expressions signify their referents via the medium of concepts. Three variables should be considered for this kind of predication: (1) the referent, (2) the name (significant expression) and (3) its conceptual content. For instance, when we predicate “man” of a man, we allocate a significant expression to its proper referent via the medium of a concept. If, however, one of the variables is missing, predication is erroneous and incomplete. For instance, if one predicates a significant expression of a non-existing subject, or if one predicates a significant expression whose conceptual content does not correspond with the being of the referent, such predication is erroneous. There is no place for erroneous predication in theology. An example of an erroneous predication is the Manichean affirmations about the Incarnation. The argument here is premised on the assumption that nothing can Perhaps manhood can also recover “immortality,” a property which originally belonged to humanity but was lost. 74 Nestorius, Bazaar, 49. 73

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be added to the divine nature. Hence, nothing can subsist in it as an accident. 75 Even so, it is said (by the Manichaeans) that God revealed himself in the flesh (i.e. without entering into the prosopic/voluntary union with the human nature). Hence, such a revelation is a mere illusion. In this case the name only is predicated of the subject. Even so, this kind of predication is illegitimate since such an accidental disposition cannot be predicated of God. As Nestorius argued, “[t]he Incarnation indeed lay not in this, as a king, in using as a king the schema of soldierhood, becomes not a soldier indeed in the manner of a soldier; or perhaps it is as if one were to say that in name only he becomes a soldier. Thus no more did God become incarnate, being not in human nature…” 76 This type of homonymy is thus illegitimate since it is not conceptually consonant with the being of its referent. There are two types of names or significant expressions that have a special place in scriptural predications. We can call them “nature predicates” and “dispensation predicates.” To illustrate: names (i.e. significant expressions) are predicated of things as their proper referents. Things have their ousiai subsistent and made manifest. Hence, the first kind of predicates is indicative of natures. Just another kind of predicates does not classify natures but their oikonomic manifestation. Their immediate referent is not a nature. Thus they have a mediated connection to natures. Cyril, the Patriarch of Alexandria and Nestorius’ adversary would soon argue that the name Christ, the most important name for theologians, does not have a nature as its proper referent, but the quality of “being anointed.” 77 It is thus a “dispensation predicate.” In short, the names involved in such kind of predication have a more distant and complex relation to natures than one may expect. So may it be the case with the vast majority of scriptural titles. The conceptual content of these significant expressions should be specified so as to be consonant with their immediate referent (say, the conception of being anointed). Their applicability to a nature is derivative and conditioned upon certain variables (such as divine works, participation, etc.). Nestorius would agree with this: By the expression “Christ” or “Only-begotten” or “Jesus” or “Son,” or by others which are similar to these, we indicate the union: but by the expression “Man” the substance which was assumed, and by the expression “God the Word” the Cf. Philoponus: “But if substance is a subject for the existence of accidents, why did he call substance ‘not in a subject’ rather that calling it ‘a subject’? Our answer to this is that, first, not every substance is a subject. The divine substance is surely not a subject, for nothing belongs to it accidentally, and therefore it would not be called a subject. So if he had generally called substance a subject, he would not have included the divine substance.” Philoponus, in Cat. 1–5, 29, 14–18. 76 Nestorius, Bazaar, 21. 77 See McGuckin, St. Cyril, 294. 75

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characteristics of the substance which became man. They say that Christ is God alone. And see, God is the Trinity. So Christ is the Trinity. If however Christ is God alone, and the Father is not Christ, then they separate them in nature. Much rather is the case thus: “Christ” is not the name of the substance but of the dispensation. And Christ is God, but God is not “Christ. 78

Hence, these names do not have an equal extension and do not convert. The former names are functional and shared; the latter ones designate nature and can be applied to another nature only homonymously. 79 Thus, the name Christ has the conception of being anointed as its immediate referent and secondly, a nature (e.g. the “assumed” man, etc.) which has a membership in this kind (of things anointed); while such names as man and god have natures as their proper referents thus representing “nature predicates”. Things have substance properly manifest. Thus prosôpa reveal their ousia. Even so, when heteroousian things enter into a voluntary union, they preserve their ousiai and exchange their prosôpa; and by doing so they create a common prosôpon. A shared prosôpon is neither the subject for existence nor that of predication. However, we can think of it as a quasi-subject of predication. Three things are said of the shared prosôpon primarily, i.e. sonhood, lordship, and the quality of being anointed (Christed). Good dispositions and actions towards God and the world (expressed by dispensation predicates) deserve praise. Another set of names here is that signifying praise and adoration. Nestorius’ famous saying “I divide natures but unite adoration” deserves some attention in this context. These doxological names are again shared. There are three doxological predicates said-of the common prosôpon – shared worship, honor, and glorification. These predicates are thus said of its quasi-subject; the rule of homonymy does not seem to apply here. Nestorius was consequently charged for elevating logic above faith. His opponents argued “[t]hings which should properly be received with faith you [Nestorius] accept with “natural logic” and reduce them to impossibilities. Then you deprive us in truth of the Christian faith as heathens or Manichaeans who stumble at the Cross of Christ.” 80 He accepted this charge but argued that the “science of Christ” is a form of knowledge; and knowledge assumes a set of rules for reason; the most important one being the rule of non-contradiction. Therefore, theological affirmations Syriac fragment from the Theopaschites, German translation in Loofs, Nestoriana, 211. English translation in Bethune-Baker in Nestorius and His Teaching, 60. 79 “If then the distinctions of the natures have not been annulled, the nature of the flesh appertains solely to the nature of the humanity. But that which is Son consubstantial with God the Father and with the Holy Spirit uniquely and solely appertains to the divinity; for by the union the flesh is son and God the Word is flesh.” Nestorius, Bazaar, 160. 80 Ibid., 16. 78

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which violate the rules of reason, despite them being allegedly established upon Christian “faith,” in reality repudiate faith by introducing incoherent opinions; hence, they have very little to do with both faith and reason. In general, any affirmations contrary to the rules of logic have no place in theology.

3.2.3.

NESTORIUS’ OIKONOMIA

As a faithful disciple of Theodore and a classical representative of the “school of Antioch” in general, Nestorius largely followed the oikonomic tradition of Eustathius of Antioch, Diodore of Tarsus, and Theodore of Mopsuestia. According to these thinkers, the Word of God, who is the “Son of God” by nature, is immutable, ontologically stable, omnipresent, and so on. Thus, in no way one can think of the Word as a subject to change, weakness or alteration. It will then follow that “coming-tobe-such and such” (that is, in human conditions) cannot be predicted of the Word since it assumes the possibility of a change from one state to another. All timebound predicates along with those suggestive of alteration/change/mutation, etc. should be immediately ruled out as far as the “divine nature” is concerned. On the other hand, all contingencies that Scripture ascribes to Christ should be said-of the “Son of Man,” the “human nature” assumed by the Word and existing in close association with the Word through the community of wills. This “human nature” (retaining its subsistence properly manifest), oikonomically lifted up and seated at the right hand of the Father, is the true subject of such time-bound affirmations. It would than follow that the Biblical language of self-emptying or condescension has a mere allegorical significance. 81 One can think of the language of descent as an allegory of obedience of the “Son of Man,” that is of a human being, Jesus of Nazareth. In other words, the “Son of Man” is the real subject of “the Incarnation.” Even so, that which is a man in the first place cannot “come-to-be-man.” Therefore, the Incarnation becomes an allegory of good will and obedience of behalf of a human being and an allegory of a special connection between God and man in which God’s good will is made manifest. This non-Incarnational Oikonomia became an alternative reading of the John’s account of descent and the Pauline account of condensation well-pleasing to some more philosophically naïve thinkers. The major pitfall associated with this account was that it posited “two sons” and thus introduced the notion Cyril would question such an approach by asking the following question: τίς δὴ ἄρα ἐστὶν ὁ ἐνανθρωπῆσαι λεγόμενος καὶ τί τὸ ἐνανθρωπῆσαι φής; τίς ὁ τὴν τοῦ δούλου μορφὴν ἀναλαβών; ἀνελήφθη δὲ παρ’ αὐτοῦ τίνα τρόπον “Who is it now that is said to be made man? And what dost thou say that being made man is? Who is he that took the servant’s form? And how was it taken by him?” Cyril of Alexandria, Five Tomes, ACO 1,1,6. 44, 23–25 [64 in translation]. Hence, apparently, the affirmations of some Antiochene thinkers on the subject of condensation did not make any sense unless assumed as allegorical. 81

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of double-subjectivity in Christ, human and divine being linked by a special connection while fully preserving their proper “nature” and subjectivity. What is Christ? Christ is firstly the name of the shared prosôpon. As we have seen, the shared prosôpon is neither the subject for existence nor the subject of predication. It is a quasi-subject since certain things can be said-of it; even so, its underlying foundation is incapable of satisfying the criteria for being a hypokeimenon (that is, subject). Now, the word Christ is predicated homonymously of various things, i.e. the man assumed, the Word of God who assumed, and the common prosôpon. It is a dispensation predicate derivative and shared. A mere relational unity (another example of it used extensively by this group of thinkers was that of a husband and wife being “one body”), however, does not provide us with proper subjectivity (that is, it does not make up the proper subject of predication and for existence). This merely relational unity is not strong enough to satisfy the criteria for being a subject. Thus, there are two subjects in Christ, i.e. his natures, and one quasi-subject, i.e. the shared prosôpon. The “being” of Christ is another thing to be looked at. Here we can evoke a classical definition of being (first ousia) which is a particular this, indivisible and one in number. Its unity (or oneness) is a whole and not the total sum. Hence, it is a whole made of parts which position within the whole makes a difference for the being of the whole. Nestorius’ Christ cannot satisfy some of these conditions. The shared prosôpon is not a thing of its own kind. It is not a particular being. It does not subsist on its own and does not have an integral principle of unity. Hence, the being of the shared prosôpon is derivative; it is contingent upon the being of the natures. It is thus accidental. The natures that enter into union are not parts of the whole; they rather represent the sum or a total (in which case the position of “parts”, so to say, does not make a difference for the being of the whole). Hence, oneness or unity here is also derivative. It will then follow that the being of Christ is not “one” or “unity” in a strong sense; hence, Christ is not a being or nature per se. It is not a proper name of the subject but a predicate that at times assumes the role of quasisubject. Nestorius’ metaphysical schema did not allow for any communication between the divine and the human apart from the voluntary one (since his axiom of immutability, extended to all natures). He thought of the union of natures in the strong sense (beyond a merely voluntary/moral relation) only in terms of mixture and fusion; and immediately ruled it out. Hence, God cannot “come-to-be” a human, although a human being can become god by “coming-to-be” virtuous, etc, by participation. Since the Word of God is immutable it cannot “come-to-be” or be united with another nature so as to jeopardize his divine stasis. The mode of relation and communication with other natures is via his operations (energeiai). The created divine operations (energeiai) are made manifest in the series of processions that express divine will for the world. The “Incarnation” can also be thought of as a metaphor of one of the divine operations. Among various ramifications of this metaphysical commitment, however, was the one that basically deconstructed the “soteriological argument” preeminent in the early Church; namely, that only God can save and that,

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for human salvation to be achieved, some sort of divine intervention into this created realm is necessary. Hence, Nestorius introduced the savior as a human being with a special merit, in other words, posited an exemplary model of salvation (which in the eyes of his opponents amounted to overthrowing the entire rational behind the oikonomy of salvation). There are two subjects for existence; each subject has its proper operations. Thus one must distinguish operations in Christ. Even so, “the diversities are [those] of the operations which are set before us and these diversities are based on the sayings; for when there is no diversity [in the operations], the diversity also of the sayings is suppressed.” 82 It would follow that we have to divide the scriptural “sayings” about Christ accordingly. Some of them tell us something about his human nature. Others tell us something of his divine nature. And some other sayings can be thought of as reflecting the common prosôpon. For instance, when Christ is designated as a high priest (that is “high priesthood” being predicated of Christ) one should immediately attribute this saying to the human nature. Now Christ as a high priest is suggestive of a human being who “was made so, he was not so from eternity… he who by little and little advanced unto the dignity of the high priesthood.” 83 Hence, Christ here is indicative of a human being since becoming, growth, etc. cannot be predicated of the divine being. If, on the contrary, one is to predicate the “high priesthood” of the Word of God, this predication would be illegitimate thus interpreting “[the saying] contrary to Paul, commingling the Impassible God the Word with earthly body and making Him a passible High Priest.” 84 An example of the sayings designating the divine nature is “He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father.” Some other sayings, however, do not differentiate natures and present them both equally. Those sayings designate both natures. The task of a theologian is to divide the sayings so as to allocate them to their appropriate subjects. If, however, the diversity of natures (and subjects) had been annihilated but the names designating the natures united are preserved, then multiple impossibilities would immediately arise. For instance, if one is to posit one Christ made of two mixed natures (that lost their distinctive properties in the mixture), what will happen? Nestorius, Bazaar, 307. Cyril of Alexandria, Five Tomes, ACO 1,1,7. 110, 13–15 [110 in translation]. 84 Ibid. Cyril noted in this context that “this is the point of their [Nestorius and Theodore of Mopsuestia] pedantic, muddle-headed fiction. In that case, the Word of God the Father on his own and by himself should not be called ‘Christ’; for just as suffering is out of character with him when he is considered in isolation from flesh, so is anointing an inconsistent feature alien to him.” Cyril of Alexandria, On Creed, ACO 1,1,4. 61, 4–5. English translation in Cyril of Alexandria, Select Letters, ed. L. Wickham (Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press, 1983), 131. 82 83

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Hypothesis: Let us assume that two natures are united “naturally” so as to create one compounded nature. Let us also assume that the constituent natures in the union are distinguished in the name alone while their underlying reality is indistinguishable. It will then follow that (1) either the names are polyonyms (since their referent is one and the same the diversity of natures being abolished; hence the name “man” and the name “god” will denote one and the same reality), or that (2) at least one name designates an accident subsisting in another nature, or (3) most likely, that one name (or both names) will be predicated of a non-existing referent, i.e. in illusion. In the latter case the predication would be incomplete. Hence, we may first assume that the names designating the natures of Christ represent one and the same thing being polyonyms. But to say that would amount to annihilating the differences between natures. Thus, this hypothesis is ruled out. If, on the other hand, the human nature of Christ subsists in the divine nature, it should be an accident subsisting in the divine nature, that is, the schema made manifest in the prosôpon of the Word. It will then follow that the human nature of Christ is “nature” in name alone; its proper status is an accident of nature. It is then distinguished from the divine nature in name alone but not in reality. However, the divine nature cannot take additions and nothing can subsist in it. Hence, this hypothesis is also ruled out. Even so, if we assume that the natures, being united into a natural union, still preserve some type of natural qualities (which is indeed impossible), and divide the sayings, these sayings will be distributed to non-existing subjects (since the natures do not exist as two any longer). Hence, there will be two sets of predicates predicated of the referents which no longer exist as such (being totally unified and thus confused and thus made one). Another way to approach the same issue was via the conception of semantic structures. Nestorius argued that “three kinds arising out of the nature of the ousiai which are required of him who considers: (1) the ousia itself and (2) the idea of the ousia and (3) the saying indicative of the idea. But whoever says that they [are] merely in idea alone, says two kinds: merely the idea and its own saying.” For Nestorius such a supposition will amount to attributing “the diversity to the idea alone of the nature and not to the ousia, but to a quality [resting] upon an illusion and upon a supposition of the nature, upon a schema of the nature and not upon the ousia of the nature.” 85 This means that the human nature is an accident predicated of the Word, a standard charge on the side of Nestorius of Cyril’s henotic Oikonomia. It would subsist “in” the divine nature and would not have its own principle of subsistence. It would be “nature” in schema and name alone, but not in reality. It would be predicated of the subject homonymously. But, it cannot be said-of the Word (as it would jeopardize his divine simplicity), etc. 85

Nestorius, Bazaar, 322.

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3.2.4.

THE CASE OF THE T H EOTOKOS

As we have already seen above, Nestorius apparently (at least according to Socrates) reacted against the title Theotokos angrily. However, this was not “precisely” the fact of the matter. Let us look closer at the case so that we may discern certain aspects of it worth noting in this context. What was all this about? I suggest that at stake was a type of homonymy involved. At this point we enter into the realm of ancient philosophy. Let us set aside the question of the extent of Nestorius’ knowledge of ancient thought (apparently quite sufficient, at least, according to his contemporaries). What is important in this context is the agenda of explicating the meaning of the term and its various modes. At stake here are various relations between the name, its conceptual content, and the referent in predication. As we have seen, homonyms are things that “have the name in common, the definition (or account of substance) corresponding with the name being different.” 86 An example of homonymous predication given by Aristotle was that of “man” predicated of a picture of man. A man and a picture of man are homonyms since they share a name alone while their definition (manifest in their account of substance) differs. What kind of homonymy is it? According to Philoponus, this is an example of the homonymy “from one thing” (as a starting point), and, “[a]mong homonyms ‘from one thing’, some get their name from the paradigmatic cause, e.g. a human being in a picture [gets its name, ‘human being’] from some real human being.” 87 Would this type of homonymy exemplify the relation of the name Theotokos to the Father and the Virgin (sharing a common appellation but differing in their formula of essence)? It would, according to Nestorius, “because the Word was united to the temple… which is in nature consubstantial with the holy Virgin… It is in virtue of this union that the holy Virgin is called Theotokos.” 88 Hence, the Virgin receives its title from the paradigmatic cause, i.e. from the Father via the medium of the Word of God being in conjunction with the temple. Even so, the being of the Virgin is not the same as the being of the Father. Hence, the community of names does not annihilate the difference in the account of substance. Further, however, Philoponus adds another qualification to the homonymy from the paradigmatic cause, i.e. the similarity of the form (morphe), “as when we go and call the image of Socrates by the name ‘Socrates.’” 89 Hence this homonymy from the paradigmatic cause also includes the similarity of the form. Form here is some sort of external manifestation of a thing. Would this new qualification fit into Aristotle, Categories, in L. Minio-Paluello, ed. Aristotelis categoriae et liber de interpretione (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949; repr. 1966), 1a, 1-2. 87 Philoponus, In Cat., 17, 8–10. 88 Nestorius, Sermon 18, Loofs, Nestoriana, 303 and 309. English translation in BethuneBaker, Nestorius and His Teaching, 85. 89 Philoponus, In Cat., 22, 7–8. 86

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Nestorius’ understanding of homonymy? It definitely would, especially in the cases when “man” is predicated of God (that is, when the Word is called man) would do the job perfectly since the Word appears in the schema of man (through the exchange of prosôpa) and thus has an external form of a man. What about the Virgin? Here we have a similar case since Christ’s form (morphe), his external manifestation, is that of humanity (though it has a more distant relation to the Virgin since Christ did not appear in the form of the Virgin). It should be noted in this context that the homonymy “from one thing” grants homonymous appellations to things which relate to one another as image to paradigm. Image, in this context, does not subsume any essential characteristics of its paradigm; even so, the name of the paradigm is allocated to it. Moreover, some sort of similarity of external manifestation is also involved. The question is whether it subsumes some accidental characteristics of the paradigm. Can an image walk or learn grammar? Perhaps not! Hence, a mere relation in the form of a common external manifestation is at stake. More importantly, in the aforementioned case the name is predicted of the union (i.e. a relation). It is not predicated of a nature. Hence, the Virgin is the Theotokos by union, i.e. the relation of the man who is born of her to God the Word. Fatherhood is a peculiar property of God the Father; Sonship is a peculiar property of the Son. The Son is true God of true God; hence to bear the Son (for the Father) is to bear God; it would then follow that “fatherhood” is essential for the being of the Father. We may call it “nature predicate” in this context. “The Birthgiver of God” for the Virgin is a “dispensation predicate” within the scope of Oikonomia. Its utility does not extend beyond the scope of oikonomic thought. Even so, if we make it into a “nature predicate” (i.e. by transferring it to the scope of Theologia) it will immediately become an illusion. The example of homonymy just mentioned was, however, not the only example of homonymy given by Aristotle. Another example that should be mentioned in this context is that of “medical” predicated of both a scalpel and a drug. This example was classified by Simplicius as an example of intentional homonymy, or one “by derivation”. While the former example of homonymy can be classified, according to C. Shields as an example of “discrete homonymy,” 90 the latter example illustrates what Shields called “comprehensive homonymy.” 91 The difference between these types of homonymy is associated with the accounts of substance of homonyms as Thus, “(DH): X and Y are homonymously F iff (i) they have their name in common, but (ii) their definitions have nothing in common and so do not overlap in any way.” Christopher Shields, Order in Multiplicity: Homonymy in the Philosophy of Aristotle (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 11. 91 Thus “(CH): X and Y are homonymously F iff (i) they have their name in common, (ii) their definitions do not completely overlap.” Ibid. 90

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having either no overlap whatsoever, or rather as not completely overlapping. While the “man-picture” example is representative of discrete homonymy, the “medical” example is representative of comprehensive homonymy. According to Simplicius, this type of homonymy was classified by some commentators as being situated between synonyms and homonyms since “not only the name is common” 92 but also their account of substance exhibits commonalities as well. In this case to say that God is God-bearing and so is the Virgin God-bearing, since what it is for God to bear God overlaps in some ways with what it is for the Virgin to bear God, would be illegitimate for Nestorius. Even so, the use of homonyms has just another aspect. For instance, while, according to Aristotle, essential predication is always synonymous, accidental characteristics are always predicated of the subject homonymously. Hence, “what is in a substrate [i.e. subject] is predicated homonymously, whereas what [is said] of a substrate is predicated synonymously.” 93 All non-essential characteristics of a thing are thus predicated of it homonymously. They are “in the subject” being its accidents. But what kind of accident is at stake? Here again, we should distinguish between certain things whose existence in the subject is contingent, that is conditioned upon other things, and merely relational accidents (substantiated via the medium of the prosopic union of natures, such as the similarity of an external form). To say that the characteristic of giving birth to God the Word resides in the subject of the Virgin (as a contingency) is to posit just another type of homonymy, i.e. that which implies that the Virgin can give birth to God but not “always or for the most time”. That would be an illegitimate homonymy for Nestorius. Nestorius perhaps thought that homonymous appellations of this kind (God the Father and Virgin being the Theotoki) are allowed only if we assume that the likeness of their underlying realities does not extends beyond the level of external morphe. If, on the contrary, we assume that the function of bearing God belongs to the Virgin really but not necessarily, i.e. that she at times may give birth to God (though such thing is not essential for the Virgin), this type of homonymy is illegitimate. Another type which assigns a name but no underlying reality (i.e. in deception) is again illegitimate. Overall, such an appellation does not seem to correspond with the conceptual content of the name and thus should be set aside. There are thus the following types of error that may be involved in such predication: (1) to confuse the level of analysis: Theologia vs. Oikonomia; (2) to closely asso-

Simplicius, On Aristotle Categories 1–4, trans. M. Chase (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2003), 32, 10–20. 93 Ibid, 12–14. “Of the subject” indicates synonymous predication. Thus, what is “saidof” the subject is predicated of it synonymously. “What does he mean by ‘as of a subject’? [He means] essentially (ousiodos) and really (pragmatikos).” It follows than that “[if] something predicated of the thing is predicated accidentally, it is not necessarily said of the subject as well.” Philoponus, In Cat., 38, 28–30. 92

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ciate the name and the account of essence (as in comprehensive homonymy in which the homonyms share the name and their accounts of essence do not completely overlap); (3) to associate homonymy with certain contingencies inherent in the subject (wherein the subject is named after those characteristics); (4) to misapply the name to the subject (to which it cannot be applied). There is only one legitimate use of such homonymy, that is, the case of homonyms from one thing not sharing any characteristics apart from a mere external manifestation (1). In general, we can conclude that Nestorius’ Oikonomia represented an intellectually subtle and internally coherent justification of non-Incarnational thought. Let us now look at Cyril’s Oikonomia so that we may have a better understanding of the chasm between these thinkers.

3.3. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA AND HIS THOUGHT Our knowledge of Cyril comes from the following sources: 1. A collection of Cyril’s works published in the second half of the nineteenth century by J.P. Migne, Vols. 68–77. Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Graeca. 2. 3.

Another collection of mainly biblical commentaries of Cyril published by P.E. Pusey in seven volumes.

Proceedings of the Council of Ephesus which include most relevant to the controversy treatises of Cyril.

Greek text: Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum by Eduard Schwartz, Concilium Universale Ephesenum AD 431. Modern Langage Translations:

French: Éphèse et Chalcédoine : Actes des Conciles by André-Jean Festugière. English: Authoritative Christianity. The Third World Council… which was held A.D. 431, at Ephesus in Asia by James Chrystal; Vols. I–III. 4.

5.

6. 7.

Various dogmatic works of Cyril published recently in the series of Sources Chrétiennes, in Greek with French translations. L. Wickham’s recent edition of Cyril’s letters.

Church historians and doxologists: the accounts of Socrates and Damascius being especially influential. Various Syriac fragments of Cyril.

Among translations of Cyril’s treatises into modern languages, the most textually correct ones can be found in J.A. McGuckin’s St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy and On the Unity of Christ. L. Wickham’s, G.M. De Durand’s, and P.

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Burguière’s translations are also of a high quality. Some older translations, including P.E. Pusey, are still of a considerable importance due to the lack of any alternative translations, though their philological qualities are not of a great order. Cyril of Alexandria received a significant scholarly attention in “modern” scholarship which was very much dominated by the notion of Christological models. Those “models” were intended to function as explanatory tools for conceptually diverging regional mindsets, schools, etc. (according to geographical or regional peculiarities: Antioch vs. Alexandria; Syria vs. Egypt, etc.) and also to account for some “inconsistent” thought-patterns within the Cyril’s corpus. Such historians as M. Richards, A. Grillmeier, R. Norris, R. Siddals, etc. propagated the notion of models (Grillmeier and Norris being the most influential). Hence, we have WordFlesh vs. Word-Man and predication vs. composition “Christological Models” (as well as some subsidiary models including mixture vs. juxtaposition, etc.). Apparently, while mid-late twentieth-century scholars found a great utility in the proposed “models,” more recent scholarship does not seem to place so much trust in them. Their historical significance is acknowledged while the extent of their utility is being questioned. This chapter is again very much indebted to McGuckin’s analysis of Cyril’s theology as it was presented in his monograph on St. Cyril of Alexandria.

3.3.1.

CYRIL’S METAPHYSICS

Apparently, Cyril did not put much trust in the choice of terms and catch-phrases. The task of defining Cyril’s terms is thus quite complicated. Even so, we may reasonably suggest that the word substance (ousia) in Cyril signifies primarily a kind. However, at times it also stands for a particular being. Hypostasis is that which designates subsistence; hence it always denotes a particular being endowed with subsistence. Nature in Cyril’s treatises has at least four meanings: (1) a kind; (2) a sensible particular being; (3) a supercosmic being of one of the divine hypostases; (4) the total sum of individual beings representing a kind (e.g. the total sum of human beings who ever lived). Even so, the contextual application of terms in Cyril’s discourse was, for the most part, very accurate and in no way led to fallacious arguments. One can easily extract the meaning of significant expressions according to their contextual use (normally well corresponding with conventional definitions). Overall, the terms of Cyril’s discourse should be contextualized in order to specify their significance. The notion of nature was indeed of a primary significance for Cyril. Nature is that which defines the being of a kind; even so it can also be subsistent and made manifest in its operations. Hence, the universal and particular aspects of the concept of “nature” often (but not always) complete one another in Cyril’s discourse. He classified natures as either created or uncreated. The divine nature is henadic and uncreated. All other natures are created. Among created natures some are complete and some incomplete. Complete natures are self-subsistent (i.e. hypostasized); incomplete natures, on the other hand, lack self-subsistence; they are hypostasized

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“in” other (self-subsistent) natures and can be thought of as their immanent constituents. Natures are either incorporeal or corporeal. The divine nature is incorporeal. It is made subsistent in three hypostases, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. “For One indeed is the Nature of the Godhead, but the Father exists in His Proper mode and the Son too and likewise the Spirit.” 94 Each hypostasis of this tri-hypostatic entity displays the same set of essential characteristics (i.e. immutability, omniscience, etc.) along with will and operations. Thus, “all things wrought by the Father and through the Son in the Spirit, and when the Father is (so to say) moved to ought, yet does the Son surely work in the Spirit; and though the Son or the Spirit be said to fulfill ought, this is full surely of the Father: and through the whole Holy and Consubstantial Trinity runs the Operation alike and Will unto everything.” 95 Thus, the unity of being (ousia), will (thelēma) and operation (energeia) constitute the foundational pillars of monotheism. Hypothesis: Let us assume that each hypostasis, while subsisting on its own, is endowed with its peculiar will and operation. It will follow then that three gods will be introduced. Thus, “the giving of the operations severally to each of the hypostases individually is nothing else than to set forth three gods severally and wholly distinct from one another.” 96 Hence, to divide wills and operations in the Trinity is to present three deities. In general, if an entity has two wills or operations is it not one but “the many.” This axiom is applicable to both Theologia and Oikonomia. Human nature is created and composite. It has both corporeal and incorporeal elements. It is changeable and mutable. The divine nature, while immutably resting in its divine stasis, can nevertheless experience some sort of intellectual motion (its operations being made manifest). Hence, it moves immovably, changes unchangeably, remains self-same while exhibiting self-differentiation. Thus a sort of intellectual motion is posited, one that has nothing to do with the motion in space (in which case the subject is circumscribed by spatial boundaries while changing its position from one place to another). Rather, it tells us about the divine efficacy, that is, energeia which proceeds from the divine being all the way to our sublunar realm so as to create the causal chains governing the world and exercising foreknowledge of its affairs. In general, the divine and human natures are not mutually exclusive and communicate in various ways. Incorporeal/intelligible natures can be present to other intelligible or sensible natures all at once. What is at stake here? Apparently, a classical part-whole dilemma

Cyril of Alexandria, Five Tomes, ACO 1,1,6. 77, 2–3 [127–128 in translation]. Ibid., ACO 1,1,6. 77, 3–7 [128 in translation]. 96 Ibid., ACO 1,1,6. 80, 32–34 [134 in translation]. 94 95

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was posited for God (as it was introduced by Plato’s Parmenides). 97 We may think of God as being present to the world. A particular aspect of this presence is associated with the Incarnation. The question posited is whether God the Word is present to the body as a whole or only partially. What happens to the Word upon the event of the Incarnation? If it is present to the body as the whole it will be separated from itself. If, on the other hand, the Word is present to the body partially, the Word will be divisible into parts thus losing its internal integrity (now being not one but the many). May one think of his being then as self-separable and divisible and thus not having a proper principle of coherence within itself? No. Hence, the whole-part dilemma is ruled out since it confuses material beings which cannot be shared or present to many things at once with immaterial things capable of omnipresence. How then is it possible that the Word could be “in the particular and in the universal”? Apparently, “it is impossible to do so.” 98 The answer is that “he had this capacity because he is incorporeal and indivisible.” 99 The Word is thus present to the body as the whole without jeopardizing his divine stasis and without being self-separated or divided. Incorporeal/intelligible natures share the fullness of their being with other beings without ceasing to be what they are and without being diminished. The principle of “undiminished giving” was foundational for Cyril. The main corollary to this axiom is that the Word has become man without ceasing to be what he was and without being diminished. He shared the fullness of his divine subsistence with the humanity; even so, he did not lose what he had and did not change the mode of his being into becoming. Natures can enter into communion with one another. One type of communion is relational, i.e. attained through “participation”. The natures that participate in other natures acquire certain characteristics intrinsic to the nature they participate in. Even so, these characteristics are not constitutive of the participant. For instance, a human nature (i.e. a concrete human being) may participate in God and “come-tobe divine” by participation. Even so, the essential characteristics of natures are nonparticipable. A human being does not become omnipotent by virtue of participating in God. What is acquired through participation is virtue, holiness, and the restoration of immortality which the human nature had before the fall. Thus, the participable phase of God is open to human intentionality.

Plato, Parmenides, ed. J. Burnet, Platonis opera, Vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901; repr. 1967), 130e–131e. 98 Cyril of Alexandria, Scholia on the Incarnation of the Only Begotten, in Sancti Patris Nostri Cyrilli archiepiscopi Alexandrini, Epistolae tres Oecumenicae; Libri quinque contra Nestorium; XII Capitum Explanatio; XII Capitum Defensio utraque; Scholia de Incarnationae Unigeniti, ed. P. E. Pusey (Bruxelles, Culture et civilisation, 1965), 550, 24–25. English translation in McGuckin, St. Cyril, 320. 99 Ibid., Pusey (1965), 550, 26–27 [320 in translation]. 97

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On the other hand, the natures may enter into union so as to become parts of the composite whole. When the natures “come-to-be-one” their natural properties become constitutive elements of the new whole. They are thus parts of the new compounded entity. Parts subsume characteristics of the whole and can be named after the whole. The mode of being of the constituents of the new compounded being is unitive. Even so, we may still intellectually loosen up the unity of being so as to discern its constitutive elements. At times, we may even think of it as intrinsically differentiated in the first place, thus ascending to unity synthetically, since our diminished epistemic capacities prevent us from grasping the subject unitively. However, one may not divide natures that entered into union into two selfsubsisting entities, that is, into two subjects for existence and of predication. This procedure would be illegitimate. The unified natures are thus distinguishable “in name alone” (that is, conceptually) but not in reality. The union in the strong sense is “natural union”. One type of “natural union” is the union between various material entities. When they unite they alter their essential characteristics so as to “temper” them 100 in order to create a new tertium quid. This type is normally classified as “mixture” or “fusion”, since the unified natures intermingle while changing their essential characteristics. This process may also result in passing away of some constitutive characteristics of the ingredients (as they become irrecoverable). As a result, the unified natures cannot act as they used to since their “tempered” characteristics cannot fully manifest themselves any longer. Just another type of “natural union” unites natures which differ in kind, namely material and immaterial. In this case, though a new tertium quid may be created (e.g. soul-body resulting in a human being), the natures entering into union do not alter their essential characteristics and do not fuse (or confuse) them. Their characteristics are not “tempered.” Hence, they manifest themselves fully either synchronically or even diachronically in diverging processions. The mode of communication of natures here is not intermingling or reciprocal acting and being acted upon (i.e. suffering), but a mutual awareness of one another. Hence, the soul, being immaterial and celestial (thus impassible) is made aware of the passions and sufferings of the body. At times Cyril extends the language of “natural union” to the Trinity. 101 Albeit, this type of “natural union” is not made out of different ingredients. Natural in this context means true. Even so, at times Cyril also used such catch-phrases as “hypostatic union”, “oikonomic union”, “true union”, etc. thus accentuating some particular aspect of union. For instance, by saying that the union of natures is hypostatic, Cyril highlights the fact that the ground of unity is an individual subsistence of God the This expression, introduced by D. Frede, is a useful metaphor describing the behavior of essential characteristics of the mixables. 101 “Ὀ μὲν γὰρ τῆς φυσικῆς ἐνότητος λόγος ἐπὶ τῆς ἁγίας Τριάδος”. Cyril of Alexandria, Five Tomes, ACO, 1,1,6. 80, 34. 100

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Word and not a mere coalescence of essential characteristics with no subsistence. By saying that it is oikonomic, he emphasizes the fact that the conception of the union of natures should not be attributed to the scope of Theologia, etc. Even so, these catch-phrases are used for the most time interchangeably. The natures unified naturally may not be of an unequal footing. Hence, one nature can affect another nature in one way or another. For instance, in the natural union the divine nature introduces a new principle of coherence to the human nature. This is just another aspect of henosis (unification). Divine nature is henadic, selfsufficient and good. And as we learn from Proclus of Athens, “every good tends to unify what participates in it; and all unification is a good; and the Good is identical with the One.” 102 And “every god is a beneficent henad or a unifying excellence, and has this substantive character qua god”. 103 Being self-sufficient and thus complete (τὸ τέλειον), each henad initiates various causal chains and produces various things by giving them a degree of unity, goodness, beauty, etc. associated with unification. Moreover, a henad bestows a character which it “itself primitively possesses” 104 on others which then possesses the character by participation. Meanwhile, the “unified” both remains in its productive cause and also proceeds from it. Then it “reverts upon that from which it proceeds,” 105 the productive cause thus being its final end and the source of well-being. And whatever reverts upon a henad becomes divinized being “linked by an upward tension to one divine henad.” 106 The nature of humanity is such as to be “sorely tried and oppressed by great evils, damned by the curse to death, and caught in the snares of sin.” 107 It is thus trapped in the state of ignorance; it lost its integral coherence and needs a repair. Even so, God loves his creation and is there, in the state of condensation, to bring knowledge and truth so as to transelement the nature of humanity from within. The Word of God assumes the human nature (nature here indicates the being of a kind, i.e. essential universal being; God the Word does not assume a particular human being upon the event of the Incarnation but rather “human conditions”). The Word gives a share of goodness and celestial beauty to Christ’s humanity and initiates a new causal chain for the entire humanity. The Incarnation thus is a necessary and sufficient condition for opening up the participated phase of God to the entire humanity so that the total sum of human beings (ever lived) can become deified. Even so, the process of deification is conditioned on human intentionality and

“πᾶν ἀγαθὸν ἑνωτικόν ἐστι τῶν μετεχόντων αὐτοῦ, καὶ πᾶσα ἕνωσις ἀγαθὸν, καὶ τἀγαθὸν τῷ ἑνὶ ταὐτόν”. Proclus, The Elements of Theology, ed. E.R. Dodds (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), Prop.13. 103 “πᾶς μὲν θεὸς ἑνάς ἐστιν ἀγαθουργὸς ἢ ἀγαθὸτης ἐνοποιός.” Ibid., Prop.133. 104 Ibid., Prop.18. 105 Ibid., Prop.31. 106 Ibid., Prop.135. 107 Cyril of Alexandria, Scholia, Pusey (1965), 522, 17–22 [320 in translation]. 102

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actions. Hence, the nature of humanity is deified (being fully integrated into divine being) but each member of this kind shall acquire a share for her/himself by reverting upon Christ, that is the source of their true being. Natures are either simple or wholes made of parts. Even so, intelligible natures are somehow both wholes before parts (being thus simple) and the wholes of parts (being thus compounded). A corollary to this is that God is a whole before parts in his disincarnate state and the whole of parts in his incarnate state. Those states correspond with the phases in God, i.e. participable and non-participable. God, on the one hand, is totally transcendent and not open to participation (considered in the mode of Theologia); and, on the other, it is immanent to the being of Christ and open to participation. In other words, in God’s oikonomic state God is both the cause of the chain that proceeds from God and also its first member.

3.3.2.

CYRIL ON NAMES AND PREDICATION

Apparently, Cyril’s conception of the origins of names assumed their natural (i.e. non-conventional) origins. Intelligible natures have primary claims for having names. Sensible particulars, on the other hand, possess names after intelligible things in which they partake. In a sense what they possess is not a “name” per se but rather its derivation. They are thus named after their intelligible paradigms in which they participate. According to Cyril they are not “named” but “co-named” by “adoption” and “imitation.” For instance, “the Father is named and is in truth God, and from Him is every fatherhood both in heaven and upon earth named, as it is written, yet are there with us other fathers too both fleshly and spiritual.” 108 Thus, the name Father will “in the highest degree befit” God the Father alone. It would then follow that names signify intelligible things primarily and sensible secondarily. Cyril’s conception of synonymy was adjusted the theory of names just introduced. Synonymous predication allocates the name and the account of substance corresponding with the name to the referent. The unity of being is the sole ground for synonymous predication. Thus, synonymous predication “will belong (as appears to me) not to things possessing an identity of name [alone], but to those rather, which obtain the equality and likeness in every thing of things that are believed to be one.” 109 Synonyms are things which have both the name (per se) and the definition in common. For instance, both soul and body are said-to be “man” synonymously. Similarly, the divine and human natures of Christ are said to be “Son”. They are synonymous one with another. Their ground for synonymy is the unity of being. The unity of being of a compounded entity is such as to consist of certain constituents. They are the parts of the compounded whole. The parts of the whole subsume characteristics of the whole and are named after the whole. They are predicat108 109

Cyril of Alexandria, Five Tomes, ACO 1,1,6. 95, 9–10 [163 in translation]. Ibid., ACO 1,1,6. 46, 19–21 [68 in translation].

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ed synonymously of the whole. Whatever belongs to the whole belongs to the parts. If it is said that sonship belongs to the whole, it also belongs to the parts (i.e. the Word and the flesh). Now, sonship is predicated of the Word Incarnate. Let us assume that sonship is essential for the being of the Word and of his flesh (and it is essential, according to Cyril). Then being the “Son” would mean the same thing for the Word and for his flesh. Hence the name is the same and the account of substance (which tells us about what it is to be “son”) is the same. This predication is clearly synonymous. The unity of being (i.e. of God and his flesh) is behind this synonymy. If, on the contrary, things are united in “identity of name and in mere and only equality of style,” are necessarily homonyms. For instance, many human beings who partake in divine being are called “sons.” Even so, a name alone is predicated of their subjects but not the account of substance (of what it is to be “Son”). And again, the name “son” predicted of a human being of virtuous stance only derivatively. Only the “Son” is the true possessor of this name and the source of sonhood for everyone. “For common (as I said) to Him with others also will such names confessedly be, for many are sons by grace and gods and lords both in heaven and in earth… yet [they are so] as participating with Him who is so by nature and in imitation [of Him].” 110 This is also a classic example of homonymy from the source, though now it has a different significance since things “co-named” (i.e. sensible things) are situated on a different level in the schema of beings. Hence, they no longer possess the name properly but derivatively. Both nature and dispensation predicates can be predicated either synonymously or homonymously of their subjects. The dispensation predicate can be said-of the subject synonymously if that which it designates contributes to the account of what it is to be such a thing. For instance, “to one and only, the Son that is by nature, will we allot the name Christ, with reason, when the birth through the holy Virgin is spoken of.” 111 Other things are said to be anointed only derivatively and not in the same sense as the Word Incarnate (who is the true Son). Thus, both the name and the definition of “Christ” are predicated of the Word. In general, this name does not designate nature but rather indicates the ergon of God, that of “saving his people”. Cyril apparently was not a proponent of classical essentialism and the theory of substance. For Cyril the notions of subjectivity and substantiality were mainly associated with immaterial beings and only then with sensible particulars. He, at times, thought of immaterial beings as populating their material substrates and providing them with their proper subjectivity. Hence, a sensible particular, at times, is presented as a bundle of properties which is non-essential; its subjectivity and essentiality being supplied by its immaterial concomitants. For instance, the analogy of the 110 111

Ibid., ACO 1,1,6. 37, 1–2 [49–50 in translation]. Ibid., ACO 1,1,6. 36, 39–40 [49 in translation].

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flower of the field or the lily of the valleys clearly demonstrates Cyril’s commitment to the primacy of the intelligible. Cyril argued that “a perfume is something incorporeal, and yet it uses as its own the bodily form which it indwells, and thus a lily can be considered to be one from both elements.” 112 Even as “the perfume is within the particular substrate” 113 it is not “in” in the sense of an accident inhering in its subject (and being incapable to subsist apart from the subject). It is rather the principle of coherence and subjectivity for this sensible particular being. What is important in this context is that Cyril does not treat the categories (i.e. of being, of being in time, acting, etc.) as pertaining exclusively to the subject of perceptible things but also to their intelligible archetypes. Hence, Cyril found the utility of significant expressions (i.e. categories) in their application to intelligible things. That helped him in apprehending the subject as being immutable while experiencing some sort of intellectual motion, etc. In other words, he could predicate certain characteristics of God (i.e. divine nature) without jeopardizing God’s divine stasis. Overall, Cyril’s logic is that of Aristotle received through the tradition of the commentators on Aristotle. Finally, the principle of subjectivity of a compounded entity is its intelligible part. It supplies the subject for being and of predication to the compounded entity. Hence, the Word of God is the sole subject of Christ. The being of the Word of God Incarnate is compounded consisting of his divine and human natures properly unified. The mode of existence of the unified natures is unitive. Even so, one may still distinguish the constituent parts of this compounded being, namely its natural qualities. But that can be done in name and notion alone and not in reality.

3.3.3.

CYRIL’S SENSE OF OIKONOMIA

Cyril’s starting point and the major axiom of his thought was that the hypostasis of the Word of God is the sole seat of subjectivity as far as Christology is concerned. He is the subject for existence and of predication. This affirmation of the unity of subject in Christ is perhaps the most distinctive thesis of Cyril. We learn from Cyril that, while eternally resting in his divine stasis, God the Word emptied himself and “came-to-be” in human conditions in order to save the humanity which was in disarray. According to Cyril, God became man so that men can become gods and not otherwise. He did not come into an already existing man, but “become” man. What are we to make of the immutable God who somehow “comes-to-be”? Does it mean that the mode of his being is becoming and that he ought to be deprived of his stasis on the even of the Incarnation? No at all! Even so, both rest and motion are said of the Word albeit not in the same sense. 112 113

Cyril of Alexandria, Scholia, Pusey (1965), 516, 20–22 [302 in translation]. Ibid., Pusey (1965), 518, 1 [302 in translation].

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Another major leitmotif of Cyril’s thought was that the Word of God exhibits diverging sets of properties in relation to God-self (meaning to itself and to the other hypostases of the Trinity) and in relation to the world (i.e. both demiurgically and oikonomically). This was indeed a commonplace of ancient thought. The corollary to this axiom was that one should distinguish two levels of analysis in Christology, i.e. Theologia and Oikonomia. Thus, oikonomically God the Word is revealed to us as both God and man. According to Cyril, if the levels of analysis are not properly distinguished, the conflict of properties will immediately follow. This conflict will, in turn, cause the internal structure of discourse to crumble. For instance, the Arian camp confused these levels of analysis. This was a procedural error. They argued that “true being” cannot be predicated of becoming. And since becoming is predicated of the Word of God, it will follow that the mode of his being is becoming; hence, his being is a lesser “being” than the being of God the Father who is unbegotten or uncreated. The Word is older and more venerable than all created things but is, nevertheless, situated on their level, being in reality “a thing made” (i.e. ktisma or poiema). Here the confusion of the levels of analysis resulted in the introduction of an entity which is self-contradictory since it absorbs conflicting sets of properties while no qualifier is being introduced to rule out the root cause of contradiction. For instance, the Word is both omniscient and ignorant, immortal and mortal, etc., all these predicates being allocated to the level of Theologia (roughly in relation to God-self), while in truth this can take place only on the level of Oikonomia. What is important is that oikonomically (i.e. both in relation to self and to others) God the Word is made manifest as both God and man, thus exhibiting two, at times conflicting sets of properties; even so, the law of contradiction is not trespassed since the proper qualifiers are introduced (e.g. in one manner and in another manner, both by nature and by dispensation, etc.). The Word of God is oikonomically present to the world. His presence is not a matter of mere appearance; he does not reveal himself in a schema of man, but in reality. He is present to the world as the God-man; hence his being is now complex. In him we can intellectually discern two diverging principles, i.e. divine and human fully united. There is one and the same subject (i.e. for existence and of predication), i.e. the Word of God in whom two natures came into unity. In other words, the Word has a dual class membership. All essential characteristics of both divinity and humanity are said-of, i.e. predicated synonymously of the Word; they are his natural completers, structurally relevant elements of his compounded being. An imposition of structure in the scope of Oikonomia allowed Cyril to deduce various characteristics of the Word constitutive of the divine and human natures, including sensible and non-sensible characteristics. From an imposition of structure there followed the deduction of numbers. Thus, the Word is one and the many having in itself a multitude fully united. Then form and extension are deduced. Then there follows the deduction of relational characteristics so as to arrive at being, knowledge and opinion pertaining to the subject. Let us illustrate Cyril’s conception of Oikonomia by an example of the use of temporal and quasi-temporal predicates. The Word is said-to-be the Only-Begotten

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(eternally, hence beyond time) and the First Born (of all creation). Thus, the Word is both Πρωτότοκος καὶ Μονογενὴς. 114 Cyril thereby posits the notion of two births of the Word, one associated with his birth from the Father and another one with his birth from the Virgin. The exegetical issue here is to explain how the Word is both pre-existent (born of the Father before all ages) and also “comes-to-be” a man at a particular moment in time. 115 How so? Cyril’s answer is – in one manner and in another manner. As Cyril writes, “[h]e is Firstborn among many brethren on account of the humanity [i.e. oikonomically], but the same one is the Only Begotten since, as God, he alone was born from the only Father.” 116 Cyril’s affirmation of one and the same Christ “before and after” the Incarnation (taking into account that humanity is non-accidental to the Word) indeed created a certain aporia in the minds of the moderns. They were puzzled about the possibility of some seemingly contradictory notions (such as one and the same and one out of two; ἕνα καὶ τὸν αὐτὸν and εἶς ἑξ ἀμφοῖν or ἑνὸς ἐξ δυοῖν) to share the same space in Cyril’s intellectual projections. How is it that he is the same before and after the Incarnation if before he is “one out of one”, so to say, and after he is one “out of two”? This is quite paradoxical! On the other hand, the language of “out of two” was thought of as being suggestive of mixture, etc. In particular, remarkable in Cyril’s affirmations was his intention to preserve the single subjectivity (associated with the divine hypostasis) and also his insistence that the human nature in Christ is essential for the being of the Word. R. Norris, being impressed by this “situation”, argued that Cyril’s scattered mind perhaps could not rest in one pattern of thought; instead it was constantly shifting from one model to another. Even so, the models, proposed by Norris, apparently did not contribute anything essential for the solution to this aporia apart from confessing Cyril’s thought as being inconsistent. Cyril’s “subject” is the hypostasis of the Word. It is a supercosmic individual being which compressed in its own being two ostensibly conflicting sets of properties upon the event of the Incarnation. Even so, an “addition” of another nature (of human nature, i.e. an essential universal being indicative of a kind) did not do away with the single subject since the “nature” added was unhypostatic, that is nonsubsistent (in other words, representing a set of properties rather than their particular instantiation). In general, when Cyril spoke of unity or oneness or of being “one” (e.g. nature or hypostasis, or being, etc.) he meant an individual being, while his affirmation of duality or multiplicity was always indicative of kinds (i.e. universal beings). Cyril of Alexandria, Scholia, Pusey (1965), 568, 10. Hence, “[a]lthough he was indeed born before all the ages, nevertheless in an instant of time, because he needed to fulfill the economy, he was also born of a woman according to the flesh.” Cyril of Alexandria, Scholia, Pusey (1965), 509, 10–12 [299 in translation]. 116 Ibid., Pusey (1965), 568, 15–17 [329 in translation]. 114 115

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As we have noted above, the universal and particular aspects of the concept of “nature” at times complete one another in Cyril’s discourse. As the result, Cyril could posit “one Incarnate nature of the Word” and argue that in this one nature we may intellectually discern two “natures.” If we take this affirmation without qualifications if would appear that two natures (and their properties) somehow collapsed into one. This is, however, a wrong impression 117 since the same name is used homonymously, in the former sense signifying a supercosmic particular being of the Word and in the latter case delineating his membership in two different kinds of being (i.e. human and divine). In order to avoid homonymy Cyril also used the term “natural quality” instead of nature to indicate the being of a kind (i.e. nature as a set of properties). Cyril argued that double-subjectivity in Christ is unacceptable not only due to its conceptual weaknesses, but also due to the fact that it completely deconstructs Christian thought. How is that possible? Cyril’s argument was that if one divides Christ into two, that is a mere man and God the Word, and posits some sort of conjunction between them, then one would have to get away with classical Theologia and to also deconstruct the rational behind Oikonomia. Moreover, such a line of reasoning would have further liturgical and sacramental ramification totally unacceptable for any sensitive thinker. Hypothesis: Let us assume that the Word of God remained calm in his divine stasis while a human being Jesus from Nazareth, being well-pleasing to God according to his special merits, was oikonomically lifted up and seated at the right hand of the Father. Let us assume that he is not God by nature. What will follow then is that he will receive “natural godhead” as a gift. To say that would amount to conceptualizing godhead as generated. Moreover, an addition of a new deity to an already existing one would either double the number of gods or would introduce a new, fourth hypostasis into divine life. Then classical Christian Theologia (established upon the pillars of monotheism) would be deconstructed. If, on the contrary, we assume that Jesus of Nazareth is a mere man that, having been lifted up, has some sort of quasidivinity, we would have to posit a new demi-god who received “the dignity of gift and from outside and by mere title.” 118 Then we would have to worship a human being (honored as a demi-deity) thus practicing idolatry. But it is assumed that there is one tri-hypostatic God who is the sole subject of worship. Thus, this hypothesis should be set aside. Moreover, to posit an exemplary model of salvation is to say that the connection between God and man is extraneous. If, however, the human nature is not fully incorporated into divine life, it could not be trans-elemented. Thus, to “say that the Indeed, Cyril’s indiscriminate use of terms created some confusion. And indeed, the task of spelling out the meaning of utterances at times can be challenging. 118 Cyril of Alexandria, Five Tomes, ACO 1,1,6. 49, 23 [75 in translation]. 117

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assumption or the connection is extraneous and of accident” would amount to saying that God is not in us too (since we are connected to him relatively) and that we cannot become “partakers of his divine nature.” 119 Hence if the assumption of humanity by God the Word is merely allegorical or accidental, then the oikonomy of salvation would also be allegorical and extraneous. Only God can save. Thus, to present the savior as a man with special merits is to undo the oikonomy of salvation. The entire rational behind Christian Oikonomia would then be subverted. Moreover, to present the savior as a human being would necessitate a re-classification of Eucharistic mystery as a practice of cannibalism, a habit of eating human flesh. It would then follow that “we have been made participant of a human body and one in no wise whatever differing from our own.” 120 In order to avoid theological fallacies just mentioned and to substantiate the unitive basic of Christ’s being, Cyril posited a set of criteria for the true affirmations about Christ. These criteria represented an intellectual measure scale allowing one to judge any Christological discourse as either a genuine “science of Christ” or a mere deceptive mockery of Christian sophists. In addition, they were meant to set boundaries to Christian discourse and to function as its regulative principles. For instance, one may not annihilate the chasm between the divine and human natures. Even so, one may neither prevent them from being in communion thus making the deity irrelevant to us and making humanity unintelligible to God. One may not separate natures and think of them as subsisting on their own. Hence the condition of inseparability is introduced. One may not divide one Christ into two subjects and should not attribute some operations and sayings to God alone and to man alone. Thus, the condition of indivisibility is introduced. One may not predicate change and alteration of the natures so as to introduce some sort of ontological flux into God’s being and into the world. Thus, the condition of un-changeability is introduced. One may not mix the qualities of natures so as to temper their operations or make them inactive, i.e. deprive the Word of omniscience and man of intelligence, etc. Indeed, one may easily recognize here famous Chalcedonian adverbs since they had the point of origin in Cyril’s treatises.

3.3.4.

THE CASE OF THE T H EOTOKOS

In defense of the title Theotokos, Cyril introduced his famous “syllogism”: “if our Lord Jesus Christ is God, then how is the holy virgin who bore him not the Mother of God?” 121 Nestorius objected to such an approach and argued that the Angels fore-heralded the blessed John Baptist, saying that “the babe shall be filled with the Ibid., ACO 1,1,6. 52, 3 [79 in translation]. Ibid., ACO 1,1,6. 84, 15–16 [142 in translation]. 121 Cyril of Alexandria, Letter to the Monks of Egypt, ACO 1,1,1. 11, 28–29. English translation in McGuckin, St. Cyril, 247. 119 120

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Holy Ghost even from his mother’s womb, and having the Holy Ghost, was this blessed Baptist born. What then? Call you Elizabeth mother of the Spirit?” 122 Cyril replied to Nestorius by pointing out that no natural union was accomplished in this case since John was a Spirit-clad man; therefore, the Spirit was not “the father” of John. Nestorius’ objection thereby confuses different types of communion between natures. 123 What is important is that while the relation of John to the Spirit is accidental, flesh (humanity) is essential to the Word of God in his oikonomic state. Thus, the humanity of the Word Incarnate is a part of the whole Word Incarnate (another part is his divinity). What is even more remarkable is that the Incarnation does not introduce a new subject (for existence and of predication). The Word of God is the sole subject in both naked (gymnos) and Incarnate (ensarkos) states of God. In general, the principle of the subjectivity of a thing is its higher phase. Now we have a whole-part issue. According to Cyril, the Word of God oikonomically incorporates into his being the being of humanity. The being of the Word Incarnate is now complex. It exhibits two sets of properties, divine and human. All essential properties of both natures are now his essential completers. They are structurally relevant elements of the now complex (even so, self-same) entity (now Incarnate), predicated of the subject, i.e. the Word of God synonymously. Parts subsume characteristics of the whole and can be thus named after the whole. So it is with the whole which can be named after its parts. Cyril illustrates this concept with his soulbody example when he writes: “[i]n the first place divine scripture frequently calls man ‘flesh’, as if designating the whole of the animal from the part.” 124 It follows that the whole can be named after its part. On the other hand, a part can also be named after the whole. In this context Cyril argued that earthly mothers have “the embryonic flesh in their wombs, which in a short time by certain ineffable working of God, increases and is perfected into the human form. Then God introduces the spirit to this living creature…” 125 Though what they produced is only the earthly bodies, “they are said Cyril of Alexandria, Five Tomes, ACO 1,1,6. 4, 30–31 [23 in translation]. “But we say this: Elizabeth hath confessedly borne the blessed Baptist anointed in the womb with the Holy Ghost: and if it had been any where said by the God-inspired Scriptures, that the Spirit too was made flesh, rightly would you have said that she ought to be called by us mother of the Spirit; but if the bairn is said to have been honored with bare anointing only, why deem you it right to put the fact of incarnation on an equal footing with the grace of participation? For it is not the same thing, to say that the Word was made flesh and that one has been anointed through the Spirit with prophetic spirit.” Ibid., ACO 1,1,6. 25, 16–22 [24 in translation]. 124 Cyril of Alexandria, Scholia, Pusey (1965), 546, 12–15 [318 in translation]. 125 Cyril of Alexandria, Letter to the Monks of Egypt, ACO 1,1,1. 15, 13–16 [251 in translation]. 122 123

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to have given birth to the whole living creature…” 126 This is how we should think of the Virgin. In other words, since the Virgin is the mother of the part of the whole Word Incarnate, she can be called the mother of the whole. Indeed, the whole here (i.e. the Word Incarnate) does not represent a tertium quid, just opposite to what we have in the “soul-body” analogy in which a new thing, tertium quid, i.e. a man, is introduced out of two elements brought into unity. Thus the analogy is not perfectly expressive of the truth of the Incarnation. Yet, even if the extent of its utility is limited, it, nevertheless, gives us some hints about that which is beyond the grasp of our reason. 127 The conception of attribution of names has multiple ramifications. The most important one in this context is indeed the conception of the Word being acted upon (or, in other words, about the sufferings of God). Here again, if a part of the whole being is susceptible to change, mutation, and being acted upon and the other part is not, we can still attribute “sufferings” to the whole being (even if the other part is impassible). Finally, the moral of Cyril’s affirmations regarding the Virgin was that if one does not confess the Virgin Theotokos, then one must think that no true Incarnation has been accomplished. In general, Cyril’s Oikonomia, accepted by Ephesus I as an oikoumenical expression of true Christology, signified the triumph of Christian Incarnational thought. Ephesus I rejected non-Incarnational speculations on the various grounds mentioned above. To conclude, Ephesus’ and Cyril’s Christology voiced out, on a significant oikoumenical scale that which was to become classical Incarnational thought for the succeeding centuries.

3.4. CRITICALLY RE-ASSESSING THE CONTROVERSY: WHAT WAS AT STAKE? One way of analyzing the controversy in the scope of the oikoumenical movement of the past century was to think of it as if it was a battle between diverging theologoumena. The notion of theologoumenon is important in this context since it gives us a middle ground between dogma and heresy. We delineate theologoumenon as some theological conception that is valid but not universally (i.e. oikoumenically) accepted, a Ibid., ACO 1,1,1. 15, 18–19 [251 in translation]. In addition, apparently, in the Theotokos case, the part is not named after the whole but after another part. Even so, since the higher part is the principle of subjectivity of the compounded being, this issue is non-existent (since the whole takes its name and identity after the higher part). There is, however, just another thread “dancing around” the same theme, namely that Christ is God and if the Virgin gave fleshly birth to God, she is the Mother of God. That which is of her belongs to him. The unity of being of the Incarnate Word is just another solid ground that justifies Theotokos as a proper appellation for the Virgin. 126 127

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sort of relatively local legitimate ecclesiastical opinion. This notion, since the time of its inception (during the nineteenth century oikoumenical movement), has had a great utility for theologians and has become instrumental in reclassifying matters of dogmatic theology (taking into account that that dogma is an oikoumenically accepted interpretation of faith which does not tolerate any deviations) into matters of regional opinions which are valid but at times contradict one another. Here the role of historians became crucial in making eternally instantiated doctrines into contextually determined flux of opinions of equal stature. Did the issue at stake arise from a mere display of competing theologoumena within the walls of Constantinople? Are the theologies of Cyril and Nestorius equally valid? 128 Many twentieth century scholars argued for this cause, pushing their arguments as far as to pronounce Nestorius orthodox. 129 The assessment of diverging patterns of Oikonomia as equally legitimate theologoumena heavily marks the twentieth century scholarly classifications. 130 This practice indeed contradicts the traditional path of Christendom and in a sense washes away the demarcation line between orthodoxy and heresy. Even so, this taxonomy was operative in oikoumenical dialogues for the last two centuries (this was indeed the reason for its introduction in the mid-nineteenth century Europe). One conclusion that we may draw, however, is that what has been classified as heresy by the councils and tradition was currently reclassified as a legitimate opinion reflecting regional peculiarities, etc. On the other hand, many scholars of modern time approached the subject from a different angle and argued that Cyril’s picture of Nestorius’ thought was a caricature (i.e. the nature of Cyril’s argument against Nestorius was entirely ad hominem) and cannot be justified analytically. Among the various ramifications of this assumption was the one that presented the charges against Nestorius as being unjustified. Did Nestorius really propagate the Christology of Paul of Samosata? Indeed, a few generic features common to the thought of Paul and Nestorius are simply insufficient to equate their oikonomic speculations (taking into account that the philosophically subtle Christology of Nestorius was far more advanced than, albeit conceptually akin to, that of Paul). What about the other charges? Let us look more closely. Prestige argued that “[t]he unorthodoxy of Nestorius was not a positive fact but a negative importance….[t]he orthodoxy of Nestorius is positive.” He goes on as far as to propose that “the substance of his doctrine was accepted as the faith of Christendom at the Council of Chalcedon in 451”. Prestige, Fathers and Heretics, 143–4. 129 See M.V. Anastos “Nestorius was Orthodox” DOP 16 (1962): 117–40. 130 For Instance, we learn from (1908) Bethune-Baker (who in his turn refers to the scholarly investigations of Père J. Mahé so as to substantiate his judgment) that “the two Christologies, of Antioch and of Alexandria, in spite of notable differences, were alike perfectly orthodox. Underneath all their differences of terminology and expression the doctrine is essentially the same.” Bethune-Baker, Nestorius and his Teaching, 198. 128

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3.5. WAS NESTORIUS NESTORIAN – WERE CYRIL’S CHARGES JUSTIFIED? Contemporary scholars were very much impressed by Nestorius when he talked about freedom of thought and investigation, and were greatly puzzled how it was possible that he ended up a heretic. A standard textbook narrative of Ephesus and Chalcedon seems to emanate out of taking the Bazaar of Heracleides at face value. In a sense, since the early twentieth century, the Bazaar was thought of as the most influential account (i.e. a continuous narration of events and theological themes) of Ephesus 131 and was used as an archetypal model (in evaluating relevant events and doctrines) for various scholarly monographs and articles. Even so, the twentieth century’s attempts to present Nestorius as orthodox and to conceptualize “Nestorianism” as a fake accusation (made on behalf of Cyril, who was in their minds a brutal Pharaoh) do not correspond with the fact of the matter (their agenda of justifying Nestorius being too explicitly biased). Indeed this was a main trend of recent scholarship, though some scholars (e.g. Sullivan, McGuckin, Clayton, among others) have warned against such a simplistic fallacy. Overall however, the depiction of Nestorius as an innocent victim of evil powers, justified in his theology and glorified in his personality, still prevails. Even so, the question remains: was Nestorius really Nestorian? From a brief exposition of his Christology we can conclude that he presented Christ as actually existing in two natures and as actually making them manifest in diverging operations. For instance, as a human being, Christ becomes tired. This contingency is predicated of its proper subject, i.e. the human nature made manifest in various (humanly possible) operations of Jesus of Nazareth. On the other hand, as God, Christ creates miracles. This supernatural capacity of having dominion over created natures is predicated of its proper subject, i.e. the divine nature made manifest in God the Word, thus being his proper operation. Scriptural sayings about Christ should also be separated into those that belong to his humanity and those that describe his divine deeds. So, we may ask; at the end of the day did he, or did he not divide the one Christ into two subjects? The philosophical and semantic facts tell us that he certainly did! Did he present them as subsisting separately? Indeed he did! Did he stand against the validity of the title Theotokos? Indeed he did! Our conclusion has to be, therefore, that in relation to the most foundational charges laid against him in antiquity he was guilty as charged and modern scholars who wish to exonerate him do so not on the basis of the evidence, but more often because they feel, anachronistically, that he was not given a charitable and “oikoumenically tolerant” hearing. Actually of both, Ephesus I and Ephesus II (449), the latter having been classified by Leo the Great as Latrocinium, i.e. the council of robbers. 131

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Another scholarly trend has been to present Nestorius’ Christology as basically Cyrilline. Indeed, the heirs of Nestorius, namely the Churches tracing their roots all the way back to Nestorius, perhaps reached the point of converging with classical Christology. Even some close associates of Nestorius, including Theodoret of Cyrrhus, adjusted their semantic clichés to conform to Cyril’s teaching, thus drifting away from the “theology of two sons.” Even so, to assess Nestorius’ thought as being akin to Cyril’s (if not conceptually then, at least, on the level of intuition of unity and diversity in Christ) is to exacerbate the issues of historical theology to the point of total confusion. I hope a brief exposition of Cyril’s and Nestorius’ thought clearly demonstrated that this assessment is totally unwarranted. If the Church of the East, the so-called Nestorian community, has since come to a position of harmony with a Cyrilline form of thought, it did not do so by reliance on the teachings of the historical Nestorius.

3.6. THE RECEPTION OF EPHESUS I BY THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON Now we may ask whether Nestorius’ Christology would have approved by Chalcedon. For instance, Loofs argued that “[i]f Nestorius had lived in the time of the Council of Chalcedon, he would possibly have become a pillar of orthodoxy.” 132 Now the question we should perhaps ask is whether Chalcedon would have approved of the Christology of Nestorius had he been present at the Council and cleared of his charges? We can also approach this issue from the opposite side and ask whether Nestorius would have approved of Chalcedon had he known what had happened there? These questions are again quite complicated. On the one hand, Chalcedon was thought of by various anti-Chalcedonian factions as basically the triumph of Nestorianism. Even so, if we look at the formula of faith (the Ekthesis of Chalcedon) we may find it being totally in accord with Cyril. Thus, by positing one and the same Christ in whom one can intellectually discern two natures (which are totally unified being distinguishable in theoria alone), and by classifying this statement with the adverbial clause “inseparably, indivisibly, without confusion and alteration,” whose proper referent is not natures but the mode of knowledge, Chalcedon apparently demolished any traces of Nestorianism. It is clear to me that Nestorius would definitely not have approved of the Chalcedonian settlement on any of his philosophical grounds. For him the natures subsist on their own and not in thought alone (gnorizomenon). Even so, if one is to associate Chalcedon with Leo’s Tome, one may arrive at a different impression, namely that Nestorius’ Christology was approved by Chalcedon. For instance, according to Cyril, the Word Incarnate does all things by means of his flesh. Thus, the Word who is God effects miracles by means of his flesh (διὰ τῆς ἰδίας σαρκὸς ἐνεργεῖ τὰς θεοσημίας θεὸς ὢν ὁ λόγος). So we can no longer say 132

Loofs, Nestorius and his Place, 21.

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that he does human things humanly and divine things divinely. 133 On the contrary, we learn from Leo that “each form (μορφὴ) does in communion with the other what pertains properly to it, the Word, namely, doing that which pertains to the Word, and the flesh that which pertains to the flesh.” 134 This sentence actually divided the operations of Christ into those pertaining to his divinity and those akin to his humanity. Consequently, we also divide the “sayings” of Scripture. But, to divide operations in Christ, according to Cyril, is to present Christ as not being one but the “many.” Indeed Severus of Antioch’s remark made in the Letter to Oecumenius that if two natures manifest themselves separately they have not been properly unified, 135 makes clearly explicit the position of Cyril. And we know from the Bazaar that Nestorius approved of the Tome as expressing consonance with his own theology. Thus, the assessment of Chalcedon and its relation to Nestorius largely depends on what we count as the essence of the statement of 451; that is either the formula of faith (the Ekthesis which is purely Cyrilline) or the text of the Tome (not “purely Nestorian” but in many ways akin to Nestorius’ oikonomic commitments). But since this topic properly belongs to the following chapter, we shall let it be taken up by our colleague there. The complicated crisis of Ephesus 431, and the long search for reconciliation and rapprochement that followed after it demonstrated well enough that many problemata remained, seeking a conciliar resolution in the latter part of the fifth century.

Thus, “before his being made man the Word existed pure and effected his divine acts by himself; but after being made man he performed them, as I said, by means of his flesh (δὶα τῆς ἑαυτοῦ σαρκός). Cyril of Alexandria, Answers to Tiberias, in Cyril of Alexandria, Select Letters, 162–3. 134 N.P. Tanner, ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 79. 135 “We must anathematize those who confine the one Christ in two natures and say that each of the natures performs its own acts. Between the things performed and done by the one Christ the difference is great. Some of them are acts befitting the divinity, while others are human. For example, to walk and travel in bodily form upon the earth is without contention human; but to bestow on those who are maimed in the feet and cannot walk upon the ground at all the power of walking like sound persons is God-befitting. Yet the one Word incarnate performed the latter and the former, and the one nature did not perform the one, and the other the other; nor, because the things performed are different, shall we on this account rightly define two natures or forms as operating.” Severus of Antioch, A Collection of Letters and Sermons, trans. E. W. Brooks (PO, 1915), 9. 133

CHAPTER 4: THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON: 451. IN SEARCH OF A NUANCED AND BALANCED CHRISTOLOGY MATTHEW J. PEREIRA 4.1. IDENTITY OF JESUS CHRIST: FROM THE GOSPELS TO THE OIKOUMENICAL COUNCILS 4.1.1. Identity and Mission of Jesus Christ From the early days of the Christian movement onwards, confessing the true identity of Jesus Christ was an upmost concern of the community. One of the primary aims of the Gospels is to reveal the identity and to explain the theological significance of Jesus Christ. Each of the Gospels narrates how the first disciples wrestled with apprehending the nature and mission of Christ. In the Gospel according to Matthew, prior to foretelling his death and resurrection, Jesus turned to his inner circle of disciples and asked: “Who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” 1

This question posed by Christ, “Who do you say that I am,” first answered by his disciples, was then returned to by each succeeding generation of Christians who rearticulate the mystery of the Incarnation. The identity of Jesus Christ is a soteriological question. Peter’s confession of Jesus Christ as the Messiah suggests that he believed him to be the anointed One, promised in the prophetic writings, who was 1

Matthew 16:15b–19 (NRSV).

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to bring mighty deliverance to the chosen people. From Peter’s confession onwards, the Church has continually professed Jesus Christ in light of its messianic expectations. The identity of Jesus Christ must align with his soteriological mission. The Gospels witness to the divine and human nature of Jesus Christ, but the biblical writers never attempted to explain how these two natures coexist in the one and same Lord Christ. 2 The biblical testimony of the one Lord Jesus Christ as the Incarnate Son of God, who suffered on the cross as a ransom for many, never entailed concise theological explication in the New Testament. Later generations of Christians took up the task of apprehending the soteriological significance of the relationship between the divine and human natures in Jesus Christ as witnessed in the biblical accounts. 4.1.2. Imperialism and Conciliarism Emperors, empresses and imperial officials convoked and oversaw the Oikoumenical Councils. The imperial rulers demanded uniformity, and the bishops under the threat of expulsion, acclaimed conciliar statements in unison. Rival theologians demonstrated an equally deep understanding of Scripture and the Church fathers, which supported their theological conclusions. Orthodoxy was largely determined by imperial mandate, where the interests of rival emperors and queens, the role of competing ecclesiastical princes, and the Empire’s military successes or failures defined the tradition of the Church. 3 The political dimension is essential to a robust interpretation of the Councils. Additionally, the theology of the council fathers contributed to the development of the confessional tradition of the Councils. The Oikoumenical Councils represent a series of politicized and ritualized attempts at preserving and rearticulating the identity of Jesus Christ. 4 The Oikoumenical CounRegarding the biblical witness, Jenkins notes, “The Bible is anything but clear on the relationship between Christ’s human and divine natures, and arguably, it is just not possible to reconcile its various statements on this matter.” Philip Jenkins, Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years (New York: HarperOne, 2010), vii. 3 Jenkins, xiv. 4 The amount of scholarship devoted to the Oikoumenical Councils is immense in both breadth and depth. It goes beyond the scope of this chapter to provide an exhaustive bibliography; however, for some of the more accessible overviews of persons, events and theology of the seven Oikoumenical Councils, the following studies (here provided in ascending chronological order) may be useful starting points: Karl Joseph Hefele, A History of the Councils of the Church from the Original Documents, five volumes, trans. William R. Clark (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1972 [volumes 2–5 reprinted from the 1883–96 edition]); Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition. Volume One: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon (451), 2d ed., trans. John Bowen (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1975); Leo Donald Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils (325–787): Their History and Theology (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1987); Ste2

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cils are more than occasions for establishing doctrinal orthodoxy; indeed, the Councils are relevant for political, ecclesiastical, cultural and theological analyses, which all merit consideration on their own terms. However, this present chapter offers a reassessment of the Council of Chalcedon (451) and the Chalcedonian Definition, with emphasis placed on analyzing the traditioning of the Christian faith. 5 Chalcedon is neither an isolated event nor the culmination of decades of doctrinal development; rather, it is the continuation of doctrinal, canonical and ecclesiastical debates reaching back to the Council of Nicaea (325), up through the Council of Ephesus (431) and onwards to the Second Council of Constantinople (553). At Chalcedon (i.e., the Fourth Oikoumenical Council), the bishops issued the Chalcedonian Definition, which is a conservative statement that reaffirms the Nicene Creed (325), the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (381), Cyril of Alexandria’s writings associated with the Council of Ephesus (431), and Leo’s Letter to Flavian (i.e., Leo’s Tome). The Definition provides a rearticulation of the faith, which may be imagined as a gestalt of the Christian tradition, suggesting that the settlement of Chalcedon should be interpreted in a holistic and integrative way rather than in terms of its individual parts. 6 phen W. Need, Truly Divine & Truly Human: The Story of Christ and the Seven Ecumenical Councils (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2008). For a concise overview of the Oikoumenical Councils, see Matthew J. Pereira, “Ecumenical Councils,” EEOC, Vol. 1, ed. John Anthony McGuckin (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011): 205–8. 5 Richard Price and Michael Gaddis have recently published the authoritative English translation of the proceedings of Chalcedon as follows: The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, Translated Texts for Historians 45, 3 volumes, trans. Richard Price and Michael Gaddis. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005). The notes and introductions by Price and Gaddis are valuable as well. In the preface to the first volume, Price and Gaddis explain, “The division of labour between the two authors was as follows. The translation is the work of Richard M. Price, on the basis of a first draft of the greater part of the text by Michael Gaddis. The General Introduction is by Gaddis, except for Section V, ‘The Theology of Chalcedon’, which is by Price. The introductions, commentaries and footnotes to each section of text, the glossary, and the indices are by Price.” Price and Gaddis, Acts of Chalcedon, vol. 1: ix. From here onward, when citing from the translation or notes of Gaddis and Price from their translation of the Acts of Chalcedon, the following abbreviated form of citation will be given: Acts, session number, paragraph number, volume number, page number(s). The citing notes from Price and Gaddis will have the volume and page numbers. For studies on the Council of Chalcedon, see M.J. Parys “The Historical Evidence on the Council of Chalcedon: The Council of Chalcedon as Historical Event,” ER 22, no. 4 (1970): 305–20; Robert Victor Sellers, The Council of Chalcedon (London: S.P.C.K., 1953). 6 Gestalt theory (i.e., “Law of Simplicity” ot “Law of Pragnanz”) dates back to the late nineteenth century in Germany. Gestalt theorists argue that the whole is greater than the parts of any system. Propoents of Gestalt theory contend that we tend to construct structure

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Each generation of orthodox bishops in attendance at the Oikocumenical Councils claimed to stand in continuity with the church tradition. 7 However, on occasion, the council fathers elaborated upon the confessions of their predecessors. The tension between the preservation and augmentation of the tradition is a major accomplishment of the council fathers at Chalcedon. In his assessment of Chalcedon, David Gwynn asserts, “The purpose of the bishops who gathered at the Council of Chalcedon was to safeguard the essential continuity of Christian tradition while adapting and interpreting that tradition to meet the needs of their own time.” 8 Chalcedon reveals the immense challenges involved in advancing tradition through the reception, interpretation and adaptation of Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381) and the Church fathers (e.g., Cyril of Alexandria and Pope Leo). The majority of bishops assumed that the tradition was established, that there was continuity from the Nicene Creed to Ephesus. However, the non-Chalcedonian and miaphysite factions challenged this assumed unbroken narrative from Nicaea to Ephesus. 9 When the officials called for a Definition, the bishops refused to submit a new confession. In agreement with the Councils of Constantinople (381) and Ephesus (431), 10 the council fathers believed the Nicene Creed was entirely sufficient, thus there was no need for a new Definition. 11 On the one hand, the council fathers reaffirmed and and harmony from disorganization. The Chalcedonian Definition fits well within this paradigm as it is a statement that should be read as a holistic statement that attempted to create structure and harmony from the past. 7 In this present chapter, the terms “orthodox” and “church” are used to denote a generalized (non-essentialist) understanding of these terms. The term orthodox is used to denote those theologians who believed that they upheld the true meaning of the Nicene Creed. The term Church is used in the universal sense, which denotes Eastern and Western metropolitans of Late Antiquity. Both terms are used as broad placemarkers rather than specific to a particular person or tradition. 8 David M. Gwynn, “The Council of Chalcedon and the Definition of Christian Tradition,” in Chalcedon in Context: Church Councils 400–700, eds. Richard Price and Mary Whitby (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009), 23. 9 For a discussion of the Oriental Orthodox Churches (i.e. miaphysite Christians), see Vilakuvel C. Samuel, The Council of Chalcedon Re-examined: A Historical Theological Survey (Madras: Christian Literature Society for the Senate of Serampore College, 1977). For a discussion of the non-Chalcedonian Churches, see Sebastian Brock, “The Christology of the Church of the East in the Synods of the Fifth to Early Seventh Centuries: Preliminary Considerations and Materials,” ed. George Dion Dragas, Aksum,Thyateira: A Festschrift for Archbishop Methodius (London: Thyateira House, 1985), 125–42. 10 In his Life of Constantine (III.6), Eusebius of Caesarea coined the term “Oikoumenical Council” in reference to the Council of Nicaea (325). 11 Nestorius of Constantinople and Cyril of Alexandria both appealed to the Nicene Creed. By the fifth century, the contests over theological doctrines was simultaneously a

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rearticulated church tradition under the mandate of imperial edict, which means it was imperial theology from above; on the other hand, the committees of select bishops enjoyed some level of influence in shaping the tradition.

