The orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation (part 3 of 3)

Part Two

    So far we’ve looked at the development of the doctrine of the Incarnation from the fourth century up to the council of Chalcedon (see my last two posts). During the Nestorian controversy, St Cyril of Alexandria (and the council of Ephesus I) emphasized that there is one single, concrete subject – our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son and Word of God the Father – who is divine and human, who was born from Mary, suffered, died, and rose again for our salvation. In the later Eutychian controversy, St Leo of Rome (and the council of Chalcedon) emphasized that Christ is both fully divine and fully human in nature, with both divine and human activities, while remaining one subject who acts. Despite differences in emphasis (since they battled opposite errors) and terminology, the basic teaching was the same: Christ is one subject who is fully divine and fully human, without confusing his divinity and humanity, or dividing him into two externally-related subjects.

From Chalcedon (451) to Constantinople III (681) [19]

    Although the council of Chalcedon succeeded at reuniting the Eastern and Western Churches, it was extremely controversial in the East. St Juvenal of Jerusalem returned home to riots which temporarily forced him out of his see, and Dioscorus’ replacement St Proterius of Alexandria was murdered a few years later by anti-Chalcedonian extremists. Over the next decades, the imperial position on Chalcedon wavered back and forth, and the council was largely not seen as having any meaningful contribution to the faith in its own right.

• In response to Proterius’ death, the Eastern bishops endorsed Chalcedon in the letters known as the Encyclica. These letters never refer to the Chalcedonian formula of “two natures, one hypostasis,” but rather view Chalcedon as a confirmation of the Nicene Creed and a rightful condemnation of Eutychianism.

• The emperor Basiliscus (475–476) issued the Encyclical which condemned Chalcedon on the grounds that it had issued a new creed in addition to the Nicene Creed, which was contrary to canon 7 of the council of Ephesus I. This was signed by many Eastern bishops (although not Acacius of Constantinople).

• The emperor Zeno (474–475, 476–491) condemned the anti-Chalcedonians who had supported his rival Basiliscus. In response to a resurgence of conflict, he and Acacius of Constantinople issued the Henotikon in 482, which avoided discussion of Chalcedon and instead simply reaffirmed Nicaea and condemned Nestorius and Eutyches, in an attempt to restore unity.

• The Henotikon allowed Chalcedonians and anti-Chalcedonians to coexist in the imperial Church, and it strained relations with the West which remained pro-Chalcedon. This superficial unity in the East allowed tensions to grow under the surface, as Alexandria and Antioch developed a strong anti-Chalcedonian tendency, while Constantinople and Jerusalem developed a staunch loyalty to the council of Chalcedon.

    This fragile peace broke in the 510s, when the influential monk Severus presented an anti-Chalcedonian reading of the Henotikon which was widely circulated. Severus was elected as bishop of Antioch in 512, and wrote extensively against “two nature” Christology in favor of a staunchly Cyrillian “one (incarnate) nature” Christology. Around the same time, several pro-Chalcedonian monks – most notably John of Caesarea, Leontius of Jerusalem, and Leontius of Byzantium – wrote against Severus’ Christology and elaborated the meaning of Chalcedon’s “two natures, one hypostasis.” This movement is now referred to as “neo-Chalcedonianism.” This is the first time that we can really refer to a conflict between miaphysite and dyophysite Christology.

    The emperor Justin I and his nephew, St Justinian, inherited this deeply divided Church when they came to power in 518. Justinian, himself a theologian in the neo-Chalcedonian vein, was determined to reunite the Church under the council of Chalcedon, but not without giving the miaphysites (including his wife, St Theodora) a fair hearing. He held a conference of Chalcedonian and anti-Chalcedonian representatives in 532, where the miaphysites presented their issues with Chalcedon, including that (1) “in two natures,” unlike Cyril’s formula “from two natures,” implies dividing Christ; (2) the Chalcedonian Definition failed to endorse theopaschism (i.e., that God the Word suffered), which was the subject of Cyril’s twelfth anathema; and (3) the council reinstated Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Ibas of Edessa, who had been Cyril’s fiercest critics. Justinian proposed a compromise solution, where the miaphysites didn’t have to accept the Definition but couldn’t anathematize those who did, which they rejected.

    Despite the failure of this conference, Justinian sought to win the miaphysites over to the imperial Church by making Chalcedonianism more palatable to them. This is exemplified in his 551 edict On the orthodox faith, which presented an explicitly Cyrillian, theopaschite, and dyophysite Christology as well as condemning the writings of Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Ibas of Edessa against St Cyril. His mission was fulfilled at the ecumenical council of Constantinople II in 553, which condemned the “Three Chapters” (i.e., the person and writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, the writings of Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and the letter of Ibas of Edessa to Maris) and gave the ecclesial stamp of approval to Justinian’s (rather uncontroversial) Cyrillian Christology. This challenged the West and Vigilius of Rome, who agreed with Justinian’s Christology but saw the condemnation of the “Three Chapters” as a betrayal of Chalcedon, but they eventually capitulated under pressure from the emperor.

    Unfortunately, Constantinople II failed to win over the miaphysites, who thought that the Chalcedonians had contradicted and anathematized themselves. In the mid-sixth century, anti-Chalcedonians began to  ordain their own clergy apart from the imperial Church – at first, out of pastoral concern for miaphysite laity who refused to commune with Chalcedonian clergy. Jacob bar ‘Addai, the miaphysite bishop of Edessa, consecrated many bishops throughout Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. By the end of the century, despite internal schisms between the anti-Chalcedonians, parallel miaphysite hierarchies had developed in many Eastern regions (which are now the Oriental Orthodox Churches).

    In the middle decades of the seventh century, as the Roman Empire came under assault from the Sassanian Empire and then the Rashidun Caliphate, internal unity was a priority. The emperor Heraclius (610–641) and Sergius of Constantinople managed to re-establish communion with several miaphysite churches in the early 630s on the basis of a formula that Christ has “one activity” (monenergism). The number of ‘activities’ in Christ had received little intra-Chalcedonian attention, so it was thought that it would be uncontroversial. However, this formula was strongly opposed by Honorius of Rome (who supported two activities but one will in Christ) and St Sophronius of Jerusalem (who supported two activities and wills). Their opposition caused Sergius to issue the Psēphos in 633 which rejected any discussion of the number of activities in Christ.

    Heraclius changed his position in light of these developments, and in 638 he issued the Ekthesis, which forbade discussion of the number of activities in Christ and supported Honorius’ doctrine of “one will” (monothelitism). In the same year, Sergius, Honorius, and Sophronius all died, and Sergius’ successor Pyrrhus supported the Ekthesis which found little opposition in the East. However, Honorius’ successors at Rome and the African monk St Maximus (who had been Sophronius’ disciple) opposed monothelitism and wrote extensively against it. This led the emperor Constans II (641–668) to forbid discussion of the number of wills in Christ in the Typos of 648, but Maximus and the pope St Martin held a Western council at Lateran in 649 which condemned monothelitism.

    The Typos led to a similar situation as the Henotikon a century prior, with division developing under the surface between monothelite Constantinople and dyothelite Rome, even though debate was forbidden. St Maximus’ continued vocal opposition to monothelitism led to his condemnation for rebellion against imperial policy, along with Sts Martin and Sophronius (posthumously), at a council in Constantinople in 662. There he was tortured and exiled, dying later in the same year, which is why he is remembered in the Church as Maximus “the Confessor.”

    When war with the Caliphate ended in 678, the emperor Constantine IV (668–685) finally addressed this internal division, and invited pope St Agatho to an ecumenical council where the number of wills in Christ would be discussed. At this council of Constantinople III (681), the bishops examined the writings of the Fathers, as well as those of Sts Sophronius and Maximus the Confessor. George of Constantinople and many other Eastern bishops became convinced of dyothelitism, and the monothelite Macarius of Antioch was deposed. This decision sealed off any hope of reunion with the miaphysites, but it officially settled Christology for the imperial, Chalcedonian Church.