4.2. FROM EPHESUS (431) TO CHALCEDON (451)

4.2.1. Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius and the Twelve Anathemas Following the Council of Ephesus (431), a defeated Nestorius of Constantinople was forced into exile, thereafter remembered as a heresiarch, whereas Cyril rose to the status of Church father. 12 After the Council of Ephesus, decades of negotiating and interpreting Cyril’s most controversial teachings had ensued. 13 Cyril triumphed over Nestorius, but there was “frustration of Cyril’s further plans, as he was obliged by the emperor in 433 to accept the Formula of Reunion, an ambiguous profession of faith drawn up by Nestorius’ allies, and in 439 to call off his campaign to secure the condemnation of the views of Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 428), credited with having been Nestorius’ teacher.” 14 Cyril was never in control of his theological legacy. 15 debate over who rightly intereperted the Church fathers and the oikoumencial creeds. For further discussion, see Thomas Graumann, Die Kirche der Väter: Vätertheologie und Väterbeweis in den Kirchen des Ostens bis zum Konzil von Ephesus (431) (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 278– 342. 12 There are a number of studies on Cyril and Nestorius. For two recent and valuable studies, see John Anthony McGuckin, Saint Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy. Its History, Theology, and Texts (Crestwood: Saint Vladimir’s Press, 2004); Susan Wessel, Cyril of Alexandria and the Nestorian Controversy: The Making of a Saint and of a Heretic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). 13 In addition to Cyril, Augustine of Hippo’s theological legacy was negotiated in the fifth and sixth centuries. Augustine’s doctrine of predestination was a problematic teaching, which was contested and negotiated, leading up to the canons at the Second Council of Orange (529). For a valuable study on the the reception of Augustine, see Ralph W. Mathisen, “For Specialists Only. The Reception of Augustine and His Teaching in Vth – Century Gaul,” Augustine: Presbyter Factus Sum. Collectanea Augustiniana, eds. Joseph T. Lienhard, et al. (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 19–41. For the Canons of Orange, see F.H. Woods, trans., Canons of the Second Council of Orange, A.D. 529: Text, with an Introduction, Translation, and Notes (Oxford: James Thornton, 1882). 14 Richard Price, “The Council of Chalcedon (451): A Narrative,” in Chalcedon in Context: Church Councils 400–700 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009), 70. 15 Of course, certain Church fathers attempted to shape their own legacies. Gregory of Nazianzus (329–90) composed an autobiographical poem (De Vita Sua) and Augustine of Hippo (354–430) wrote his classic autobiographical work Confessions. Both of these Church fathers exerted much effort in order to shape the ways in which they were to be remem-

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Political and ecclesiastical authorities played a significant role in establishing Cyril’s canonized teachings. Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius, which included an appendix of Twelve Anathemas, was the most contested writing in the period between Ephesus and Chalcedon. 16 Cyril composed the Third Letter to Nestorius towards the conclusion of Ephesus. He wrote the letter with victory ensured, which may have emboldened him to include his Twelve Chapters (i.e., Anathemas). In the Twelve Anathemas, Cyril affirmed the Theotokos, 17 communicatio idiomatum and the single hypostasis of the human and divine natures in the divine Logos. 18 The most controversial point in the Twelve Anathemas is Cyril’s assertion that the Word (Logos) of God suffered, which was the logical outworking of the communicatio idiomatum, 19 that affirmed the divine and human natures communicated properties in the one hypostasis of the Word of God. 20 bered, but even in their case, the succeeding generations of interpreters have indelibly shaped their caonical legacies. 16 For a translation of Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius and the Twelve Chapters, see McGuckin, Christological Controversy, 266–75. 17 The term Theotokos, which is transalted as God-bearer or Mother of God, is an appelation ascribed to the Virgin Mary in order to affirm the full diety of the Son of God. For further discussion, see George S. Bebis, “Theotokos,” EEC, 1124. 18 Greer asserts the four themes of Cyril’s Twelve Anathemas as Theotokos, communicatio idiomatum, the union of divine and human natures in one hypostasis, and the suffering of the Word of God. For further comment, see Rowan Greer, Theodore of Mopsuestia: Exegete and Theologian (London: Faith Press, 1961), 35. 19 The term communicatio idiomatum (often transalted as “Communion of Properties” or “Communion of Idioms”) comes out of the Latin tradition. The term is often associated with Leo’s Tome, where the two idiomata refer to what is “proper or peculiar to a nature.” Therefore, the idiomata of the human nature is hunger, weakness and so forth, whereas the idiomata of the divine nature is omnipotence, immoratlity and so forth. McGuckin rightly notes that “Alexandrians had long been accustomed to refer the two idiomata indiscriminately as a mark of their strong support of the single-subject Christology. Thus, Cyril often spoke of the ‘sufferings of the divine Word’ as such.” For further discussion, see John Anthony McGuckin, “Communion of Properties (Communion of Idioms),” in The Westminster Handbook to Patristic Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 70–1. 20 The Greek term hypostasis has been interpreted in English as “person,” “substance,” “subject,” or “subsistence.” The term hypostasis was employed in trinitarian and christological discourse. Apollinarius of Laodicea (fl. 375) was probably the first theologian to use hypostasis in a christological manner. Apollinarius argued that the Word of God usurped the human “spirit” or “intellect,” consequently, there was a single divine hypostasis within Christ. At the Council of Chacledon, the term hypostasis was reemployed in a different manner from Apollinarius. Chacledon affirmed Cyril’s assertion that Christ is one hypostasis of the divine Son, but at the same time, there was to be no blurring the lines between hypostasis and nature. Here, Chalcedon appears to be in agreement with the use of the term hy-

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In the 12th anathema, Cyril declared, “If anyone does not confess that the Word of God suffered in the flesh, and tasted death in the flesh, becoming the first-born from the dead, although as God he is life and life-giving, let him be anathema.” 21 In the Latin West, Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius and the Twelve Anathemas were largely ignored after Ephesus. 22 However, in the Eastern ecclesiastical networks, Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius and the Twelve Anathemas emerged as a dividing issue between the more moderate and radical Cyrillines. The Twelve Anathemas were probably read with Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius during the first session at the Council of Ephesus (431). 23 Here, in the opening stages of Ephesus, Acacius of Melitene defended the Twelve Anathemas without any referencing of divine suffering. The council fathers likely presumed that Acacius affirmed divine suffering since theopaschism was often equated with the Twelve Anathemas. 24 This was the first instance, within context of conciliar proceedings, that Cyril’s Third Letter and Twelve Anathemas became a divisive issue. Here, at the Council of Ephesus, the majority (if not all) of bishops affirmed the Nicene Creed, but divisiveness emerged over the proper interpretation of Creed of 325. By the end of the fifth century, hard line Cyrillines largely believed that Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius and the Twelve Anathemas stood as a faithful interpretation and continuation of the Nicene Creed, whereas the more moderate Cyrillines argued that these writings transgressed the orthodox tradition. In a document drafted during an impromptu side council (i.e., Conciliabulum) at Ephesus (431), John, bishop of Antioch (r. 428–441/42) rebuked Cyril’s Third Letter, 25 by associating it with the heresies of Arius, Apollinarius and Eunomius. 26 In postasis within the grammar of the doctrine of the Trinity. Thus, Chalcedon asserts one divine hypostasis or prosôpon (i.e., person) that has two uncofnused and inseperable natures (i.e., divine and human). For further discussion of hypostasis, see Richard A. Norris, “Hypostasis,” EEC, 551–53. 21 Cyril, Twelve Chapters, in McGuckin, Christological Controversy, 275. 22 Hefele, History of the Councils, vol. 3, 104. 23 Cyril, Explanation of the Twelve Chapters, in McGuckin, Christological Controversy, 83. 24 In his account of Acacius at Ephesus, McGuckin asserted, “Acacius’ fault, apparently, was to teach that the divinity suffered, which probably means no more than that he defended the orthodoxy of the Twelve Chapters.” McGuckin, Christological Controversy, 104. 25 John of Antioch (r. 428–441/42) was a moderate ally of Nestorius during the Council of Ephesus (431). John and his Antiochene party showed up late to the Council of Ephesus because of inclimate weather. By the time John had arrived at Ephesus, the council bishops had already condmened Nestorius. John convenved a side council (i.e., Conciliabulum). For further discussion, see Frederick W. Norris, “John of Antioch (d. 441/442),” EEC, 625. 26 The charge of Apollinarism against Cyril’s Anathemas continued throughout the Council of Ephesus. The bishops worried about the crypto-Apollinarism of the Twelve Anathemas, but they were receptive of Cyril’s explanation where he asserted his only purpose was to correct Nestorius.

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response, while under house arrest in Ephesus, Cyril wrote his Explanation of the Twelve Chapters. 27 In his explanation of the 12th anathema, Cyril declared that Jesus Christ, the Son and Word of God the Father, became flesh. 28 He added that the Word of God remained God even within the flesh after the Incarnation. 29 Cyril did not renounce his teachings on divine suffering (i.e., Word of God) in the flesh. More so than most theologians in the fifth century, Cyril boldly affirmed the mystery of salvation by affirming a qualified notion of divine impassibility, where the Word of God suffered in the flesh. In response to the fallout after Ephesus, the Syrian bishops held their own local synod. 30 At this synod, the Syrian bishops defined the limits of the Christian tradition by reaffirming the Nicene Creed and Athanasius’ Letter to Epictetus, 31 but condemning Cyril’s Twelve Anathemas. 32 As the divide between the Alexandrians and Antiochenes increased, the emperor and Patriarch of Constantinople encouraged reconciliation between these metropolitan sees. Both Patriarchates made demands prior to reaching rapprochement. In 432, the Syrian bishops called for Cyril to recant his Twelve Anathemas. In response to this request, Cyril sent a letter to Acacius of Beroea, 33 in which he explained that the Twelve Anathemas were only directed against Nestorius. 34 Cyril never rejected the Twelve Anathemas, but as a means of compromise, he narrowed their reach to Nestorius, which meant they were not meant as essential to the canonical tradition. In return, the Syrian bishops quietly condemned Diodore of Tarsus 35 and Theodore of Mopsuestia. 36 In both cases, these acts of renunciation set boundaries around the canonical tradition. With Cyril and the Syrians making concessions, the next step towards reconciliation and For an English translation of Cyril’s Explanation of the Twelve Chapters, see McGuckin, Christological Controversy, 282–93. 28 Ibid., 288–9. 29 Ibid., 289. 30 Syrian bishops in attendance included: Alexander of Hierapolis, Acacius of Beroea, Macarius of Laodicea, Andrew of Samosota, and Theodoret of Cyrrhus. For further review, see Ibid., 111, fn. 188. 31 For further discussion, see Joseph Lebon, “Altération doctrinale de la lettre à Epictète de saint Athanase,” RHE 31 (1935): 713–61. 32 McGuckin, Christological Controversy, 111. 33 For an English translation of Cyril’s Letter to Acacius of Beroea, see Ibid., 336–42. 34 Cyril never rejected the Twelve Anathemas, but he minimized their reach for the sake of reconciliation. For further discussion, see Ibid., 112. 35 Diodore of Tarsus founded a monastery and school in the proximity of Antioch. John Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia were two of his most well known students. For further disucssion, see Rowan A. Greer, “Diodore of Tarsus (d. ca. 390),” EEC, 331–32. 36 For further discussion, see Rowan A. Greer, “Theodore of Mopsuestia (ca. 250– 428),” EEC, 1116–17. 27

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the establishing of a common creedal tradition would be reached with the Formula of Reunion (i.e., Cyril’s Letter to John of Antioch). 37

4.2.2. The Formula of Reunion (433) In August of 431, Emperor Theodosius requested a confession of faith from John of Antioch and Theodoret of Cyrrhus, 38 which could potentially serve as the basis for ecclesiastical reconciliation. 39 Cyril received this confession in correspondence from John of Antioch. After reading the letter, Cyril requested a stronger condemnation of Nestorius, but overall, he approved of its orthodoxy. 40 In the spring of 433, Cyril composed a Letter to John of Antioch (i.e., Let the Heavens Rejoice), in which he included a confession of faith, today known as the Formula of Reunion. 41 The Formula affirmed the first proposition of the Nicene Creed, which states Jesus Christ “is consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father according to the Godhead” and added a new clause stating that he is also “consubstantial (homoousios) with us according to the manhood.” 42 Furthermore, the Formula asserted a “union of two natures” in the Lord Jesus Christ. 43 In the Formula, there is a Cyrilline emphasis on two na-

For an English translation of the Formula of Reunion, that is Cyril’s Letter to John of Antioch, see McGuckin, Christological Controversy, 343–8. For the Epistula Iohannis Antiocheni ad Cyrillum in the Acta Concilioroum Oecumenicorum, E. Schwartz (ed.), see ACO 1.1.4: 15– 20. Furthermore, from here onwards, Cyril’s Letter to John of Antioch (a.k.a. Formula of Reunion), will be abbreviated as Ep. 39, [with] section number. 38 Theodoret was a monk-bishop of Cyrrhus, who defended the two-nature Christogy of the Antiochene tradition. He was the leading spokesperson of Antioch at Ephesus (431). In his work Eranistes (published in 447), Theodoret subversively attacked Cyril’s single-nature Christology. At Ephesus II (449), Dioscorus deposed of Theodoret, but then at Chacledon (451), he was restored into full communion with the Church after renouncing Nestorius. For further discussion, see Gerard H. Ettlinger, “Theodoret of Cyrus (393–460 [or 457/8 or 466]),” EEC, 1117. 39 Epistula Iohannis Antiocheni ad Cyrillum. ACO 1.1.7: 151–2; McGuckin, Christological Controversy, 113. 40 Immediately prior to reasserting the Formula in his letter to John of Antioch, Cyril declared that the creedal statement was not a “new invention but rather a full exposition of what we have received from the tradition of the holy Fathers at Nicaea.” Cyril, Ep. 39 (ACO 1.1.4: 17); McGuckin, Christological Controversy, 344. 41 For valuable studies on the Formula of Reunion, see André de Halleux, “L’Accord Christologique de 433: Un Modéle de Réconciliation Ecclésiale?” Communion et Reunion: Melanges Jean-Marie Roger Tillard (1995): 293–99; Graham Gould, “Cyril of Alexandria and the Formula of Reunion,” DR 106 (1988): 236. For the Formula of Reunion, see Cyril, Ep. 39, sec. 5, in ACO 1.1.4: 17. 42 Cyril, Ep. 39, sec. 5 (ACO 1.1.4: 17). 43 Ibid. 37

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tures coming together in one union (henosis). 44 The Formula affirmed Mary as the Theotokos. 45 The Formula was a general confession, 46 which affirmed the Nicene, Antiochene and Alexandrian traditions thus combining ostensibly contradictory theological stances in one statement so as to quench the spirit of contention detrimental for ecclesial unity. Under imperial pressure, Cyril and John declared that the Formula reestablished harmony between Alexandria and Antioch. 47 Even so, the parties could not agree on the presice meaning of the stament thus launching an exegetical contest over its significance. The Formula was formative for the Chalcedonian Definition, which in part, can be seen in its avoidance of difficult doctrines. Most notably, the Formula never mentions the suffering and death of Christ. This is glaring lacuna, especially in a creedal statement that purports to be in the Nicene tradition. The Formula affirmed the first proposition of the Nicene Creed, which is the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father; however, the second proposition of the Nicene Creed, Jesus Christ suffered, is not affirmed. The Nicene Creed states, “He suffered, and on the third day, rose again.” 48 The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are central to the Nicene Creed. Nonetheless, this Gospel declaration “Christ crucified” is not broached within the Formula. Cyril surely recognized this problematic omission within the Formula. In his correspondence to John of Antioch, Cyril concluded by rebuking theologians who declared that the body of Christ came down from heaven rather than coming through the womb of the Virgin Mary. At this point in the letter, Cyril affirms the theological import of the self-emptying of Jesus Christ (Philippians 2:5–11) and Christ’s sufferings in the flesh (1 Peter 4:1). 49 The sufferings of Christ dominate Cyril’s concluding comments in the letter to John. He proclaims that Christ took on This emphasis on the single subjectivity of the Word of God is key to Cyril’s Christology. After affirming the two natures, the Formula asserts the unity of “one Christ, one Son, and one Lord. Ibid. 45 Ibid. 46 In her assessment, Wessel contends that John of Antioch was truly committed to reconciliation, but nonetheless he made “fewer doctrinal concessions” than Cyril. Wessel, 272. 47 In a letter addressed to Pope Xystus, John of Antioch affirmed that the Antiochenes and Alexandrians confessed together one Christ, Son and Lord in the union of two natures. Epistula Iohannis Antiocheni ad Xystum papam (ACO 1.1.7: 159 [6–12]). Also, see Relatio Iohannis Antiocheni ad imperatores (ACO 1.1.7: 157, lines 29–31; ACO 1.1.7: 158, [22–4]). 48 For a translation of the the Nicene Creed, see Creeds of the Churches: A Reader in Christian Doctrine from the Bible to the Present, John H. Leith ed. (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1973), 30–1. 49 Cyril declared, “Moreover, all of us confess that the divine Word is impassible, even if in his all-wise economy of the mystery he is seen to attribute to himself the sufferings that befall his own flesh.” Cyril, Ep. 39 ACO 1.1.4: 19; McGuckin, Christological Controversy, 347. 44

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suffering in his flesh. 50 At the conclusion of the letter, Cyril assured John that he adhered to the Church fathers and every syllable of the Nicene Creed. 51 This assurance may be interpreted as a subversive correction of the Formula, which deviates from the Nicene faith by omitting the suffering of Christ. Cyril reminds John that he remained faithful Nicaea as he simultaneously rebuked those who omit the sufferings of Christ. This is not a coincidence. Cyril knows that to affirm the Nicene Creed entails the affirmation of divine suffering. The Formula brought temporary reconciliation during a difficult ecclesiastical impasse, but Cyril was unsatisfied with this statement. In his mature writings, after the Formula, Cyril returned to the crucifixion of the impassible Word of God. Contemporary assessments of the Formula emphasize that John and Cyril agreed upon the statement, 52 which is partly accurate, but it needs to be equally stressed that Cyril raised objections, which continued to be contentious during the deliberations and the formation of the Chalcedonian Definition. In his Letter to John of Antioch, Cyril’s correction of unknown enemies was simultaneously a challenge to the Formula. The Formula never satisfied the most ardent Cyrilline theologians. Dioscorus, 53 archbishop of Alexandria, in collaboration with the influential archimandrite, Eutyches of Constantinople, took up the cause of Cyril after his death. 54 In alliance with Eutyches, Dioscorus abandoned the conciliatory theology of the Formula in favor of a fully articulated Cyrilline Christology, which obviously entailed an affirmation of divine suffering. Leading up to the Council of Chalcedon, Cyril’s legacy was negotiated within diverse ecclesiastical networks, by bishops who opposed Cyril to those who affirmed a moderated reading of Cyril to those who championed the radical Cyril. The metropolitans of Constantinople and Alexandria were two of the most powerful forces during the debates over the theological legacy of Cyril. Flavian (r. 446–49), archbishop of Constantinople, evaded the issue of divine suffering in his reception of Cyril’s Christology, whereas Dioscorus, archbishop of AlexCyril, Ep. 39, ACO 1.1.4: 19; McGuckin, Christological Controversy, 347. Ibid. 52 In his assessment, Need concludes, “Cyril and John both agreed on this form of words in 433 and it later played an important part in the Chalcedonian Definition of 451.” Need, Truly Divine and Truly Human, 94. 53 Dioscorus served as the archbishop of Alexandria (444–51). Wessel labels Dioscorus “a Cyrillian fundamentalist” who “had earlier rejected the Tome outright, that being one of the reasons the conciliar bishops at Chalcedon deposed and condemned him.” Wessel, 287. For an overview of Dioscorus of Alexandria, see Frederick W. Norris, “Dioscorus (d. 454),” EEC, 336. 54 Eutyches was archimandrite of a Constantinopolitan monastery. The imperial court provided Eutyhces with much support. He was attacked as a heretic because he taught that the sufferings of Christ were to be equated with the sufferings of the Word of God. For further discussion, see Rowan A. Greer, “Eutyches (fl. 450),” EEC, 404–5. 50 51

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andria, affirmed the canonical status of Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius and the Twelve Anathemas. The theological legacy of Cyril would be further contested in two controversial synods prior to Chalcedon; then it would once again be negotiated within the grander tradition of the Church at the Council of Chalcedon. 4.2.3. The Trial of Eutyches and the Home Synod of Constantinople (448) In 448, Flavian convoked a Home Synod, attended by some 30 bishops and 18 archimandrites who were already present in Constantinople. 55 The only extant record of the Home Synod comes from the first session of the Council of Chalcedon. The already uneasy relations between the ecclesiastical factions was completely obliterated with the trial of the archimandrite Eutyches, which occurred over seven sessions, held over a two-week period from 8 to 22 November, at the Home Synod of Constantinople. 56 Formal power resided with the archbishop Flavian, who ascended to the archbishopric in 446, but Eutyches was the more imposing figure. Eutyches was the charismatic leader of around 300 monks, spiritual guide to Emperor Theodosius II and was godfather to Chrysaphius, a powerful eunuch and influential figure in the imperial court, who was also a bitter rival to Pulcheria, Theodosius’ sister. Eutyches recounted that Cyril sent him a record of the Acts of Ephesus, which emboldened his Christological leanings. Eutyches taught there were two natures prior to the Incarnation, but then afterwards there was one hypostasis, one prosôpon, one Son, one Christ. 57 Eutyches was more “Cyrilline than Cyril himself,” 58 which made him a public target of some powerful Christians. Flavian, who recognized the threat of Eutyches, preferred that the council fathers offered spiritual correction (e.g., prayerful guidance) rather than ecclesiastical discipline (i.e., formal condemnation from an official church body). However, Eusebius, the bishop of Dorylaeum, who led the prosecution at the Home Synod, remained zealous in his attack against Eutyches. 59 In the second session of the Home Synod, Cyril’s Second Letter to Nestorius and the Formula of Reunion were read aloud. 60 The Home Synod affirmed Cyril’s writings, Jenkins, 181. For the minutes of the Home Synod, see Acts I.223–552, Vol.1:168–229. 57 Davis explains that Eutyches “hated the idea of two natures in Christ after the Incarantion because he understood nature to mean concrete existence.” Davis, 171. 58 John Anthony McGuckin, “Mystery or Conundrum? The Apprehension of Christ in the Chalcedonian Definition,” in In the Shadow of the Incarnation: Essays on Jesus Christ in the Early Church in Honor of Brian E. Daley, S.J., ed. Peter W. Martens (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 249. 59 On 8 November, Eusebius read the official indictment against Eutcyhes. Fruthermore, there was summons sent to Eutyches requesting his presence at the Home Synod. Acts I.223–35, Vol.1:168–9. 60 For the readings from Cyril’s Second Letter to Nestorius and his Letter to John of Antioch at the second session of the trial of Eutyches, see Ibid., I.238–46, Vol.1:172–83. 55 56

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however, the participants did not read the Third Letter to Nestorius and Twelve Anathemas. The Formula of Reunion, originally a work produced by the Antiochene bishops, increasingly became associated with Cyril since he (i.e. Cyril) included it within his Letter to Flavian. Conversely, Eutyches’ theology was informed by Cyril’s earlier writings without taking into account the Formula. 61 Over the course of the two-week trial, Eutyches refused to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is consubstantial with humanity and God the Father. Furthermore, Eutyches denied the two natures of Christ, as this suggest two entities after the Incarnation. In his concluding condemnation of Eutyches, Flavian provided a judgement against the now former archimandrite, accusing him of the “heresies of Valentinus and Apollinarius.” 62 In an unprecedented move, some monks of Constantinople signed in agreement with the condemnation of Eutyches. 63 Immediately following the defeat at the Home Synod, Eutyches sought support from the Patriarchates of Rome, Alexandria, Jerusalem and Thessalonica. He requested a retrial to be held at an oikoumenical council. On 30 March 449, Emperor Theodosius II sent letters to the bishops ordering an oikoumenical council to be convened at Ephesus in August of 449. 64 In the meantime, allies of Eutyches accused the notaries of revising the Acts of the Home Synod, thereby casting serious questions upon the legitimacy of the council. In the midst of ongoing turmoil, Flavian sent a letter to Pope Leo. On 13 June 449, Leo sent correspondence to Flavian, which has been forever memorialized as Leo’s Tome. 65 In the Tome, Leo supported Flavian’s condemnation of Eutyches and affirmed a two-nature Christology. Leo instructed the papal legates to order the letter to be read at the upcoming general Council at Ephesus, which would be the final major ecclesiastical event prior to the Council of Chalcedon. Already, prior to the convocation of the Council at Ephesus in 449, all of the reconciliatory efforts forged by Cyril and John and the Formula of Reunion were completely undone by the trial of Eutyches at the Home Synod. 66 Wessel asserts that Eutyches had “based his understanding exclusively on Cyril’s earlier writings, failing to take into consideration the letters Cyril wrote after the Council met at Ephesus.” Wessel, 280. 62 After associating Eutcyhes with Valentinus and Apollinarius, Flavian’s final judgement asserts: “For this reason, as we moan and weep for his total perdition, we have decreed in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, whom he has blasphemed, that he is deprived of all sacerdotal rank, of communion with us, and of the headship of a monastery. All persons who in future speak with him or visit him are informed that they too will incur the penalty of excommunication for failing to avoid his company.” Acts I.551, Vol.1:225. 63 Ibid., I.552, Vol.1:225–29. 64 For Emperor Theodosius II’s letter to Dioscorus, see Ibid., I.24, Vol.1:132–4. 65 For Leo’s Tome, see Ibid., II.22, Vol.2:14–24. 66 For valuable studies on the Constantinopolitan monks, see H. Bacht, “Die Rolle des Orientalischen Mönchtums in den kirchenpolitischen Auseinandersetzungen um Chalkedon 61

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4.2.4. The Council of Ephesus II (449) Following the Home Synod of 448, Dioscorus chaired a council at Ephesus in 449 (i.e., Ephesus II). Emboldened by the wholehearted support of Theodosius II, 67 and in partnership with other bishops, 68 Dioscorus completely controlled the agenda at Ephesus II. Dioscorus, an extreme champion of Cyrilline Christology, 69 bolstered his position by confiscating wealth from Cyril’s Alexandrian relatives. In keeping with the tradition of Cyril at Ephesus (431), Dioscorus employed intimidation tactics at Ephesus II. In the first session, convened on 8 August 449, the Roman envoy presented Pope Leo’s Letter to Flavian to the council fathers. 70 It was received but neither read before the council nor placed in the official record. 71 It is worth noting here that at the Council of Chalcedon, the council fathers rebuked Ephesus II for refusing to include Leo’s Tome. 72 The main objective behind the convocation of Ephesus II was the vindication of Eutyches. Dioscorus ordered a reading from the (431–519), in Das Konzil von Chalkedon, eds. A. Grillmeier and H. Bacht (Würzburg: EchterVerlag, 1954), 193–314; Gilbert Dagron, “Les Moines et la Ville. Le Monachisme à Constantinople jusqu’au concile de Chalcédoine 451,” TM 5 (1970): 229–76. 67 In explaing the heavyhanded acitions of Dioscorus, Jenkins states, “Almost certainly, he was misled by the absolute support he seemed to be getting from the emperor, who was in a position to overawe any opposition. Or perhaps he was just Alexandrian, in that he came from a Church that had over a century’s history of trampling all opposition, using a mixture of intimidation, manipulated piety, and the invocation of martyrdom.” Jenkins, 183. 68 The fellow bishops and allies of Dioscorus at Ephesus II included Juvenal of Jeruslaem, Thalassius of Caesarea, Eusebius of Ancyra, Eustahius of Berytus, and Basil of Isaurian Seleucia. In the first session of Chalcedon, the council fathers condemned and dimissed these six bishops. Acts I.1068, Vol.1:364. 69 In Need’s assessment, Dioscorus was a theologian who “carried some of the tendencies of Alexandrian theology to an extreme degree.” Need, 95. 70 “Hilary deacon of Rome, with Florentius bishop of Lydia acting as interpreter, said: ‘The most glorious and Christian emperor’ out of his attachment and devotion to orthodoxy sent a venerable letter to summon our most blessed Bishop Leo of the apostolic see to attend this venerable and holy assembly. This could have pleased his piety, had there been some precedent for it. As your holinesses know well, the pope of the most holy see did not attend the holy Councils at Nicaea or Ephesus or any such holy assembly. Therefore, following this habitual principle, he has sent us; this most holy man does not doubt that he is present here in us, who, he knows, will do everything that pertains to the purity of the catholic faith and to respect towards the most holy apostle Peter. Through us he has sent to your beatitude a letter appropriate for the assembly of the holy fathers: receive it and order it to be read.” Acts I.83, Vol.1:147–8. 71 Dioscorus declared, “Let the letter to this holy and Oikoumenical Council from our most sacred brother and fellow Bishop Leo be received.” Ibid., I.84, Vol.1:148. 72 Ibid., I.87–106, Vol.1:148–50.

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minutes of the Home Synod; then he pounced on Flavian and Eusebius, declaring they inserted novel teachings into the Church, which is a direct violation of Canon 7 of Ephesus. Dioscorus reaffirmed Nicaea, thereafter stating, “no one is allowed to compose another creed in addition to it,” then concluding, “Flavian formerly bishop of the Church of Constantinople and Eusebius of Dorylaeum are seen to have stirred up and perverted almost everything.” 73 After making this judgement, Dioscorus declared that Flavian and Eusebius are to be stripped of all priestly and episcopal dignity. 74 Flavian spent his last days or months in jail where he died of unknown causes. 75 Following the tactics of past Alexandrian bishops who usurped Constantinopolitan archbishops, 76 Dioscorus advanced his agenda despite Roman objections, thereby securing the condemnation of Flavian and Eusebius on account of their illegal prosecution of Eutyches at the Home Synod. 77 In addition to Flavian and Eusebius, Dioscorus condemned Ibas of Edessa and others of Nestorianism. 78 Dioscorus received Eutyches back into full communion. Emperor Theodosius II affirmed the decisions reached at Ephesus II. However, the Western emperor, Valentinian III, rejected the conciliar verdict of Ephesus II. Pope Leo famously derided the Ephesus II as the “Robber’s Synod (Latroncinium).” 79 Contemporary assessments of Ephesus II match Leo’s harsh rebuke. McGuckin describes Dioscorus’ actions as “both politically and theologically inept.” 80 Furthermore, he adds that, “His blatant Ibid., I.962, Vol.1:343–44. Ibid., I.962, Vol.1:344. 75 For further discussion on the death of Flavian, see Henry Chadwick, “The Exile and Death of Flavian of Constantinople: A Prologue to the Council of Chalcedon,” JTS 6: 17– 34. 76 On the Alexandrian tradition, Jenkins asserts, “And just as Cyril had accompanied Theophilus to overthrow John Chrysostom in 403, so Dioscorus had been present at the fall of Nestorius in 431. A rising yong cleric could have no better form of on-the-job training than witnessing his mentor overthrow a Patriarch.” Jenkins, 170. 77 The proceedings from the Council of Chalcedon include the first meeting of the synod of Ephesus (449), in which, the bishops received Eutyches back into communion and deposed Flavian and Eutyches. The synod of Ephesus (449) is disepered through the minutes of the first session of Chalcedon. See Acts 1:68–1067. 78 Ibas of Edessa was condemend for corrupting the faith of Cyril and the Council of Ephesus (431). This accusation first appears to have arisen amongst the populace back in his hometown of Edessa. Furthermore, Price recounts that Theodoret of Cyrrhus and other “Syrian bishops sympathetic to Nestorius, including their superior Bishop Domnus of Antioch,” were triumphed over at Ephesus II (449). Price notes our dependence on the Syriac Acts of the Council for this record. Price, “The Council of Chalcedon,” 71. 79 Leo, ep. 95. Epistula Leonis ad Pulcheriam augustam (20 July 451) (ACO II.4: 50–51). 80 McGuckin, “Christ in the Chalcedonian Definition,” 249–50. 73 74

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siding with Eutyches, and his disregard of the legitimate concerns of Syria and Rome, when added to his high-handed dealings at the synod of 449, were significant in pushing away chances at reconciliation.” 81 Need describes Ephesus II an “utterly chaotic and unfortunate event.” 82 Jenkins dubs it the “Gangster Synod.” 83 There was no possible way that Ephesus II would be counted as one of the Oikoumenical Councils. It was too one-sided and over-determined of an affair to ever garner universal approval. The council is rarely recorded in the annals of church history. It is a ghost council. The political advantage would shift to the Roman see on 28 July 450. On this fateful summer day, Emperor Theodosius II suffered fatal injuries in a horse accident. Soon after the demise of Theodosius II, his sister (and regent over Theodosius during his youth), Pulcheria (399–453) married General Marcian in order to forge a strong political relationship 84 and was proclaimed Empress granting the title of Emperor to her husband. By October of 451, the Late Roman Empire was under intense military threats, thus the fortification of a strong imperial marriage was a necessary maneuver. 85 Pulcheria was a trusted ally of Pope Leo, therefore imperial favor now fell to the papacy. In demonstrations of vengeful strength, Pulcheria reclaimed control of Constantinople after the death of Theodosius II. 86 She executed Chrysaphius; then by imperial decree she reversed the recent restoration of Eutyches, thereby leading to his final expulsion. 87 Pulcheria called for the restoration of Ibid., 250. Need, 98. 83 On Ephesus II, Jenkins concludes, “For all the numbers and prestige of those attending, all the wieghty issues discussed, Second Ephesus – the Gangster Synod – became The Council That Never Was.” Jenkins, 169. 84 Marcian was an Eastern Roman Emperor. In 450, he married Pulcheria and agreed she would keep her vow of perpetual virginity. Pulcheria influenced Marcian’s decision to call for the Council of Chalcedon. For further discussion, see Harry Rosenberg, “Marcian (ca. 392–457),” EEC, 714–15. 85 Rome and Constantinople verged towards collapse under foreign invasions throughout the 440’s onwards. For a valuable study on the decline of the Roman Empire, see Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 86 Regarding the influence of Pulcheria, Jenkins notes, “Although Pulcheria did not officially rule the Eastern Empire, she so influenced public policy that it certainly looked like she was in sole charge from 414 through 440. She ruled, in fact, through her posiution as imperial Big Sister.” Jenkins, 118. 87 Eutyches fled into hiding after the ascencion of Marcian and Pulcheria. In the first session of Chalcedon, Dioscorus was ready to condmen Eutcyhes if he held opinions in contradiction to the Church. Acts I.168. 81 82

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those bishops who were disposed at Ephesus II. 88 Prior to the ascension of Marcian, Archbishop Anatolius of Constantinople and Bishop Maximus of Antioch were willing to ally with Dioscorus. However, Anatolius and Maximus quickly switched allegiances to the Roman see in accordance with the shifting sands of imperial policies. In step with the leanings of Pulcheria, Anatolius and Maximus instructed their suffragan bishops to notate their agreement with Leo’s Tome. In addition to affirming Leo’s Tome, Marcian planned to convoke an oikoumenical council to further ensure doctrinal agreement within the Church. Leo did not believe an oikoumenical council was necessary as he was content to have the Tome received within the canonical tradition, but Marcian wanted to ensure unity within the Church and possibly advance his own legacy as another Constantine. 89 In an attempt to show continuity with the First Oikoumenical Council of 325, Marcian called for a council to be convened at Nicaea. However, after a military campaign diverted his attention, Marcian reconsidered and opted for the more convenient location of Chalcedon, a suburb of Constantinople, which housed the sizable church of Saint Euphemia.

4.3. CHRISTOLOGY OF THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON 4.3.1. Primary Sources of the Acts (Sessions) of Chalcedon Eduard Schwartz’s Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum remains the standard edition for the Greek and Latin versions of the Acts of Chalcedon. The Greek version of the Acts is located in Schwartz’s Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum II.1. 90 The Latin version of the Acts is in Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum II.3. 91 The Latin version of the Acts preserves the original Greek text to a larger extent than the Greek version in Schwartz. Translation of the Acts (Sessions) of Chalcedon There have been a couple exceptional translations of portions or the entire Acts of Chalcedon into French and Russian over the last century. 92 Richard Price and Michael The official restortation of the bishops to the sees would be realized in the Council. Pulcheria and Leo kept in close correspondence with one another. For the letter from Pulcheria to the pope calling for the restoration of the bishops, see Leo, ep. 77, in Acts, Vol. 1:93–4. 89 Emperor Marcian’s insistence on a new Defintiion may have been part of his ambition to be placed on par with Constantine and the Nicene Creed. 90 ACO II.1. ed. Eduard Schwartz, (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1933–5). 91 ACO II.3. ed. Eduard Schwartz, (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1935–7). 92 For French translations of the Greek version of Sessions I to VI, see A.J. Festugière, Ephèse et Chalcédoine (Paris: Beauchesne, 1982); Ibid., Actes du Concile de Chalcédoine: Sessions IIIVI (Geneva: Patrick Cramer, 1983). For the entire text of the Acts of Chalcedon in Russian 88

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Gaddis have recently published an outstanding English translation of the proceedings (i.e. Acts) of the Council of Chalcedon. It is the authoritative translation for current and future generations of historians. The following selections from the proceedings are borrowed from the groundbreaking work of Price and Gaddis. Any minor changes have been duly noted, but in the main, their translations of the original Greek text have been preserved, with some reliance, when necessary upon the Latin edition. 93 The numbering (and to a lesser extent) the ordering of the acts (alternatively, known as the sessions) varies between the Greek and Latin editions. Technically, there is a difference between acts and sessions, but for our purposes, these terms will be used interchangeably. 94 One issue that Price and Gaddis addressed was deciding the location of the session on Canons 1–27. Another difficulty is that some acts were not numbered in the Greek and Latin editions. Furthermore, some of the acts only appeared in either the Greek or Latin editions. This assessment of the Acts of Chalcedon follows the numbering and ordering sequence established by Price and Gaddis in their recent contribution. 95 This numbering and ordering is similar to the Latin edition. 96 4.3.2. Session One: Rereading the Home Synod (448) & Ephesus II (449) The first session of the Council of Chalcedon convened on 8 October 451 at the church of St. Euphemia. 97 The Acts recorded that 343 bishops and ecclesiastical translation, see volumes 2 and 3 in Deyaniya Vselenskikh Soborov (Kazan, 1908; repr. Saint Petersberg, 1996). 93 Price and Gaddis explain that their translation follows the Greek text published in Eduard Schwartz, ACO II.1 (1933–35). They also advise that they employ the Latin text as a supplement for whole pages, words, or phrases, when necessary. Acts, Vol. 1: x. 94 Regarding the difference between the terms acts and sessions, Price and Gaddis explain, “Strictly, a distinction should be drawn between the ‘acts’ of the Council, of which several could be transacted in one day, and the ‘sessions’ of the Council, each lasting one day: the Breviarium of Liberatus, composed in Carthage in the early 560s, lists and numbers the sessions (sessiones, conventus or secretaria) accordingly, and details the acts (actiones) each one transacted. A different numeration for ‘sessions’ and for ‘acts’ would therefore be both logical and traditional; but it would be confusing for the modern reader and is not adopted here.” Ibid., Vol. 3: viii. 95 Price and Gaddis provide a valuable chart that denotes the variants in the numbering of the acts and sessions in the following editions: Session in Liberatus; Act in Greek edition; Act in Latin edition; Gaddis and Price edition. For the chart, see Acts, Vol. 3: viii. 96 Price notes that western scholars have largely followed the format of the Latin edition. Ibid., Vol. 3: vii. 97 “In the consulship of our lord Marcian perpetual Augustus and the one to be designated, eight days before the Ides of October, at Chalcedon.” Acts I.1, Vol. 1:122. The protection of St. Euphemia was of importance, for she was a martyr in the early fourth century,

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leaders attended the first session. On behalf of the emperor, the magister militum, Anatolius, in cooperation with imperial officials, chaired the proceedings. 98 The record of the first session is long and burdensome, 99 but these minutes offer valuable insights into the three-year span from the Home Synod to Chalcedon. The Roman legates opened up the session by demanding the expulsion of Dioscorus, 100 who attended the Council with the support of his fellow bishops. 101 When asked to state charges against Dioscorus, the Roman legate Lucentius asserted that he “presumed to hold a council without the leave of the apostolic see, which has never been allowed and has never been done.” 102 Anatolius acquiesced to the demands of the Roman legates, thereby placing Dioscorus on trial. 103 At this point in the session, Eusebius of Dorylaeum (one of the bishops who was condemned at Ephesus II), 104 submitted the case against Dioscorus. 105 In his petition, which was read before the

who was central to a “popular miraculous cult favored by the imperial family as well as surrounding Churches and cities.” Jenkins, 203. 98 “By order of our most divine and pious lord Marcian perpetual Augustus there assembled in the most holy Church of the holy martyr Euphemia, that is: the most magnificent and glorious Anatolius, magister militum, former concsul, and patrician…” Acts I.2, Vol. 1:122. 99 In the complete version of the first session (only availble in the Latin text), Price notes that the first session is around forty percent of the entire acts of Chalcedon. Price, Acts, Vol. 1:111. 100 “Paschasinus, the most devout bishop and guardian of the apostolic see, took his stand in the centre together with his companions and said: ‘We have [at hand] instructions from the most blessed and apostolic bishop of the city of Rome, the head of all the Churches, in which he has thought it right to declare that Dioscorus should not take a seat at the assembly, and that is he has the effrontery to attempt to do so, he should be expelled.” Acts I.5, Vol. 1:129. 101 Ibid., I.5–12, Vol.1:129–30. 102 Ibid., I.9, Vol.1:129. 103 It may be argued that it was predetermined that Dioscorus would face a trial at Chalcedon. Here, the notion of “acquiscence” is more in keeping with the record keeping than perhaps what was actually transpiring in the moment. 104 A number of historians have characterized Eusebius as a passionate bishop. In his account, Davis asserts that Eusebius’ “zeal made even fire seem cool.” Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils, 173. 105 Eusebius, bishop of Dorylaeum, decalred: “By the preservation of the masters of the world, order my petition to be read, in accordance with the wishes of our most pious emperor. I have been wronged by Dioscorus; the faith has been wronged; Bishop Flavian was murdered. He together with me was unjustly deposed by Dioscorus. Order my petition to be read.” Acts I.14, Vol. 1:130.

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Council fathers, Eusebius called for the recitation of the Acts of Ephesus II. 106 Dioscorus also requested the reading of the Acts of Ephesus II, thus both parties believed their vindication rested on the record of Ephesus II. 107 The Acts were read before the assembly. The reading of the Acts was used as evidence against Dioscorus, who was accused of unlawful practices and the promulgation of illegitimate decrees. As the Acts were read aloud, Dioscorus became increasingly alienated, to such an extent that even the Egyptian bishops shifted allegiances towards the Roman see. 108 In the midst of the preliminary instructions, the imperial officials welcomed Bishop Theodoret of Cyrrhus, 109 thereby leading to a frenzied debate between, which concluded with the officials placing the bishop next to Eusebius as a fellow plaintiff (rather than with the bishops). 110 Cyril, John of Antioch, Proclus of Constantinople and Emperor Theodosius II were now deceased, thus leaving Theodoret as the only survivor responsible for the Formula of Reunion. Indeed, he may have authored the Formula, which caused him much trouble at Ephesus II. 111 Dioscorus and The Act reads, “Since his offences against the Christian faith and against us are far from trivial, we beg and petition your authority to decree that the most devout Bishop Dioscorus must answer the charges we have brought against him, with, of course, the reading before the holy Council of the minutes of his proceedings against us…” Ibid., I.16, Vol. 1:132. 107 Dioscorus declared, “The most pious emperor ordered a Council to be convened, and it convened according to the divine will of our most pious emperor. Regarding the proceedings relating to Flavian, then bishop of the holy Church of Constantinople, minutes were taken at the holy Council, and I ask that they be read.” Ibid., I.18, Vol.1:132. 108 Juvenal, bishop of Jerusalem, and other Palestinian bishops crossed over to the other side thus abandoning Dioscorus. A roll call of bishops began to distance themselves from Dioscorus. After the Council of Chalcedon, the desserters of Disocorus returned to their bishop seats in Egypt as a despised group of disloyal Churchmen. For the account of those bishops who abandoned Dioscorus, see Ibid., I.284–98, Vol. 1:188–90. 109 “The most glorious officials and the exalted senate said: ‘Let the most devout Theodoret enter and take part in the Council, since the most holy Archbishop Leo has restored his see to him, and since the most divine and pious emperor has decreed his attendance at the holy Council.’” Ibid., I.26, Vol.1:134. 110 The officials and senate said, “The most devout Bishop Theodoret, restored to his see by the most holy archbishop of the renowned city of Rome, has now appeared in the role of accuser. Lest the hearing be disrupted, let us conclude what we have initiated. The presence of the most devout Theodoret will be prejudicial to no one, since, obviously enough, full right of speech is assured after this both for you and for him, if you should wish to raise any matters in turn, even though we have a particular and oral witness to his orthodoxy in the most devout bishop of the great city of Antioch.” Ibid., 1.35, Vol.1:135. 111 Theodoret has been suggested as the original author of the Formula on many occasions. Need states, “A form of the words decided upon at Ephesus (and probably composed 106

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his allies were convinced that Theodoret was a Nestorian. Dioscorus and other bishops, who participated in Ephesus II, attempted to evade responsibility for the misguided synod. Dioscorus argued that he acted in accordance with the other bishops, thus he should not be scapegoated for the outcomes reached at Ephesus II. 112 In response, other bishops asserted they were compelled by threats of violence to support Dioscorus. 113 However, later in the proceedings, the bishops admitted that Ephesus II could not have occurred without their participation, which was not entirely guided by the coercion of Dioscorus. 114After much posturing, the reading of the Acts of Ephesus II commenced. 115 As the Acts were being read aloud, the council fathers announced their disapproval against the abuse of Flavian 116 and the omission of Leo’s Tome. 117 After the reading of the Acts of Ephesus II, the proceedings from the Home Synod of 448 were recited before the congregation in order to examine the actions of Flavian of Constantinople. 118 In the midst of the reading, the presiding authoriby Theodoret of Cyrus [sic] was sent to Cyril and incorporated by him later into ‘Laetentur coeli,’ his letter to John.” Need, 94. 112 Dioscorus declared, “The most pious emperor ordered a Council to be convened, and it convened according to the divine will of our most pious emperor. Regarding the proceedings relating to Flavian, then bishop of the holy Church of Constantinople, minutes were taken at the holy Council, and I ask that they be read.” Acts I.18, Vol.1:132; also, see I.53, Vol.1:140. 113 The Oriental bishops and those with them exclaimed, “No one concurred, force was used, force with blows. We signed blank paper. We were threatened with deposition. We were threatened with exile. Soldiers with clubs and swords stood by, and we took fright at the clubs and swords. We were intimidated into signing. Where there are swords and clubs, what kind of Council is it? This is why he had soldiers with him. Drive out the murderer. The soldiers killed Flavian.” Ibid., I.54, Vol. 1:140–41. 114 The Oriental bishops and those with them exclaimed, “We all sinned, we all beg forgiveness.’ The most glorious officials and the exalted senate said: ‘Yet you declared earlier that you were forced by violence and compulsion to sign the deposition of Flavian of sacred memory on a blank sheet.’ The most devout Oriental bishops and those with them exclaimed: ‘We all sinned, we all beg forgiveness.’” Ibid., I.181–3, Vol.1:161. 115 For the minutes of the Acts of Ephesus II, which are interspersed throughout the first sesssion, see Ibid., I.67–1067; Vol. 1:143–363. 116 “The most glorious officials and the exalted senate said: ‘If your teaching was so orthodox, why did you sign the deposition of Flavian of sacred memory?’” Ibid., I.177, Vol 1:161. 117 Ibid., I.87–91, Vol. 1:148. 118 For the minutes from the Acts of the Home Synod, which are intersperesed throughout the first session, see Ibid., I.223–552, Vol. 1:168–229.

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ties sought acclamations in support of Flavian. 119 The majority of bishops (except the loyal Egyptian bishops), 120 who supported Dioscorus at Ephesus II, began to align themselves with Flavian. 121 One by one the bishops sought to excuse themselves “under the scornful eye and withering sarcasm of the increasingly isolated Dioscorus.” 122 By the practice of acclamation, the bishops approved of the deposition of Dioscorus and his inner circle. 123 At the end of the first session, the officials condemned Dioscorus and five other bishops for their involvement at Ephesus II. 124 Dioscorus and his cohort were prohibited from attending more proceedings. The council fathers placed Dioscorus under trial. The other five bishops were reinstated in the fourth session. 4.3.3. The Call for a New Definition of the Faith In session one, the council fathers shouted their approval when the Formula of Reunion was read aloud. The bishop affirmed the Formula as the faith of Cyril and Flavian. 125 The coalescence of the Church fathers into a singular tradition was a common technique at Chalcedon. In the second session (10 October), the bishops assumed they would be called upon to affirm Leo’s Tome in order to demonstrate doctrinal agreement. The affirmation of Leo’s Tome fits well with the totalizing discourse of Chalcedon. However, the presiding officials requested the unexpected, by demanding a new statement of Christian faith. 126 The council fathers believed the

Ibid., I.272–80, Vol. 1:187–88. Four Egyptian bishops (i.e., Athanasius of Busiris of Tripolis; Auxonius of Sebennytus; Nestorius of Phlabonis; Macarius of Cabasa) acclaimed their approval of Flavian. Ibid., I.293–96, Vol. 1:189. 121 Ibid., I.284–98, Vol. 1:188–90. 122 Davis, 181. 123 Acts I.1068–71, Vol. 1:364. 124 The Oriental bishops and those with them declared, “Many years to the senate! Holy God, Holy Almighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us. Many years to the emperors! The impious are always routed; Christ has deposed Dioscorus. Christ has deposed the murderer. This is a just sentence. This is a just Council. This is a holy Council. The senate is just, the Council is just. God has avenged the martyrs.” Ibid., I.1071, Vol. 1:364. 125 Ibid., I.246–55, Vol.1:178–83. 126 The officials and senate declared, “If it seems good to your devoutness, let the most sacred Patriarchs of each diocese select, each one, one or two [bishops] from their own diocese, come together, deliberate in common about the faith, and then make their decisions known to all, so that, if all are in accord, every dispute may be resolved, which is what we wish, and if some prove to be of a contrary opinion, which we do not expect, this may reveal their opinions as well.” Ibid., II.6, Vol. 2:11. 119 120

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Nicene Creed was a sufficient statement of the orthodox faith. 127 In the opening of the second session, the bishops asserted they would not produce another exposition of the faith as the canon (i.e. Canon 7 of Ephesus [431]) forbids the making of another exposition. 128 By the middle of the fifth century, the majority of bishops affirmed the Nicene Creed; however, many council fathers had no knowledge of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (381). The majority of bishops at Ephesus (431) were unacquainted with the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. This creed was a revised version of the Nicene Creed, which emerged between the Constantinople (381) and Chalcedon (451). At the end of session one, the NicenoConstantinopolitan Creed was submitted alongside the Nicene Creed. 129 Diogenes of Cyzicus was the only council father to demonstrate exceptional familiarity with the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. At the conclusion of the first session, Diogenes condemned Eutyches because of his omission of certain parts of the Creed of 381. 130 Thus, the tradition was being expanded to include the Creed of 381, but im“When this had accordingly been read, the holy Council laid down that no one is allowed to produce or write or compose another creed beside the one laid down with the aid of the Holy Spirit by the holy fathers who assembled at Nicaea; and that as regards those who dare to compose another creed, or produce or present it to those who wish to turn to the knowledge of the truth whether from paganism or Judaism or any form of heresy, they, if they are bishops or clerics, are to be expelled, the bishops from episcopacy and the clerics from the clergy, while if they are laymen they are to be anathematized.” Ibid., I.943, Vol. 1:323. 128 The bishops exclaimed, “We will not produce a written exposition. There is a canon which declares that what has already been expounded is sufficient. The canon forbids the making of another exposition. Let the [will] of the fathers prevail.” Ibid., II.7, Vol. 2:11. 129 The officials and senate said: “Let each of the most devout bishops of the present holy Council set out in writing what he believes, without any anxiety and with the fear of God before his eyes, recognizing that the beliefs of our most divine and pious master [Marcian] accord with the creed of the 318 holy fathers at Nicaea and the creed of the 150 fathers after that, with the canonical letters and expositions of the holy fathers Gregory, Basil, Hilary, Athanasius and Ambrose, and with the two canonical letters of Cyril which were approved and published at the first Council of Ephesus, and does not depart from their faith in any way. In addition it is a familiar fact that the most devout Leo archbishop of Senior Rome sent a Letter to Flavian of devout memory concerning the dispute that Eutyches impiously stirred up in opposition to the catholic religion.” Ibid., I.107, Vol. 1:363–4. 130 In recalling the condemnation of Eutyches in 448, Diogenes of Cyzicus declared, “He [Eutyches] adduced the Council of the holy fathers at Nicaea deceptively, since additions were made to it by the holy fathers on account of the evil opinions of Apollinarius, Valentinus, Macedonius and those like them, and there were added to the creed of the holy fathers the words ‘He came down and was enfleshed from the Holy Spirit and Mary the Virgin.’ This Eutyches omitted, as an Apollinarian.” Ibid., I.160, Vol. 1:157–8. 127

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mediately following Diogenes’ judgement against Eutyches, the Egyptian contingency referenced Canon 7 of Ephesus. 131 Furthermore, during session two of Chalcedon, when the imperial authorities demanded a new definition of the Christian faith, the bishops once again appealed to Canon 7. 132 The constant appeals to Canon 7 demonstrate that no one wanted to devise a new definition of the faith. It was, so it readily appears, purely the ambitions of Marcian that led to the promulgation of the Chalcedonian Definition. Following in the footsteps of Constantine and the Nicene Creed, Marcian sought to establish his own legacy as defender of the Christian tradition through establishing once and for all the definitive settlement of the universal faith. 4.3.4. Session Two: Formation of a New Christological Definition of Faith In response to the immense imperial demands for a new definition of the faith, 133 the council fathers first turned to the established tradition. The Creed of Nicaea was cited before the congregation. 134 After the reading of the Nicene Creed, the bishops declared that this is the orthodox faith, which they all believe in, which was taught by Cyril and Leo. 135 Next, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed was recited. The bishops offered a far more general affirmation of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed than that which was given after the Nicene Creed. After the recitation of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, the bishops declared, “This is the faith of all. This is the faith of the orthodox. We all believe accordingly.” 136 Not a single bishop referred to it as the creed of their baptism or of Cyril, which were the acclamations given after the reading of the Nicene Creed. 137 There is no explicit rejection of the “The most devout Egyptian bishops and those with them exclaimed: ‘No one admits any addition or subtraction. Confirm the work of Nicaea; the orthodox emperor has commanded this.’” Ibid., I.161, Vol. 1:158. 132 For the bishops constant referencing of Canon 7 of Ephesus, see Ibid., II.3–7, Vol. 2:10–11. 133 Regarding the imperial demands for a new definition, Grillmeier rightly concludes, “It was only under constant pressure from the emperor Marcian that the Fathers of Chalcedon agreed to draw up a new formula of belief.” Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition Vol. 1, 543. 134 Acts II.11, Vol. 2:12. 135 The bishops exclaimed, “This is the faith of the orthodox. This we all believe. In this we were baptized, in this we baptize. The blessed Cyril taught accordingly. This is the true faith. This is the holy faith. This is the eternal faith. Into this we were baptized, into this we baptize. We all believe accordingly. Pope Leo believes accordingly. Cyril believed accordingly. Pope Leo expounded accordingly.” Ibid., II.12, Vol. 2:12. 136 Ibid., II.15, Vol. 2:15. 137 Gwynn, 17. 131

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Creed of 381, but the objections may have been omitted from the record. 138 Even as the Egyptian bishops remained steadfast in bypassing the NicenoConstantinopolitan Creed, the majority of bishops affirmed it as an addition to the Nicene Creed. The acclamation of the Creed of 381 raised the Council of Constantinople to the status of an oikoumenical council. 139 At this point, the archdeacon Aetius offered to read Cyril’s letter to Nestorius (i.e. Second Letter to Nestorius) and his Letter to John of Antioch. After the officials called for the reading of these two letters, 140 Aetius read Cyril’s Second Letter to Nestorius, 141 followed by the recitation of his Letter to John of Antioch. 142 Following the reading of Cyril’s two letters, the bishops declared that Pope Leo believes in accordance with Cyril. 143 Next, the officials instructed that Leo’s Tome should be read. 144 The secretary Veronicianus read Leo’s Tome (i.e., Leo’s Letter to Flavian) in its entirety. 145 4.3.5. Christological Statement: Leo’s Letter to Flavian (or Leo’s Tome ) Leo’s Letter to Flavian, popularly known as Leo’s Tome, was composed on 13 June 449. 146 The Tome is a lengthy exposition of dual nature Christology. Leo entrusted his Tome over to his papal legates, who were ordered to present it before the bishops

In assessing the lack of reception of Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed at Chalcedon, Gwynn asserts, “One might legitimately wonder whether other bishops shared such concerns or whether there were at some stage during the Council any explicit objections to the introduction of the apparently unknown creed of 381 into the debate. If there were, however, those objections have disappeared from our official record.” Gwynn, 18. 139 Davis, 185. 140 Acts II.17, Vol. 2:13. 141 Ibid., II.18, Vol. 2:13. In the Latin version of the Acts of Chalcedon, the full text of Cyril’s Second Letter to Nestorius is extant, whereas the Greek version only offers the first few lines of the letter. 142 Ibid., II.19, Vol. 2:14. In the Latin version of the Acts of Chalcedon, the full text of Cyril’s Letter to John of Antioch is extant, whereas the Greek version has an abridged version. 143 After the reading of Leo’s Tome, the bishops declared, “We all believe accordingly. Pope Leo believes accordingly. Anathema to him who divides and him who confuses! This is the faith of Archbishop Leo. Leo believes accordingly. Leo and Anatolius believe accordingly. We all believe accordingly. As Cyril so we believe. Eternal is the memory of Cyril. As is contained in the letters of Cyril, so we hold. We have believed accordingly, and we believe accordingly. Archbishop Leo thinks, believes and wrote accordingly.” Acts II.20, Vol. 2:14. 144 “The most glorious officials and the exalted senate said: ‘Let the letter of the most religious Leo, archbishop of the imperial and senior Rome, be read.’” Acts II.21, Vol. 2:14. 145 For Leo’s Letter to Flavian (i.e., Leo’s Tome), see Ibid., II.21–22, Vol. 2:14–24. 146 One of Leo’s secretaries was largely responsible for drafting the Tome, which relied heavily upon predecessors such as Augustine of Hippo. However, what is of importance, is Leo’s strong suppor of the Tome. Jenkins, 185. 138

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at Ephesus II. Dioscorus received the Tome without reading it or including it in the archives. Two years later, at Chalcedon, the Tome was received into the canonical tradition. In the Tome, Leo maintained the two natures in Jesus Christ, but he always coupled the dual nature Christology with the unity of the true and perfect man-God. In regards to the economy of salvation, which is always grounded in the redemptive work of the cross, Leo maintains a distinction and unity with the two natures. He declares: With, therefore, the distinctive character of each nature being preserved and coming together into one person, lowliness was assumed by divinity, impotence by power, mortality by immortality; and for the payment of the debt owed by our nature the divine nature was united to the passible nature, so that – this fitting our cure – one and the same, being ‘the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus’, would be able to die in respect of the one and would not be able to expire in respect of the other. Therefore in the pure and perfect nature of true man true God was born, complete in what is his own and complete in what is ours. 147

In the Tome, Leo asserts, “the impassible God did not disdain being a passible man, nor the immortal one submit to the laws of death.” 148 Additionally, he states, “For each form (μορφή) performs what is proper to it in communion (κοινωνία) with the other, the Word achieving what is the Word’s, while the body accomplishes what is the body’s; the one shines with miracles, while the other has succumbed to outrages (ὕβρις).” 149 The ambiguity of the above assertion is open to many interpretations. Leo may be arguing that the “forms” of God and humanity instead of the “personal subjects” of the Word of God and Christ participate in miracles and outrages. The distinct operations and effects of the Word of God and the human nature (i.e., flesh) could be interpreted as an affront to Cyril’s Fourth Anathema. 150 In part, the Cyrillian faction (perhaps naively but nonetheless) accepted Leo’s Tome because they interpreted it to stand in agreement with Cyril, but this acceptance of the Tome came with reservations. Leo consistently assigns human weakness to human nature within the one Christ; hunger, thirst and weariness belong to the human nature, whereas the feeding of five thousand men with five loaves of bread, the walking on water Acts II.22, Vol. 2:17–18. Ibid, II.22, Vol. 2:19. 149 Ibid. 150 “If anyone interprets the sayings in the Gospels and apostolic writings, or things said about Christ by the saints, or the things he says about himself, as referring to two prosopa or hypostases, attributing some of them to a man conceived of as separate from the Word of God, and attributing others (as divine) exclusively to the Word of God the Father, let him be anathema.” Cyril, Twelve Chapters (ACO 1.1: 41), McGuckin, Christological Controversy, 274. 147 148

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and the rebuking of the swell, all belong to the divine nature. 151 Following a consistent emphasis on the two natures in Christ, Leo asserts, “For although indeed in the Lord Jesus Christ there is one person of God and man, nevertheless that because of which the outrage is common in both is one thing and that because of which the glory is common is another.” With this declaration, Leo affirms that the Incarnate Word shares in human weakness and divine glory, thus there is no clear separation of the two natures as witnessed within Nestorianism. Leo explains as follows: Because, then, of this union of person that needs to be conceived in each nature we also acknowledge that the Son of man came down from heaven, when the Son of God assumed the body from the Virgin from whom he was born, and again the Son of God is said to have been crucified and buried, when he endured these things not in the Godhead itself in which he is only-begotten, coeternal and consubstantial with the Father, but in the weakness of his human nature. 152

Leo affirms the crucifixion of the Son of God. In the next section of the Tome, Leo rebukes Eutyches, who denied the human nature of the only-begotten God. 153 He argues that Eutyches’ Christology, which denies the human nature in Christ Jesus, has negative consequences upon the mystery of salvation. Leo makes the following assertion: What is it to divide Christ if not to sever his human nature from him and to try to make vain by shameless fictions the mystery through which alone we are saved? He who has created obscurity around the nature of the body of Christ is necessarily deranged with the same blindness in relation to his passion as well. For if he does not think the cross of the Lord to be false and is in no doubt that the passion he underwent for the salvation of the world was real, let him then acknowledge the flesh of the one whose death he acknowledges, and let him not deny that the one who he acknowledges was passible was a man of our flesh, since the denial of the true body is a denial also of the body’s suffering. If therefore he accepts the faith of Christians and does not avert his hearing from the preaching of the gospel, let him consider which nature it was that, pierced by the nails, hung on the wood of the cross; and when the side of the one fixed to the cross was opened by the spear of the soldier, let him reflect whence the blood and water flowed so that the Church of God might be watered both by the bath [of baptism] and by the cup. 154 Acts II.22, Vol. 2:20. Ibid., II.22, Vol. 2:20–21. 153 Ibid., II.22, Vol. 2:22. 154 Ibid. 151 152

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Leo’s insistence on the dual natures in Christ affirms his interpretation of the Scriptures and the Gospel proclamation of “Christ crucified” as the central event that ensures the salvation of humanity. Jenkins has lauded the Tome as an impressive document because of its “comprehensive gathering of biblical texts and a sound, clear logic running throughout.” 155 In the above excerpt, Leo connects the human body with the passion of Christ in order to argue that the human or bodily nature is essential for rightly interpreting the salvific import of the crucifixion. The climatic event of the Gospels is the crucifixion of Christ, 156 which Leo surely recognizes when he asserts that to deny the human flesh of Christ, which suffered on the cross, is to deviate from the truth of the Gospel. If Eutyches truly wishes to affirm the Gospel of Christ, then, Leo admonishes the archimandrite to consider what nature (i.e., the human or divine) was “pierced by the nails” and “hung on the cross.” Leo’s affirmation of Christ suffering in his human nature resonates with Cyril’s assertion that the Word of God suffers in the flesh. 4.3.6. Cyril and Leo: Fathers of Chalcedonian Christology In response to Leo’s Tome, the bishops at Chalcedon declared that Peter and the apostles taught accordingly to Leo; furthermore, they proclaimed that Leo and Cyril taught the same thing. 157 This was the common refrain of the bishops, “Leo and Cyril taught the same thing.” Leo and Cyril obviously did not teach the same thing at every point in their Christological writings. Leo’s dual nature Christology and Cyril’s miaphysite Christology share some differences and similarities, which emerge throughout the sessions of Chalcedon. Cyril believed that the operations of Christ, both the human and divine, exists within the one Word of God. In contrast to Cyril’s single nature Christology, which asserts all actions are grounded in the one divine-human Logos, Leo contends that the outward actions correspond to the two natures in Christ Jesus. 158 There are obvious differences between Cyril and Leo; Jenkins, 186. The resurrection of Christ is another climatic event within the Gospels. However, the passion and crucificion of Christ is the most important moment in the salvation story. 157 After the recitation of Leo’s Tome, the bishops exclaimed: “This is the faith of the fathers. This is the faith of the apostles. We all believe accordingly. We orthodox believe accordingly. Anathema to him who does not believe accordingly! Peter has uttered this through Leo. The apostles taught accordingly. Leo taught piously and truly. Cyril taught accordingly. Eternal is the memory of Cyril. Leo and Cyril taught the same. Leo and Cyril taught accordingly. Anathema to him who does not believe accordingly! This is the true faith. We orthodox think accordingly. This is the faith of the fathers. Why was this not read out at Ephesus? Dioscorus concealed it.” Acts II.23, Vol. 2:24–25. 158 In his assessment of Leo’s Christolgoy, Price asserts, “Following Augustine, Leo stressed the mediatorship of Christ, as God and man: only as man could he offer the supreme sacrifice, and this required human free will and a human nature that was not merely 155 156

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however, the two Church fathers shared commonalities as well. Cyril and Leo believed that Christ Jesus, suffering in the flesh at the cross, stands at the center of the Gospel proclamation. Cyril and Leo both assert that suffering in the flesh is essential for the oikonomy of salvation. Whereas the majority of council fathers received Leo’s Tome as part of the canonical tradition, the Illyrian and Palestinian bishops raised objections. The Illyrian and Palestinian bishops challenged Leo’s statement, “For the payment of the debt owed by our nature divine nature was united to the passible nature, so that – this fitting our cure – one and the same, being the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, would be able to die in respect of the one and would not be able to expire in respect of the other.” 159 In this passage, Leo affirms the unity of the human and divine nature in Christ and then asserts that he suffered and died only in the human nature. The Illyrian and Palestinian bishops questioned the above passage. The specific complaints are not provided within the Acts, but their objections were probably similar to the complaints of Timothy Aelurus, 160 who declared, “Notice how again he teaches similar things to Nestorius when he says he can die in one person and not expire in one, calling the mortal and immortal two different things.” 161 Timothy’s objection is not preserved in the Acts, but his assertion underlines the concerns of the Illyrian and Palestinian bishops, who detected a Nestorian duality within Leo’s Tome. Their fears are not without any warrant, after all, after reading Leo’s Tome, Nestorius gave thanks to God that the “Church of Rome was confessing correctly and without fault, although they were otherwise disposed towards me myself.” 162 The two-nature Christology of Leo’s Tome was applauded by Nestorius, which in itself, validates the concerns voiced by many bishops who believed the Definition was far too Antiochene in its theology and language. Following the recitation of Leo’s Tome, Aetius, archdeacon of Constantinople, read a section from Cyril’s Second Letter to Nestorius, “‘Since again his own body by passive under the direction of the Word of God that assumed it, but possessed its own spontaneity.” Acts II.25, fn. 79. 159 Acts II.24, Vol. 2:25. 160 Timothy Aelerus was a monophysite Patriarch of Alexandria from 457–60 and 475– 77. Timothy, known as “the Cat” due to his diminutive stature, led the Monophysite opposition against Chalcedon (451). However, Timothy would later come to side with Cyril and Severus (against Eutyches) in affirming that the body of Christ is the same substance of other human bodies. See Everett Ferguson, “Timothy Aelurus (d. 477),” EEC, 1133. 161 R.Y. Ebied and L.R. Wickham, “Timothy Aelurus: Against the Definition of the Council of Chalcedon,” in After Chalcedon: Studies in Theology and Church History, ed. C. Laga et al. (Leuven: Department Orientalistiek, 1985), 147. 162 Quoted from Nestorius, Bazaar of Heracleides, trans. G.R. Driver and Leonard Hodgson (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2002 [previously published by Oxford University Press, 1935]), 340.

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the grace of God tasted death on behalf of everyone, as the apostle says, he himself is said to have suffered death on our behalf, not as though he entered into the experience of death in regard to his own nature (for to say or think that would be lunacy) but because, as I have just said, his own flesh tasted death.” 163 In both of the above excerpts, from Leo’s Tome and Cyril’s Second Letter to Nestorius, there is emphasis on the suffering of Christ in the flesh, which does not touch the divine nature, thus assuring divine impassibility. Aetius read from Cyril (after the objections of the Illyrian and Palestinians) in order to demonstrate the compatibility between the Church fathers of Chalcedon. Leo and Cyril’s statements on the suffering Christ are placed together in order to establish a singular tradition. Following the readings of Cyril and Leo, the bishops declared, “This is the faith of Archbishop Leo…We all believe accordingly. As Cyril so we believe. Eternal is the memory of Cyril. As is contained in the letters of Cyril so we hold.” 164 In the second session, when certain bishops (who previously sided with Dioscorus) questioned Leo’s Tome, 165 those who sided with the Roman cause referenced select quotations from Cyril that stood in agreement with Leo. The acceptance of Leo’s Tome and Cyril’s Second Letter to Nestorius was a foreseeable outcome. In May of 450, Leo sent a decretal to Ravenius of Arles, in which he included a florilegium containing excerpts from Cyril’s writings. 166 Furthermore, in 450, Leo’s Tome and Cyril’s Letter to Nestorius were sent together in a correspondence that travelled from Gaul to Spain. 167 One year prior to Chalcedon, Leo’s Tome and Cyril’s writings were transmitted throughout the Western epistolary networks as a canonical collection of writings. 168 Prior to Chalcedon, there was alActs II.24, Vol. 2:25. Ibid., II.20–21, Vol. 2:14. 165 Ibid., II.24–6, Vol. 2:25–6. 166 “Hoc dilectioni tuae specialiter delegantes, ut sollicitudine vigilantiae tuae epistola nostra, quam ad Orientem pro fidei defensionem direximus, vel sanctae memoriae Cyrilli, quae nostris sensibu tota concordat, universis fratribus innotescat: ut certiores effecti contra eos qui incarnationem Domini pravis persuasionibus aestimant temerandam, spirituali se virtute praemuniant.” Leo, Ep. 67 (Ad Ravennium Arelatensem Episcopum) (PL 54: 886A-887A). For Letter 67 in its entirety, see PL 54: 886A-887A. 167 See Chronicle of Idazius, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auctores Antiquissimi, Vol.11:25. 168 Leo sent his and Cyril’s writings to Easterndignitaries. Leo honored Cyril in “sacred memory” throughout his writings. In Letter 70, Leo stated, “Simplex enim est absolutumque quod posco, ut remoto longarum disputationum labore, sanctae memoriae Cyrilli Alexandrini episcopi epistolae, quam ipse ad Nestorium miserat, acquiescat.” Leo, ep. 70 (Ad Pulcheriam Augustam) (PL 54: 893B-894A). Furthermore, in Letter 71, Leo mentions his sending of “paternal authorities (paternarum auctoritatum)” to the Easternleaders. The footnote clarifies that these authorities are the holy fathers (both Greek and Latin) testimony on the In163 164

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ready an emergent tradition in place, which placed Leo and Cyril side by side as part of a singular totalizing discourse. Next, the Archdeacon of Constantinople, Aetius, read from Cyril’s Letter to Acacius, which declares, “Some of the sayings are particularly fitting to God, some again are particularly fitting to man, while others occupy a middle position, revealing the Son of God as God and man simultaneously and at the same time.” 169 In the context of the Letter to Acacius (bishop of Beroea), Cyril was attempting to explain his own position in relation to the Formula of Reunion. This is the moderate Cyril, who was being conciliatory in an attempt at rapprochement with John of Antioch. The above excerpt from Cyril’s Letter to Acacius stands in contrast with his Twelve Anathemas, which states, “If anyone interprets the sayings in the Gospels and apostolic writings, or the things said about Christ by the saints, or the things he says about himself, as referring to two prosôpa or hypostases, attributing some of them to a man conceived of as separate from the Word of God, and attributing others (as divine) exclusively to the Word of God the Father, let him be anathema.” 170 The council officials tasked the bishops with establishing an integrative tradition, which meant they privileged a moderate Cyril, who would more easily fit within the tradition of the Church. In addition to their concerns regarding the differences between Cyril and Leo on divine suffering, the Illyrian and Palestinian bishops objected to the part within Leo’s Tome that asserts, “Although indeed in the Lord Jesus Christ there is one person of God and man, nevertheless that because of which the outrage is common in both is one thing and that because of which the glory is common is another, for he has from us the humanity that is less than the Father, and he has from the Father the Godhead that is equal with the Father.” 171 The Miaphysite party frequently asserted that this part of Leo’s Tome smacked of Nestorianism. 172 In response to the Illyrian and Palestinians, Theodoret of Cyrrhus asserted that Cyril said a similar statement in the Scholia de incarnatione, where he declares, “He became man without shedding what was his own, for he remained what he was; he is certainly conceived as one dwelling in another, that is, the divine nature in what is human.” 173 This contestation between Theodoret and the Illyrian-Palestinian bishops illustrates that the creation of a totalizing tradition was an ongoing struggle throughout the Acts of Chalcedon. Tradition is never given intact as a whole entity; rather it is a collaborative forging together of the collective parts of the past through the praxis of

carnation of Christ. Leo, Ep. 71 (Ad Archimandritas Constantinopolitanos) (PL 54: 896A; also, see fn. k). Also, see Leo, Ep. 88 (Ad Paschisnum Episcopum Lylibaetenum) (PL 54: 928B). 169 Acts II.25, Vol. 2:26. 170 McGuckin, Christological Controversy, 274. 171 Acts II.26, Vol. 2:26. 172 Timothy Aelurus argued that Leo’s statement was nonsensical because unity exists when he speaks of “one and another.” Ebied and Wickham, 152. 173 Acts II.26, Vol. 2:26.

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reception and interpretation. At this point in the session, the officials asked the bishops if they had more objections, in turn, then they responded, “No one has any objections.” 174 Leo and Cyril had different Christologies, which enjoyed distinct followings at Chalcedon; yet, in the midst of difference, under imperial mandate, the bishops coalesced these two Church fathers into a singular tradition. After the bishops affirmed that Cyril and Leo belonged to the same tradition, Atticus of Nicopolis declared, “We should also be provided with the letter of the blessed Cyril written to Nestorius in which he urged him to assent to the Twelve Anathemas (i.e. Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius), so that at the time of the examination we may be found well prepared.” 175 Earlier in the second session, Cyril’s Second Letter to Nestorius and his Letter to John of Antioch were received as part of the canonical tradition. 176 Furthermore, after Veronicianus read out Leo’s Tome, the bishops affirmed it as an orthodox profession of the Christian faith. 177 The bishops contoured the ecclesiastical tradition by placing the above writings within one corpus, where they were read as a monolithic expression of the faith. Atticus’ appeal to Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius could be interpreted as a challenge during the process of establishing a canonical tradition. Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius had been consistently omitted from the tradition. The positive reception of Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius would have augmented this tradition. If the council fathers received the letter as part of the tradition, then it would have shaped the interpretation of Leo’s Tome and the Formula of Reunion, because the canonical writings were read in collaboration with one another. Rather than outright rejecting Atticus’ request to read Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius, the council fathers bypassed the thorny issue by calling for the restoration of the bishops who were ousted alongside Dioscorus. 178 Then, at this point, the offiIbid. The only time that Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius is referenced throughout the sessions of Chalcedon was here in the second session. Ibid., II.29, Vol. 2:26–7. 176 Ibid., II.18–19, Vol. 2:13–14. 177 For Leo’s Tome (Leonis Epistula ad Flavianum; Ep. 11) (June 13, 449), see ACO II.2.1: 24–33; ACO IV.1: 167–72; in the Greek, ACO II.1.1: 10–20. For an English translation of the Tome, see Acts of Chalcedon (vol. 2), 14–24 (hereafter, Leo, Tome). The English translation of the Acts of Chalcedon from the labors of Price and Gaddis is quoted in this study. This translation is from the Greek rather than the Latin. Price and Gaddis explain, “We translate the Greek version of the text…since this was the text read out at this point and because English translations of the Latin original are legion.” Acts I.14, fn. 26. 178 Acts II.27, Vol. 2:30. The Council fathers were calling for the restoration of Juvenal of Jerusalem, Thalassius of Caesarea in Cappadocia, Esuebius of Ancyra, Eustathius of Berytus, and Basil of Seleucia in Isauria, whow all were removed with Dioscorus in the first session. 174 175

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cials adjourned the Council for five days to allow for ongoing deliberations. 179 It is an abrupt moment within the conciliar proceedings, perhaps, even a bit awkward, for no one wanted to explicitly reject Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius, but at the same time, it had clearly fallen out of the ecclesiastical tradition. In summary, the council fathers approved the following writings during session two of Chalcedon: the Nicene Creed, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, Cyril’s Second Letter to Nestorius and the Laetentur caeli correspondence, penned to John of Antioch, which approved of the Formula of Reunion, and Leo’s Tome. These canonical writings were affirmed as part of the creedal tradition, with the Nicene Creed as the basis, then the succeeding writings as faithful interpretations of the one in the same faith. It was assumed that each of the above writings taught the same thing; therefore, these texts were read in an intertextual manner, where the canonical writings interpreted and supported one another within an integrative framework. 4.3.7. The Trial of Dioscorus At the conclusion of the second session, it was clear that there was an impasse between the allies and opponents of Dioscorus. 180 The third session (13 October 451) was devoted to reaching a verdict on Dioscorus. Eusebius, the bishop of Dorylaeum (Phrygia), was the zealous lead prosecutor during the trial of Dioscorus. Four Egyptian plaintiffs were brought forth for their testimony before the council fathers. Bishop Paschasinus of Lilybaeum, a high-ranking confidant of Leo’s, chaired the third session. 181 The imperial representatives did not attend the trial, which may have been to demonstrate impartiality. Nearly half of the bishops decided to abstain from the trial of Dioscorus. The nearly 200 church leaders in attendance conIbid., II.31, Vol. 2:27. The Council would resume discussions on the defintiion of faith in the fourth session, which took place seven days later, on 17 October 451. 180 In his assessement of the concialiar proceedings, Price asserts, “Quite apart from the continued presence at the Council of a small but vocal minority of bishops, largely from Illyricum and Palestine, who boldly opposed the ecclesiastical policy of the government, we may presume that not only the six bishops (all metropolitans) who had been deposed at the first session but virtually all their suffragans were now absenting themselves from the meetings.” Price, “The Council of Chacledon,” 76. 181 Paschasinus, the bishop of Lilybaeum, who represented Leo, declared in Latin: “It is well known to this God-beloved Council that a divine letter was sent to the blessed and apostolic Pope Leo summoning him to the holy Council. But since neither the custom of antiquity nor the necessities of the general time seemed to allow this, he has charged our littleness to preside over this holy Council in his stead. It is therefore necessary that whatever is brought forward should be examined by our sentence. Therefore let the plaint that has now been presented by our most God-beloved brother and fellow-bishop Eusebius be received by the most God-beloved archdeacon and primicerius {of notaries} and read.” Acts III.4, Vol. 2:41. 179

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demned Dioscorus, 182 largely on account of his unwillingness to attend the trial after receiving three requests to present himself before the Council. Charges of heresy were levied against Dioscorus in the first session, but the mainline attack was generally vague misconduct. 183 The trial confirmed the condemnation of Dioscorus that was first asserted in the first session. In step with legal precedence, the council fathers summoned Dioscorus on three occasions during the session. Dioscorus refused to show up, thus, the council fathers were justified to condemn him. The major offense made against Dioscorus was a refusal to show up for his defense, thus implying guilt by refusing to attend after a threefold summons. Dioscorus’ intransigence was clear grounds for the guilty verdict. In addition, Paschasinus condemned Dioscorus for prematurely rehabilitating Eutyches into communion with the Church. Paschasinus also rebuked him for excommunicating Leo and censuring the Tome. The council fathers denounced his unfair judgment against Flavian, 184 harsh actions towards Eusebius of Dorylaeum, and his restating of bishops who were previously condemned. In addition to charges of misconduct, certain council fathers accused Dioscorus of heresies. The bishops accused Dioscorus of Eutychianism, 185 a defective view of the Trinity, and they gestured towards other doctrinal aberrations. In their comFor a discussion on the issues aurrounding the number of attendees at the third session, see Acts II:35–7. 183 In step with the majority of bishops, Theodore, bishop of Tarsus, declared: “Dioscorus has deprived himself of priestly dignity by the following offences: he illegally received into communion Eutyches, who had been condemned by Flavian of holy memory; he has been accused of crimes of the utmost gravity; and he did not comply when summoned by the holy and Oikoumenical Council. He has therefore been justly condemned by the greatest sees – the archbishops Leo and Anatolius of the most holy Churches of Great Rome and New Rome. I too in agreement with them pronounce my sentence, adjudging him deprived of all pontifical ministry.” Acts III.96.13, Vol. 2:72. 184 Quintus, the bishop of Phocaea, declared, “When he murdered that most holy man Flavian, the guardian of orthodoxy, he didn’t cite canons or have them read, nor did he follow any ecclesiastical procedure, but he deposed him on his own authority. But now everything has been decided canonically, and he ought not to have recourse again to a postponement.” Ibid., III.89, Vol. 2:68. 185 In the opening of the third session, Aetius read out from a document by Eusebius of Dorylaeum, “We accused the aforesaid Dioscorus of sharing the beliefs of the heretical Eutyches, who has been deposed and anathematized, and of the fact that, wishing to confirm that man’s false beliefs at the Council that recently took place in the metropolis of Ephesus, he assembled a multitude of disorderly mobs, achieved domination through the wealth at his disposal, and proceeded to damage the orthodox faith, so far as he could, to introduce the ferment of a new heresy into the catholic Church, and to strip me of priestly rank.” Ibid., III.5, Vol. 2:42. 182

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plaints against Dioscorus, bishops and officials suggested that he held heretical views, but there was never uniformed and specific accusations made against him. 186 The Council sent forth letters announcing the condemnation of Dioscorus. In the letter sent to the Empress Pulcheria, the fathers provided general complaints that were issued throughout the session, such as his refusal to read Leo’s Letter to Flavian, but the overall tenure of complaints was general and innuendo like in their nature. The council fathers criticized Dioscorus for being deceitful and thus deprived him of the dignity of the priesthood. 187 These general complaints were normative throughout the trial of Dioscorus. Despite no specific and consistent charges of heresy, once Paschasinus condemned Dioscorus, thereafter, the bishops confirmed the verdict. 188 There was little room for further debate once Paschisnus condemned Dioscorus.