“He has united the extremes in himself”

    Neo-Chalcedonian Christology was developed in opposition to Severus of Antioch, so we should make an effort to understand him first. For Severus, following the Cappadocian Fathers, ousia (i.e., essence) refers to what is universal (such as humanity) while hypostasis refers to what is particular (an individual human such as Paul). However, universals exist only as collections of particulars: humanity is nothing other than all humans who actually exist. [20] Physis (i.e., nature) might refer either to universal nature or a particular nature. Thus, his dilemma for Chalcedonians: if Christ is “in two natures,” are these universal or particular?

• If Christ is in universal divine nature and universal human nature, then (since universals exist only as collections of particulars) this means nothing else than that the entire Trinity is incarnate in all humans, which is patently ridiculous.

• If Christ is in particular divine nature and particular human nature (after the Incarnation), then this means nothing else than that Christ is a divine hypostasis and a human hypostasis, which is simply the heresy of Nestorius. [21]

Since Christ being “in two natures” is either ridiculous or heretical, he must be one nature, which (to avoid obviously heretical Eutychianism) must be a composite divine-human nature. However, we do say that Christ is “from two (particular) natures,” which is the same as saying “from two hypostases,” which means that before (i.e., conceived apart from) the union there is complete divinity and complete humanity, which are truly united to form one subject, “one hypostasis,” “one incarnate nature of the Word.” [22]

    The miaphysites who held to this Christology weren’t exactly viewed as heretics by Chalcedonians at the time. The word used to describe them was “hesitant” (diakrinomenos) or “dissident” (aposchistikos), which meant that they rejected Chalcedon (and communion with Chalcedonians) for invalid reasons. Their view that Christ is one composite nature from two natures, without confusing the divinity and humanity, was considered at best terminologically confused. The solution, then, was to clarify the terminology, which is exactly what neo-Chalcedonian theologians sought to do. Their job was to distinguish the logics of nature and hypostasis, such that Chalcedon’s formula of “two natures, one hypostasis” was shown not to be ridiculous or self-contradictory.

    It’s in the writings of St Maximus the Confessor, who stands at the apex of neo-Chalcedonian thought and bridges the fifth and sixth ecumenical councils, that the doctrine of the Incarnation reaches its fullest expression. We should therefore turn to him, without neglecting the neo-Chalcedonians who came before him. For these theologians (John of Caesarea and the two Leontiuses), there is no real difference between universal and particular nature: ousia/physis is what is common, which is not merely a collection of individuals, but is found wholly within each individual. [23] Thus, the humanity of Paul is not different from humanity in general. In contrast, hypostasis is the individual itself, in which the ousia/physis exists. Thus, the neo-Chalcedonians gave the term enhypostaton (“in-hypostasis”) a new technical meaning, to refer to individualized natures as they exist in a hypostasis. [24]

    St Maximus builds on these concepts in his Letter 15, written to explain Chalcedonian Christology to the new convert Cosmas, a deacon in Alexandria. He begins by stating:

According to the Fathers, the common and the universal, or general, are essence [ousia] and nature [physis], for they say that these things are identical to one another. The proper and the particular, on the other hand, are the hypostasis and the person [prosōpon], for these also, according to them, are identical to each other. (PG 19:545A) [25]

In support, he gives a series of quotations from Sts Basil the Great and Gregory the Theologian in which they distinguish between ousia as common and hypostasis as particular (545A–549A). [26] Maximus defines the hypostasis as “that which subsists by itself separately” (to kath’ auto diōrismenōs synestōs; 557D). It isn’t merely the combination of essence plus particular properties (although he does recognize that definition, 557D), but is the irreducible particular reality of a being (e.g., Amb 17.5-6; cf. Opusc 21, PG 91:248BC).

    Every really-existing essence is also enhypostatic, that is, it exists in a particular being (hypostasis). St Maximus defines the enhypostatic as “that which in no way subsists by itself but is seen in others, as the species is seen in the individuals under it” (557D–560A; cf. Opusc 14, PG 91:150BC). Conversely, every hypostasis is also en-essenced (enousion), that is, it has or exists in a specific essence/nature. St Maximus defines the en-essenced as something (i.e., a hypostasis) which not only has its own particular properties, by which it is distinguished from others, but also has an essence in common with others (Opusc 14, PG 91:152A).

    The two basic elements of Maximus’ metaphysics are essences, which only exist enhypostatically, and hypostases, which only exist en-essenced. Therefore, there are two (and only two) ways that things can be really united or “the same” (tauton) as one another: according to essence and according to hypostasis. Things which are the same according to essence (i.e., homoousios, consubstantial) are necessarily different according to hypostasis: for example, Peter and Paul, or God the Father and the Son (549B–552C). Things which are different according to essence can only be really united according to hypostasis (552C). The classic example of this is the human body and soul, which are very different in nature, but exist in and as a single person (552C–553C).

    Keeping this metaphysical background in mind, St Maximus summarizes the doctrine of the Incarnation in a single passage:

Teaching us expressly that he is perfect according to both nature and essence, according to which he is identical and consubstantial with the Father and the Spirit, and also according to person and hypostasis, according to which he is other than the Father and Spirit, the Word of God became man perfectly, preserving personal difference without confusion, being incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary. That is, he became perfect man through the assumption of flesh with an intellective and rational soul, the flesh receiving in him both nature and hypostasis – that is, being and subsistence – simultaneous with the very conception of the Word.

Seeing that it was the Word himself instead of seed – or better said, he was found willingly to be the seed of his own flesh – he, being by nature simple and uncomposite, became composite according to hypostasis. And thus, in the permanence of the parts from which he is constituted, he remained one and the same, unchanged, undivided, and unconfused. And in order that he might be, according to hypostasis, the “Mediator” between the parts from which he has been composed, he bridged the difference of the extremes in himself, making peace and reconciling human nature with God the Father through the Spirit.

Existing truly as God according to essence and becoming man truly by nature according to the economy, he neither divided his own parts that are different by nature, nor did he confuse them by their unity according to hypostasis. Instead, by the principle of the commonality of the parts from which he was composed according to essence, he was united with both the Father and with his Mother according to nature, and he was revealed as preserving the difference of the parts one to the other out of which he is composed. But by the principle of the particularity according to hypostasis of his own parts, he is distinguished from his extremes – that is, from the Father and from his Mother – and maintaining the oneness of his own hypostasis completely undifferentiated, he united his parts fully with one another in the extreme identity of person. (553C–556B)

    Let’s unpack this dense passage. Before (which, since God is outside time, really means conceived apart from) the Incarnation, the Son is a single person who is the same as the Father and the Spirit according to essence, and different from them according to hypostasis, by his particular property of being begotten by God. (This is standard trinitarian theology.) With the Incarnation, there is a human nature (that is, a body and a rational soul) which is enhypostatic in the same hypostasis of the Son. This humanity did not exist even for a single moment in a different hypostasis, but “the flesh was made particular by the Word himself according to hypostasis” (557D–560C).

    How is it possible for one hypostasis to have two different natures – which might be called “the logical problem of the Incarnation”? One solution might be that there is some commonality between divinity and humanity, which would mediate between Christ’s divinity and his body. [27] St Maximus unequivocally rejects this possibility: there is nothing in common between divinity and humanity, “except the hypostasis of the same natures [i.e., Christ]” (Disp Pyr, PG 91:296CD; cf. Amb 5.20). If the hypostasis is in two natures that are utterly different, then what is this hypostasis in itself? That’s the wrong question entirely, since “what” pertains to nature, while “which” (for impersonal things) or “who” (for persons) pertain to hypostasis, and the answer to “who” is precisely the Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son and Word of the Father.

    This is the fundamental insight of neo-Chalcedonian metaphysics. A nature, even an individualized nature, doesn’t explain the particular, concrete reality itself. This reality (i.e., hypostasis) presents itself to us as something utterly experiential and irreducible to nature, which can’t be abstracted as a “what,” but only revealed as a “who.” [28] Because hypostasis does not and cannot have any essential content in itself, it’s also fundamentally indifferent to nature. Therefore, there’s nothing impossible about one hypostasis existing in two natures – this is clear from the fact that a human person exists in and as body and soul, which are different in nature. The manner of the hypostatic union is, as the Fathers frequently say, impossible to describe (arrētos) – in the case of the human body and soul as well as Christ’s divinity and humanity – but it does not involve a logical contradiction. [29]

    All right, then: being divine and human in one hypostasis (i.e., one concrete reality), the real difference between Jesus Christ’s divinity and humanity does not divide him, nor does the fact that he is one and the same hypostasis confuse his natures (556B–557A). For this reason, to avoid either division or confusion, St Maximus says that both the expressions “two natures” and “one incarnate nature of the Word” (or, as he prefers to say, “one composite hypostasis”) are necessary; the miaphysites wrongly reject one in favor of the other (Letter 12, 477A–504C). According to his different essential properties, Christ is identical to God the Father and his mother Mary, while his divinity and humanity differ; and according to the same hypostatic properties, Christ makes his divinity and humanity identical, and he differs from God the Father and his mother Mary (Letter 15, 557AD). [30]

    Once again, for Maximus, the only ways for two things to be really united are according to essence or according to hypostasis. Since there’s no commonality between divinity and humanity, it’s not possible for God to be united to us according to essence. Thus, hypostatic union is the only way for God to be really united to humans. Christ is united to “the extremes” (i.e., God and humans) according to essence, and he has also united the extremes (i.e., divinity and humanity) in himself according to hypostasis, thereby making it possible for us to be really united to God the Father through him (556BD). Jesus Christ isn’t only “from two natures” or “in two natures,” he is his natures (as St Maximus frequently says), proving God and man to be one and the same according to the concrete reality of his hypostasis (573AC).

An aside: Contra Severum

    The rest of Maximus’ Letter 15, and most of his Letter 12, is dedicated to refuting Severus of Antioch’s miaphysite Christology. St Maximus points out that a number in itself is not a substance, and therefore has no power to act, nor is it an accident to be acted upon, so a mere number can neither divide in reality nor be divided (Letter 12, 473B–476D; Letter 15, 561C–564D). Number only indicates a quantity of real differences, and doesn’t indicate whether the realities that differ are one or divided. There is a difference between divinity and humanity, therefore, we must confess two natures without thereby dividing Christ (477A–481A; 564D–568C).

    Severus confusingly says that there is one nature in Christ, but two “natural qualities” (see his letters to Sergius the Grammarian). This makes no sense to Maximus – if, as Severus thinks, hypostasis and nature are identical, then a difference in natural quality implies a difference in hypostatic quality, which implies Nestorianism! (568D) But if there is no difference in hypostasis, then there can’t be a difference in natural quality either, which implies that Christ’s humanity and divinity are consubstantial, as Apollinarius said (569AB). And if Christ is a composite nature with both divine and human qualities, then he can’t be consubstantial with the Father, whose nature is not composite (569BC). Thus, the difference in Christ’s natural qualities must be grounded in two natures (569D–572A).

    Severus says that Christ is a composite nature, like human nature which includes body and soul. For every composite nature, the parts come into existence at the same time and involuntarily, and the nature is shared between multiple individuals (488C–489A). But Christ’s divinity and humanity did not come into existence at the same time, the Incarnation was a voluntary act of the Son, and “Christ” is not a species shared by multiple individuals (489A–492B). Therefore, it’s ridiculous to say that Christ is a composite nature like humanity; rather, just as body and soul come together in and as one human person, Christ’s divinity and humanity exist in and as one “composite hypostasis” (489CD).

“The whole Word wholly deified our whole nature”

    Why did St Maximus oppose monenergism and monothelitism so strongly? A central tenet of classical metaphysics is that natures ground powers (dynameis) which are expressed in activities (energeiai). [31] For the Cappadocian Fathers, the way we know that the Son and the Holy Spirit share the Father’s nature is that they cooperate in the same activities (e.g., Gregory of Nyssa, Letter to Eustathius). Likewise, St Maximus says that the only way we could know that Christ has a human nature is that he performs properly human activity.

The only valid proof that this [human] essence is present in its entirety moreover, is its natural, constitutive power, which one would not be mistaken in calling a “natural activity,” properly and primarily characteristic of the nature in question, since it is the most generic motion constitutive of a species, and contains every property that naturally belongs to the essence, apart from which there is only nonbeing, “since only that which has absolutely no being whatsoever” – according to that great teacher [Dionysius the Areopagite] – “has neither motion nor existence.” (Amb 5.2)

For how will he be God by nature and man by nature without possessing completely what belongs to each nature in its natural constitution? What and who will he be known to be – which is not subject to change – if this could not be confirmed by what he performs by means of his natural activities? How could each of the natures – from which, and in which he is constituted, and indeed which very things he is – how, I say, can these constitutive elements be confirmed if they are devoid of their natural motion and activity? (5.12)

    The more learned monenergists didn’t necessarily deny this tenet, but they proposed a few different ways that Christ could be fully divine and fully human, yet have one activity. Maximus addresses these in his Opusculum 5, which discusses three ways that Christ’s activity could be both “one and two”:

• Christ has one composite, divine-human activity. But since activity is grounded in nature, this would imply a composite, divine-human nature, which is absurd for the reasons he lays out in Letter 12: the parts of a composite nature (or activity) come into existence involuntarily at the same time, and this nature (or activity) is shared by multiple individuals. This is not true of Christ or his activity, which refutes the first option.

• Christ’s divine activity uses his human activity like an instrument. This instrumentality is either natural or artificial. If it’s natural, then it implies the same absurdity as a composite nature. If it’s artificial, then the divine and human either relate to one another as separate entities (which would be Nestorian) or as active agent to passive instrument (which would be Apollinarian, denying that Christ’s humanity has its own movement).

• Christ’s divine activity dominated his human activity. But domination implies “relation” (pros ti), and there can be no natural relation between divinity and humanity (only the identity of hypostasis). Any natural relation between divinity and humanity, even an asymmetric one, would imply mixture and change on the part of both natures. [32]

    This raises the question of how Christ’s divine and human activities are united, if there is no natural relation whatsoever between them. The answer is “according to hypostasis”! One and the same concrete reality, one person, acts divinely and humanly in an inseparable manner.

[There is] one Christ who works both divine and human things. He worked the divine things bodily, for the natural activity of the flesh did not lack the power to work miracles, and the human things divinely, for he willingly received the trial of human sufferings with authority and without natural constraint. (Letter 15, 573B; cf. Amb 5.12-19)

For example, Jesus walking on water “shows that the natural activity of his own flesh is inseparable from the power of his divinity,” since this requires both “transcendent power” and a body that can move from one place to another (Amb 5.7). [33] In short, Christ’s divine and human activities are wholly present in everything that he does.

    St Maximus refers to this as perichōrēsis, the mutual interpenetration of divinity and humanity in the one Christ, which importantly goes both ways: the human nature has also “penetrated throughout the whole” divine nature without change (Amb 5.14). This is what makes possible our union, as humans, with God – that “the Word became human so that we might become God,” or as Maximus often puts it even more provocatively, “we might become God to the same extent that he became human” – “the whole human wholly pervading [perichōrēsas] the whole God, and becoming everything that God is” (Amb 41.5). [34] This would not be possible if there were some natural relation by which Christ’s divine activity overpowered, or worse obliterated, his human activity. We can see why Maximus fought so strongly against monenergism: for him, “one activity” is an implicit denial of salvation itself!

    What about monothelitism (one will in Christ)? In his Disputation with Pyrrhus, St Maximus makes distinctions between the subject who wills (ho thelōn), the will itself (to thelēma), the manner of willing (to pōs thelein), and the object of willing (to thelēton). He also distinguishes between “natural will,” which is common to beings of the same nature – “the desiring capacity for natural existence [which] contains all the properties that essentially belong to an entity’s nature” (Opusc 3, PG 91:45D) – and “gnomic will,” by which individuals decide between goods of differing value – “having ignorance, doubt and opposition, since one only deliberates about something which is doubtful, not concerning what is free of doubt” (Disp Pyr, 308CD). In his most mature thought, Maximus denies that Christ has any gnomic will. [35]

     If Jesus has only one will, there are a few options (Opusc 3, 53C–55A). This could be a will belonging to a unique “Christ”-nature – but that would make Christ different in nature than both his Father and us. It could be a deliberative will – but that only belongs to an individual, which again would make his will different from the Father and the Spirit. It could be only a divine will – but then he couldn’t be subject to passions like hunger and thirst. It could be only a human will – but that alone could never perform miracles. It could be a composite divine-human will – but that could only belong to his hypostasis (since he is not a composite nature), which again alienates him from the Father. Thus, if Christ is complete in divinity and complete in humanity, he must have both a divine and a human will.