4.4. CHALCEDONIAN DEFINITION: A NUANCED CHRISTOLOGY 4.4.1. Fourth Session: Road to the Definition In the fourth session (17 October), the council fathers returned to questions regarding the definition of faith. The Council fathers examined Leo’s Tome. After some convincing of the Illyrian and Palestinian bishops through diplomatic maneuvers over the prior week, the conditions were now set for the approval of Leo’s Tome. In the first half of the session, the bishops affirmed that Leo’s Tome stood in agreement with the Nicene Creed. The five bishops associated with Dioscorus, who were dismissed during the first session, were now reinstated. The Egyptian bishops and the Constantinopolitan monks protested during the proceedings of the fourth session. The Egyptians were granted permission to be excluded from the proceedings until another bishops replaced Dioscorus. The Constantinopolitan monks stood in outCertain Alexandrian deacons and presbyters submitted their formal complaints against Dioscorus. For example, see the plaints of Theodore, deacon of Aleandria, see Ibid., III.47, Vol. 2:51–3; Ischyrion, deacon of Alexandria, see Ibid., III.51, Vol. 2:53–7; Athanasius, presbyter of Alexandria, Ibid., III.57, Vol. 2:58–61. 187 For the Council’s letter to Augusta Pulcheria, provided at the end of the session, see Ibid., III.103, Vol. 2:114–16. 188 The Roman representative’s announcement against Dioscorus was rather long. At the outset, Paschasinus, bishop of Lilybaeum in Sicily and the other representatives of Leo, delcared, “Manifest are the deeds committed with lawless audacity by Dioscorus bishop of the city of Alexandria against the discipline of the canons and the rules of the Church, as is shown by the past proceedings and the present pleas. To omit the greater part, Eutyches, who shared his perfidy and had been lawfully condemned by his own bishop, Flavian of holy memory, he is known to have received [into communion] even before sitting [in Council] together with the bishops who had assembled in the city of Ephesus.” Ibid., III.94.1–3, Vol. 2:69. 186

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right opposition throughout the conciliar proceedings. 189 The senate and officials instructed the bishops to provide a statement of faith. On behalf of the Roman see, Paschasinus declared: The holy and blessed Council upholds and follows the rule of faith of the 318, issued by them at Nicaea. In addition the Council of 150 that assembled at Constantinople under Theodosius the Great of blessed memory confirmed the same faith. The teaching of this creed, taught by the man Cyril of blessed memory at Ephesus, when Nestorius was condemned for his craftiness, it similarly embraces. Thirdly, the letter sent by that most blessed (and apostolic man) Leo, archbishop of all the Churches, who condemned the heresy of Nestorius and Eutyches, reveals what is the true faith. The holy Council likewise holds fast to this faith and follows it, allowing nothing further to be added or subtracted. 190

The above declaration confirms that the Nicene Creed, Cyril’s teachings against Nestorius, and Leo’s Letter to Flavian, are all essential to the Christian faith. Furthermore, Paschasinus asserts that nothing else is needed beyond these articles of faith. In response to Paschasinus, the bishops declared that they all believe accordingly and were baptized in this faith. 191 In addition to the group acclamation, the officials instructed each bishop to state if the Nicene Creed stood in harmony with Leo. 192 In quick succession, over 150 bishops declared that Leo’s Tome was in agreement with the Nicene Creed and Cyril’s Second Letter to Nestorius. 193 Following the declarations of these bishops, the remainder of the council fathers expressed their approval through acclamation. 194 The five restored bishops (who were initially deposed with Dioscorus) signed the creed, and then everyone acclaimed, “As Leo believes, so they believe.” 195 There is no record of a vigorous cross-examination of Leo’s Tome with Cyril’s Second Letter to Nestorius. It appears that approval was reached through acclamation, but there is no evidence of a careful study and comparison of these two texts. In his assessment of the fourth session, Price concludes, “The admission to the Council chamber of critics of the consensus around Leo’s Tome was a government decision presumably intended to provoke the bishops into issuing a new definition of the faith; it illustrates how government could choose to manipulate a Council rather than dictate to it, as it did at the second and fifth sessions.” Acts, 2.17. 190 Acts IV.6, Vol. 2:127. 191 Ibid., IV.7, Vol. 2:127. 192 Ibid., IV.8, Vol. 2:127. 193 Ibid., IV.9.1–9.161, vol. 2:127–46. 194 Ibid., IV.11, Vol. 2:146. 195 Ibid. 189

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After the acclamations for the Nicene Creed, Cyril’s Second Letter to Nestorius and Leo’s Tome, the five bishops associated with Dioscorus were restored. 196 The Egyptian bishops, who did not attend the second and third sessions because of the disposition of Dioscorus, entered the Council and submitted their confession of faith, which was read out by the secretary Constantine. 197 The decree of the Egyptian bishops affirmed the Nicene Creed and three revered Alexandrian bishops: Athanasius, Theophilus and Cyril. Furthermore, the Egyptians anathematized Arius, Eunomius and Nestorius. There was no mention of Leo’s Tome or the heretical views of Eutyches. This lacuna within the confession was quickly noticed. Paschasinus and a succession of bishops demanded the Egyptian bishops to sign off on Leo’s Tome and to condemn Eutyches. 198 In response to these demands, the Egyptians pleaded for mercy and requested that they be allowed to abstain from offering another confession because they were without their archbishop (i.e., Dioscorus) and other Egyptian bishops. 199 After deliberations, the Egyptian bishops were allowed to abstain from further discussion regarding the faith, but they needed to provide assurance that they would remain in Chalcedon until the appointment of a new archbishop of Alexandria. 200 The presiding officials summoned the archimandrites and monks to appear before the Council. 201 Upon the presentation of the monks’ petition, 202 Veronicianus read the statement aloud. 203 The monks called for the authorities to put an end to the factions by “the collecting of signatures by force, and to the harassment of ourIbid., IV.14–18, Vol. 2:147. Ibid., IV.25, Vol. 2:148–9. 198 Ibid., IV.26–47, Vol. 2:149–51. 199 In response to the demands for signing approval to Leo’s Tome, the Egyptian bishops declared, “We have already in a petition made our faith plain and have been seen not to hold beliefs contrary to the catholic faith. But since the most religious bishops of our diocese happen to be very many, while we, being easy to count, are not able to represent them, we entreat your pre-eminence and this holy and great Council to have pity on us and wait for our archbishop, so that we may follow his decision according to ancient custom. But if we do anything without the approval of our leader, the whole Egyptian diocese will attack us as acting uncanonically and as not keeping but abolishing the ancient customs according to the canons. Have pity on our old age, have pity, and do not force us to end our lives in exile.” Ibid., IV.48, Vol. 2:151. 200 Ibid., IV.62, Vol. 2:153. 201 Ibid., IV.63, Vol. 2:153. 202 The following monks are named with the first petition: Carosus, Dorotheus, Helpidius, Photinus, Eutychius, and the rest of the most devout monks mentioned above, and Barsaumas the monk, and also Calopodius the eunuch. Ibid., IV.66, Vol. 2:154. 203 Ibid., IV.76, Vol. 2:155–6. 196 197

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selves practised every day by clergy.” 204 The monks begged no one to suffer expulsion until just judgment. The council fathers attacked Barsaumas who had “slaughtered the blessed Flavian.” 205 The bishops demanded the expulsion of the monk Barsaumas. 206 Thereafter, a plaint of the archimandrites and monks was read out, in which they called for the restoration of Dioscorus. 207 In the middle of the statement, the council fathers rejected this plea and anathematized Dioscorus. 208 When the monks’ complaint continued, they argued that nothing could be done with Dioscorus, and they attached the Nicene Creed to their document in order to demonstrate their adherence to the orthodox faith. 209 In response to the obstinacy of the monks, Aetius, the archdeacon of Constantinople, declared: If any presbyter or deacon, in contempt of his own bishop, has separated himself from the Church, held his own assemblies and set up his own sanctuary, and ignoring the summons of the bishop refuses to heed or obey a first and second summons from him, he is to be completely deposed, deprived of maintenance, and denied any recovery of his dignity. If he continues to cause turmoil and disturbance to the Church, he is to be chastised by the secular authorities as a troublemaker. 210

The bishops affirmed the canonical nature of the above declaration. Therefore, the archimandrites and monks were compelled to give an account of their faith. The archimandrite Carosus and the Syrian monk Barsaumas only confessed faith in the Nicene Creed. 211 The archimandrite Dorotheus and the monk Helpidius affirmed the Nicene Creed and the decree against Nestorius at Ephesus. 212 The Archdeacon Aetius pressed the monks to demonstrate fidelity with the council fathers of Chalcedon; however, they were either unwilling or only begrudgingly anathematized Eutyches. 213 At the conclusion of the fourth session, Veronicianus read the petition of Faustus and other archimandrites, in which they condemned Eutyches and sought support from the authorities in order to discipline those who refused to anathematize the famous abbot. 214 The monk Dorotheus would not sign the petition of Ibid., IV.76, Vol. 2:156. Ibid., IV.77, Vol. 2:156. 206 Ibid., IV.81, Vol. 2:156. 207 Ibid., IV.83, Vol. 2:157. 208 Ibid., IV.84, Vol. 2:157. 209 Ibid., IV.88, Vol. 2:158. 210 Ibid., IV.90, Vol. 2:159. 211 Ibid., IV.93, 95, Vol. 2:159. 212 Ibid., IV.94, 96, Vol. 2:159. 213 Ibid., IV.100, 103, Vol. 2:160. 214 Ibid., IV.105, Vol. 2:161. 204 205

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Faustus; instead, he declared that the Nicene Creed, in which he was baptized, was entirely sufficient. 215 In an addition to affirming the Nicene Creed, Dorotheus added, “We profess that he who suffered is [one] of the Trinity, and I do not acknowledge any other creed.” 216 This is a provocative creedal insertion from Dorotheus. Price described Dorotheus’ declaration a “rare early anticipation of the famous theopaschite formula ‘One of the Trinity suffered,’ which was debated in the period 518–34.” 217 In addition to an anticipation of the Theopaschite Controversy of 519, Dorotheus’ affirmation of “one of the Trinity suffered” aligns him with Cyril of Alexandria’s theopaschism. In his Twelve Anathemas, Cyril declared the “Word of God suffered in the flesh, was crucified in the flesh, and tasted death in the flesh.” 218 Dorotheus’ affirmation of the phrase “One of the Trinity suffered” is simultaneously an anticipation of John Maxentius and the Scythian monks and more so a defense of Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius and the Twelve Anathemas. 219 The officials and senate tried once more to coerce Dorotheus to sign the new petition, but he refused, instead asserting that he abides in the Nicene Creed and the decrees of Ephesus, and will affirm nothing else. The session concluded with the officials declaring that holy Council would issue a judgment. Prior to the historic fifth session of Chalcedon, there were mini-sessions (which were unnumbered); one dealt with the defiant monks, 220 another session addressed an issue of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. 221 In response to the demands to assent to Faustus’ petetion, the monk Dorotheus asserted, “I was baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, acknowledging Christ our Saviour, who came down and was enfleshed from the holy Virgin, and became man and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate – bear with me and if anything escapes me, correct me –, and we profess him to be of the Trinity. And our Lord himself, having been spat upon, pierced and struck, said to his holy disciples when he rose from the dead, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Ibid., IV.108, Vol. 2:162. 216 Ibid., IV.108, Vol. 2:162. 217 Acts, Vol. 2:162, fn. 74. 218 Cyril’s Twelve Anathemas, in McGuckin, Christological Controversy, 275. 219 For a recent study on the Theospachite Controversy and the Scythian monks, see Matthew J. Pereira, Reception, Interpretation and Doctrine in the Sixth Century: John Maxentius and the Scythian Monks, Ph.D. Dissertation (New York: Columbia University, 2015). 220 This session addressed those defiant monks of the fourth session. For the session titled “Act concerning Carosus and Dorotheus and those with them,” see Acts Vol. 2:164– 168. 221 One session addressed jurisdictional rights between the Photius, bishop of Tyre and Eustathius, the bishop of Berytus. Prior to his death, Theodosius II gave the see of Berytys the status of a metropolitan, but now this was being disputed. For the session, “Act concerning Photius, bishop of Tyre and Eustathius bishop of Berytus,” see Ibid., Vol. 2:169–82. 215

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4.4.2. Fifth Session: Chalcedonian Definition In the fifth session of Chalcedon, the bishops declared that the NicenoConstantinopolitan Creed was the seal of the Nicene Creed (325), thereby reaffirming the continuity between the Councils. 222 The bishops countered appeals to Canon 7 of Ephesus (431) by asserting continuity from Nicaea to Constantinople and then to Chalcedon (451). The Chalcedonian Definition included the Nicene Creed (325) and the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (381) as constitutive preambles to the creed of 451. 223 It is a mistake to minimize the inclusion of the Creeds of 325 and 381 as non-essential, for they are integral parts of the Chalcedonian Definition as a holistic document that reaffirms and advances tradition. In the fifth session at Chalcedon, the bishops at once appealed to the tradition and reconstructed it, for they appealed to Nicaea then linked it to the Definition of Chalcedon. This is the dance of supersession, where the past is reaffirmed through elaboration, thus privileging the most recent teaching while affirming the ancient tradition. After reciting the Chalcedonian Definition, the bishops declared it as the one “wise and saving symbol,” 224 here, it is in the singular, thus suggesting it is the culmination of past creeds in this one sufficient definition of the faith. 225 Anyone who strayed from the tradition was branded a heretic, but with that said, it needs to be emphasized that the tradition was not completely settled prior to Chalcedon, rather in the contestations, acclamations and adaptations of the Council, the tradition was being shaped. In his study on Chalcedon and the Christian tradition, Gwynn rightly asserts: What was not yet agreed was just what that tradition should include. All recognized the authority of the scriptures and of the Nicene Creed, and the writings of The Archdeacon Aetius read, “This then we have done, having by a unanimous decree repelled the doctrines of error, renewed the unerring faith of the fathers, proclaimed to all the creed of the 318, and endorsed as akin the fathers who received this compendium of piety, that is, the 150 who subsequently assembled at great Constantinople and set their seal on the same faith. Upholding also on our part the order and all the decrees on the faith of the holy Council that formerly took place at Ephesus, of whom the leaders were the most holy in memory Celestine of Rome and Cyril of Alexandria, we decree the preeminence of the exposition of the correct and irreproachable faith by the 318 holy and blessed fathers who convened at Nicaea under the then emperor Constantine of pious memory, and also the validity of the definition of the 150 holy fathers at Constantinople for the uprooting of the heresies which had then sprung up and for the confirming of our same catholic and apostolic faith.” Ibid., V.31, Vol. 2:201. 223 For the “Symbol of the 318 fathers at Nicaea,” and “The same of the 150 holy fathers who assembled at Constantinople,” see Ibid., V.32–33, Vol. 2:202–3. 224 Ibid., V.34, Vol. 2:203. 225 Jaroslav Pelikan, Credo: Historical and Theological Guide to the Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition (New Have: Yale University Press, 2003), 14. 222

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Cyril were also held in great respect. But how the Nicene Creed should be interpreted remained a subject of debate, and so too did the question of which of Cyril’s various writings were authoritative, a question that particularly revolved around the status of his Third Letter to Nestorius and the Twelve Anathemas. 226

The official approval of the Chalcedonian Definition occurred in the fifth session on 22 October 451. The session commenced with the review of the draft of a new Definition, which was first worked out in the second session. 227 The Roman legates and Syrian bishops expressed their concerns regarding the lack of an explicit dual nature Christology within the draft. Marcian took the lead demanding that the bishops amend the Definition or else there would be a new council convened in Rome under the supervision of Pope Leo. The record demonstrates that the imperial authorities played a significant role in the production of a new Definition of the faith. A draft of the Definition was discussed by a committee prior to the fifth session, in which, it became clear that the majority were pleased with the conciliatory nature of the Creed. 228 On 22 October, a committee of theologians led by Archbishop Anatolius, submitted a draft of the Definition. This confession of faith is no longer extant, 229 but it appears to have employed the phrase “out of two natures” rather than the Leonine “in two natures.” 230 Many of the bishops exclaimed that the Definition satisfied God and all attending the Council. 231 However, the Syrian bishops and the papal legates objected to this first draft. Here, at a deadlock, there was an intermission in the session, in which Emperor Marcian threatened to reconvene in the West if agreement was not reached at Chalcedon. 232 In one more attempt, 23 bishops, Gwynn, 15. Ibid., II.2, Vol. 2:10. 228 Anatolius, bishop of Constantinople, said: “Did the definition of the faith satisfy everyone yesterday?” The most devout bishops said: “The definition satisfied everyone. We do not hold a different belief. Anathema to whoever holds a different belief. This is the faith of the fathers. The definition has satisfied God. This is the faith of the orthodox. May the faith not suffer from chicanery. Write ‘Holy Mary the Theotokos,’ and add this to the creed.” Ibid., V.7–8, Vol. 2:197. 229 Jenkins notes that the draft statement was deliberately excluded from the minutes. He explains, “The Council’s fathers knew they would have to work hard enough to convince critics about the statement that eventually did achieve consensus, without having to argue over every stage of the debate along the way.” Jenkins, 209. 230 Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, Vol. 1, 543. 231 Acts V.8, Vol. 2:197. 232 The secretary Veronicianus read the following notification (here partially provided), “Or, if you do not approve this, each one of you is to make his faith known through his metropolitan so as likewise to leave no doubt or disagreement. If your holinesses do not want even this, you are to know that the Council will have to meet in the western parts, since 226 227

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who were predominantly Cyrilline in their theological leanings, revised the Definition and submitted to the council fathers. 233 However, at the same time, the imperial commissioners and Roman contingency demanded that the Definition include Leo’s Letter to Flavian. 234 The final version of the Definition probably had minor differences with the earlier draft. It was revised quickly with only few changes. The majority of the Creed was already established in the second and fourth sessions of the Council. In the fourth session, the secretary Veronicianus reconvened the meetings, 235 then the council fathers confirmed the orthodoxy of the Nicene Creed, the NicenoConstantinopolitan Creed, Cyril’s two and Leo’s Tome. Following the Roman response, Anatolius, the archbishop of Constantinople, declared: The letter of the most sacred and God-beloved Archbishop Leo accords with the creed of our 318 holy fathers at Nicaea and of the 150 who subsequently assembled at Constantinople and confirmed the same faith, and with the proceedings of the Oikoumenical and holy Council at Ephesus under the most blessed Cyril, [now] among the saints, when it deposed the infamous Nestorius. Therefore I have both expressed agreement and signed willingly. 236

Anatolius, the archbishop of Constantinople, asked the council fathers if they found the Definition to be satisfactory. The majority of bishops affirmed the new creed as part of the Chalcedonian Definition. The first draft omitted the term Theotokos, which was an essential aspect of Cyril’s theology that safeguarded against any Nestorianizing tendencies. On two occasions, bishops demanded that the Theotokos be included in the Definition. 237 The Antiochenes, represented by John, bishop of Germanicia, requested for amendments to the Definition. The majority of bishops voted for the inclusion of the Definition whereas the Antiochenes asked for its removal. Early in the session, John of Germanicia asserted that the Definition was “not a good one and needs to be made precise.” 238 Later, when John once again appeared before the Council, the bishops exclaimed, “Drive out the Nestorians. Drive out the fighters or God…Yesterday the definition satisfied everyone.” 239 It appears that the Theotokos clause was oringially part of the Definition otherwise there your religiousness is unwilling to issue here an unambiguous definition of the true and orthodox faith. Ibid., V.22, vol. 2:199. 233 Price notes the Cyrillian nature of the committee. Thus, the final draft of the Definition was largely Cyrilline in its character. Acts II.188–9. 234 Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, Vol. 1, 543. 235 Acts IV.4, Vol. 2:126–27. 236 Ibid., IV.9.1, Vol. 2:127–28. 237 Ibid., V.8, Vol. 2:197. 238 Ibid., V.4, Vol. 2:196. 239 Ibid., V.12, Vol. 2:197.

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would have been no objections from the Antiochenes. In addition to the Antiochene party, the Roman legates raised objections against the draft. They threatened, “If they do not agree with the letter of the apostolic and most blessed man Archbishop Leo, order letters to be given us so that we may return home, and the Council be concluded there.” 240 From the first session of Chalcedon onwards, the Roman representatives wanted to ensure a two nature Christology, which was in accordance with Leo and Flavian. 241 Dioscorus said, “I accept ‘from two natures’, but I do not accept ‘two.’” But the most holy Archbishop Leo says that there are two natures in Christ, united without confusion, change or separation in the one only-begotten Son our Saviour. So whom do you follow – the most holy Leo, or Dioscorus?’ The most devout bishops exclaimed: ‘We believe as Leo does. Those who object are Eutychianists. Leo’s teaching was orthodox.’ The most magnificent and glorious officials said: “Then add to the definition in accordance with the decree of our most holy father Leo that there are two natures united without change, division or confusion in Christ.” 242

The most contentious issue during the deliberations over the Definition involved the competing phrases “out of two natures” or “in two natures.” The first draft most likely opted from the phrase “out of two natures,” which could be interpreted in a manner that affirmed the Miaphysite position, that is the proclamation of one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, acknowledged in two nature, which stands in contrast with the Chalcedonian phrase “one and the same Christ out of two natures.” Christ could be said to have come “from two natures,” which were then united in the one nature whereas the phrase “in two natures” only fits within the two-nature Christology of Leo. Price notes that the phrase “from two natures” does not occur in Leo’s Tome. He asserts that, “Leo was too good a theologian to attach prime importance to formulae.” 243 De Halleux contends that the phrase “acknowledged in two natures” can be attributed to Basil of Seleucia, who found warrant for the language in a letter from Cyril that asserted, “the same perfect in Godhead and the same perfect in manhood.” 244 Whatever the origin of these two phrases, the bishops ultimately privileged “in two natures” over “from two natures” because Dioscorus approved of the latter phrase (i.e., from two natures). The imperial authorities insisted on changing the phrase from “of two natures” to “in two

Ibid., V.9, Vol. 2:197. In the first session of Chalcedon, Dioscorus of Alexandria declared, “I accept ‘from two [natures].’ I do not accept ‘two.’” Ibid., I.332, Vol. 1:194. 242 Ibid., V.26–8, Vol. 2:200. 243 Price, “The Council of Chalcedon,” 80. 244 For his valuable assessment of the Chalcedonian Definition, see André de Halleux, “La définition christologique à Chalcédoine,” RTL 7 (1976): 2–23. 240 241

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natures” in order to please the Western Church. 245 The Roman legates concluded that Dioscorus’ affirmation of “from two natures” demonstrated the insufficiency of the phrase. At the conclusion of the fifth session, the officials called for the bishops to remain silent and listen to the Definition. 246 At this point, Aetius, archdeacon of Constantinople, read the Definition. 247 The Definition consists of the Nicene Creed (325), 248 Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (381), 249 affirmation of Cyril’s two “conciliar letters” and Leo’s Letter to Flavian (Leo’s Tome). 250 Prior to reading of the new addition to the Oikoumenical faith (the part of the Chalcedonian Definition that is often taken to be the whole of it), Aetius declared: For the Council sets itself against those who attempt to dissolve the mystery of the dispensation into a duality of sons, and it removes from the list of priests those who dare to say that the Godhead of the Only-begotten is passible; it opposes those who imagine a mixing or confusion in the case of the two natures of Christ, it expels those who rave that the form of a servant which he took from us was heavenly or of some other substance, and it anathematizes those who invent two natures of the Lord before the union and imagine one nature after the union. 251

The rebuke of divine suffering illustrates the ongoing tensions revolving around the crucifixion. In the Twelve Anathemas, as mentioned above, Cyril affirmed that the Word of God suffered in the flesh. 252 The council fathers ignored Cyril’s Twelve Anathemas because of the theopaschite claims. In the fourth session, the bishops affirmed Cyril’s Second and Third Letters and Leo’s Tome; however, they did not receive Cyril’s Twelve Anathemas. In the Chalcedon colloquies, the Oriental (e.g. Antiochene) party demanded the condemnation of the Twelve Anathemas. 253 There was little promise for the acceptance of the Twelve Anathemas based on its emphasis of the Word of God suffering in the flesh. After the above excerpt, Aetius read the final (i.e., original) section of the Definition. This section is often taken to be the exclusive Definition of 451, but it should be read in collaboration with the earlier Need, 103. Acts V.29, Vol. 2:200–1. 247 For the Chalcedonian Definition in its totality, see Ibid., V.30–4, vol. 2:201–5. 248 Ibid., V.32, Vol. 2:202. 249 Ibid., V.33, Vol. 2:202–3. 250 Ibid., V.34, Vol. 2:203. 251 Ibid., V.34, Vol. 2:203–4. 252 “If anyone does not confess that the Word of God suffered in the flesh, was crucified in the flesh, and tasted death in the flesh, becoming the first-born from the dead, although as God he is life and life-giving, let him be anathema.” Cyril’s Twleve Anathemas, [anathema 12], in McGuckin, Christological Controversy, 275. 253 Ibid., 108. 245 246

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sections (e.g., Nicene and Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed). McGuckin rightly warns that the first two sections of the Definition “ought not be excised as if it were simple blather.” 254 However, there needs to be some reflection on McGuckin’s assertion regarding the Chalcedonian settlement, which he describes as merely the Creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople, which offer “no new creed to replace these cardinal statements of faith.” 255 The Chalcedonian Definition is not intended to be read as a novel creed, for nothing is more damning than the charge of novelty, but the Definition does provide an interpretive extension of the Creeds of 325 and 381. The Definition moves into receptive interpretation when it declares: Following, therefore, the holy fathers, we all in harmony teach confession of one and the same Son our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and the same perfect in manhood, truly God and the same truly man, of a rational soul and body, consubstantial with the Father in respect of the Godhead, and the same consubstantial with us in respect of the manhood, like us in all things apart from sin, begotten from the Father before the ages in respect of the Godhead, and the same in the last days for us and for our salvation from the Virgin Mary the Theotokos in respect of the manhood, one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, acknowledged in two natures without confusion, change, division, or separation (the difference of the natures being in no way destroyed by the union, but rather the distinctive character of each nature being preserved and coming together into one person and one hypostasis), not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, Only-begotten, God, Word, Lord, Jesus Christ, even as the prophets from of old and Jesus Christ himself taught us about him and the symbol of the fathers has handed down to us. 256

Prior to a review of contemporary interpretations of the Definition, it is worth underlining that the two natures are affirmed, which fits well the Antiochene tradition, but that these natures are united as one person (prosôpon) and hypostasis, which resonates with the Alexandrian tradition. The Greek terms prosôpon and hypostasis were open for varied interpretation, which helps explain why the original semantic ambiguities associated with these meaningful expressions would lead to competing readings of the Definition. The Greek term person (prosôpon) is defined as “external appearance” or “face,” which relates to the Latin term persona, which is often translated as the outward appearance of something. 257 This term was a key semantic unit of Antiochene thought whose utility they could not underestimate since, in their minds, this term was primarily expressive of the union of natures. They thought of McGuckin, “Christ in the Chalcedonian Definition,” 255. Ibid., 255. 256 Acts V.34, Vol. 2:204. 257 Need, 103. 254 255

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the divine and human natures as of self-subsistent (i.e. hypostatic) entities united in the common prosôpon of Christ (a sort of undivided manifestation of both nature). Such union was thus relational, rooted in will or free deliberation rather than in nature. This was the only union that the Antiochenes could accept as all other types of union (i.e. natural, hypostatic, etc.) were suggestive of mixture of natures (the possibility of which they could not acknowledge because of its transgressive metaphysical stance) and of change on the side of divine nature. The Alexandrians, on the other hand, largely neglected this term (i.e. prosôpon) as ontologically flimsy (pertaining to the matters of appearance rather than essence or being). They rather preferred a more ontologically firm term hypostasis, establishing the unitive theme upon it. However, this was totally inacceptable to the Antiochene party. The Antiochenes would have rendered the term hypostasis as a “substantial element” of which there were two, whereas the Alexandrians would have interpreted the term hypostasis as a “concrete individual” that was surely one. 258 Hence, the Antiochene formula of two self-subsisting natures united in a common external manifestation (grounded in the community of wills), was quite contrary to the Alexandrian formula of one concrete individual subsistence which compressed in its being two substantial elements. Chalcedon made a radical move and weaved these terms together. It thus justified the use of the term prosôpon for the Alexandrians and also paved the way for Antiochians to accept the language of one hypostasis in Christ. The Chalcedonian Definition asserts there is one individual reality (rather than two external appearances), which is confessed in language steeped within the early Christian tradition: the Son, Only-Begotten God, Word, Lord and Jesus Christ. 259 After receiving the Definition, the presiding bishops declared, “Now that these matters have been formulated by us with all possible care and precision, the holy and oikoumenical council has decreed that no one is allowed to produce or compose or construct another creed or to think or teach otherwise.” 260 Here, with this affirmation, the bishops ironically reclaimed Canon 7 of Ephesus I (431) while overthrowing it all at once. At the end of the fifth session, the council fathers acclaimed that the Definition was the “faith of the fathers” and the “faith of the apostles.” 261 The Chalcedonian Definition begins with the confession of “our Lord Jesus Christ is one in the same,” thereby recapitulating language that reaches back to as early as Ignatius of Antioch (d. 107), who as Grillmeier states, predicates the divine and the human in one and the same subject. 262 The opening confession within the Ibid. Ibid. 260 Acts V.34, Vol. 2:204. 261 Ibid., V.35, Vol. 2:205. 262 Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to Ephesians 7.2; also, see Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, Vol. 1, 546. 258 259

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Definition effectively connects it with the ancient confession of the Church. Grillmeier argues that the theological method of the Chalcedonian Definition is “no different from the earlier Councils.” 263 The next part of the Definition confesses “the same Son our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and the same perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and body.” This phrase was carefully crafted, it harkens back to the Formula of Reunion and Flavian’s professio fidei of 12 November 448. The emphasis on completeness of both natures counters the past heresy of Apollinarius, who taught that two complete natures cannot coexist within the same entity. For him the Incarnation entailed the Word of God assuming an incomplete humanity, that is, a human body without a human soul, for it was replaced by the divine Logos. Chalcedon, on the contrary, affirmed the fullness of Christ’s humanity, which included a “rational soul”. Prior to Chalcedon, Cyril had truncated the above statement to read “one in the same perfect in Godhead and in manhood,” with no mention of the truly God and truly man consisting of a rational soul and body. The council fathers replaced Cyril’s phrase with the Antiochene version. 264 The affirmation of a rational soul and body fits well within the Christian tradition that repudiated the docetic tendencies of Gnosticism and the loss of the human nature within Apollinarism. Next, the Definition appropriates the Nicene language of consubstantiality (homoousios) and extended it to the human nature. This is a clear refutation of Eutyches who denied that Christ shared a consubstantial nature with humanity. From the outset, the Definition is rooted in tradition, more so than most other councils in Late Antiquity. The Definition is “ancient tradition in a formula corresponding to the needs of the hour.” 265 4.4.3. Modern Interpretations of the Chalcedonian Definition The massive amount of scholarship, both in the form of focused studies and cursory treatments on the Council of Chalcedon and the Chalcedonian Definition, would require (as McGuckin quipped) “an industrial truck to move it around campus.” 266 Critiques and praises of the Chalcedonian Definition are vast in scope and range, but in either case (whether applause or criticism), contemporary scholars have routinely recognized 451 as the watershed moment of the Oikoumenical Councils. In his overview of the Oikoumenical Councils, Need calls Chalcedon the “most significant of the oikoumenical councils” in terms of Christology. 267 This type of overarching claim of significance is common fare within many contemporary assessments of Chalcedon. In some of the more recent interpretations, there is special Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, Vol. 1, 545. Ibid., 546–7. 265 Ibid., 550. 266 McGuckin, “Christ in the Chalcedonian Definition,” 246. 267 Need, 93. 263 264

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focus placed on determining the influence of the Church fathers (e.g., Leo and Cyril) on the Chalcedonian Definition. Often at stake in the modern interpretations is the legacy of the Church fathers, most notably, Cyril, Leo and Flavian. In Western historiography, many notable scholars have concluded that Chalcedonian Definition signified the complete victory of the Latin West over the Greek East. The commonly held assumption has been that Leo, who now had the backing of Marcian and Pulcheria, was placed in a position of superiority over and against Cyril. Adolf von Harnack, for example, characterizes the events of Chalcedon as the Eastern surrender to Emperor Marcian and Pope Leo. 268 In a more nuanced manner, which nonetheless underscores the Roman ascendancy, Grillmeier argues that since Monophysitism was a greater danger than Nestorianism, the most pointed Cyrilline statements (which were favored by Eutyches) were relegated to the background and their place was “taken by the Tome of Leo, and the Antiochenes played a special part with the Formulary of Reunion.” 269 Additionally, Need argues that after the Formula of Reunion, Leo’s Tome is the “second most important influence on the Chalcedonian Definition.” 270 Finally, Pelikan recognizes that the majority of quotes in the Chalcedonian Definition come from the writings of Cyril, but the contributions coming out Leo’s Tome were the most decisive ones. 271 In recent decades, a succession of valuable studies has demonstrated that Cyril’s influence upon the theological conclusions at Chalcedon was far more significant than had been previously assumed within the main of Western scholarship. 272 It is worth suggesting that many of the council fathers’ reluctance regarding the production of a new confession was not only grounded in traditionalism and appeals to Canon 7 of Ephesus, but also the Nicene Creed and the writings of Ephesus I both supported a Cyrilline Christology. Many of the council fathers affirmed one-nature Christology because they believed it was in accord with the Nicene tradition, which meant, they would not affirm a new Definition unless it too supported the single Adolf von Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, Vol. 2, Die Entwicklung des kirchlichen Dogmas I, 5th ed. (Tübingen: Mohr), 390. 269 Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, Vol. 1, 544. 270 Need, 96. 271 Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. Volume 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600) (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1971), 264. 272 For scholars who emphasize with Cyril’s influence upon the Chalcedonian Definition, see Herman M. Diepen, Les Trois Chapitres au Concile de Chalcédoine: une étude de la christologie de l’Anatolie ancienne (Oosterhoud (Pays-Bas) Éditions de Saint Michel, 1953); John Meyendorff, Christ in EasternChristian Thought. (Washington D.C.: Corpus Books, 1969), chs. 1–4; Patrick T.R. Gray, The Defense of Chalcedon in the East (451 – 553), Studies in the History of Christian Thought 20, ed. Heiko A. Oberman (Leiden: Brill, 1979); McGuckin, Christological Controversy, 227–43. 268

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nature Christology of Nicaea. Furthermore, a close reading of the Chalcedonian Definition demonstrates that there were important commonalities between Cyril and the Definition. The famous adverbs of the Chalcedonian Definition, which qualified the relationship between the human and divine natures in the person Jesus Christ, may have been derived from Cyril’s writings. The Definition states that two natures are united in the one person. Hence, the mode of being of natures is now unitive. Even so, one may still analytically loosen up the unity of being so as to divide it into its intellectually discernable constituents. Yet, such division is merely notional but not real. Hence, one and the same Christ is made known, that is, intellectually discerned in two natures (natures here designate Christ’s class membership embracing both his divinity and his humanity). Christ thus does not “exist” in two natures, but rather is made known “in two natures.” The mode of knowledge is qualified by the adverbs. How one and the same Christ is made known in two natures? The answer is: unchangeably (ἀτρέπτως), undividedly (ἀδιαιρέτως), and unconfusedly (ἀσυγχύτως) and without separation (ἀχωρίστως). The two natures are united in the person Jesus Christ after the Incarnation. These adverbs support a two-nature Christology, which appears to stand in agreement with Nestorius. However, the origin of these three adverbs may be Cyril’s First Letter to Succensus. In his First Letter to Succensus, Cyril declares, “We unite the Word of God the Father to the holy flesh endowed with a rational soul, in an ineffable way that transcends understanding, without confusion, without change, and without alteration, and we thereby confess One Son and Christ and Lord.” 273 In the Chalcedonian Definition and the Second Letter to Succensus, these adverbs qualified the relationship between the human and divine natures thus ensuring the unity and particularity of both natures. However, Need asserts that the expressions “without confusion” and “without change” come from the Antiochene tradition, 274 whereas the last two (i.e. “without division” and “without separation”) belong to the Alexandrians. 275 Despite the commonalities between Cyril’s First Letter to Succensus and Leo’s Tome, several scholars have argued that Leo had almost exclusively relied upon AuIn the First Letter to Succensus, Cyril declared, “And so we unite the Word of God the Father to the holy flesh endowed with a rational soul, in an ineffable way that transcends understanding, without confusion, without change, and without alteration, and we thereby confess One Son and Christ and Lord.” Cyril, Ep. 45, sec. 6 (ACO 1.1.6: 153) English transaltion in McGuckin, Christological Controversy, 354. Cyril’s two letters to Succensus, bishop of Diocaesarea in the province of Isauria, were written sometime between 434–438. For Cyril’s First Letter to Succensus (Ep. 45), see ACO 1.1.6: 151–57. For English translation, see McGuckin, Christological Controversy, 352–58 (hereafter, Cyril, Ep. 45). 274 Pelikan suggests the phrases “not divided or separarted into two persons” come from Theodoret. Pelikan, Christian Tradition, 264. 275 Need, 102. 273

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gustine and Ambrose 276 while Cyril had Athanasius and Didymus as his theological pillars. Hence, Leo and Cyril had diverging points of reference and perhaps conceptually diverging theological underpinnings. Modern scholarship has demonstrated that there are two clearly differentiated traditions, the West and East, that of Leo and that of Cyril, but the task of the council fathers was to create a singular tradition from the two traditions. The four qualifying adverbs of the Chalcedonian Definition had made it impossible to affirm Christ as a “mingled God-man whose flesh was not real flesh.” 277 The hard-line Cyrillians failed to appreciate the theological similarities between Leo’s Tome and Cyril’s writings. 278 Cyril’s influence upon the Definition was significant. However, Cyril’s Twelve Anathemas were once again passed over during the conciliar proceedings. The same can be applied to the extremes of the Antiochene thought, which was overthrown by the Definition as it stated that the natures do not endure practically in one and the same Christ but notionally. J.N.D. Kelly has offered a balanced interpretation of the Chalcedonian Settlement. 279 First, Kelly emphasizes the political nature of the Council by recounting that the imperial commissioners exerted considerable pressure upon the bishops. He notes that from the imperial perspective, the “whole object of the Council, from the imperial point of view, was to establish a single faith throughout the Empire.” 280 Second, reassessing the final version of the Definition, Kelly describes it as a “mosaic of excerpts from Cyril’s two letters, Leo’s Tome, the Union Symbol and Flavian’s profession of faith at the Standing Synod.” 281 Third, Kelly asserts that the distinctive theology of the Definition is in its “equal recognition it accords to the unity and to the duality in the God-man.” 282 Then, on the one hand, Kelly recognizes that Chalcedon has often been rendered as the triumph of the Western and with it the Antiochian Christology. He concludes that Roman support of two nature Christology ensured victory at Chalcedon; furthermore, the council father’s rejection of Cyril’s A.C. Stewart, “Persona in the Christology of Leo I. A Note,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 71 (1989): 3–5; Brian E. Daley, “The Giant Twin Substances: Ambrose and the Christology of Augustine’s Contra sermonem Arianorum,” Augustine: Presbyter Factus Sum, ed. Jospeh T. Lienhard, et al. (New York: Peter Lang, 1993): 477–95. 277 Jenkins, 214. 278 The strict Cyrillians (which, for Wessel, would be those Christians who exclusively held to the earlier writings of Cyril) would not affirm the continuity between Leo’s Tome and Cyril. The strict (Egyptian) Cyrillians are contrasted with the majority of bishops present at the Council of Chalcedon. The majority, Wessel states, “had apparently absorbed more of the interpretive freedom so characteristic of Cyril’s public teachings.” Wessel, 288–89. 279 For Kelly’s discussion of the “Chalcedonian Settlement,” see J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (Peabody: Prince Press, 2004 [first published in 1960]), 338–43. 280 Ibid., 339. 281 Ibid., 340–41. 282 Ibid., 341. 276

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“hypostatic union” betrayed Cyril and the Alexandrian tradition, which was “prepared to drift off into schism as monophysites.” 283 Kelly admits that the above points suggest a Western victory, but it “does less than justice, however, to the essential features of Cyril’s teachings enshrined, as has been shown, in the council’s confession,” especially in the affirmation of the “oneness of Christ and of the identity of the Person of the God-man with that of the Logos.” 284 Additionally, the Definition’s use of the term Theotokos for the Virgin Mary affirms the Alexandrian tradition. 285 Furthermore, Kelly argues that characterizing Chalcedon as a Western victory overlooks that Cyril’s Synodical Letters were held in just as high honor as Leo’s Tome and “greatly exaggerates the theological differences between the two.” 286 Price argues that the Definition should be viewed as the vindication of Flavian. He notes that the Council fathers believed that Leo’s Tome stood in agreement with the Home Synod (448). 287 The Creed of the Home Synod, which Flavian of Constantinople declared to the Council, was read out in the first session of Chalcedon (451). 288 The confession of the Home Synod bears much resemblance with the addition with the Chalcedonian Definition. 289 Price asserts that the similarity between Ibid., 341–2. Ibid., 342. 285 Need, 103. 286 Kelly, 342. 287 Acts, Vol. 1:67. 288 The Archbishop Flavian decalred, “It is both most pious and necessary for us to agree with what has been correctly defined, for who can oppose the words of the Holy Spirit? The letters that have been read of our father Cyril of blessed memory and [now] among the saints, then bishop of the most holy Church of Alexandria, give an accurate interpretation of the thought of the holy fathers who assembled in their time at Nicaea, and they teach us what we hold and have always held, that our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten son of God, is perfect God and perfect man made up of a rational soul and body, begotten from the Father without beginning before the ages in respect of the Godhead, and the same at the end and in the last times for us and for our salvation born from Mary the Virgin in respect of the manhood, consubstantial with the Father in respect of the Godhead and consubstantial with his mother in respect of the manhood. For we confess that Christ is from two natures after the incarnation, as we confess in one hypostasis and one person one Christ, one Son, one Lord. Those who choose a different belief we exclude from the holy assembly of priests and the whole body of the Church. Each of the most God-beloved bishops here present should record his beliefs and his faith in the text of the minutes.” Acts I.271, Vol. 1:186–7. 289 Grillmeier makes a similar observation in his assessment of the Definition. He asserts, “Finally we must also add Flavian’s professio fidei, which had been read out at the Council of Chalcedon in the context of the trial of Eutyches.” Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, Vol. 1, 544. 283 284

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the two documents could be interpreted as the vindication of Flavian of Constantinople at the Council of Chalcedon. 290 He concludes, “the distinctive features of Western Christology echoed in the Tome were of no concern to the council fathers whatsoever.” 291 The final issue that demands serious reconsideration is the question of the doxological and soteriological character of the Chalcedonian Definition. In his recent assessment of the Chalcedonian Definition, McGuckin has argued for difference between the Eastern and Western Christological traditions along the fault line of a doxological (or soteriological and mysterious) approach in contrast with a philosophical (or legal and logical) approach, whereas the former paradigm is ascribed to the East and the latter is ascribed to the West. McGuckin asserts that the Eastern creedal tradition is rooted in the “doxological confessions” and restatements of the “soteriological mystery in doxological form.” 292 The Roman tradition, McGuckin asserts, placed a “high valency to logical clarity,” which was in variance from the ancient tradition that centered on the mystery of salvation. 293 In contrast to McGuckin, Need emphasizes the confessional nature of the Definition, which reaches back to early Christian language to become part of Christian tradition and belief. 294 Davis reaches a similar conclusion to McGuckin, albeit there is a positive feel when he declares, “In his Tome Leo shows himself less of a speculative theologian than Cyril; he does not discuss or demonstrate; he judges and settles difficulties, reproducing the teaching of Tertullian, Augustine and the Antiochenes with uncommon precision and vigor.” 295 McGuckin and Davis both conclude that the Leo’s language is more concise than Cyril’s approach, but they vary in how they interpret the doxological and soteriological emphases of the respective theologians. McGuckin argues that Leo’s Tome did not contain any liturgical elements, instead it was steeped in legal semantic precision that introduced a mechanistic conception of person as “that factor which stands as a possessor of a generic nature.” 296 Need makes a similar claim when he asserts that the Definition is “riddled with Greek philosophical distinctions and ambiguities that need to be understood if the overall thrust of the Christology is to be appreciated.” 297 Where Need holds out the possibility for appreciation, McGuckin opts for critique when he insists that the Acts I.271, Vol. 1:186–7. Furthermore, Gaddis asserts, “In all, despite the formal approval of the Tome by the Easternbishops both before the Council, at the Council, and in the Definition itself, it remained far less important for them than the conciliar letters of Cyril.” Price, Acts, Vol. 1:67. 292 McGuckin, “Christ in the Chalcedonian Definition,” 250–1. 293 Ibid., 250. 294 Need, 101. 295 Davis, 175. 296 McGuckin, “Christ in the Chalcedonian Definition,” 253. 297 Need, 101. 290 291

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Chalcedonian statement is virtually “tone deaf” to the mystery of salvation, that is, how the Word of God caught up and deified human nature. 298 If Christology was to be authentic then it functions always as soteriology. 299 McGuckin concludes by asserting the dragged out negotiations throughout the Acts of Chalcedon were largely about shifting away from Leo’s Tome and towards a creed that had a more doxological character. 300 In no uncertain terms, McGuckin’s reading of the Chalcedonian Definition places it in opposition with the doxological and soteriological rootedness of the Eastern tradition. In contemporary scholarship, the precise language of the Creed has led some interpreters to argue that the settlement attenuates the mystery of the economy of salvation. However, the precise language of the Definition can be read in another direction, where one argues that the terms are meant to engender a paradox in the qualifiers embedded within the statement. Davis’ interpretation of the four qualifying adverbs of the Definition supports the argument for a mystery affirming interpretation of the Creed. By employing “a series of four Greek negative adverbs – without confusion, without change, without division, without separation,” Davis asserts the bishops “showed their concern for the mysterious and incomprehensible nature of the subject matter with which they were dealing.” 301 The employment of precise language does not necessarily mean the Definition did away with the mystery of the Incarnation. In the fifth century, all serious theologians pained over the correct use of language in order to safeguard the mystery of salvation. The question was which theologian and tradition had most adequately expressed the Gospel in a way that declared the truth and mystery of the Incarnation. The theological concept of communicatio idiomatum (the communication of the properties) is central to the soteriological import of the Chalcedonian Definition. Davis explains that Leo’s Christology rests upon the unity of the natures (i.e., divine and human) through communicatio idiomatum, 302 which leads to an understanding that the “Son of God is said to have been crucified and buried, though He suffered these things not in the Godhead itself, wherein the Only Begotten is coeternal and consubstantial with the Father, but in the weakness of human nature.” 303 In other words, Leo’s Tome is invested in the salvific nature of the Incarnation. Eutyches was required to confess that “he whom he knows to have been subject to suffering was a man of like body to ours, since denial of His true flesh is denial also of His bodily McGuckin, “Christ in the Chalcedonian Definition,” 254. Ibid., 250. 300 Ibid., 251. 301 Davis, 187. 302 Need notes the same priniciple at the heart of Leo’s Tome. He asserts that the “one person” in two natures shared qualities through an interchange of properties known as the “communion of idioms (communicatio idiomatum).” Need, 98. 303 Davis, 176. 298 299

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passion,” which wrought the world’s salvation. 304 Regarding Eutyches, Need advances a similar line of argumentation as Davis by concluding, “Once again the humanity of Christ had been undermined through too much emphasis on the divinity and once again there were severe implications for the Christian understanding of salvation.” 305 The Western Church condemned Eutyches on theological grounds. He was a powerful and charismatic monk, but when he threatened the relationship between the Incarnation and salvation, the Church was compelled to condemn his propositions. The West and East were both equally concerned with the relation between soteriology and doctrinal statements; indeed, for Leo, Cyril, and the majority of theologians, one of their central aims was articulating the mystery of the Incarnation in order to explain its soteriological significance.

4.5. ECCLESIASTICAL RULINGS OF CHALCEDON In the sixth session (25 October 451), the Chalcedonian Definition was read before Emperor Marcian and Empress Pulcheria. 306 At the end of the sixth session, 452 bishops signed their approval to the Definition. 307 In a well-received speech, Marcian praised the bishops for their grand achievement. The bishops made a request to conclude the Council of Chalcedon, 308 but Marcian demanded them to stay a bit longer in order to deal with additional ecclesiastical issues. 309 In the next couple of sessions, the bishops returned back to issues stemming from Ephesus II (449). In the seventh session, convened on 26 October 451, the bishops arrived as a decision concerning the jurisdictional rights of the metropolitan of Jerusalem. 310 Maximus, the bishop of Antioch, strived to have Palestine, Phoenice and Arabia returned back to the Antiochene Patriarchate. All three of these regions were stripped from the Patriarchate of Antioch at Ephesus II. In the seventh session, the bishops concluded that the Patriarchate of Jerusalem was allowed to keep its independence from the Antiochene see, but Phoenice and Arabia were returned back under the ecclesiastical

Ibid. Need, 95. 306 For the sixth session, see Acts, Vol. 2:206–43. 307 Need, 98. 308 At the conclusion of the session, the bishops exclaimed: “Just is the decision of the emperor. O you [Marcian] worthy of the holy one! One Easter for the whole world! Put an end to the misfortunes of the bishops. The holy one will protect you. We beg you, dismiss us. You are pious, O emperor; dismiss us.” Acts VI.22, Vol. 2:243. 309 In response to the requests of the bishops to conclude the Council, Marcian declared, “You are exhausted after enduring toil for a fair period of time. But remain three or four days longer, and in the presence of our most magnificent officials, move whatever proposals you wish; you will receive appropriate help. None of you is to leave the holy Council until definitive decrees have been issued about everything.” Ibid., VI.23, vol. 2:243. 310 For the seventh session, see Ibid., Vol. 2:244–9. 304 305

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control of Antioch. Thus, the decisions of Ephesus 449 were renegotiated, affirming the independence of Jerusalem and restoring Phoenice and Arabia to Antioch. 311 In the eighth session, held on 26 October 451, the bishops restored Theodoret of Cyrrhus to his see, which was stripped away during Ephesus of 449. 312 In later generations, the restoration of Theodoret was used as evidence for revealing an underlying Nestorianism at the Council of Chalcedon. The ninth and tenth sessions addressed the status of Ibas, bishop of Edessa, thus returning to another issue from Ephesus II (449). 313

4.6. LEGACY OF CHALCEDON 4.6.1. Chalcedon Reconsidered The legacy of Chalcedon remains exceptionally complicated because it is always a matter of interpretation and contestation. There is no essential Chalcedon. There is no Chalcedon as it really was, but only the reception and interpretation of the Fourth Oikoumenical Council, which are often impregnated with theological, cultural and political motivations. Once the bishops acclaimed their approval of the Chalcedonian Definition, they declared that the “ecumenical council has decreed that no one is allowed to produce or compose or construct another creed or to think or teach otherwise.” 314 If anyone devised another creed, they were to be deposed if at the status of the bishop or cleric, alternatively, they were to be anathematized if at the status of monk or laity. 315 In the Western Church, the majority of bishops viewed Chalcedon as the capstone of the four Oikoumenical Councils. Indeed, in Western discourse, there has been a parallel made between the first four Oikoumenical Councils and the four Gospels. They are both authoritative and just as importantly viewed as closed canons. Chalcedon stood as the Fourth Oikoumenical Council and the Definition was the closure of universal doctrinal statements. Even though the Acts of Chalcedon remained unavailable throughout the West until a

The Roman legates declared (then bishops in succession affirmed) as follows, “We recognize that this proposal resulting from an agreement between our brothers Maximus the most devout bishop of the Church of Antioch and the most devout and holy Bishop Juvenal of Jerusalem was made for the sake of the benefit of peace, that is, that the bishop of the Church of Antioch should have the two Phoenices and Arabia and the bishop of Jerusalem the three Palestines. May it be confirmed in addition by the declaration of our humility, so that from now on no rivalry may remain between the aforesaid Churches over this matter.” Ibid., VII.7, Vol. 2:248. 312 For the eighth session, see Ibid., Vol. 2:250–7. 313 For the ninth session, see Ibid., Vol. 2:258–64; for the tenth session, see Ibid., Vol. 2:265–309. 314 Ibid., 5.34, Vol. 2:204. 315 Ibid., 5.34, Vol. 2:205. 311

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century after the proceedings, 316 the Council was immediately received as the final and authoritative word of the universal Church. Even if Chalcedon was the final word on the Christian faith (which, of course, it most certainly was not), there has been scores of interpretation that have contoured the legacy of this monumental Council. There is not one legacy of Chalcedon. Instead, there are legacies of Chalcedon, which interact, sometimes cooperatively and other times in competition, with one another. 4.6.2. Divisions after Chalcedon: Failures of Imperial Oikoumenism The Chalcedonian Definition failed to unite the Christian oikoumene. Divisions within Eastern Christianity increased following Chalcedon. The failure of Chalcedon as a unifying event is undeniable. The Chalcedonian Definition was a Symbolum of the faith, and as such, it was open for a wide range of interpretations, for symbols of faith (or otherwise) often contain a surplus of meaning. The tendency to ascribe cause to Chalcedon for the ongoing rupturing within Christianity needs to be reevaluated. A score of contemporary assessments have ascribed to Chalcedon a causal relation to the divisions that ensued into the sixth century and onwards. In some modern assessments, the Council of Chalcedon has been criticized for causing more division within the universal Church. After Chalcedon, the Eastern Churches increasingly separated from one another, which stands as a divide that has never been fully restored to the present day. There are several lines of reasoning that support placing much blame upon Chalcedon for the fractured state of the Eastern Churches from the middle of the fifth century onwards. For instance, Need concludes that, “even though it became the most important conciliar statement about Christ, it caused serious divisions between Christians that have persisted to this day.” 317 McGuckin asserts there were signs of healing in the East, such as the case of Theodoret, who shifted from opposition against Cyril to affirming the hypostatic language associated with Cyrilline Christology. 318 McGuckin then makes a bold leap asserting that the Syrians and Alexandrians were “healing, if not healed, and would have merged in a generation or less – so long as precipitate action had not been takA Latin version of the Acts of Chalcedon dates from 546, when Facundus of Hermiane referenced the Latin Acts in his Defence of the Three Chapters. See Friedrich Maassen, Geschicthe der Quellen und der Literatur des canonischen Recths, vol. I (Gratz: Leuschner & Lubensky, 1870), 139. 317 Need, 94. 318 Davis notes the same shift within Theodoret, who “ended by accepting Cyril’s basic view that the Word is the sole person of Jesus Christ.” Davis further explains, “In 447 Theodoret wrote against those who, holding that Christ’s humanity and divinity formed one nature, taught that the humanity had not really been derived from the Virgin and that the divinity suffered.” Davis, 172. 316

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en to press a point that perhaps did not need to be insisted on.” Thereafter, McGuckin explains that “Chalcedon proved to be the last straw for many in the East, not because of the ongoing argument between the Syrians and the Alexandrians but because a new element had been stirred into the mix: precisely the narrowing of the question down to “One or two natures after the Union?” 319 McGuckin’s insightful conclusions are provocative and warrant further consideration; however, a word of caution should be inserted here, as divisions within the Eastern Church can not be reduced to a singular event or cause, even one as a momentous as Chalcedon, rather, schisms and ruptures within the Church almost always entail long and circuitous plotlines with many interventions, characters and events along the way. It is far too weighty to suggest that the Antiochenes and Alexandrians would have healed within the fifth or sixth century if not for the outcomes at the Council of Chalcedon. Theodoret’s theology may have shifted more towards a Cyrilline perspective, and it could also be suggested that Cyril showed moments of openness towards two-nature Christology, but it is a reach to suggest that the Antiochenes and Alexandrian were healed or in the process of healing in the fifth century. There were always ebbs and flows within inter-church relations, but ultimately, the arch has been towards increased factionalism. Perhaps, now with the advent of modern day oikoumenism, we are witnessing a turn towards genuine reconciliation. The blaming of Chalcedon for the ills of Christianity is even witnessed with Grillmeier, who first suggests that the Church fathers were not to blame for the divisions after Chalcedon, and then asserts that the tragedy of the Fourth Oikoumenical Council was that it “led to a long war and division in the Church.” 320 This notion of Chalcedon “leading” to war and division is a common trope but it needs to be reevaluated as it is a thoroughly teleological claim. The Fourth Oikoumenical Council was not the sui generis cause of divisions in the universal Church. Chalcedon is another example of the paradox of imperial oikoumenism, which attempted to enforce uniformity within the Church through the convocation of councils. The paradox of imperial oikoumenism is that whenever uniformity was enforced from above, it would nearly always lead to more division over the long run. Ecclesiastical factions following Nicaea (325) and then every Oikoumenical Council thereafter often defined themselves by either rejecting the conciliar decisions or more likely the parties would affirm the oikoumenical definitions but then interpret them in a manner that engendered difference with rival movements. Factionalism increased after Ephesus I as well. Perhaps no one has perceived the malady of councils more than the Cappadocian father, Gregory of Nazianzus, who once declared, “My inclination is to avoid all assemblies of bishops, because I have never seen any council come to a good end, nor turn out to be a solution of evils. On the contrary, it usually increases 319 320

McGuckin, “Christ in the Chalcedonian Definition,” 253. Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, Vol. 1, 548.

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them.” 321 If one wants to blame Chalcedon for the ensuing divisions after 451, then let it be placed within the broader narrative, which demonstrates that this is the common failure of each and every Oikoumenical Council. The reason for this pattern of enforced imperial uniformity followed by factionalism is two-fold. First, the bishops were willing to bow down before imperial mandates at the Councils, but then they returned home to once again embrace their local traditions. Second, and this point is essential, the Creeds of the Oikocumenical Councils provided opportunity for creating increased divisions through the practice of receptive interpretation. 4.6.3. Chalcedon as Theological Compromise or Oikoumenical Traditioning Many commentators on the Chalcedonian Definition, as Need and other scholars have recounted, have “misleadingly interpreted this statement of faith as a mere compromise between the Antiochene and Alexandrian Christologies.” McGuckin recounts that many historians have interpreted the Definition as a “hopeless enmeshment in historical compromising.” 322 A number of scholars have routinely characterized Chalcedon as an attempt at ecclesiastical compromise. Frances Young has described the Chalcedonian Definition as an ecclesiastical compromise, that is, a “committee product” that exclaims negotiation. 323 Need asserts the Definition was an attempt to “bring together Antiochene and Alexandrian insights.” 324 Finally, Davis admits that Leo did not solve every problem, but he notes that the Antiochenes could find their “two-nature” Christology and the Alexandrians could recognize Cyril’s basic insight “that the person of the Incarnate is identical with that of the Divine Word.” 325 Numerous reassessments have characterized the Definition as a mere compromise devoid of much originality and merit. There is much truth to these assertions, indeed, the Definition was first and foremost, a statement that supported the conservation of the Christian tradition. With that said, there is a positive contribution within the Chalcedonian Symbolum, which is most located in its attempt to advance an interpretation of the Nicene tradition. In his favorable assessment, Need Quote from Gregory of Nazianzus is borrowed from Jenkins, who does not provide a primary source. Jenkins, 129. 322 McGuckin, “Christ in the Chalcedonian Definition,” 247. 323 In assessing the Chalcedonian Definition, Young declares, “There’s an old saying that a camel is a horse produced by a committee! The Definition is, of course, a ‘committee product,’ and it shouts ‘compromise’ at us as soon as we realize what lay behind its production.” Frances M. Young, “The Council of Chalcedon 1550 Years Later,” Touchstone (2001): 12. 324 Need, 94. 325 Davis, 176. 321

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concludes that the Definition was “a finely balanced statement of the complex relation between Christ’s divinity and humanity, bringing together elements from both (Antiochian and Alexandrian) approaches but adding significantly deeper insights into the person of Christ.” 326 Grillmeier recognizes that the task of the council fathers was to “construct its own exposition of the tradition” in order for it to be received as a universal confession of the Christian faith. 327 Here, with the Chalcedonian Definition, Grillmeier declares, “as in almost no other formula from the early Councils, all the important centres [sic] of the Church life and all the trends of contemporary theology, Rome, Alexandria, Constantinople and Antioch, have contributed towards the framing of a common expression of faith.” 328 In the Definition’s attempt at establishing a universalizing tradition, it opened itself up for misinterpretation, where the Alexandrians detected Nestorianism and the Antiochenes feared Eutychianism. The irony here should not be lost, for the Definition strived to counter both Nestorianism and Eutychianism by drawing from the orthodox traditions of the universal Church. Chalcedon was not primarily concerned with placing Leo over Cyril, or Cyril over Leo, rather the bishops were foremost committed to remaining faithful to the Nicene Creed through the practice of receptive interpretation. 329 Emperor Marcian initially called for the universal council to meet in Nicaea. On 1 September 451, the bishops had arrived in Nicaea, but Marcian was detained in Constantinople on account of the Hunnish encroachments. Marcian’s desire to hold the council at Nicaea demonstrates the symbolic significance attached to Nicene tradition. Calling for the council to be held at Nicaea represents a harkening back to the First Oikoumenical Council, that is, to original universal Council convoked by the famous Emperor Constantine. From the early conciliar proceedings onwards, the council fathers lauded Leo and Cyril as the faithful interpreters of the Nicene Creed. They both were said to stand in total agreement with the Nicene tradition, which was rightly upheld at the Council of Ephesus (431). 330 Furthermore, as mentioned several times Need, 101. Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, Vol. 1, 544. 328 Ibid. 329 In her assessment of the Chalcedonian Definition, Young asserts, “The first thing to note is that there is not attempt to produce a new creed. It is recognized that the controversy was about the proper interpretation of already agreed-upon creeds. The previous century had seen Council after Council trying to improve on the creed of Nicaea without achieving consensus. So sensibly the common starting-point in the creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople is acknowledged at Chalcedon.” Young, 11; also, see Robert L. Wilken, “Tradition, Exegesis, and the Christological Controversies,” ChHist 34 (1965): 123–45. 330 In one of his positive contributions at Ephesus II (449), Dioscorus argued that the Council of Ephesus (431) was in kindred agreement with the Council of Nicaea (325). He asserted that Nicaea and Ephesus were synonymous Councils. Perry has translated the con326 327

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throughout this study, the Chalcedonian Definition included the Nicene Creed (325) and the Constantinopolitan Creed (381) in their entirety prior to the inclusion of Cyril’s Synodical Letters and the Chalcedonian Definition. Kelly’s final assertion is on point, where he asserts it is not that (as the council fathers acclaimed) Leo and Cyril taught the same thing, at least not at every point, but they were many similarities to be lifted up within a conciliar creedal statement. As Kelly notes, Cyril once admitted that after the act of union it is still possible to speak of two natures. 331 Cyril’s emphasis on the single nature Christology was a defense against Nestorianism. The Chalcedonian Definition clearly rejected the errors of Nestorius, therefore, Kelly conjectures that it is “reasonable to suppose, in the light of his attitude to the Union Symbol, that he too would have acquiesced in the Chalcedonian settlement and would have been embarrassed by the intransigence of his over-enthusiastic allies.” 332 In conclusion, Kelly declares that if (and here it is by no means fully conceded) Antiochene Christology emerged as victorious at Chalcedon, it was only after absorbing and being modified by the “fundamental truths contained in the Alexandrian position.” 333 Convinced of the all-encompassing sufficiency of the Nicene tradition, the council fathers did not want to insert any new theological statements within the Definition. Furthermore, the bishops aimed at providing a Definition that would be approved by the universal Church. In his assessment of the conciliar fathers’ positive reception of the Definition, Price asserts, “It would be absurd to suggest that either of these groups thought themselves as correcting Cyril; they must have given a Cyrillian interpretation to what they approved, even if the Definition had to contain phrases that would satisfy the Roman delegates.” 334 It is beyond contestation that the Chalcedonian Definition has many Cyrilline elements, but perhaps, rather than framing the new creed as either Cyrilline or Leonine, it would be more enlightening to recall that no theologian is greater than the Christian tradition. Every Church father is bound to the tradition. The importance of the Chalcedonian Definition is located in its attempt to reaffirm the conciliar creeds and the writings of Cyril and Leo in a manner that conceives of them within one continuum of the Christian tradition. Under imperial orders, the council fathers provided an expression of “the faith of the whole Church,” 335 which was an impossible task, especially after a century of factionalism reaching back to the Council of Nicaea, then through

ciliar proceedings of Ephesus II (449) from the Syriac into English. The Second Synod of Ephesus: Together with Certain Extracts Relating to it, trans. Samuel G.F. Perry (Dartford: Orient Press, 1881), 347. 331 Kelly references Cyril’s Epistula 40. Kelly, 342. 332 Ibid., 342. 333 Ibid. 334 Price, “The Council of Chalcedon,” 81. 335 Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, Vol. 1, 545.

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the Trinitarian Controversy of the fourth century, followed up by the Council of Ephesus and the Christological Controversy of the early fifth century. Even though abstract philosophical concepts have found their way into the Definition, the theological approach of the council fathers consists in carefully listening to the witness of the Christian faith. 336 The council fathers did not believe they said anything new with the Definition. The confession has philosophical concepts, but it is only in relation to the established tradition of the Church. In one of his most intriguing provocations, Grillmeier contends that none of the council fathers “could have even given the definition of the concepts with which they had now expressed christological dogma.” 337 The council fathers did not intend to explain the proclamation of the Church even when it employed philosophical terms. 338 In the fifth century, the formal terminology of the Definition would have sounded more confessional and conversely less technical than it translates to modern historians. The council fathers employed philosophical terms in an attempt to explain the biblical witness of Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God, born in the flesh, thus truly divine and truly human. 339 In short, the Chalcedonian Definition does not represent a novel turning point in early Christian doctrine, rather it stands as a traditional confession, which affirms, interprets and reconstitutes the witness of the ancient Church. 340 In assessing the Definition, Pelikan concludes that the genealogy of this decree makes it clear that it is not an “original and new creation, but like a mosaic, was assembled almost entirely from stones that were already available.” 341 The work of integrating Leo and Cyril into the grander witness of the Church tradition continued after the Council of Chalcedon. In August of 458, Pope Leo (440–61) sent a letter to Emperor Leo, in which was included a florilegium of the

Ibid. Ibid. 338 Insisting upon the lack of philosophical pedigree with the council fathers, Grillmeier asserts, “The formula of the Council states only the bare essentials of what was needed to resolve the difficulties of the time, which were, of course, the result of a long development. It was not at that time the intention to draw out all the consequences of the complete distinction of the natures in Christ.” Ibid., 550. 339 Arguing for the biblical basis of the creed, Grillmeier argues that the “apparently abstract and formal concepts of this Definition must always be supplemented from Holy Scripture.” Ibid. 340 In appreciating the ways in which the Definition expresses the powerful ideas of the Christian past, Jenkins asserts, “the Defintion cannot be appreciated except as a compressed commentary on a long previous history that is only alluded to in a brief document.” Jenkins, 212–13. 341 Pelikan, Christian Tradition, 264. 336 337

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Church fathers (testimonia excerpta de libris Catholicorum Patrum). 342 Leo included some excerpts from Cyril’s Scholia on the Incarnation and a longer portion of his Second Letter to Nestorius. In the excerpt from the Second Letter, Leo included Cyril’s doctrine that the Word of God suffered in the flesh for humanity. In this excerpt, Cyril explained that the Word of God did not suffer in his nature but insofar as that which is attributed to his own body suffered, then he (Word of God) suffered for our sake since the Impassible One was in the suffering body. 343 The majority of Cyril’s writings, save his Third Letter to Nestorius and the Twelve Anathemas, continued to be received in the canon of the Church fathers in the years following Chalcedon. The Definition perhaps taught a “hypostatic union” of Christ (albeit without mentioning it), but it needed further explication for it ignored some of the most difficult issues. Pelikan asserts, “It was not clear, for example, who the subject of the suffering and crucifixion was, for these events in the history of salvation were not so much as mentioned.” 344 The issue of divine suffering would be picked up with much vigor by the Neo-Chalcedonians of the early sixth century, 345 spearheaded by John Maxentius and the Scythian monks, which would lead to the vindication of Cyril’s Twelve Anathemas at the Second Council of Constantinople (553), which is the next chapter within the story of the Oikoumenical Councils. Emperors convoked Oikoumenical Councils in order to promote, or more to the point, enforce universality within the Church. Emperor Marcian called for a new definition of faith that was inclusive and integrative, one that created a totalizing tradition, which affirmed that the tradition is greater than any single theologian. In other words, the sum or whole is greater than the individual parts, when this convicFor the letter with excerpts from the Church fathers, see Leo, Ep. 165 (Ad Leonem Augustum), PL 54: 1155–1190. For the excerpts from Cyril’s Scholia and his Second Letters to Nestorius, see PL 54: 1186A-1190A. 343 In his letter to Emperor Leo, Pope Leo prserves an excerpt from Cyril’s Second Letter to Nestorius: “Sic illum dicimus et passum esse et resurrexisse, non quia Deus Verbum in sua natura passus sit aut plagas, aut clavorum transfixiones, aut alia vulnera (Deus namque incorporalis extra passionem est), sed quia corpus illud, quod ipsius proprium factum est, ideo haec omnia pro nobis ipse dicitur passus. Inerat enim in eo corpore quod patiebatur, Deus, qui pati non poterat. Simili modo et mortem ipsius intelligimus. Immortale enim et incorruptibile est naturaliter, et vita, et vivificans Dei, Verbum. Sed quia corpus ipsius proprium, gratia Dei, iuxta Pauli vocem, pro omnibus mortem gustavit, idcirco ipse dicitur mortem passus esse pro nobis.” Leo, Ep. 165 (Ad Leonem Augustum), PL 54: 1188AB). For the Greek version of this excerpt from Cyril’s Second Letter to Nestorius, see Cyril, Ep. 4 (ACO 1.1.1: 27); for an English translation, see McGuckin, Christological Controversy, 264. 344 Pelikan, Christian Tradition, 265. 345 Neo-Chalcedonians is a term used to describe those theologians who affirmed the Council of Chalcedon, but did so with a Cyrilline emphasis, which included a championing of his Twelve Anathemas. 342

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tion (i.e., Gestalt theory) is applied to the Chalcedonian Definition, it sets up an interpretive framework that reads the establishment of a creedal tradition (i.e., Definition) as a whole entity that is to be privileged over the individual components (e.g., Cyril and Leo) within it. The whole is greater than the parts, or in ecclesiastical jargon, the Christian tradition is greater than any one Church father, or for that matter, any two Church tathers. To affirm that Leo and Cyril teach the same thing is really nothing more than affirming both belong within the tradition of the Church. The modern inclination to isolate the particular components of the Chalcedonian Definition is a valuable academic exercise, but it moves in the opposite direction of achievement of Chalcedon, which is the formation of an integrative tradition that confesses the mystery of salvation in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.

CHAPTER 5: THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE II: 553. A CHRISTOLOGY SEEKING REFINEMENT AND SUBTLETY 1 ANNA ZHYRKOVA 5.1. PREAMBLE The Second Council of Constantinople has been overshadowed to a great extent by its predecessor, the Fourth Oikoumenical Council of Chalcedon. Constantinople II concluded a ferocious controversy over Chalcedonian teaching that had been continuing for more than a century and, as such, certainly cannot be viewed in separation from Chalcedon. Moreover, Constantinople’s achievements as regards the development of theological doctrine initially seem pale in comparison to the Chalcedonian Horos. It comes as no surprise, then, that many scholars share a minimalistic interpretation of the Second Council of Constantinople: it is viewed as a mere clarification or scaling down of Chalcedonian teaching. Regrettably, though, such a minimalistic interpretation downplays unfairly the role and meaning of the Council that concluded a century filled with intense battles over orthodox Christology, and that had dramatic consequences for Church unity. The persistence of such a minimalistic interpretation has diminished the importance of, and eventually condemned to oblivion, several theologians who not only stood in defense of Chalcedonian principles, but also developed an actual doctrine based on those principles. In so doing it neglects the birth of a new, speculative sort of theological reflection – something that forms part of the backcloth to the Council of Constantinople itself. The theology in question was born in historical circumstances that were deeply tragic for the Church, yet its conclusions have become the standard point of reference in shaping our perceptions of Chalcedonian teaching, and are frequently confounded with the latter. This was not a “mere clarification” of Chalcedon; rather, it was a new kind of The chapter presents some results of the author’s research carried out within the framework of the project Reconstructing Early Byzantine Metaphysics, financed by Poland’s National Science Center (grant UMO-2012/05/B/HS1/03305). 1

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theology that employed philosophical argumentation as one of its basic tools and sought, in its discourse, clarity of expression and acuteness of argumentation. Much blood had to be spilt before its proposals could be accepted at Constantinople, and before it could assume the status of one of the mainstream currents in theology, eventually reaching its apex in the works of John Damascene and Palamas in the East, and Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus in the West. To be sure, providing a proper historical and theological explication of the Second Council of Constantinople (553) is by no means a straightforward affair. Within the historiography of the Church, it is considered one of the most problematic councils, in that arriving at a proper account and evaluation requires one to confront many ambiguities and complications. 2 Much of the confusion stems, ironically, from the fact that we are in possession of a considerable amount of historical evidence. In contrast to many of the events that transpired during the epoch of the Oikoumenical Councils, the evidence at our disposal is not limited to the frequently biased testimonies of “winners.” The extant evidence, be it of a historical or a purely theological nature, is so rich that all particular elements constituting the historical phenomenon called “the Second Council of Constantinople” (including circumstances, major figures, decisions and consequences) can be viewed from multiple dramatically different standpoints. The entire picture of the Council available to us is therefore far too complex to be elucidated by selecting one or two purportedly revealing features, and instead calls out to be subjected to comprehensive historical and theological scrutiny. Most scholars agree that the principal aim of the Second Constantinopolitan Council was to restore peace within the Empire’s Church, divided for an entire century between those who accepted Chalcedon as the Fourth Oikoumenical Council and those who disavowed it. At least, this was the goal proclaimed by the Emperor Justinian in a letter that was read in lieu of the Council’s official commencement – right at the outset of the first session (I,7 [7]). 3 By focusing on this declared aim of the Council, it has become possible to place Constantinople II within the framework relating to the dialectical development of Christian doctrine in the patristic period, in which each and every Oikoumenical Council serves as the statement of a certain theological truth (thesis), to be followed by a period corresponding to its negation (antithesis) – while the synthesis is brought about by the next council. 4 Yet Cf. Wilhelm de Vries, Orient et Occident. Les structures ecclésiales vues dans l’histoire des sept premiers conciles œcuméniques, Histoire des doctrines ecclésiologiques 5 (Paris: Cerf, 1974), 161. 3 All references to the acts of Constantinople II are based on Richard Price, The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553; with related texts on the Three Chapters Controversy, Translated Texts for Historians 51 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009). 4 Cf. Alexander Schmemann, Istoricheskiy put' pravoslaviya (New York: Izdatelʹstvo im. Chekhova, 1954), 165, 70. Translated by Lydia W. Kesich as The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003). 2

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neither Chalcedon nor Constantinople II really fit such a scheme. Not only did Chalcedon arouse strong and immediate counter-reactions in Egypt and Syria, but it also engendered a division among Christians that was not resolved by the Fifth Council and continues right up to the present day. Neither did Constantinople offer a middle path between negation and acceptance of Chalcedon. Its statements reaffirm Chalcedon by pointing to a more precise manner of phrasing its theological assertions. Hence, in order to understand the historical developments that followed from the Council of Chalcedon we ought first to address the question of why the teachings of the latter, which, for contemporary theologians, form the indisputable and unequivocal cornerstone of orthodox Christology, have provoked such an outcry that the very legitimacy of Chalcedon itself has come to be broadly and vehemently questioned.

5.2. THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON AS A BONE OF CONTENTION The Council of Chalcedon usually has ascribed to it the following accomplishments: (i) introducing the so–called Chalcedonian Horos or Definition, in which Christ is elucidated as “acknowledged in two natures” that “come together into one person and one hypostasis;” (ii) rejecting the Eutychian miaphysite doctrine; (iii) deposing Dioscorus of Alexandria; (iv) elevating Constantinople and Jerusalem to patriarchates, and recognizing Constantinople’s primacy of honor over the more ancient sees, due to its civic importance (the famous 28th canon). Even so, no less attention should be given to another, by no means less consequential, achievement of this Council: (v) the restoration of Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Ibas of Edesa – known for their criticism of Cyril and support for Nestorius – to their sees. In traditional scholarship, the Christological controversy of the fifth century is elucidated by treating it as the climax of an enduring opposition between the Antiochene and Alexandrian theological stances, which may be traced back to the antithetical exegetical approaches of the two schools. The Antiochene vision might be described as a “two-subject” Christology, as opposed to the Alexandrian “onesubject” model. 5 The assumed rivalry between those two stances, however, does not function well when it comes to explaining resistance to Chalcedon. Firstly, as has been pointed out by Andrew Louth, such concepts as Antiochene and Alexandrian Christology barely correspond to any historical reality. The “two-subject” Antiochene Christology was probably not much more than a set of conceptions shared by several theologians associated with Antioch, such as Diodore, Theodor and Nestorius, and was hardly representative of the region as a whole. On the other hand, Alexandrian Christology can by no means be equated with a merely “one-subject” doctrine. This is because Athanasius and Cyril, and not Eutyches, are On the opposition between Antiochene and Alexandrian theology, see chapters 2 and 3 above. 5

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its principal voices. Their Christology arises out of traditional Greek thought and conveys, as such, an orthodox doctrine of universal range. 6 Secondly, even if we assume that Chalcedon was itself the outcome of a clash between two antagonistic Christologies, it is difficult to view the resistance aroused against the Council in the Eastern provinces of the Empire in such terms. As a matter of fact, the Chalcedonian Christological definition equally condemns both Nestorian “two-subject” and Eutychean “one-subject” Christology. However, the theological opposition to the Council of Chalcedon, both in Egypt and in Syria, was voiced predominantly by followers of a version of “one-subject” Christology – one that was not miaphysite in character, either. 7 Both in Alexandria and in Antioch, the non-Chalcedonian resistance accused the Council of Chalcedon of having betrayed the orthodox faith proclaimed by previous councils and by the great Fathers of the East. The question, therefore, is the following: what was the theological issue uniting Egypt, Syria, and Palestine in their attack on Chalcedon? Today, hardly any scholars would doubt that the theology of Chalcedon was very much in accord with Cyril’s own thought. The evidence shows that the Council relied on his theology to such a great extent that it can be said that Cyril was considered the ultimate embodiment of orthodoxy and an unquestioned doctrinal authority. Even the Tome of Pope Leo received its endorsement in the form of a recognition that it was in accord with Cyril’s Second Letter to Nestorius. As has been pointed out by Richard Price, throughout the Council it was Cyril, rather than Leo, who was See Andrew Louth, “Why Did the Syrians Reject the Council of Chalcedon?,” in Chalcedon in Context: Church Councils, 400–700, ed. Richard Price and Mary Whitby, Translated Texts for Historians, Contexts 1 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011), 107–16. 7 We should point out that explaining the entire anti-Chalcedonian opposition as a miaphysite reaction to dyophysite theology, as well as referring to it in terms of “miaphysiticism” / “Miaphysites” or “monophysiticism” / “Monophysites,” is quite misleading and anachronistic. Anti-Chalcedonians by no means associated themselves with either Eutyches or radical one-subject Christology, but rather with Cyrilian orthodox doctrine, which can hardly be regarded as miaphysitic sensu stricto. The term “monophysiticism” / “Monophysites” was only coined in the seventh century, and originally had negative connotations. The term “miaphysiticism” / “Miaphysits,” employed nowadays, is intended to be less negative in character, but is equally unsuitable, for the reasons given above. Therefore, in the present paper those who rejected the Council of Chalcedon will be referred to simply as “antiChalcedonians.” See Lebon’s classical studies on the subject Joseph Lebon, Le monophysisme Sévérien. Étude historique, littéraire et théologique sur la résistance monophysite au Concile de Chalcédoine jusqu’à la constitution de l’Église jacobite (Leuven: Josephus Van Linthout, 1909), cf. Jacques Jarry, “Hérésies et factions à Constantinople du IVe au VIIe siècle,” Syria: Revue d’art oriental et d’archéologie 37, no. 3–4 (1960): 360, doi:10.3406/syria.1960.5492; Patrick T. R. Gray, The Defense of Chalcedon in the East (451–553), Studies in the History of Christian Thought 20 (Leiden: Brill, 1979), 74. 6

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considered the determining voice of orthodoxy. 8 And yet it seems that the East received the Chalcedonian doctrine as a betrayal of Cyril’s teaching. If we take a closer look at the Chalcedonian achievement as a whole, the reaction of its opponents does not seem entirely unreasonable. The Chalcedonian definition employed some terminology whose provenance, and connotations, were both doubtful. The Council incorporated almost verbatim into its definition the clause from the Tome of Leo referring to “the distinctive character of each nature being preserved and coming together into one person.” 9 The term “person” was used by Pope Leo to talk about an independently existing individual subject, and, most certainly, such an understanding would have been by no means alien to Eastern thought. 10 The problem, though, lay in the fact that Leo was using this term while simultaneously emphasizing the distinction between the two natures in Christ. In this context, a unity of natures described using the terminology of “one person” could easily appear to resemble Nestorius’ notion of the “personal mode” (prosopikōs) of the unity of Christ, which is only relational, not real. To be sure, Leo’s clause was modified in the Council’s own definition through the addition of terminology that better reflects Cyril’s teaching, the expression “one person” being replaced by that of “one person and one hypostasis.” 11 The term “hypostasis” was introduced to Christological contexts by Apollinarius, but precisely thanks to the Apollinarian controversy it was avoided thereafter. The fact is, that the term was re-introduced into Christology by Cyril, but he mainly employed it in the formula “union/united according to hypostasis,” in order to clarify how natures were united. Applied to “united natures”, the expression “according to hypostasis” emphasizes that such a union is real. 12 Thus, the Council’s having employed the term in its documents not to characterize the unity, but in reference to the very subject of the union, could well have raised some suspicions. Certainly, the Chalcedonian Definition, which affirms that Christ is one person and one hypostasis in two natures, seems to agree perfectly with Cyril’s essentially Richard Price, “The Council of Chalcedon (451): A Narrative,” in Chalcedon in Context: Church Councils, 400–700, ed. Richard Price and Mary Whitby, Translated Texts for Historians, Contexts 1 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011), 78; and Richard Price and Michael Gaddis, The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, Translated texts for historians 45 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005), 2: 117–18. 9 Leo, Tomus, 54–5: “Salva igitur proprietate utrisque naturae et in unam coeunte personam.” 10 Cf. Basil Studer, “‘Una persona in Christo’: Ein augustinisches Thema bei Leo dem Grossen,” AUG 25 (1985). 11 On the changes made to Leo’s clause, see Price and Gaddis, Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, 2:17, n. 43. 12 Cf. Hans van Loon, The Dyophysite Christology of Cyril of Alexandria, vol. 96, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2009), 508–9. 8

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dyophysite thought. 13 Still, Chalcedonian teaching refrained from embracing the entirety of Cyril’s Christology. The formulation in the Horos appeared to be in conflict with Cyril’s famous formula of “one incarnate nature of God the Word,” through which he sought to describe the inseparable unity of human and divine natures after the incarnation. Cyril, primarily for soteriological reasons, put special stress on the unity of Christ. Even when recognizing the distinctness of the two natures, and their differences, in Christ, he underlined that they were only distinct in contemplation, not separated in reality as two independent entities. On the other hand, Cyril also emphasized a point not embraced at Chalcedon, which was that the one who died on the cross was not just a man associated with God, but the only one begotten as the Son of the Godhead. This was the doctrine known as “theopaschism.” Moreover, Chalcedon passed silently over Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius and Twelve Chapters: i.e. Cyril’s polemical works, whose terminology emphasizes the unity of Christ. This omission only served to reinforce the impression that Chalcedon had embarked upon a deviation from Cyril’s teaching as a whole. 14 Even so, taken as a whole and viewed in its own terms, the theology of Chalcedon would probably not have appeared to constitute a deviation from Cyril’s teaching. However, the Council also condemned Cyril’ successor at the Alexandrian see, Archbishop Dioscurus. To be sure, neither Dioscurus, nor the Second Council of Ephesus he summoned, known as the “Robber Council,” 15 were condemned on grounds of heterodoxy: instead, they were found guilty of antagonizing the Church and violating its peace and order. For all his doings, Dioscurus was widely perceived as a zealous follower of Cyrilian Christology and opponent of Nestorianism. Likewise, Ephesus II was viewed as a confirmation both of Nicaea and of Cyril’s teaching – since it endorsed Ephesus I – and thence as a strong anti-Nestorian voice. In addition, Chalcedon rehabilitated two widely known supporters of Nestorius, Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Ibas of Edessa, who had been condemned at Ephesus II. Given such circumstances, one should not be astonished that the Council of Chalcedon had sparked off such a negative reaction, especially if its Horos had sounded suspiciously non-Cyrilian. It was viewed as apostasy from the standpoint of the orthodox This point is convincingly argued by Loon, The Dyophysite Christology. While the omission of this particular work by Cyril could have been seen as suspicious, the suspicions ought to have been allayed by the declarations of Cyril himself. After having accepted the Formula of Reunion in 433, he was accused by his own supporters of having betrayed them, and of having revoked his Chapters. Yet at that point Cyril reassured his former followers that the Formula was in complete agreement with the Twelve Chapters. See Cyril, Ep. 41, 44–46. On the subject of Cyril’s teaching, and its role, see chapter 3 herein. See also Price, Acts of the Council of Constantinople II, 1:66, 276. 15 On Dioscurus and the “Robber Council”, see chapter 4. 13 14

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Christological doctrine laid down by the First Council of Ephesus, and at the same time as acknowledging the teaching of Nestorius. 16 The opposition to Chalcedon was prompted not only by considerations of a theological nature. Among its other achievements, Chalcedon had also elevated Constantinople to the status of a patriarchate, giving it the honor of primacy over more ancient sees. In diminishing their authority, the Council was promoting an official theological doctrine of the Empire’s capital, at the same time in effect disowning those traditionally accepted Christological viewpoints with which the Churches in Egypt and in Syria had identified themselves. Taking into account all of these issues, the Council’s achievements were acceptable, for the most part, to the Constantinopolitan Church, the Roman legates, and a small number of Palestinians and Antiochenes. Even so, they aroused vehement opposition in much of the East, from Egypt to Palestine, and ultimately also in Syria. It is difficult to believe, but even Pope Leo himself was hardly enthusiastic about the results of the Council. It was not just that he opposed the convocation of a council in principle from the very outset, seeing his own Tome as sufficient to resolve the doctrinal issue at stake: he also objected most vocally to Canon 28. For the Pope, accepting this canon stemming from Chalcedon amounted to nothing less than “violation of the faith.” Indeed, the Pope’s opposition to the Council was so strong that the Emperor considered it necessary to obtain additional formal sanction from the Pope himself, even though the Pope’s delegates at Chalcedon had already confirmed the decrees on his behalf. In the end, Leo granted his approval, but even afterwards could not restrain himself from attacking Canon 28 and those who had accepted it at the Council. 17 The council fathers were met by their congregations with hostility in numerous places. For instance Juvenal, who returned from Chalcedon to Jerusalem as its first Patriarch, needed the support of troops to enter the city, and subsequently had to flee Jerusalem when anti-Chalcedonians overpowered him and installed Theodosius on his throne. He was restored to his see with the help of imperial soldiers in 452. In that very same year Patriarch Proterius was consecrated and enthroned in Alexandria in place of Dioscurus, who had been deposed by the Council. The resistance of the Dioscurian supporters was so strong that the prefect Florus had to make use of the army to suppress the clashes between members of the pro- and antiPseudo–Zacharias Rhetor phrased the judgment of the Council in the most straightforward terms: “[Council was assembled] as though concerning the matter of Eutyches, but introduced and increased the heresy of Nestorius, and disturbed the whole Empire, added evil upon evil, established these two heresies side by side.” See Zacharias Rhetor, HE III.1. 17 See correspondence between Leo, Pulcheria and Marcian before the Council in Price and Gaddis, Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, 1: 94–8 and commentary ad locum, and between Leo, Marcian and Anatolius after the Council in Price and Gaddis, Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, 3: 136–54 and commentary ad locum. 16

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Dioscurian factions. The conflict, however, was still not resolved. The Patriarch faced unremitting resistance from the clergy. An Alexandrian priest, Timotheus, together with a deacon named Peter and supported by several bishop and monks, openly stood against him on the grounds that the Patriarch had ignored Dioscurus in diptychs and acknowledged the Council of Chalcedon. Although the rebels were condemned and sentenced to exile, it seems that a number of monks and clergy did suspend communion with the Patriarch. The Emperor Marcian apparently soothed the conflict, yet after his death in 457 a robust opposition arose afresh. With strong support from discontented bishops, clergy, monks, and the general mob, Timotheus returned to Alexandria and was appointed to the position of patriarch, while Proterius was most savagely killed. 18 Proterius was stabbed in the baptistery of the Church, where he had been tortured beforehand. His corpse was mutilated, profaned and burnt by the Alexandrian mob. If not stated otherwise, the following historic account is based on (a) sources: PseudoZacharias Rhetor, HE book III–XI; Evagrius Scholasticus, HE II.5; II.8; III.5; 6; 8–10; 12; 13; 16; 22; 30–32; IV.10; Theodore Lector, Epitome 368; 422–24; 441–55; Theophanes AM 5983; 5987; Liberatus 16.107–17.112; 17.119–120; 20.134–5; 23.138–24.141; Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita Sabae 30–31; 50; 52–7; 65; Michael the Syrian, Chronicle IX; (b) scholarship: Gray, The Defense of Chalcedon; Patrick T. R. Gray, “The Sabaite Monasteries and the Christological Controversies (478–533),” in The Sabaite Heritage in the Orthodox Church from the Fifth Century to the Present, ed. Joseph Patrich, Orientalia Lovaniensia analecta 98 (Leuven: Peeters, 2001); Patrick T. R. Gray, “The Legacy of Chalcedon: Christological Problems and Their Significance,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, ed. Michael Maas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Alois Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. 2, From the Council of Chalcedon (451) to Gregory the Great (590–604), part 1, Reception and Contradiction: The Development of the Discussion about Chalcedon from 451 to the Beginning of the Reign of Justinian, trans. Pauline Allen and John Cawte (London: Mowbray, 1987); Alois Grillmeier and Theresia Hainthaler, Christ in Christian Tradition, Vol. 2, From the Council of Chalcedon (451) to Gregory the Great (590–604), part 2, The Church of Constantinople in the Sixth Century, trans. John Cawte and Pauline Allen (London: Mowbray, 1995); William Hugh Clifford Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement: Chapters in the History of the Church in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972); Peter Charanis, Church and State in the Later Roman Empire: The Religious Policy of Anastasius the First, 491–518, 2nd ed., Βyzantina keimena kai meletai 11 (Thessaloniki: Kentron Byzantinōn Ereunōn, 1974); John Meyendorff, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions: The Church AD 450–680, The Church in History 2 (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1989); Rafał Kosiński, The Emperor Zeno: Religion and Politics, Byzantina et slavica cracoviensia 6 (Cracow: Towarzystwo Wydawnicze “Historia Iagellonica,” 2010); Rafał Kosiński, “Dzieje Akacjusza, Patriarchy Konstantynopola w latach 472–489)” [Acacius, Bishop of Constantinople in the Years AD 472–489], U Schyłku Starożytności. Studia Źrodłoznawcze 9 (2010); Rafał Kosiński, “Peter the Fuller, Patriarch of 18

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The vicious murder of Proterius and the election of Timotheus Aelurus by the people of Alexandria resonated loudly all over the region, engendering much confusion and fear. Following the tragic incident in Alexandria, the newly enthroned Emperor Leo I addressed a set of official queries to the city authorities and bishops of the East, as well as to Pope Leo I, concerning their reception of Chalcedon and the validity of Timothy Aelurus’ consecration. The collected responses of the hierarchs, known as Encyclica or Codex encyclicus, allow us to understand the complexity of the stances adopted in that part of the Christian East towards Chalcedon. To be sure, the bishops of the East rejected the validity of Timothy’s consecration quite unanimously, with the majority of them also strongly endorsing Chalcedon. 19 However, most of them attributed only conditional authority to the Council itself. The latter was perceived and endorsed as a reaffirmation of Nicaea, and as providing a remedy against heresies not previously condemned. Even the dyophysite formula introduced by Chalcedon was perceived (if mentioned at all) as no more than an explication of the Holy Fathers and the Nicene Creed, and lacking the significance of an article of faith in its own right. It is worth noting, though, that in the Encyclica, both the theology of the Imperial Church and the Emperor’s role as the custos and cultor fidei were professed more ardently than was the Chalcedonian Christology. On the other hand, the Alexandrian seat was dominated by anti-Chalcedonians, who must have enjoyed the full support of local populace as attempts to install a pro-Chalcedonian patriarch were largely unsuccessful there. 20 What is more, within a relatively short time the seat of Antioch had also fallen under the control of the anti-Chalcedonians. Constantinople therefore had no choice but to admit that the government’s attempt to impose the terms of Chalcedon by force had failed. From the imperial political standpoint, they would simply have to reach some sort of compromise with the non-Chalcedonians. Emperor Leo I’s successors, the usurper Basiliscus (475–476) and Emperor Zeno (474–475, 476–491), tried to settle the conflict by quite different means. In 475 Basiliscus, under the influence of Timothy II Aelurus, whom he had brought back from exile, pronounced an edict known as the Encyclical. The edict was comAntioch (471–488),” Bls 68 (2010); Rafał Kosiński, “Euphemios, Patriarch of Constantinople in the Years 490–496,” JOB 62 (2012), doi:10.1553/joeb62s57. 19 Price suggests that such an endorsement could have issued from the shock felt at the abominable murder of the Patriarch Proterius. See Price, Acts of the Council of Constantinople II, 1:2. 20 In 457 the Emperor Leo I banished Timothy II Aelurus. In his place a proChalcedonian, Timothy III Salophakiolos, was elected. Yet in 475 Timothy II Aelurus was restored. After him, in 477, the seat was inherited by the anti-Chalcedonian Peter III Mongus. He was replaced by Timothy III Salophakiolos, restored to his see. Salophakiolos, in turn, was succeeded by John I Talaia, also a pro-Chalcedonian. In 482 Peter III Mongus was restored to the seat, and from that time on Alexandria remained anti-Chalcedonian.

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posed by Paul the Sophist, a member of the Alexandrian delegation of monks that had appealed to Basiliscus for the recalling of Timothy from banishment. The edict proclaimed the absolute sufficiency of the Nicene symbol, also recognizing the Constantinopolitan Creed and the Council of Ephesus. But it called for condemnation of both Chalcedon and the Tomus of Leo the Great, for being in conflict with the whole ecclesiastical and canonical tradition and for endorsing Nestorian teaching. There are three things about the Encyclical that deserve particular attention. Firstly, it was not, strictly speaking, miaphysite in character. Although it affirmed traditional orthodox Alexandrian Christology, it neither mandated a miaphysite formula nor alluded, even, to a dyophysite one. On the contrary, the Encyclical rejected the Eutychian teaching. Secondly, it anathematized Chalcedon not for having introduced the wrong Christological doctrine, but because it had gone beyond the Nicene Creed in instituting new doctrinal formulations. It had thereby violated the decisions of two consecutive Councils: Constantinople, which had reaffirmed the Nicene Creed, and Ephesus, which had forbidden any future additions to the Creed. Thirdly, the edict ordained that bishops sign a condemnation of Chalcedon as representing a threat to the unity and well-being of both Church and Empire. From a theological point of view, the rejection of Chalcedon in the Encyclical did not differ in essence from its endorsement in the bishops’ letters gathered together in Codex encyclicus. While Chalcedon received only limited support in the latter, both documents viewed the theology of Chalcedon in the light of the significance and exclusivity of the Nicene Council. With Nicaea being regarded by both as the backbone of the unity of Church and Empire, both evaluated Chalcedon mainly with reference to the Empire’s interests. Having in mind the escalations of conflict to which discussions of the Council of Chalcedon had previously led, should one be surprised that more than five hundred bishops signed the edict of Basiliscus? Nonetheless, Basiliscus’ ecclesiastical approach soon came to nothing. Acacius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, refused to sign the Encyclical. Although Acacius’ motives are not entirely clear, it seems that his opposition to the edict was caused by his fears for the see of Constantinople. On the one hand, he could have been afraid of losing the see as a consequence of the intrigues of the anti-Chalcedonian party, which had the support and sympathy of Basiliscus, or because of the disapproval expressed by the pro-Chalcedonian masses of Constantinople. On the other hand, edict’s condemnation of Chalcedon put in question the very status of his see, which had been elevated to patriarchate status by the 28th Canon of Chalcedon. 21 Thus, The reasons behind Acacius’ refusal to sign the edict are considered in Kosiński, “Acacius,” 74–75. Kosiński argues that Acacius disagreed for doctrinal reasons, but taking into account the absence from the edict of any strict doctrinal Christology such as could have been aimed at rejecting Chalcedon as an Oikoumenical Council, and also the later position of Acacius, this explanation seems rather unsatisfactory. It is also important to note that 21

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when Basiliscus’ position weakened under the threat of Zeno swiftly regaining power, Acacius started to contend the usurper’s policy most actively. In consequence of both the latter’s activities and the news of Zeno’s appearance close to Constantinople, Basiliscus proclaimed a new decree, the Antencyclical, in which he retracted the Encyclical and restored the previous status quo. Those efforts, however, were in vain. In August 476 Emperor Zeno regained the throne. Being supported by Chalcedonians, 22 Zeno revoked all of Basiliscus’ decrees and determined the latter’s followers to be heretics. The leaders of the anti-Chalcedonian opposition were condemned and banished, and control of the sees in the East had, it seemed, been regained by the Chalcedonians. Moreover, the five hundred bishops who had signed the Encyclical now found themselves begging for forgiveness. The victory of the Chalcedonians was merely apparent, and did not last long. Within a very short time, a significant movement opposed to Chalcedon had arisen again, emerging first in Palestine. Nevertheless, by 478 the conflict between the antiChalcedonian monks and Martyrius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, had already been successfully resolved through a mutual agreement known as the Palestinian Henosis. It seems, though, that this agreement evaded the question of Chalcedon itself, focusing instead on the common theological foundations accepted by both camps in the form of the Nicene Creed. 23 This was hardly a novelty, but in this case the strategy did prove effective. Once agreement had been reached, peace reigned in Palestine. Thus, when the tensions between anti- and pro-Chalcedonians in the East flared up once again, Zeno had a precedent already in place to follow. The political situation at the beginning of the 480s compelled the Emperor to seek out extensive support – especially in Egypt, which, however, sided for the most part with the anti-Chalcedonian opposition. Backed by the Chalcedonians, Zeno had regained his throne from Basiliscus, but now, to preserve it, needed the help of their adversaries as well. The Emperor, quite reasonably, did not trust his magister militum, during the reign of Leo, in 472–3, Acacius was still engaged in seeking a validation of Canon 28 from Pope Simplicius. See Gelasius, Ep. ad. Episcopos Dardaniae, CA. 95. 22 Frend speaks of voices demanding an orthodox emperor after the usurpation of Basilicus Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement, 164–5. Zeno praised Pope Simplicius and Acacius for supporting him against the heresy. The Pope, in turn, treated Zeno as a defender of orthodoxy. See Felix, ep. ad Zenon aug. Simplicius also entertained deep trust for Acacius, making him Papal Representative in Constantinople. See Simplicius, Ep. ad Acacius in CA 57–58; Ep. ad Zeno aug. CA. 60. Cf. Philippe Blaudeau, “Vice mea: Remarques sur les représetations pontificales auprès de l’empereur d’orient dans la seconde moitié du Ve€ siècle (452–496),” MEFRA 113, no. 2 (2001): 1088–90, doi:10.1400/13520. For Acacius, this support was of great significance. Cf. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement, 172–73; Michael Redies, “Die Usurpation des Basiliskos (475–476) im Kontext der aufsteigenden monophysitischen Kirche,” AnTard 5 (1997): 217–18, doi:10.1484/J.AT.2.300972. 23 Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita Euthymii 43.

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Illus, who had initially supported Basiliscus against Zeno, but later switched sides, standing behind Zeno for a period during the time of the latter’s return, and also helping him to defeat the revolt of Marcian in 479. Yet, as he watched Illus gain the status of a second figurehead within the state, Zeno prepared himself for the inevitable confrontation. 24 Indeed, it was probably these tensions with Illus that caused him to be biased against John Talaia, who led the deputation sent to Constantinople by the Patriarch Timothy Salophakiolos in 481. The goal of the deputation was to ensure the future election of patriarchs by the Alexandrian council, as the Alexandrians feared a repeat of what had transpired in Antioch, where, in 479, Calandion had been installed on the see thanks to the decision of Constantinople’s Patriarch, Acacius. To be sure, the Emperor conceded to the deputation that the Alexandrians would be able to elect the next patriarch independently. Yet John Talaia had to declare under oath that he would not accept the title of patriarch were it to be offered to him. Thus, when, after the death of the Patriarch Timothy in 482, John was elected as his successor, the Emperor accused him of committing perjury and recognized Peter Mongus – one of the leaders of the anti-Chalcedonian opposition, previously condemned by Acacius – as Patriarch. However, Mongus was endorsed only on the condition that he would end the painful division within the Egyptian Church by receiving the Chalcedonians into community, and would sign an imperial edict establishing communion between the opposing camps. The imperial edict, known as the Henotikon [Act of Union], 25 was composed by Patriarch Acacius. Certainly, the goal of the edict was to reunite the antiChalcedonian opposition with Chalcedonians. However, by this time it was clear that any agreement built on a one-sided proposition would not be acceptable to either faction. Rather, the Palestinian Henosis seemed well suited to serving as a model for what was needed. 26 Just like the document from 479, the edict from 482 neither Eventually, the developing course of events proved Zeno’s concerns justified. In 484, Illus backed the unsuccessful rebellion of Leontius (484–488), which ended with their decapitations. On this development, see Joshua the Stylite, Chronicle 12–17, in Frank R. Trombley and John William Watt, The Chronicle of Pseudo-Joshua the Stylite, Translated Texts for Historians 32 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000); John of Antioch, fr. 214 in John of Antioch, Ioannis Antiocheni fragmenta quae supersunt omnia, 435. Cf. Hugh Elton, “Illus and the Imperial Aristocracy under Zeno,” Byzantion 70, no. 2 (2000). 25 The text of the Henotikon is preserved in Eduard Schwartz, Codex Vaticanus gr. 1431. Eine antichalkedonische Sammlung aus die Zeit Kaiser Zenos, Abhandlungen der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Philologische und Historische Klasse 32,6 (München: Oldenbourg, 1927), 52–4. Evagrius Scholasticus, HE III, 14; Pseudo-Zacharias HE V, 8; Liberatus 17.113–117. 26 Aloys Grillmeier rightly points out that the main difference between the Palestinian Henosis and the Henotikon lies in the fact that the Palestinian union was of a strictly ecclesias24

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explicitly rejected, nor made obligatory, acceptance of the Council of Chalcedon. As a matter of fact, the edict had very little to say about Chalcedon itself, invoking it only once. This reference, moreover, in effect made the acceptability of Chalcedon dependent on whether it conformed to the teaching of Nicaea or not. 27 Still, the edict seemed to uphold the Chalcedonian decrees that had condemned Nestorius and Eutyches, all the while implying that these were merely disciplinary canons. 28 The document refrained from mentioning any terms or formulae that would not be acceptable to both sides of the conflict, 29 but to say that the Henotikon merely sought to avoid addressing problematic issues, and relied in its claims exclusively on theological assertions such as constituted a common ground, would be a mistake. On the one hand, the edict’s emphasis on the unity of Christ was not just a nod towards the anti-Chalcedonian faction. The edict explicitly validated the teaching on the unity of Christ found in Cyril’s Twelve Chapters – a work that the Council of Chalcedon had preferred to ignore. On the other hand, the edict accentuated the twofold consubstantiality of Christ through a formula that described the Lord Jesus Christ as “consubstantial with the Father in divinity and the same consubstantial with us in humanity.” This formula had been developed by Cyril in the letter Laetentur caeli, addressed to John of Antioch. Even so, the opponents of Chalcedon were perfectly tical nature, whereas the edict issued in Constantinople was merely an instrument of the imperial Church. See Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, Vol. 2, pt. 1, 251. 27 Besides the Council of Nicaea, the document also recognized the Councils of Constantinople (381) and Ephesus (431). 28 Evagrius Scholasticus, HE III.14.13: “We anathematize anyone who has thought, or thinks, any other opinion, either now or at any time, whether at Chalcedon or at any Synod whatsoever, and especially the aforesaid Nestorius and Eutyches and those who hold their opinions.” Cf. Pseudo–Zacharias Rhetor, HE V.8. Price claims that the mention of “anyone who has thought… any other opinion,” and of those “who hold their opinions [i.e., of Nestorius and Eutyches]” “at Chalcedon,” refers to the minority of bishops who were accused of Nestorianism there: i.e., Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Ibas of Edessa. Therefore, the antiChalcedonian interpretation, according to which the meaning of this remark amounted to a condemnation of Chalcedon, would be a misreading of Zeno’s intention. See Price, Acts of the Council of Constantinople II, 1: 16–17. However, given that the Council had itself restored these two, condemning them was in fact tantamount to a rejection of Chalcedon. Hence, regardless of what Zeno and Acacius intended, such a reading was possible. 29 Cyril’s expression “one incarnate nature of God the Word” was not used there. Neither were such formulas as “knowable in two natures,” or “one hypostasis / person in two natures,” addressed. One may point out that the formula “the one shines through miracles, the other is subject to abuse,” from Leo’s Tome, was commented on most critically and rejected in the edict (“For we declare to be of one being both the miracles and the sufferings which He endured voluntarily in the flesh…”). However, this particular formula was not included in Chalcedon’s Horos .

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happy to ignore it. It had also been employed in the Formula of Reunion (433), appearing subsequently in Chalcedon’s Horos. It appears, thus, that the Henotikon attempted to reunite the two sides by asserting the entirety of the Christological teachings of Cyril, to whose authority both camps appealed with equal insistence. The edict of Acacius and Zeno, then, was hardly anti-Chalcedonian in its stance, even if the antiChalcedonian party did try to read it that way. 30 To be sure, once Mongus had accepted the conditions imposed on him, communion between Alexandria and Constantinople seemed to have been achieved. The Henotikon was signed by all of the Eastern patriarchs, and peace in the Eastern Churches nominally restored. The edict itself was contested by the radical antiChalcedonians, but there is no evidence to support the widely held view that a repudiation of the Henotikon occurred amongst the pro-Chalcedonians. It is worth noting that the edict itself was not opposed, even by Rome. And yet, neither Rome nor the pro-Chalcedonian Patriarch of Antioch, Calandion, could bring themselves to accept communion with Peter Mongus, who was widely known for his vehement resistance to Chalcedon, and who was condemned not only by the Pope, but by Acacius as well. Communion with an illegally consecrated heretic was considered simply out of the question. The Antiochean opposition led by Calandion was swiftly neutralized. Calandion himself was deposed and his name erased from the diptychs after the failure of Illus’ rebellion against Emperor Zeno, in which the Patriarch had been involved. Peter the Fuller was elected to the see of Antioch, and agreed to sign the edict and enter into communion with the Chalcedonian bishops. The result was that, by 485, at least apparent unity had been achieved in the East. Rome, however, broke off communion with Constantinople, initiating the so-called Acacian schism, which would continue for 35 years. Constantinople certainly would have regretted the loss of communion with Rome, but the need for peace and unity between the Eastern bishops was deemed of greater importance then. It became imperial policy to require bishops to comply with the Henotikon, and this lasted until the end of the reign of Zeno’s successor, Anastasius (491–518). 31 Nonetheless, when it came to actually achieving its intended goal, the effectiveness of the Henotikon turned out to be miserably limited. In Egypt, the antiChalcedonian position gained in strength. Thanks to the radical anti-Chalcedonians, in 487 Peter Mongus decided to condemn both Leo’s Tomus and Chalcedon. His successor, Athanasios I, though initially seemingly more oriented towards comproSee Price, Acts of the Council of Constantinople II, 1: 2–3; vs. the traditional view of Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, Vol. 2, pt. 1, 254–6. Some radical anti-Chalcedonians even considered the Henotikon a crypto-Chalcedonian document. See Kosiński, The Emperor Zeno; Kosiński, “Peter the Fuller,” 68–7. 31 The fact that Acacius had himself previously condemned Mongus was brought up by Rome constantly. 30

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mise, proved over time even more radical. At the same time, the situation in Constantinople became highly complicated. Its Patriarch, Euphemios, known as a passionate advocate of Chalcedon, was not particularly fond of the candidate for the vacant emperor’s throne, Anastasius, who had been suspected of espousing manifold heretical beliefs. Yet Euphemios accepted his written pledge and solemn oath not to act against the faith or the Church. (Later, the Emperor went to great lengths to retrieve this document, eventually expropriating it by force.) Moreover, in 491– 492 the Patriarch sought to ensure the constancy of the imperial Church’s policy of support for Chalcedon by summoning two synods that confirmed and validated its decrees. To be sure, at the beginning Anastasius maintained the status quo instituted by Zeno. But Euphemios’ attempts to strengthen the pro-Chalcedonian stance, and also his unsuccessful attempt to re-institute communion with Rome, further aggravated the opposition against him fuelled by Athanasios I of Alexandria. Emperor Anastasius considered the province of Egypt to be of the highest strategic importance, for it was the source of essential supplies for the capital and, owing to its geographic location, it was the only hub of local power through which the Empire could exert meaningful influence over the Eastern provinces. Anastasius was by no means set on resisting a reunion with Rome or Euphemios’ efforts as a matter of principle. He was ready to consent to it, but on the terms of the Henotikon rather than by pledging allegiance to Chalcedon, as that would inevitably alienate the East. His Church policy had to comply with his primary political goals. Considering that Euphemios had openly expressed disapproval of the Emperor, and that the Emperor viewed the Patriarch’s loyalty with distrust, associating him with the Isaurian rebellion, Anastasius’ decision to uphold the anti-Chalcedonian endeavors of Patriarch Athanasios of Alexandria amounted to a fairly straightforward and reasonable choice. Euphemios’ feud with the Emperor and Athanasios, whom he tried to depose, brought on two assassination attempts against him, and led, eventually, to his being accused of Nestorianism by Athanasios and Sallustius of Jerusalem, and his dethronement in 496. His successor, Macedonius, promptly signed the Henotikon, yet that did not prevent him from being a persistent supporter of Chalcedon, in spite of the Emperor’s ceaseless anti-Chalcedonian maneuvers. 32 See also Jitse Dijkstra and Geoffrey Greatrex, “Patriarchs and Politics in Constantinople in the Reign of Anastasius (with a Reedition of O.Mon.Epiph. 59),” Millennium 6 (2009): 227–30, doi:10.1515/9783110208887.223; Mischa Meier, Anastasios I. Die Entstehung des Byzantinischen Reiches (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2009), 89, 106–9; Charanis, Church and State, 54–6. Patriarch Euphemios is a tragic figure, undeservedly overlooked in Church historiography. His fidelity and dedication to the cause of the Council of Chalcedon deserve special attention. At the same time, what is really quite puzzling about his particular history is the fact that not one of his attempts to restore communion with Rome received the latter’s support. For more on Euphemios, see Kosiński, “Euphemios.” 32

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At the same time, during Anastasius’ reign Alexandria enjoyed a period of ecclesiastical stability. Peter Mongus and his successors – Athanasius II (490–496), John II (496–505), John III Nicotes (506–515), and Dioscurus II (515–518) – all loyally and consistently maintained the anti-Chalcedonian policy. Although the Henotikon was not revoked, it was given quite a radical interpretation which, in effect, amounted to a condemnation of the Council of Chalcedon. This made it possible for the Emperor’s ecclesiastical policy in Egypt to be one of non-interference in ecclesiastical affairs, the outcome of which was religious peace and order in the region. Meanwhile, the Patriarchate of Antioch’s stance regarding the Council of Chalcedon was undergoing a shift. Even as successive Patriarchs affirmed the Henotikon, a limited pro-Chalcedonian tendency was emerging. Patriarch Palladius (490–98) firmly stood by Athanasios of Alexandria and against Euphemios, and anathematized the Council of Chalcedon, but his successor, Flavian II (498–512), in spite of having endorsed the Henotikon, refused to condemn the Chalcedon and broke off communion with Alexandria. This moderate position caused great irritation to the radical anti-Chalcedonians, whose leader Philoxenus tried, without success, to persuade the Emperor to depose Flavian. At that point the Emperor was still inclined to follow a policy founded on the Henotikon. However, because of the outbreak of war with Persia in 502, the situation in Syria changed dramatically within a very short span of time. The Church in Persia exhibited a distinctly Nestorian leaning. The introduction of the Henotikon had separated it from its closest neighbor, the Church in Syria, and spurred on the process of its self-definition. Its creed came to be defined by its professing a belief in the union of two natures that remained unchanged as to their features, free of any confusion or blending, and united only in the oneness of majesty and adoration. This Church, with its Nestorian orientation, enjoyed the support of the Persian state. After war broke out a great number of anti-Chalcedonian monks fled from Persia to Syria. By the end of the war in 505, those refugees constituted the main anti-Persian element in the province, and Anastasius needed their support. In such circumstances, supporting a dyophysite doctrine would have been tantamount to assisting the enemy of the Byzantine state. The Emperor was compelled to give his support to the anti-Chalcedonian faction in Syria. Although Flavian once again endorsed the Henotikon and condemned Nestorius and his teachings, this was not enough to save him. Philoxenus called for an unequivocal condemnation of Diodore, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and Ibas of Edessa. Such a demand amounted, in point of fact, to a rejection of the Chalcedon Council, which had rehabilitated Theodoret and Ibas. The Patriarch Flavian had no intention of going that far, and was consequently deposed in 512.

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The path pursued by the Patriarchate of Jerusalem at this time was quite different, however. Ever since the Palestinian Henosis, the atmosphere there had been quite different from in other provinces. Both sides in the conflict had adopted a relatively tolerant attitude towards each other. 33 The following successors of Martyrius with respect to the see of Jerusalem – i.e. Salustios (486–494), Elias (494–516), and John (516–524) – manifested a pro-Chalcedonian approach in their politics. The pro-Chalcedonian faction amongst the Palestinian monks under the administration of St. Sabas grew in strength, becoming more widespread. Thus, when the radical anti-Chalcedonian Severus tried to give an interpretation of the Henotikon that rejected Chalcedon, he met with strong resistance. As a result, Severus was forced to seek refuge in Constantinople (509), where he was most active in advocating opposition to both Chalcedon and its supporters. In the context of the polemics involving Severus, a new and controversial figure came to prominence: the Palestinian monk Nephalius. The latter is known to us for, amongst other things, his Apology for Chalcedon, and it is in him that we may see the origins of a movement known by the name of neo-Chalcedonism. 34 At the same time, in Constantinople the strength of the anti-Chalcedonian lobby was growing noticeably, having found support in the activities of Philoxenus and Severus. In 510 Severus produced the Typos – an interpretation of the Henotikon that anathematized the Tome of Leo and two-natures Christology. Without rejecting Chalcedon explicitly, it condemned, in point of fact, its theology. 35 This made it impossible to read the Chalcedon in a minimalistic way, focusing only on its censure of Nestorius and Eutyches. Although the Typos was not promulgated by the Emperor, it was disseminated by the imperial authorities. Ironically, this turned the Henotikon, which had not insisted on a rejection of the Council, into an instrument employed by Chalcedonians to defend their stance. 36 The anti-Chalcedonian lobby, led by Philoxenus and Severus and supported by imperial power, targeted Flavian of AntiSee note 25. Zacharias Rhetor, Vita Severi 100–4; John of Beth Aphtonia, Vita Severi 231–3. 35 The text of the Typos was not preserved. Alois Grillmayer, Christ in Christian Tradition, Vol. 2, pt. 1, 275–76, replaces it, for the purposes of his analysis, with a text discovered by J. Lebon “Les citations patristiques grecques du ‘Sceau de la Foi,’” RHE 25 (1929), which his student Charles Moeller, in Un fragment du Type de l’empereur Anastase I (Berlin: AkademieVerlag, 1961), 242, identified as a part of a formula of faith sent by Anastasius to the Armenian Church. A strong formulation can be found in this text: “anathematizamus synodum Chalcedonis cum ipsa etiam Leonem et Tomum eius.” However, the authenticity of this text is doubtful and, therefore, it can hardly be used as a basis for reconstructing the Typos. In particular, such a strong and direct condemnation of the Chalcedon appears incompatible with the broad lines of Anastasius’ ecclesiastical policy. See Gray, The Defense of Chalcedon, 39–40. 36 It is worth noting that the Typos was sent to Elias, the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Yet the latter only agreed to a condemnation of Nestorius and Eutyches. 33 34

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och and Macedonius of Alexandria, both of whom were still resisting any condemnation of Chalcedon. Emperor Anastasius was compelled to toughen his antiChalcedonian policy, but whereas, previously, he had been unable to take action against the Patriarch, on account of the latter’s popularity, by 512 he could already depose Macedonius. In the same year that the Patriarch of Antioch, Flavian II, was removed from his see, so was Macedonius. In his place was installed a moderate anti-Chalcedonian, Timothy, while the radical Severus was appointed to the see of Antioch. For a short while, it seemed as if the Emperor had actually succeeded in stifling the Chalcedonian opposition. In spite of all the Emperor’s efforts, however, the resolve of the proChalcedonian resistance simply stiffened. Already, in 512, when Anastasius had ordered that a miaphysite clause be inserted into the Trisagion hymn, this addition, which ascribed the suffering on the cross explicitly to the second hypostasis of the Trinity, triggered violent riots in the capital. 37 In the period of just two years, he was obliged to face several instances of highly problematic fallout stemming from his ecclesiastical politics. Unable to repress the revolt of the general Vitalian (514), Anastasius, to save his throne, had to accede to Vitalian’s terms, which included restraining his anti-Chalcedonian policies and engaging in negotiations with Rome. 38 No less fervent was resistance in Palestine. 39 Troops sent to Elias, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, to deliver the order to recognize Severus as the Patriarch of Antioch, failed to break through the crowd of pro-Chalcedonian monks led by St. Sabas, who himself came out to protect the Patriarch. Even though Elias’ successor, John, pledged to recognize Severus, he himself eventually had no alternative but to anathematize the latter, along with anyone who rejected Chalcedonian teaching. In Jerusalem, as Patrick Gray points out, the real power responsible for determining Church policy was not the patriarch, but the dominant monastery. The monastic pro-Chalcedonian opposition, led by the archimandrite Theodosius and St. Sabas, was extremely Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, 97–8; Malalas, Chronographia, 406–7. In the preliminary negotiations started by Anastasius, Pope Hormidas laid down such conditions as removing the names of Dioscorus, Timothy Aelurus, Peter Mongus, Peter Fuller and Acacius from the diptychs, and pledging support for Chalcedon. But satisfying these demands would have spelled ruin for the entire ecclesiastical policy developed by the Emperor with the aim of consolidating the place of the Eastern provinces within the Empire. A drastic reversal of his policy could well have worked against him, causing a rebellion in Syria and Egypt and, possibly, even in Constantinople, which itself would not have forgiven him for offending the memory of Acacius. It is not surprising, then, that the negotiations with Rome came to nothing. 39 An interesting account of why support for Chalcedonian teaching in Palestine expanded systematically is offered by Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement, 151–3. 37 38

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strong. Hence, the Emperor decided to give up on tempting any further interference. 40 It possible to say that during the last years of his reign (512–518), Anastasius did not change his policy, but rather just attempted to carry it out in a more restrained way. Like his predecessor, Zeno, he prioritized the unity of the Empire, which required that a consensus be maintained with anti-Chalcedonian Alexandria and Antioch. Nevertheless, he preferred coming to some sort of an arrangement with the pro-Chalcedonians to having to suppress them. The Henotikon, which during his reign remained the banner of the imperial ecclesiastical policy, precluded, on the one hand, an absolute victory for either side in the ecclesiastical conflict. Not only did it enable the status quo of the Chalcedonians to be preserved, it even allowed them to occupy two major sees: Constantinople and Jerusalem. On the other hand, as Evagrius put it, it was nothing more than a cloak under which anti- and proChalcedonian factions could keep on fighting each other. Hence, Anastasius’ ecclesiastical engagements, rather than fostering unity, engendered a further radicalization of these two rival groups within the Church, and it is not at all surprising that the next dynasty undertook a radical turn with respect to Church policy. Immediately after assuming the throne, the new emperor, Justin I (518–527), returned to the policy of enforcing Chalcedon. Many of the studies seeking to explain such an abrupt shift stress the role of his personal religious beliefs and origins, and the influence of his nephew Justinian. At the same time, it is surely worth pointing out here that Justin’s religious beliefs are mainly known to us from his own actions, and that clearly the choices made, first by him and subsequently by his nephew Justinian, were also determined by the tangible realities of the era. Firstly, Justin not only belonged to the pro-Chalcedonian faction, but also had gained the throne largely thanks to their support. No one less than Vitalian, the powerful proChalcedonian leader of the revolt against Anastasius in 514 who had forced the former emperor to engage in dialogue with Rome, had sided with Justin. Secondly, the previous imperial policy, which had aimed to reunite pro- and antiChalcedonians, albeit while favoring adversaries of the Council, had proved highly unsuccessful. And thirdly, by that time the imperial City was itself predominantly pro-Chalcedonian. Quite simply, the newly elected Emperor could not possibly go against the wishes of the people who had put him on the throne. Only a few days after the proclamation of Justin I as Emperor, on 15th and 16th July 518, “the synaxis of the Council of Chalcedon” was celebrated at St. Sophia, followed on the 20th of that same month by a domestic synod. The latter’s decision, in accordance with what the people of Constantinople had been demanding, meant that the four Councils were endorsed, the names of Chalcedon’s defenders (the Patriarchs Euphemius and Macedonius, together with Pope Leo) were restored to the 40

Cyril of Scythopolis, Life of Sabas 52–7. Cf. Gray, The Defense of Chalcedon, 43.

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diptychs, the banished supporters of the two Patriarchs were reinstated, Severus of Antioch (who by this time had become the figurehead of the anti-Chalcedonian resistance) was deposed, anathematized and banished to Egypt, and July 16th set as the official date for the feast of Chalcedon. After the synod, an imperial edict was promptly produced, ordering all bishops to adhere to the Chalcedonian confession of the faith. Such actions, without a doubt, entailed a complete rejection of the Henotikon policy, and so also the restoration of communion with Rome. Without any further delay, even at the beginning of August, Emperor Justin was engaged in initiating negotiations with Rome that were to prove successful. Early on in 519, papal legates brought to Constantinople, among other documents, the libellus of Pope Hormisdas. As previously, the Pope rejected any compromise, and demanded unconditional submission to the libellus from the Patriarch of Constantinople – and, subsequently, from all bishops of the Empire. Among the Pope’s requests there remained one that was highly controversial: that all names of those who have been separated from the communion of the Catholic Church – that is, who disagree with the apostolic see be removed from the diptychs. 41 The request pertained not only to Acacius, but also to his successors during the period of schism, Euphemius and Macedonius, who had defended both Chalcedon and reunion with Rome, and whose names had only recently been restored. This particular demand stirred strong opposition in the East. In spite of the Emperor’s attempts to obtain Hormisdas’ consent to limiting this provision just to Accacius, the Pope remained adamant, and Justin was forced to accept the libellus in its entirety. Justin viewed the Empire as incomplete without unity between Old and New Rome, so bringing Constantinople into a communion of faith with Rome was, for him, doubtlessly a priority. 42 Communion with Rome was restored after thirty-five years, on Easter Sunday of 519. However, this reunion with just the see of Constantinople did not satisfy Rome. Pope Hormisdas expected compliance with Rome, and with Chalcedonian teaching, from the sees of Alexandria and Antioch. Therefore, in a letter to Justin, See Liebellus Hormisdae, CA 116b in comparison to CA 145; 148. Frend, however, suggests that accepting Hormisdas’ libellus was neither degrading for the see of Constantinople, nor tantamount to real submission on the part of the Emperor. As Patriarch of Constantinople, John, in his subsequent libellus, accepted that Old Rome, the see of St Peter, and New Rome, the imperial city, were one. In other words, the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Pope were equals (CA 159). As for the Emperor, Justin intended nothing more than a return to the status quo ante Acacium, and a bringing back of Rome to the unity of Christendom. For Justin’s nephew Justinian, who supported his uncle in those initiatives, it actually meant that the Pope could be ordered to appear at the capital on demand. See Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement, 236–8. Also worth noting are the suggestions of Frend concerning the possible role of Pope Gelasius in the victory of the papacy in 519 and in the decision of Justin. See Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement, 196–7. 41 42

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he suggested conducting a correctio of those errant Churches. In accordance with this proposal, the Emperor, supported by Vitalian, initiated a purge of antiChalcedonians in Syria. Within the Church of Egypt, which was predominantly antiChalcedonian and, in comparison to Syria, internally undivided, the new policy went unexecuted. 43 In any case, the policy of suppression, adopted after years during which the anti-Chalcedonian cause strengthened in the Eastern provinces, could hardly be considered effective. New “martyrs” of anti-Chalcedonian orthodoxy only encouraged further resistance. In consequence of the Chalcedonian restoration having been imposed on the Empire, its adversaries were forced to flee, either to communities outside of its borders, or to regions in which the policy was not being put into effect. But they were not won over. In less than two years, 44 Justin had to restrain his policy with regard to the anti-Chalcedonians, even as he was officially engaged in declaring a pro-Chalcedonian stance and preserving unity with Rome. Justin’s successor, his nephew and former advisor Justinian, is often referred to as “the last Roman emperor” and “the first Byzantine basileus.” Schmemann, however, has with good reason called him “the first ideologist of the Christian Empire, who brought the union of Constantine to its logical conclusion.” 45 Aspiring to restore glory to the Roman Empire in line with the ideal of a single Christian imperium, as established by Constantine the Great, Justinian portrayed himself on the one hand as the guardian of ancient tradition and on the other as the supreme custodian of the Church. 46 Restoration of the Roman Empire in the form of Christendom implied, for Justinian, accomplishing the following objectives: regaining and reintegrating the lost Latin-speaking Western provinces, codifying Roman law in a way that would impose unity and order upon the renewed Empire, and a genuine reunification of the Church itself, which had been torn apart by the quarrels over Chalcedon. Justinian, beyond any doubt, succeeded in attaining the second objective. At his command, the Corpus Juris Civilis was composed, containing three works: the Codex Justinianus, the Institutes, and the Digest. The Codex, promulgated in 529, permaEven when exiled to Alexandria, Severus was able to act freely, ruling over the Church of Antioch from there. See Severus, Ep. 57, cf. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement, 252. For possible reasons for this anomalous state of affairs, see Lucas Van Rompay, “Society and Community in the Christian East,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, ed. Michael Maas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 241. 44 The assassination, in 520, of Vitalian, who had strongly encouraged and supported an oppressive campaign against the anti-Chalcedonians, may have made it a great deal easier for Justin to alter his Church policy. 45 Alexander Schmemann, The Historical Road of EasternOrthodoxy, trans. Lydia W. Kesich (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003). 46 Justinian was most explicit in professing his opinion on matters pertaining to the State, the Church, and the role of the Emperor in both of these domains. See, especially, his Novella 6.35–6. Cf. Meyendorff, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions, 207–11. 43

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nently established the three pillars of Roman law. In other respects, Justinian achieved only temporary or cosmetic success at best. Justinian’s ecclesiastical policy was determined by the necessity of finding a way to bring the divided factions into genuine unity. Therefore his tactics were quite pragmatic: on the one hand, he continued to support Chalcedon and maintain relations with Rome (especially while waging wars with the aim of reintegrating the West into the Empire), while on the other, despite official condemnation, he continued to search for reconciliation with the anti-Chalcedonians. 47 Still prior to the consensus with Rome having been achieved, there took place, in 518, an event of ostensibly less importance, often referred to as “the affair of the Scythian monks.” It was on that occasion, and long before being named coEmperor, that Justinian entered the arena of ecclesiastical politics. A group of Scythian monks, backed by Vitalian, was given the opportunity of presenting, at the court in Constantinople, their proposal that the proper elucidation of Chalcedon required the introduction of the theopaschite formula to the effect that “one of the Trinity was crucified.” This would then place the Chalcedonian teaching firmly in the domain of Cyrilian Christology, and prevent any Nestorian readings. The initiative of the Scythian monks met with sharp rejection. They then had to take their chances in Rome, where they also failed to gain support for their cause, and were expelled. However, their doctrine did have a profound effect on Justinian. At first, he was probably apprehensive about endangering the union with Rome, since immediately after the meeting he sent a letter to Hormisdas, denouncing the Scythian proposal. Yet, in a letter sent to the Pope only a few days later, he supported it wholeheartedly, arguing that it was absolutely essential to “the peace of the Church” (pax sanctarum ecclesiarum). It seems that Justinian realized that the theopaschite formula could, after all, bring about true peace between the pro- and anti-Chalcedonian factions. In 527, four months before his death, Justin promoted his nephew to the position of co-Emperor. Shortly afterwards, the two augusti, Justin and Justinian, together issued the edict De haereticis. 48 The measures it prescribed were supposed to address the sense of disappointment connected with the unsatisfactory consequences of the deliberately lenient application of Justin’s anti-Chalcedonian policies from 520 on. The period of grace was over: heretics were now to be deprived of their properEven his extraordinary marriage in 525 to Theodora, who, apart from having been a prostitute and an actress who had performed at the Hippodrome, belonged to the antiChalcedonians, perfectly served his double-track policy (cf. extremely biased and misogynistic interpretation of Justinian’s and Theodora’s alliance by Procopius, Secret History, 9–10). He could exploit the difference of confession with his marital partner as a pretext for engaging in parallel diplomacy with the anti-Chalcedonians, without being accused of disloyalty to the Chalcedonian cause. Theodora, however, was by no means a mere instrument of his, and remained Justinian’s true companion and close advisor until her death in 548. 48 Codex Justinianus 1.5.12. 47

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ty, deposed from public office, and forbidden to teach. Yet, just as previously, this harsh policy was carried out quite selectively. Predominantly anti-Chalcedonian Egypt was left in peace, while in Syria, the newly appointed Patriarch Ephrem of Amid (526–544) put it enthusiastically and vigorously into effect. Ephrem’s persecution of the anti-Chalcedonians was mainly aimed at preventing the emergence of the alternative anti-Chalcedonian hierarchy that John of Tella had begun developing in the mid-twenties. 49 Nonetheless, such anti-heretical actions were by no means the defining feature of Justinian’s ecclesiastical policy. They were a mere instrument for thwarting further division within the Church. Even as he sanctioned policies towards heretics that were oppressive, Justinian was making moves in the direction of reconciliation with the anti-Chalcedonians. For Justinian, the earlier portion of the next decade was marked by military success. In 532, the so-called “Eternal Peace” was agreed on with Persia, concluding the Iberian War. In 534, Africa was conquered in a campaign led by Belisarius. It is probable, then, that Justinian came to feel confident and free from any immediately pressing political worries. Already in 532, he had called an informal meeting between the pro-Chalcedonian bishops and several anti-Chalcedonian bishops from Syria. The negotiations were focused on finding theological solutions that would meet the objections raised by the anti-Chalcedonians, and this dialogue was not entirely fruitless. The anti-Chalcedonians accepted that the Council had some merits, agreeing with the pro-Chalcedonian point that it had stopped the development and dissemination of Eutyches’ heresy, while the anti-Chalcedonians exonerated Dioscurus from the accusation of having partaken in Eutyches’ opinions. Still, the negotiations did not achieve much more, except for having clearly delineated the fundamental points of disagreement. Justinian was not, apparently, foiled by this obvious failure, and brought forward a pragmatic proposal that consisted in (i) adopting a minimalist interpretation of the Chalcedon as a rejection of Eutyches and Nestorius, (ii) condemning Theodoret, Ibas, and Theodore of Mopsuestia, and (iii) accepting the one-nature and two-nature formulae as equally legitimate. 50 Even when the antiChalcedonians promptly discarded his proposal, Justinian continued his quest for doctrinal consensus. As of 533, he had already instituted two decrees concerning faith. In the first edict, the Chalcedonian teaching was elucidated through Leontius Byzantinus’ conception of “union according to hypostasis,” while the second emCf. Van Rompay, “Society and Community,” 244–5. See Gray, “The Legacy of Chalcedon,” 245. See the account of this event given by John of Beit-Aphtona in Sebastian P. Brock, “The Conversations with the Syrian Orthodox under Justinian (532),” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 47 (1981). Reprinted in in Sebastian P. Brock, Studies in Syriac Christianity: History, Literature, and Theology (Collected Studies Series 357, Aldershot: Ashgate / Variorum, 1992) ch. XIII, statement of anti-Chalcedonians, in Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement, 362–6, and pro–Chalcedonian report in Innocentius of Maronea, Ep. ad Thomam, ACO IV.2.169–184. 49 50

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ployed, for the same purposes, the formula previously proposed unsuccessfully by the Scythian monks – i.e. “one of the Trinity was crucified.” This time, Justinian’s initiative met with approval from the new Pope, John II. 51 In 535, against the will of the people of Alexandria and helped by imperial troops, an anti-Chalcedonian follower of Severus, Theodosius, seized the patriarch’s see. Meanwhile, the already legendary leader of the anti-Chalcedonians, Severus himself, came to Constantinople from his exile in Alexandria, encouraged by the Emperor’s invitation. His presence, and his relationship with Anthimus, the Patriarch of Constantinople, helped the anti-Chalcedonian cause in the capital. However, in that very same year, Justinian’s ambition to reunite the Western provinces with the Empire once again brought about a shift in his ecclesiastical policy. Taking advantage of the dynastic struggles going on in Ostrogothic Italy, the Emperor engaged in the first phase of the Ghotic War (535–540). Having arrived in Constantinople in 536 as a refugee, Pope Agapetus used all of his power and influence to strengthen the pro-Chalcedonian position. He was able to secure the election of Menas in place of Anthimus in Constantinople, and to safeguard the position of the pro-Chalcedonian Ephrem as the head of the Antiochean Church, thereby preventing Severus’ return. A synod held in that very same year on the explicit instructions of the Emperor in Constantinople and Jerusalem condemned the anti-Chalcedonian leaders, marking the end of the attempts at reconciliation with their party, at least at this particular historical moment. 52 What is more, the first pro-Chalcedonian in a long period of time, Paul of Tabennisi, was installed on the Alexandrian see in place of the deposed Theodosius. In the following year, the two most influential figures in the conflict, Severus and John Tella, both died. For a moment, the whole of the Eastern Church was in communion with Rome and the victory of the proChalcedonians could well seem to have been achieved. However, it would also appear that executing a real crackdown on the antiChalcedonian opposition was no part of Justinian’s plan, and that he still believed in the possibility of genuine reconciliation between the hostile factions. Even as the repression was unfolding, his wife, Theodora, engaged in the pursuit of diplomatic relations with the anti-Chalcedonians on his behalf. The deposed Patriarch of Alexandria was allowed to reside in Constantinople and to lead the anti-Chalcedonian movement. The Emperor tolerated the development of an independent antiChalcedonian hierarchy, a process that had been initiated by John Tella and vigorously continued by Theodosius of Alexandria, Jacob Baradaeus and Theodore of Hirtha. In this way, the foundations for a separate miaphysite Church inadvertently Codex Justinianus I.I.6–8. The imperial constitution of Aug. 6.536. See Fergus Millar, “Rome, Constantinople, and the Near Eastern Church under Justinian: Two Synods of C.E. 536,” JRS 98 (2008), doi:10.2307/20430666. 51 52

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came to be laid, the latter emerging already in a context where the proChalcedonians, in spite of strong imperial support, were being steadily reduced to a mere Byzantine enclave surrounded by a Coptic majority. 53 At the beginning of the 540s, the fortunes of the entire Empire altered and its life was shattered by a series of calamities, ranging from military losses in the wars rekindled against the Sassanid Empire (540–562) and the Goths (541–554) to the outbreak of Bubonic Plague (542). Faced with the urgency of hostilities resumed by Persia, and with the pressure of distressing events like the siege of Antioch in 540, the Emperor was compelled to respect the religious predilections of the majority of his subjects in Syria. In these circumstances, achieving real and stable unity with the anti-Chalcedonians was not just a religious or ideological aspiration, but a political necessity as well. If one takes into account the notorious penchant for Nestorian ideas exhibited by the Church in Persia, supported by an enemy that first and foremost threatened Syria, one should not be astonished by Justinian’s next apparent “reversal” in ecclesiastical policy, which could be more than adequately justified just with reference to the political realities of the moment. In the mid-540s, Justinian decided to exculpate the Chalcedon Council from accusations of Nestorianism ostensibly justified by its vindication of Theodoret and Ibas. Around 544–5, he issued an edict against the so-called Three Chapters (“Τρία Κεφάλαια”, meaning both “three heads” and “three chapters”): i.e. against (i) the person and works of Theodore of Mopsuestia, (ii) Theodoret of Cyrrhus’ antiCyrilian writings, and (iii) Ibas of Edessa’s Letter to Mari the Persian, with all three condemned for having participated in the Nestorian heresy. 54 From the very beginAnna Maria Demicheli, “La politica religiosa di Giustiniano in Egitto: Riflessi sulla chiesa egiziana della legislazione ecclesiastica giustinianea,” AEG 63, no. 1/2 (1983): 239, doi:10.2307/41217004. Van Rompay, “Society and Community,” 248–51. Edward R. Hardy, “The Egyptian Policy of Justinian,” DOP 22 (1968): 31–2. 54 The text of the edict is lost, but can be reconstructed on the basis of fragments found mainly in Facundus, Pro defensione trium capitulorum IV. 3, that outline the criticism of the edict in the West. The condemnation of Three Chapters happened to take place during the last phase of the Origenist controversy in the sixth century, which ended with a definite condemnation of Origenism. The main theological advisor to Justinian during the period from 536 to 553 was a monk from New Laura, Theodore Askidas, presumed to be, at the very least, a supporter of the Palestinian Origenists. It would appear largely on this account that Libertatus’ claim that the condemnation was triggered by the Origenist controversy (see Libertatus 24. 140–1) has been adopted in recent historiography. For instance, Frend claims that Askidas attempted to condemn Theodore of Mopsuestia because of his strong criticism of Origen. See Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement, 279–80. It seems, however, that the connection between the Origenist controversy and Three Chapters was actually of a rather incidental character. The controversy itself was very much an internal problem for the local Palestinian Church, with no direct connection to the quarrels over Chalcedon. As underlined 53

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ning of the conflict, the rehabilitation of Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Ibas of Edessa, proclaimed by Chalcedon, had been seen by its critics as a betrayal of the First Council of Ephesus and a deviation from Cyril’s teaching. Thus, the condemnation of those three Nestorians could well have counted as a meaningful step en route to reconciliation with the anti-Chalcedonian faction. The patriarchs and bishops of the East signed the edict without much enthusiasm, and with some qualifications. In contrast, the West reacted fiercely, seeing in the edict a direct attack on Chalcedon. Latin theologians reckoned that condemnation of those absolved by Chalcedon amounted to a repudiation of the Council itself, or at least implied a re-evaluation of its decrees. 55 Defying Justinian’s expectations, Pope Vigilius did not resist the powerful Western opposition, and refused to subscribe to the edict. In response, Justinian summoned the Pope to Constantinople in 547. Vigilius, after being exposed to imperial pressure, declared in a secret letter to Justinian and Theodora that he personally condemned the Three Chapters, but was reluctant to do it publicly. The following year, Vigilius was coerced into releasing Judicatum, in which he officially anathematized the Three Chapters, even while underlining the fact that all four Councils retained their everlasting validity, and that the personal vindications or condemnations proclaimed at these Councils remained in force. 56 Nonetheless, Judicatum by Grey, Origenist Christology was essentially dyophysite, being so to an even greater degree than its Antiochean counterpart, albeit in a different sense. Origenism was primarily shaped in the sixth century by Evagrius, for whom Christ was an intelligible soul – the only one not to have fallen from unity with God into the sensible realm, and one that had become incarnate only to show other souls the way back to unity with God, which could be achieved through contemplation and asceticism. It is, moreover, only in the light of Evagrius’ teaching that the position of the Origenists monks known as isochristoi (equals with Christ) can be properly elucidated: they held that in apocatastasis all souls would became equal to the soul of Christ thanks to their having escaped from the material realm – something to be brought about via spiritual and ascetic practices directed at “dematerialization”. See Cyril of Scythopolis, Vita Sabae 192–9. Even so, at the beginning of the 540s, when the problem was raised by the papal apocrisiary Pelagius, who was competing with Theodore Askidas for Justinian’s graces, the Emperor issued a letter condemning Origenism (543). The issue was addressed by Justinian again in his letter to the Council in 553, and by the Council itself in its fifteen anathemas against Origenism. Even if one does accept that the idea of condemning the Three Chapters originated with such purported Origenists as Askidas, it is neither the case that the actual issue relating to the Three Chapters came from them, nor true that they were in any way particularly supportive of elucidating Chalcedon in anti-Nestorian terms. The latter was proposed by the Scythian monks, and expanded in the edict. Concerning the relationship between the Origenist controversy and the Three Chapters, see Gray, The Defense of Chalcedon, 63–5; Price, Acts of the Council of Constantinople II, 1: 16–20, 2: 272–4. 55 See Fulgentius Ferrandus, Letter 6 in The Acts of Constantinople II, 1: 112–21. 56 See Constitutum I, 300 in The Acts of Constantinople II, 2: 210.

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aroused immense opposition in Rome and North Africa and, therefore, was withdrawn on Vigilius’ request. The Pope and the Emperor agreed on a better way of resolving the issue, planning to hold an oikoumenical council, and the Pope pledged in secrecy to join forces with the Emperor in securing condemnation of the Three Chapters. 57 In 551, Justinian issued the edict “On the Orthodox Faith,” 58 which contained an exposition of a dyophysite, yet definitely Cyrilian, Christology, and proposed an interpretation of the condemnation of the Three Chapters that did not necessarily entail rejecting or deprecating the Chalcedonian decrees. Amongst the thirteen anathemas pronounced by the edict, the last three concerned those seeking justification for the Three Chapters. The edict argued that Ibas’ Letter to Mari the Persian ought to be condemned on the grounds that Chalcedon’s fathers had not approved of this indubitably Nestorian text, but rather had accepted Ibas’ disowning of this letter and made him explicitly reject its contents. Moreover, it stated that the posthumous condemnation of heretics such as Theodore of Mopsuestia, who had persevered in their errors until death, was traditionally endorsed by the Church. The edict emphasized that Theodore had not, in point of fact, received any expression of praise or respect from the Holy Fathers. In other words, the edict argued that the condemnation of the Three Chapters by no means compromised the doctrinal validity and legitimacy of the Fourth Council. Richard Price argues that this edict, while jeopardizing the agreements between Vigilius and Justinian, offered conclusions on the part of the Emperor quite possibly drawn from his negotiations with the Syrian anti-Chalcedonians. Those negotiations had failed because of internal doctrinal divisions amongst the anti-Chalcedonians, who had disagreed profoundly on the issue of the corruptibility of Christ’s body. 59 Anyway, no matter what the circumstances were leading to the edict’s proclamation, Justinian certainly projected a modus operandi through it, for the Church, with regard to Chalcedon. The Pope, however, saw in the edict no more than an infringement of their former accords. He warned against supporting it, threatening its endorsers with excommunication and issuing a decree that condemned the hierarchs who had backed the edict – i.e. Theodore Ascidas and the Patriarch Menas of Constantinople. The Pope refused to yield to the Emperor’s attempts to harass and humiliate him, and the Emperor had no option but to back down. The edict was revoked. Nevertheless, its canons were replicated in those of the Fifth Oikoumenical Council, albeit without being explicitly referred to.

See The Acts of Constantinople II, I. 7.11. See in The Acts of Constantinople II, 1: 122–59. 59 Price, Acts of the Council of Constantinople II, 1: 25–6. 57 58

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5.3. THE COUNCIL In last years leading up to the Council, the focus of Justinian’s ecclesiastical policy had shifted to the Latin West. For the Western Church, condemnation of the Three Chapters meant nothing less than a betrayal of Chalcedon. Justinian, though, was determined to bring the West into line with his stance. He continued to exert pressure on Vigilius to give papal approval for a council to be summoned. After months of negotiations, and after having apparently agreed to appear at the Council that the Emperor himself convoked at Constantinople, Vigilius declined to turn up at the sessions. He sent Pelagius instead, with a request to delay the deliberations until he had decided whether to sanction the Council. In spite of Vigilius’ absence, Justinian proceeded with the meeting. Ten days after its official opening, Vigilius communicated his disapproval in his Constitutum. One hundred and seventy bishops were assembled at Constantinople for the event. 60 Because of Pope Vigilius’ dilatory tactics, the official opening of the Council was postponed until 5th May 553. It had eight sessions. However, even before the first session, the Emperor had managed to get the bishops to reaffirm their condemnation of Origenism. The interesting point is that the latter was presented to the assembled bishops as a heresy linked to Nestorianism, so that its condemnation was apparently encompassed by the task of anathematizing the Three Chapters assigned to the Council. 61 At the very first session, the Emperor’s letter was read to the Council. The letter began with a confession of Justinian’s faith in the Four Councils and a declaration of the aim of his ecclesiastical policy, which was “to unite the divided priests of the holy Churches of God from East to West.” The letter stated that the reason for assembling an oikoumenical council was to persuade those who continued to defend the impious Three Chapters that they should alter their stance. Probably referring to According to Price, 152 out of the 170 bishops actually attended the Council. Twelve were from Illyricum, eleven (in addition to the Pope) from Italy, and eight from Africa. In other words, Western bishops were in an absolute minority (about a quarter of all of those gathered). See Price, Acts of the Council of Constantinople II, 1: 27–8. 61 Price believes that this presentation of the Evagrian and Isochristic version of Origenism as closely linked to Nestorianism was a case of manipulation by the anti-Origenist Palestinian deputation, led by the monks Conon and Eulogius, aimed at eliciting renewed condemnation of the movement. See Price, Acts of the Council of Constantinople II, 2: 270–80. Nonetheless, the Origenist Christology of Palestine in the sixth century was – as Gray points out – superficially Chalcedonian: it presupposed a unification of the Divine and human natures by the pre-existent soul of Christ. See note 54, and Gray Gray, The Defense of Chalcedon, 63–5. On the other hand, it reduced Christ to his role in the relevant event of creation, which made the issue of whether it was tantamount to an instance of Nestorianism or Chalcedonianism largely irrelevant. 60

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the Pope’s secret letter to Justinian and his spouse, as well as to the Judicatum, the Emperor pointed out that Vigilius had already anathematized the Three Chapters. The Pope’s subsequent change of mind contradicted his earlier declarations. Therefore, Justinian turned to the Council, asking it to examine the issues surrounding the orthodoxy of the Three Chapters and its posthumous anathematization. Alongside this, he sought to instruct them as to the correct conclusions to be inferred. At the second session, the Council listened to a series of reports detailing the unproductive and cunctative negotiations with Vigilius that had been conducted by deputations authorized by the Emperor and by the Council with the aim of persuading the Pope to participate in the Council. The third session reaffirmed the recognition of the four Oikoumenical Councils. The expressions of loyalty to the four Councils and Church Fathers were concluded with a threat of anathema against anyone who would alienate himself from the orthodox faith. This was a clear threat to depose Vigilius. During the fourth and fifth sessions, collected excerpts from the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Theodoret of Cyrrhus were examined, and the question of the status of posthumous condemnation within Church tradition scrutinized. It is worth noting that in each case the evidence was selected and presented in a manner that clearly suggested a certain line of interpretation, so that it could readily be concluded that (1) the condemnation of Theodore amounted to nothing more than the reaffirmation of an earlier judgment already arrived at by such great authorities as Cyril and Proclus in the 430s, (2) the theology of Theodoret professed in the works he composed during the Nestorian controversy was sufficiently akin to the teachings of Theodore and the doctrine defended in Ibas’ Letter to Mari the Persian to deserve condemnation, and (3) the custom of refusing to posthumously condemn heretics was not an intrinsic constituent of Church tradition and was not upheld by its majority. 62 After Ibas’ letter had been scrutinized at the sixth session, the Patriarch Eutychius declared on behalf of the Council that the fathers of Chalcedon had, in truth, disavowed the approval of this letter expressed at Chalcedon by two bishops, 63 as an absolute majority of the fathers had in fact demanded that Ibas condemn Nestorius and accept the Chalcedonian Horos. 64 The bishops assembled at See the intriguing analyses of the documents for Sessions 4 and 5 in Price, Acts of the Council of Constantinople II, 1: 225–30, 71–82. 63 The two bishops Eutychius spoke about were Paschasinus and Lucentius, who after the letter had been read at Chalcedon broadly commended the orthodoxy of Ibas, and who were joined by Maximus of Antioch. See Acts of Chalcedon, X, 161; 163 in Price and Gaddis, Acts of the Council of Chalcedon. 64 On differences between Eutychius’ final statement and Justinian’s reading of the issue, as revealed in the edict On the Orthodox Faith, see Price, Acts of the Council of Constantinople II, 2: 3–5. 62

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Constantinople resolved, by acclamation, that to comply with the letter would be to reject Chalcedon. The seventh session was intended to be the last one. Yet composition of the final decrees was delayed by the necessity of dealing with the consequences of the Constitutum issued by Pope Vigilius. That document had argued forcefully against condemnation of the Three Chapters, disallowing any divergent verdict on the subject. In consequence, the Constitutum put into question the very authority of the Council. The Constitutum was signed on 14th May, while on the 25th of that same month Vigilius attempted to deliver his response to the Emperor; but Justinian – most probably knowing its content – refused to accept it. During the session, a collection of documents demonstrating that the Pope had explicitly pledged to condemn the Three Chapters, but had then broken that commitment by delivering the Constitutum, was presented to the fathers of the Council. 65 The Council concluded that Pope Vigilius had been guilty of impious treachery and apostasy. It was decided to remove his name from the diptychs, but without imposing the full form of condemnation that would have been implied by his being deposed and excommunicated. In other words, the Council suspended Vigilius from the see, but without breaking off communion with the Church of Rome. The eighth and final session of the Council, held on 2nd June, as had been anticipated, ratified the condemnation of the Three Chapters. The statement of faith was followed by fourteen canons that are, essentially, an extended version of the thirteen anathemas contained in Justinian’s edict from 551, On the Orthodox Faith. 66 The Emperor certainly would not have wished to jeopardize his own policies in relation to the West by breaking off communion with Rome. Therefore, the publication of the decree against Vigilius was postponed for about two months after the seventh session had taken place, in the hope that the Pope would cease opposing the Council. The suspended Pope yielded to coercion after having been confined for six months and threatened with being deposed from the see and even with expulsion from the clerical state. In December 553, he signed a letter addressed to Patriarch Eutychius, expressing his agreement with the Council’s resolutions and adherence to the condemnation of the Three Chapters. He also revoked any writings and documents in which he had argued for the latter. Later, on February 23rd 554, Vigilius also issued the second Constitutum, in which he gave a more elaborate account of the subject, concentrating mostly on Ibas’ Letter to Mari the Persian. After Vigilius’ surrender, a new edition of the conciliar acts was produced, with all decrees and Among the documents presented was the Pope’s secret letter (The Acts of Constantinople II, VII 6–7.11), to which Justinian had alluded in his address to the Council at the first session. See The Acts of Constantinople II, I.7.12. 66 For more on the differences between the canons and the anathemas contained in the Emperor’s edict, see Price, Acts of the Council of Constantinople II, 1: 103–5. 65

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documents from the seventh session that were discrediting for the Pope expunged from it. Vigilius himself was, moreover, finally given permission to return to Rome. However, he never managed to see the city of St. Peter again, as he died in Syracuse on 7th June 555, while making the voyage there. The main goal of the Council, both when seen from a historical perspective and as declared by Justininan in his letter to the Council, was to bring the Latin West into compliance with the imperial policy of exonerating the Council of Chalcedon from any accusations pertaining to a Nestorian reading. 67 It is possible to say that its purpose was not to overcome the anti-Chalcedonian opposition, but rather to unite the Chalcedonian Churches in the West and the East. The revised acts of the Council, which were disseminated in the West as the official version, contributed to an impression that Pope Vigilius had endorsed the Council without any objections. His direct successor, the previously influential papal apocrisiary Pelagius, enjoyed particular respect from Justinian himself. He was already known for having fiercely defended the Three Chapters, but after he became Pope (with Justinian’s endorsement), he adhered to their condemnation. Even though a certain element of resistance to the Council persisted in the West (the Aquileian Schism, 553–698), the popes from Pelagius to Gregory the Great recognized the Second Council of Constantinople as one of the legitimate and authoritative oikoumenical councils. 68 It is possible to conclude, therefore, that Justinian’s goal had been successfully accomplished. The Council, however, did very little to resolve the divisions in the East. Members of the pro-Chalcedonian faction neither felt a particular need to confirm or vindicate the authority of the Chalcedon, nor opposed Justinian’s condemnation of the Three Chapters. As far as endorsing Chalcedon was concerned, Constantinople II obviously did not raise any objections. To what extent it was more than that, expressing and promoting a doctrine that was a development of Chalcedonian theology, is a complex question, to be addressed in the next section. In turn, for antiChalcedonians, the Council was of a little importance. The constantly failing negotiations with the anti-Chalcedonians bear witness to the fact that they had already reached a point where acceptance of anything other than the miaphysite formula would have hardly been possible at all. Those who, in spite of the numerous measures taken against them by Byzantine state, persevered in a deliberate rejection In this letter Justinian strongly underlined the threat of Nestorianism pervading the actions and works of Theodore, Theodoret and Ibas. As he himself stated, he had proceeded with condemnation of the Three Chapters because of this threat, and not on account of the charges brought against them by the anti-Chalcedonians. The Emperor greatly exaggerated the doctrinal threat of Nestorian heresy. It is necessary to bear in mind, however, that one of the greatest enemies of Byzantium at that time supported Nestorianism. 68 Nonetheless, Constantinople II was not regarded as on a par with the first four Oikoumenical Councils. See Price, Acts of the Council of Constantinople II, 1:99–101. 67

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of Chalcedon, could not be satisfied by what they considered attempts at a “denestorianization” of Chalcedon. The double-track policy of administrative suppression combined with occasional brute force on the one hand, and tolerance of a separate emerging ecclesiastical hierarchy on the other, permitted the transformation of a resistance movement into separate national Churches with distinctive doctrines, structures, and followers ready to give their lives for the sake of their faith. For the anti-Chalcedonians, Constantinople II merely confirmed the pro-Chalcedonians’ obduracy in respect of their impious errors, and showed that it was no longer possible to regain the Empire for the orthodox (i.e. the miaphysite) faith. From this perspective, by condemning the Three Chapters, and with it those vindicated by Chalcedon, the Chalcedonians did not rectify any errors, but only exposed their own inner contradiction. They confirmed, thereby, that Chalcedonian teaching was essentially wrong, thus condemning themselves even more. 69 It thus seems reasonable to assert that the Second Council of Constantinople merely served to reassure both pro- and anti-Chalcedonians in their stances. By condemning Theodore of Mopsuestia, the Council widened the already virtually unbridgeable gap between the Chalcedonian Churches and the Church in Persia. Whereas resistance to Chalcedon prior to the Council had been mainly of a doctrinal nature, after Constantinople II, non-Chalcedonian Christology became something more than a set of beliefs professed and defended by certain local Churches, transforming as it did into a symbol of political and national independence from ByzantiEspecially significant is John Philoponus’ reaction to Constantinople II, to be found in his Four Tmemata against Chalcedon, in Michael the Syrian, Chronicle, II.109–10; 117–21 and Uwe Michael Lang, “John Philoponus and the Fifth Ecumenical Council: A Study and Translation of the Letter to Justinian,” AHConc 37 (2005): 412. Analyzing particular canons, he concluded that Constantinople II should, in some respects, be regarded as a rejection of Chalcedonian teaching. Yet, in his opinion, this only made matters even worse: by adopting their new canons, formulated as anathemas of dyophysite Christology, the Chalcedonians condemned themselves. In this context it is worth invoking a point made by Menze and Price: for the anti-Chalcedonians, the requirement to remove the anti-Chalcedonian bishops from the diptychs that had been imposed by Hormisdas on Justin as a condition for ending the Acacian schism amounted to their having to betray both themselves and their postChalcedonian past, where the latter was what connected them to the true faith of the Apostles and the Nicean Church. Their reply to this demand contended that satisfying it would make them “anathematize ourselves and those who were our fathers” Brock, “The Conversations,” 114). See Volker-Lorenz Menze, Justinian and the making of the Syrian Orthodox Church, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 100–4; Price, Acts of the Council of Constantinople II, 1:36. We can only surmise how deplorable and revolting the solutions put forward by Constantinople II must have seemed for the antiChalcedonians. 69

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um. In the long term, the circumstances surrounding the Emperor’s temporary victory greatly complicated ecclesiastical relations between East and West. Neither the Emperor’s intervention in the sacred field of theology, nor the humiliation of the West in the person of Pope Vigilius, were easily forgotten or forgiven. These are the main historical ramifications that seem to have ensued from Constantinople II. However, if justice is to be done to the Council, it must also be made clear that these were rather the results of Justinian’s State and Church policies than consequences stemming from the Council itself, whose outcomes were just as humble as its goals. Having set himself the glorious goal of bringing true theological unity to a Church divided over the question of the Council of Chalcedon, Justinian failed to achieve this. 70 The most remarkable failure of his ecclesiastical policy was the factual and formal disintegration of the Church in the Byzantine Empire, into what are known as the Eastern and the Oriental Orthodoxies. From the doctrinal point of view, however, the Council is usually deemed less consequential. It is assumed that the Council just advanced an artificially narrow interpretation of Chalcedonian theological teaching, to a certain extent misrepresenting it. In the next section, though, the issue of whether or not the Council brought anything new or inspirational to Christology will be scrutinized in more detail, as significantly more light can now be shed on its canons thanks to our growing awareness of theological developments before and after the Council.