    How can these two wills be united in one person? Let’s consider Jesus’ prayer in the garden: “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I will, but your will be done” (Matt 26:39). The monothelites interpreted this to mean that his human will (“what I will”) was completely suppressed by his divine will, which he shared with the Father (“your will”). It should be clear why this isn’t an option for St Maximus: there can be no natural relation between Christ’s divine and human wills such that one overpowers the other. Instead, he says that Christ has one “deliberative will” and one “aim and intention” (Opusc 3, 56B) – what he calls in the Disputation “mode of willing” and “object of willing.” In other words, like Christ’s divine and human activities, his divine and human wills are never separated in reality, much less opposed, with regard to how and what he wills.

    The human natural will to avoid death, which Jesus exhibited in the garden of Gethsemane, isn’t wrong in itself or opposed to God, because “nothing natural is ever in any way opposed to God” (Opusc 3, 48D). But by purposely bringing this human will into alignment with the larger divine plan – “not what I will, but your will be done” – he thereby “wholly deified his natural will, bringing it into agreement with the divine will itself,” without suppressing it (Opusc 7, 80C–84D; cf. Opusc 3, 48AD; 6, 68AD). Although Maximus doesn’t use the term, this is perichōrēsis of the divine and human wills.  Thus, “the whole Word became substantial with our whole nature and thereby deified it wholly” (Opusc 6, 68C). As with monenergism, we see that, for St Maximus, monothelitism challenges salvation itself: it implies that we, as humans, can’t be fully united to God without our nature being suppressed!

Conclusion

     I might not have done the best job of showing it here, but the doctrine of the Incarnation isn’t really supposed to be metaphysically complex. Much like it is for the doctrine of the Trinity, the Nicene Creed is sufficient: there is one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, true God from true God, who took flesh from the Virgin Mary and became man, who was crucified for us, rose on the third day, ascended into heaven, and will come again. Also like the Trinity, the point of this is to explain how we can truly know and be united to God (the Father): because his Son, Jesus Christ, who is united to him in nature and will, came to share our nature as well and reveal him to us, that we might also be really united to the Father through him. (St Athanasius put it more succinctly: “the Word became human so that we might become God.”)

    The metaphysical speculation about the Incarnation, which came in the fifth through seventh centuries, was only meant to defend and give substance to this basic idea. How can divinity and humanity exist in one single person without dividing him into two? Conversely, how can one person be divine and human without confusing them into one? This led to a revolution in metaphysics, which made a crucial distinction between the concrete subject (hypostasis) and its individual nature (physis). [36] Because nature and concrete subject obey different, opposing logics, it’s possible for one subject to have (and be) two natures. The coexistence and mutual interpenetration of complete divinity and complete humanity in one subject, as St Maximus saw, is what makes our deification and real unity with God possible.

    Even so, the doctrine of the Incarnation doesn’t require us to know and understand all this philosophy. All that’s required of us is praise toward he who accomplished our salvation, our Lord Jesus Christ, one of the Holy Trinity, whose death on the cross for us destroyed death:

Only-begotten Son and immortal Word of God, / who for our salvation willed to be incarnate of the Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, / who without change became man and was crucified, / who are one of the Holy Trinity, glorified with the Father and the Holy Spirit, / O Christ our God, trampling down death by death, save us! [37]

______________________________

[19] This historical overview draws from Richard Price, The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553 (Liverpool University Press, 2009), 1-58; The Acts of the Lateran Synod of 649 (Liverpool University Press, 2014), 1-58; Sergey Trostyanskiy, Seven Icons of Christ, 225-255, 280-310.

[20] Johannes Zachhuber, “Personhood in miaphysitism: Severus of Antioch and John Philoponus,” in Personhood in the Byzantine Christian Tradition: Early, Medieval, and Modern Perspectives, ed. Alexis Torrance and Symeon Paschalidis (Routledge, 2018), 35-38; “Christology after Chalcedon and the Transformation of the Philosophical Tradition: Reflections on a neglected topic,” in The Ways of Byzantine Philosophy, ed. Mikonja Knežević (Sebastian Press, 2015), 113-119; The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics: Patristic Philosophy from the Cappadocian Fathers to John of Damascus (Oxford University Press, 2020), 119-144.

[21] Johannes Zachhuber, “Personhood in miaphysitism,” 35-36; “Christology after Chalcedon,” 113-115; this dilemma is presented in Leontius of Byzantium, Epilysis, PG 86:1916Bff; John of Caesarea, Apology 14.8.

[22] For example, see Severus of Antioch, Against the Impious Grammarian, Or. 11.22 which addresses the meaning of “from two natures.”

[23] Johannes Zachhuber, “Christology after Chalcedon,” 114-115; The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics, 189-217.

[24] Johannes Zachhuber, The Rise of Christian Theology and the End of Ancient Metaphysics, 196-214. The ingenuity of this is that the concrete subject (hypostasis) is now distinguished from the individualized nature (enhypostaton), which is made particular by the hypostasis. This makes it logically possible for two individual natures to exist in one subject.

[25] Translation from Panayiotis Hasiakos, Saint Maximus the Confessor: Christological Letters (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2026), 96-135.

[26] Basil the Great, Letter 214.4; 236.6; 52.3; 210.5; 125.1; Gregory the Theologian, Oration 20.6-7; 42.16; 39.11.

[27] This was proposed by Origen and, after him, St Gregory the Theologian, who saw Christ’s human mind as that which mediates his divinity and his body (On First Principles 2.6.3; Letter 101.8).

[28] This distinction was greatly developed by the neo-Chalcedonians, but it can be found as early as Aristotle who distinguishes between “the what it is” (to ti einai, i.e., essence or nature), and “a certain ‘this’” (tode ti, i.e., the reality itself). St Gregory of Nyssa adds “the how it is” (to pōs einai: Letter to Ablabius), which refers to the particular property by which the persons of the Trinity are distinguished, such as being begotten.

[29] One might object that it’s still a logical contradiction for contrary attributes (e.g., invisible and visible, unlimited and limited, impassible and passible, atemporal and temporal) to be predicated of one individual. However, this is true of the human unity of body and soul as well, because every human person is both immaterial and material (but according to different natures). Because hypostasis is completely indifferent to nature, there can be no contradiction between hypostasis and nature. Any contradiction would be due to a natural relation; for example, I and a dog can’t be the same hypostasis, because we both have a material nature and can’t be in the same place at once. But since, as Maximus says, there is no commonality whatsoever between divinity and humanity, Christ’s divinity and humanity cannot enter into any relation with one another according to nature, which means there can be no contradiction here.

[30] It seems to me Maximus is saying that the same particular property by which the Son is distinguished from the other persons of the Trinity – that is, being begotten by God the Father – also distinguishes his humanity from other humans. This would mean that the virgin birth, when Christ was begotten by God the Father in the Virgin Mary, is indispensable to the hypostatic union. When I asked Maximus scholar Jordan Daniel Wood what he thought of this reading, he responded with “a hearty ‘yes’” (pers. comm. 2026).

[31] This is clearly articulated by St Gregory of Nyssa in a fragment of a letter to Xenodorus preserved by St Maximus: “For we say that activity [energeian] is the natural power [dynamin] and movement of each essence without which a nature neither is nor is known.”

[32] This overview of Opusculum 5 relies on Jordan Daniel Wood, The Whole Mystery of Christ: Creation as Incarnation in Maximus Confessor (Notre Dame Press, 2022), 45-48.

[33] Likewise, Christ’s death most fully reveals him as the God-man, since he accomplished the salvation of the world (the most transcendent, God-befitting activity) by dying on a cross (the most finite, human activity). It’s here most of all that we must therefore acknowledge the communication of attributes: “one of the Trinity was crucified.”

[34] Jordan Daniel Wood, The Whole Mystery of Christ, 85-140.

[35] For an overview, see Christopher A. Beeley, “Natural and Gnomic Willing in Maximus Confessor’s Disputation with Pyrrhus,” Studia patristica 75 (2017): 167-180.

[36] Johannes Zachhuber, The Rise of Christian Theology.