5.4. CONSTANTINOPLE II: THE RISE OF SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY 5.4.1. The Theological Criticism and Solutions of the anti-Chalcedonians If one leaves aside, as rooted in historical circumstance and misunderstanding, the accusations that the Chalcedon defended Nestorianism and betrayed Cyril’s teaching, the entire controversy that Constantinople II was supposed to resolve might appear as no more than a quarrel over the correct terminology. Were that to be so, then its achievement would consist merely in having offered more precise definitions of the theological terms involved. On a closer view, though, one realizes that those more precise definitions were in fact the outcome of some quite new theological reflections that were themselves born out of the analysis of terminological issues raised by the Chalcedonian solutions. This new body of theological reflection was Even his aphthardocetic views at the end of his life, which were somehow rooted in his Chalcedonism, give a testimony to his devotion to win over the anti–Chalcedonians. See Karl-Heinz Uthemann, “Kaiser Justinian als Kirchenpolitiker und Theologe,” AUG 39, no. 1 (1999): 79–83, doi:10.5840/agstm19993911; Michel van Esbroeck, “The Aphthartodocetic Edict of Justinian and Its Armenian Background,” SP 33 (1997); Filippo Carcione, “L’aftartodocetismo di Giustiniano: una mistificazione strumentale del dissenso politicoreligioso,” SROC 7 (1984); Van Rompay, “Society and Community,” 254. 70

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what is nowadays known as “neo-Chalcedonism,” and any exposition of the theology introduced in and presupposed by the canons of the Second Council of Constantinople will be, in effect, an account of the roots, arguments, and solutions offered by this theology. Chalcedon rejected two extreme Christological solutions, Nestorianism and Eutychianism, through its introduction of the distinction between essential constituents (the divine and human natures) and their bearer (hypostasis). Yet it did not offer an elaborate Christology: the terse formulation of the Chalcedonian Horos, although it did set out the criteria for correct Christological doctrine, did not explain the union in one subject of two essentially different constituents that remained distinct and unmingled. A union which did not bring about an essentially integrated reality seemed like an inherently contradictory concept, and Chalcedonian teaching plainly would not be able to withstand challenges on that score without further clarification. It is worth emphasizing that both sides of the controversy over Chalcedon appealed in their argumentation to the same ecclesiastical authorities – first of all to Cyril and the Cappadocians. Both were concerned with finding terms and formulations that could be used to give proper expression to one and the same truth regarding the mystery of the Incarnation and Salvation. Each faction underscored one aspect of the Incarnation: while anti-Chalcedonians underlined the unity of Christ, their opponents stressed the duality and distinctiveness of natures in Him. Even such a prominent anti-Chalcedonian as John Philoponus considered that most of the theologians participating in the controversy did not differ fundamentally, but merely disagreed in respect of terminology. 71 To be sure, in our age of dialogue and compromise, it would be convenient to present the struggle over the Council of Chalcedon as a result of terminological misunderstanding only. However, those apparently merely terminological differences had essential theological consequences. As one of the most prominent proponents of the new theological approach, Leontius of Byzantium, himself pointed out, when discussing doctrinal matters the indiscriminate use of terms affected the very substance of the debate. 72 The incoherence, even absurdity, of the Chalcedonian Horos was denounced by prominent representatives of the anti-Chalcedonian group, starting with Timothy Aelurus, Philoxenus of Mabbug, and, naturally, Severus of Antioch. In their opinion, the Chalcedonian formulation “Christ… acknowledged in two natures… coming Philoponus pointed out that their agreement was patently manifested in their equally rejecting both Eutychian and Nestorian heretical conceptions. For more detail, see Philop. Arb., Prol. 2, in Uwe Michael Lang, John Philoponus and the Controversies over Chalcedon in the Sixth Century: A Study and Translation of the Arbiter, Spicilegium sacrum Lovaniense: Études et documents 47 (Leuven: Spicilegium sacrum Lovaniense; Peeters, 2001), 42–3, 175. 72 Leontius B., Epyl. PG 86: 1925B. 71

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together into one person and one hypostasis,” undermined the very unity of Christ emphasized by Cyril. On the other hand, Christ’s unity would not be endangered if, instead, the formula professed “one Christ out of two natures.” The phrasing adopted at Chalcedon had most significant soteriological implications, for if there is no real union in Christ, then human nature is not truly restored in Him and, in consequence, there is no salvation of a concrete individual human. In turn, if the union of divine and human natures qua natures is to be genuine and real, it ought to result in a single entity. Otherwise it is impossible to say that the natures have been united, for “to be united” means “to become one.” If this single entity is a genuine reality, and in no wise either an accidental one, or a mere name given to two different subjects, or a complement within a nature, then, of necessity, it is a substance or a nature. Unavoidably, after the union, this one entity is endowed with one nature, even though this nature unites divine and human natures. Just as Cyril expressed it, it is “one incarnate nature of God the Word.” Moreover, if one is committed to such a genuine union of natures, then it will not be sufficient to refer to the single entity of Christ through the term “hypostasis.” This, as the anti-Chalcedonians assumed – not differing on this from ecclesiastical thinkers who predate the Chalcedonian controversy – is because the terms “substance,” “nature,” “hypostasis,” and “person” are synonymous. 73 To be sure, the custom of defining “substance” and “nature” as that which is common and universal, and “hypostasis” and “person” through the concept of “particular,” was already well established within the idiom of Trinitology. Alongside this, the philosophical language of the era incorporated a different manner of speaking about substance, rooted in Aristotle’s logical distinction between two different types of referent for the term “substance.” In its Neoplatonic incarnation, “first substance” was identified with particulars, “second substance” with universals. Influenced by the two traditions, Cyril had employed the term “nature” in his writings as an exact synonym for “substance”, and had used “nature” to denote not only the common and universal essences of some objects, but also particular objects as such. Hence the anti-Chalcedonians, faithful to Cyril’s way of expressing the matter, wondered what else the Chalcedonian notion of hypostasis could be, if not a particular – i.e. primary – substance or nature. And, conversely, they also wondered about what else in Christology the term “nature” could be applied to, if not the particular entity which is the incarnate Word? 74 Besides, the antiChalcedonians embraced the principle, formulated by the Cappadocians, to the efSee, for instance, Severus, Ep. 3 ad Sergium. The evidence for synonymic usage of those terms in the Church tradition is extensive. Even long after their meanings had been demarcated from the point of view of standard usage in orthodox theological discourse, John of Damascus observed, in the eighth century, that these terms had been distinguished by philosophers but were still used interchangeably by the Fathers. See Dial. 31.23–9. 74 Severus, Ep. 6. 73

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fect that no nature exists “in the nude.” 75 This principle determines that no nature or substance subsists as separate from a hypostasis or a person. Accordingly, if the Chalcedonians professed a commitment to the two natures of Christ, they would also have been obliged to admit the existence of two hypostases or persons. 76 That, however, would have been tantamount to accepting the Nestorian teaching on this. Conversely, should someone hold to the idea of there being just one hypostasis of Christ, then they ought to also accept that there is just one nature involved – as those who considered themselves true followers of Cyrilian doctrine in fact did. For anti-Chalcedonians, Christ’s union meant, most importantly, that He was both truly one and composite. Christ is one (ἕν), although He is brought together from (ἐξ) two natures. 77 For the very same reason, his nature is not simple. In the case of Christ, divine and human natures remain separate and unmixed, being united in one composite subject. 78 To elucidate the conception of one nature that is composed of two elements but is without any confusion or admixture of those united elements, the anti-Chalcedonians employed the analogy of the human composite of soul and body. This analogy was construed against the background of a conception of the body–soul relationship firmly rooted in the Platonic tradition, which had been refined and popularized by Plotinus. 79 In Christology, this human paradigm had already been deployed by Origen, before being subsequently brought back into focus by Apollinarius and utilized by Nemesius, Cyril and Severus. 80 Human nature Basil, Ep. 38. Philoponus, Arb. VII.27.24.19–25.4; Lebon, Le monophysisme Sévérien, 247. 77 Severus, Hom. 23: PO 37.116 and 122; Hom. 42: PO 36.48; Ep. 25: PO 12.229–30. Here Severus is following Cyril of Alexandria. Ep. 45 ad Succensum I. 78 I avoid any deliberate mention of the conception of “composite nature” in my discussion of anti-Chalcedonian theology, even though the idea of a “composite nature” is frequently ascribed to Severian miaphysitism. As a matter of fact, the expression “composite nature” is not typical for the anti-Chalcedonians. Severus, in whose writings this phrase occurs sporadically, rejects the conception of a composite nature or substance quite explicitly in his work directed against John of Caesarea, and in his correspondence with Sergius the Grammarian (see C. Imp. Gr. II, 10: CSCO 111 [112], 104 [81–2]; Ep. 3 ad Sergium: CSCO 119 [120], 150 [114–15]). Instead, he usually speaks of Christ himself, and his hypostasis, as composite (see Ep. 15; 25; 34). See Lang, John Philoponus and the Controversies, 128–9; cf. Lebon, Le monophysisme Sévérien, 319–21. It does seem to be the case that the antiChalcedonians are all too frequently construed as seen through the eyes of John Philoponus, who thoroughly explicated and made extensive use of this conception in his theological writings. Cf. Arbiter where this term is used most recurrently. 79 Plato, Alcibiades Maior 129c–e; see also Phd. 102e–103a; 103d; 105e–107a; Plotinus, Enn. I.1.3 and IV.7.1. 80 On the paradigm of a human composite, see Lang, John Philoponus and the Controversies, 101–34. 75 76

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qua nature is not simple, but rather complex. It contains two elements that differ essentially: an intelligible nature, which is the rational soul, and a sensible nature, the human body. Because the soul’s essence is intelligible, the soul and the body remain perfectly separate and unchanged within the one nature of the human being. A particular human being, however, does not manifest itself as a duality, but as a genuine unity. At the level of universal substances, the human being is a substance or nature corresponding to just one species and possessing just one form. Meanwhile, on the level of particular substances it corresponds to a single integral subject, in which the body is subjected to the activity of the rational soul and serves as its proper instrument. By analogy, in Christ, divine nature is united with human nature in one subject. Christ as a whole is a composite of divine and human elements, but He is an undivided unity. 81 And because He is one essential whole, the properties of both complementary natures can be predicated of Him. Due to communicatio idiomatum, it is right to profess that Christ is God, even though this then entails the attribution of human suffering to God (theopaschism). 82 But just as the soul constitutes the ontological principle of any particular human being as such, the divine incarnated Logos is the ontological principle of Christ’s nature. The anti-Chalcedonians accepted that the human nature of Christ never pre-subsisted its union with the Logos. It was only thanks to its being assumed by the Logos that it came into existence at all and acquired its subsistence in the Logos. 83 Moreover, just as the human body is subordinated to its soul, so the humanity of Christ is subservient to the divinity in Him, and acts as its instrument. Christ, therefore, appears and operates as one completely integrated and united subject, while the duality of natures in Him can only be discerned by intellectual abstraction. The anti-Chalcedonian criticism of Chalcedon’s Horos, as well as the theological solutions that the anti-Chalcedonians elaborated, were grounded in Church tradition, especially in Cyril’s authority. The terminology they employed was, from a philosophical point of view, accurate and sound. The anthropological paradigm they invoked imparted validity to a one-nature Christology then still under development, by making it possible to envision a substantial (natural) union of two elements such as would give rise to a composed but unitary nature. Just as there is no duality in a human being, even though it is composed from two different natures, there is only one single subject and one nature of Christ, albeit composed from divinity and humanity. The broadly Platonic view of the soul as ontologically superior to the body that underlay the paradigm also suited anti-Chalcedonian theology well, as this theology was focused almost exclusively on the incarnated Logos. However, a conseSeverus, Hom. 70: PO 12.40. Severus, Ep. 3 ad Sergium: CSCO 119 [120], 158 [121]; Ep. 1: PO 12. 176–7, 184–5, Ep. 2: PO 12, 194. 83 See, for instance, Severus, Philalethes: CSCO 133 [134], 133 [108]. 81 82

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quence, which followed from this coherent and monolithic defense of Christ’s unity, was highly significant for theology: the anti-Chalcedonian emphasis on unity obtaining within the Logos and arising because of the Logos devalued the role of the human element in that unity. It denied Christ the possession of human knowledge, willing, and freedom. This degraded, and even undermined, the very humanity of Christ. Severus, for instance, considered the very term “nature” inapplicable to the human element in Christ after the incarnation. In other words, it was denied that the humanity of Christ was an ontological constituent. It was treated instead as a mere addition to, or appropriation by, divinity, and as an instrument for the Logos. In the long term, the unfolding of anti-Chalcedonian views unavoidably brought about strict monophysitism, monotheletism and monoenergism. The polemic with antiChalcedonians was, after all, not just about words. 5.4.2. The Neo–Chalcedonian Answer In reaction to the anti-Chalcedonians’ strong and well-argued criticism, there emerged before long the phenomenon to which contemporary historians have given the name “Neo-Chalcedonism.” This can hardly be counted as a school, as it did not have such attributes of a school as a common body of teachings, or consistent doctrinal development in line with some shared principles or an overarching vision. Rather, it was a movement born within the Church, in which were engaged several theologians loosely connected by their source of inspiration – namely, the theology developed and practiced in Palestine – and by their awareness of the need to subject the Chalcedonian teachings to some sort of clarification. We can, moreover, speak of two separate branches of this movement, arising for the most part independently of each other: the Latin Neo-Chalcedonism represented by the so called “Scythian monks,” who transferred the oriental theopaschite tradition (originating in the Palestinian lavras) to the West, and the Neo-Chalcedonism that sprang up in direct opposition to Severus within the vigorous theological environment of the Sabaite monasteries. 84

Patrick Gray proposes a definite geographical link between the representatives of Neo-Chalcedonism. In his opinion, this movement was brought to existence, and nurtured, in or around the Sabaite monasteries. See Gray, “The Sabaite Monasteries.” V. Schurr shows that connections existed between the theopaschite theology of the Scythian monks and the Palestinian tradition that had utilized Proclus’ formula “unus ex trinitate incarnatus” even before its use in the Henoticon and by the Severians. See Viktor Schurr, Die Trinitätslehre des Boethius im Lichte der “skythischen Kontroversen,” Forschungen zur christlichen Literatur und Dogmengeschichte 18,1 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, 1935), 142–67, 229, also see Grillmeier and Hainthaler, Christ in Christian Tradition, Vol. 2, pt. 2, 317–20; John Anthony McGuckin, “The ‘Theopaschite Confession’ (Text and Historical Context): A Study in the Reinterpretation of Chalcedon,” JEH 35, no. 2 (1984), doi:10.1017/S0022046900026968. 84

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These representatives of Neo-Chalcedonism may have differed quite significantly with respect to their detailed commitments, but one may still discern two features that made the movement distinct in the context of the Christological debates of the sixth century: the Neo-Chalcedonians were attempting to reconcile Chalcedon’s doctrine with the entirety of Cyril’s teaching, and with Church tradition, and to establish a clear body of terminology, on the basis of which a coherent Christology would then be able to be formulated. 85 It is this movement that stood behind Justinian’s theological and ecclesiastical initiatives – crowned, in turn, by Constantinople II – and that carved out the path of orthodox theology for centuries to come. The term “Neo-Chalcedonism” was introduced by Lebon, Le monophysisme Sévérien., but the concept was further developed by Lebon’s student Charles Moeller, “Un représentant de la christologie néochalcédonienne au début du sixième siècle en Orient: Nephalius d’Alexandrie,” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 40 (1945); Charles Moeller, “Le chalcédonisme et le néo-chalcédonisme en Orient de 451 à la fin du VIe siècle,” in Das Konzil von Chalkedon. Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Alois Grillmeier and Heinrich Bacht, vol. 1 (Würzburg: Echter-Verlag, 1951), and by Marcel Richard, “Le Néo-chalcédonisme,” MScRel 3 (1946). On the history of the conceptual development of the term, and its importance for the history of theology, see Alois Grillmeier, “Der Neu-Chalkedonismus. Um die Berechtigung eines neuen Kapitels in der Dogmengeschichte,” HJ 77 (1958); Gray, The Defense of Chalcedon, 169–72; Kenneth Paul [Warren] Wesche, “The Defense of Chalcedon in the 6th Century: The Doctrine of ‘Hypostasis’ and Deification in the Christology of Leontius of Jerusalem” (PhD thesis, Fordham University, New York, 1986), 7–12; and Karl-Heinz Uthemann, “Der Neuchalkedonismus als Vorbereitung des Monotheletismus. Ein Beitrag zum eigentlichen Anliegen des Neuchalkedonismus,” SP 29 (1997); Karl-Heinz Uthemann, “Zur Rezeption des Tomus Leonis in und nach Chalkedon. Wider den dogmenhistorischen Begriff ‘strenger Chalkedonismus,’ ” PS 34 (2001). We should indicate here that attempting to define “Neo-Chalcedonism” by pointing to a preeminent feature such as, for instance, acceptance of the “two-natures” formula alongside the “one-nature” formula, or the entertaining of a positive attitude towards theopaschism, prevents one from gaining a comprehensive view of this movement, which embraced diverse theological perspectives and solutions. I myself would concur with Gray The Defense of Chalcedon, 169–72. that the main mistake in defining Neo-Chalcedonism consists in treating this small and chronologically limited movement as a kind of school with a common systematic theological vision or common philosophical presumptions. To be sure, its supporters did all belong to one and the same orthodox tradition, and were engaged in trying to resolve the same problems arising in relation to Chalcedonian theology and terminology, but they had no specifically structured theology, such as might be characterizable by pointing to philosophical claims or theological goals specific to them. That does not mean, however, that Neo-Chalcedonism is a mere name, without any historical reality behind it. In spite of its vague character, it greatly influenced the further development of theology. 85

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Like all their predecessors in the dispute, the Neo-Chalcedonians – starting from Severus’ first openly declared adversary, the monk Nephalius – had to address the issue of Chalcedon’s loyalty to Church tradition and, in particular, to the teachings of Cyril. Since the beginning of the conflict, both pro- and anti-Chalcedonians had shown a noticeable degree of selectivity in the choice of texts or works they were prepared to invoke in their arguments, preferring those more suited to their aims, and ignoring those less so. In contrast, the Neo-Chalcedonian approach was characterized by a critical but inclusive treatment of the tradition. So, on the one hand, the Neo-Chalcedonians composed florilegia containing the testimony of the patristic authorities that had supported Chalcedonian doctrine, 86 while also playing a significant role in exposing the forgeries their opponents had prepared with the aim of legitimizing their miaphysite formula through the authority of tradition and of Cyril. 87 On the other hand, though, they did not shun the texts their opponents were using to support their claims, but tried to show that the texts which Chalcedonian doctrine appeared to contradict could in fact receive different interpretations consistent with Chalcedon. This interpretative stance was adopted, first of all, towards the works of Cyril, and, in particular, towards his assertion positing “one incarnate nature of the Logos.” According to John the Grammarian, the statement avowed the existence of one Son and one nature pertaining to the Word that had become flesh. This amounted to professing a commitment to one incarnate nature: i.e. accepting that, in Christ, flesh is endowed with a rational soul. For this reason, it cannot be said that Cyril’s statement precluded the “two-natures” formula. 88 Leontius of Byzantium pointed out that the very addition of the word “incarnate” to the phrase “one nature” meant that, in Cyril’s view, the Logos became true and natural flesh, i.e. a human being. Severus’ writings give testimony to a floreligium composed already by Nephalius. See Severus Or. 2. Florilegia were also composed by Leontius of Byzantium and by Leontius of Jerusalem. CNE, CA, DTN of Leontius of Byzantium are concluded by florilegia, while Adversus Fraudes Apollinaristarum (AFA) is a florilegium itself. Leontius of Jerusalem’s work CM is a commentary on a florilegium composed of two parts, Testimonies of the Saints and Aporiai. 87 Leontius of Jerusalem ascribed to John Grammarian the achievement of exposing so-called Apollinarian forgeries, falsely attributed to the authority of Cyril. Those forgeries were extensively employed by anti-Chalcedonians, also during the debate that took place in Constantinople in 532. It seems that Severus was particularly displeased with John’s revelations. See Severus, C. Imp. Gr., CSCO 112, 78.26–33. Leontius of Byzantium also wrote a work Adversus Fraudes Apollinaristarum, i.e Against the Deceits of the Apollinarians (PG 86, 1948A1976A). Daley suggest that this work was composed as a dossier for Bishop Hypatius and was used in his dialogue with anti-Chalcedonians in 532. See Brian E. Daley, “Leontius of Byzantium: A Critical Edition of His Works, with Prolegomena” (D. Phil. dissertation, Oxford University, 1978), LV–LVIII. 88 John Gram., Apol. I.1.37 (17–18). 86

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This was tantamount to professing belief in a second nature present in Christ, in which case one may then assert that the “one-nature” and “two-natures” formulae are not contradictory, but compatible and mutually corrective. Ephram of Amida, in turn, claimed that Cyril, in his statement, had used “nature” to mean “hypostasis” – itself a term used at Chalcedon. 89 The Scythian monks took much the same approach. They proposed a similar “one-nature” interpretation of Cyril’s formula. This enabled them to expound, in an orthodox way, the theopaschite formula asserting that “one of the Trinity was crucified” (unus ex trinitate crucifixus). The monks pointed to an essential correspondence between the two formulae: the terms “one” (unus), “out of the Trinity” (ex trinitate), and “crucified” (crucifixus), correspond, respectively, to the terms “one nature” (una natura), “of God the Word” (Dei Verbi), and “incarnate” (incarnata). Accordingly, if, in line with true faith, we profess an acceptance of the incarnation of the nature of the second person of the Trinity, i.e. the Word of God, it will be acceptable to claim that one of the Trinity was crucified and suffered. 90 And it was in this theological proposal on the part of the Scythian monks that Emperor Justinian saw a solution capable of bringing together both parties fighting over Chalcedon. A further problem the Neo-Chalcedonians sought to confront was the terminological confusion present in the fields of Trinitology and Christology, which, they insisted, mostly stemmed from the indiscriminate employment in Christology of such terms as “substance,” “nature” and “hypostasis,” whose meanings had initially been determined in the context of Trinitology, and so with a view to serving the aims of the latter. In contrast to “strict-Chalcedonian theologians,” who adhered rigidly to “strict-Chalcedonian language,” 91 Neo-Chalcedonians were confident that See Leontius of Byzantium, Epap. 16–18 PG 86, 1905C–D. The same claim was upheld by Ephrem of Amida, cod. 229, 153.II.25–36; 154.II.24–157.I.17. 90 Grillmeyer Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. 2, pt. 2, 317–18. points to the fact that the theopaschism of the Scythian monks in effect continued a Palestinian tradition, already initiated before the Council of Chalcedon by Proclus the Patriarch of Constantinople (434–446), and perpetuated by the Sabaiths. I would like, in turn, to stress the fact that the Scythians’ dependence on this tradition serves to link the Latin branch of Neo-Chalcedonism with its Eastern branch. 91 The terms “strict-Chalcedonian theologians,” “strict-Chalcedonian language,” and “strict Chalcedonism” were used by Grillmeyer and Richard to describe probably the majority of authors that were contemporary with the Neo-Chalcedonians and who were pursuing a conservative pro-Chalcedonian theology, such as Hypatius of Ephesus, Heraclianus of Chalcedon, the Sleepless Monks of the Monastery of Eirenaion, and the monk Eustathius. See Richard, “Le Néo-chalcédonisme”; Grillmeier, “Der Neu-Chalkedonismus”; Grillmeier and Hainthaler, Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. 2, pt. 2, 230–70. The representatives of this theological approach chiefly emphasized the doctrine of the duality of natures and its being in accord with Cyrilian teaching, while shunning any further explanation of what “hypostasis” 89

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it would be possible to resolve the problems identified by the anti-Chalcedonians in the theological formulations and doctrine of the Council just by clarifying and developing the terminology it had employed. Both John the Grammarian and Nephalius contended that Severus’ account of Christ’s nature was tantamount to affirming a confusion of substances in Christ (confusionis et mixionis substantiarum). Severus vehemently rejected such a reading of his views, but the Neo-Chalcedonian criticism was entirely justified, given that Severus, like Cyril before him, had used the term “nature” as a synonym for “universal,” as well as “particular substance.” 92 In order to prevent such an ambiguity, John the Grammarian proposed to define clearly what nature is, and how it relates to hypostasis. Therefore, to the great displeasure and irritation of Severus, John stirred up a discussion of philosophical vocabulary to which both sides of the debate then recurred. Adopting a solution of the Cappadocians, who had introduced into Trinitology the Neoplatonic conception of universals which are integrated with or enmattered in, yet also different from, individuals, 93 he distinguished in the language of Christology between (a) “substance” and “nature,” referring to that which is common and universal, and (b) “hypostasis,” denoting that which is particular. Defined thus, those terms suited Trinitology and Christology equally well, imparting mutual consistency to the two theological accounts. 94 The distinction was widely adopted by other Neo-Chalcedonians. However, unlike traditionalists on both sides, they did not stop at pointing to the fact that this kind of distinction had been espoused by the Holy Fathers. Neo-Chalcedonians went further, both in refining the philosophical terminology they brought into the discussion and in scrutinizing the theological consequences of their advances. By introducing the notion of enhypostaton, John the Grammarian put forth a view of could in itself be, or even avoiding speaking of hypostasis as such at all. As a matter of fact, this was merely a conservative continuation of the defense of Chalcedonian teaching already put forward around the time of the beginning of the controversy by Basil of Seleucia and Diadochus Pliotike. See Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, Vol. 2, pt. 1, 230–5. 92 Severus, Ep. 3 ad Sergium: CSCO 119 [120]. 93 This conception, presented in Basil’s Ep. 38, is known as Neoplatonic in its origin. For its sources, see Ammonius, In Cat. 49.5–11; Simplicius, In Cat. 53.6–9; 55.32–56.4. Cf. Anna Zhyrkova, “Porphyry’s Interpretation of Categories – the Neoplatonic Approach to Nominalism?,” Eos 95, no. 2 (2008). 94 In Trinitology, the terms “substance” and “nature” are used to signify one common divinity of God who exists completely in each of the three different hypostases. Similarly, in Christology the terms “nature” and “substance” refer to the divinity and humanity of Christ. John Gram., Apol. I.2.3.1 See also Sergey Kozhukhov, “Kappadokiyskaya traditsia ponimania termina ‘priroda’ Ioannom Grammatikom v polemike c Sevirom Antiokhiyskim” [The Capadocian Tradition Regarding the Understanding of the Term ‘Nature’ as Employed by John the Grammarian in His Polemic with Severus of Antioch], VES, Seria I: Bogoslovie, Filosofia 46, no. 2 (2013).

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universal being as substance or nature existing in individuals. This conception was expanded by Leontius of Byzantium and Leontius of Jerusalem. The NeoChalcedonians embraced an Aristotelian axiom, which they knew of through the intermediary of Neoplatonism: sensible particulars are ontologically prior to universals, while the latter are inseparable from them. Accordingly, they maintained that neither substance nor nature exists without hypostasis. Alongside this, they stressed that existence in hypostasis does not equate with being a hypostasis. Substance, or nature, is not a hypostasis, but exists in hypostasis. In other words, substance or nature is an enhypostatic being that has a genuine, yet neither independent nor separate, existence and subsists only in hypostases. This unfolding of the axiom, applied to Christology, made it possible to say that divine and human natures do not exist separately in their own particular subjects, but subsist in one and the same hypostasis of Christ as enhypostatic entities. 95 Leontius of Byzantium expanded on the mode of unity according to which two different natures are united in one subject. As he pointed out, Christ is one indivisible monad that is composed of two complete natures: neither of them can be identified with the complete Christ. His divine and human natures are united not accidentally, but “essentially:” i.e. in a manner that makes up a genuine being. This is a union “according to hypostasis,” in the same mode as that according to which the soul and body are united in an individual endowed with a human nature. In a manner analogous to that of the union of the human soul and body, the union of divinity and humanity in Christ is a union of two substantially different things brought together in union in one and the same ontological subject, such that their mode of union is essential rather than accidental. 96 Nonetheless, the Neo-Chalcedonians were well aware that the anthropological paradigm was not fully applicable to Christ. 97 In the case of a human being, the union of the two natures, the soul and the body, produces yet another entity, essentially different from both of them. Human nature is created originally as a composite, yet as a common species or form it is, without doubt, unitary. Neither the soul nor the body alone constitute a human being, and likewise, “soul” and “body” are not indicative of human nature but of its composite elements. In contrast, in the case of John Gram., Apol. I.2.4.2–3; Leontius Byz. CNE, PG 86, 1277–1280. See Oleg Davydenkov, “‘Voipostastnaya sushchnost’’ v bogoslovii Ioanna Grammatika” [Enhypostaton in Theology of John Grammaticus], VES, Seria I: Bogoslovie, Filosofia 22, no. 2 (2008). 96 See Leontius of Byz. CNE, PG 1280B–1281A; 1301A–1305D; DTN, PG 86, 1380 B–C; Epil. PG 86, 1940 B–C; 1944C. 97 Leontius Byz. CNE, PG 86, 1280D. Even though Ephrem of Amida applied the human paradigm to explain that two different natures can exist in one hypostasis without the need for a hypostasis for each of them (cod. 229: 147.II.17–33), he also insisted that the comparison between Christ and an individual possessing a human nature has limitations. See Ephrem, cod. 229: 127.IV. 95

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Christ, there is a unique ontological entity that has no specific nature but preserves in itself two different unmixed and complete natures and therefore is equivalent neither to any individual of a given species, nor to any unum sui generis object such as the moon or the sun. Unlike the term “human,” that denotes a certain nature as well as individuals of that nature, the name of Christ is a proper name, and thus not indicative of any common or universal entity. It does not designate substance or nature of any kind, but points to a concrete, individual, and unique person. Unlike any human, Christ was not created as a composite of a certain kind. Through Incarnation, the eternal, uncreated Logos united Himself with human nature in His own perpetually existing hypostasis. But the ultimate outcome achieved by the Incarnation was not the genesis of a new nature composed of the two elements: both united natures remain unchanged and unmixed in their perfection and completeness in one composed hypostasis. Therefore, while it is impossible to call a human a soul or a body, because it is a composite of them both, “divinity” and “humanity” can be predicated equally of the one hypostasis that is Christ. 98 The Neo-Chalcedonians’ attempt to properly elucidate the mystery of the Incarnation resulted in a shift of emphasis away from the way in which the natures are united, to the very subject of their union. This shift, in turn, entailed a redefinition of the notion of hypostasis. For John the Grammarian and Leontius of Byzantium, hypostasis, being self-identical qua particular, was nothing other than self-existent substance, qualified by characteristics proper to it and non-essential. Already, the Cappadocians had been of this opinion, but its origins lie in the traditional Platonic account of the individual as a collection of qualities. 99 Even so, with Leontius of Jerusalem, hypostasis became something more than an individual substance that can be discerned by its peculiar features. Leontius pioneered the view of hypostasis as an ontological principle, when he proposed that it is an indivisible ontological unity (a monad) that provides the ontic foundation for an individual entity. 100 Henceforth, the hypostasis of the Logos, elucidated as an ontological principle, became the cornerstone of Christological discussions. Breaking with the Cyrilian tradition, Ephrem of Amida spoke of “one incarnate hypostasis of the Logos” rather than “one incarnate nature.” 101 Leontius of Jerusalem went back to the strictly Chalcedonian expression “union in one hypostasis,” employing it alongside the Cyrilian formulation “union / composition according to hypostasis” that figured more typically in NeoChalcedonian discussions. 102 Leontius Byz. CNE, PG 86, 1283D; 1289B–1293B; 1292 A–B; Epap., PG 86, 1912A. John Gr. Apol. I.2.3.1; Leontius Byz., CEN, PG 86, 1277D; Epil. PG 86, 1945A–C. 100 Leontius Jer. CM, PG 86, 1813D-1816A. 101 Ephrem, cod. 229: 142.II.37–4. 102 “According to hypostasis”: Ephrem, cod. 229: 142.II.8–9. Ephrem suggested that “union according to hypostasis” could justify the theopaschite claim about the suffering of 98 99

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The next step in the direction of increased sophistication as regards the terminology derived from Chalcedon was that taken by the Scythian monks. It consisted in rendering the term “hypostasis” into Latin as “subsistentia,” whereby the role of ontological subject of existence was then most definitely ascribed to hypostasis. Secondly, they avowed that subsistentia and persona are synonyms, clarifying in this way possible confusions stemming from the language used by Pope Leo. The Scythian monk John Maxentius had, in point of fact, a view of Christ that was parallel to the one adopted by Leontius of Jerusalem: he treated the person of God the Word as an ontological foundation for unity in Christ, ascribing to this person existence in itself (manere in seipso), accompanied by the assumption of there being a complete human nature that had no subsistence of its own beyond the person of the Logos. 103 One should not derogate those advancements as mere terminological precisions. They indicate significant changes in the perception and reception of Chalcedon. Instead of proposing a purified vision of the Council that had been orthodox just by virtue of having been innocuous, and thereby inconsequential, the NeoChalcedonians embraced this as furnishing an incentive to create a Christology stemming from Chalcedonian premises. The manner in which the Neo-Chalcedonians went about developing their ideas on the basis of the Severian conception of Christ’s unity as a composition from two natures provides us with an important example of this approach. The Scythian monks saw in this a remedy against the flawed accounts of the mystery of the Incarnation devised by the Nestorians and Euthychians. In their opinion, the idea of “composition from two natures” offered a much needed explanation for Christ’s real and essential unity. On the other hand, it made it possible to justify the doctrine they espoused, according to which “one of the Trinity was crucified,” by precluding the possibility of ascribing Christ’s suffering exclusively either to a simple and imthe incarnated Word. See cod. 229: 144.II. 19–25. “In hypostasis”: Leontius Jer., CM, PG 86: 1881 A–B. 103 See John Maxentius, Capitula CNP I, CCSL 85A: 29.4–5; Prof. brev., CCSL 85A: 33.4–5; Dial. CN I.XI: CCSL 85A, 67.445–455. It is worth mentioning that John Maxentius also defined “person” as an individual thing of a certain nature (Dial. CN I.XIV: CCSL 85A, 69.523–528), where this foreshadows the well-known definition of Boethius. Together with John’s understanding of “person” as an entity that exists in itself, this was by no means unimportant for the subsequent development of Latin philosophical thought. See Alois Grillmeier, “Vorbereitung des Mittelalters. Studie über das Verhältnis von Chalkedonismus und Neu-Chalkedonismus in der lateinischen Theologie von Boethius bis zu Gregor dem Grossen,” in Das Konzil von Chalkedon. Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Heinrich Bacht and Alois Grillmeier, Vol. 2 (Würzburg: Echter-Verlag, 1953), 821. Identification of the term “hypostasis” with “person” also occurs in Ephrem, cod. 229: 132.II.13–17.

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passible God or to a human being. 104 Also, Leontius of Byzantium spoke about Christ as composed from two natures, elucidating Christ’s composition and unity through the example of the composite nature of human beings. 105 Leontius of Jerusalem, in turn, concentrated on the subject of the union, contending that it was the pre-existing hypostasis of the Logos, and not His nature, that assumed an ahypostatical and a-personal, yet complete, human nature. Thus, what was composite was not the nature but the hypostasis of Christ: the composition of divine and human natures in Christ had occurred through, and in respect of, the Logos’ hypostasis, which had assumed a human nature through the Incarnation. 106 Both natures, composed according to hypostatic union, remained essentially unchanged and unmixed, preserving their own properties, yet the properties of both natures were the properties of one and the same hypostasis of God the Word. Hence, the human nature assumed by the hypostasis neither ceased to be, nor was assimilated, but instead underwent divinization. 107 According to Leontius of Jerusalem, the properties of human nature were appropriated by and to the divine subject. Therefore, the entire life and activity of Jesus Christ was a revelation of His divinity and a manifestation of genuine humanity. 108 It is worth recalling here that unlike the Neo-Chalcedonians, strict supporters of the Chalcedonian doctrine shunned the exact Chalcedonian formulations. They defended the Council by demonstrating that it perpetuated Church tradition and had Epistula ad Episcopos, CCSL 85ª, 161.115–118; John Maxentius, Capitula CNP IX: CCSL 85A, 30.34–35; Dial. CN. II, II: CCSL 85A, 81.195–82,226. 94. 105 Leontius Byz. CNE, PG 86, 1301C-1304A; 1305C. It is noteworthy that both the Scythian monks and Leontius of Byzantium retained fragments from presbyter Malchion, who was one of the Fathers of the synod of Antioch in 268–9, at which he discussed the essential unity of the one Christ who is composed out of two elements. See Henri de Riedmatten, Les Actes du procès de Paul de Samosate. Étude sur la christologie du IIIe au IVe siècle, Paradosis: études de littérature et de théologie ancienne 6 (Fribourg: Éditions Saint Paul, 1952), 147 (2); Lang, John Philoponus and the Controversies, 106–7. Grillmeyer, in turn, underlines the connections between the Scythian monks and the Palestinian tradition: namely, with monastic supporters of the “one of the Trinity was crucified” formula, and their leader Euthymius, who spoke of one composite hypostasis of Christ. See Cyril Scyth. Vita Euth., 27. Cf. Grillmeier and Hainthaler, Christ in Christian Tradition, Vol. 2, pt. 2, 336. 106 See for instance Leontius Jer., CN, PG 86, 1485C–D; 1592B-1593C; 1749B–C; cf. 1601A. 107 Leontius Jer., CN, PG 86: 1581C–D. However, the perfect divinization of Christ’s humanity is achieved only after the Resurrection. See CN, PG 86, 1712A. Cf. CN, PG 86, 1724D, where Leontius states that the human flesh is not annihilated, but is only elevated to a higher state. 108 Leontius Jer., CN, PG 86, 1581D; 1724C; 1725 B–C; CM, PG 86, 1789A–B; 1792D– 1793A. 104

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not introduced any theological novelty. Thus, the “two-natures” formula was vindicated as consistent with Cyril’s teaching, the unity of natures was elucidated through Cyril’s Christological vocabulary, and the Chalcedonian formulation that emphasized not the union itself, but rather the subject of that union, had to be ignored. Contrary to this, the Neo-Chalcedonians were inclined from the very beginning to offer a defense of Chalcedon that, it was hoped, would address the criticisms of the anti-Chalcedonian camp and in so doing reconcile the two factions. They started from a humble proposal to clarify the terms used by both sides in their arguments, so that any unnecessary misunderstandings could be avoided. They tried to show that Chalcedonian teaching was not inconsistent on either a philosophical or a terminological level. Their subtle re-definitions created, in point of fact, a new terminology, much more appropriate to the subject of the debate, which became an inherent part of Christology. To be sure, some of them upheld the miaphysite formulae, of “one incarnate nature” and “from two natures,” contending that they were compatible with the strict Chalcedonian formulation “in two natures and one hypostasis.” Yet, ultimately, they were advancing a Christology of their own, focused on the Incarnation of the hypostasis of God the Word. Their initial attempt at mounting a defense of Chalcedon that was limited in scope evolved into the foundation for a new Chalcedon-based theology, which was accepted and endorsed by Emperor Justinian. 5.4.3. Endorsement of Neo–Chalcedonian theology It must be acknowledged that Justinian’s ecclesiastical policy brings to mind the image of Janus Bifrons, and that its consequences for the Church as a whole were questionable, to say the least. Yet his theological opinions were surprisingly well defined and coherent: he evidently understood that the ecclesiastical conflict over the Council of Chalcedon could not be resolved on a purely administrative level, just by officially sanctioning one or other of the opposing factions. He also realized that neither faction would ever agree with the arguments of the opposite side. Any solution that would bring peace needed to be a doctrinal re-interpretation and elucidation of Chalcedon that would integrate those elements of Cyril’s theology fiercely defended by the anti-Chalcedonians. A new genre of theology that concentrated on straightening out terminological confusions, and that constructed a Christology rooted in Chalcedonian definitions and the doctrine of Cyril, appeared to provide the solution Justinian had been hoping for. Justinian welcomed the resolution to Christological disputes that those whom we call now the Neo-Chalcedonians proposed, and embraced their theological approach himself in his own works: namely, in Contra Monophysitas and Confessio fidei. The latter should certainly be viewed as forming part of the Neo-Chalcedonian movement itself, and not as merely adducing

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some elements of Neo-Chalcedonian origin. 109 Justinian accepted the NeoChalcedonian terminological differentiation between “nature” and “hypostasis.” 110 He also adopted the dyophysite elucidation of the Cyrilian formula of “one incarnated nature,” discerning in the term “incarnated” a reference to a complete human nature that exists together with perfect divinity in the one Christ. 111 He treated the formulae “in two natures” and “from two natures” as equally admissible and mutually consistent, yet came to the conclusion that the former is more accurate and admits no ambiguity. He defined Christ as a composite and spoke of a unity of natures in Christ “according to hypostasis.” However, according to Justinian, “hypostasis” did not refer to the end result of the union of natures, but to the pre-existent hypostasis of God the Word. The Logos created for himself and permanently assumed human nature. Hypostasis of the Logos is the ontological core of the unity of divine and human natures that co-exist in it in an unconfused manner. Human nature, though, receives its very existence in the Logos himself. There were not two natures before the Incarnation, but only one hypostasis with a divine nature that then assumed a human nature in the Incarnation. Accordingly, it is not the case that there is a single composed nature after the Incarnation, but rather two natures in one composite Christ. The real unity of the composite Christ in the divine hypostasis of the Logos is manifest in the suffering of the incarnate God the Word, who remains one of the Trinity (Unus de sancta Trinitate). 112 The Council at Constantinople, called by the Emperor on his own initiative, was the paramount expression of Justinian’s espousal of Neo-Chalcedonian theology. From the point of view of political history, the aim of the Council was to gain the support of the Western Church for Justinian’s ecclesiastical policy seeking to rid Chalcedon of the charge of Nestorianism that had been leveled by the antiChalcedonian faction. However, politics was by no means dissociated here from genuinely theological concerns. Justinian’s intentions, as far as the Council was conJustinian’s CF is undoubtedly a Neo-Chalcedonian work. His CM seems to be less mature in respect of theology. It is less a Neo-Chalcedonian work in its nature. Still, it shows considerable dependence on Leontius of Jerusalem. See Jeffrey Macdonald, “Leontius of Jerusalem’s Against the Monophysites as a Possible Source for Justinian’s Letter to the Alexandrian Monks,” Byzantion 67, no. 2 (1997). 110 See Justinian, CM 7 in Kenneth Paul [Warren] Wesche, On the Person of Christ: The Christology of Emperor Justinian (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1991), and CF 72; 82; 84; 86; 92 in Price, Acts of the Council of Constantinople II. The numbering however is according to Eduard Schwartz, Drei dogmatische Schriften Justinians, Abhandlungen der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-historische Abteilung, N. F. Heft 18 (München: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften; C. H. Beck, 1939). 111 However, Justinian decisively opposed employing the formulae “one nature” and “one composite nature” in the theological discourse. See CM 7; 43; CF 74; 92; 86. 112 Justinian, CM 16; CF 72; 74; 76; 78; 86; 88. 109

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cerned, included the clarification and rectification of Chalcedonian teaching, to secure the latter against misinterpretation. Accomplishing this goal amounted, in practice, to a canonization of Neo-Chalcedonian theology. The fourteen canons, approved at the final session in June 553, were merely an expanded version of the anathemas pronounced in Justinian’s Confessio fidei, issued two years earlier. 113 The Christological formulation of Canon 1 required that one must distinguish the meanings of the terms “nature” and “substance” on the one hand, from those of the pair “hypostasis” and “person” on the other, thereby rejecting the usus of the Cyrilian and Nestorian traditions. Canon 2 proclaimed two births of God the Word: one timeless and incorporeal, the other from the holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary. Canon 3 subscribed to a doctrine of perfect identity between God the Word, who performed the miracles, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who was born from a woman and suffered. Canon 4 reiterated the rejection of Nestorian and Euthychian heresies, and against them propounded the doctrine that the union of God the Word with human flesh endowed with a rational soul came to be in those ways appropriate to composition and hypostasis, and in one composite hypostasis. This kind of union not only preserves elements of the union unaltered and unconfused, but also prevents their division. Canon 5, in relation to Justinian’s anathemas, was new. Its primary target was the Nestorian teaching that employed the expressions “two persons” and “one person,” understood respectively as “two particular natures” and “unity in respect of person.” This condemnation, in point of fact, also pertained to the practice of ambiguously referring to natures through the term “hypostasis.” The canon definitively banned the plural forms of the terms “person” and “hypostasis” from all exegesis of the unity of two natures in Christ, and in that very same canon, the Council defended the Chalcedonian theology it was seeking to promote from the charge that it was guilty of introducing a fourth person or hypostasis into the Trinity. Such accusations were dismissed by pointing to the hypostatical mode of the union of the Word of God with the flesh: an ahypostatical human nature had been united with the one and only subject of incarnation, i.e. the sole pre-existing hypostasis of the divine Logos. Thus the Holy Trinity received no addition of a further person or hypostasis after the Incarnation of one of the Trinity. Canon 6 addressed a mistake committed in the Chalcedonian Definition, in which, due to its dependence on the Antiochean Formula of Reunion, the mother of Christ had been given the title Christotokos. The canon rectified the error by explaining that the Definition should be understood as affirming that Mary was the mother of God, i.e. Theotokos. In this context there was a censuring of Theodore of Mopsuestia, criticized at The relationships between Justinian’s edict On the Orthodox Faith and the canons of the Council are as follows: Canons 1–4 of the Council correspond to Anathemas 1–4 of the edict; Canon 6 to Anathema 5; Canon 7 to Anathemas 7 and 8; Canon 8 to Anathema 9; Canon 10 to Anathema 6; Canon 11 to Anathema 10; Canons 12–14 to Anathemas 11–13. 113

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Session IV for his characterization of Mary as Anthropotokos, “mother of men,” and Christotokos – titles which he had interpreted as implying that the holy Mary had merely given birth to some man devoted to God the Word. 114 Canon 7 explains in what way the duality of natures in Christ should be understood: it states that those natures that have been compounded are still different in perception, because the differences between them have not been destroyed by their unity. However, they are not separate and have no hypostases of their own. The difference between the two natures may be recognized in perception, on condition that their actual unity is affirmed. 115 Canon 8 clarified that the formulae “from two natures” and “one incarnate nature of God the Word,” introduced by Cyril and used by his followers, are admissible on condition that they are not interpreted as an acknowledgement of one nature or substance with regard to Christ; however, those who recur to them should recognize the duality of hypostatically united natures after the Incarnation. Canon 9, meanwhile, had no equivalent in Justinian’s anathemas. It addressed two inappropriate practices of worship that implied wrong accounts of Christ. The divinity and humanity of Christ should not be worshipped separately, as if there were no one true subject of worship. 116 However, Christ should also not be worshipped as if He were of one nature or substance, which would entail either that his humanity has been abolished, or that the divinity and humanity in Him have been merged. The single act of worship should be directed to the incarnate God the Word, together with His flesh. At the same time, Canon 10 officially proclaimed that Jesus Christ crucified in the flesh is the true God, and one of the Holy Trinity, while Canon 11 reaffirmed the condemnations of all heretics anathematized by the four previous Oikoumenical Councils. Among those, however, was listed the name of Origen – even though Origenism had only been condemned by Justinian and the bishops assembled in Constantinople before the official opening of the first session. Alongside this, the canon mentioned “those who held or hold tenets like those of the aforesaid heretics and persisted in the same impiety till death.” This inclusive remark seemed to announce the condemnation of Theodore of Mopsuestia, which followed immediately in Canon 12. The final canons 12–14 reaffirmed the anathema on the Three Chapters, whose earlier condemnation had led to the convocation of the Council. The canons testify to the complete adherence of the Council to Justinian’s theological views and terminology, which also implied an acceptance of the Christological discourse devised by the Neo-Chalcedonians. Although phrased in the negative

Concerning the Formula of Reunion, see chapters 3–4. Concerning Theodore’s usage of the term, see the excerpt at Acts IV. 52. 115 The canon, as with Justinian’s edict, refrained from applying the human paradigm – to which Cyril had recurred in his own defense of the miaphysite formula, in seeking to explain the unity of the two natures of Christ as a union according to nature. Cf. Ep. 46 ad Succenssum II, PG 77, 245AB. 116 Such practice suggests a Nestorian Christological perspective. 114

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form of anathemas, they constituted an important contribution to the development of orthodoxy. The first contribution of the Second Council of Constantinople consisted in its giving a definitive and authoritative ecclesiastical affirmation to the Council of Chalcedon. 117 Constantinople II validated the status of Chalcedon as an Oikoumenical Council. It confirmed the soundness of Chalcedon’s doctrine, even if this required some clarification and rectification. It demonstrated the essential harmony of the Chalcedonian Definition with Cyril’s teaching. It made the rigorous terminology defined by the Neo-Chalcedonians into an intrinsic element of its espousal and appropriation of Chalcedonian doctrine, even if it did not stress this point, and so rendered the Neo-Chalcedonian input somewhat inconspicuous from the vantage point of posterity. The latter made it possible to eliminate from the Chalcedonian legacy some ambiguous conceptions and formulations – such as, for instance, the miaphysite formula, even though this had been authorized by Cyril himself. The Chalcedonian inheritance stood vindicated, but only thanks to its having been reshaped in the Neo-Chalcedonian mould. The second, and probably most important, contribution of the Council, lay in its integration into the body of Church doctrine of a coherent Christology built on the idea of stressing the primordial role of the hypostasis of God the Word in the mystery of the Incarnation. Constantinople II asserted that the only-begotten Logos was hypostatically united in its Incarnation with a complete human nature. The two natures, united according to the hypostasis of God the Word, nevertheless remained distinct and unaltered. Thus, in consequence, there is in truth just one Jesus Christ, who is simultaneously consubstantial with the Father with respect to the Godhead, and with us in respect of humanity. The Council, by embracing the elucidation of the mystery of the Incarnation through the union according to hypostasis, adopted an account of the genuine unity of divine and human natures in Christ that did not lose or diminish the human component. The third of Constantinople’s principal achievements was the official ecclesiastical affirmation of speculative theology. To be sure, the Council condemned, among other heresies, Origenism, which had greatly relied on philosophy and discourse of a speculative nature. However, that very same Council unreservedly embraced the Neo-Chalcedonian Christology, which in its core was also speculative – a Christology that intentionally sought theological refinement not only through the introduction of terminological clarity into its philosophically founded apparatus, but also by requiring of its adherents subtlety in argumentation. It is fair to say that the Neo-Chalcedonian approach to theology, supported by Justinian and confirmed by I could not agree more with Richard Price, when he asserts that treating the Second Council of Constantinople as a betrayal of Chalcedon constitutes an inversion of history. See Price, Acts of the Council of Constantinople II, 1: 74. 117

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the Second Council of Constantinople, has shaped the direction of development of Eastern and Western traditions for centuries, if not millennia. It could hardly be concluded, therefore, that the Second Council of Constantinople achieved in the main just a “clarification” of the Chalcedonian Creed. The minimalist interpretation of the Council mentioned at the outset of this chapter, according to which it offered a “mere clarification” of Chalcedon, or limited the scope of the latter’s statements, is not only inaccurate, but also neglects the fact that, in such fields as philosophy and theology, clarification of one’s predecessor’s conceptions, frequently of a painstaking sort, is an absolute prerequisite for further development. Yet, by all accounts, the accomplishments of Constantinople II should not be reduced even to this kind of undervalued labour. As well as fulfilling the political and ecclesiastical goals set for it by the Emperor, the Council espoused new solutions that evolved from, but also went far beyond, attempts to clarify terminology and rectify doctrines that had previously left room for ambiguous interpretation. Indeed, it would not be an overstatement to assert that the Council’s decisions have informed Christology as a whole, delineating the very standards according to which theology as a discipline has itself come to be pursued.

5.5. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING As was mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, we are now in possession of an exceptionally rich body of historical evidence relating to the Second Council of Constantinople. Besides this, more and more materials have become accessible to us as they have come to be translated from their original languages (Greek, Syriac, and Latin) into modern ones. The outstanding work of Richard Price, making Church proceedings and documents from the Councils of Chalcedon and Constantinople II available to contemporary English readers, can reasonably be expected to result, before long, in a further growth of interest in this field, as well as in many new studies devoted to Church history and theology pertaining to this era. The available sources can be divided into two main groups: historical testimony and theological evidence. The latter includes church documents and relevant theological works. The recommended historical sources are as follows: The Chronicle of Pseudo-Zachariah Rhetor; The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus; Cyril of Scythopolis’ Lives of the Monks of Palestine; Theophanes the Confessor’s Chronicle; and Michael the Syrian’s Chronique. Also an unquestionable point of reference is offered by Publizistische Sammlungen zum Acacianischen Schisma, edited by Eduard Schwartz, and Collectio Avellana edited by Otto Günther. I would suggest the following readings on the theology of the Council: Acta conciliorum œcumenicorum in the original Greek and Latin along with Richard Price’s translations of the acts of Chalcedon and Constantinople II. As far as theological treatises are concerned, it should be pointed out that, unlike materials of a purely historical nature, the theological works of the main authors of the era are, in some instances, not only unavailable in modern languages, but also lacking critical edition. I would suggest the following sources to access the theology

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of the main protagonists of Constantinople II in the original languages: John the Grammarian’s Iohannis Caesariensis presbyteri et grammatici Opera quae supersunt, edited by Marcel Richard and Michaele Aubineau in CCSG; Justinian’s Corpus iuris civilis, edited by Paul Krüger, Theodor Mommsen, Rudolf Schöll, and Wilhelm Kroll; Drei dogmatische Schriften Justinians, edited by Eduard Schwartz and translated in Kenneth Paul [Warren] Wesche. Scritti teologici ed ecclesiastici di Giustiniano, edited by Mario Amelotti and Livia Migliardi Zingale is also an extremely valuable source for historians. Ephrem of Antioch’s Four Works can be found in Photius, Bibliotheca, edited by René Henry. For a critical edition of works of Leontius of Byzantium see Brian Daley’s unpublished dissertation from 1978 and Vol. 86 of PG. A critical edition of Leontius of Jerusalem’s Contra Monophysitas and Contra Nestorianos is available in Vol. 86 of PG. John Philoponus’s Four Tmemata is translated by Jean Baptiste Chabot and the Arbiter by Uwe Michael Lang. Severus of Antioch’s theology is well represented in Homiliae cathedrales, edited by Maurice Brière; Orationes ad Nephalium eiusdem ac Sergii Grammatici: Epistulae mutuae, edited by Joseph Lebon; Liber contra impium Grammaticum, edited by Joseph Lebon; and Philalethes, edited by Robert Hespel. Translations of selected Severus’ texts and letters can be found in Iain Torrance’s Christology after Chalcedon; Allen, Pauline and C. T. Robert Hayward’s Severus of Antioch, Select Letters; and The Sixth Book of the Select Letters of Severus, and A Collection of Letters of Severus of Antioch edited and translated by Ernest Walter Brooks. John Maxentius’s Brevissima adunationis ratio Verbi Dei ad propriam carnem, Capitula edita contra Nestorianos et Pelagianos ad satisfactionem fratrum, Dialogus contra Nestorianos, and Item eiusdem professio brevissima catholicae fidei, can be found in CCSL 85A. Texts of the Scythian Monks can be found in Epistula Scytharum monachorum ad episcopos (Epistula ad Episcopos), CCSL 85A. See also a translation by John A. McGuckin in his article “The ‘Theopaschite Confession’ (Text and Historical Context): Study in the Reinterpretation of Chalcedon.” Well–known but still in a great part relevant studies on the subject are Peter Charanis’ Church and State in the Later Roman Empire: The Religious Policy of Anastasius the First, 491–518; Alois Grillmeier’s Christ in Christian Tradition; Patrick T. R. Gray’s The Defense of Chalcedon in the East (451–553); W.H.C. Frend’s The Rise of the Monophysite Movement: Chapters in the History of the Church in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries; Richard Price’s and Mary Whitby’s Chalcedon in Context: Church Councils, 400–700. In addition to those studies, an interesting work is Rafał Kosiński’s The Emperor Zeno: Religion and Politics as it sheds new light on many historical points and key figures. For more information please consult bibliography.

CHAPTER 6: THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE III: 681. THE MORAL DYNAMISM OF CHRIST AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FREEDOM GREGORY TUCKER 6.1. PREAMBLE The division of the past into more or less discrete periods in modern historiography has too often left “dark ages” which, having fallen between the cracks of academic specializations, remain understudied and thus mysterious to most students of history. Scholars of Byzantium continue to lament that their field of inquiry is frequently regarded as “either nonexistent or in-between…a niche specialization…” which eludes modern historians and confounds their categories. 1 If this is true of Byzantium generally, then I suggest that it is even more the case for the contested period of transition from “Late Antiquity” to “Byzantium.” This phase lasted, by some estimations, as long as five hundred years, from the death of Constantine (337) to the so-called “Triumph of Orthodoxy” (843), but the most shadowy period of this “dark age” undoubtedly began with the conclusion of the reign of Justinian (565). Even some more recent Byzantine historians regard this as a period of “interlude…the bleakest in Roman history in almost all ways, certainly in terms of literature, art, architecture, and social life.” 2 Clearly, it was an age of military conflict and dramatic changes for the Empire, which would never again exercise as much worldly power as under Justinian, but it was also a period in which profound theological questions continued to be debated at the highest level of society. And it is during this period that the Sixth Oikoumenical Council took place in 681. The details of this Council, the third at Constantinople, often evade students of Christian doctrine and history. Those broadly familiar with the world of ancient Averil Cameron succinctly summarizes this situation in a chapter entitled “Absence” in her Byzantine Matters (Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2014). 2 Anthony Kaldellis, Hellenism in Byzantium: the Transformation of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 179. 1

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Christianity are frequently well versed in the earliest theological disputes and their historical contexts. A common narrative presents the Council of Chalcedon (451) as the culmination, and frequently the effective termination, of fundamental theological dispute among “orthodox” Christians, and so knowledge of the immediately subsequent period is often lacking. But those who venture to investigate a little further discover that Chalcedon was by no means the conclusion of theological debate in the ancient Church – even from the perspective of mainline Chalcedonian Churches (Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant) – and moreover that many of the enduring divisions which exist between confessional groups in the Christian East, often traced to Chalcedon, emerged only in the aftermath of the Council, over the course of several centuries. 3 This chapter will examine the events leading up to the Sixth Oikoumenical Council and the doctrinal statement that emerged from it. The period immediately following Justinian’s death was one which saw both a return to the political turmoil that had existed before his reign and the continuation, for a time, of efforts towards reconciliation between adherents to Chalcedon (and Constantinople II) and those who dissented from the terms of the former. Since official rejection of Chalcedon and Constantinople II was now impossible, attention was focused on ways in which the Oikoumenical doctrine of both Councils might be exegeted and expressed in a way which would appease the concern that the imperial Church was “Nestorian” – a view held by the “miaphysite” non-Chalcedonians. 4 Two closely related doctrines – I use the term “Christian East” with some hesitancy. Historically, many of the theological and ecclesiastical issues which will be discussed in this chapter have been debated by Christian groups which were at one time within the boundaries of the Eastern Roman Empire (which in its later phases comes to be referred to by modern scholars as “Byzantium”) or on its borders (i.e. far-Eastern Europe, Asia Minor, Syria, the Levant, and Egypt). Today, however, these debates and their effects are seen throughout the world, as a result of twentieth-century migrations that have dispersed many of these peoples and their Churches across the globe. 4 Throughout this paper, I refer to miaphysite(s) rather than monophysite(s), for several reasons: i. “miaphysite” represents the self-designation of those who maintain a strictly Cyrillian theological position (against a Chalcedonian one), whereas “monophysite” is a pejorative term applied by Chalcedonians to those who dissent; ii. this allows for a clear distinction between Eutychian Christology (which is rejected by both Chalcedonian and miaphysite Churches) and the Christology of the miaphysites; iii. “miaphysite” better reflects the language of Cyril, which the miaphysite Churches claim to uphold strictly. I also refer to miaphysites using a lower-case “m” because this conveys the complexity of the ecclesiastical situation and the fact that the schism between the imperially-sanctioned (Neo-)Chalcedonian “dyophysites” and the non-Chalcedonian “miaphysites” (strict Cyrillians/Severans) emerged slowly over the period considered by this essay, as we shall see. For the most part, the term “non-Chalcedonian” refers to the miaphysites who accepted the first three Oikoumenical 3

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monoenergism and monotheletism – were explored in the first half of the seventh century, and for a brief period appeared to offer a viable path to ecclesiastical unity with Chalcedonian Christians for both miaphysite and Nestorian groups. But the orthodoxy of both teachings was challenged, and both doctrines were ultimately rejected at the Sixth Oikoumenical Council, thus ending the last serious effort at formal reconciliation between Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Christians in the East, until the dawn of the oikoumenical movement in the twentieth century. Because this period is unfamiliar to many students of Christian history, this chapter will first provide a comprehensive overview of the main developments after the Fifth Oikoumenical Council, before proceeding to an analysis of the Christology of Constantinople III. 5 Councils, but it is sometimes used as an umbrella term including other ecclesial communities not aligned with the imperial Church, including Nestorians and Armenians. Context will make the intended meaning clear. For further reference, see Sebastian Brock, “The Christology of the Church of the East in the Synods of the Fifth to Early Seventh Centuries: Preliminary Considerations and Materials,” in G. Dragas ed., Aksum-Thyateira: a Festschrift for Archbishop Methodios (London-Athens, 1985): 125–142; reprinted in Studies in Syriac Christianity (1992), chapter XII. 5 It is beyond the scope of the overview provided in this chapter to notate the primary sources for each historical episode mentioned here. I will do so only where a specific source is mentioned, the sources diverge significantly, or there is some specific point of interest. Any of the excellent recent monographs listed in the bibliography can guide the interested reader through the details of our period. The main chronicles for the period are: Chronicon Paschale, ed. L Dindorf (Bonn: Weber, 1832) = Chronicon Paschale, 284–628 AD, trans. Michael Whitby & Mary Whitby, Translated Texts for Historians 7 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1989); Evagrius Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History, ed. J. Bidez and L. Parmentier in The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius, with the Scholia (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1964) = Evagrius Scholasticus, The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus, trans. Michael Whitby, Translated Texts for Historians 33 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000); History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, ed. B. Evetts, “History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria,” parts 1–3, PO 1.2, 1.4 (Paris, 1904), 99–214, 381–518; PO 5.1 (Paris, 1910), 1–215; and PO 10.5 (Paris, 1915), 357–55; Jacob of Edessa, Chronicle, ed. E. W. Brooks in Chronica minora, vol. 3, CSCO 5, SS 5, 261–330 (Paris, 1961);
John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History, ed. E. W. Brooks in Ioannis Ephesini historiae ecclesiasticae pars tertia, CSCO 105/54, 106/55 (Paris, 1935– 36), and Ioannis Ephesini historiae ecclesiasticae fragmenta quae e prima et secunda parte supersunt, CSCO 104/53, 402–20 (Louvain, 1965); John of Ephesus, Lives of the EasternSaints, ed. E. W. Brooks, PO 17–19 (Paris, 1923–25); John of Nikiu, Chronicle, ed. H. Zotenberg in Chronique de Jean, évêque de Nikiou (Paris: Impr. nationale, 1883) = John of Nikiu, Chronicle, trans. R. H. Charles (Amsterdam: APA, 1981); Michael the Syrian, Chronicle, ed. J.-B. Chabot, 4 Vols. (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2011); Nicephorus, Chronography, ed. C. de Boor in Nicephori Archiepiscopi Constantinopolitani opuscula historica, 81–135 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1880) = Nicephorus,

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6.2. THE CHRISTIAN WORLD AFTER CONSTANTINOPLE II (553–610) At the Second Council of Constantinople (553), Justinian secured oikoumenical support for the religious policies of the early years of his reign. The bishops in synod condemned the Three Chapters – that is to say, the person of Theodore of Mopsuestia, the writings of Theodoret of Cyrrhus against Cyril of Alexandria and the Second Oikoumenical Council at Ephesus (431), and the Letter of Ibas of Edessa to Maris the Persian, which questioned the condemnation of Nestorius. Further, they endorsed a Cyrillian reading of Chalcedon (an understanding of the Council sometimes called “Neo-Chalcedonian” by later commentators), which included use of the theopaschite formula, the approval of the Twelve Anathemas against Nestorius, and the acceptance of Cyril’s phrase “one incarnate nature of the God-Word.” 6 Together, these decisions were intended to reassure the opponents of Chalcedon that the imperial Chalcedonian Church was not Nestorian, and that it abided by the theology of Cyril, even while it permitted phraseology not found in his corpus. The Pope of Rome, Vigilius (537–55), was initially resistant to the decisions of Constantinople II, as he had been to Justinian’s earlier imperial condemnation of the Three Chapters. In this, he was in agreement with the majority of bishops in the Christian West, who were reluctant to condemn persons now long-dead (Theodore, Theodoret, and Ibas) who had reposed in unimpeded communion with the Church. Leading up to Constantinople II, Vigilius had at first resisted the condemnation of the Three Chapters, then assented, and then returned to his objection. This led to the summoning of the Fifth Oikoumenical Council without the consent of the papacy or its representation, and the condemnation of Vigilius at the seventh session of the Council. In December 553, six months after the close of Constantinople II, Vigilius recanted once more, anathematized the Three Chapters, and issued a statement reaffirming his commitment to Chalcedon and declaring the Letter of Ibas to be inauthentic. Having restored communion between the sees of Rome and Constantinople, he began his journey back to Italy, but died en route at Syracuse, Sicily, on June 7, 555. Despite having re-entered communion with Constantinople, Vigilius’s reticence concerning both the condemnation of the Three Chapters and the Cyrillian reading of Chalcedon was maintained by his episcopal brethren in the West, where Chalcedon had been received with an emphasis on the Tome of Pope Leo. The new Pope, Pelagius (556–61), who was present at Constantinople during the Council, Short History, trans. C. Mango, Nikephoros, Patriarch of Constantinople: Short History (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1990); Theophanes Confessor, Chronographia, ed. Carl de Boor (Hildesheim: Olms, 1963) = Theophanes the Confessor, The Chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor, trans. Cyril Mango & Roger Scott (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). 6 “μία φύσις τοῦ θεοῦ λόγου σεσαρκωμένη.” See John A. McGuckin, Saint Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy (Crestwood, New York: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004), 140 ff.

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was highly unpopular on account of his support of the condemnation of the Three Chapters, and it was possible to find only two bishops to perform his consecration. Despite Justinian’s attempt to impose recognition of the Fifth Oikoumenical Council by force, it remained unacknowledged in parts of the West until the end of the seventh century, in what has come to be known as the Schism of the Three Chapters or the Schism of Aquileia. Under the leadership of Bishop Macedonius of Aquileia (535–56), several sees in Northern Italy broke communion with the Roman Church over this matter. In 579, their schism was confirmed by their Synod of Grado under the leadership of Macedonius’s successor, Paulinus, by which time much of the territory to which they laid claim was subject to Lombard rule, and thus beyond the reach of the imperial Exarch of Ravenna. Under the title of Patriarch, which had been adopted by Paulinus, his successor Elias erected a Cathedral at Grado, dedicated to St. Euphemia, whose miraculous intervention had been taken as a sign of the orthodoxy of the Definition of Chalcedon. Beginning in the early years of the seventh century, bishops of the schismatic Patriarchate of Aquileia began to be reconciled to the Roman Church, and this process continued as the Lombards gradually renounced Arianism in favor of Niceno-Chalcedonian Orthodoxy. The schism was finally healed in 698, after which the Patriarch of Aquileia was permitted to retain his exalted title and was granted the pallium by the Pope. Justinian remained engaged in ecclesiastical issues until the very end of his reign, both continuing to support dialogue with the hierarchs of the nonChalcedonian sees, and engaging in yet further theological speculation, especially on the subject of aphthartodocetism – the doctrine that the flesh of Christ was incorruptible before his Resurrection (and, according to its opponents, thus radically different from other human beings). Justinian’s interest in this subject appears to have been genuinely intellectual, since the propagation of such a doctrine would not obviously have enabled reunion with the non-Chalcedonians and would likely have divided the imperial adherents to Chalcedon. Although aphthartodocetism was taught by some non-Chalcedonians, it was also held by some Chalcedonians. At the same time, it had been condemned by Severus of Antioch, the great opponent of Chalcedon, and was equally opposed by Eutychius, Patriarch of Constantinople, who was removed from his see by Justinian on account of his opposition to the doctrine. When Justinian was ready to issue an edict propagating the doctrine of aphthartodocetism, Patriarch Anastasius of Antioch summoned a large Council against this, and providence intervened to prevent Justinian’s decree. He died on November 14, 565, at the age of 82. At the time of Justinian’s death, the Eastern Roman Empire had recovered much of the glory and prestige it had earlier enjoyed, and was the largest it would be until its final defeat by the Ottomans in 1453. Justinian’s armies had reconquered the Mediterranean, taking back North Africa and Italy, and the southeastern part of the Iberian Peninsula, establishing a capital at Córdoba. The Empire was thus rich in material resources and benefited from the political stability that derived from this, enabling it to maintain its borders, both Eastern and Western. The imperial capital at Constantinople had been rebuilt after the Nika Riots (532), which had devastated

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the area around the royal palace at the beginning of Justinian’s long reign. Over the site of the Theodosian cathedral – itself built to replace the first basilica, erected by Constantine – Justinian constructed a new Great Church dedicated to Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) that was for a millennium the largest church in the world, and which, despite its major structural flaws, remains standing today, as an icon of the achievements of Christendom in Late Antiquity. But with Justinian’s death, the Empire entered a period of great political instability. Between 565 and 610 there were four emperors, each of whom struggled to maintain internal order and external peace. Justinian was immediately succeeded by Justin II (565–78), the husband of his niece Sophia, and supported by the praepositus sacri cubiculi, Callinicus, a high-ranking officer of the imperial household, who was the sole witness of Justinian’s death, and claimed that the late emperor had named Justin as his heir. Inheriting an empty treasury, Justin proceeded to withhold the payments that his uncle had been accustomed to make to neighboring powers in order to secure the borders, thus exposing the Empire to the Avars in the West and the Persians in the East. In addition, a new threat was posed by the Lombards, a Germanic tribe that had been progressing gradually southwards, which entered the Italian peninsula in 568. The Avars became increasingly difficult to subdue and entered Dalmatia in the same year. Justin battled them for three years and was eventually reduced to seeking a costly truce. In 571, Armenia rebelled against its ruler, the Persian Shah Chosroes II, appealing to Justin for assistance and thus drawing the Roman Empire into a conflict which would cost them dearly and outlast the emperor. Early in his reign, it appears that Justin desired reconciliation with the nonChalcedonians. The Ecclesiastical History by John of Ephesus (a moderate nonChalcedonian but firm advocate of imperial loyalty) presents the beginning of Justin’s rule as one of tolerance of the non-Chalcedonians and suggests that, in her youth, the Empress Sophia had received communion in Churches of miaphysite confession. 7 Elsewhere, the same author records that the Empress sheltered a large community of some 500 refugees in the great halls (triklinoi) of the Palace of Hormisdas, 8 and it has been suggested that the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus (today known as the Küçük Ayasofya Camii or “Little Hagia Sophia” Mosque) was constructed for their use. 9 The exiled non-Chalcedonian Patriarch of Antioch, Theodosius, whose deposition the nascent Coptic Church never acknowledged, had been installed in the imperial palace by Justinian’s wife Theodora and continued to live there under Justin’s protection until his death in 566. For about a year from John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History, Part 3, II.10. John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, trans. E. W. Brooks, 600, 676–84. 9 See Jonathan Bardill, “The Church of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus in Constantinople and the Monophysite Refugees,” DOP 54 (2000): 1–11. 7 8

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566–7, the Patriarch of Constantinople, John III Scholasticus (565–77), an able canonist from the East who had been present in the capital as apokrisiarios of the Patriarch of Antioch since 548/9, presided over an internal debate between nonChalcedonians concerning “Tritheism.” 10 The debate numbered among its participants the iconic leader of the miaphysite movement, Jacob Bar ’Addai. 11 This is indicative of the generosity of the court (which may have been premised on the potential need for political allies in the Eastern parts of the Empire) and of the genuine spirit of inquiry and debate which appears to have characterized much of the sixth century. It also directs us to the reality of religious division which continued to exist in the Roman Empire in this period, in which “fathers are divided against their children, children against the authors of their birth, a wife against her own husband, and again a husband against his own wife,” according to Evagrius Scholasticus. 12 During a trip to the border with Persia in 567/8, an imperial ambassador seems to have rallied support for union between the Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian parties among the non-Chalcedonian leaders, which led to further discussions in the capital, but caused a riot in Callinicum where the conference was being held. In 571 Justin issued a Programma, calling for union based on mutually acknowledged “right faith,” leaving aside disputes over terminology and individual persons, and affirming both strict-Cyrillian and Chalcedonian Christological language, thus reaffirming the Neo-Chalcedonianism of Justinian. 13 According to the Chronicle of Michael the Syrian, the Programma was satisfactory to the non-Chalcedonians in doctrinal matters, and both John of Ephesus and Paul, Patriarch of Antioch, received communion from the Patriarch of Constantinople – but they recanted upon discovering that Chalcedon would not be disavowed. 14 At this juncture, Justin began to apply pressure to the non-Chalcedonians. John of Ephesus writes that the non-Chalcedonian leaders present in the capital were imprisoned and their Churches were seized, thereby ending a policy of practical tolerance and negotiation which had endured since the beginning of Justinian’s reign. 15 All Christians in Constantinople and Anatolia were required to assent to the Programma, and a number complied, including Paul of Antioch, but the resistance of others drove the synod at Constantinople to See Lionel Wickham, “Schism and Reconciliation in a Sixth-century Trinitarian Dispute: Damian of Alexandria and Peter of Callinicus on ‘Properties, Rôles and Relations,’” IJSCC 8 (2008): 3–15; and U. M. Lang, John Philoponus and the Controversies over Chalcedon in the Sixth Century: a Study and Translation of the Arbiter (Leuven: Peeters, 2001). 11 See below for further details. 12 Evagrius, Ecclesiastical History IV.10. 13 The text of the so-called “Second Henotikon” of Justin II is found in Evagrius, Ecclesiastical History V.4. 14 Michael the Syrian, Chronicle X.3. 15 John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History, Part 3, I.4. 10

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reissue the anathema against Severus, which had been implicitly dropped in the Programma. From the early 570s, Justin’s mental health had begun seriously to deteriorate. In 574, Sophia persuaded her husband to appoint a Caesar, in the person of the general Tiberius, who reigned with her as co-regent until the death of Justin II in 578. During this period, there was no stilling of the political storm, with the emergence of the Turks on the Eastern frontiers and the invasion of the Slavs in 577. Further, Sophia asserted herself rather forcefully over Tiberius, especially in the area of fiscal control, such that when he finally succeeded to the throne as sole, uncontested emperor in 578, it was necessary to confine Sophia for the remainder of her life. Tiberius (578–82), who assumed the name “Constantine” in addition to his own, appears to have been much less concerned about money than his predecessor, and annually gave away gold with such largesse that he nearly bankrupted the treasury in the process. He continued to fight valiantly on both the Persian and Western fronts, but the resources of the Empire were overstretched, and it was necessary to come to terms with the Avars in order to continue the war with the Persians. After the death in 577 of the staunchly Chalcedonian Patriarch of Constantinople, John Scholasticus, Tiberius renewed the pragmatic peace with the nonChalcedonians (which had existed before Justin’s Programma failed to achieve union and he turned to violence). John of Ephesus was briefly released in the same year that John Scholasticus died. Eutychius, the Patriarch whom Justinian had deposed for his refusal to endorse the doctrine of aphthartodocetism, returned to the archiepiscopal throne though he was uncomfortable with the emperor’s policy of the toleration of miaphysites. In 578, Jacob Bar ’Addai, wearied by the growing rifts between the non-Chalcedonian sees (exemplified by the schism between Paul of Antioch, whom he had restored to non-Chalcedonian communion after he had communed with John Scholasticus in Constantinople, and Peter of Alexandria, with whom he eventually sided in supporting Paul’s deposition from the patriarchal throne), died en route to Egypt, at the age of 73. Tiberius died on August 13, 582, having ingested poorly prepared food or perhaps poison. He was succeeded by Maurice (582–602), who had commanded the imperial armies against the Persians and was betrothed to Tiberius’ daughter, Constantina. The Empire was almost bankrupt after Tiberius’ policy of fiscal largesse, and a lack of funds plagued his entire reign, eventually precipitating his demise. Nonetheless, Maurice continued to attempt to maintain the imperial borders, with some success. Amidst internal turmoil, Maurice was able to assist Chosroes II to reclaim his throne in Persia in 591, bringing about a peace between the long-warring kingdoms, and saving the treasury the tribute which had been paid to the Persians previously. Further, Chosroes extended Byzantine territory beyond what had been promised originally, to the edge of Lake Van in Armenia. In the West, Maurice delegated rule to two Exarchs, of Ravenna (in 584) and of North Africa (590), and employed able generals and diplomats in his service. By 599 he had repelled the Avars back beyond the Danube for the first time in 200 years, and he also made advances against the Slavs, such that the Byzantines were able to hold the Danube border.