[37] Justinian I, “Only-Begotten Son,” used in Byzantine rite liturgy.

The orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation (part 2 of 3)

Part One

    In this series of posts, we’re looking at the doctrine of the Incarnation as it was historically elaborated in the Christological controversies of the fourth through seventh centuries. We’ve already looked at St Cyril of Alexandria and the Nestorian controversy. St Cyril showed, against Nestorius, that Jesus Christ is one concrete subject from two natures, divinity and humanity, which he termed “hypostatic union.” As he frequently said, the difference between the natures is not confused by the union, but they cannot in any way be divided in reality. The divine Son of the Father and the human son of Mary are one and the same, whose life, death, and resurrection are what saves us and unites us to God.

    This certainly wasn’t the end of controversy, however. Shortly after Cyril’s death, in 448, a monk and archimandrite named Eutyches who had been a member of Cyril’s party against Nestorius was charged with heresy and brought before the synod of Constantinople. The bishops present there – led by St Flavian, bishop of Constantinople – concluded from Cyril’s Second Letter to Nestorius and the Formula of Reunion that it was necessary to confess Christ as “from two natures” and “in two natures” after the incarnation. Eutyches, on the other hand, said (when pressed) that “I confess that our Lord was from two natures before the union, but after the union, one nature”; and refused to think “that the body of our Lord and God was consubstantial with us.” [12] His condemnation for holding these views sparked another period of strife for the Church.

“He who is true God is also true human”

     In response to this judgment, Eutyches appealed to the bishops of Rome, Alexandria, Jerusalem and Thessalonica to vindicate him. This appeal was heard by the emperor St Theodosius II through the influence of Eutyches’ godson, the powerful eunuch Chrysaphius, at the emperor’s court. Theodosius II therefore called an ecumenical council at Ephesus to be held later in 449. The council of Ephesus (II) was to be chaired by Dioscorus, bishop of Alexandria, who had been a hardliner within Cyril’s party and saw this as an opportunity to defeat a new Nestorius (i.e., St Flavian) and get rid of the pesky Antiochene party with whom St Cyril had made peace in 433. Although the proceedings of Ephesus II were hotly contested afterward, Dioscorus was later – as Cyril had been at Ephesus I – accused of using force and intimidation at the council. Flavian was deposed and died under mysterious circumstances, while Domnus II of Antioch, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Ibas of Edessa, and others were also removed.

    Prior to Ephesus II, both Eutyches and Flavian had written to St Leo bishop of Rome to try and get him on their side. Leo concluded that Eutyches had fallen ignorantly into heresy in his old age and wrote a letter back to Flavian, now known as the Tome of Leo, to help teach Eutyches and bring him back to the orthodox faith. Dioscorus prevented this letter from being read at Ephesus II, and the deacon St Hilary, the Roman representative at the council, formally objected to the council and escaped with difficulty. [13] St Leo’s Tome was later read and proclaimed to be orthodox at the council of Chalcedon (451) which overturned Ephesus II. Thus, it’s worth looking at this text to discover the orthodox Christology that was presented at Chalcedon.

    The Tome begins with a condensed creed:

The whole multitude of the faithful... believes in God the Father Almighty, and in Christ Jesus his only-begotten Son our Lord, born from the Holy Spirit and Mary the Virgin – three declarations by which the machinations of virtually all the heretics are defeated. (2a) [14]

St Leo seeks to show that this creed implies the two natures of Christ. Because God is the Father, “the Son is also revealed as coeternal with him, in no respect differing from the Father, since he is God from God” (2b). It is the same subject, “the eternal only-begotten of the eternal Father,” who “was born from the Holy Spirit and Mary the Virgin; this birth in time neither subtracted anything from his divine and eternal birth nor added anything to it” (2b). Leo continues into soteriology: we could not defeat sin and death unless “he whom neither sin could defile nor death detain... [had] assumed our nature and made it his own” (2b).

    If the Creed isn’t enough for Eutyches, then the Scriptures also show that Jesus Christ was truly born as a human (2c). Matthew refers to “the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (1:1). Paul says that “his Son... came to be from the seed of David according to the flesh” (Rom 1:1-3). Abraham was promised, “In your seed all the nations will be blessed” (Gen 22:18), and that seed “is Christ” (Gal 3:16). Isaiah prophesied that “the Virgin will conceive in her womb and will bear a son, and they will call his name... God with us” (7:14), and “A child has been born for us... and they will call his name Angel of great counsel, mighty God” (9:6). This refutes Eutyches’ view that “the Word became flesh in such a way that Christ born from the Virgin possessed human form but did not possess the truth of his mother’s body” (2c). [15]

    Perhaps the reason Eutyches thinks “that Christ the Lord is not of our nature” is because of Luke 1:35, which says that the Holy Spirit would come upon Mary, so that the one who is born “will be called the Son of God.” But the uniqueness of Christ’s birth has no bearing on “the distinctive property [proprietas] of the race” (2d). “For the Holy Spirit gave the Virgin fruitfulness, but the truth of the body was taken from [her] body, and when ‘Wisdom built itself a house’ [Prov 9:1], ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’ [John 1:14], that is, in this body which he took from man and which he animated with the spirit of a rational life” (2d).

    Having proven that Jesus Christ is both truly divine and truly human, Leo describes the true unity of these two natures:

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’ [1 Tim 2:6], 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. (3a)

His statement about “each nature... coming together into one person [unum personam]” is unfortunately ambiguous, since the Latin persona can refer both to a person’s external manifestation (Greek prosōpon) and their concrete subjectivity (Greek hypostasis). Nestorius confessed that Christ is one prosōpon, but saw both a divine and a human hypostasis. This ambiguity may contribute to the later non-Chalcedonian claim that the Tome is Nestorian. However, since St Leo says that Christ is “one and the same,” it’s clear that he sees Christ as a single concrete subject.

    The “ours” in which Christ is complete is the nature that God created in the beginning and restored, not the sin which the devil added (3b). He thus “assumed the form of a servant without any defilement of sin, augmenting the human without lessening the divine” (3b). In other words, “the one who while remaining in the form of God created man, himself in the form of a servant became man”; neither nature or form is diminished by the presence of the other (3b). Because humanity was deceived by the devil and stripped of immortality, and God’s justice required the loss of our original honor, we needed “the dispensation of the ineffable mystery” so that God’s goodness would be revealed toward us and we could be restored (3c).

    The next section is the central part of the letter in which St Leo describes the “ineffable mystery,” that is, the Incarnation. It’s worth quoting in full:

Therefore the Son of God enters this lowly state of the world, descending from his heavenly throne without being separated from the glory of the Father, born by a new order and a new birth – by a new order because, although invisible in what is his own, he became visible at our level and, although incomprehensible, he willed to be comprehended and, while remaining eternal, he began to be in time and, although master of the universe, he received a servile form, after veiling the greatness of his own Godhead; the impassible God did not disdain being a passible man, nor the immortal one to submit to the laws of death. And he was born by a new birth, since inviolate virginity, without experiencing desire, provided the material of the flesh. There was taken from the mother of the Lord nature but not sin; nor, because in the Lord Jesus Christ born from the womb of the Virgin the generation is a marvellous one, is his nature for this reason unlike ours. For the one who is true God is himself also true man.

And there is no deceit in this union, in that both are with each other, both the lowliness of the man and the greatness of the Godhead; for just as God does not undergo change through compassion, so the man is not consumed by the greatness of divine dignity. For each form performs what is proper to it in communion 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. Just as the Word is inseparable from equality with the glory of the Father, so the body has not abandoned the nature of our race. For one and the same is truly Son of God and truly son of man, God in that ‘in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’ [John 1:1], man in that ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’ [John 1:14], God in that ‘through him all things came into being, and without him not one thing came into being’ [John 1:3], man in that ‘he came into being from a woman, and came into being under the law’ [Gal 4:4].