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Maurice’s religious policy was no doubt partially shaped by the election of John IV “the Faster” (582–95) as Patriarch of Constantinople in the same year as his accession to the imperial throne. John was regarded by all as a pious ascetic and seems to have enjoyed a close relationship with Maurice, whose son he crowned at the age of only four and a half. The non-Chalcedonian John of Ephesus, long imprisoned in Constantinople, records the Patriarch as having a generous spirit towards the miaphysites whom Maurice was moved to persecute. 16 Others regard Patriarch John as the defender of Chalcedonian Orthodoxy, however, and Maurice as tolerant of the non-Chalcedonians. In any case, when the opportunity arose for Maurice to negotiate with the Georgian and Western Armenian bishops after the peace with Persia and Chosroes II, he did so, drawing both groups into the sphere of imperial Chalcedonian Orthodoxy. Further east, the non-Chalcedonians continued to exercise considerable influence and gain ground. Meanwhile, in the West, tensions emerged between the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Pope of Rome: the occupant of the former see, John the Faster, began to use the title “Oikoumenical Patriarch” in correspondence, to the irritation of both Pope Pelagius II (579–90) and his successor, Pope Gregory I (590–604), who protested this innovation. 17 Antagonism between Rome and Constantinople became a regular feature of ecclesiastical life from the seventh century onwards. Despite settling the war with the Persians and securing the Western border along the Danube, Maurice met a bloody end as the victim of a military coup. Liquid assets had remained in short supply throughout his reign, leading to a cut in military wages. His decision in 599/600 not to ransom some 12,000 soldiers taken captive by the Avars, and their resultant execution, led to a revolt among the troops. They demanded that Maurice abdicate in favor of his son, Theodosius, or his father-in-law Germanus, a general. Maurice accused both men of treason and had Theodosius flogged, while Germanus took refuge in the Great Church. Riots broke out, Maurice fled with his family to Nicomedia on the other side of the Bosphorus, and the general Phocas emerged in a bid for the throne, being crowned by the Patriarch in the Church of the Forerunner. Phocas inaugurated his reign of terror by executing Maurice and his sons, torturing and executing anyone thought to remain loyal to Maurice’s memory, and banishing the former Empress Constantina and her daughters to a convent. Phocas’ reign (602–610) was, mercifully, fairly short. His usurpation of the imperial throne was the first violent revolt against an emperor since the foundation of Constantinople and appears to have shocked the city, leading Phocas to rule by violence, although he did win popular support for a while by reducing the taxes which Ibid., V.15. See Hans-Georg Beck, Kirche und theologische Literatur im byzantinischen Reich (Munich: Beck, 1959), 63–4. 16 17

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had been so high during the reign of Maurice. Nonetheless, he was immediately beset by military challenges. Chosroes II of Persia, who owed his throne and loyalty to Maurice, straightaway turned against Phocas and began a war against him which would extend well into the reign of his successor. During the eight years of Phocas’ reign, he lost most of the Eastern territories, and on the eve of the end of his rule, Chosroes was encamped at Chalcedon, across the Bosphorus from Constantinople. In the West, the army stationed at the Danube revolted in 605, and the Avars and Slavs whom Maurice had worked so hard to repel began once again to flood the Balkans. The Empire gradually descended into anarchy. Phocas enjoyed cordial relations with the Church of Rome, however. He received letters of support from Pope Gregory and the emperor in turn supported the papal program of reform. Later he gave over the Pantheon to the great missionary Pope Boniface IV (608–15) for use as a Church. In the East, Phocas launched a campaign against non-Chalcedonians and Jews, whom he required to convert to (Chalcedonian) Christianity. 18 At Antioch this led to a violent uprising, during which the Chalcedonian Patriarch Anastasius II was horribly mutilated and then murdered in the street. Shortly afterwards, the advancing Arab armies arrived in Antioch, which the Jews duly surrendered. With the Empire in disarray, the reign of Phocas was brought to a swift end by the arrival of Heraclius, son of the Exarch of Carthage. Supported by the senate and much of the city, Heraclius’ fleet sailed into the port of Constantinople, and on October 5, 610, Phocas was killed. Heraclius was proclaimed Emperor and crowned by Patriarch Sergius. Before turning to the reign of Heraclius and the emergence of the monoenergist and monothelite debates, let us first consider in a little more depth one development, to which we have already alluded in passing and which occurred during the period from Justinian to Phocas: the solidification of the parallel jurisdiction and hierarchy of rival non-Chalcedonian churches. Although the Council of Chalcedon was strongly contested from the beginning, it did not immediately produce a neat schism in the Church. Throughout the fifth century and into the sixth, the Christology of the Fourth Oikoumenical Council continued to be debated, and there was no clear sense of permanent and irreconcilable separation between adherents to the rival theological positions. Efforts towards the formal unity of the Church continued into and beyond the reign of Justinian, as we have seen, but they became increasingly strained and the prospect of reunion gradually faded. The emergence of an alternative ecclesiastical structure in parallel to the imperial Chalcedonian hierarchy began, at least symbolically, when the miaphysite nonChronicle of Zuqnin, ed. J.-B. Chabot, Chronicon anonymum pseudo-Dionysianum vulgo dictum, 2 Vols. CSCO 91, 104, SS 43, 53 (Paris, 1927–65), 148ff = Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel Mahrē, Chronicle: Known as the Chronicle of Zuqnin, Part III, trans. Witold Witakowski, Translated Texts for Historians 22 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996). 18

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Chalcedonians refused to acknowledge the canonical deposition of their popular leader, Patriarch Severus of Antioch, at the time of the accession of Justin I in 518. Severus went into exile and continued to regard himself as the legitimate Patriarch, but he did not immediately attempt to establish rival churches in the canonical territory of Antioch. During the early years of Justinian’s reign, Severus’ cause was bolstered by the appointment of his friend Theodosius (535–567) to the Patriarchate of Alexandria in 535, under the patronage of the Empress Theodora. Since the Council of Chalcedon, the See of Alexandria had been held for the most part by bishops who did not recognize the authority of that synod, and Theodosius was no exception. But for this reason, in a move that indicates Justinian’s early commitment to the faith of Chalcedon, Constantinople withdrew its recognition of him – though, of course, opponents of Chalcedon did not. Shortly afterwards, Theodosius took refuge in the imperial palace in Constantinople under the protection of Theodora. Thus, from 535 there were rival Patriarchs at both Antioch and Alexandria – the two strongholds of miaphysite Christology – to whom non-Chalcedonian bishops could now ally themselves. Meanwhile, one such bishop, John of Tella (483– 538) in distant East Syria, had begun ordaining large numbers of clergy for the express purpose of serving non-Chalcedonian communities, with the knowledge and reluctant consent of Severus. 19 He died in imperial captivity in Antioch in 538, the same year as Severus, but his policy of ordaining non-Chalcedonian clergy was continued by Theodosius who, in 542 or 543, and with the encouragement of Theodora and the consent of Justinian, ordained two new bishops for the East, Theodore of Bostra and Jacob Bar ’Addai (which means “Patchworker” and is often Latinized as “Baradaeus”) of Edessa. 20 Quite what intention lay behind this decision is unclear: perhaps Justinian and Theodora thought that official reunion between the Chalcedonians and the miaphysites was likely, and it was better to have a hierarchy in place which they had authorized? As things would turn out, however, this was an important stage in establishing a permanent alternative structure of ecclesiastical oversight. Theodosius continued to exercise considerable authority in Constantinople and was addressed by the title “Oikoumenical Patriarch,” in the same manner as the Archbishop of Constantinople. 21 Jacob Bar ’Addai emerged as a person of missionary zeal and charismatic authority. According to some reports, Jacob actively consecrated approximately 100,000 clergy during his ministry, including 89 bishops and two Patriarchs, though Elias, Life of John of Tella, in E. W. Brooks, Vitae Virorum apud Monophysitas celeberrimorum (Louvain: Durbecq, 1955), 58–59. 20 Lucas Van Rompay, “Society and Community in the Christian East,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, ed. Michael Maas (Cambridge: CUP, 2005), 248. 21 W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 288. 19

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his contemporary hagiographer John of Ephesus only records twenty-seven bishops. 22 In either case, Jacob thereby not only fulfilled the spiritual needs of those opposed to the Council of Chalcedon who had been deprived of the sacraments and pastoral care, but effectively populated a whole region on the fringe of the Byzantine Empire with clergy opposed to the doctrine of the official Church, continuing the work which had been begun by bishops such as John of Tella. Many of these bishops shared the title of their see with a Chalcedonian counterpart, and it seems likely, therefore, that they did not occupy the cathedral of their town, but operated itinerantly from a nearby monastery, or perhaps out of Constantinople. While Jacob travelled intermittently to Constantinople throughout his life, participating in discussions aimed at the reconciliation of the miaphysites with the imperial Church, he was not as loyal to the Empire as figures such as Theodosius, and seems to have concentrated his efforts on building up the Church in the territories which were on the fringe of the Empire – namely, Syria and Egypt. As Theodosius was advancing in years, Jacob was involved in the consecration of a successor miaphysite Patriarch of Antioch, Sergius (557–60), of whom little is known. 23 Several years after Sergius’ death, Theodosius proposed another consecration to the see of Antioch, in the person of his secretary, the Alexandrian native Paul the Black (564–75). Paul’s election and consecration were contested by the Church in Syria, and his ecclesiastical career was by no means executed with as much diplomacy as Theodosius’. Paul was among those summoned to Constantinople in 571 by Justin, for the purpose of establishing peace between the Churches. Having refused the reunion on the basis that the imperial Church would not rescind Chalcedon, Paul was imprisoned and tortured. 24 Soon after he escaped to Syria, where he was accepted after explaining his position on Chalcedon, but he soon became embroiled in the ecclesiastical situation at Alexandria, where there had not been a miaphysite Patriarch since the death of Theodosius in 567. Thus, in 575, Paul attempted to impose his candidate, the Syrian Theodore, whose consecration was rejected by the Alexandrians, who for their part elected an aged deacon, Peter, and installed him in place of Theodore. According to John of Ephesus, Peter then consecrated a large number of bishops to re-establish the miaphysite hierarchy in Egypt, and moved (uncanonically) to declare Paul deposed as Patriarch of Antioch, and to bring charges against Jacob Bar ’Addai. Jacob accepted Peter’s deposition of Paul, leading to a schism between the “Paulites” (who recognized Paul as Patriarch of Antioch) and the “Jacobites” (who accepted Paul’s deposition). The schism between Antioch and Alexandria continued after Jacob’s death in 578, through the episcopaErnst Honigmann, Évêques et évêchés monophysites d’Asie antérieure au VIe siècle (Louvain: Durbecq, 1951), 172–3. 23 Dating is contested; see Frend, Rise, 291. 24 John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History, Part 3, I.4. 22

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cy of Peter of Callinicum (581–91) at Antioch and Damian at Alexandria (578–606). A temporary peace was reached in 581, but this broke down again until 616, and Paul the Black died unrestored to his throne. Thus, during the middle decades of the sixth century, the non-Chalcedonians established ecclesiastical structures in parallel to those of the imperial Chalcedonian Church, and proceeded to populate the areas in which their support base was located with clergy of all ranks. But at the same time there emerged various theological sub-divisions within this party, which led to tensions and divisions within the hierarchy. One such division emerged directly from the rejection of the theo-logic of Chalcedon, namely the doctrine of “Tritheism.” Taking the terms ὑπόστασις and φύσις to be equivalent, the doctrine imagined not only three hypostases but three physes in God – the divine unity was thus seriously compromised. This position was adopted by some prominent non-Chalcedonians, including Sergius of Antioch and the two bishops ordained first by Jacob Bar ’Addai, but it was strongly refuted by Theodosius. It was accepted and further elaborated by the Alexandrian philosopher, theologian, and philologist, John Philoponus, providing further grounds for the schism between the two leading Eastern sees. The doctrine was eventually condemned by the Synod of Alexandria in 616. This extremely volatile and complex political and ecclesiastical situation provides the context for the immediate pre-history of the Sixth Oikoumenical Council. Although we have perhaps belabored the point, it has been important to show that, at the beginning of the seventh century, lively theological debate continued within the Christian communities which were encompassed by and on the fringes of the Roman Empire. More precisely, we have seen that the boundaries between Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian confessions had remained somewhat fluid for over a century after Chalcedon. However, from the end of the first quarter of the sixth century, we see the rapidly emerging existence of parallel ecclesiastical structures and their entrenchment in local cultures. With this comes not only tension between Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian hierarchies, but also internal battles between various miaphysite groups. At the end of the sixth century, it is clear that the intersection of doctrine and politics continued to be fraught: not only did policies of tolerance and persecution of non-Chalcedonians vacillate, but the relationship between non-Chalcedonians and political entities outside the Roman Empire became an increasingly potent cause for concern at Constantinople.

6.3. THE EMERGENCE OF MONOENERGISM & MONOTHELETISM (610– 49) The accession of Heraclius (610–41) in October 610 undoubtedly ushered in a new era, though one which by no means saw an immediate end to the turmoil of the preceding decade – the Empire continued to fight wars on several fronts, and the treasury remained impoverished. Earlier in the same year, the deacon Sergius (610– 38) had ascended the Patriarchal throne at Constantinople, and in due course he crowned the new emperor. Heraclius and Sergius enjoyed a close relationship during

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their nearly co-extensive periods in high office, which involved both Heraclius’ support for Sergius’ policy of working towards ecclesiastical reconciliation with the non-Chalcedonian Churches in the East, and Sergius acting as defender of the imperial city of Constantinople during the emperor’s absence. The successes of this partnership were short-lived, however, in secular and ecclesiastical spheres, and the memory of both figures has been forever tarred by their support for the doctrines of monoenergism and monotheletism, which would be condemned at the Sixth Oikoumenical Council. But first, let us recall the contours of their reigns, which frame the emergence of these teachings. From the beginning, Heraclius faced a particularly difficult situation in the East, as the Persians continued to make advances against the Roman Empire. After some initial success in driving Chosroes’ armies out of Anatolia, the Persians then rallied to take much of Syria and the Levant, including the prominent Christian city of Damascus (613) and the holy city of Jerusalem (614). 25 According to the Chronicon Paschale, the Persians sacked the city, slaughtered thousands of priests and monastics, destroyed the Church of the Anastasis, and carried off the most precious relics – those of the Passion of Christ, including the True Cross – along with their custodian, the Patriarch Zachariah, all of which remained in Zoroastrian hands until 631. 26 They continued to make deep incursions into Byzantine territory, seizing the city of Alexandria (619) 27 and reaching the walls of Constantinople, which they intended to storm, but never managed successfully so to do. Meanwhile, the Avars and Slavs threatened the Empire on its northwestern frontier, taking much of Illyria and enslaving the local population, leaving only the city of Thessaloniki in Byzantine hands. At the same time, the Visigoths advanced into Spain and annexed several cities, announcing the final decline of the Western provinces of the Roman Empire. In 622, Heraclius, contemplating the desperate situation surrounding him, began a counter-offensive campaign which would last until 628, and bring about a lasting defeat for the Persians. He initially sailed east to Armenia and succeeded in recovering much of Asia Minor. The most difficult episode of these years then ocPseudo-Sebēos, History, ed. G. Abgaryan in Patmut’iwn Sebēosi (Yerevan, 1979) = The Armenian History Attributed to Sebeos, Vol. 1, trans. Robert Thomson & James HowardJohnston, Translated Texts for Historians 31 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), 33–34. 26 Chronicon Paschale [Dindorf, 704–5]. Other sources report initial voluntary capitulation from the citizens before a later revolt which was put down. See Phil Booth, Crisis of Empire: Doctrine and Dissent at the End of Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 94–5. 27 Anonymous Chronicle to 724, ed. E. W. Brooks in Chronica minora, vol. 2, CSCO 3, SS 3 (Paris, 1960), 75–156, at 113; on this dating over that of Theophanes’ Chronicle (614), see L.S.B. MacCoull, “Coptic Egypt during the Persian occupation: the papyrological evidence.” SCO 36 (1986), 307–13 and V. Déroche, Études sur Léontios de Néapolis (Uppsala, 1995), 118. 25

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curred in 626. 28 While Heraclius was in the East, Chosroes led an attack by the Persians against the city of Constantinople, in concert with the Slavs and Avars who were encamped to the West. The city was besieged on all sides, but under the guidance of Patriarch Sergius the Constantinopolitans successfully repelled the attackers. The unexpected victory was attributed to the intercessions of the Theotokos, whose robe was enshrined in the Church near the Blachernae Gate and whose icon the Patriarch and clergy had paraded around the walls of the city throughout the siege, and this propelled her cult at Constantinople to new heights. 29 This victory raised the morale of the Empire considerably, and in its wake Heraclius made important advances against the Persians. In 627, he took the city of Dastagerd near Ctesiphon, which contained the palace of the Great King of the Persians. Civil war erupted shortly afterwards in the Persian Empire, and the realm was soon at the mercy of Heraclius, who negotiated both the return of the Eastern lands and of the relic of the True Cross to the Roman Empire. 30 On September 14, 628, the relic was elevated with solemn ceremony in the Great Church of the city of Constantinople. Then, in early 629, Heraclius set off again for the East, taking with him the relics. On March 21, Heraclius became the first reigning Christian Emperor to enter the Holy City of Jerusalem. 31 In a spectacular ceremony, he returned the True Cross to the Church of the Anastasis at Jerusalem, being received by the patriarchal locum tenens (and soon-to-be Patriarch) Modestus. 32 This must have been a truly momentous occasion, though the threat of war was undoubtedly looming over the city. During this episode, the ongoing issue of the doctrinal disagreements internal to Eastern Christianity presented itself once more. The non-Chalcedonians in the East, while sharing the religious heritage of the Byzantines, had preferred their subservient relationship with the Persians. In 614, Chosroes introduced a policy within the Persian Empire of supporting the “Nestorian” and miaphysite hierarchs in the For an overview see James Howard-Johnson, “The Siege of Constantinople in 626,” in Cyril Mango and Gilbert Dagron, eds., Constantinople and its Hinterland (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995), 131–42. 29 Theodore Syncellus, “On the Siege of Constantinople,” ed. L. Sternbach, Analecta Avarica (Krakow, 1900), 298–320 [reprint: F. Makk, Traduction et commentaire de l’homélie écrite probablement par Théodore le Syncelle sur le siège de Constantinople en 626 (Szeged, 1975)]. For discussion see J. L. Van Dieten, Geschichte der Patriarchen von Sergios I. bis Johannes VI. (610–715) (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1972), 12–21; Howard-Johnston, “The Siege of Constantinople”; and the extensive commentary in Whitby and Whitby, Chronicon Paschale, 169–81. 30 For a summary of the whereabouts of the relics of the True Cross during this time, see: Phil Booth, Crisis of Empire, 155–159. 31 Return of the Relics of Anastasius the Persian 1, ed. B. Flusin, Saint Anastase le Perse et l’histoire de la Palestine au début du VIIe siècle, vol. 1 (Paris: Editions du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1992), 99. 32 Nicephorous, Chronography 18. 28

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provinces in which they respectively represented the majority. According to Severus of Ashmunein (Hermopolis Magna, Upper Egypt), Athanasius the Camel-driver (595–631), the non-Chalcedonian Patriarch of Antioch whom the Byzantines had forbidden to enter the city, celebrated the arrival of the Persians in his city, writing to his brother bishop, the Coptic Patriarch of Antioch, Anastasius: “The world rejoiced in peace and love, because the Chalcedonian night had vanished.” 33 The generosity of the Persians meant that non-Chalcedonians of all creeds were reluctant to support Heraclius during his campaigns. With the defeat of the Persians and the collapse of their authority, however, the situation changed again, as the nonChalcedonian problem was brought once more within the borders of the Empire, refueling the drive – both theological and political – for ecclesiastical unity. Both Heraclius and Sergius appear to have come from the East, and so it is quite possible that they each possessed some first-hand knowledge of ecclesial life beyond the reaches of the imperial Chalcedonian hierarchy. Most contemporary sources agree that Heraclius was Armenian. And with regards to Sergius, the nearcontemporary prolific ecclesiastical writer, Anastasius of Sinai, records that he was both Syrian and Jacobite – though the latter identification may be slanderous, and an early attempt to explain why the Patriarch of Constantinople so enthusiastically supported an heretical position. Whatever the case, it seems that Sergius had been considering the means to ecclesiastical unity since he ascended the patriarchal throne, and Heraclius was content to defer to him on such matters – perhaps especially after he proved himself in leading the inhabitants of Constantinople to victory over the Persians when they had besieged the city in 626. Over some 20 years, Sergius weighed the value of a new Christological formulation as the basis of reconciliation. Such a formula would be required to uphold the neo-Chalcedonian theology endorsed by the Fifth Oikoumenical Council, while further allaying the concerns of those who continued to maintain that Cyril’s theology had been betrayed by the “two natures” formula of Chalcedon. Sergius initially considered a formula based on a single energeia in Christ – hence, monoenergism. While energeia is often translated homophonically as “energy,” it is better understood as “activity” or “operative force.” 34 The essence of monoenergism was to suggest that Christ, existing in a hypostatic unity of two natures, human and divine, which are distinguished in contemplation alone, is a single active subject, possessing a single divine-human energeia. The monoenergist formula contends that in Christ there is a History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, ed. B. Evetts, 481. The meaning of energeia is discussed more fully below. For the sake of clarity, and in order to resist the temptation to extrapolate from this seventh-century controversy to the fourteenth-century Palamite debate over divine essence and energeiai (and thence to the revival of interest in Gregory’s writings in the twentieth century), I shall use the transliterated form throughout this paper. 33 34

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single divine-human activity, rather than distinct human and divine activities that nonetheless work together in perfect harmony. No doubt, Sergius hoped to forge a theological union on the basis of a concept which had not been hotly contested by Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians. The nature of Christ’s hypostatic energeia(i) was potentially one such concept, and it certainly had not been defined by an Oikoumenical Council. Nonetheless, there was some history of reflection on the energeia(i) of Christ, and a more shrewd ecclesiastical politician than Sergius might have avoided it altogether, noting the names of Apollinarius, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Severus of Antioch among its exponents. 35 Apollinarius’ theology had emphasized the unity of Christ as far as possible: “because he is single, we worship his single nature, will, and energeia.” 36 Theodore, while speaking of two sources of action, corresponding to the Logos and the man in Christ, nonetheless also speaks of a single common energeia and will in Christ, on the level of Christ’s single prosōpon (πρόσωπον). 37 A different tradition of monoenergism emanated from the principal miaphysite exponent of Cyrilline theology, Severus of Antioch, who extended Cyril’s theology into the spheres of energeia and will, on which the great teacher had not pronounced judgment. For Severus, Christ’s one energeia corresponded to his one nature, in direct contradiction to Chalcedon. 38 As with so much of Severus’ teaching, the doctrine of the one energeia was taken up by his theological followers in the sixth century in support of the oneness of Christ. In the cases of mainstream miaphysite thinkers such as Theodosius of Alexandria and Jacob Bar ’Addai, the doctrine remained essentially Severan, but in other cases it mutated into yet more problematic teachings, such as the aphthartodocetism of Julian of Halicarnassus, and the agnoetism of Themistius of Alexandria. 39 Nonetheless, it was monoenergeism which Sergius chose to make the foundation of union. In order to explore the viability of this formula as a means to union, Sergius conducted a correspondence with Theodore, bishop of Pharan in Sinai, which, according to Maximus the Confessor, included the exchange of a libellus, purportedly sent by Patriarch Menas of Constantinople to Pope Vigilius of Rome in the midsixth century. 40 This libellus apparently expressed a monoenergist Christology and was frequently appealed to in the early seventh century, but its authenticity was called into question at Constantinople III and the Council eventually rejected it as For the history of monoenergism and monotheletism in Christian discourse before the sixth century, see Cyril Hovorun, Will, Action, and Freedom: Christological Controversies in the Seventh Century (Leiden: Brill, 2008), Chapter 1. 36 Ad Iulianum, ed. H. Lietzmann in Apollinaris von Laodicea und seine Schule: Texte und Untersuchungen (Tübingen: Teubner, 1904), 247–8. See Hovorun, Will, Action, and Freedom, 9. 37 Ibid., 12–13. 38 Ibid., 15–28. 39 Hovorun, ibid., 28–33. 40 Maximus the Confessor, Disputation with Pyrrhus, PG 91, 332B–333A. 35

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fraudulent. Nonetheless, monoenergist phrases could be found throughout the tradition, both in Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian writers and not least in the works of (pseudo-)Dionysius, which had recently acquired great popularity. In Epistle 4, Dionysius wrote of a “single theandric energeia” (μιᾷ θεανδρικῇ ἐνεργείᾳ), and this phrase became one of the touchstones of the monoenergist debate. 41 Sergius also consulted representatives of non-Chalcedonian theology, such as Sergius Macaronas and George Arsas, who expressed support for the language. Despite some early resistance – notably (according to Maximus) from the charismatic Chalcedonian Patriarch of Alexandria, John the Merciful, whose protest against Sergius’ letters to the non-Chalcedonians was prevented only by the invasion of the Persians – the monoenergist proposition seems to have enjoyed initial success. 42 In 630, the “Nestorian” Catholicos Ishoyahb II, an emissary of the Persian Queen Boran II, met Heraclius at Aleppo. In their theological discussion, Heraclius raised the matter of the energeiai of Christ. As we have noted, in the Antiochene theological tradition taught by Theodore of Mopsuestia, Christ was understood to be in two natures, expressed as a single energeia, so the language now being offered by Heraclius would have seemed quite natural. The Catholicos celebrated the Divine Liturgy and the Emperor and his court received Holy Communion, but the union was not accepted by the Assyrian Church when Ishoyahb returned home. 43 In the same year, a similar meeting took place between Heraclius and Ezr, the Catholicos of Armenia. They too reached agreement on the basis of the monoenergist formula and the Emperor received Holy Communion as a sign of their reconciliation. A few years later, a Council of Armenian and Greek bishops at Theodosiopolis formally accepted their reunion, in the presence of Heraclius, and the Armenians conceded the oikoumenicity of the Council of Chalcedon, but some sources report that this prompted a schism within the Armenian Church. 44 The changing political landscape on the Eastern edge of the Byzantine Empire destabilized the union again, however, and it was finally dissolved with the Arab conquest in the mid-seventh century. Similar situations existed in Georgia and in the territories of Antioch, which involved negotiations with Athanasius the Camel-driver. Perhaps the most important achievement of monoenergism in this early stage was at Alexandria. In 623, a young and popular man, Benjamin, was elected as the miaphysite “Coptic” Patriarch of Alexandria. Several years later, in 631, Heraclius

(Pseudo-)Dionysius the Areopagite, Epistle 4 to Gaius in Letters, ed. A. M. Ritter, in G. Heil and A. M. Ritter, eds., Corpus Dionysiacum, Vol. 2 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1991): 155–210, at 161. 42 Maximus the Confessor, Disputation with Pyrrhus. 43 Chronicle of Seert 93, ed. A. Scher, Histoire Nestorienne: Chronique de Séert, 4 vols., PO 4.3, 5.2, 7.2, 13.4 (Paris, 1908–19), 557–59. 44 Narration on Armenian Affairs, ed. G. Garitte La Narratio de rebus Armeniae, CSCO 132, Subsidia 4 (Louvain: Durbecq, 1952), 119–43. 41

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appointed Cyrus, bishop of Phasis, to the imperially-sponsored Chalcedonian Patriarch of the same city, also endowing him with the responsibility and authority of Prefect of Egypt. Cyrus’ mission was to achieve ecclesiastical union in Egypt on the basis of the monoenergist formula, which he managed to do in spite of the absence of Benjamin, who fled to Upper Egypt and remained there in hiding. While the Chalcedonian sources record that Cyrus persuaded some of the Egyptian clergy to accept monoenergism and re-enter communion with the imperial Church by theological arguments, the non-Chacledonians record only Cyrus’ use of force. Whatever the means, reunion between the two parties was announced in a Pact of Union, enacted at a concelebrated Liturgy on June 3, 633, held at the Caesarium in Alexandria, and proclaimed to Heraclius in a letter from Cyrus. The Patriarch and Prefect maintained this union by force until the end of his rule and the invasion of the Arabs into Egypt (639), which appears not to have been opposed by the local population, no doubt indicating their continued rejection of the Chalcedonian ecclesiastical hierarchy and secular authority. For a time at least, it seemed that monoenergism might prove to be the tool most suited to achieving ecclesiastical union between the imperial Chalcedonian Church and the various non-Chalcedonian groups within and on the fringes of the Empire. But already in the early 630s, opposition was emerging from Chalcedonians who regarded Sergius’ formula as contrary to the faith they professed. This was not entirely new: as we noted above, John the Merciful had also been alarmed at his brother Patriarch’s policy. But whereas John’s ability to actively oppose monoenergism was cut short by circumstances, from now on it would be sustained by zealous advocates of orthodox theology, who were willing to die for their witness, until the official condemnation of the doctrine, its cousin, monotheletism, and their proponents, some half a century later. At this early stage of the emerging controversy, the main opponent seems to have been Sophronius (c. 550–639), an elderly monk, who would briefly become Patriarch of Jerusalem (634–9) and face the undesirable task of transferring the city from Byzantine to Arab control. According to his disciple Maximus, Sophronius’ opinion was courted by Cyrus on the Nine Chapters of Reunion proposed at Alexandria, which the former rejected. But Cyrus proceeded to proclaim the union in spite of the advice he received. 45 Deeply concerned by this development, Sophronius traveled to Constantinople, where he met with Sergius, who, in the absence of Heraclius, seems to have reneged on his carefully researched formula, and in August 633 he issued a Psēphos, with the support of the Standing Synod, prohibiting any further discussion of one or two energeiai in Christ. 46 It is unclear precisely why Sergius was Maximus’ letter to Peter, known as Opuscula 12, PG 91, 141–6. The text of the psēphos is no longer extant, but its content is thought to be summarized in Sergius’ First Letter to Honorius. The letter is preserved in the Acts of the Sixth Oikou45 46

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so quick to abandon his idea, which had already achieved limited but successful results. His actions effectively ended the possibility for a monoenergist formula of reconciliation, but it did not resolve the theological issue since the question of the number of activities in Christ remained open. Perhaps, as many have suggested, Sergius’ initial motivation for promoting the formula was not theological but political, and the wise Sophronius had brought to light unintended and undesirable theological consequences of the formula? Or perhaps Sergius was concerned that Sophronius’ charismatic authority as an ascetic known throughout the Empire (he had travelled extensively with John Moschus) would turn Chalcedonians against himself and scupper the union with the non-Chalcedonians at the same time? Apparently satisfied with the outcome of his visit, Sophronius traveled to Rome, where he received the Spiritual Meadow and the instruction to return the body of his friend, John Moschus, either to Sinai or Jerusalem. Unable to reach Sinai because of the political unrest there, Sophronius returned to the Holy City and was promptly elected Patriarch, with the support of the instruments of the Empire, and perhaps as a consequence of his visit to Constantinople. His great age notwithstanding, he ascended the patriarchal throne at the beginning of a period of enormous and enduring transformation for Arabia and the Levant. In 632, according to the traditional dating, Muhammad, the charismatic leader of an Arab religious revival group, died at Medina. The next year, his devout followers began to raid the Byzantine territory of Egypt, and by 635 they had conquered Damascus. The hard-won advances that Heraclius had made in the East, recovering Byzantine territory from the Persians, were once again under threat, and rumors of the danger posed to Jerusalem had already reached Sophronius, as is clear from the conclusion of his Synodical Letter. 47 Perhaps haunted by the memory of the Jewish surrender of Antioch during the reign of Phocas, and aware from his own campaign history of the difficulty of motivating diverse religious populations, Heraclius ordered the baptism of all the Jews in the Empire. 48 This led to the flight of many Jews in the East to the protection of the Persians or into the hands of the rapidly advancing Muslim Arab armies. menical Council: Rudolf Riedinger (ed.), Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum: Concilium Universale Constantinopolitanum tertium, 2 Vols. (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1990–2) [= ACO ser. sec. II] vol. 2, 534–46; reproduced with translation in Pauline Allen, Sophronius of Jerusalem and Seventh Century Heresy: the Synodical Letter and Other Documents (New York: OUP, 2009), 182–94. See Phil Book, Crisis of Empire, 213–15. 47 For the text of the letter with a translation, see: Pauline Allen, Sophronius, 66–157, and notes on the transmission of the text (64–65). 48 This is mentioned by Maximus in Letter 8, “To the Monk Sophronius,” dated to 632: Maximus, Letters, PG 91, 364–649. The same event is mentioned in Michael the Syrian, Chronicle 11.4 and the Doctrine of Jacob 1.2 (The Doctrine of Jacob the Recently Baptized, ed. V. Déroche, “Juifs et Chrétiens dans l’Orient du VIIe siècle,” in Travaux et mémoires du Centre de recherche d’Histoire et civilisation byzantines 11 (Paris, 1991): 71–219. 


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At the time of his election, Sophronius issued the customary Synodical Letter, addressed to the five archbishops of the ancient Patriarchates, which in his case was a lengthy exposition of his faith with an accompanying heresiography. The subject of monoenergism received unambiguous treatment, but by not literally enumerating the energeiai in Christ, the new Patriarch strictly observed the terms of the Psēphos which forbade discussion of the matter. Nevertheless, he argued strongly against monoenergism as being akin to monophysitism. According to Photius (Patriarch of Constantinople, 858–67 and 877–86), the Synodical Letter was accompanied by a florilegium in support of the idea of two energeiai in Christ. 49 Around the same time, Sergius also wrote to Honorius, Pope of Rome (625–38), to inform him of the important news of the 633 union at Alexandria, and of Sophronius’ concerns with the monoenergist formula, which Sergius felt he had addressed. 50 Honorius was known in his lifetime for his ascetic and pious pontificate, and it is likely that Sergius genuinely respected his advice and sought his approval for developments in the East. Sergius’ letter attempted to downplay the significance of the dispute with Sophronius as only a trifling disagreement over words, while emphasizing his affirmation of the two natures in Christ, communicatio idiomatum, and the Tome of Honorius’ venerable predecessor, Leo. Honorius replied to Sergius with warm congratulations for the achievement of ecclesiastical union at Alexandria. 51 He agreed with the Patriarch of Constantinople that it was not necessary to split hairs over the minutiae of theological language, and thus the silence imposed by the Psēphos was to be maintained. However, Honorius continued by elaborating his view that there was one divine agent in Christ, and thus the hypostatic union presupposed one will in Christ, saying: “We confess the one will of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 52 By these few unfortunate words, Honorius inadvertently became the first recorded proponent of the doctrine of monotheletism (one will in Christ), which was soon to be contested and ultimately condemned. All of Honorius’ achievements at Rome and in the West more generally would be cast under the shadow of the heresy of a pope who was anathematized by each of his successors until the eleventh century, and whose papacy became a matter of great embarrassment for the proponents of the dogma of Papal Infallibility in the nineteenth century. In a second letter to Sergius, of which only a fragment is preserved in the Acts of the Sixth Oikoumenical Council, Honorius appears to have withPauline Allen, Sophronius, 32. ACO ser. sec. II, vol. 2, 534–46; trans. in P. Allen, Sophronius, 182–94. 51 The original Latin letter is lost, but a Greek copy, on the basis of which Honorius was later condemned, was preserved in the Acts of the Sixth Oikoumenical Council: ACO ser. sec. II.2, 548–58; reproduced with translation in P. Allen, Sophronius, 194–205. 52 “ὅθεν καὶ ἓν θέλημα ὁμολογοῦμεν τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ.” 49 50

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drawn slightly from his earlier position, perhaps having received Sophronius’ Synodal Letter – but his reserve came too late. The first letter emboldened Sergius against his brother bishop at Jerusalem, and presented him with a viable alternative to monoenergism, which might be able to continue the progress made by Heraclius and Cyrus. Sophronius continued his opposition to imperial policy, however. He sent an emissary bishop, Stephen of Dora, to Rome to convince the Pope of the dangers of monoenergism and monotheletism, but Honorius died before he could issue any clarification. Sophronius also convinced Arcadius, the Archbishop of Cyprus, to convene a Synod to condemn monoenergism. According to the Syriac Life of Maximus the Confessor, Anastasius, Maximus’ disciple, was present at the synod to defend the opinion of both his master and Sophronius, but the bishops were unable to reach an agreement. 53 Around the same time, the aforementioned Maximus, a monastic disciple of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who would become the greatest defender of Christological orthodoxy between the death of Sophronius and the Sixth Oikoumenical Council, began to write on related topics: in the fifth of his Ambigua (“Book of Difficulties”), he discusses the text of Dionysius’ Epistle 4 which was cited in favor of the monoenergist position. 54 The text known to the miaphysites read “one theandric energeia,” whereas Maximus knew this as “a new theandric energeia,” and he considered the former to be a corruption. At this stage, his writing was not yet explicitly directed against monoenergism, but a criticism of monoenergist theology is implied in his anti-miaphysite explication of a passage frequently appealed to by both miaphysites and monoenergists. In 636, Heraclius issued an Ekthesis – an imperial statement on theological matters – in response to Sophronius’ Synodal Letter and the Synod held at Cyprus, condemning the “doctrine of Maximus” which was referred to him for adjudication. 55 George of Resh’aina, Vita Maximi 7–14 = Sebastian Brock, “An Early Syriac Life of Maximus the Confessor,” AB 91 (1973): 299–346, 315–17. 54 Maximus the Confessor, On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: the Ambigua, 2 vols., ed. & trans. Nicholas Constas, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 28 & 29 (Harvard University Press, 2014). The early life of Maximus the Confessor is contested by contemporary scholars. There are two main sources of information: the first is a Greek Stoudite text of the latetenth century, which presents Maximus as emerging from the Constantinopolitan élite (see Bronwen Neil & Pauline Allen, The Life of Maximus the Confessor – Recension 3, Early Christian Studies 6 [Strathfield, NSW: St Pauls, 2003]); the second is a pejorative Syriac life of the lateseventh century, which places his ignoble birth in the East (see Sebastian Brock, “Life of Maximus”). To these, we may add various biographical vignettes culled from Maximus’ own letters and writings, as well as some external sources. For an overview of these issues, see Phil Booth, Crisis of Empire, 143–155. 55 On the dating, see Marek Jankowiak, “Essai d’histoire politique du monothélisme à partir de la correspondance entre les empereurs byzantins, les Patriarches de Constantinople et les papes de Rome,” unpublished PhD thesis (Paris and Warsaw, 2009). For the only sur53

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The Ekthesis almost exactly repeated the prohibitions of the Psēphos against discussion of the number of energeiai in Christ, and instead openly promoted the theology, endorsed by Pope Honorius in his First Letter to Sergius, of a single will in Christ (monotheletism). It appears that Sophronius agreed once again to abide by the terms of silence imposed by the Ekthesis. In November 638, shortly before his death, Sergius convened a Synod at Constantinople to approve the Ekthesis. Honorius was unable to respond to this development, having died in October of the same year. His successor Severinus (640) refused to accept the Ekthesis, leading to a delay of more than a year in the confirmation of his election and brutal treatment at the hands of the imperial Exarch. When he did finally accept the Ekthesis, he was confirmed and consecrated, and thereafter condemned the text once more. He was Bishop of Rome for little over two months. His immediate successors, John IV (640–42), Theodore (642–49), and Martin (649–53), each maintained papal opposition to the Ekthesis and the doctrine of monotheletism. During these crucial years, the Empire was once again thrown into political turmoil. Much of the Middle East fell permanently into the hands of the Muslim Arabs – effectively lost to the Christian Roman Empire for good. 56 In February 638, the Arabs arrived at Jerusalem. Sophronius had already secured the relic of the True Cross for Christendom by sending it back to Constantinople, so, according to the traditional accounts, the Patriarch went out of the city to greet the invading Caliph Omar, thus securing some toleration for the Christian inhabitants of the city. Sophronius died in 638 or 639, probably on March 11 (the date of his feast in the Byzantine calendar). 57 It appears that he was not replaced, and the Chalcedonian Patriarchate of Jerusalem remained vacant until the beginning of the eighth century. In a somewhat surprising turn of events, in the same years, around 640, Cyrus, who had secured the union at Alexandria, was recalled to Constantinople, deposed, and tried for treason for having proposed to pay tribute to the Muslim Arabs. In 642, viving record of the Synod at Cyprus, see the Syriac Life of Maximus, ed. & trans. S. Brock, 299–346. The text of the Ekthesis is preserved in the Acts of the Lateran Synod: Rudolf Riedinger (ed.), ACO: Concilium Lateranese a. 649 celebratum (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1984) [= ACO ser. sec. I], 156.20–162.13; reproduced with translation in P. Allen, Sophronius, 208–17. 56 After the fall of Jerusalem in 638, it was never again under Byzantine rule. The Empire expanded eastward in the eleventh century, which provoked the pre-emptive destruction of Christian sites by the Muslim rulers in the Middle East, but the Byzantine armies never reached the Holy City. This defeat and the increasing hostility towards Christian pilgrims in part led to the launch of the First Crusade in 1096, which reclaimed Jerusalem in 1099. Over the next century and a half, rule passed between the Crusaders and various Muslim leaders, until the invasion of the Khwarazmian Turks brought an end to Crusader (Christian) rule in 1244. Jerusalem was in the hands of the Ottomans from 1517 until the beginning of the British Mandate in 1917. 57 On the date of Sophronius’ death, see Pauline Allen, Sophronius, 21, n. 58.

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Alexandria fell permanently to the advancing armies. Cyrus was later exiled to North Africa. In the closing years of Heraclius’ reign, there was therefore much change in the upper echelons of Roman society. Sergius was succeeded by Pyrrhus, abbot of the monastery of Chrysopolis, who was consecrated very shortly after his predecessor’s death. With Sergius, he had been an architect of the Psēphos and was a committed exponent of monotheletism, corresponding with Maximus on this subject. In Heraclius’ old age, Pyrrhus became one of the Emperor’s few supporters and confidants. Shortly after his election, he convened a session of the Standing Synod to endorse the Ekthesis, and they issued a synodal letter to that effect. According to the Acts of the Lateran Synod of 649, Pyrrhus also wrote to Pope John IV reaffirming monotheletism and seeking papal support for the continuation of the policies set forth in the Ekthesis. Heraclius himself died in 641, leaving the Empire in little better condition than it was when he ascended the imperial throne some thirty years before, despite the successes of his early years. After the death of his first wife, Eudoxia, Heraclius had married his niece, Martina, who had proved quite unpopular at court. Heraclius entrusted a sum of money to Pyrrhus for her protection, anticipating a struggle over the imperial succession, but in any event, Pyrrhus was politically weak, and conceded the money to the treasury. Heraclius had named his first sons by Eudoxia and Martina as Caesars, equal in rank. Upon his death, Eudoxia’s son, Heraclius, was elected to reign as Constantine III, but within a very few months he died of tuberculosis – though rumors at the time said Martina had poisoned him. Martina’s son Heraclonas (who ruled as Heraclius II) succeeded and, together with his mother, began to exile those who had supported Constantine, including the imperial treasurer Philagrius. This led to further unrest, with the result that the general Valentine rallied troops in favor of Constantine III’s son, Constans II. Heraclonas forced Pyrrhus to crown Constans as co-emperor. Subsequently, Martina and Heraclonas were deposed, mutilated, and exiled to Rhodes, and Constans (641–68) took the throne alone. Whether fleeing the displeasure of the crowd for having co-operated with Martina and Heraclonas, or deposed by Constans, Pyrrhus left Constantinople for exile in North Africa. 58 He was succeeded as Patriarch of Constantinople by Paul (641– 53), whose letters, which were examined at the Sixth Oikoumenical Council, testify to his commitment to monotheletism. Constans, on the other hand, had written to Pope John in Rome expressing his desire for reconciliation and the rejection of any Nicephorus reports that Pyrrhus fled the capital for North Africa (Chronography 31), whereas John of Nikiu claims that he was deposed by Constans and exiled to Tripoli (Chronicle). See also Phil Booth, “Shades of Blue and Green in the Chronicle of John of Nikiou,” BZ 104 (2012): 555–601. 58

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innovation which had taken place. The new Emperor’s relationship with John was cut short by the latter’s death, and the election, without imperial support, of Theodore, a Greek with ties to the Holy City of Jerusalem. Theodore sent a number of letters to the East, including to Constans and Paul, condemning the Ekthesis and its proponents, and demanding that the document be immediately rescinded. Paul’s reply was evidently unacceptable to the Roman bishop, who excommunicated his colleague in 646. Meanwhile, in the late 630s or early 640s, the monk Maximus had returned to North Africa, where he began to write a sustained critique against monotheletism. He settled at Hippo Diarrhytus, not far from Carthage, where he built up a close friendship with Gregory, the Prefect of Africa, who appears to have had a strained relationship with Constantinople in the years after Heraclius’ death. During this period, Maximus seems to have cultivated extremely warm sentiments towards the Bishop of Rome, composing some of the most explicit statements on papal authority preserved in Greek Christian literature. One of his earliest letters was a defense of the monothelite statement in Honorius’ First Letter to Sergius, and he later wrote to justify Theodore’s use of the Filioque in the Creed, which was attracting criticism at Constantinople. 59 Maximus began to emphasize the primacy of the Roman Church among the ancient Patriarchates, in its role as guardian of orthodoxy, inheritor of the promise made to Peter, and confirmation of councils and synods. 60 Cynically, one might say that Maximus saw in his allegiance with Rome the only possible route to guarantee his theology from condemnation; on the other hand, Rome was the only Patriarchate which had maintained Neo-Chalcedonian Orthodoxy in the face of the errors propounded by the leaders at Constantinople. One of the most dramatic and well-known episodes in the history of the monothelite controversies occurred at Carthage in July 645, when Maximus and Pyrrhus, the exiled former Patriarch of Constantinople, met for a theological disputation, under the presidency of Gregory. Not surprisingly (the interaction was recorded by Maximus or his supporters), Maximus won, and Pyrrhus recanted of his former error. 61 Pyrrhus then traveled to Rome where he was received by Pope Theodore and, having renounced monotheletism and the Ekthesis, re-entered the Church with his full Patriarchal dignity. Maximus followed shortly behind Pyrrhus, while opposition to monotheletism intensified in North Africa, and two local councils met to condemn the doctrine, later communicating their decisions to the Lateran Synod of 649. Maximus the Confessor, Opuscula 20 (PG 91, 237C–D) and Opuscula 10 (PG 91, 133B–137C). 60 Phil Booth, Crisis of Empire, 269–72. 61 Maximus the Confessor, Disputation with Pyrrhus: Marcel Doucet, “Dispute de Maxime le Confesseur avec Pyrrhus: Introduction, texte critique, traductions et notes,” unpublished PhD thesis (Montreal, 1972). 59

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All the while, political unrest continued on the fringes of the Empire. In 642, the Byzantines withdrew entirely from Egypt, and the Muslim Arabs began a series of attacks on the islands of the Mediterranean. Constans continued to suffer defeat as the Empire shrank. In 646, the Exarch of North Africa, Gregory the Patrician, launched an open rebellion against Constans, and was acclaimed emperor by his troops. But in 647, in an episode which prefigured the final loss of North Africa, Gregory was killed by the invading Arabs. This appears to have shaken the resolve of Pyrrhus – ever the political chameleon – against monotheletism, and he fled Rome for Ravenna, where he was received by Constantine’s Exarch and made peace with imperial policy, recognizing that the patriarchal throne was lost to him for good. Pope Theodore wasted no time in excommunicating Pyrrhus, as he had done with his successor Paul, signing the decree with a pen dipped in the Eucharistic chalice. In response, Paul hastily pulled down the altar in the chapel of the palace of Placidia at Constantinople, which had been given over to the use of the Roman legates, whom he also expelled from the city. Among them was the apokrisiarios Martin – soon to be Pope of Rome. The latest episode revealed what appeared to be an intractable theological dispute between Old and New Rome. Moreover, at the same time, the political impetus for maintaining the Ekthesis and the potential use of a monothelite formula for reunion with non-Chalcedonians was fading, as increasingly the non-Chalcedonian groups were located outside the boundaries of the Roman oikoumenē. At Rome, there was open ecclesiastical hostility toward the Empire and its political instruments, backed up by growing popular support and an increasingly large armory of sophisticated theological treatises, mostly from the pen of Maximus. Finally, in 648, Constans sought to bring the whole episode to a close. In the name of the Emperor, Patriarch Paul ordered the removal of the Ekthesis from the narthex of the Great Church, and in its place a Typos of Faith was erected. 62 The Typos forbade discussion both of Christ’s energeiai and wills, appealing for a faith based on Scripture, the Five Oikoumenical Councils, and the tradition of the Fathers. It was issued in the form of an imperial edict, and set out strict penalties for those who disobeyed. Constans clearly expected that the Typos would appease the bishops in the West and sent emissaries to obtain their approval – but it never arrived. In fact, it seems that Pope Theodore had already begun preparations for a large synod to condemn the doctrine of monotheletism. Before the Council could meet, Theodore died in May 649 not yet having received a copy of the Typos. He was immediately replaced by Martin, the former Roman delegate to Constantinople, who did not wait for his election to be See Phil Booth, Crisis of Empire, 291. The text of the Typos is preserved in the Acts of the Lateran Synod, ACO ser. sec. I, 208–11; trans. with commentary, Richard Price, Phil Booth, Catherine Cubitt, The Acts of the Lateran Synod of 649, Translated Texts for Historians 69 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014), 262–3. 62

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confirmed by the Exarch of Ravenna. Instead, he proceeded with the Lateran Synod as planned, which met in October of the same year. The council met under Martin’s presidency, with 105 bishops present, mostly from North Africa and Italy, but supplemented by some from the East, and a number of the monastic refugees who had fled the Arab invasion. The Synod prepared Acts in both Latin and Greek, and it is certain that Maximus took an active role in the discussions and in preparing the texts. 63 In fact, some have suggested that the Greek Acts were prepared in advance by Maximus, during the pontificate of Theodore, and that the Lateran Synod was staged merely to give them synodal authority. 64 In any case, the Synod reaffirmed the Fourth Oikoumenical Council and the doctrines of two wills and two energeiai as corresponding to the two natures in Christ: And just as [we profess] his natures united without fusion or division to be two, so [we profess] the wills [θελήματα] according to nature, divine and human, to be two, and his natural operations [ἐνεργείας], divine and human, to be two, for a total and flawless confirmation that the one and the same our Lord and God Jesus Christ is truly by nature perfect God and perfect man apart from sin alone, and that he wills [θέλοντα] and operates [ἐνεργοῦντα] our salvation both divinely and humanly, ‘as from of old the prophets and Jesus Christ himself taught us about him and the creed of our holy fathers has handed down,’ and simply all the holy and ecumenical five councils and all the approved teachers of the catholic Church. 65

To this profession the Synod added seven canonical chapters anathematizing heretical positions on the energeiai and wills of Christ. Further, the lengthy eighteenth chapter condemned the “most impious Ekthesis” and the “most impious Typos,” together with the persons of Theodore of Pharan, Cyrus of Alexandria, and Sergius, Pyrrhus, and Paul. 66

6.4. FROM THE ROMAN SYNOD OF 649 TO THE SIXTH OIKOUMENICAL COUNCIL The Lateran Synod did not condemn Constans (or any emperor for that matter) but it nonetheless attracted his wrath. After the Synod, Martin disseminated the Acts to The Acts of the Lateran Synod of 649 are preserved in their entirety: ACO ser. sec. I; trans. Richard Price, Acts of the Lateran Synod. 64 Pauline Allen & Bronwen Neil, Maximus the Confessor and His Companions: Documents from Exile, Oxford Early Christian Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 19–20. 65 Quoted from Richard Price, Acts of the Lateran Synod, 378; for the original text, see ACO ser. sec. I, 364–7. 66 ACO ser. sec. I, 378–85; Richard Price, Acts of the Lateran Synod, 381–82. 63

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secular and ecclesiastical rulers throughout the Christian world, composing a special letter to Constans, seeking his support and attaching a copy of the Acts in Greek. 67 Although the Synod did not consider itself oikoumenical (in spite of the suggestion from his own letter that Maximus regarded it as such), 68 and was thus at perfect liberty to meet without imperial consent, the Emperor took affront at Martin’s behavior, and recalled that he had not sought approval for his election. Constans ordered the Exarch of Ravenna, Olympus, to Rome to arrest the Pope, where he faced popular resistance and baulked, fleeing to Sicily. There Olympus plotted with the Arabs against the Emperor, but died in 652 before he could execute his plan. This was not the end of the matter for Martin, however. In 653, the new Exarch, Theodore Calliopas, arrested the sick and elderly Pope for the crime of treason, accusing him of holding office without imperial consent and of colluding with the Arabs against the Empire – something which he, and later Maximus, always strongly denied. The accusation perhaps represented the atmosphere of suspicion and fear of the strength of the Muslim Arab armies more than anything that could be substantiated by fact. Martin was taken to Constantinople where he was imprisoned before being tried in 654 by the synodal court of the Patriarchate, not for any ecclesiastical offence, but for complicity in the thwarted plot of Olympus. 69 The Pope attempted to raise the subject of the Lateran Synod, but was informed that the information was irrelevant to the trial. He was sentenced to death as a traitor who had usurped the papal throne, but this was commuted to exile in the Crimea, where he arrived in May, but not before the death of Paul, the Patriarch of Constantinople whom he had excommunicated. Martin seems to have been abandoned by his supporters in Rome, who failed to send any assistance. 70 He died in exile in September 655 or April 656. 71 Inexplicably, Pyrrhus regained his throne at Constantinople in succession to Paul, for a brief period in 654, before his death. He was succeeded by the monothelite Patriarch Peter (654–666), under whom the first trial of Maximus began in 655. ACO ser. sec. I, 404ff; Richard Price, Acts of the Lateran Synod, 389ff. Only a fragment of the letter survives in Maximus’ Opuscula Theologica et Polemica 11 (PG 91, 9–285), 137–140. He mentions six Oikoumenical Councils, and some have taken the sixth to be the Lateran Synod of 649. See Hovorun, Will, Action, and Freedom, 85, nn. 183 & 184. 69 The account of Pope Martin’s trial was compiled in Greek by Theodore Spudaeus and survives in a Latin translation by Anastasius Bibliothecarius as “Narrations concerning the Exile of the Holy Pope Martin,” in Bronwen Neil, ed., Seventh-Century Pope and Martyrs: the Political Hagiography of Anastasius Bibliothecarius (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 166–232. Spudaeus also wrote an account of the sufferings of several “dyothelites” in the Hypomnesticum; see Pauline Allen & Bronwen Neil, Maximus the Confessor and His Companions, 148–70. 70 Theodore Spudaeus, Narrations 29–30. 71 Pauline Allen & Bronwen Neil, Maximus the Confessor and His Companions, 22. 67 68

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Together with Martin, Maximus and his disciple Anastasius were arrested at Rome in 653, before a year of crushing defeats for Constans and the Byzantine Empire, which culminated in yet another siege of Constantinople in 654 – one which the seemingly impregnable Queen of Cities once again managed to survive. 72 In the context of political defeat and continuing anxiety, Maximus was detained and then brought to Constantinople on grounds of “politico-religious sedition.” 73 He was accused of having betrayed Egypt, Alexandria, and Africa; of being complicit in the rebellion of Gregory the Patrician; of opposition to the Typos; and of Origenism. The suspects must have been held captive for some time since the trial did not begin until 655. 74 At the trial’s conclusion, Maximus and Anastasius were exiled to separate locations in Thrace, where Maximus apparently continued to engage in religious disputation. Soon after the trial, Maximus himself, or a close associate, composed the Record of the Trial – a rhetorical piece celebrating Maximus’ confession. 75 According to another text from within Maximus’ circle, the Disputation at Bizya, the highranking bishop Theodosius came to debate with the Confessor and the Emperor’s emissaries appear to have approached the possibility of an accord with him, but it subsequently became clear that Maximus would not enter into communion with the Patriarch and Emperor. 76 The first fitnah (civil war between Arab Muslims, 656–61) granted a period of respite to the Byzantines, during which Constans was able to attend to matters at home. One such matter was Maximus, who was recalled to Constantinople for retrial. He and his two disciples, both called Anastasius, were brought to Constantinople, condemned by a general council, and sentenced to exile in Lazica. According to “The Third Sentence Against Them,” a text appended to the Disputation at Bizya, they were also sentenced to mutilation: both Anastasii were beaten with rods, whereas Maximus’ tongue was cut out, his right hand severed, and he was paraded through the streets of the city. No protest came from any quarter in the Church – even Rome where he had made so many friends. He died at Lazica on August 13, 662, at over 80 years of age, apparently the last defender of Neo-Chalcedonian orthodoxy. Although Pope Martin had still been alive in 654, Eugenius (654–657) was elected to replace him, with imperial consent, as Bishop of Rome. Both Eugenius and his successor Vitalian (657–72) complied with the Typos, without either formally endorsing or rejecting it. Eugenius reinstated communion with Pyrrhus’ monothelite successor, Peter, and this was maintained by Vitalian, who was the recipient of imGreek Life of Maximus the Confessor 23. Phil Booth, Crisis of Empire, 370. 74 Pauline Allen & Bronwen Neil, Maximus the Confessor and His Companions, 35. 75 Ibid., 48–74. 76 Ibid., 76–119. 72 73

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perial favors. In 662, Peter convened a synod at Constantinople to anathematize Sophronius, Martin, and Maximus, and issue a Psēphos to this effect. 77 With the death of Maximus, the intra-Byzantine religious tensions seemed to subside. When Constans visited Rome in 663 – the first time a reigning Emperor had visited the city in 200 years – he appeared to be on good terms with Vitalian (though this did not prevent him from stripping the city of its adornments and taking them back to Constantinople). Hard-pressed by the Arab armies to the east and south, and Slavs to the north, and deeply unpopular with the populace of Constantinople, he contemplated moving the capital to Syracuse in Sicily, which he had used as a base during his earlier trip to Italy. Rumors of Constans’ intentions were his undoing, leading to his assassination by his chamberlain at Syracuse in 668. Constans was succeeded by his son, Constantine IV Pogonatus (“the Bearded”), who had quite successfully managed affairs at Constantinople during his father’s tour of Italy. His first task was to put to flight a rebellion, led by the Armenian general Mzez Gnouni, which he did effectively, before turning back to the now perennial problem of the Arab Muslims. By 670, the Arabs had taken most of the major Mediterranean islands (Cyprus, Rhodes, and Cos) together with a number of important cities, including Cyzicus, to which they added Smyrna in 672, en route to Constantinople. For the second time in less than a decade, the Arab armies encamped at Constantinople, which they held under siege from 674 until 678. In that year, the Arabs lifted the siege and then suffered a significant defeat on land, which turned the tables, and allowed Constantine to negotiate a peace which would last 30 years, together with a tribute which helped to support Thessaloniki, under siege by the Slavs. In the first decade of his reign, Constantine had not attended to ecclesiastical matters, and the situation remained in effect whereby the Church of Constantinople observed the Typos and its Patriarchs were broadly known to support monotheletism, and the Popes of Rome demurred. At Constantinople, the archiepiscopal throne passed briefly to Thomas II (667–9) and then to John V (669–75) before two further short reigns (Constantine, 675–77, and Theodore, 677–79) were followed by the election of George (679–86). At Rome, Vitalian was succeeded by Adeodatus II (672–76) and Donus (676–86), neither of whom were entered into the Constantinopolitan diptychs. A greater tension had emerged between Rome and Ravenna, whose privileges had been extended as the seat of the imperial Exarch, in 671 and 677. After the passing of Pope Vitalian and Archbishop Maurus of Ravenna, the unease seems to have subsided. Upon his election in 677, the Patriarch of Constantinople, Theodore, together with Macarius, the titular Patriarch of Antioch residing at Constantinople, petitioned ACO ser. sec. II.1, 228–30; Maximus the Confessor, Dispute at Bizya 16, in Pauline Allen & Bronwen Neil, Maximus the Confessor and His Companions, 116–19. 77

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the emperor to remove Pope Vitalian’s name from the diptychs. They were both committed monothelites, for whom Vitalian’s silence on the matter was clearly unsatisfactory. Theodore’s Synodical Letter to Donus did not seek so much to preserve the status quo of the Typos, as to effect a union based on monothelite terminology. 78 The Emperor Constantine rejected this move, not least because Vitalian had supported him at the beginning of his reign in quelling the rebellion in Sicily. Moreover, the relative peace of the Empire after fifty years of war with the Arab Muslims seemed to present an opportunity to resolve the theological dispute over the wills of Christ once and for all. Thus, in 678, Constantine wrote to Pope Donus, inviting him to send delegates to a local synod of theologians who would discuss the matter of the will(s) of Christ, the teachings of the Five Oikoumenical Councils, and the tradition of the Fathers. 79 While the letter was being delivered, Donus died, but his successor, Agatho (678–81) enthusiastically supported the Emperor’s decision, summoning a number of smaller synods to meet in the West (at Milan and Rome, Italy, and Hatfield, England). The councils condemned monotheletism and Agatho wrote to Constantine to convey the news. 80 Agatho’s letter also spoke of the unfailing adherence to the truth which could be seen in the Roman Church – this was perhaps a cavalier claim, considering the succession of Popes from the time of Honorius, but it may also reflect the reigning pontiff’s desire to protect his immediate predecessors (who had remained silent on the matter of monotheletism) from anathematization by appealing to the memory of the Lateran Synod of 649. The delegation bearing news from the West arrived at Constantinople in 680, where the troublesome Theodore had been replaced by the more germane George. It rapidly became apparent that a larger gathering than originally planned should take place, not least because changing politics in the Arab Muslim world enabled the ancient Patriarchates to send representatives to Constantinople. The Emperor therefore inaugurated the Council on November 7, 680, in the hall called “Troullos” in the imperial palace. 81 The delegates met for eighteen sessions over the course of ten months, until September 16, 681. Only a relatively small number of bishops were able to attend: 43 at the first session, rising to 174 who signed the final decree. 82 This is surely reflective of the imperiled and divided nature of Christianity in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire and the fact that the Western Church had already given its pronouncement. John Meyendorff, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions: the Church AD 450–68, The Church in History 2 (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1989), 369. 79 ACO ser. sec. II.1, 2–10. 80 ACO ser. sec. II.1, 123–159. 81 τροῦλλος = domed. 82 The complete Acts of the Sixth Oikoumenical Council are contained in two volumes: ACO ser. sec. II. 78

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Macarius, the titular Patriarch of Antioch, represented the monothelite position, along with his disciple and peritus, Stephen. There were no episcopal representatives from Jerusalem or Alexandria, whose Chalcedonian thrones were vacant, but these ancient sees were represented by vicars, who, like Macarius, lived in Constantinople. Unlike at previous Councils, where there had been a pressing political need to resolve the matters at hand or a prominent theologian whose opinions were being scrutinized, the Council of Constantinople of 681 was able to proceed more methodically. The decrees of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Oikoumenical Councils were reviewed, together with various imperial and Patriarchal documents, some of which were found to be inauthentic. At the fourth session of the Council, the decision of the Western dioceses, as conveyed by Pope Agatho, was considered, and the fifth through tenth sessions were given over to the compilation of florilegia in support of and opposition to monotheletism, based on those brought from Rome. These compendia were essentially the texts prepared during the Lateran Synod of 649, probably under the direction of Maximus and drawn from his Opuscula 15. 83 At the eighth session, the content of the Typos (which theoretically remained in force) was rehearsed and a number of clerics were charged with maintaining its views. All except Stephen refuted the claim and presented statements of faith for scrutiny. Patriarch George, who had earlier expressed sympathy for monotheletism, announced that he was persuaded by the available evidence to support the doctrine of two wills in Christ. Patriarch Macarius was also called upon to produce a creed, in which he articulated his faith in monotheletism as it had come to be understood in the late seventh century. At the eleventh session of the Council, the Synodical Letter of Sophronius (who had been condemned at the local Council of Constantinople in 662) was read aloud. At the next session, following the examination of his opinions, Macarius was deposed and Theophanes was elected in his stead. Macarius subsequently retired to a Roman monastery. The thirteenth session saw an examination of the documentary evidence, drawn from the patriarchal archive, of those who had promoted monotheletism, and before it, monoenergism: Theodore of Pharan, the Pact of Union (633) from Alexandria, Honorius, Pyrrhus, Paul, Peter, Thomas, John, and Constantine were all subjected to scrutiny. Several figures were accused of forging documents and inserting them into the Acts of the Fifth Oikoumenical Council. One of the most outstanding episodes of the Council took place at the fifteenth session. A hieromonk called Polychronius produced a book defending monotheletism, which he claimed was divinely inspired. Perhaps having in mind the miraculous intervention of Saint Euphemia at Chalcedon, he claimed that the book could resurrect the dead. A corpse was duly produced and the book placed upon it, and Polychronius began to whisper over it. Like the Council, the corpse was appar83

Maximus, Opuscula 15 (PG 91.153–84).

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ently unconvinced of the life-bearing properties of monotheletism. Polychronius was given an opportunity to recant, but he refused, and was subsequently anathematized. Like Macarius, he too was dispatched to a Roman monastery. At the conclusion of the sixteenth session, Patriarch George of Constantinople attempted to redeem the memory of his predecessors on the Oikoumenical throne, but he failed to convince the Council. The teaching of the single energeia and will of Christ was condemned, and Honorius of Rome, Sergius, Pyrhhus, Paul, and Peter of Constantinople, Cyrus of Alexandria, Theodore of Pharan, Macarius of Antioch, his assistant Stephen, the fanatical priest Polychronius, and Apergius of Perga were anathematized. The condemnation of Honorius apparently attracted no complaints from the Roman legates, and was confirmed by the Seventh Oikoumenical Council in 787. Until the eleventh century, the anathema was repeated by each of Honorius’ successors. The final two sessions of the Council prepared its statement of faith, which, like the Fourth and Fifth Councils, affirmed the sufficiency of the creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople I. The Horos was issued and copies of the Acts were prepared and approved by the Patriarchs and the Emperor. Pope Agatho died before he received the news of the Council, but his successor Leo II (682–3) confirmed the Acts. The issue of the reconciliation of the Eastern Churches – Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian – was not raised at the Council. Too much time had passed since Chalcedon, and too many attempts at reconciliation had failed to stake the faith of the Empire on that apparently futile task. Moreover, the power of the advancing Muslim Arab armies had already instilled the fear that the Eastern lands would never be restored to Byzantium. What mattered now was the confirmation of the orthodoxy of those who remained within the oikoumenē. And in all the lengthy deliberations of the Sixth Oikoumenical Council, the name of Maximus was uttered only by Macarius – and then in condemnation – despite the fact that he was the architect of the Lateran Synod of 649, whose decree had prevented the papacy after Martin from capitulating to the monothelite agenda of Constantinople. His imprint on the theology endorsed by the Council is undeniable, however, and he was recognized at the Seventh Oikoumenical Council (787) as “the ever-memorable Maximus, who is praised by all the churches.” 84 The Council was received without complaint. Constantine immediately sought to restore dignity to the Roman See, granting certain tax remissions to the papacy. The next year, the archiepiscopal see of Ravenna was again submitted to Roman jurisdiction. Macarius, Stephen, and Polychronius, the only living persons to be anathematized by the Council, were granted the opportunity to recant their monotheletism, but they chose to maintain their views, and so were exiled to Roman monasteries. Constantine’s successor, Justinian II (685–95; 705–11), who considered 84

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himself a defender of orthodoxy, assembled his provincial governors in Constantinople in 687 to assent to the Acts of the Council, and later summoned the so-called “Quinisext” Council in 692 to deal with matters of ecclesiastical discipline which had arisen in the absence of any canons being issued by the Fifth and Sixth Councils. But Justinian was heavy-handed, and the canons were not accepted by Pope Sergius of Rome (687–701), not least because they contradicted Roman practice in a number of instances. In 711, Justinian II was deposed for the second time and executed by Philippicus Bardanes, who was proclaimed emperor (711–13). Philippicus was of Armenian extraction and, envisioning himself as a new Heraclius, relied on the support of the dwindling monothelite community. He deposed the Patriarch of Constantinople, Cyrus (705–12), in favor of the monothelite John (712–15), thereby causing a rupture in communion with Rome, and he convened a synod of bishops to condemn the Council of 681. Pope Constantine (708–15) vigorously opposed Philippicus’ regime and attempt to reassert monotheletism, instructing that depictions of the Six Oikoumenical Councils should be painted in Saint Peter’s Basilica. Philippicus was ousted and blinded in 713, and succeeded by Anastasius II (713–15), who deposed Patriarch John VI and reinstated the decrees of the Sixth Oikoumenical Council. In 715, John was succeeded by Germanus (715–30), who denounced the Council of 712 which had promoted monotheletism, and summoned a Council to confirm Constantinople III, its anathemas, and the teaching of the two energeiai and wills of Christ. With the accession of Germanus to the Patriarchal throne, the heresy of monotheletism was finally put to rest in Byzantium. The passage of time between the Fifth Oikoumenical Council in 553 and the Sixth in 681 saw enormous changes in the Eastern Roman Empire. Much territory was lost as the Empire continued to fight seemingly interminable wars on its Eastern and Western frontiers. By the middle of the seventh century, the Eastern lands were effectively lost for good to the Muslim Arabs, who had claimed Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch. In the ecclesiastical sphere, many of the divisions over the Christology of Chalcedon continued to deepen. The non-Chalcedonian churches became rooted in their historic heartlands, which were increasingly removed from the political influence of Constantinople and began systematically to fill their territories with clergy obedient to hierarchies separated from the imperial Chalcedonian Church. The final attempt in the early seventh century at constructing a formula for reunion on the basis of a single energeia or will in Christ met with voracious opposition from several erudite and respected theologians, who also found support in the West. Despite the resolve of the Emperors and Patriarchs of Constantinople through much of the seventh century, the personal witness of these theologians and the unwillingness of the Western Church to concede to imperial coercion – combined with the declining political impetus towards reunion between the nonChalcedonian and Chalcedonian Churches – led to the eventual rejection of monoenergism and monotheletism by the universal Church in synod at Constantinople in 681.

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6.5. THE H OROS & THEOLOGY OF THE SIXTH OIKOUMENICAL COUNCIL The final statement of faith of the Sixth Oikoumenical Council was prepared during the last two sessions of the Council, in late summer and early autumn 681. 85 The original Greek copy of the Acts, which had been kept at Constantinople, was burned during the brief resurgence of official monotheletism under Emperor Philippicus Bardanes, but a Latin copy had been sent to Rome, and the Greek version was recreated by the deacon Agatho in 713, who was the Patriarchal archivist and had been present at the Council. A translation of extracts from the Horos follows: The Holy and Great and Oikoumenical Synod, by the Grace of God and the allpious decree of the most pious and most faithful great Emperor Constantine, having been assembled at this God-protected and royal city of Constantinople, New Rome, in the Council chamber of the sacred palace, called Troullos, determined the subject. The only-begotten Son and Word of God the Father, who became human, like us in all things except sin, Christ our true God, proclaimed in the piercing words of the Gospel, I am the Light of the World; one who follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life, and again, My peace I leave you, my peace I give you. 86 For the sake of this divinely-spoken teaching of peace, our most gentle Emperor, champion of right belief [ὀρθοδοξία] and adversary of pernicious belief [κακοδοξία], guided on the way by godly Wisdom, gathering this holy and Oikoumenical assembly of ours, unified every judgment of the Church. Wherefore, this Holy and Oikoumenical Synod of ours, driving out the error of impiety which existed from long ago until the present, unerringly following in a straight path after the holy and eminent fathers, has piously spoken in unison in all things with the five Holy and Oikoumenical Synods. [A summary of the first five Oikoumenical Councils follows, together with the creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople I.] This pious and orthodox Symbol [creed] of divine grace was sufficient for full recognition and confirmation of the orthodox faith. But since, from the beginning, the contriver of evil has not ceased, finding a fellow-worker in the serpent and through him introducing to human nature the venom of death, in the same way he has now found instruments suited to his own purpose: namely, Theodore, who was bishop of Pharan, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul, and Peter, who were preThe complete text may be found in the eighteenth session of the Acts: ACO ser. sec. II, 768–777. 86 John 8.12, 14.27. 85

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GREGORY TUCKER eminent in this imperial city, and further Honorius, who was pope of elder Rome, Cyrus of Alexandria who served as bishop, and Macarius who was recently leader of Antioch, and his disciple Stephen. Through them, he has not been idle in raising against the fullness of the Church stumbling blocks of error – of one will and one energeia against the two natures of Christ our true God, who is one of the Holy Trinity – sowing among the orthodox people, with novel language, the heresy which agrees with the mind-perverting pernicious belief of the impious Apollinarius, Severus, and Themistius. This heresy is eager to destroy the fulfillment of the becoming-human [ἐνανθρώπησις] of the very same one Lord Jesus Christ our God, through certain deceitful thoughts, which then slanderously introduce [the idea of] his unwilling [ἀθέλητος] and inactive [ἀνενέργητος] intellectually enlivened flesh. Therefore, Christ our God has raised up the faithful Emperor, the new David, finding him a man after his own heart 87 who did not allow sleep for his eyes or drowsing for his eyelids, 88 as the Scripture says, until, through this God-assembled, divine gathering of ours, he found the perfect proclamation of right belief. For, according to the divinely-spoken saying, Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them. 89 [The Synod affirms that the report received from Pope Agatho and the Acts of the Lateran Synod of 649 accord with Chalcedon, the Tome of Leo, and the synodal letters of Cyril of Alexandria.] Following the five Holy and Oikoumenical Synods and the holy and eminent fathers, we determine in harmony to confess our Lord, Jesus Christ, our true God, 90 one of the holy, consubstantial, and life-giving Trinity: “the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity; the same truly God and truly human, from a rational soul and body, the same consubstantial with the Father according to divinity and consubstantial with us according to humanity, like us in all things except sin; 91 the same begotten from the Father before the ages, according to divinity, and in the last days 92 for us and for our salvation from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, who is chiefly and truly Theotokos, according to humanity; 1 Kgs. 13.14 = 1 Sam. 13.14. Psalm 131(132).4. 89 Matthew 18.20. 90 1 John 5.20. 91 Hebrews 4.15. 92 Hebrews 1.2. 87 88

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one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, acknowledged in two unconfused, immutable, inseparable, indivisible natures; the difference between the natures in no way abrogated by the union, but rather what is particular to both natures is preserved, and gathers into one person [πρόσωπον] and subsistent being [ὑπόστασις], not distributed or divided into two persons, but one and the same only-begotten Son, God-Word, Lord Jesus Christ, just as the prophets taught us from the beginning about him, as indeed did Jesus the Christ himself, and as the Symbol of the Holy Fathers handed it down to us.” 93 And we proclaim that there are two natural volitions [θελήσεις] and wills [θελήματα] in him and two natural energeiai, which are unconfused, immutable, inseparable, indivisible, according to the teaching of the Holy Fathers. And the two natural wills [θελήματα] are not in opposition (certainly not!), as the impious heretics said, but his human will follows, not objecting or wrestling, but rather subjected to his divine and most mighty will. “For it was necessary that the will of the flesh be set in motion but subjected to his divine will,” according to the most wise Athanasius. 94 For just as his flesh is said to be and is flesh of the God-Word, in the same way the proper natural will of his flesh is said to be of the God-Word, as he himself says: I have come down from heaven, not in order to do my own will but the will of the Father who sent me, calling his own will of the flesh since the proper flesh became his own. 95 For in that way, his all-holy and blameless animate flesh was not destroyed when it was divinized but remained within its own limit and definition, and so his human will was not destroyed when it was divinized; rather it was preserved, according to Gregory the Theologian, who says: “For his willing, when he is thought of as Savior, is not in opposition to God, but wholly divinized.” 96 And we hold that there are two natural energeiai, which are unconfused, immutable, inseparable, indivisible, in the very same, our Lord Jesus Christ, our true God, 97 that is to say, a divine energeia and a human energeia, according to the divinelyThe preceding passage (from “the same perfect in divinity…” through “as the Symbol of the Holy Fathers handed it down to us”) is a lengthy quotation from the Symbol of Chalcedon: Edward Schwartz (ed.), Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum: Concilium Universale Chalcedonense, Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1933–35) [= ACO ser. prim. II], 129–130. 94 Cf. ACO ser. sec. II, 660, 15–16 and ACO ser. sec. I, 284, 19. 95 This quotation is taken from the same homily attributed to Athanasius and quotes John 6.38. Cf. ACO ser. sec. II, 660.12–14 and ACO ser. sec. I, 284.13–15. 96 Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations 30.12 (Paul Gallay, Grégoire de Nazianze: Discours 27– 31, Sources Chrétiennes 250 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1978). 97 Cf. 1 John 5.20 93

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GREGORY TUCKER inspired Leo, who says most clearly: “For each form acts in communion with the other, which it has as its own: the Word working with that which is of the Word, and the body executing that which is of the body.” 98 “Of course, we will not grant that there is one natural energeia of God and creature, lest we elevate to the divine that which is made, or else we conspicuously reduce what is characteristically of the divine nature to the level of what is begotten.” 99 For we know that the wonders and the sufferings are one and the same, according to one or the other of natures out of which he is and in which he has his being, as the divinelysweet Cyril said. So then, guarding on every side that which is indivisible and unconfused, we announce the whole in a concise formula: Believing our Lord Jesus Christ to be our true God, 100 one of the Holy Trinity even after the incarnation, we affirm two natures in his one subsistent being which shines forth, in which he exhibited both wonders and sufferings through the whole of his abiding [with us], according to the economy, not in appearance but in truth, the difference between the natures being made known in the same one subsistent being, by each nature willing and performing what is proper to it, in communion with the other, without confusion and without division. In accordance with this rationale, we hold that the two natural wills and energeiai join together appropriately, for the salvation of the human race. “So, now that these things have been set down by us with all precision and care in every respect, we determine that no person is permitted to set forth another faith, that is, to write or construct or contemplate or teach otherwise; but those who dare either to construct another faith, or to bring forward or teach or hand down another Symbol to those who wish to turn to the knowledge of the truth 101 – from Hellenism, or Judaism, or, indeed, any sort of heresy – or to introduce novel language (that is, invention of terms), to overturn what has now been determined by us, such as these, if they are bishops or clerics, they are to be deprived, bishops of episcopacy and clerics of clerical rank, and if they are monastics or laity, they are to be anathematized.” 102

The Horos affirms, in accordance with the Christology of Chalcedon, that in the one Lord Jesus Christ, who is known in two natures in the hypostatic union, there are two wills and two energeiai, corresponding to the divine and human natures. This

Pope Leo, Tome to Flavian (ACO ser. prim. II, 28.12–14). Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus XXXII (PG 75, 453 B13–C3). 100 Cf. 1 John 5.20. 101 Cf. 1 Timothy 2.4. 102 The conclusion is also a quotation from the Symbol of Chalcedon: ACO ser. prim. II, 130. 98 99

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statement represents the conclusion of the debates over monoenergism and monotheletism, which began in the early seventh century at Constantinople as an attempt to reconcile the non-Chalcedonian churches in the spirit of the Fifth Oikoumenical Council of 553. Although these two theological propositions had their genesis in an act of outreach to those who had become estranged from the imperial Chalcedonian Church, they soon became central to a divisive internal debate over the conclusions that should be drawn from the Christological statements of the previous centuries. We have considered at length the historical context that provided the impetus for the exploration of the language of the hypostatic union in the late sixth and early seventh centuries, and we will now turn to the theological substance of that project. Monoenergist and monothelite formulations represented a genuine attempt to explore the “oneness” of the hypostatic union of Christ. It was the potential compromise of the unity of the God-human Christ in the Chalcedonian faith that most worried the miaphysites, and which the Fifth Oikoumenical Council had tried to address specifically. The Christology of the five prior Oikoumenical Councils committed its adherents to the affirmation of two natures – one divine, one human – in Christ, known in contemplation alone, and expressed in a single subject (hypostasis), but the miaphysites remained concerned that the insistence on two natures in Christ after the union was Nestorian. In turning first to the language of energeia, Sergius alighted upon a term which had not been systematically explored by theologians, and which therefore contained the potential for fresh agreement because its meaning and relationship to the other fundamental Christological terms had not been contested. As we noted above, however, energeia was not a Christological concept without any history at all: it had been the subject of reflection among such notable teachers as Apollinarius, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Cyril of Alexandria, and Severus of Antioch. Most notably, a strong tradition concerning the single energeia and will of Christ had been developed by Severus building on Cyril’s writings, of which he was a committed expositor. Within the strict Cyrillo-Severan system, the teaching of Christ’s single energeia was a natural corollary to that of his single nature: he considered Christ to be a single divine subject with a single divine energeia, of which the humanity was nothing more than “flesh endowed with a reasonable soul.” 103 That is not to say, of course, that the flesh of Christ was separable from the single subject, but it was not an equal partner to his divinity – rather, the humanity of Christ was a vehicle for Christ’s divinity. Severus connected this to the contested phrase in Dionysius’ Letter to Gaius (Ep. 4), which he discussed in a letter to the Abbot John. 104 He confessed that Christ’s energeia is singular and composite (theandric), appealing to Severus, Contra Grammaticum III 33 (CSCO 102), 134. Severus, Letter to John, in F. Diekamp, Doctrina patrum de incarnatione verbi (Münster: Aschendorff, 1907), 309–10. 103 104

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Gregory of Nazianzus and Cyril, equating the latter’s classic phrase “one incarnate nature of the God-Word” with his own “one composite nature and hypostasis.” 105 He reflected on the question of will in Christ in a similar way, though at lesser length. Unlike Severus, Sergius, of course, did not proceed from a rejection of the “dyophysite” language of Chalcedon, but it cannot be denied that non-Chalcedonian thought on the single energeia and will of Christ, such as we have seen existed in Severus, was in the background of his project of unity, and the latter’s miaphysite reasoning was hardly going to pass without objection. Unfortunately for Sergius, a further problem was posed by the fact that the key terms of the debate – especially energeia – were not defined early on. By the standards of Aristotelian metaphysics which were dominant in the seventh century, and from which the meaning of this term was drawn, his profession of a single energeia in Christ amounted to a denial of the full reality of the two natures which had been confessed at Chalcedon, since energeia was a term which functioned not in relation to hypostasis but rather to physis. This was surely the very basis of Severus’ embrace of the doctrine of a single energeia. It is not possible to provide a full summary of Aristotle’s metaphysics here (which has its own long and complex history of reception and interpretation), but it is expedient to make a few comments on the term that sparked the controversy which raged throughout most of the seventh century. Energeia acquired a particular technical meaning in the philosophical web of Aristotelian metaphysical vocabulary. In his Metaphysics (primarily 7 and 9), Aristotle introduced the word energeia, meaning something like the “being-at-work” of a thing, its action or operation distinguished from its potentiality. 106 It is similar in definition and use to the word entelecheia, which expresses the idea that the energeia of a being is its end (telos). In short, energeia is the working out of the potential (dynamis) of what something is by nature. The Sixth Oikoumenical Council did not offer a definition of these important philosophical terms in its official documents, even though their meaning was contested and had been examined in detail by Maximus. We should deduce from this absence, and the silent yet incontrovertible fact that Constantinople III confirmed Maximus’ theology of two wills and energeiai in opposition to imperial monotheletism and monoenergism, that the operative definition of energeia (and thelēsis) is that which is found in the works of Maximus. The Pact of Union of 633 built on the single-subject language of Cyril of Alexandria (which had been confirmed as orthodox at Constantinople II), to which it added a phrase ostensibly taken from Dionysius – “one theandric energeia” – to define the singular operation of Christ. Whether or not this wording represented the authentic text of Dionysius’ Letter to Gaius known to Sergius and those who supported his See Hovorun, Will, Action, and Freedom, 20ff. “Being-at-work” proposed as a translation by Joe Sachs, Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Santa Fe, NM: Green Lion Press, 1999). 105 106

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theological propositions, it became an essential component of the ongoing discussion. As the phrase was understood and deployed by them, it suggested that the one Lord Jesus Christ, who is incarnate in one hypostasis, possesses only one energeia – singular agent, singular energeia. From this, it could be concluded either that the energeia was hypostatic (i.e., a unique theandric energeia of the union of the two natures) or else that it belonged to one of the natures only – presumably the divine nature of the God-Word, since it is inconceivable that the divine nature could be governed by the human. As a result, the humanity of Christ would be subsumed into the divinity and rendered impotent. This proposition attracted early protest from Sophronius and Maximus (and perhaps also John the Merciful), as we saw above, before the discussion was silenced. The limited goal of the early refutation of monoenergism seems to have extended to securing an alternative, Chalcedonian reading of the passage in Dionysius, which Sophronius and Maximus had received differently as “a new theandric energeia.” Sophronius initially spoke of three energeiai in Christ – human, divine, and theandric – but the last was not in fact expounded as a composite third thing but a way of talking about the unity of the divine and human energeiai. In a similar way, Maximus’ early writing on the topic is not especially polemical. 107 He interpreted Dionysius’ phrase as being consistent with neo-Chalcedonian theology, arguing that the Godhuman who embraces both natures in his hypostasis is double in energeia, existing in a new way which is theandric, but not possessing a novel and unique energeia which is a mixture of divine and human energeiai. Dionysius’ phrase was to be understood as pointing to the fact that the two natural energeiai are known through each other in the hypostatic union. This argument was taken up at the Lateran Synod by Pope Martin, when he argued that Dionysius used a composite term (the-andric) to express the notion of the two energeiai in their operational unity, and he further appealed to the doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum taught by Pope Leo in the Tome, to argue that the energeiai penetrate one another in the hypostatic union. Interestingly, the Horos of the Sixth Oikoumenical Council made no mention of the phrase from Dionysius, neither glossing it in an acceptable manner in the definition of faith nor excluding it entirely. After the exchange between Sergius and Honorius and the promulgation of the Ekthesis, discussion soon passed from energeiai to wills (θελήματα). This was an altogether different discussion than the one briefly outlined above. Energeia was a word used unsystematically in patristic writings and not found in the New Testament concerning Christ, whereas thelēma (θέλημα) is an important New Testament word, occurring in a number of significant Christological passages, including Luke 22.42, “Not my will but yours be done,” and John 6.38, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.” The conversation was 107

Maximus, Ambigua 5.

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therefore refocused to include important points of scriptural exegesis. The prominence and difficulty of these verses also meant that there was a wealth of theological literature on which to draw, in which these and similar passages had been cited and expounded. But to complicate matters, the term thelēma – unlike energeia – was carefully defined neither in the mainstream Greek psychological tradition nor in earlier Christian theological writings. Monotheletism was, like monoenergism, motivated by the desire to speak about how the single subject of Christ is expressed. To the proponents of one-will Christology, it seemed that a singular volitional faculty within Christ was necessary in order to avoid the conclusion that Christ was torn between opposing desires, and to ensure that he acted always in accordance with the divine will. But unlike the appeal to the Dionysian “theandric energeia,” in the case of the will the monothelites argued not that there was a single divine-human will – the unique product of the union – but rather a divine will alone: “we do not say that there was a human will in Christ…for his will belonged only to his divinity.” 108 They often chose to speak of the humanity of Christ as “enlivened flesh” [ἐμψυχωμένη σάρξ], which was governed by the divine will of the Word in the hypostatic union. The main advantage to this position, reiterated in many monothelite documents including the Ekthesis, was that it avoided any notion of a conflict between the human will and the divine will in Christ. Because the human will is liable to sin – erring from the will of God – it seemed to the monothelites that the presence of a functioning human will in Christ would lead inevitably to conflict. As a corollary to this, they imagined that the only will that could remain faithful to God’s was his own. Although the doctrine of a single will in Christ seemed to resolve the theological problem of a volitionally schizophrenic Christ, it created several significant problems. First, if a will was to be understood as proper to human nature, which the logic of Aristotelian metaphysics seemed to require, then the absence of a human will in Christ implied that his humanity was somehow incomplete, rendered nothing more than the fleshly instrument of the divine will. Second, if, in an attempt to resolve this Christological error, the will was excluded from what is proper to human nature, then how was it possible to account for the volitional impulses of human beings? If human beings lack a will by nature, do they also lack the freedom associated with volition? Such an idea provoked the accusation found in the Horos that the monothelites introduced the idea of an “unwilling and inactive intellectually enlivened flesh.” Third, though the monothelites never proposed a unique kind of will in Christ – a theandric will – such a concept, if understood as a novel composite will, would inevitably be unacceptable, since it would define the will in Christ as something neither human nor divine but uniquely divine-human, and on the basis of the Macarius gave his full confession at the eighth session of the Council. See ACO ser. sec. II, 190–261. 108

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foundational patristic maxim that “what is not assumed is not healed,” 109 it would leave the human will unredeemed. Those who favored a two-will Christology agreed with the monothelites that it was impossible to understand Christ as divided between two opposing wills, but they were also committed to the idea that natures correspond to wills and energeiai, and so it was necessary that the Chalcedonian dyophysite Christ should have two wills and energeiai. Further, they agreed that sinful human nature, including its will and energeia, exists in a state of conflict with God. But Maximus found it possible to resolve this tension by extrapolating a clarification of the state of Christ’s human will and energeia from what it means for his human nature to be untouched by sin: he is “like us in all things except sin,” according to Hebrews 4.15. Maximus declared that what is natural is not in opposition to the will of God, and only comes to oppose him through sin – unnaturalness or improper actualization of nature. Human nature, together with its will and energeia, is not naturally opposed to the will of God, but only when subject to sin. Since Christ was not subject to sin, he must have willed and acted in accordance with his human nature. As a result, his human will, which as natural cannot oppose the will of God, faced no conflict with the divine will. Maximus also introduced another distinction, which clarified an ambiguity in the understanding of the will and opposed the idea that Christ’s human will is merely subsumed into the divine and thereby annihilated by it. He argued for a difference between the will as a faculty of nature (which he referred to as θέλησις or θέλημα) and as the object of volition (τὸ θελητόν or τὸ θεληθέν). By parsing out the difference between these two things, Maximus was able to show that the divine will and the human will are not conflated when they have the same object of volition, because it was not logically necessary that one had to share the same faculty of will in order to will the same end. For example, God and the saints have the same object of will insofar as they desire the salvation of the world, but their wills do not merge on this basis, remaining distinctly divine and human respectively. 110 In Christ, this was most perfectly seen, since his human will, free from sin, accorded perfectly with its nature, which, as created by God, ultimately desires the same as the divine will. Those who had made the case for two wills and energeiai in Christ, in accordance with his two natures, fully human and fully divine, were therefore vindicated by the Horos of the Sixth Oikoumenical Council, which may be divided into three broad sections. The first confirms the sufficiency of the Symbols (Creeds) of Nicaea and Constantinople I as expressions of orthodox faith and reaffirms the Council’s fidelity to the five previous Oikoumenical Councils. The second section outlines the erGregory of Nazianzus, Epistle 101 (ed. Paul Gallay & Maurice Jourjon, Grégoire de Nazianze: Lettres théologiques, Sources chrétiennes 208 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1974). 110 Maximus, Opuscula 1. 109

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rors of monoenergism and monotheletism and the principal proponents of these heresies, and then proceeds formally to receive the Acts of the Lateran Synod of 649 as being in full agreement with Chalcedon, the Tome of Leo, and the synodal letters of Cyril of Alexandria. The third section offers a full statement of the Council’s faith with respect to the wills and energeiai of Christ, concluding with a succinct recapitulation of this same faith, and a conventional warning not to deviate from this proclamation. After the profession of the creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople I, the Horos sets out the theological errors of monoenergism and monotheletism in the terms which we have explored above through the critiques of Maximus, Sophronius, and others. At the most basic level, profession of a single energeia and will in Christ is contrary to the confession of his two natures, which is the essence of Chalcedonian Christology. The implication of this statement is that will and energeia are understood by the Council to be proper to nature, and thus a two-natured subsistent being (hypostasis) must also possess two wills and energeiai. Those who advocated for the monoenergist and monothelite positions never intended to deny the full reality of the incarnation, but this was the conclusion which their arguments seemed to reach from the perspective of those who were committed to Chalcedon. Following the tradition of heresiological genealogy, the errors of monoenergism and monotheletism are traced to Apollinarius, Severus, and Themistius. Apollinarius famously substituted the Word for the human mind of Christ, but perhaps more importantly expressed the doctrine of the divine-human union in such terms that even Christ’s flesh was understood as properly of the Word and from heaven, and thus the “humanity” of Christ no longer had anything in common with our humanity. Severus was one of the great leaders of the anti-Chalcedonian movement, which sought to be faithful to Cyril’s miaphysite language alone. He rejected any discussion of duality in Christ, and therefore his theology undergirded the ongoing miaphysite opposition to imperial Chalcedonian Christology, which had fuelled the desire to find formulae of reunion, leading to the early monoenergist and monothelite movements. Themistius was a sixth-century deacon from Alexandria who promoted the doctrine of the ignorance of Christ, and had come under criticism in Sophronius’ Synodical Letter. The profession of faith which follows is deeply shaped by the language of the preceding synods, especially Chalcedon, which it quotes at length. It strongly emphasizes the single subjectivity of Christ who is nonetheless dual in nature, and frequently uses the four Chalcedonian adverbs – unconfused (ἀσυγχύτως), immutable (ἀτρέπτως), inseparable (ἀδιαιρέτως), indivisible (ἀχωρίστως) – to describe both the relationship between Christ’s divine and human natures, and that between his divine and human energeiai and wills. Following Maximus, the Horos stresses that there is no conflict between the volition of human and divine wills. The human will is subject to the divine in every respect, but it is nonetheless fully active. The humanity of Christ is in no way destroyed by union with the divine, but rather divinized by it. In accordance with the doctrine of communicatio idiomatum found in Leo’s Tome, each will and energeia performs what it proper to it, in perfect harmony with the other.

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The Horos therefore gives a robust account of Chalcedonian Christology developed to take account of Christ’s wills and energeiai. The Lord Jesus Christ, one person (πρόσωπον) and subsistent being (ὑπόστασις), joins in himself two natures, human and divine, both of which are fully present in the union. The perfect humanity of Christ includes a rational soul and body, together with the natural human will and energeia. This will, which acts according to nature untouched by sin, is perfectly subject to the divine will, sharing the same end, and being wholly united with the divine will, is wholly divinized, yet nonetheless remaining human. The energeiai operate in communion with each other, performing what is proper to their nature (the divine energeia working divine things, the human energeia working human things) within the single subsistence of the one Lord Jesus Christ. The perfection of the union of human and divine in Christ is thereby confirmed. Beyond its immediate Christological import, the theology expressed at the Sixth Oikoumenical Council bears profound anthropological and soteriological significance. By affirming the connection between nature, will, and energeia, and stating that there is no conflict between the divine and human wills and energeiai in Christ on account of his sinlessness, the synod teaches that there is no natural conflict between human nature and God, when human nature is healed of sin. The will, though affected by sin in all human beings except Christ, is itself naturally capable of willing and enacting the will of God. In the person of Jesus Christ, who wills and works the salvation of the world not only as God but as human, we are enabled to see and experience the perfect alignment of natural human will and natural divine will. The human will is subject to the salvation which comes through the economy of Jesus Christ. Further, by confirming that will belongs to nature, the Horos refutes the monothelite notion that Adam possessed no will other than the divine before the Fall, and acquired a sinful human nature after. Resisting the desire to speculate about prelapsarian human nature, those who advocated for a two-will Christology never doubted that Adam possessed a human will from the beginning. Rather, Adam was endowed with a will which, until the Fall, acted according to nature and therefore in accordance with the divine will. But when he sinned, Adam voluntarily deviated from his natural energeia. In this way, human nature is separated from and opposed to God; but it is not so naturally, only insofar as it is afflicted by sin. In Christ, whose human will and energeia are unaffected by sin, the concord between human and divine wills and energeiai is once again revealed. Christ’s human nature, together with its energeia and will, is fully deified and therefore subject to the divine, not in a way that it is destroyed but rather that it is enabled to act in full accord with its nature. One clear implication here is that the human will is not subject to determination: it remains volitionally active and fundamentally free, even as it is impeded in its desire by sin in ordinary human beings. Christ is fundamentally free in his human nature and, as one untouched by sin, his freedom is exercised in such a way that his human nature operates in accordance with its natural energeia, harmonizing with the will of God. Such a possibility is revealed for all human beings, whose nature is not

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fundamentally altered but rather obscured and misdirected by sin. Human beings remain free according to their nature to act in accordance with that nature, their human nature being divinized and conformed to the divine. The fact that such a will and energeia belong to nature means that this divinization and freedom is possible for all those who share in human nature – all human beings – but the actualization of this nature in individual hypostases, of course, also means that the realization of this natural existence remains undetermined and voluntary at the individual hypostatic level. Ultimately, the faith expressed in the Horos of the Sixth Oikoumenical Council reaffirms the abiding truth of the Gospel, that the divine economy of the Lord, the God-human Jesus Christ, effects the redemption of humankind: “two natural wills and energeiai join together appropriately, for the salvation of the human race.” The Horos teaches that the incarnation of the Word is fully real, his humanity encompassing all that it means to be perfectly human, including possessing the freedom to act in accordance with one’s nature. As the Acts of the Lateran Synod, on which so much of the theology of the Sixth Oikoumenical Council was built, record, [Christ] adopted and hypostatically united with himself everything. He healed whatever belongs to our nature: body, soul, mind, energeia, and will, through which Adam deliberately transgressed the commandment. [Adam] as a whole had committed sin and had been convicted to death; therefore, he as a whole had a need to be healed by him who first created and then renewed our nature. 111

In short, the Council teaches us that our salvation is to be found in Christ alone, who united in himself our complete human nature and that of the divine, passing through the whole of human experience and overcoming the divisions which separate us from God. Only the full and unqualified confession of Christ as human and divine in the single hypostasis can guarantee this truth.

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CHAPTER 7: THE COUNCIL OF NICAEA II: 787. THE POWER AND SACRAMENTALITY OF CHRIST’S ICON WILL BELLAMY 7.1. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND EMPEROR LEO III The Seventh Oikoumenical Council, the second of Nicaea, was convened in 787 by Empress Irene for the purpose of restoring to the Church the institution of the icon and the tradition of icon worship as legitimate forms of theological expression. Perhaps more pressing at the time was the agenda of systematically discrediting the iconoclastic tradition that had been developing throughout the Byzantine Empire and which had reached its highest pitch by the eighth century. The Iconoclastic Crisis brought the issue of Christian visual imagery, and especially the icon of Christ, into a volatile political situation, evolving into a Christological drama and a civil war which, in varying degrees of intensity, would inform and define Byzantine culture for a little over a century. For several decades prior to the outbreak of iconoclasm in the 720s, a far more conventional crisis had gripped the Byzantine Empire. It was existential, or, at the very least, one that had effectively shattered Byzantine pride and brought the Empire dangerously close to collapse. Since the beginning of the seventh century, the Byzantines were engaged in a state of near constant warfare, beginning with the Persian invasion in 611. 1 The earlier stages of this war were marked by the successive and rapid advances of the Persian military. Antioch fell in 613, Egypt in 621, and the Persians had proven themselves quite capable of defeating the Byzantine military in pitched battles. During the war, the Avars allied themselves with the Persians and mounted their own European theater of operations against the Byzantines. The two foes besieged Constantinople in 626, but were reThis was when the Persian armies marched into Byzantine controlled territory and began to engage the Byzantine military in large numbers. Technically, a state of war had existed for about a decade prior to this invasion, but had yet to feature any consequential military action. 1

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pelled by Heraclius, whose subsequent counter-attack was able to drive the Persians as far back as Nineveh. The war had lasted for twenty-six years, exhausting the Empire’s manpower and material resources, and leaving it completely incapable of reestablishing authority and control over the territories that had fallen to the Persians. Exacerbating this was the simultaneous and meteoric expansion of Islam as a premier rival power in the region. Jerusalem, Damascus, Alexandria, and Antioch had all been quickly enveloped by the expanding Caliphate which, in 717, had arrived at the gates Constantinople. Upon claiming the throne in 717 Leo III, known as the Isaurian, organized the defense of the city. With the help of a particularly savage winter and a fortuitous pestilence that ravaged the ranks of the Arab besiegers, he was able to lift the siege and secure for the Empire a much needed victory. He had established the moment as a source of Byzantine pride, a pride uniquely tied to the martial legacy of the Isaurian dynasty, which would then be deployed to stir support for the iconoclastic cause later on. Prior military defeats were rendered, propagandistically, as divine punishments for the embrace of icons and that these defeats came at the hands of an iconoclastic Islam was a sufficient justification for such an attitude. One of the most notable features of this conflict was that it saw the first large scale use of what is now considered the signature of the Byzantine military: Greek fire. Unable to douse the flames with water, the Arab naval detachment conducting this siege was devastated and Greek fire would earn a fearsome reputation. The battle that it won for the Byzantines was, according to historian E.J. Martin, “almost as important as Poitiers,” 2 and, had Leo’s career as emperor ended on this high note, he might have been counted among the greatest of the Byzantine monarchs. Immediately after having secured this victory and, for the time, the Empire’s border security, Leo initiated a policy of domestic reform that quickly evolved beyond his control and understanding. He had spent nearly a decade engaged in military operations against the Empire’s enemies and had correctly diagnosed that the Empire’s weaknesses seemed to be stemming from an ideological and moral fatigue. His first peacetime measures were to address this. The respite was temporary and Leo understood that neither the peace nor his legacy would last long if the structural problems of the Empire were not addressed. To this end, Leo initiated numerous reform policies. One of the most prominent changes to the civil landscape was the Ecloga, a new legal code that was both strictly Christian and rigidly militaristic. Mutilations, such as the cutting off of ears, noses, and hands were prescribed as standard punishments for civil offenses. A clear indication of the Ecloga’s broader focus on reshaping social morality, and a testament to its scope, was its particular interest in expanding the rights of women through marEdward J. Martin, A History of the Iconoclastic Controversy (London: Society for the Promoting of Christian Knowledge, 1930), 17. 2

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riage reform. Despite his iconoclastic policies, Leo’s reputation as a reformer was not entirely negative. In addition to the wide recognition of his abilities for martial leadership, Leo was actually praised at the 787 Council which, it should be kept in mind, was presided over almost exclusively by people whose task it was to destroy his legacy and reputation, as well was that of his much more reviled son, Constantine V. 3 [Leo and Constantine] deserve the praise and honour of all their subjects for their care for the preservation of their people, their victories, their reforms in government and the law, the improvement they brought into their cities; the monuments which commemorate their achievements are a perpetual reminder of their courage and sues, making the beholder regret their loss and strive to emulate their example. 4

By the 720s, iconoclastic literature was circulating throughout the Empire as part of a propaganda campaign in advance of the next of the emperor’s reform projects. It has been speculated that two Churchmen in particular, Thomas of Klaudioupolis and Constantine of Nakoleia had managed to hold Leo’s attention long enough to somehow persuade him of the worthiness of the iconoclastic cause. Letters written by the Patriarch Germanos in the previous years identify these characters as causing popular unrest with this issue in a wave that made its way from Cappadocia to Phrygia towards Constantinople. Ironically, these letters, which were written to reprimand Thomas and Constantine for their hostility to images, contain the justification of such images on the basis that Leo himself was a “lover of images.” The narrative is somewhat conspiratorial and it ultimately belongs to a whole catalogue of fruitless guesswork investigating Leo’s motivations. Many scholars, such as Ambrosios Giakalis, Leslie Brubaker, and Christoph Schönborn find it unconvincing as an explanatory theory for Leo’s program, though they certainly recognize its value as illustrative of the polemics of the iconoclasm in its earliest days. Ultimately, there is not a great deal to be gained from arriving at an accurate understanding of what Leo was thinking when he instituted the ban on icons. It is sufficient to say that he was an influential character in the development and unfolding of “deep-seated differences that went back to the earliest stages of patristic theology, perhaps back to the Theophanes the Confessor wrote of the year 718 as when “a still more impious son was born to the impious Emperor Leo: Constantine, the forerunner of the Antichrist.” Theophanes the Confessor, The Chronicle of Theophanes: Anni mundi 6095–6305 (A.D. 602 – 813), trans. Harry Turtledove (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), 91. 4 Mansi, XIII, 355. For an English translation, see Martin, A History of the Iconoclastic Controversy, 17. Perhaps this admission of praise was a technical formality but, even so, it is conspicuously out of place among the endless rhetoric disparaging these two emperors. 3

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Jewish origins of Christianity.” 5 His son, Constantine V, on the other hand, was a thoroughgoing iconoclast. Even so, the business of attending to the problem of the icon can appear to be of rather secondary importance to Constantine V who, in between military ventures which secured the begrudging praise of even his harshest iconophilic critics, still took the time to contribute his own personal theological formulations to the discourse. The opening salvo of the iconoclasm was dealt on 723 when Leo had the icon of Christ removed from the ceremonial entrance gate of the imperial palace, the Chalcē, and undeterred by the public outcry, made a formal pronouncement against icons. 6 It seems to be the case that his stance on icons belongs within his larger reform strategy, but where exactly it fits into this strategy and how it embodies his attempts to rejuvenate Byzantine spirit are as obscure as the source of his position on the matter. One should not discount that Leo’s motives may have been genuinely religious, that he truly saw idolatry in icon worship. Such a notion is given a little extra weight by the fact that Leo was born and raised in the Syrian province of Commagene, in close proximity to the Arab frontier. However influential the Islamic prohibition against images may have been for Leo in his developing theological position, it is not the sole, and most likely not even the primary, source of the Iconoclastic Controversy. Even so, the influence of Islam on the Byzantine Iconoclasm should not be discounted. At the time, little more was needed to explain the basis for Leo’s policies than the claim that he had been corrupted by Islam. 7 In the one hundred years since the death of the prophet Muhammad, the Islamic conquests had almost entirely removed the Byzantine Empire from the Near East. The irony that these losses, both in terms or territory and in manpower, were suffered at the hands of an iconoclastic Islam was not lost on the propagandists who pitched these military defeats as punishment for Christian “idolatry.” Furthermore, the resulting Jaroslav Pelikan, The Spirit of EasternChristendom (600–1700), (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 93. 6 The historicity of this event remains dubious. It is directly related in the Chronographia of Theophanes and in numerous other anecdotal formats, though many modern voices speculate, not unreasonably, that it was a fiction retroactively deployed by the iconodules for propagandistic purposes. That virtually every account of it is attended by the claim that the unfortunate solider who had to carry out the impious order was set upon by a group of fanatically enraged deeply faithful women and righteously murdered. 7 Martin humorously paraphrases Mansi, XIII, 373c, “The motives which led Leo to adopt the policy of Iconoclasm need, however, further analysis. In interpreting the mind of heterodox thinkers, the Church authorities upon whom alone we depend give us little help. One motive alone explains for them the action of Leo, obedience to the orders of the devil, and if details are wanted, the devil’s natural emissaries, the Jew and the Moslem, are enough.” 5

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cultural exchange was defined largely by hostility and distrust and doubtlessly involved tensions regarding the issue of religious imagery. Idolatry appeared to be the only known theological pillar on which this campaign was initially launched. In the early days of the iconoclasm, little more than the injunction against idols in Exodus 20:4 was needed to give the emperor’s policy the sufficient theological authority to move forward. Additionally, there is a sense in which the emperor was attempting to address the tension between the spiritual reality that is contemplated and the spiritual reality that is physically beheld, a tension which quickly assumed a neoplatonic philosophical vocabulary as the controversy progressed. This tension, between the validity of materiality in the life of the faith on the one hand, and the invisible and eternal essence of that faith’s subject on the other, is not limited to the discourse on images and can quickly be located in other areas of Christian philosophy. Materiality was associated with lack of authenticity, with idolatry, with the shadows of the cave wall. It was a mere reflection of a deeper and more profound reality what was located in the nobler realm of invisible forms. It can be assumed that something resembling this intellectual prejudice was at work in the emperor’s initial policy-making with respect to the iconoclasm, though there is virtually no extant primary literature attesting to the specific intellectual foundations of his program. This is a conclusion derived from the specific claims to which the early defenders of the image, specifically St. John of Damascus (the Damascene), were attempting to respond. Similarly, reliable records of the political events that transpired during this period as a consequence of the imperial iconoclastic policy are hard to come by. It is known that the Patriarch Germanos of Constantinople vacated his office in the early years of the ban, either resigning in protest of Leo’s policy or deposed because of his opposition to it. The more pliable Anastasios replaced him. There are stories of persecutions, martyrs, and of monastery raids. Indeed, the information is so scarce as to lead some scholars, most notably Leslie Brubaker, to the conclusion that there is no real basis at all for labeling Leo III a genuine iconoclast. He could have just as easily been an opportunistic politician taking advantage of a volatile ideological situation so as to secure lasting reform and a place in posterity. At any rate, the issue of idolatry gradually shrank into the background and its currency among serious theologians diminished considerably in the wake of St. John Damascene’s systematic defense against the charge. With the death of Leo III and the ascendency of Constantine V to the throne, the iconoclastic campaign began to take on more specific and nuanced theological dimensions, becoming an explicitly Christological affair. Before addressing this, it is important to address the icon’s history and place in early Christian life and thought.

7.2. THE ICON BEFORE ICONOCLASM Giving a definition to the concept of the icon is complicated by the fact that it is used in multiple contexts to refer to a variety of different notions. The most familiar definition of the icon, and not the least relevant, is that of a wood panel painting depicting Christ, the Virgin, the angels, the saints, or the martyrs as visible testimo-

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nials. In another sense, it might not be conceived as a physical object, but as a philosophical and theological term for the concept of likeness, which doesn’t necessarily need a physical dimension. The Word of God, for example, is often thought of as an icon of God the Father. It usually happens that these meanings and applications of the notion of the icon, and the image by extension, flow into and shape one another. The point at which all these definitions converge is in the icon’s capacity to function as a signifier, a link in a chain that connects to and gestures towards something beyond itself. It is expressive of a paradigm. In any event, the icon as a visual image, in terms of its theological importance to Christian intellectual discourse, its value as a social institution, and its function as a fixture of the liturgy, has a history extending back long before the outbreak of the eighth century iconoclasm. This controversy was not the first time that the icon, and the concept of imagery as a whole, encountered opposition. Of course, not too far away from the concept of the image is that of the idol, and there was never any ambiguity among the partisans of the controversy as to the sinfulness of the latter. Conflating these two concepts into one another and applying the attributes of the idol to the image was, it seems, among the iconoclasts’ more commonly deployed arguments. Even though it was an erroneous generalization, it did not seem entirely unreasonable to express alarm at the kind of reverence that icons were getting during the years leading up to the controversy. The charge of idolatry would be perfectly valid if icon worshippers understood the material constituent of an icon, i.e. a wood panel painted and decorated in a particular way, as an object of worship and veneration in and of itself and without any further reference. If, on the other hand, the icon was conceptualized as containing, within its materiality, the divinity to which they were directing their prayers, and if such divinity was thought of as being trapped in the material substratum, the charge of idolatry would perhaps be easy to sustain. Even so, this level of popular piety, common to ancient religious piety, was quite alien to Christian doctrinal stances (which conceptualized God as omnipresent). Still, we cannot rule out the possibility for popular piety to creep into Christian religious practices. Indeed, there were plenty of suggestions that this was a plausible phenomenon and it was clear that some clarification was needed as to how to go about icon worship in a manner that avoided idolatry. Nonetheless, the icon defenders were committed to the claim that this was not how icon worshippers understood what they were doing and that the whole idolatry charge was simply a mischaracterization of icon worship. The Damascene, would be the premier iconodule champion of the cause of the icon in this capacity, claiming that the Incarnation of Christ on earth, and all the associated events that took place during the time of His tenure here, had rendered the notion of idolatry utterly incompatible with the Christian religion. Hence, the Incarnate presence of God the Word to the world bridged the seemingly unbridgeable gap between God and his creation, between material and immaterial, between sacred and profane. In other words, the sacramentality of God’s presence on earth sanctified that which is material and raw by adorning it with celestial order and beauty. This also concerned the marks of his

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presence captured through the faculty of sense perception and imagination, i.e. His physical shape and form. The problem, however, that some acute thinkers of the time would illustrate, was that by the mid-eighth century no coherent theory of visual marks of the Word’s presence on Earth had been offered. This is indeed not to mention the problems associated with the depiction of saints and various members of celestial hierarchy. For that reason the icon was easy enough to attack. There existed very little in the way of doctrinal precedent which unambiguously declared on the issue in either direction, and this would significantly complicate Byzantine intellectual discourse which often measured truth and authenticity according to demonstrated allegiance to the Patristic tradition. The scholarship surrounding the origins of the tradition of the Christian image is a rather controversial domain, providing us with an unreliable and often obscured narrative. German scholar Ernst Kitzinger wrote that, “No literary statement from the period prior to the year 300 would make one suspect the existence of any Christian images other than the most laconic and hieroglyphic of symbols.” 8 Yet there have been discovered numerous examples of Christian art predating 300. Although the earliest records of Christian theologians show a reserved, if not hostile attitude to Christian art, there is no doubt that the practice of depicting Christ and the Virgin was more widespread by the third century than has hitherto been thought, and took its origins not so much from the example of speculations of the learned, but rather from the practices of popular piety that were “displacing” domestic cultic rites of the old gods. The earliest surviving examples of art from this time, such as the Roman Catacombs, the Duro Europos House Church Baptistery, or the Cleveland Jonah carvings are wonders in that they survived at all, rather than evidence of the non-existence of art at the popular domestic level. The function of images in early Christianity was strongly tied to the processes of intercession within the hierarchical framework of celestial and terrestrial structures. As Leslie Brubaker argued, prayers were directed at intermediaries, (usually a saint or the Virgin, but sometimes a living person believed to be sufficiently holy to have special access to the divine) to arbitrate or intervene on [the believer’s] behalf…What is often called the cult of saints resulted from people’s attraction to these heavenly helpers. Probably by the end of the fourth century, and certainly be the mid-fifth, this was joined by the conviction that the holiness of saints remained attached to their bodies after death. Burial in close proximity to a saint’s tomb built on this belief in the importance of physical presence, and was intended to ensure saintly intervention on one’s behalf at the doors of heaven. This led, in turn, to a cult of relics, based on the belief that the power of the 86.

8

Ernst, Kitzinger, “The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm,” DOP 7 (1954):

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WILL BELLAMY saint to intercede with Christ continued to be exerted even when the body had been dismembered – so parts of the saintly body (even objects that had come into contact with the body or bones of a saint) had the same “real presence” as the complete body. 9

Religious imagery, thusly established as a fixture of popular piety, had yet to be given a consequential and thorough theological assessment which would determine its acceptability and validity in Christian doctrine. There are, to be sure, several essential writings addressing the problems generated by the issue of imagery by such esteemed thinkers as Origen of Alexandria, Cyril of Alexandria, and Athanasius, also of Alexandria. Yet none of this work was consolidated into a formal Orthodox position on the matter. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that lacking either a formal seal of approval or a formal condemnation, the institution of the icon, and the entire concept of religious imagery as a whole, was put into a very vulnerable and precarious political situation. The history of the icon and the tradition of its veneration throughout the early centuries of Christian practice may be obscure, but it is clear enough that its development was organic. In the Orthodox tradition, this narrative begins with the story of King Agbar of Edessa, who lived and reigned contemporaneously with Christ. Dying from leprosy, he commissioned a portrait of the face of Jesus. Instead of allowing the royal artist to paint His human likeness, Jesus left an imprint on a cloth by pressing his face to it. He sent the cloth back to the dying king, curing his conditions and providing the impetus for his conversion, and that of his entire kingdom 10, to Christianity. The image imprinted onto this cloth was known as the Acheiropoieton, or “image not made by human hands.” Therefore, while it is technically the archetypical icon of Christ, it is also falls more into the category of relic and, with respect to the function it served, this seems like a more appropriate designation. Some vestiges of paganism here are more obvious than others. Relics of Christ, for example, were made to function as Roman palladia, or statues of the patron gods and goddesses of cities whose role was to provide these cities with divine protection. 11 “The seventeenth century Paschal Chronicle, for example, tells us that when Constantine I moved his power-base from Rome to Constantinople in 324, he secretly took Rome’s palladion – effectively its protective deity – with him, presumably to ensure the superior protection of his new capital.” 12 Images of Christ had also developed into battle standards, were paraded around Constantinople during times Leslie, Brubaker, Inventing Byzantine Iconoclasm (London: Bristol Classic Press, 2012), 10. Such is the etiological narrative of the origins of Syriac Christianity. 11 R.L. Gordon “The Real and the Imaginary: the Production of Religion in the Graeco-Roman World,” AH 2, no. 1 (1972): 5–34. 12 Brubaker, Inventing Byzantine Iconoclasm, 13. 9

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of crisis, and were almost certainly deployed to invigorate troop morale during Leo’s defense of the city. Besaçon wrote that, Icons presided over the games at the hippodrome, went to battle at the head of armies. Heraclius carried the acheiropoetic image with him on his expeditions. Several times, Thessalonica, besieged by Slavs, owned its salvation to the miraculous intervention of Saint Demetrius. During the great siege of 626, the Patriarch Sergius, followed by the Senate, formed a procession around the walls, carrying images of Christ, and the Virgin, and the barbarians turned away their heads to escape the sight of the invincible Theotokos. Icons were found in bedrooms, in front of shops, at markets, on books, clothing, household utensils, jewelry, vases, walls, seals; they were taken on journeys; it was believed they spoke, cried, bled, crossed the seas, flew through the air, appeared in dreams. 13

It is important, however, to note the distinction between the image’s function as an object of cultic ritual, as a thing that is prayed to or otherwise venerated, and its function as a thing expressive of Christian teaching, or an articulation of Christological identity. With respect to the latter category, it was systematically addressed for the first time at the Quinisext Council (Council of Trullo) of 691/2. Brubaker writes that, “Whether or not sacred portraits were sometimes and sporadically venerated before this, by the end of the seventh century icons had taken on a much more significant and ubiquitous role in Byzantine textual record than they had played previously.” 14 The 82nd Canon of this Council decreed that Christ no longer be depicted symbolically as a lamb, but that His human form should serve for future representations, “so that all may understand by means of it the depths of the humiliation of the Word of God, and that we may recall to our memory his conversion in the flesh, his passion, and his salutary death, and his redemption which was wrought in the whole world.” 15 In this declaration we find the first oikoumenically formatted suggestion of the theological position that would later be adopted by the Seventh Oikoumenical Council, that the icon of Christ be understood in terms of a representational expression of the soteriological events of Christ’s Incarnation and Resurrection. As such, the Quinisext Council became one of the central, though sometimes unacknowledged, bulwarks of the apologies of the most prominent image defenders, including St. John of Damascus. Images had evolved from staples of “pagan” ritual into mediums of systematic theological expression. Inasmuch as they operated within the spheres of popular piety, the use of images inspired some legitimate expressions of alarm. It was disconcerting enough that Alain, Besançon, The Forbidden Image: An Intellectual History of Iconoclasm (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 114. 14 Brubaker, Inventing Byzantine Iconoclasm, 14. 15 Martin, Iconoclastic Controversy, 20. 13

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the masses understood their Christian faith through magical objects which functioned in a manner virtually identical with those of pagan protective deities. Gregory of Nyssa attests to something of the passion that icons could inspire, writing of the relics of St. Theodore that, Those who behold them embrace them as though the very body were living and flowering, and they bring all the sense – eyes, mouth, ears – into play; then they shed tears for his piety and suffering and they address to the martyr their prayers of intercession as though he were present and whole. 16

This was taken a step further when icons were brought to baptisms to serve as godparents or when flakes of paint were scraped into the blood of Christ and, when consumed with the host, were thought to transmit miracles. The extent to which the emergence of this tendency is directly attributable to the Empire’s cultural inheritance from classical Greece is far from certain and the problematic relationship between physical objects and divine essences is in no way unique to either Greek or Byzantine religious history. Throughout much of the modern scholarship concerned with this Council and era, there is a relatively consistent narrative vision detailing the history of icons and religious imagery in Christianity. Beginning with the claim made by Kitzinger that there is no evidence which would suggest any substantial Christian art before the third century “except the most laconic and hieroglyphic of symbols,” it follows that Christian imagery during this artless period was of the Acheiropoetos sort, or the category of holy objects not made by human hands. Basic examples of art followed, including frescoes, funeral art, and a few representations of Jesus. Then, by the sixth century, icons had become an omnipresent fixture not only in the Byzantine Church, but in the public life of the Empire and in the private lives of its citizens. This narrative was a picture that was related to the theological notion that the Bible forbade religious art, the New Testament sustained this, and in later times the strictures were relaxed as decadence set in and then art spread, until the Reformation threw it out once again in a purifying movement. Nowadays the ideological history of iconography (either the Orthodox version that it began at the very beginnings of the Church, or the Protestant one that it was a much later decadence) is giving way to a more sober historical survey. The voices participating in the more sober historical survey include, recalling from the earlier assessment of sources, Christoph Schönborn, Ambosios Giakalis, Leslie Brubaker, Cyril Mango, and, unsurprisingly, J.A. McGuckin. PG 46: 740B, For an English translation, see Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 11; or Brubaker, Inventing Byzantine Iconoclasm, 10. 16

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So far, we have discussed the social trajectory of the icon as a fixture of popular piety. Alongside this, a theological contest unfolded, but it did not become explicit or concentrated until the crisis erupted. The essential theological dilemma of the icon was philosophically grasped in neoplatonic terms, or at least it is from this particular intellectual framework that the area of contention arose. The problem with the icon is the role that it plays within a dichotomous conception of reality that contrasts the “spirit-intellect” with physical materiality. The immaterial reality had always been held in higher spiritual and intellectual esteem with this system. As famously proposed by Plato in the Phaedo, the realm of ideas was the location and source of the divine and accessing it required a degree of contemplation and mental activity that is impeded upon by the needs of the physical body. Materiality was considered crude and corrupted to such an extent that its very claim to authentic reality was suspect. The physical body was the incomplete shadow of the spiritual essence, corrupted and in need of sacrificial redemption. The icon seriously complicated this relationship by attempting to bridge the gap between the visible and the invisible. It “depicted the invisible,” by rendering into material colors a thing that should be philosophically secured against such abasements. The resulting contest involves the effort to give a coherent Christian definition to the term “image,” the relationship between the Incarnation and materiality reality, and how an icon works upon the faith of the believer, sitting as it does at the liminal intersection of the Platonic binary. One of the most consequential early Christian voices on this matter was Origen of Alexandria. The influence of Origen on the iconoclasm, and indeed for much of the history of Christian iconoclastic thought, has been widely acknowledged by scholars. A controversial figure in his own right, Origen’s influence was largely indirect and perhaps even spectral. However, he was an overwhelming personality, writer, and thinker whose philosophical input is very easy to misrepresent. He is most commonly thought of as Christianity’s most rigorous Platonist, or at the very least, a person for whom sensory perceptions were strongly associated with the shadowy realm of material substance. Images, to him, signified the artifice of materiality within the Platonic binary. Charles Schönborn assembled numerous quotations from Origen relevant to his stance here. The Lord is called “without conceit” (Deut. 32:4) in contrast to the shadow, the likeness, the image, for thus exists the Word in the eternity of heaven. But on earth he is not the way he is in heaven; for since the Word became flesh, he manifests himself by means of shadows, likenesses, and images. The multitude of

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The presupposition here is that human beings are creatures whose faculties of sense perception and imagination serve as poor substitutes and compromised interpreters of the Truth of the Word. Behind this rests the incarnational notion that Jesus’ appearance in the flesh was the assumption of a “shadow form,” a theory that Schönborn finds, …somewhat disturbing if it implies that the events of Jesus’ life would mean nothing more than representation of the first and most elementary step of initiation, of induction. This conception becomes even more disturbing if it considers the suffering on the Cross of Christ as merely the lowest level of this initiation process, whose highest level would be Christ’s Transfiguration and Resurrection. 18

Schönborn further observes Origen’s preference for the activity of “contemplating” over that of “seeing.” These two words are extremely similar in Greek (thea, theoria) so, for the purposes of clarification, “seeing,” in this context refers to the energeia of the faculty of sense perception. “Contemplating,” on the other hand, would be better described as the energeia of the faculty of non-discursive reasoning known as noesis. Quoting Origen again, “He who looks at the body of Jesus with his physical eyes does not yet, in this alone, see the Father, his God. For I think time and practice were needed to see Jesus in such a way as to see the Son and thus contemplate the Father.” 19 At every step, Origen’s thoughts on the matter suggest the priority of “spiritualizing” the Word, claiming that it can only be apprehended as a subject of “contemplation” not “perception.” Furthermore, the increasing degrees of awareness and knowledge of the Word seem to come about, according to Origen, as the result of an intellectual progression strikingly similar to several of Plato’s formulations about the ascent of the soul. Giakalis wrote that, In Origen’s eschatology is found the conception that bodies [embodied souls] will become “intellects” once again, restored to the primeval state from which they fell to the sensible world and received specific shape and “form.” This is also true a fortiori of the Body of Christ after the Resurrection. 20 C. Schönborn, God’s Human Face: The Christ-icon, trans. Lothar Krauth (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1994), 48. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., 50. 20 Ambrosios, Giakalis, Images of the Divine: The Theology of Icons at the Seventh Ecumenical Council – Revised Edition (Leiden: Brill Academic Pub., 2005), 71. 17

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In fairness, this attitude was more explicit with the inheritors of Origen’s tradition and those would claimed to be continuing his thought. While Origen’s thinking has some clearly Platonic inflections, his position in the divine image question represents a small figment of a personality that Schönborn calls, “too universal, too biblical, too ecclesiastical, too ‘Catholic,’ to allow the reduction of his work only to one of its dimensions.” 21 It is by virtue of his prolific literary legacy and his immense ideological influence, a reputation made all the more impressive and intriguing by his having been anathematized by the Church, that his authority was eagerly sought, even if this sometimes required discretion. It would be a mistake to conclude that Christian hostility towards “matter,” and the valorization of the ineffable divinity that can only be contemplated in its spiritual form, was a strictly Origenist construction. Nonetheless, he furnished the iconoclastic party with what appears to have been one of their primary lines of theological reasoning in this regard. When Christian art emerged onto the imperial religious landscape, its status, canonicity, and acceptability were all fluid and informal notions. Christian writers of the Early Church were fairly divided on the issue, though there seems to be no shortage of patristic anecdotes, such as those supplied by Origen, summoned as theological support beams by the iconoclasts, attesting to Christianity’s hostility towards images. One of the most authoritative and most utilized stories comes from Eusebius of Caesarea. “The opponents of images in the eighth century discovered a text that seemed custom-made for their intentions. It was a letter written by Eusebius of Caesarea to Constantia, the Great Constantine’s sister. This letter is known to us only through the debates of the image controversy.” 22 The letter was a reply to Constantia’s request for a personal icon of Christ and, in no uncertain terms, did Eusebius respond that this was as impossible as it was impious. You wrote to me regarding a certain icon of Christ and your wish for me to send you such an icon: What did you have in mind, and of what kind should this icon of Christ be, as you call it? … Which icon of Christ are you looking for? The true, unchangeable image that by nature shows the likeness of Christ, or rather the other image that he has taken on for our sake when he clothed himself with the form of a servant (cf. Phil 2:7)?… I cannot imagine you are requesting an icon of his divine likeness. Christ himself has instructed you that nobody knows the Father except through the Son, and that nobody is worthy to know the Son except the Father alone who has begotten him (cf. Mt 11:27)… Thus, I presume, you desire the icon of his form as a servant, the form of the humble flesh with which he clothed himself for our sake. Yet about this we have learned that it is inter-

21 22

Schönborn, God’s Human Face, 53–54. Ibid., 57.

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The language of power and authority in Trinitarian or Christological conversations are also deeply steeped in the “matter problem,” and Eusebius’ formulation, like Origen’s, articulates a seemingly unbridgeable gap between God and humanity. In both systems Jesus appears like a provisional construction whose humanity only seems relevant in an eschatological sense, which is to say that death and resurrection liberate the soul from matter. Whether or not matter is sanctified through this process is an almost negligible consideration. The human form of Christ was never denied and, if something has a human form or a physical manifestation, it is necessarily vulnerable to pictorial representation. What made Christ immune, however, was the iconoclast belief that, after the Resurrection, the human element in Christ was absorbed into His divinity. If such a “swallowing up” had indeed taken place in the Resurrection, His humanity becomes just as impossible to depict as His divinity. From an iconoclastic position, it became hard to dispel the impression that the Incarnated Christ, the Son, was somehow of lesser value, inferior to the invisible perfection of the Father. This is not a fair characterization of their position, but perhaps if their aversion to matter were less entrenched, they would be better able to articulate an acceptable and coherent conception of the Trinity. The primary difficulty revolved around the Incarnation. The iconoclasts demonstrated a conservative unwillingness to acknowledge that some of the implications of the Incarnation – the physicality of Christ’s body, His visible presence, which is rendered almost empirically in the Gospels – could legitimately dislodge their deeply rooted antipathy for all things material. Images in the Christian tradition also had many of sympathizers. The most often encountered and most pragmatic justification for Christian images was that they had the capacity to educate the illiterate, to render the narratives and sequences of Scripture pictorially and vividly. “Iconography,” translates to “icon writing” and, indeed, a painted likeness was understood as functionally identical to the written word. Leo Davis observed that, “In the West too Gregory the Great (d. 604) had to rebuke Serenus, bishop of Marseilles, for tearing down sacred images since, said the pope, they are a means of leading the illiterate to a knowledge of the truths of the faith.” 24 The danger, of course, is that this premise invests a tremendous amount of confidence in the interpretive abilities of those illiterate masses to effectively discern the proper Christian message from imagery, a medium that could not help but invoke the very specific and prominent scriptural injunction with severe consequences. This investment of confidence extends to the clergy as well, and to their abilities Ibid., 58–59. Leo D. Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Church (325 – 787): Their History and Theology (Wilmington: Michael Glazier Inc., 1983), 292. 23 24

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as interlocutors and transmitters of iconic and pictorial wisdom. At any rate, this educational justification does not contain a theological response to the danger posed by the implied relationship between images, idolatry, and heresy. It would only be towards the very end of the controversy, after 2nd Nicaea in fact, that a comprehensive iconophilic theology would be formalized.

7.3. ASSESSMENT OF SOURCES The chief theological voices which we have come to associate with the era of Byzantine iconoclasm were those of the most successful defenders of the icon, namely St. John of Damascus (675–76 – 749) from the first outbreak, and St. Theodore the Studite (759 – 826), and the Patriarch Nicephorus (758 – 828) from the second. Of these three, the Damascene was the only writer whose defense of the icon was singled out by the Seventh Oikoumenical Council for especial praise, if for no other reason than that he was the only of these three to produce a coherent theological defense of the icon before the Council took place. Standing in opposition to imperial policy, their writings on icons belong to the genre of apologetic literature. On the one hand, these texts were characterized by a spirit of defense and by the assertion of Orthodoxy in the face of a new, imperially sanctioned heresy. On the other hand, this is where the Orthodox tradition finds its precedent for the accepted position on icons and on religious imagery. 7.3.1. John the Damascene Three Apologetic Treatises Against Those Decrying Holy Images was written in around 730 from the monastery at Mar Sabas near Jerusalem, emerging in the immediate aftermath of Leo III’s initial iconoclastic measures. Accordingly, it addressed the principle issue of idolatry. Mar Sabas, it is worth noting, was territorially within the Abassid Caliphate which meant that the Damascene was freed from certain persecutory political realities 25 that might threaten to silence his Byzantine contemporaries. Prior to taking his monastic vows and taking up residence at Mar Sabas, the Damascene was a high ranking bureaucrat, a financial official, in the Islamic court in Damascus. His family had been established in the aristocracy of Damascus since long before With respect the iconoclasm specifically. Islam was, like the Byzantine monarch, officially iconoclastic and this often brought the Damascene, if we are to believe the words of his biographer, a John of Jerusalem, into tense and potentially explosive situations with the Caliphate. Indeed, despite this, the Damascene found himself bold enough to explain Islam, in his Concering Heresy, as nothing more than a Christological heresy. His antagonistic stance on Islam was also speculated to be among the reasons that he, fed up with the gradually intensifying imposition if Islamic values into the bureaucracy in Damascus, retreated to the universally Christian context of the monastic life. 25

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the Arab conquest in 634 26 and were permitted to retain their status and role in the city government as Christian subjects of the Caliphate. The Damascene most likely received a specialized Hellenic education 27 and the authority of his command over the classic subjects of Greek learning – music, geometry, metaphysics, etc – was solidly framed by a deep Christian piety. Pious though he was, the monastic life did little to remove him from the public eye and, with the publication of his Three Apologetic Treatises Against Those Decrying the Holy Images, he made an enemy of the Byzantine emperor, becoming the voice most enduringly associated with the defense of the icon. The text was written and published before the iconoclasm began to take Christological dimensions. Unlike Theodore the Studite or Nicephorus, the Damascene was responding primarily to the charge that icons were idols and that icon worship constituted idolatry. In addition to drawing attention to the widespread and divinely sanctioned use of images, carvings, statues, etc, in the Scriptures, the Damascene distinguished between the various kinds of worship, claiming that the worship due to God is of a fundamentally different sort than the display of reverence offered to an icon. This text was widely translated and circulated in the Damascene’s own lifetime becoming, as it were, an instant classic. Correspondingly, a hagiographical tradition soon followed which attested to miracles performed by or upon the Damascene, some more obscure than others. The apology itself, however, endures most likely because it was the icon’s first organized philosophical defense and because it emerged in an ideal collection of political circumstances. Its genius was to remain politically relevant while simultaneously setting a theological precedent and it is often the case that texts of this sort are especially hard to suppress or confine to obscurity. Much of his work, including the apology, have been collected into the Patrologia Graeca (PG), though his work has also been extensively translated into English. The English translation to which this chapter will refer is the public domain version, composed by Mary Allies and published in 1898.

Eutychius, a Melkite writing in the 10th century, suggests that it might have been the Damascene’s grandfather himself who surrendered the city to the invading Rashidun Caliphate. 27 There are various accounts as to how the Damascene was educated. It is clear that he displayed a familiarity with Hellenic philosophical learning, but it is also clear that he had demonstrated some familiarity with (and highly opinionated enmity towards) the Quran. It was often claimed that he had a private tutor who basically turned the prodigal Damascene into an expert in all the staples of classical Greek learning, music, geometry, arithmetic, philosophy, etc. 26

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7.3.2. Theodore the Studite Theodore the Studite’s (759–826) career was not limited to the spirited defense of the icon, though this is by far his most recognized contribution to Christian theology. Like the Damascene, he was born into a family of financial bureaucrats with considerable political pull in imperial palace politics. Along with his uncle, Platon, Theodore entered into a leadership position among the monastic partisans who actively supported Empress Irene and her appointment of Tarasius to the office of Patriarch of Constantinople. Both Theodore and Platon were leading political partisans in Constantinople and perhaps their most famous involvement in imperial politics concerns the complicated marital situation of Emperor Constantine VI. The story of the Emperor’s attempt to annul his marriage to Maria of Amnia without proof of adultery led to an open hostility between Theodore and Constantine VI, one which resulted in imperial troops storming into the Sakkudion Monastery and dispersing the monks. 28 The public life of Theodore was largely determined by the degrees of favor granted him by the succession of emperors at the turn of the eighth century. Constantine VI had dispersed his monastery, he was invited back into the public intellectual life of the Church when Irene’s hold on political power was more secured, and he again lost imperial favor in 806 when he and Platon protested the ascension of the laymen Nicephorus to the throne. Emperor Michael I brought Theodore out of exile in 811, but this was short-lived for, with the rise of Emperor Leo V and a new iconoclastic campaign, Theodore was again put into a delicate political situation. Forced into exile once again, he was nonetheless able to function as an effective partisan for the cause of the icon while simultaneously producing an immense body of theological literature in its defense. Much of this is to be found in the Patrologia Graeca, along with his extensive administrative writings, hymns, his two catecheses, correspondence, and his sermons. Several of his texts are specifically concerned with the problem of iconoclasm and attempt to develop a philosophically coherent affirmation of the institution of holy images. These texts are, Refutations (Antirrhetica) of the Iconoclasts, The Canon for the Establishment of Holy Images, his Epistle to Plato on the Cult of the Holy Images, his Chapters against the Iconoclasts, Problems with the Iconoclasts, and, most amusingly, his Refutation of the Poems of the Iconoclasts. 7.3.3. Papal Correspondence Several records survive of Pope Gregory II’s letters to Emperor Leo III which date to the opening stages of the crisis. These letters reveal something of the ecclesiastical and political stakes at play here. An English translation of the first two letters written by Gregory to Leo appears in Rev. John Mendham’s 1850 translation of the Theodore and Platon had converted this family estate into a monastery at their personal expense in around 781 – 82 CE. 28

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787 Council transcript though, like the Council, the original Greek is in the public domain. The animosity between the Pope and the Emperor extends back before the outbreak of iconoclasm to the Arab siege, during which Gregory II was forced to supply funds for Leo’s defense of Constantinople at the expense of the Rome’s granary. As a result, Gregory provided encouragement to anti-imperial elements in Rome which, in turn, drove out the imperial governor and left Rome quite outside Leo’s direct influence. The exchange, it is hardly surprising, was tense and hostile. It is clear that the Pope perceived the iconoclastic actions taken by Leo as an imperial overstep into ecclesiastical jurisdiction and displayed overt suspicions about the emperor’s political agenda with this move. The narrative that unfolds here is highly illustrative of the disintegration of Papal relations with Constantinople, but, with respect to theology, it deals more with the question of reaffirming Papal primacy rather than it does with the acceptability of a Christ-icon or theological imagery. Christian art in the West had yet to confront this sort of theological problem. 7.3.4. The Council The deliberations of the Seventh Oikoumenical Council were dutifully transcribed in the original Greek and imperfectly translated into Latin. Thus its reception and legacy in Western Christianity was a problematic affair. The political narrative of which this Council is a part was one of deep and widespread division between Eastern and Western Christianity. The loss of Ravenna in 751 to the Lombards was another justification for the Pope’s escalating suspicions that Constantinople was incapable of providing Rome with protection or of exercising any meaningful or helpful political influence in Rome’s sphere of interest. It is reasonable to conclude that, even without a mistranslated theological deliberation occurring within a political climate that was virtually unfelt in the West, a division of this sort was not far off. In 800, thirteen years after the Council was held, Pope Leo III (not to be confused with the earlier Byzantine emperor Leo III) famously crowned Charlemagne as “Emperor of the Romans.” This gesture effectively deposed Irene and cast into suspicion the legitimacy of the numerous measures that she had taken as Empress. The 787 Council was neglected in the West, allowing for two different artistic traditions to emerge from the same general body of theological knowledge. One of these, it is clear, bore the heavier stamp of neoplatonic philosophy and has its official precedent in the Seventh Oikoumenical Council. As is the case with virtually all of the early Councils of the Church, the philosophical traditions which came to define and qualify the pronounced doctrines occurred at the periphery of the deliberations themselves. The Christological tradition and formalized acceptability of the Christ-icon was theologically developed by Nicephorus and Theodore several decades later. Furthermore, while the Damascene is credited extensively as a noble champion of the cause of the icon, it is on the basis of his political reputation as a figure of intellectual resistance rather than on the content of his theological writings that he is most frequently praised. In short, the intel-

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lectual substance of the Councils of the early Church is not often found in the Council itself, but in the discourse surrounding it. Historians of the Early Church have long understood this and have correctly determined that the primary source value of the Council’s pronouncements does not consist in its ability to satisfactorily resolve nuanced theological problems, but in its completeness. Councils have always been transcribed in their entirety with an explicit awareness as to their value to posterity and were thusly meticulously maintained even if they were sometimes catastrophically mistranslated or insensitively communicated. As institutions, they were unselfconscious in their wielding of authority. To be sure, they functioned as forums for theological discourse, but it is difficult to avoid the notion that their energies for discourse were sooner directed towards rhetorically embellishing predetermined statements than towards any ideological contest or conversation. It is still the case, however, that in its self-understanding as a pronouncement for posterity, the Council declares itself a total and contained narrative. For us, this narrative exists in its entirety, even if we must turn to the theology outside of it in order to make any sense of it. As was the case with Theophanes (see below), the Council should not be relied upon as the sole source of theological knowledge about what was going on in the Byzantine iconoclasm. It is a framing device, an episode in the narrative in which the shifts in political power were perhaps at their most dramatic point. They reveal to us, by way of displaying the standards of rhetoric at the time, a tremendous amount about the social context, the priorities and values of the players involved, and the severity of the stakes. For most theological historians, this information is subordinate to the task of clarifying the development of the Christological doctrine of the Christ-icon. For any other kind of historian, that doctrine is subordinated to the realities illustrated by Theophanes or the transcription of the Council. 7.3.5. Theophanes Theophanes the Confessor (758/60 – 817–18) was a Byzantine chronicler, monk, and aristocrat from Constantinople whose Chronicle, or Chronographia (Χρονογραφία) is the only primary historical record of the era of iconoclasm. The political history can be pieced together by consulting non-historical texts which circulated throughout the Empire at the time, including the works of the Damascene and other theologically oriented polemical material, but this Chronographia was the only such text to belong the genre of what we might call a history textbook. The years bracketing the text’s area of historical concern run from 602 to the year of its writing in 813. It is likely that Theophanes was not the author of the majority of the completed product, having assumed the responsibility of court historian from George Syncellus. 29 Cyril Mango argues that Theophanes functioned as little more than an editor for the Chronicle and that his primary achievement in undertaking its completion was to compile to29

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The Chronicle is as passionately partisan as any theological literature of the age and a cursory glance at Theophanes’ rhetoric reveals his deep disdain for the Isaurian dynasty and their iconoclastic project. For this reason, it is unwise to return to him as an authority on the actual state of historical affairs. His explicit objective was to systematically discredit the cause of iconoclasm and to shame, for posterity, those who attempted to advance it, thus filling the text with dubious historical claims and unsubstantiated ad hominem attacks on Leo III and Constantine V. The resulting picture is one of great clarity as to the atmosphere of partisanship that the iconoclasm was able to inspire, but one that obscures the historical facts about its progression. Further, Theophanes wrote the Chronographia just as the second wave of iconoclastic sympathies began to gather traction and was thus working in the same intellectual climate as Theodore the Studite and the Patriarch Nicephorus, an era sometimes referred to as the “golden age of icon theology.” 30 He shares with such figures the same spirit and allegiance, but his attention to the theological dimensions of the icon, much less their Christological implications, are comparatively lacking. The distinguishing feature of the Chronographia was its organizations of dates, an editor’s touch, which corresponded each recorded year to the amount of time an official or monarch held office. Annus Mundi 6209 (September 1, 716– August 31, 717) for example, is specified as the first year of the twenty-four year long reign of Leo III, the third and final year of the Arab ruler Suleiman, and the third year of Germanos’ fifteen year long tenure as Bishop of Constantinople. It thusly follows that the chief value of Theophanes as a primary source is not in his capacity as a reliable historical commentator, but in the function he serves to give a consistent chronological frame to the political narrative of the iconoclastic era. 7.3.6. Secondary Sources In the Western interpretive tradition, the study of the iconoclastic era and the 787 Council has been an unavoidably problematic affair. The difficulties encountered here extend as far back as the immediate aftermath of the Council itself, or, more appropriately, back to the translation of the Council’s transcript into Latin by the commission of Charlemagne. The mangled disaster that resulted from this would appear before Western scrutiny as though this Council had just decreed in favor of idolatry. Tensions between East and West were perfectly apparent long before the crisis erupted, originating as they did in narratives that were far broader than the issue of religious imagery. The first iconoclastic policies were implemented when Eastern and Western Christianity were on the cusp of disunity. None of the imperial gether the historical records written by George Syncellus whose own work, it seems, was an assemblage of a wide variety of court documents and other historical records. 30 Christoph Schönborn used this as a title for a chapter addressing the writings of these two image defenders.

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measures against images were seriously enforced west of the Adriatic and, for the most part, the real political consequences of such measures were largely unfelt outside the direct sphere of the Emperor’s influence. At the time, Western Christianity had no parallel for the theological dialogue that was taking place in Constantinople and had little invested in the doctrinal consequences that might result from such a dialogue. Furthermore, the approach that Byzantine intellectuals and Church figures had taken to address the metaphysical dimensions of the iconic medium did not resonate for the Western sensibilities, which never had any real stake in the controversy in the first place. As far as Pope Hadrian, who sent representatives to the 787 Council but did not himself attend, was concerned, this Council was a corrective measure designed to repair the damage that the Emperors Leo III and Constantine V had done. For this reason, people can be excused for forgetting to mention it alongside the other, more important and doctrinally affirming councils so treasured in the Western tradition. The Western interpretive tradition of the iconoclasm was brought back before public scrutiny when the Reformation’s purifying energies sought to oppose the impression that the Catholic Church had descended into corrupt idolatry. One of the Reformation’s primary achievements was to remove the intermediaries which stood in the way of the pure and unbounded connection between God and the human soul. Saints, paintings, and even the Church were perceived to have inserted themselves in between God and humanity as though they were duplicitous and misleading obstacles to a purer faith. While these institutions claimed to facilitate the communication between God and humanity by acting as interlocutors, they actually interfered with this communication. Images, interpreted within this context, were seen as a corruption that had snuck into the early Church, an idolatrous evil that had somehow managed to get the stamp, duplicitously, of ecclesial approval, thus affirming for the West the stereotype of Byzantine decadence. Intermediaries, in addition to blocking the pathways of God’s direct communication with individual human beings, may as well have been mere decoration. The non-partisanship of the modern historical study of the iconoclasm should not be taken to suggest that a coherent consensus has developed which addresses the issue of the iconoclasm to everyone’s satisfaction. Generally speaking, secondary scholarship on the iconoclasm falls into one of two categories. The first, and by far the largest, is the genre of political, social, and cultural history. The other is doctrinal history, which emerges from theological analyses that attempt to relate or directly engage with the main intellectual figures of the time. Unfortunately, these two domains of scholarly inquiry do not overlap enough. The era of iconoclasm was a consequential period in Christian history and, as such, it is usually given some measure of treatment in broader historical texts, like

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John Julius Norwich’s A Brief History of Byzantium, 31 or George Ostrogorsky’s History of the Byzantine State. Texts of this sort do not often commit to treating of the theological content of these historical epochs with much thoroughness, but they nonetheless offer clear narratives of the social and political contexts of certain theological atmospheres. They are invaluable resources when sifting through the primary material, providing critical assessments on the reliability of certain sources over others. Countless monographs, articles, and book chapters have been dedicated to various aspects of the iconoclastic era. In various attempts to establish the intellectual trajectory of the dialogue taking place during the iconoclasm, many of these texts analyze key historical figures, like Eusebius of Caesarea, Epiphanius of Salamis, 32 or Dionysius the Areopagite (Pseudo-Dionysius), 33 and discuss the continuity of their thoughts and writings with the issues at play. Additionally, the iconoclastic period has numerous historical gaps, areas of contention for which no historical consensus has been developed. These include the motivations of Leo III, or whether this really was truly the last straw for the in East-West relations. There are plenty of specific questions here that have managed to elude such consensus and it shouldn’t be terribly surprising these questions have remained at the center of most modern scholarly treatments of the era.

7.4. THE COMMANDMENTS, IDOLATRY, AND ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS The intellectual and religious center of the iconoclastic crisis can be found in Exodus 20:4. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your The entire text not at all brief, but given the scope of his treatment, covering the history of the Byzantine Empire from the reign of Constantine the Great until Constantinople’s fall to the Ottomans in 1453 CE, only so much effort can be dedicated to all the intricacies of Byzantine history. Hence the assessment of the iconoclasm, which occupies around 30 pages, is comparatively small. For the most part, this is the consistent model for the scholarship on the iconoclasm within broader historical texts. 32 Steven Bigham’s monograph, Epiphanius of Salamis: Doctor of Iconoclasm? is a thorough assessment of all the ancient sources which link the Cyprian bishop to the early iconoclastic tradition of the Church. Bigham’s primary focus here is to investigate the use of these sources in the partisan rhetoric of the iconoclasm and to determine the authenticity of statements and writings attributed to Epiphanius. 33 Symbol and Icon, the monograph by Filip Ivanović engages in a very similar exercise as Bigham, but in reference to Dionysiuys the Areopagite (Pseudo-Dionysius), the fifth–sixth century figure who wrote extensively on the nature of the Christian image as defined by neoplatonic metaphysics. 31

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God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Less considered is the applicability of a verse closely following this one to the Christological dilemma that the crisis would later embody after the charge of idolatry grew dimmer. Exodus 20:7 reads, “You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.” Christological misunderstandings of mischaracterizations fall nicely within the purview of this commandment, though, when the controversy assumed a Christological character, the partisans would not defer to Exodus 20:7, but to Christian thinkers like Origen, Eusebius, and Epiphanius. There were also non-Christian philosophers who wielded considerable intellectual authority for the iconcoclas, chief among them being Plotinus, the third century philosopher who basically created Neoplatonism as we understand it. At any rate, the charge of idolatry was sufficiently grave as not to need the intellectual elucidation of non-Christian thinkers to attest to its unambiguous sinfulness. As we have seen, the manufacture and use of icons and their overwhelming visibility in Byzantine public life flirts dangerously with idol worship of the sort with which St. Paul took issue. “Of what use would be further discussion?” Schönborn asks rhetorically. “Not one image can claim an exception! Let us not try to get away from the strict demands of this command! In view of this ban, did not the entire dispute about images assume the character of idle sophistry? Was it not a crying shame that Jews and Muslims had to remind Christians of the seriousness of this prohibition?” 34 The problem, however, is that there were plenty of images that could, and did, claim exceptions and one does not have to spend too much time sifting through scripture to locate them. This is how the Damascene began his defense of icons; first by identifying other biblical passages which provided similar injunctions against images, then by summoning passages that seem to display more forgiving attitudes towards them. I have taken heed to the words of the Truth Himself: – ‘The Lord thy God is one.’ (Deut. 6.4) And ‘Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, and shalt serve him only, and thou shalt not have strange, gods.’ (Deut. 6.13)… and “Let them be all confounded that adore graven things.’ (Ps. 97.7) Again, “The gods that have not made heaven and earth, let them perish.’ (Jer. 10.11) In this way God spoke of old to the Patriarchs through the prophets and, lastly, through His only-begotten son, Jesus Christ, on whose account He made the ages. 35 Schönborn, God’s Human Face, 149. St. John of Damascus. Three Treatises on the Divine Images: Apologia Against Those Who Decry Holy Images, trans. Mary H. Allies (London: Thomas Baker, 1898), 4. Allies’ translation 34 35

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Immediately after composing this list, the Damascene shifts focus somewhat to declare his faith in the context of the icon problem. He takes the opportunity to outline both the Christological and Trinitarian character of that faith. God is “the source of all things, without beginning, uncreated, immortal, everlasting, incomprehensible, bodiless, invisible, uncircumscribed.” 36 He avoids controversy by declaring his belief in the three persons of the single Godhead, but he is also very concerned with clearly defining his terms. Large potions of his argument, we shall see, hinge on very precise definitions of theological concepts, the obfuscation of which he considers the ultimate source of all the confusion about icons and the perception that they are idols. To accept the Platonic binary which divides the ideal from the material was not, for the Damascene, to claim that those two planes of reality were hopelessly and infinitely separate. Rather, he insisted upon the continuity between them, a sort of vertical bridge between the visible and invisible which can help souls ascend to the truth. In order to demonstrate this, he describes the interpretive processes attached to the icon, or the process by which it is conceived by the painter and received by the observer. The scripture says, “You have not seen the likeness of Him.” What wisdom in the law-giver. How depict the invisible? How picture the inconceivable? How give expression to the limitless, the immeasurable, the invisible? How paint immortality? How localize mystery? 37

It is interesting to note that this language would eventually serve as one of the primary foundation stones of more modern notions of aesthetic theory, theological or otherwise. For the Damascene, however, it is a rhetorical flourish designed to highlight a vital truth. As a visual image of Christ, the icon is not and cannot be perfect in the sense of being consubstantial with its paradigm but, and this is his primary point, the limitations of the icon and its material nature, despite failing to achieve consubstantial equivalence with the invisible God, nonetheless activates an interpretive mechanism that has the effect of delivering that ineffable and divine truth to the observer through a movement of ascension. The icon lifts up the soul on the ladder of knowledge so that it may ascend to the knowledge of the divine by means of theoria. Though an icon at first exhibits sense data to the faculties of sense perception, its final end is not to set in motion perception and imagination, but to direct those faculties to pure seeing. In secular language, one could say that an icon, like any piece of visual art, is a provisional symbol of the truth to which it refers, simultaneis the public domain English language translation of the Damascene’s Three Treatises on Holy Images and will be the version used throughout this chapter. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid., 8.

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ously depicting something while gesturing, around its own artifice, beyond its own visible form as the subject, towards the invisible substance of that subject. The Damascene answers the question of how to depict the invisible God by referring to the Incarnation. The iconoclasts were never able to develop a coherent and consistent stance on the Incarnation and its implications for icon theory. Broadly speaking, it seems to be the case that they did not prioritize it because they envisioned the proper subject of Christological inquiry as a post-resurrection Jesus. What mattered was the final form that Jesus took, which is invisible, not the manner in which he physically disclosed himself. The Damascene’s answer to the question of how, and more crucially, why, one goes about painting the invisible God, is achieved by recalling the simple fact that His only begotten Son took “upon Himself the form of a servant in substance and in stature, and a body of flesh.” 38 Whatever the case may be concerning icons, relics, and other material images which claim to represent the divine, Christ’s “ineffable condescension, His virginal birth, His baptism in the Jordan, His transfiguration on Thabor, His all-powerful sufferings, His death and miracles, the proofs of His Godhead, the deeds which He worked in the flesh through divine power, His saving Cross, His Sepulchre, and resurrection, and ascent into heaven,” 39 are episodes of the activity of Christ within the material and created world. The Gospels are, after all, biographical renderings of events to which human beings ostensibly bore direct witness. Though they were no doubt embellishments in a certain sense, they were understood to be public records of historical events that could be, and were, physically apprehended by lowly and materially limited human beings. The Damascene writes, An image is a likeness of the original with a certain difference, for it is not a reproduction of the original… the Son is the living, substantial, unchangeable image of the invisible God, bearing in himself the whole Father, being in all things equal to Him, differing only in being begotten by the Father who is the begetter. 40

On the one hand, the Damascene is referring to the principle that the Son is the consubstantial image of the Father, but the “certain difference” he describes applies to all types of images and it is much easier to notice in non-consubstantial images like painted icons. A painted icon is, like the Son, substantially different from the paradigm to which it stands in relation, but is nonetheless connected to it in terms of likeness. The Son, of course, is in closer proximity to the paradigm by virtue of his consubstantiality with the Father, a relationship that does not involve or require physical material. The painted icon, on the other hand, stands on the same continuSt. John Damascene, On Holy Images, 9. Ibid. 40 Ibid., 10. 38 39

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um of likeness, participating in the same kind of relationship as the Son does with the Father. However, the painted icon does so from a much greater distance, across the gulf separating the visible and invisible worlds, and must make use of material in order to properly function. Putting aside notions of consubstantiality for a moment, the issue of Christ’s materially constituted human body was, in some way or another, very close to the core of most of the heresies that plagued the Early Church. The Damascene did not consider the prospect of a materially constituted Christ to be worthy of such drama. What is so controversial about the notion of an icon? It cannot simply be the materiality of the painting itself that produced such hatred. Isn’t such physicality the replication, or imitation, of the process that occurred with the Incarnation? Whether it is the physical human body or the woodpanel painting, “crude matter” is sanctified and elevated by Christ through the Incarnation. After all, God has demonstrated a willingness to present Himself to humanity’s crude sensory apparatus, thus bridging an immense gap between the material and immaterial realities and connecting all the faculties of the human soul. Thus one is allowed to start with crude sensory data and ascend to subtle intellectual projections in the course of activating human discursive capacities. Eventually, one arrives at the level of pure seeing, the intellectual border at the heights of the ineffable. The fundamental limitations of this apparatus, our perceptual and interpretive capacities, or the inability to penetrate further into the incorporeal nature of things, which is, as far as humanity can tell, the reason for God’s ineffability, are well considered in the Damascene’s doctrine of the Incarnation. God, simply put, created an image of Himself in the form of Christ that the human eye could perceive and the human mind contemplate. That “certain difference” the Damascene speaks of does not compromise the towering heights of God’s unassailable, immaterial, existence. Rather, it is God made visible for the sake of humanity, his condescension. “St. John conceives of a ladder of revelation. God uses visible things such as images of the invisible, and the visible is in some measure endowed sacramentally with the virtue of the invisible that it represents.” 41 Having established the framework and philosophical basis for icon theology, the Damascene understood that there needed to be a corresponding and equally precise liturgical dimension to icons. Here, the Damascene explores the concept of worship with the same semantic specificity as he did with “image,” establishing its various definitions and forms before inserting it into his philosophical structure of ascent. With respect to the Damascene’s clarification of terms, the word latreia (λατρεία) takes on a special importance. “Worship,” he writes, “is the symbol of veneration and of honour. Let us understand that there are different degrees of worship. First of all the worship of latreia, which we show to God, who alone by nature 41

Martin, Iconoclastic Controversy, 119.

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is worthy of worship.” 42 This is a fundamentally different kind of reverence than proskenysis (προσκύνησις), the ambiguous term originally derived from the Persian custom of respectful prostration. The iconoclasts would employ the latter term exclusively during the controversy, unconvinced as they were of the semantic importance of this distinction, or perhaps they deliberately downplayed it so as to avoid unwelcome connotations. The physical object of the icon never was, from either perspective, the recipient of latreia nor was it the case that the Damascene considered it to possess the same caliber of divinity as God. Rather, the icon received the honor of prostration symbolically and transfers the latreia that the act itself represents to its proper recipient: God. The icon acts in an educational capacity in this respect, making visible the narrative which compels the worshiper to contemplate the invisible God. “If, then, holy Scripture adapts itself to us in seeking to elevate us above sense, does it not make images of what it clothes in our own medium, and bring within our reach that which we desire but are unable to see?” 43 More specifically, he writes, “What a book is to the literate, that an image is to the illiterate. The image speaks to the sight as the words to the ear; it brings us understanding.” 44 Again, the Damascene gives voice to the notion of ascent here. Ultimately, it is the condescension of God, His willingness to provide a divine image so that we may better contemplate that which is beyond our senses, that elucidates for us what is the proper object and form of worship. The icon throws a faint light upon the invisible, fostering increasing, or ascending, degrees of reverence and understanding which culminate in proper latreia. We shall return to the Damascene later in this chapter and describe with greater specificity the function of the icon, but for now, it is necessary to address the next historical development in this saga: the iconoclastic attempt to reformulate their hostility towards images along Christological lines.