The generation of the incarnation is a display of human nature, while the childbearing of the Virgin provides an indication of divine power; and the infancy of the child is recognized through the meanness of the swaddling clothes, while the greatness of his majesty is shown by the voices of the angels. He whom Herod impiously plots to kill is like human beings newly born, but it is the master of the universe whom the Magi rejoice to worship with supplication. And when he came to the baptism of his forerunner John, in order that he should not escape notice because his Godhead was hidden by the veil of flesh, the voice of the Father resounding from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased’ [Matt 3:17]. Accordingly he who as man is tempted by the devil’s craftiness is served as God by the rank of the angels. For to hunger and thirst, to be weary and to sleep are confessedly human, but to satisfy five thousand men with five loaves and to give the Samaritan woman living water, which, when she drew it, made her never thirst again, to walk on the surface of the sea without one’s feet being wetted, and to still the surging of the waves by rebuking the swell is without doubt of God.

As therefore, to pass over most of the instances, it is not of the same nature to weep for a dead friend from a disposition of pity and, when the mound of a burial already four days old was demolished, to raise him up to new life by a command of the voice, or to be hung on the cross and to shake all the elements, changed from night to day, or to be pierced with the nails and to open the gates of paradise to the faith of the thief, so also it is not of the same nature to say, ‘I and the Father are one’ [John 10:30], and to say, ‘My father is greater than I’ [John 14:28]. 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. 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. (4)

    This passage of Leo’s Tome was controversial, both at the council of Chalcedon and afterward, as some saw the language of each nature “performing what is proper to it” (even though “in communion with the other”) as Nestorian. However, throughout the entire section, it’s one “he” who’s the subject of both divine and human activities. St Leo’s point is that we can – and indeed must – distinguish what is divine and what is human in Christ, even though these aren’t separable in reality. Each of the couplets shows that Christ’s human activities (e.g., being conceived) are performed divinely (e.g., by a virgin), and vice versa. Leo’s argument here, and the Tome as a whole, is summed up by his statement that “the one who is true God is also himself true man... one and the same is truly Son of God and truly son of man” (4ab).

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. Whence it is that in the creed itself we all acknowledge the only-begotten Son of God crucified and buried, according to that apostolic saying, ‘For if they had known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory’ [1 Cor 2:8]. (5a)

    In other words, the union of divinity and humanity in one person means that the attributes of both belong to one subject, so we can say that the Son of Man came down from heaven and the same Son of God was born, crucified, and buried. When Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?,” and Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” this shows that it’s necessary to confess one person as both Son of God and Christ (i.e., an anointed human; 5b). Likewise, when the Crucified one rose again, he appeared to his disciples by entering a room with a closed door, bestowing the Holy Spirit, and revealing divine secrets, while also showing the bodily wounds of his suffering. This was so “that we might learn in this way that the Word is not the same as the flesh, but might acknowledge that both the Word and the flesh are the one Son of God” (5c).

    Therefore, Eutyches is wrong when he “fails to acknowledge our nature in the only-begotten of God,” and he thereby denies that “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh” and “divides” him (1 John 4:2-3) from his humanity (5d). If he denies that Jesus has a truly human body, then he must also deny Jesus’ true suffering and true blood, despite Sts Peter and John (1 Pet 1:18-19; 1 John 1:7; 5:4-8) who say that we are saved by the blood of Jesus (5e). The faith of the Church is that “neither the humanity without the true divinity, nor the divinity without the true humanity, may be believed [to exist]” (5e). Eutyches’ statement, “I profess that our Lord was from two natures before the union, but after the union I profess one nature,” is therefore utterly reprehensible, and he should be taught and given the opportunity to repent (6).

“Leo and Cyril taught the same!”

    At the council of Chalcedon, the creeds of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381) along with the letters of St Cyril to Nestorius (Second Letter) and John of Antioch (Letter 39, with the Formula of Reunion) were read, all of which were acclaimed by the bishops (Acts of Chalcedon II.9-20). The Tome of Leo, which was prevented from being read at Ephesus II, was then read (II.21-22). According to the acts of the council, then “the most devout bishops exclaimed [among other things]... ‘Leo and Cyril taught the same’” (II.23). However, many hardline Cyrillians, both at the time and later, saw the Tome as Nestorian. So did St Leo and St Cyril really teach the same doctrine?

    Chalcedon wasn’t merely intended to be the victory of Leonine Christology (except, perhaps, for the emperor St Marcian whose main purpose was to reunite with the West). The council was really about who the genuine theological successors of Cyril were: the Alexandrian hardliners, like Eutyches and Dioscorus, who rejected union with the Antiochenes, or the more moderate Cyrillians who accepted “two natures” (when interpreted correctly)? In fact, the bishops were so loyal to St Cyril that even Theodoret of Cyrrhus, who had been one of Cyril’s chief opponents, had to quote him to defend the Tome (II.26). The Illyrian bishops, who were sympathetic to the hardline position, were given several days to examine the Tome and see if it agreed with Cyril (II.29ff). [16] Therefore, even if the Tome can be interpreted in a Nestorian way, the council was determined to accept it only as Cyrillian.

    How congruent really was St Leo’s Christology with St Cyril’s? On Cyril’s most important point – that the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, is one single subject – Leo was in perfect agreement. The Tome is clear that it is “the same eternal only-begotten of the eternal Father” who “was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary” (2b). It is “one and the same... ‘the man Christ Jesus’” to whom belongs contrary attributes, who is “able to die in respect of the [humanity] and not able to expire in respect of the [divinity]” (3a); and “one and the same is truly Son of God and truly son of man” (4b). The communication of attributes, which Cyril saw as the necessary result of Christ’s single subjectivity (and which Nestorius could not “strictly” support), is explicitly stated by Leo (5a).

    The controversial aspects of the Tome are the sections which stress Christ’s duality. The Illyrian and Palestinian bishops at Chalcedon objected to a few passages: “Christ Jesus would be able to die in respect of the [humanity] and not able to expire in respect of the [divinity]” (3a); “each form performs what is proper to it in association with the other, the Word achieving what is the Word’s, while the body accomplishes what is the body’s” (4b); “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” (4d). In response, Aetius of Constantinople and Theodoret of Cyrrhus cited similar statements from St Cyril:

...since his own body ‘tasted death by the grace of God on behalf of all’ [Heb 2:9], as Paul says, then he himself is said to have suffered death for our sake. This does not mean he underwent the experience of death in terms of his nature for it would be madness to say or think such a thing; rather, as I have said, it means that his flesh tasted death. (Second Letter to Nestorius 5)

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. (Letter 40.16)

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. (Scholia on the Incarnation 25)

    St Leo’s statement about Christ’s humanity and divinity performing different activities could indeed be interpreted in a Nestorian way. However, he goes on to say that these natures and activities belong to “one and the same,” and throughout this section it’s one “he” who is the subject of each activity. In Leo’s letter 124 to some non-Chalcedonian monks in Palestine (which came to be known as his Second Tome), he clarifies that “the person of the Word and the flesh is one, and both have their actions in common”; what we distinguish are “what it is that the flesh without the Word, or the Word without the flesh, does not do” (124.5). In other words, the incarnate Christ does nothing apart from both divinity and humanity, but we can discern (not separate in reality) the activities which are grounded in either the divine nature or the human nature.

    It’s clear that Cyril preferred not to speak of “two natures” since he saw this language as tending to divide Christ. At the same time, he accepted that this had an orthodox interpretation, since he accepted “two natures” in the Formula of Reunion and defended it against hardliners in his own party. In his letters to Acacius and Succensus, he emphasized that Christ’s union is “from two natures,” which are not divided “after the union” (44.6). Of course, this isn’t meant as a temporal sequence (i.e., that there were two separate realities which became one reality), but that we can mentally abstract divinity and humanity out of the one Lord Jesus Christ without dividing him: “before” and “after” refer to two different ontological levels rather than two different times. Thus in his writings, both before and after the controversy, St Cyril frequently distinguishes between Christ’s activities and sayings “as God” and “as man” while attributing them to one and the same subject. [17]

    This terminology (“from two natures,” not “after the union”) became a flashpoint for later controversy which led to Chalcedon. The Alexandrian hardliners saw the confession of St Flavian and other bishops, against Eutyches, that Christ is from and in two natures after the union as an admission that they divided Christ into two separate realities. Hence, Dioscorus insisted at Chalcedon, “I accept ‘from two’; I do not accept ‘two’” (Acts of Chalcedon I.332). In contrast, St Flavian and the others interpreted Eutyches’ refusal to accept Christ as in two natures after the union to mean that he denied any difference between humanity and divinity in Christ at all. St Leo even took Eutyches’ confession that “our Lord was from two natures before the union, but after the union, one nature” as referring to a temporal sequence, viewing it as a strange sort of adoptionism in which God and a man, existing separately, became one thing (Tome 6a).

    In summary, despite subtle differences in terminology, the teaching of St Leo and St Cyril was actually the same. This agreement in meaning between (orthodox) Alexandrians and (orthodox) Antiochenes was what Cyril himself recognized when he agreed to the Formula of Reunion, and the hardliners in his own party failed to see, which led to their eventual downfall at Chalcedon. The Chalcedonian Definition sums up this agreement well:

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. (Acts of Chalcedon V.34)

This definition uses terminology from both Alexandria (“one and the same... not parted or divided”) and Antioch (“consubstantial with the Father... consubstantial with us... in two natures”) to summarize a basically Cyrillian Christology. [18] There is one single subject, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is both truly God the Word and truly a human being, truly born from the Father and truly born from Mary, one and the same Son of God and son of man.

______________________________

[12] The deposition of Eutyches is recorded in the Acts of Chalcedon I.458-552, with interpolations from Ephesus II and Chalcedon.

St Cyril also never referred explicitly to two natures after the Incarnation, although he did speak of Christ’s divinity and his humanity as natures which were not confused by the union. Eutyches’ statement about two natures before the union and one nature afterward is more or less what Cyril said in his letters to Succensus. Eutyches’ mistake was to speak of “one nature” unqualifiedly rather than adding “incarnate” (as Cyril did), which the bishop Basil of Seleucia pointed out during the proceedings, but this is understandable since he confessed being unfamiliar with using the language of “natures” to refer to God. Eutyches did say that Christ is “perfect human” (teleios anthropos), so his denial that Christ’s body is consubstantial with us – which certainly went much further than St Cyril – is difficult to explain.

It’s unclear whether Eutyches actually held the heretical view attributed to him (that Christ has one divine nature and not a human nature). He was theologically untrained and his views were somewhat muddled. It looks like he was one of the Alexandrian hardliners who refused to accept the Formula of Reunion and saw it as a betrayal, which would explain why he was opposed to the language of “two natures” and double consubstantiality. His condemnation was ultimately because he refused to accept this language and to anathematize other Alexandrian hardliners, which threatened the reunion.

[13] Hilary apparently escaped by hiding in a chapel of St John, and brought letters from St Flavian and Eusebius of Dorylaeum (who had been Eutyches’ accusers) to the pope Leo which prompted him to refer to Ephesus II as a latrocinium (“robber council”). Hilary’s escape is commemorated by an inscription in the baptistry of the Lateran Basilica from after he became bishop of Rome, which reads, “To his liberator, blessed John the Evangelist, Hilary the bishop, slave of Christ.”

[14] Translation from Richard Price and Michael Gaddis, The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon (Liverpool University Press, 2005), 2:14-24.

[15] This view is taken from the acts of the home synod of Constantinople in 448, in which the bishop Eusebius of Dorylaeum claimed that, in conversation with him, Eutyches “acknowledged as perfect God and perfect man the one who was born from the Virgin Mary but [he] does not have flesh consubstantial with us” (Acts of Chalcedon I.359). During his own deposition, Eutyches said, “Till today I have not said that the body of our Lord and God is consubstantial with us, but I acknowledge that the Holy Virgin is consubstantial with us, and that our God was enfleshed from her” (I.516).

[16] Richard Price and Michael Gaddis, The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, 1:65-75.

[17] Daniel A. Keating, “The Christology of Cyril of Alexandria,” Religions 15 (2024): 688.

[18] The Definition even echoes language used by Dioscorus himself. In the first session of the council, he said, “We speak of neither confusion nor division nor change. Anathema to whoever speaks of confusion or change or mixture” (Acts of Chalcedon I.263); and the Definition refers to “two natures without confusion, change, division, or separation” (V.34).

The orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation (part 1 of 3)

    A few months ago, I attempted to explain the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity by drawing on the first- through eighth-century patristic tradition, especially St Gregory of Nyssa. [1] In this post, I will try to do the same for the doctrine of the Incarnation. As I said before, it’s wrong to view Christian theology as a logical ‘problem’ to be solved. Nor can theology be really separated into different fields like triadology, Christology, and soteriology, all of which are intimately bound up with one another and with Scripture and the liturgical life of the Church. The seven ecumenical councils weren’t discussing sterile logical propositions, but discerning and refuting errors about the hypothesis of the Christian faith himself, the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ, which challenged our salvation in him. [2]

    Our starting point, therefore, must be the Nicene Creed that is recited weekly by most Christians worldwide, which says about Jesus:

[I believe] in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten, begotten of the Father before all ages; light of light; true God of true God; begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father; by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man; and he was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried; and the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father; and he shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.

    The Fathers, especially St Cyril of Alexandria, also took the Creed as a starting point and saw it as sufficient for orthodox Christology. However, they encountered various errors that implicitly denied the truth of Christ, which forced them to elaborate the doctrine of the Incarnation and how it’s possible for God to become human. Here, we’ll go through a few key texts from the Christological controversies of the fifth to seventh centuries to better understand “the whole mystery of Christ,” as St Maximus the Confessor referred to the Incarnation.

Christology before St Cyril

    Prior to the fifth century, there wasn’t a lot of focus on the Incarnation proper: that is, Christ as God-man. [3] In the apostolic era, the main Christological controversy was about whether Jesus had a genuine physical body or only in appearance (docetism), and St John insisted that the Son of God really was “in the flesh” (1 John 4:1-3; 2 John 1:7; cf. Luke 24:39; John 1:14; 6:51-56; 1 Tim 3:16). The few Incarnational statements in the New Testament – “the Word became flesh” (John 1:1-18), “Christ Jesus… being in the form of God… taking the form of a slave” (Phil 2:6-8), “God sent his Son, born of a woman” (Gal 4:4-6) – are embedded in a larger narrative or exhortation.

    St Ignatius of Antioch, following his teacher, was a strong opponent of docetism and insisted on the real physical existence of Jesus Christ (Tral 10; Smyrn 1–7). Against false teachers (the docetists?), he says that “there is one Physician, both fleshly and spiritual, born and unborn, in humanity, divine, in death, true life, both from Mary and from God, first passible and then impassible: Jesus Christ our Lord” (Eph 7.2). [4] Ignatius’ attribution of apparently contradictory (both divine and human) predicates to one subject anticipates later Christological formulations.

    By the time of St Irenaeus of Lyons, the main challenge to proto-orthodoxy was gnosticism. Because the gnostics made a stark distinction between the God of spirit and the demiurge who made matter, some also (at least in Irenaeus’ view) divided Jesus Christ into two, between the fleshly Jesus and the Christ who descended upon him (Against Heresies 3.16.1). Against them, the bishop of Lyons repeats the refrain “one and the same”: the only-begotten Word of the Father is the very same one who was born of the virgin and became human (3.16-18). We know, therefore, that “there is one God, the Father, and one Christ Jesus [cf. 1 Cor 8:6]... the invisible becoming visible, the incomprehensible becoming comprehensible, the impassible becoming passible, and the Word human” (3.16.6). He became, says St Irenaeus, what we are, so that we may become what he is (3.19.1; 5.pref).

    Origen of Alexandria elaborates his incarnational Christology in his work of systematic theology, On First Principles. “The medium between all these created things and God [the Father]” is the Son of God, not by being an ontological intermediate between God and humanity, but by having emptied himself and become himself a human (2.6.1). What baffles the intellect is how one subject can be both divine and human: “If it thinks of God, it sees a mortal; if it thinks of a human, it sees him returning from the dead with spoils, having conquered the kingdom of death” (2.6.2). This is possible because the Word of God, from the beginning of creation, was perfectly united to his soul in its properties and moral disposition, like iron taking on the properties of fire (2.6.4-6). The soul mediated between the Word and his flesh, making it possible for him to become human (2.6.3). Origen’s view was not, of course, followed in all its details, but his emphasis on the human rational soul of Jesus Christ became an important part of later orthodoxy.