7.5. THE COUNCIL OF HIERIA It was clear that, in the early stages of the controversy, the theological factions were still undeveloped and were not yet firmly established, as is suggested by Germanos’ letter in the 720s attesting to Leo’s love of images. The iconoclasts had launched their attack against images before completing a comprehensive theological strategy. Images were similar enough to idols and further elaboration could be seen as mere sophistry. To them, the idolatry inherent in the icon cult was self-evident and the appeal of images, as well as the loyalty that they inspired, had the effect of rendering the need for such a comprehensive theological strategy less felt. On the one hand, images were tremendously popular fixtures of popular piety, but on the other, this popularity had the effect of removing the need to qualify or justify their religious St. John Damascene, On Holy Images, 13. Ibid., 96. 44 Ibid., 19. 42 43

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role. The lovers of images were therefore defenseless, as Leo must well have considered, when he ordered to the removal of the Chalcē icon in 723. Equally as problematic for the efforts of the image defenders to consolidate their position was the fact that this entire policy was a formally executed sociopolitical persecution with a diverse range of consequences, many of which were imperially calculated. Theological disputes were among many of the difficulties that the defenders of images were forced to contend with and so it stands to reason that a sophisticated theological retort, and one which would, for posterity, sanctify the institution of images, took additional time to develop. Indeed, it is perfectly logical that the first systematic effort undertaken on this behalf emerged, as St. John’s apologia did, from outside the Empire, a fact made slightly more ironic by St. John’s formal citizenship in an iconoclastic Caliphate. Whatever the scope of the persecution may have been, the multidimensionality of the conflict and its political consequences would deeply strain efforts to theologically defend, let alone authoritatively assert, the validity of the institution of icons and their veneration. When the Damascene’s Apologia began to circulate in the Empire, and after a ploy to silence him that was promptly converted into a miracle narrative, the issue of idolatry grew dimmer. The persecution did not appear to show any signs of altering its course, but it became increasingly clear that idolatry was becoming an insufficient basis on which to spearhead the campaign of iconoclasm. “The whole problem of idolatrous worship,” writes Edward Martin, “with the subsidiary problems of degrees of adoration and the exact nature of images, is examined by St. John of Damascus so thoroughly and so finally that the argument about idolatry was felt by the iconoclasts themselves to lack conviction and was practically replaced by a new one based on Christology.” 45 Idolatry certainly became a less deployed line of reasoning, but this should not be taken to mean that the issue vanished from the list of iconoclastic protests against images. Far from simply replacing idolatry, the Christological approach merely did a good job at redirecting theological focus with idolatry still lingering in the background like a warning, as the state into which people would fall if they embraced images. To misunderstand the metaphysics and Christology at work in icons, which would be the controversy’s ultimate theological deliberation, was to commit the sins of both heresy and idolatry as far as the iconoclasts were concerned. They did not abandon the issue when it became untenable. Rather, they ignored it and found another angle. When Constantine V ascended to the throne in 741, he immediately became the victim of a plot concocted by his brother-in-law, Artabasdos. The recently crowned Constantine was called away on military duties after his coronation and, taking advantage of his absence, Artabasdos usurped the throne with the support of the people. It is possible that Artabasdos’ popularity was due, in some measure, to 45

Martin, Iconoclastic Controversy, 116.

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his promises to end the imperial policy of iconoclasm. At any rate, his reign was short-lived; Constantine returned from Asia Minor, defeated his brother-in-law in battle, and banished him to the monastery of Chora after having him publicly blinded. After some restructuring within the Orthodox hierarchy that would hope to prevent any more shifts in allegiance on the matter of Constantine’s claim or authority, and in the aftermath of a devastating plague that was popularly understood as God’s punishment for the brief resurgence of icon worship in his absence, the business of iconoclasm was resumed. Constantine V was an amateur theologian himself and he understood that in order to successfully bring about religious reform on the matter of icons, there would need to be an organized and recognized pronouncement on the issue, one with enduring authority. To this end, he convened the self-styled “Seventh Oikoumenical Council,” and held it at the imperial palace of Hieria in 754. History has not treated this Council very kindly. Overturning it was, after all, the primary reason for the officially recognized Seventh Oikoumenical Council thirty five years later, and given the general reputation of the iconoclasm and its champions, enshrined, as they were, in the writings of its harshest critics like Theophanes the Confessor and Theodore the Studite, Hieria’s reputation as a non-canonical robber Council has remained largely intact. This is despite the best efforts of historians like Martin, who wrote, “It is necessary by seeking every shred of evidence to clear this Council from the misrepresentation of which it has been the victim.” 46 Martin is willing, it seems, to do away with the suspicion aroused by the death of Patriarch Anastasius by strangulation early that year which “freed Constantine from the handicap of an invertebrate Patriarch.” 47 Additionally, the absence of representation from any of the five main Patriarchs hardly could have helped this Council’s bid for legitimacy. Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria had fallen during the Islamic expansion and Rome had denounced the iconoclasm during Leo’s reign with such sincere vitriol as to provoke the emperor into assembling what could only be assumed to have been a punitive expeditionary fleet which was promptly shipwrecked in the Adriatic before the Pope was made aware of the threat. Additionally, the systematic reorganization that took place within the Orthodox hierarchy saw to it that there would be no ambiguity as to what exactly these three hundred and thirty eight bishops assembled at Hieria were going to conclude. While most attempts to ground a Christian iconoclasm would naturally begin with the biblical injunction in Exodus 20:4, the iconoclastic Council of Hieria, convened by Emperor Constantine V in 754 had its starting point in the personal theological contributions of the Emperor himself. As stated earlier, the notion of idolatry would no longer serve the iconoclasts’ purposes. This charge needed to be quali46 47

Ibid., 45. Ibid.

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fied by a clearer and more consequential theological outlook if it was to mean anything substantial. It would not longer suffice to settle with a disorganized and fractured attempt to intensify the inherited philosophical disdain of matter ostensibly derived from Plato. This disdain, it became increasingly clear, needed stronger philosophical support beams in order to sustain a committed iconoclastic attack. It was therefore necessary to take a closer look at the content of the icon, or its subject matter, to locate within Christian theology its precise heretical elements. This is how Constantine V understood the theological task before him and thus the project of stamping iconoclasm with ecclesiastical approval began with his theological contributions. He wrote, Those who fashion icons of Christ… have not grasped the depth of the dogma regarding the unmixed union of the two nature of Christ… This is the firm belief of the holy Catholic Church of God… since the two natures come together in an unmixed union, that is, a union of divinity and humanity, Christ is one, in the one hypostasis; and so it follows that he is twofold in the one person… Our Lord Jesus Christ is the person [prosôpon] out of two natures, one immaterial, the other material, by an unmixed union… After the union has taken place, the resulting reality has become inseparable, Christ, out of a duality, has become one person. 48

Constantine made careful attempts to present his position as in accordance with Chalcedonian precedent, though he clearly and perhaps deliberately augmented the distinction between Christ’s two natures “so strongly,” in fact, “as to make the distinction between [these two natures] almost invisible.” 49 Cyril’s catch-phrase “out of two natures,” making a strong emphasis on unity, helped him accomplish this task. His claim is actually rather modest, that icons cannot capture the essence of that “resulting reality.” He bases this claim on his understanding of the doctrine of consubstantiality. The iconoclasts sought both natures of Christ in his icon. In a way, they ask the question posed by John of Damascus, “How paint the invisible?” The ineffability of His divinity simply places the subject out of reach as a valid candidate for physical representation because, according to Constantine’s consubstantiality approach, an icon of Christ must be able to effectively circumscribe His divinity in order to properly be called an icon of Christ. The human component of Jesus’ “personal countenance,” by which Constantine means to say, the mixed union and “resulting reality,” may be vulnerable to physical representation, but such an icon cannot be considered capable of effectively rendering the entirety of Christ. Paraphrasing Constantine’s position, Nicephorus wrote, Quote from Constatine V taken from Herman, Hennephof, ed. Textus Byzantinos Ad Iconomachiam Pertinentes: In Usum Academicum (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1969), 67. 49 Schönborn, God’s Human Face, 171. 48

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How is it possible that there can be a drawing, that is an image, made of our Lord Jesus Christ, when he is one person of two natures in a union of the material and the immaterial which admits no confusion? Since he has another immaterial nature conjoined to his flesh, and with those two natures he is one, and his person (πρóσωπον) or substance (ὑπόστασις) is inseparable from the two natures, we hold that he cannot be depicted. For what is pictured is one person, and he who circumscribes that person has plainly circumscribed the divine nature which is incapable of being circumscribed. 50

Indeed, one may immediately note certain confusion in this argument which steams from a semantic shift from the notion of person to that of nature. It is true that the divine nature cannot be circumscribed since it is omnipresent. Even so, the divine hypostasis or prosôpon is not a subject to this restriction. It is precisely this individual subsistence that was made manifest to the world thus allowing the Word Incarnate to exhibit various divine signs and miracles. The fallacious nature of the argument, nevertheless, did not prevent its circulation and did not diminish its rhetorical utility during the controversy. Constantine arrived at the conclusion that, at best, any attempt to paint an icon of Christ is a pointless and doomed prospect. Claiming allegiance to the patristic vision for the Church, both sides of the conflict frequently accused each other of heresy and would “employ a posteriori Christological arguments and hurl against each other changes of Nestorianism and Eutychianism.” 51 From Constantine V, we see the same impulse. His tactic was to force the defenders of images into one of two heretical positions, Nestorianism and Monophysitism. He alludes to Athanasius’ Theologia, which states that the Son is the consubstantial image of the Father, perhaps insinuating that to posit just another image would amount to introducing an image of the image. Even so, the crucial caveat of Constantine’s argument was associated with his application of Athanasius’ theological axiom to oikonomic speculations. The argument offered was premised on the conception of visible images transmitted through the faculty of sense perception as not being expressive of the truth of immaterial or spiritual realities and of the faculty of sense perception and imagination as being incapable of making an ascent to that which is properly unsensory and imageless. He then inferred that since the hypostatic union consists of two natures, only one of them can be presented via the medium of painted images, and the other one cannot. The corollary to this argument was that painted images necessarily divide Christ by circumscribing his human nature and not his divine naNicephorus, Antirrheticus, I, 232a, 236c, PG 100. For an English translation, see Barnard. The Graeco-Roman and Oriental Background of the Iconoclastic Controversy, 99. 51 Grégoire, Henri. “The Byzantine Church.” In Byzantium: An Introduction to East Roman Civilization, eds. Norman H. Baynes and H. St. L. B. Moss (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 105. 50

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ture. An icon, Constantine argued, cannot be painted without producing this effect and icon painters would thus be labeled Nestorians for attempting to bring about the division of Christ’s human and divine natures by hiding behind the claim that icons depict merely His human countenance. On the other hand, they would be miaphysites if they maintained that icons produced no such division, for this would imply that Christ was of one nature after the incarnation and the resurrection. 52 The problematic aspect of such “miaphysite” approach is that it would circumscribe both the divine and human natures. This approach avoids division but it results in the introduction of an object which is intrinsically incoherent. The great irony of the iconoclastic theology outlined at Hieria is not that Constantine’s formulations border on incoherent. The argument literally states that, because the icon of Christ circumscribes His human nature, it necessarily circumscribes his divine nature, all the while reiterating that this divine nature cannot be circumscribed. So Constantine would have it that a painted icon is an impossible object. Or perhaps it is a failed object because it cannot circumscribe Christ’s divine nature, but does not its failure in this regard effectively absolve it of the crime of attempting to circumscribe the divine? If one were to accept Constantine’s premise, the icon devolves into meaninglessness, not heresy. Rather, the irony consists in the fact that the Council at Hieria seemed to develop an approach entirely distinct from than that of the Emperor while reaching the same conclusion. “The Council of 754 shifts the emphasis to the question of whether the flesh of Christ can be circumscribed or not.” 53 One crucial thing to note is the Emperor’s silence on the issue of matter. He does not condemn icons on the basis that they are crude material substances, but because they do not meet his standards of consubstantiality. The Council he convened, on the other hand, would declare, Should anyone endeavor to capture the divine countenance [charaktêra] of the incarnate Word of God by means of material colors instead of contemplating him wholeheartedly with the eyes of the spirit, him who sits at the right hand of the father on the throne of glory, surpassing the sun in splendor, such a one be banned. 54

Constantine did not base his position on the Platonic two-world metaphysics (that is, material and spiritual) and yet the entire iconoclastic crisis is steeped in this difficulty. It is most likely the case that the bishops of the Council found the Emperor’s theology somewhat lacking and so they needed to rest their premises on a different Monophysitism had, by this time in Byzantine history, become a synonym for a diverse array of positions perceived to have been in opposition to the Christological statements of the Council of Chalcedon. 53 Schönborn, God’s Human Face, 177. 54 Mansi, 13, 336E. For an English translation, see Schönborn, God’s Human Face, 161. 52

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philosophical foundation. The Emperor’s demand that an image be consubstantial with the original struck a harsh chord with the Council’s decision to stress the enormous chasm between the material world, within which pictorial representation takes place, and the spiritual world, within which the original paradigm resides. At any rate, the forcing of one’s opponents into one of two diametrically opposed heresies is a tricky affair and the iconodules in 787 were quick to expose the arbitrariness of what was clearly a rhetorical push by the iconoclasts. The iconoclasts ultimately accused the iconodules of participating in two mutually exclusive heresies simultaneously. This accusation was essentially conditional, as if to say that “If the iconodules deny heresy A, they implicitly embrace heresy B,” all the while forbidding them the opportunity to explain that A might not lead to B. Perhaps what the iconoclasts intended to suggest is as follows, Such a man made an icon, calling it Christ. And this name, Christ, is both God and man. It is an icon, then, of both God and man. He has therefore by his own vanity either limited, according to appearances, that aspect of the divinity which cannot be limited, by the depiction of the created flesh, or else he has compressed together the unconfused union, having fallen into the lawlessness of confusion, and has thus joined two blasphemies to the divinity both through limiting it and through confusing it. He who venerates such an icon has therefore submitted to the same blasphemies, and the “woe” applies equally to both groups, for they have been deceived together by Arius and Dioscorus and Eutychus and the heresy of Akephaloi. 55

The Iconoclastic Council concluded, as intended, with the ecclesial ban on religious images and with the characterization of those who venerate them as idolaters. Selfstyled the “Seventh Oikoumenical Council,” it was believed to have stamped out a heresy which was the result of organic cultural developments that diverged from the Patristic vision for the Church by regressing towards a Gnostic-like paganism. In truth, this Council struggled to assert its oikoumenical legitimacy from the very start. Theologically inconsistent with itself, stacked by bishops whose task was to creatively reconfigure the predetermined theopolitical project of the Emperor into something properly resembling the Patristic tradition, and unattended and unsanctioned by any of the five great Patriarchs, it stands to reason that the Council did not retain religious authority for long, that it would not take more than the whim of a successor to overturn the iconoclastic accomplishment of Hieria. The hatred that Constantine V inspired in his opponents was uniquely visceral. While his military accomplishments and the security that he brought to the Empire were begrudgingly acknowledged by official chroniclers, the same chronicles were Mansi, 13, 252A; Cf. 245 ABC, 340C. For an English translation, see Giakalis, Images of the Divine, 88. 55

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more than happy to refer to him by the unflattering nickname he was given by his political and ideological enemies, Copronymos. Literally translated as “shitChristened,” it is derived from the almost certainly fictional anecdote that he soiled the baptismal font when he received the sacrament. His fascination with horses and the great deal of time he was alleged to have spent at the imperial stables earned generated suspicion of some manner of impropriety. The Patriarch Nicephorus, writing in the 810s, nearly half a century after the end of Constantine’s reign, represented the rhetorical spirit to which the Emperor’s legacy was treated. Constantine’s arguments were, …the belchings of a disordered digestion, the spreading of manure which is his chief delight, the fruits of unceasing vomits, of a life lived with dogs and swine, imitating the habits of wild beasts; his acts are the acts of hunters of the brute creation, men who dip their hands in Christian blood and arm themselves against Christ, the inventions of ravishers of human flesh. 56

Similarly, George the Monk, “whose power of invective balances his weakness as a historian,” 57 described Constantine as the “Antichrist of the tribe of Dan. He has the faith of a Saracen and the heart of a Jew… He is not a Christian (God forbid), but a Paulician, or to speak more truly and fitly, an idolater, a worshipper of devils and a devotee of human sacrifice.” 58 His central contribution, and one of the primary pillars of iconoclasm after the accusation of idolatry had lost its efficacy, was that of consubstantiality, or the assertion that an image must be of the same substance or essence as its paradigm. The only acceptable image of Christ is one in which both His divinity and His humanity is effectively circumscribed. Such an accomplishment is simply beyond the capacity of so crude a medium as painting, the material constitution of which blocks its aspirations towards divine representation. In keeping with the trends of the neopolatonic binary, the authenticity, reality, and ultimately, the basic worth of any physical matter, was to be intuitively distrusted.

7.6. THE 787 COUNCIL Constantine V died in 775, leaving the throne to his son Leo IV, who had been ruling as co-emperor with his father for twenty-four years at that point. During his reign, the iconoclastic persecutions began, at first, to decrease in intensity as he attempted to balance his familial relationships and obligations. His wife, Irene, was an Athenian iconophile and there is a famous anecdote in which the Emperor, upon Nicephorus, Antirrhereticus, II, 289ab, For an English translation, see Martin’s A History of the Iconoclastic Controversy, 39. 57 Martin, Iconoclastic Controversy, 38. 58 English translation supplied by Martin, Iconoclastic Controversy, Ibid. 56

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discovering personal icons among her possessions, refused to share his marriage bed with her. His reign would last for only five years, after which Irene became Empress regent for their son, Constantine VI. Much of her reign was characterized by outmaneuvering her political opponents who protested her ascension and her authority. Her crowning triumph in this regard is the convening of the Seventh Oikoumenical Council which, despite the tenuousness of its success and legacy, is nonetheless an example of masterful statecraft. The office of the Patriarch of Constantinople was vacated by Paul in 784 amid much speculation as to Irene’s involvement. There were suggestions of coercion but, whatever the case, it is clear enough that the Patriarch’s parting advice was the convening of a Council that might restore an amicable relationship to Rome and the West. Irene sent ambassadors to Rome to invite Pope Hadrian to the proposed Seventh Oikoumenical Council. Simultaneously, and even more controversially, the empress elevated the lay politician Tarasius to the office of the Patriarch, recognizing that he would be a reliable ally who was capable of presiding over the restoration of icon worship. He was appointed on Christmas Day the same year that Paul had left the office. Rome protested the move, but was willing to tolerate it in light of Tarasius’ objective. Many elements in the East, both ecclesial and lay, were also not terribly thrilled to see a layperson assume the office, but the decision did not provoke any unmanageable discontent. Hadrian’s response to these developments expressed these reservations, but he ultimately gave papal support to the proceedings. An archpriest and an abbot, both named Peter, were the Pope’s formal representatives to the Council. The conditions of this papal support, that the iconoclastic Council of Hieria be condemned, that icon worship be restored, and that the estates of South Italy and Sicily be returned to Papal control, which had been punitively appropriated by Leo III in the early stages of the controversy, were all predetermined outcomes and the East was more than willing to oblige. With the agenda set, the Council opened in Constantinople on August 1, 786. This first attempt was interrupted by elements from within the Byzantine military which remained one of the last holdouts of iconoclastic sympathies, hardly a surprising notion given the martial prestige of Leo III and Constantine V. Barging into the proceedings, they energized the iconoclastic bishops present and, between them, created a riot that forced the Council to be rescheduled. In order to ensure that this problem would not repeat itself, Irene ordered the responsible soldiers to be deployed eastward on the pretense of a renewed campaign against the Arabs, whereupon they were disbanded. A contingent of Balkan troops, loyal to the empress, were brought to serve as the garrison of Constantinople and, a year after this interruption, a second attempt was made at conducting the Council, this time in Nicaea. Irene’s engagement with the iconoclasm suggested far more than an affection for icons or a personal theological position towards them. She understood that her predecessors had very nearly severed all ties to the West and her initial policymaking, before undertaking the project of the Seventh Oikoumenical Council, clearly placed reconciliation as a top priority. Ironically, Rome was not enthusiastic in the

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least that the monarch to whom they answered was a woman with such a forceful personality. Western suspicions of this Council’s findings justified themselves, in at least one instance, on the basis that a woman should not be permitted to wield such authority. It has even been speculated that, on the same basis, support was thrown behind the coronation of Charlemagne in 800. Additionally complicating this relationship was the misleading Latin translation of the Council’s proceedings which appeared to many in the West, and to Charlemagne, as an endorsement of idolatry. The tone of 2nd Nicaea was one of damage control as evidenced by the conspicuous amount of energy expended on the systematic discrediting of the iconoclastic bishops who were instrumental in the proceedings at Hieria. Some of these bishops were made to recant their former positions publicly. The focus on clearing up the confusion that the image problem had created and on reestablishing ecclesial unity appears to have been more important than the task of articulating a Christological formula for the divine image. To be sure, the attempt was made, but the final consolidation of such a formula was achieved afterwards, during the second outbreak of iconoclasm wherein Theodore the Studite and the Patriarch Nicephorus took up the cause of the image against a new wave of attackers. The germ for the theological issues to be engaged by Theodore and Nicephorus, however, can be detected in the Ekthesis. It states the following: And, to be brief, we affirm that we preserve all the traditions of the Church which have been handed down to us in her, whether written or unwritten, without innovation: of which one is the formation of representative images, which is perfectly concordant with the history of the Evangelical preaching in the confirmation of the true and not the imaginary incarnation of God the Word, and which conduces no less to edification than the other. For those things which are mutually illustrative of each other have mutually their impressions from each other… These things, therefore, being so, as proceeding in the royal road and following the sacred doctrine of our holy fathers and the tradition of the Catholic Church – for this we acknowledge to be from the divine Spirit that dwelleth in her – we with all exactness and care do define that, in the same manner as the holy and life-giving cross, so shall holy images, whether formed of colors or of stones, or any other material, be set forth in all the holy Churches of God, and also on sacred vessels and garments, on walls and on doors, in house and by the highway – whether images of Christ Jesus our Lord, our God and Savior, or of our immaculate Mistress the holy Mother of God, or of the holy Angels, or of the Saints and other holy men. For, in proportion as these are continually seen in im-

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ages and pictures, so are the minds of the beholders aroused to the remembrance of and affection for their prototypes. 59

Of critical importance to Theodore would be the affirmation of the functional power of the icon to lift up the believer to greater contemplation of divine things. It is with the suggestion of the concept of prototype/paradigm within this structure of ascension 60 that the subsequent theological discourse would establish its agenda. Given that slightly more is said to affirm the validity of images as in accordance with Orthodox tradition than is said to explain the theological reasoning at work, there is a strong sense that the recognition of the Damascene’s scheme of images, its organization, its categories, and its function, represented the full extent of the Council’s theological effort to validate itself. This would prove a good starting point for Theodore and Nicephorus to clarify and refine an iconophilic theology. At any rate, beyond this, there was not a great deal that was said at this Council which indicates any novelty or new direction in the Christological drama. For the most part, the language used at the Council stresses the narrative of restoration, claiming that the iconoclasm was an interruption in Christian practices of piety and in the corresponding Christological standards of its theology. While it is to be granted that a strong iconoclastic tradition was, and remains still, a considerable aspect of several strains of Christian identity, that these strains are derived from the important precedent of the covenantal injunction against images, and that while images had not until this Council achieved any formal definition, the fact remains that the icon did not properly come under and organized attack until Leo III. When he made opposition to icons an imperial policy, the backlash was severe enough to lead many to characterize the episode as a civil war. Furthermore, the iconoclastic rhetoric which made appeals to previous Christian thinkers hinged on tenuous claims over overlapping philosophies in anti-image doctrine, few of which can be said to have been truly substantiated. Nonetheless, the same might be said of the iconodules. Though they made fewer appeals to specific voices of Christian intellectual history on the matter than their opponents, they were equally as committed to the Byzantine intellectual priority of establishing continuity with the authority of the Early Fathers. Rather than specifically articulate the legitimacy or truthfulness of their allegiance to men like Athanasius or Cyril, they claimed themselves to be the rightful inheritors to this tradition more through appeals to the legitimacy of the organic developments in popular piety. In essence, their focus on discrediting the iconoclasts consisted in proving that iconoclastic thought was a baseless novelty championed by an opporTaken from Mendham’s translation, The Seventh Ecumenical Council: The Second of Nicaea, Held A.D. 787, in Which The Worship Of Images was Established (London: W.E. Painter, 1850), 439. 60 The entire suggestion that images “arouse” people to remembrance and affection for prototypes is derived almost entirely from the Damascene and the hierarchy of images. 59

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tunistic faction seemingly unconcerned with theological integrity. All in all, they wished to paint the picture, as did the Pope, that this debacle would never have come about if the imperial throne did not stumble blindly and self-servingly into ecclesial affairs. Ultimately, the Council manages to articulate the principles without which icon theology would fall apart; that the prototype is divine and that an image, in representing the paradigm, nurtures the ascent of the worshipper to the invisible divine.

7.7. THE IMAGE AND ITS DEFENDERS How the term “image” is defined is generally the most important and distinguishing aspect of any icon theology. For Constantine V, the authenticity of an image, its claim to holiness, consisted in whether or not it was of the same essence as its subject, its archetype. Objects which failed to meet this criterion of consubstantiality were to be regarded as sacramentally useless with an essentially heretical underlying theology. The main trio of image defenders, the Damascene, Theodore the Studite, and Nicephorus, all seemed to address the issue of consubstantiality in remarkably similar ways, 61 namely to stress the function of the image as a medium. It is something liminal which, in some way, is deeply involved in the holiness of its subject without being essentially identical with it. At the same time, they are visually apprehended physical objects, material creations. They sit at the intersection of material reality and abstract form, but it is in its function, its action upon the faith of the beholder, that its liminal location is made apparent. In short, the image is holy despite failing to satisfy Constantine’s requirement of consubstantiality. The question, therefore, is “How is an image holy?” Or perhaps, “What is it that an image does which qualifies it as a holy object?” All three thinkers begin with an acknowledgement of the inherent limitations of the image, by which they mean to refer to its physical construction as material. As such, the image stands at a fundamental and essential disconnect from its immaterial referent, the paradigm. The image is, conceptually speaking, an artifice. Moreover, this artifice resembles something like a condescension, for the image accommodates itself to materiality by shedding an element of its invisible and immaterial perfection so that a physical rendering of it is made possible. The Damascene wrote that the image, “too, is a dark glass, according to the denseness of our bodies. The mind, in much travail, cannot rid itself of bodily things.” 62 It is a mirror, or “dark glass,” that provides an imperfect (material) reflection of an original. Or, to vary the language The Damascene does so indirectly, for the concept of consubstantiality did not become formerly attached to the iconoclastic cause until after his death. Despite this, he gives a definition of “image” that both strongly resembles those supplied by Theodore and Nicephorus and one that captures the same philosophical priorities. 62 PG 94: 1288; 1320. For the English, see the Mary Allies translation Apologia, 71. 61

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slightly, we read that Theodore the Studite defines an image as “a kind of seal and representation, bearing within itself the authentic form of that from which it also gets its name.” 63 This is to say that, despite a lack of essential identification with the original, and despite the crudity of its imitation, the image’s function as a representation allows it to contain something of the original, its likeness, which is, in effect, transmitted to the beholder. Theodore also wrote that an image is a “likeness of that of which it is the image, itself showing by imitation the character of its archetype… the true in the likeness, the archetype in the image.” 64 Terms like “likeness,” “mirror,” and “representation” are all suggestive of the principle that, precisely because of its imperfections, or its failure to achieve consubstantiality with its archetype, the image is able to physically gesture towards the abstracted perfection of that archetype. Nicephorus offers perhaps the most clinical definition of the image in these terms. Also calling the image a “likeness” of an archetype, he writes that the image, having impressed upon it the form of what it represents by similarity, differing from it only by the difference of essence in accordance with the materials [of which they are made]; or an imitation or similitude of the archetype, differing [from it] in essence and substance; or a product of some technical skill, shaped in accordance with the imitation of the archetype, but differing from it in essence and substance. 65

Being a likeness, the image is made to function as a symbol for the object to which it refers. This is hardly controversial and by no means is the phenomenon unique to the Christian, let alone the Byzantine tradition, yet we can see here the first phases of its theological formalization in a socially consequential way. The danger, however, that it poses in such a context is that, still, it can be mistaken for idolatry. Without sufficient institutional moderation, image worship could devolve into idolatry if the awareness of the symbolic nature of the image is let go and replaced by the physical object itself. There must be, as these three assert, a thing which stands in between the visible world, in which the image physically exists, and the invisible world to which it refers and brings the worshipper. Without this liminal element, the charge of idolatry would appear valid. The other, greater problem concerns Christology. Constantine V’s line of reasoning followed the notion that the material constitution of a painting corresponded to the humanity of Christ, that a painting cannot depict the invisible divine nature of Christ, and concluded that icons of Christ can do nothing more than represent his humanity. If this

Theodore Studite, Antirrheticus I.8, PG 99: 337, For an English translation, see Pelikan, Spirit of Eastern Christendom, 118. 64 Theodore Studite, Epistola Platonem, PG 99: 500–501, For an English translation, see Pelikan, Spirit of Eastern Christendom, 118. 65 Nicephorus, Antirrheticus I. 28, PG 100: 277, For an English translation, see Pelikan, Spirit of Eastern Christendom, 119. 63

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humanity is represented absent His divinity, which is the result of any attempt at producing a painted image of Christ, it could be concluded that the image is a heresy that divides Christ’s nature. Such a perspective demands the concession that a symbol cannot be holy because it is the very nature of the symbol to gesture to substance external to itself, thusly making consubstantiality impossible. In order to counter this, the holiness of the image must be defined according to a set of criteria that did not require consubstantiality. The task of demonstrating the possibility that a symbol can be holy thus necessarily involves a careful negotiation with a) the specific nature of the faith experience of one beholding the icon, and b) the conceptual projections linking the invisible God and His painted likeness, rooted in the event of the Incarnation which bridged the ostensibly unbridgeable realms and sanctified crude matter. Beginning with the premise that an icon is an image and that an image is a likeness of a thing and not its essential equivalent, the iconodules deny the heresy of Christological misrepresentation. More than this, they asserted the holiness of the icon by expounding upon its symbolic and liturgical functions, each presenting the same argument in their own distinct styles. That God is invisible was a premise that the iconoclasts commonly asserted, and yet the iconodules never took serious issue with it nor did they make any concentrated effort to prove it otherwise. For them the event of the Incarnation was a sufficient warrant for the legitimacy of painted images. Moreover, the Word’s prosopic revelation to the world, they argued, made it possible to depict God as being revealed to the world in His personal subsistence made manifest through His psycho-somatic constitution. Thus, though the divine nature is invisible, the prosôpon/person of God the Word was indeed visible to the disciples and others. In fact, the iconodules frequently affirm the invisibility of God even when defending the legitimacy and sacramentality of the Christ-icon, a physical likeness of the same God. We have observed earlier the Damascene claim precisely this when he rhetorically asks how one goes about “painting the invisible.” The invisibility of God is not compromised by such renderings, for it does not interfere with His ability to disclose His prosôpon which, thanks to the Incarnation, provides humanity with an image, a reflection, of His likeness. The question then becomes one of determining how and why this prosôpon of God functions in this way within an otherwise binary division of reality between the visible and the invisible. Giving the world a structure that divides visible reality from invisible reality is an almost reflexive metaphysical categorization for those conditioned by a Platonic perspective and, with so much scriptural precedent stressing that God’s divine nature is invisible or, at the very least, that this nature is beyond the sensory faculties of human sense perception, it stands to reason that attempts were made to fit Him into such a binary framework at the upper polar end of invisibility. But it is not God alone who belongs to this invisible realm. Indeed the whole host of all divine nature possesses the quality of invisibility. Additionally, this invisible world is of a fundamentally higher and more holy sort than the invisible one, uncorrupted as it is by the taint of physical matter. It stands over and above the crudity of sinful creation. The enormity of the gulf separating these two worlds does not, however, lack certain access points,

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bridges that can facilitate interaction and communication between them. The semantic distinction between nature and prosôpon helped the iconodules affirm the gulf and bridge it simultaneously. They applied this subtle conceptual projection to the conception of icons so as to demonstrate that the function that the image serves is precisely adjusted to this double task of sustaining the difference between the image and paradigm and revealing the paradigm in the form of likeness. 7.7.1. The Damascene’s Image There are several types of images in the Damascene’s intellectual scheme. Firstly, there are natural images, or images according to nature (κατα φύσιν). Images of this sort are more applicable to classical Theologia, wherein the Son is treated as the perfect image of the Father. Filip Ivanović clarifies the concept, writing that the “natural image” is [a] term that denotes a primordial relation, considered as a primary and irreducible component of a supreme reality. The general affirmation becomes particularly valid if it refers to the Son as the live, substantial, immutable, and natural image of the Father who is the cause and principle of the other two persons and the principle of the relations from which the hypostases receive their distinct characteristics. 66

A painted icon, it is plain enough, is not exactly an image of this sort. Made as it is by human hands, the painted icon stands at a relatively safe distance from issues pertaining to Trinitarian complications. The image category for the icon does not apply very well when dealing with primordial divine essences and their interactions among themselves. Its utility, on the contrary, is confined within the scope of Oikonomia, i.e. God’s care for the world. This indeed immediately reformulated the issue as pertaining to the Incarnation and visible manifestation of God the Word. In this context, the icon concerns itself with and exists within the category of image according to imitation (μίμησις). Hence, the criterion of co-substantiality can be safely set aside. It should become clear that this category of imitation is virtually synonymous with the concept of material reality and, consequently, all visible Creation. This is what distinguishes visual icons from invisible and consubstantial icons. Whereas natural images are not materially constituted and their relationships to their paradigms and do not require traversing the visible-invisible divide, painted images have material substratum and are conceptually framed into two-world metaphysics. This is, again, expressive of the dichotomous conception, in much of Greek and Early Christian philosophy, of reality as essentially divided and an affirmation of the higher status of the invisible world as holier and somehow more authentic than the deFilip, Ivanović, Symbol and Icon: Dionysius the Areopagite and the Iconoclastic Crisis (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2010), 67. 66

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ceptive crudities of visible, material creation. This visible world, however, is neither forsaken nor is it entirely cut off from the emanations of holiness coming from the invisible world. It is, after all, God’s Creation, but it is still nonetheless critically deficient in such a manner as to make images a vital necessity for its salvation. The emanations of this holiness are originally invisible, thus requiring intermediaries to facilitate the process of their physical manifestations in the visible world. This is where images according to imitation become relevant. Images according to imitation must have something to imitate, something to mirror or reflect. Invariably, the archetype for the image exists initially within the invisible world and it is given form by the labors of mimetic expression undertaken by the artist or author. It is through this mimetic expression that we are even aware of the divinity of the invisible world, which is to say that the image reflects the invisible reality of its archetype imperfectly and incompletely, but nonetheless in a manner necessarily conducive to our sense perceptions. All images, or everything for which there is a material expression, has a corresponding essential and invisible reality. Being that the category of image by imitation basically encompasses all of material creation, it stands to reason that there be some variety of image types within this category. Humanity itself is one example of an image of God. There are also images, …that provide in bodily form a dim understanding of what is depicted. For Scripture applies forms to God and the angels, and the same divine man [PseudoDionysius] gives the reason when he says that if forms for formless things and shapes for shapeless things are proposed, something might say that not the least reason is because our analogies are not capable of raising us immediately to intellectual contemplation but need familiar and natural points of reference. 67

As when the Damascene wrote of the human capacity to clothe Christ with human features, this kind of image refers explicitly to the provisionality and compromise required when rendering spiritual paradigms into visible images. Even so, behind this endeavor there stands the Incarnate Word, an Invisible God “closed” into a psycho-somatic structure and revealed in it. Moreover, there is a practical end of clothing Christ with a painted image. It consists in giving to the faithful a starting point in the ascent to God. It is, after all, on the basis of the inherent limitations in the human intellect that a visible image is needed in the first place. It is important to distinguish here between such a kind of image and the physical substratum of the icon, which belongs to a similar but distinct category. Hence, an important distinction between the material object which displays the reality situated above it in the schema of beings and an object that does not, should be sustained. St. John of Damascus, Orationes Tres adversus eos qui Sacras Imagines Abjiciunt., trans. Filip Ivanović in Symbol and Icon, 68. 67

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The Incarnation always functions as the conceptual pillar that sustains any Christian theory of images. An image of an invisible thing, for example, would be the physical countenance of Christ reflecting into materiality His invisible divine nature. An icon, on the other hand, is an imitation of this physical countenance and thusly stands at a greater distance from that invisible divine nature, but still connected to it through several intervening layers of imitation and physicality. The icon also occupies the last place in the Damascene’s vertical hierarchy of imitative images. This final type of image “consists of heterogeneous elements, words, material objects, and icons. This type of image is two-fold – through the word written in books and through sensible visions.” 68 A hierarchy such as this can seem intuitively like a ranking system, as though the Damascene was attempting to qualitatively organize all of reality from most to least holy. While there is certainly a distribution of esteem and holiness throughout his image types, it is important to look beyond the implications that sometimes come from seemingly vertical structures, and not to mistake what is actually a matter of philosophical and theological coherency for a qualitative assessment on degrees of holiness. An icon may take “last place,” but this is due to the fact that its sacramental function involves more intermediary components. A painted material likeness of a physical likeness of Christ as a man is, in essence, the visible image of a visible image of the invisible divine source. This is a longer path up the ladder than, say, the upward movement which is set in motion by the visitation of an angel. Regardless of the initial impetus for the contemplation required to make this ascent, the destination is the same and the Damascene does not indicate that someone inspired by an icon is less likely to ascend to that holiness than someone who was visited by an angel. The function, purpose, and destination of all the types of imitative images described by the Damascene are essentially the same. More importantly, to elevate certain kinds of imitative images over others and to neglect those in the “last place” isn’t exactly possible without disparaging the emanations of divine holiness from the original source in the invisible God. Even further, doing so would completely undermine the entire point of the Damascene’s structure, for the goal of ascending to invisible holiness is made possible only by these emanations which reflect a different movement along the same path coming in the opposite direction. These emanations which are disclosed in the images we perceive do not function so as to help people “escape” from the spiritually limiting confines of physical matter. Rather, they sanctify the physical matter by transforming it. It is entirely possible for someone to look at a Christ-icon and not see anything beyond a painting of a male face. In fact, this holds true for just about any piece of art. This is because such a person fails to apprehend the symbolic capacity for such images. Filtered into material creation, these emanations make physical ob68

Ibid.

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jects into symbols which gesture back towards the divine source. In this way, the continuum extending across the visible-invisible divide and throughout all the varieties of visible creation is a two way street. By becoming a symbol, a Christ-icon changes from being solely a rendering of a physical likeness into an instrument of salvation. 7.7.2. Theodore’s Image Like the Damascene, Theodore the Studite was born into a family of bureaucrats in the imperial court and, by the prestige of this station, was given a thorough education. His uncle, Platon, was once a prominent member of the court but had since taken monastic vows and lived in a monastery in Bithynia. It is unlikely that his family risked their wealth and status by opposing the iconoclastic policies of Constantine V, though they no doubt remained politically active during this time. They aligned themselves politically with Irene when she rose to power and supported her selection of Tarasius for the office of Patriarch of Constantinople. Theodore himself attended the proceedings in Nicaea which saw this layman elevated to such a high office. He was an active political partisan during the resurgence of iconoclasm and would come to represent a crucial advantage that the iconodules did not have at the original outbreak under Leo III, namely a ready-made theological mind with the political power and philosophical intelligence to champion the cause formally, publicly, and immediately. He would thus become, in many ways, the final authoritative voice on icon theology and supplied the cause with its closing philosophical remarks. The iconoclastic controversy would continue a little over two decades after his death but, by this point, iconoclastic thinking had become theologically discreditable largely thanks to his efforts. Also similar to the Damascene, Theodore’s approach to defending the icon featured a distinction between natural images and imitative images, though Theodore would refer to the latter as artificial images. The definitions for both images remains the same with both thinkers, the natural image being identical to the paradigm in both essence and likeness while the artificial image is identical to the paradigm in likeness alone. Their similarities continue regarding the function of images as instruments necessary for salvation. He wrote, God is venerated in spirit and in truth, in an image, in the Book of Gospels, in the Cross and in every other consecrated thing, since material objects are uplifted through the mental elevation towards God. The mind does not stop at them… On the contrary as the orthodox faith teaches, through them, it reaches the prototype. 69 Theodore Studite, Antirrheticus, 344D. PG 99. For an English translation, see Ivanović, Symbol and Icon, 76. 69

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When venerated, the image directs the contemplative mind towards God, the prototype. In doing this, an image become “uplifted” and sanctified, its material form assuming a consecrated status. The framework in which the image operates – its metaphysical relation to its prototype on one end and to the worshipper on the other, its ability to facilitate movement across this line, and the sacramental power of the image to sanctify both material objects and elevate human spiritual consciousness – is fairly consistent from the Damascene to Theodore. The novelty that Theodore had to contend with was the Christological issue. When the image debate took this turn towards Christology after the introduction of Constantine V’s consubstantiality argument and, more specifically, its qualification that an image cannot circumscribe the invisible divinity, a different theological vocabulary became attached to icon debate. Terms like ousia (οὐσία), hypostasis (ὑπόστασις), and prosôpon (πρόσωπον), which belonged the Christological debates of the previous Councils, were not brought into the image debate before Hieria in 754. It took time for these terms to evolve a coherent theological relevance when dealing with the idea of an invisible God colliding with His material, painted, representational likeness. Recalling an essay by Sarah Coakley, Thomas Cattoi, who has provided one of the more authoritative English language translations of Theodore’s writings, claims that “the Council fathers did not seek to offer an exhaustive account of the hypostatic union, but merely selected some conceptual and terminological tools to mark a legitimate theological ‘space’ in which reflection on the mystery could continue.” 70 They tended to grow more and more specific as the Christological drama unfolded. Ousia (οὐσία) can roughly be translated into English to mean something like “substance” or “essence,” and it is often used when attempting to distinguish the defining characteristics of a type of being. Homoousios, for example, means “same-being,” referring to the essential bond between two or more beings which partake of the same ousia, though it should be mentioned that Origen’s attempts to inject this term into the lexicon of Orthodox Christology were met with failure and anathema. Nature has both an ousia and a hypostasis, a term which can be used colloquially to refer to group of like objects just as easily as it can be used to divide objects of like or unlike “substance.” It can also be used in a broader and more general sense, with a universal reach that attempts to encompass all things. Nature and the term “universe” have always been used somewhat interchangeably, this identification stemming from Aristotle’s definition of nature as an inner principle of motion and rest. Hypostasis is broadly defined as the foundational and underlying reality of a nature or a substance, or its subsistence. It is easy to confuse hypostasis with ousia and it seems to be the case that, in the effort to clear up this confusion, the Cappadocian doctrine of the Trinity was developed claiming three hypostaTheodore Studite, Writings on Iconoclasm, trans. Thomas Cattoi (Mahwah, New Jersey: Newman, 2015), 15. 70

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ses in one ousia. Prosôpon is the most specific and particular of these terms and, translated into “person,” it essentially refers to the manifestation of a nature, sometimes in terms of material appearance, but also in terms of more abstract concepts. It is that which makes a nature known. The entire controversy revolved around the ambiguities inherent in this disclosure, around what exactly it was that an icon was manifesting. Pelikan writes that, “The complex structure of Christological and Trinitarian metaphysics and the precise technical terminology of the debates before and after Chalcedon was now put into the service of a theological validation for the worship of icons.” 71 Theodore’s icon theology makes frequent use of these terms. Ousia is invisible and ultimately incomprehensible in and of itself. If an ousia lacked a prosôpon, or the means by which the ousia could disclose its own existence, we’d be forever ignorant of it. Human nature can be disclosed in behavioral trends, in value systems, in physical features, and in countless other ways, but it is not the ousia itself which is being disclosed in this process. It is rather the particular characteristics constitutive of that ousia which can be observed and apprehended through this disclosure. This is to say that a pious action is not the same as piety, a courageous action not the same as courage, or a wise saying not the same as wisdom itself. Such things are manifestations of an ousia. A person’s ousia is that which connects the person to the rest of humankind, what establishes a class membership for various beings, while their prosôpon accounts for individual manifestations of these beings. Prosôpon refers to the manifestation of a nature, an ousia and, as such is distinguished from the nature itself. In the case of human beings, prosôpon comes to refer to the distinguishing characteristics of individuals, the features of a face, the sound of a voice, or the manner in which the person is both apprehended and made unique. Those features illustrative of a person’s individuality do not necessarily have to be physical, though it is usually the case that physical features underline the differences between people more readily and conspicuously than emotional, intellectual, or even cultural distinctions. Despite being a particular example of an aspect of an ousia, a prosôpon nonetheless is expressive of the ousia because it is capable of exhibiting it, imperfectly so as to correspond to, say, humanity’s perceptual and intellectual limitations. What we see in a prosôpon is the reflection of the ousia towards which it gestures. Theodore places a heavy emphasis on the relationship between particularities and generalities, yet another binary relationship illustrative of the visible-invisible model, and respectively inserts into this model these two new categories. Particularities correspond to the visible, universals to the invisible; particulars to the prosôpon and universals to the ousia. By this logic, a painted icon, the likeness of a single person, cannot render an ousia in its fullness, for a particular example cannot encompass the universal nature. 71

Pelikan, Spirit of Eastern Christendom, 128–29.

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The icon of someone does not depict his nature, but his person… Peter is not portrayed in an icon insofar as he is a being endowed with reason, mortal and having a mind and intelligence. For all this characterizes not only Peter, but also Paul and John and everyone else belonging to the same species. 72

A painted icon does not depict such essential qualities as intelligence and animality, those constitutive of human nature. What is disclosed in a painted icon is the prosôpon of the paradigm and, in an icon of Peter, we see a man with “a curved nose, curly hair, pleasing complexion, kindly eyes, and anything else in terms of specific properties of his appearance.” 73 If the icon in question does not render the likeness of Peter, but that of Christ, a few modifications to this principle need to be made. At first, Christological considerations appear to throw this system into complete confusion. Part of this is due to the ambiguity surrounding the ousia to which the prosôpon stands in reference in the case of Christ. Which of Christ’s natures does the prosôpon reflect? Does the worshipper, in beholding the prosôpon, see the reflection of humanity in general, divinity in general, or either of them in particular? For Theodore, it is impossible that a prosôpon exhibit anything generally but, for the iconoclasts, it was thought insufficient to describe the prosôpon of Christ in terms applicable to other individual members of the species. With respect to the issue of Christ’s human nature, the iconoclasts would rather have it that, instead of the prosôpon reflecting the characteristics of a unique individual, the human nature of Christ should be taken as representative of the nature of the human species as a whole. The entire notion of particularities would have been odious to the iconoclasts, for whom the term might as well have been synonymous with accidental features. It is, after all, in those accidental physical features that particularities are more obvious. Theodore’s response to this was that generalities and particularities could not exist without one another. “What is general exists only in individuals; for example humanity only exists in Peter, Paul, and other individuals of the human species. If there do not exist any individuals, then humanity in general does not exist either.” 74 It would therefore be meaningless to speak of an ousia without taking into consideration the constituent members and defining characteristics of that ousia. Even if it were possible for an ousia to somehow exist without the need to be constituted by particularities, it would still be invisible to everything but humanity’s capacity for extremely abstract reasoning. Continuing, Theodore writes, “What is general we grasp only with our reason and our mind; what is particular, however, we grasp with PG 99, 405A. PG 99, 405AB, For an English translation, see Lothar Krauth’s translation of Schönborn’s original German in God’s Human Face, 219–220. 73 Ibid. 74 PG 99, 396D., For an English translation, Ibid., 221. 72

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our eyes, as they see the things of the senses.” 75 Permitting of a few differences, almost everything about this structure parallels what the Damascene envisioned. There is a movement and an interactivity occurring within and between the visible and invisible worlds. Defined, as they both are, by contemplation, the ascending movement towards the invisible is the same as the ascending movement towards the general. Theodore thus particularizes Christ in order to salvage the credibility of the Christological claim that He has a human nature. Christ’s human nature may indeed encapsulate the universal totality of what essentially defines “human nature” and thus, his human side stands to represent humanity as a whole. Theodore may have perhaps agreed with such a notion. Yet, even if it were true, Theodore would say that this “universal human nature” of Christ is composed from particularities, specific descriptive qualities, the ousia from the prosôpon. In order to have a human nature, Christ must also have a prosôpon by which that human nature makes itself known to us. Perhaps it is the case that the ultimate ontological core of Christ’s human nature is a general ousia representing all of humanity. This does not negate the necessity of some form of disclosure and Theodore believed that it was through the particulars, the prosôpon, that the human mind could glimpse that ousia. The process that occurs here can be rendered in secular language as well. This mechanism could apply to all art, regardless of its spiritual or religious dimensions. It involves the initial display of particulars, or individual features like shape, color, or style. These particulars gesture towards the generality that is the subject of the art piece. Further, this generality, once disclosed, brings the mind of the viewer into conversation, or contemplation, of the broader ousia behind the prosôpon being disclosed. Or, as the Damascene puts it, I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter, I worship the God of the matter, who became matter for my sake, and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter. I will not cease from honoring that matter which works my salvation. I venerate it, through not as God. How could God be born out of lifeless things? 76

Matter is an instrument, not in itself holy, with which we can, through the medium of the icon, bring ourselves from the prosôpon of the subject towards its ousia, towards the essence of what is represented or, in this case, the human nature of Christ. In seving this function, in being such an instrument, matter can become holy.

75 76

PG 99 397A., For an English translation, see Ibid. St. John Damascene, On Holy Images, 10.

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7.8. SYMBOL AND SACRAMENTALITY Prosôpon, likeness, image, and icon are all strongly interrelated terms and their respective meanings can, if one permits a bit of generalization, collect together with some uniformity under the same canopy as the term “symbol.” From a certain angle, identifying an icon as a symbol can appear misleading. Colloquially, the word “symbol” sometimes establishes a distance between the signifier and that which is signified; by its very nature it draws attention to the fact that it represents something beyond itself. If it actually were to be identified entirely with the thing that it represents and references, it would cease to be a symbol. This can, in turn, lead to the qualitative assessment that symbols are less authentic or less substantial than the real things that they symbolize. Perhaps this is so, but if the “real thing” that one is dealing with is something beyond circumscription, something markedly distinct from material reality, than the importance of an effective symbol can become more sharply felt. Furthermore, within an intellectual tradition defined by the premise that there is an incomprehensible invisible reality beyond material existence and that material existence is an incomplete reflection of the perfection of that invisible reality, it becomes something of a mute point to claim that symbols establish a disconnect between signifier and signified. In Christianity, symbols are not required to attest to the existence of this disconnect. The image defenders of the era were in unanimous agreement that images functioned symbolically in this manner, incapable of circumscribing the invisible and divine essence of a thing, but nonetheless capable of rendering its likeness through an indirect reflection. This was not considered a disadvantage with respect to the function that an image served, but an ontological necessity within a Christian framework. The Damascene’s litany of apophatic descriptors for the invisible nature of God cited earlier illustrate this point and also highlight the nuances involved in representing the invisible in symbolic terms. The value and meaning of a symbol is determined by the context which necessitates its use. This context includes the character of the early Christian community, the essential distinctiveness of Christian theology from other perceptions of God in terms of dynamic monarchism, the value that Christianity bestows on man and on material creation, the distinct faith in the incarnation of God and man’s redemption and participation in the divine life, the theology of the Church in terms of her soteriological nature and liturgical character… Apart from this theological context, or independent of any aspect of it, the icon becomes another painting, obscure, unintelligible, or naïve for that matter. 77 Daniel J. Sahas, Icon and Logos: Sources in 8th Century Iconoclasm (Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 5. 77

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This context is also given its ontological shape by the neoplatonic tradition that it has inherited from classical philosophy. Each of those terms – prosôpon, image, icon, etc – is presented and defined as the liminal element which connects the otherwise dichotomous poles of visible and invisible reality. In an overarching sense, this is the primary dichotomy which frames all of existence in the Christian worldview, but, corresponding to the various terms which designate that liminal element, there are numerous other ways to express this dichotomy. Humanity stands in contrast to divinity, particularity in contrast to generality, and matter in contrast to spirit. Of course, there is also the dual nature of Christ to consider. Symbols occupy the location at which these two realities make contact, serving both as boundaries of separation and bridges of connection. More importantly, however, is that symbols function in this way for the sake of humanity, to facilitate spiritual movement in the face of material limitations. The icon, therefore, is an indispensable component for both human salvation and the sanctification of material creation. In performing this function it becomes endowed with a soteriological and sacramental power. This is the mystery of the icon, its paradox. It is holy because it elevates the believer to God and it is able to elevate the believer because God has condescended to endow it with holiness. Like so many of the mysteries of the Christian faith, the icon expresses how, in God and in the function of the Church, such a paradox is able to work without its dichotomous structure falling apart; divinity and materiality are made to overlap without, as it was feared, one of them compromising the other.

EPILOGUE The Seven Oikoumenical Councils are a digested history, in and of themselves, of the high intellectual tradition of Christian thought and spirituality. Each one clearly belongs to its own specific historical era, formed by, and formative of, the issues that were prevalent in their different times (from late Platonic metaphysics in the fourth century, to psychological notions of coherence in the seventh, and issues of representative art in the eighth) and yet they were also, in a real sense, transhistorical. All seven can be considered as a linked agenda running diachronically across much of the first millennium of the Church. All seven can certainly be seen as systematically advancing, one upon the other, in terms of developing the substantive Christology of the Church’s confession. In this sense the agenda set by the Nicene Creed runs on like a great river, forming the central topography of the tradition of the confession of the faith. To this day it remains, as the conciliar fathers of almost every council reiterated, one after another, the central creed of all Christendom, the definition par excellence of what classical Christianity meant, and continues to mean in the world today. After Nicaea, each separate council wrestled with its interpretation in new dimensions; what would be its correct exegesis in new circumstances, and in the light of new questions raised from its earlier paideia? So, when Nicaea teaches the perfect divinity of the Son begotten of the Father before time, Constantinople I is inevitably given the task of explicating how Christians do not thereby believe in two Gods, but rather understand the unicity of the Godhead in a complex sense of triadic communion, concurring to unity. When Ephesus I teaches the mysterious potency of how the Divine Logos assumes humanity to himself and deifies it in his own person, so as to make it the paradigm of the deifying salvation of the whole mortal race, it is thus left to Chalcedon, Constantinople II and Constantinople III to make more and more refined explications of how that deification of the race can occur in the person of the Saviour, and how he thus models perfection of humanity to the world, alongside the perfection of divinity he manifests as Son from the Father. Many in the West, perhaps because of its long held and deep suspicions of aesthetics in theology, have not seen the logical implication of Nicaea II, and therefore how it too logically remains, in essence, a Christological council like all the others. For, like them, it is concerned with the model of perfection, and how the “Icon of the Invisible” (so the New Testament designates the Word made flesh) is sacramentally made available to his lesser icons whom he saves and gathers together as Church. All seven great councils are, therefore, essays in the refinement of soteriol373

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ogy, the understanding of salvation, gathered around the central pole of Christological faith, the mystery of communion with Christ, which is the dynamic of salvation. To enter into the profundity of their thought is a difficult thing. It is clear from many books that are available today, that these councils often seem to the outsider, to those who approach them superficially and carelessly, as the futile exercises of dead pedants. Those who spend the time to learn the music of their syntax may discover something very different: and see within these ancient studies a profound exegesis of the scripture that is moved by deep liturgical reverence, and a lively sense of the dynamics of grace: no less than the transfiguration of the world through the mercy of a God who wishes to be an immediate part of it. It is my hope that these essays, which have grappled in all seriousness of spirit and acuity of mind, with these demanding texts and histories, may at last serve to demonstrate why the study of the councils ought to be the mainstay of all courses of Christian dogmatics, for all traditions of Christian theology. To fulfill that task properly, it was abundantly evident that a new text book was urgently required. This we have tried to provide in the present volume; something accessible yet simultaneously elevated; something that could work at an introductory level, yet also be the basis for a more advanced series of seminars. May the volume now set sail, like a little ship, and bring its treasures to new and distant harbours. John A. McGuckin. Feast of St. Gregory Palamas. Nov. 14th 2015.

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS John McGuckin (PhD. Durham, DD, DLitt) is the Nielsen Professor in Late Antique and Byzantine Christian history & Professor of Byzantine Christian studies, Columbia University. He is widely published in the fields of Early Christian and Byzantine studies. Todd E. French (PhD. Columbia University) is Assistant Professor of Religion at Rollins College. He specializes in Late Antique hagiography, Early Christianity, and Syriac literature. His areas of interest include Byzantine history, and narrative in the context of religion. Sergey Trostyanskiy (PhD. Union Theological Seminary) is currently a Research Fellow of the Sophia Institute of Byzantine and Eastern Orthodox studies, New York and Union Theological Seminary, New York. His research interests include Byzantine history and philosophy. Matthew J. Pereira (PhD. Columbia University) is a Bellarmine Postdoctoral Faculty Fellow at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA. He is a scholar of Late Antique and Byzantine Christianity, who specializes in the transmission of Augustine in the borderland monks of Scythian Minor. Gregory Tucker is a PhD candidate at Fordham University. His research interests lie in the areas of Patristic and Byzantine theology and liturgy. Anna Zhyrkova (PhD. Catholic University of Lublin) is an associate professor at Jesuit University Ignatianum in Kraków. She specializes in ancient, patristic, and medieval philosophy. Particular fields of her interest are Neoplatonic logic, Early Byzantine philosophy, and problem of individuation. William Bellamy (MA. Union Theological Seminary) is an independent research scholar specializing in Byzantine history and the history of Christian visual art.

397

INDEX NAMES Acacius, the Patriarch of Constantinople 232–234, 236, 242 Aetius of Antioch 56–57, 59–61 Agatho of Rome, the Pope 307–309, 312 Agatho, deacon 311 Alexander of Alexandria 13–16, 19–20, 23–26, 28, 31, 35, 40–41, 43, 46, 49 Anastasius, disciple of Maximus 298, 305 Anastasius, the Emperor 236–241, 275 Apollinaris/rius of Laodicea 47, 70, 76– 79, 81–87, 96, 118, 165, 171, 182, 205, 258, 293, 315, 320 Arius of Alexandria 5, 13–16, 20–29, 31, 35, 39, 46, 48, 50–51, 54, 56, 65, 103, 165, 195, 355 Athanasius of Alexandria 6–7, 17, 22, 28– 29, 31, 33, 39–40, 42–43, 45–46, 49– 52, 54–56, 60, 64–67, 74, 76–78, 82, 166, 195, 208, 225, 313, 330, 353, 359 Athanasius “the Camel-driver” of Antioch 292, 294

Constans II, the Emperor 300–306 Constantia (sister of Constantine I) 27 Constantina 285 Constantine I (the Great) 15–16, 18–21, 23–25, 27–28, 42, 48–50, 56, 69, 89, 96–97, 182, 217, 243, 277, 282, 311, 330 Constantine II, the Emperor 50–51 Constantine IV “Pogonatus” 306–308, 309 Constantine V, the Emperor 325–327, 342–343, 350–357, 360–361, 367 Constantine VI, the Emperor 339, 357 Constantius, the Emperor 19, 42, 51–52, 55, 59–60, 63–64, 66, 83 Cyril of Alexandria 3, 31, 38, 41, 59, 104– 105, 107–111, 113–120, 130, 135, 139–157, 161–178, 180, 182, 184, 186–191, 194–195, 197, 199–202, 205–212, 214–221, 225–228, 236, 244, 247–249, 251, 255–259, 261– 264, 266, 269–273, 280, 292–293, 312, 314, 315–316, 320, 330, 352, 359 Cyrus of Alexandria 295, 298–300, 303, 309–310, 312

Basil of Ancyra 62–63, 67 Basil of Caesarea (the Great) 31, 45, 55, 61, 66–70, 74, 85, 111 Basilides 65 Basiliscus, the Emperor 231–234 Benjamin of Alexandria 294–295 Boniface IV of Rome, the Pope 286

Damasus of Rome 74 Demophilus, the Archbishop of Constantinople 85 Diodore of Tarsus 76–77, 82–83, 85, 90– 91, 94, 132, 166, 225, 238 Dionysius, Pseudo- 294, 298, 316–317, 344, 364

Charlemagne 340, 342, 358 Chosroes II 282, 284–286, 290–291 Clement of Alexandria 76 Constans, the Emperor 51, 55

399

400

SEVEN ICONS OF CHRIST

Dioscorus of Alexandria 169, 172–175, 177–180, 184, 188, 190–196, 201– 202, 355 Donus of Rome 306–307 Ephrem of Amid 245–246, 266, 275 Epictetus, Bishop of Corinth 76 Epiphanius of Salamis 31, 62–63, 344– 345 Eunomius of Cyzicus 56–57, 165, 195 Euphemios, the Patriarch 237–238 Eusebius of Caesarea 16, 18, 20–22, 30, 42, 54, 67, 335–336, 344–345 Eusebius of Nicomedia 15, 20–23, 27–29, 35, 49–51 Eustathius of Antioch 15–16, 18–20, 22, 28, 46, 83 Eutyches of Constantinople 76, 169–174, 181–182, 185–186, 192, 194–195, 196, 205–206, 211–212, 225, 235, 239, 245 Eutychius of Constantinople 251–252, 281, 284 Ezr of Armenia 294 Flavian of Constantinople, the Patriarch 109, 169–173, 179–180, 192, 196, 201, 205–206, 208–210 Gaddis, Michael 176 George of Constantinople 306–309 George of Laodicea 55 George Syncellus 341 Germanus, the Patriarch 310 Gratian, the Emperor 69–70 Gregory of Nazianzus 3, 39–40, 45, 51, 66–68, 70–74, 79, 85–97, 110, 215, 313, 316 Gregory of Nyssa 57, 66, 69–70, 78–79, 332 Gregory, Prefect of Africa 301 Gregory the Great 253, 336 Gregory I, the Pope 285–286 Gregory II, the Pope 339–340

Grillmeier, Aloys 140, 204–206, 215, 217 Heracleides, the Arabian bishop 30 Heraclius 286, 289–292, 294–296, 298, 300–301, 324, 331 Hilary of Poitiers 55, 57–58, 63 Hippolytus 11, 41, 76 Honorius, the Pope 297–299, 301, 307– 309, 312, 317 Hormisdas, the Pope 242, 244 Ibas of Edesa 173, 213, 225, 228, 238, 245, 247–249, 251–252, 280 Irene, the Empress (Regent) 323, 339– 340, 356–357, 366 Ishoyahb II of Persia 294 Jacob Bar’Addai/ Baradaeus 246, 283– 284, 287–289, 293 John of Antioch 102, 111, 165, 167–169, 171, 178, 189–191, 235 John of Damascus (the Damascene) 224, 327–328, 331, 337–341, 344–350, 352, 359–360, 362–367, 370–372 John of Ephesus 282–285, 288 John Grammarian 262, 264, 266, 275 John Maxentius 197, 220, 267, 275 John Philoponus 136, 256, 275, 289 John Talaia 234 John Tella 234, 245–246, 287–288 John “the Merciful” of Alexandria 294– 295, 317 John III “Scholasticus” of Constantinople 283–284 John IV of Rome 299–301 John IV “the Faster” of Constantinople 285 Jovian 66 Julian, the Apostate 52, 60, 64, 66 Julius, the Pope 51 Justin I, the Emperor 241–244, 287 Justin II, the Emperor 282–284, 288

INDEX Justinian, the Emperor 224, 241, 234– 253, 255, 261, 263, 269–273, 275, 277–278, 280–284, 286–287 Kelly, J.N.D. 30, 208–209, 218 Leo I, the Pope 3, 110, 157, 161–162, 171–175, 180–195, 199–202, 206, 208–212, 216–221, 226–227, 229, 231–232, 236, 239, 241, 267, 280, 297, 312, 314, 317, 320 Leo I, the Emperor 231 Leo II, the Pope 309 Leo III, the Emperor 323–327, 331, 337, 339–340, 342–344, 349–351, 357, 359, 366 Leo IV, the Emperor 356 Leo V, the Emperor 339 Leontius of Byzantium 245, 256, 262, 265–266, 268, 275 Leontius of Jerusalem 265–268, 275 Liberius, the Pope 63 Macarius of Antioch 306, 308–309, 312 Macarius of Jerusalem 20, 30 Macedonius, the Patriarch 237, 240–242 Marcellus of Ancyra 31, 51, 74, 85 Marcian, Emperor 174–175, 182, 199, 206, 212, 217, 220, 230, 234 Martin of Rome 299, 302–306, 309, 317 Maurice 284–286 Maximus the Confessor 3, 293–295, 298, 300–306, 308–309, 316–317, 319–320 McGuckin, John Anthony 74, 85, 89, 91– 92, 94, 110, 116, 120, 139–140, 155, 173, 203, 205, 210–211, 214–216, 275, 332 Melitius of Lycopolis 13, 25–26, 28, 49 Menas of Cosntantinople 246, 249, 293 Michael I, the Emperor 339 Muhammad 296, 326 Nephalius 239, 262, 264

401

Nestorius, the Patriarch 59, 76, 100–110, 113–121, 126–139, 152, 154–157, 163, 166–167, 187–188, 194–195, 196, 200, 207, 218, 225, 227–229, 235, 238–239, 245, 251, 280 Nicephorus, the Patriarch 337–339, 342, 352, 356, 358–361 Noetus 53 Origen of Alexandria 11–14, 20–21, 30, 35, 40–41, 54, 76, 86, 258, 272, 330, 333–336, 345, 367 Ossius of Cordoba 15, 17–21, 28, 42, 58, 62 Paul “the Black” of Antioch 283–284, 288–289 Paul of Constantinople 300–304, 308– 309, 311 Paul of Samosata 12, 14, 19, 30, 42, 65, 109, 119, 154 Pelagius I of Rome, the Pope 253, 280 Pelagius II of Rome, the Pope 285 Pelikan, Jaroslav 206, 219–220, 368 Peter of Constantinople 305–306, 308– 309, 312 Peter Mongos 234, 236, 238 Peter, the Bishop 49 Peter the Fuller 236 Philippicus Bardanes 310–311 Philostorgius 56–57, 60 Philoxenus of Mabbug 238–239, 256 Phocas 285–286, 296 Photius of Constantinople 297 Platon (Uncle of Theodore the Studite) 339, 366 Polychronius 308–309 Praxeas 53, 75 Price, Richard 175–176, 197, 201, 209, 218, 226, 249, 274–275 Pyrrhus of Constantinople 300–305, 308, 311 Sabellius 53, 65

402

SEVEN ICONS OF CHRIST

Schwartz, Eduard 120, 139, 175, 274–275 Scythian monks 197, 220, 244, 246, 260, 263, 267 Secundus of Ptolemais 21, 23, 25 Serenus of Marseilles 336 Sergius of Antioch 288–289 Sergius of Constantinople 286, 289–301, 303, 309, 311, 315–317, 331 Severus of Antioch 157, 239–240, 242, 246, 256, 258, 260, 262, 264, 275, 281, 284, 287, 292–293, 312, 315–316, 320 Simplicius of Cilicia 137–138 Socrates Scholasticus 16–18, 23, 26, 88, 96, 116–117, 120, 136, 139 Sophronius of Jerusalem 295–299, 306, 308, 317, 320 Sozomen 88, 96 St. Sabas 239–240

Theodore of Rome 299, 301–302 Theodore Studious (the Studite) 337–340, 342, 351, 358–361, 366–370 Theodoret of Cyrrhus 60, 88, 111, 156, 167, 178–179, 189, 213, 214–215, 225, 238, 245, 247–248, 251, 280 Theodosius I, the Emperor 69–70, 74– 75, 85, 88–94, 96–97 Theodosius II, the Emperor 99, 106, 110, 114, 118, 167, 170–172, 173–174, 178, 194 Theognis of Nicaea 20, 23, 28 Theonas of Marmarica 21, 23, 25 Thomas of Klaudioupolis 325 Tiberius Constantine 284 Timothy Aelurus 187, 231–232, 256

Tarasius, the Patriarch 339, 357, 366 Tertullian 4, 7, 19, 41–42, 75–76, 210 Theodore Ascidas 249 Theodore of Bostra 287 Theodore of Mopsuestia 70, 83–84, 100– 101, 120, 132, 163, 166, 238, 245, 247, 249, 251, 254, 271–272, 280, 293– 294, 315 Theodore of Pharan 293, 303, 308–309, 311

Valens 33, 66–67, 69, 85 Valentinus 65, 171 Vigilius, the Pope 248–254, 280, 293 Vitalian, the Pope 305–307

Ursacius of Singidunum 54

Zachariah of Jerusalem 290 Zeno, the Emperor 231, 233–234, 236– 237, 241

SUBJECTS Action see Energeia Ad Jovianum of Apollinaris 82 Against Praxeas of Tertullian 75 Agnoetism 293 Anhomoios 59 Anomeans 59 Anthropotokos 100–101, 272 Aphthartodocetism 281, 284, 293 Apodeixis of Apollinaris 78–79 Apologia of St. John of Damascus 347–350 Arabs (Caliphate) 295, 299, 302, 304, 306, 310, 357

Arab Siege of Constantinople (717–8) 324, 340 Archetype/Paradigm/Prototype 6, 11, 24, 41, 124, 136–137, 145, 147, 210, 258–259, 265, 328, 346–347, 355–356, 359–360, 363–364, 367, 369, 373 Avars 282, 284–286, 290–291, 323 Baptismal Creed of Jerusalem 29

INDEX Cappadocian 6, 45–46, 51, 56–57, 67, 70, 79, 256–257, 266, 367 Chalcē Removal (Mid to late 720s) 326, 350 Chalcedonian Definition (Horos) 161–162, 168–169, 182, 187, 193, 198–214, 216–221, 225–227, 269, 271, 273, 281 Chora (Monastery) 351 Christotokos 100, 102, 271–272 Chronographia of Theophanes the Confessor 341–342 Codex encyclicus 231–232 Communicatio idiomatum 164, 211, 259, 297, 317, 320 Constitutum of Pope Vigilius 250–252 Contra Apollinarem of Theodore 84 Council of Antioch (379) 85 Council of Hieria (754), Iconoclastic 349, 351, 354–355, 357– 358, 367 Council of Seleucia and Ariminum (359) 59 Council of Serdica (343) 54–55 Council of Sirmium (357) 42, 57, 61–62 Council of Trullo, Quinisext (691– 2) 310, 331 Council of Tyre (335) 49–50 De Decretis of Athanasius 18, 60 De Generatione et Corruptione of Aristotle 80 De Synodis 31, 55 Demiurge 35–36 Dichotomic/Trichotomic 79, 81– 83 Divine Circumscription 371 Doxologia 35, 99, 102–104, 126, 131, 139, 210–211 Easter Sermon of Nestorius 102

Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus 274 Ecloga (Leo III’s legal reforms) 324 Edict of Thessalonica 74 Ekthesis of 636 298–303, 317 Encyclical Letter of Athanasius 51 Energeia 133, 141, 292–295, 297– 299, 302–303, 309–322, 334 Epistle to Plato of Theodore the Studite 339 Filioque 40, 301 First Letter of Honorius to Sergius 299, 301 First Letter of Cyril of Alexandria to Succensus 207 Formula of Reunion (433) 118– 119, 163, 167, 170–171, 178, 189, 190–191, 205–206, 236, 271 Gothic 69, 106 Henosis (Palestinian) 233–234, 239 Henotikon 234–239, 241–242 Heracleon’s Commentary on the Gospel of John 35 Heterousians 21–22, 56–60 Home Synod of Constantinople (448) 170–173, 176–177, 179, 209 Homoians 52, 56, 58 Homoiousians 34, 52, 56, 58, 61, 63–64 Homonymy 101, 126–131, 136– 139, 146, 150 Hypostasis 10, 12, 33, 39–40, 45, 52, 54, 68–69, 72, 74, 82, 84– 85, 90, 93, 127–129, 140– 141, 147–150, 164, 170, 189, 203–204, 225, 227, 240, 245, 256–258, 263–273, 289,

403

404

SEVEN ICONS OF CHRIST 315–317, 322, 352–353, 363, 367

Idolatry 150, 326–328, 337–338, 342–345, 349–351, 356, 358, 361 Illyricum 23, 89, 92 Image 38–39, 41, 43–44, 48, 79, 124, 129, 136–137, 323, 325– 339, 343, 345–350, 353, 355– 356, 358–367, 370–372 Immutable 61, 72, 76–77, 79, 82– 84, 111–112, 122–123, 128– 129, 132–133, 141, 147, 313, 320, 363 Incarnation xix, 3, 38, 43–44, 55– 56, 60, 72, 75–76, 78–82, 110, 112–113, 127–130, 132–133, 139, 142, 144, 147, 149, 152–153, 159, 166, 171, 205, 207, 211–212, 221, 228, 256–257, 260, 263, 266–273, 314, 320, 322, 328, 331, 333– 334, 336, 347–348, 354, 358, 362–363, 365, 371 Invisible/Visible (Platonic Binary) 333, 346 Jacobites 288 Jews 26, 73, 286, 296, 345 Lateran Synod of 649 300–301, 303–304, 307–309, 312, 317, 320, 322 Latreia 349–350 Letter to Flavian (Tome of Leo I) 3, 156–157, 161, 171–172, 175, 179–180, 183–195, 200–202, 206–211, 226–227, 229, 239, 280, 297, 312, 317, 320 Letter to Mari the Persian 247, 249, 251–252

Likeness 6, 41, 60, 62–63, 138, 145, 328, 330, 333, 335–336, 346–348, 361–363, 365–369, 371 Logos 9–14, 20, 22, 29, 31, 34, 37–41, 44–45, 54–55, 58, 74–80, 86, 164, 186, 205, 209, 259–260, 262, 266–268, 270–271, 273, 293, 373 Lombards 281–282, 340 Macrostich 55 Mar Sabas (Monastery) 337 Meletians 52 Miaphysitism/ Monophysitism 82–3, 162, 186, 189, 201, 209, 225–226, 232, 240, 246, 253–254, 260, 262, 269, 278– 279, 282–284, 286–289, 291, 293–294, 297–298, 315–316, 320, 353–354 Monarchian 11–14, 19, 53, 76 Monoenergism 260, 279, 289–290, 292–295, 297–298, 308, 315, 316–318, 320 Monotheletism 260, 279, 289–290, 295, 297, 299–302, 307–311, 316, 318, 320 Nature see Physis Neo-Arians 52, 56–57, 59–63, 67, 89 Neo-Chalcedonism 8, 220, 239, 256, 260–273, 280, 283, 292, 301, 305, 317 Neo-Platonism 80, 256, 264–265, 327, 333, 340, 345, 372 Nestorian 120, 155–156, 173, 179, 185, 187, 189, 200, 206, 213, 217–218, 228, 232, 237–238, 244, 247–251, 253, 255–256, 267, 270–271, 275, 278–280, 291, 294, 315, 353–354

INDEX Nicene Creed (325) 3, 10, 22, 29– 31, 34, 55, 65, 95, 111, 113, 161–162, 165–169, 181–183, 191, 193–200, 202, 206, 217– 218, 231–233 Nous 78–83 Oikonomia 3,11, 43, 58, 72, 76– 77, 88, 96, 101, 104, 111– 113, 118, 132, 135, 137–139, 141, 147–151, 153–154, 363 On the Orthodox Faith, the edict 249, 252 Ousia 7, 12–13, 22, 29, 32–33, 36, 39–40, 43, 45, 52–54, 58, 60–63, 65, 68–70, 75, 80, 82, 88, 95, 103, 121, 124, 127– 131, 133, 135, 140–141, 367– 370 Pact of Union of 633 295, 308, 316 Panarion of Epiphanius 31, 62 Pantokrator 32, 36 Paraclete 54–55, 58, 68 Patripassianism 19, 59 Paulites 288 Persians 64, 282, 284–285, 290– 292, 294, 296–297, 323–324, 349 Photinians 89 Physis 6–8, 19, 29, 34, 37, 42, 45, 48–50, 60–61, 63, 65, 68–73, 77–79, 81–84, 86–89, 92–93, 100, 105, 112–113, 118, 121– 125, 127–152, 155–157, 159–160, 164, 167, 170–171, 183–189, 193, 196, 199–212, 215–216, 218, 220, 224–225, 227–229, 235, 238–239, 245, 254, 256–260, 262–274, 280, 289, 292–294, 297, 303, 307, 311–322, 335, 346, 348, 350,

352–354, 362–363, 365, 367–372 Platonic 57, 78, 258–259, 264, 266, 333, 335, 346, 354, 362, 373 Programma 283–284 Proskenysis 349 Prosôpon 74, 84, 90, 102, 121, 124–125, 127–128, 130–131, 133–135, 137–138, 165, 170, 189, 203–204, 227, 293, 352– 353, 362–363, 367–372 Psēphos of 633 295, 297, 299–300 Psēphos of 662 306 Psyche 78–80, 82 Regula Fidei 29 Resurrection 10, 29, 86, 94, 159, 168, 281, 334, 336, 347, 354 Rule of faith (Canon tes Pisteos) 35, 194 Sakkudion (Monastery) 339 Sasima 67, 85, 92–93 Second Letter to Nestorius (Cyril of Alexandria) 105, 170, 183, 187–188, 190–191, 194–195, 220, 226 Schism of Aquileia 253, 281 Slavs 284, 286, 290–291, 306, 331 Soma 78, 80 Subsistence 8, 12, 64–65, 114, 121, 123, 125, 127, 132, 135, 140– 144, 204, 259, 267, 321, 353, 362, 367 Symbol 12–13, 16, 28, 30, 39, 204, 208, 214, 216–218, 232, 254, 286, 311–313, 314, 319, 329, 331–332, 346, 348–349, 361–362, 365–366, 371–372 Synod of Cyprus 298 Synodical Letter of Sophronius 297, 307–308, 320

405

406

SEVEN ICONS OF CHRIST

Synonymy 19, 39, 52, 71, 101, 119, 127–129, 138, 145–146, 148, 152, 257, 264, 267, 363, 369 Synousia 82 Syntagmation of Aetius 60 Theandric energeia 294, 298, 316– 318 Thelema 6, 22, 25, 27, 74–75, 86, 93, 123–125, 132–133, 141– 142, 204, 246, 260, 293, 295, 297, 299, 302–303, 307–322 Theologia 7, 43, 48, 72, 101, 111– 113, 137, 138, 141, 144–145, 148, 150, 353, 363 Theopassianism 59, 75 Theotokos 99–103, 106, 110, 136– 137, 151, 153, 156, 164, 168, 200, 203, 209, 271, 291, 312, 331 Third Theological Oration of Gregory 71–72

Three Chapters 247–254, 272, 280–281 Tomus ad Antiochenos of Athanasius 52 Trier 28, 50 Trisagion 240 Tritheism 283, 289 True Cross, Relics of the 290–291, 299 Twelve Chapters/Anathemas against Nestorius (Cyril of Alexandria) 163–166, 170, 189–190, 197, 199, 202, 208, 220, 228, 235, 280 Tyana 67 Typos of 648 302–303, 305–308 Unbegotten 71, 93 Unoriginate 14, 71 Will see Thelema