    The Arian controversy marked a turning point for Incarnation Christology. If Jesus is not as divine as the Father, but rather a created deity (even the greatest one), then it’s possible to see the Incarnation as an episode in the life of a single psychological subject, the Word, who begins as a god and then ensouls a human body (e.g., Eusebius of Caesarea, Church Theology 1.20.40-44). But if Jesus is “true God of true God [the Father],” then it’s no longer possible to view the Incarnation as a temporal movement from one state to another. Thus, after the victory of Nicene orthodoxy, the issue of the Incarnation came to the forefront. The main contributors to the fourth-century discussion were Apollinarius of Laodicea, Diodore of Tarsus, and St Gregory the Theologian. [5]

    Apollinarius emphasized the unity of Christ, to the point that, in his view, the communication of attributes applies not just to the person of Jesus Christ but his humanity and divinity. Thus, his flesh is eternal and descended from heaven, and his divinity was born from Mary. [6] There is, therefore, “one nature constituted out of both parts” (Union 5). Furthermore, as seen in the fragments of his writings, he believed that the Word took the place of the human spirit in his composite of body, soul, and spirit, since the natural human spirit is indelibly stained by sin. Because of this, Christ did not assume full human nature; indeed, Apollinarius can go so far as to say that Christ is “not a human” and “not of our nature” (e.g., Anak. 3; 23).

    Against him, Diodore of Tarsus stressed the full humanity, and the duality of Christ, to preserve the impassibility of the Word which he saw as challenged by Apollinarius’ view. Diodore argued that the attributes of the divinity and the humanity – and the various statements about Christ in Scripture – must not be confused, but rather attributed to different subjects, the “divine Word” and the “son of David” (BD 6). [7] The Word was not born, but rather his temple (the body), from Mary, who is therefore not strictly speaking theotokos (“birthgiver of God”: BD 1; cf. SD 2). Therefore, Christ is not “one and the same” (BD 26), but “one and another” (BD 2).

    St Gregory the Theologian opposes both of these views in his writings, especially his Letter 101 to the presbyter Cledonius. In this letter, he sets out his own view:

...we affirm and teach one and the same God and Son, at first not man but alone and pre-eternal, unmixed with body and all that belongs to the body, but finally human being too, assumed for our salvation, the same passible in flesh, impassible in divinity, bounded in body, boundless in spirit, earthly and heavenly, visible and known spiritually, finite and infinite: so that by the same, whole man and God, the whole human being fallen under sin might be fashioned anew. (4)

    He goes on to reject several claims: that Mary is not theotokos; that Christ passed through her like a channel; that his humanity was first formed and later assumed; that there are two Sons – because Christ is “one [thing] and another” (allo kai allo), not “one [person] and another” (allos kai allos), just as the Trinity is one person and another but not one thing and another –; that the man Jesus was “activated by grace” and not “united”; that the Crucified is not to be worshipped; that Jesus was made worthy of adoption; that Christ no longer has a body; that his flesh descended from heaven; and that he does not have a human mind (5). Most of these anathemas refute Diodore, but the last two or three refute Apollinarius. Against him, St Gregory insists that the Word and a human mind can occupy the same body because both are incorporeal (6–7). Clearly influenced by Origen, he says that the mind is precisely what mediates between Christ’s divinity and his body (8). If the human mind is stained by sin, then all the more it should be assumed by Christ to restore it: “what is not assumed is not healed, but what is united to God is being saved” (5; 8–10).

“The one Lord Jesus Christ must not be divided”

    So much for the doctrine of the Incarnation in the first through fourth centuries. Controversy sprung up again in the fifth century when Nestorius, the archbishop of Constantinople and indirect disciple of Diodore of Tarsus, claimed publicly that Mary cannot strictly (akribos) be referred to as theotokos: she “did not produce the Creator, rather she gave birth to the human being, the instrument of the divinity” (First Sermon Against the Theotokos). Whatever his actual views, Nestorius’ opponents, especially St Cyril of Alexandria, interpreted him as saying that Christ is two subjects, divine and human, who are united only by an external relation. [8] It’s undeniable that he stressed the duality of Christ to an extent that his real unity was called into question.

    St Cyril, archbishop of Alexandria, wrote three letters in response to Nestorius over the course of the controversy. The Second Letter to Nestorius was later canonized by the Councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451), and hence it is a genuine expression of the orthodox Christian faith. He begins by quoting the Creed of Nicaea (325):

Well, the great and holy Synod [of Nicaea] said that it was the Only begotten Son himself, naturally born from God the Father, true God from true God, light from light, through whom the Father made all things, who was the one who came down, was made flesh, was made man, suffered, rose again on the third day, and ascended into the heavens. We must follow these words and teachings, and realise what is meant by the Word of God being made flesh and made man. (3a) [9]

    His starting point is the creed worked out a century before him, because, as he wrote earlier, “we shall [expound the sound doctrine of the faith] most correctly if we are very careful, when we encounter the teachings of the holy Fathers, to hold them in the highest regard” (2). St Cyril was deeply concerned for his doctrine to be in line with the historical teaching of the Church and her bishops, especially as worked out at the council of Nicaea.

We do not say that the nature of the Word was changed and became flesh, nor that he was transformed into a perfect man of soul and body. We say, rather, that the Word, in an ineffable and incomprehensible manner, ineffably united to himself flesh animated with a rational soul, and thus became man and was called the Son of Man. This was not effected only as a matter of will, or favour, or by the assumption of a single prosopon. While the natures that were brought together into this true unity were different, nonetheless there is One Christ and Son from out of both. This did not involve the negation of the difference of natures, rather that the Godhead and manhood by their ineffable and indescribable consilience into unity achieved One Lord and Christ and Son for us. (3b)

    Here Cyril refutes the charges, laid against him by Nestorius, that he confused the divinity and humanity of Christ and that he was an Apollinarian. The Word did not unite to himself flesh alone, or flesh with an animal soul alone, but “flesh animated with a rational soul” (psychē logikē). Against Nestorius, this union wasn’t an external relation – whether an agreement of wills between the Word and the man, or favor bestowed on the man by the Word, or the manifestation of the Word and the man as a single persona (prosopōn) – but a “true unity” which is described as “hypostatic” (kath’ hypostasin). This means that a single concrete subject was formed out of “the divinity and humanity,” making “one Christ and Son out of both,” without thereby denying “the difference of natures” (tōn physeōn diaphoras).

For this reason, even though he existed and was begotten of the Father from before all ages, he is also said to have been begotten from a woman according to the flesh. This does not mean that his divine nature received the beginning of its existence in the holy virgin or that it necessarily needed a second generation for its own sake after its generation from the Father. It is completely foolish and stupid to say that he who exists before all ages and is coeternal with the Father stood in need of a second beginning of existence. Nonetheless, because the Word hypostatically united human reality to himself, ‘for us and for our salvation’, and came forth of a woman, this is why he is said to have been begotten in a fleshly manner. The Word did not subsequently descend upon an ordinary man previously born of the holy virgin, but he is made one from his mother’s womb, and thus is said to have undergone a fleshly birth in so far as he appropriated to himself the birth of his own flesh.

So it is we say that he both suffered and rose again; not meaning that the Word of God suffered in his own nature either the scourging, or the piercing of the nails, or the other wounds, for the divinity is impassible because it is incorporeal. But in so far as that which had become his own body suffered, then he himself is said to suffer these things for our sake, because the Impassible One was in the suffering body. We understand his death in the same manner. By nature the Word of God is immortal and incorruptible, and Life, and Life-giver, and yet since his own body ‘tasted death by the grace of God on behalf of all’ [Heb 2:9], as Paul says, then he himself is said to have suffered death for our sake. This does not mean he underwent the experience of death in terms of his nature for it would be madness to say or think such a thing; rather, as I have said, it means that his flesh tasted death. Similarly when his flesh was raised up, once again we say that the resurrection is his. This does not mean that he fell into corruption, certainly not, but again that his own body was raised. (4–5)

    This passage is key to understanding St Cyril’s Christology and his dispute with Nestorius. Cyril coins the term “hypostatic union” in this letter to indicate that the Word of God and the “flesh animated with a rational soul” are one concrete subject. Therefore, the body and the flesh are “his own” (to idion autou), and anything that is predicated of the body – birth from Mary, suffering, death, and resurrection – must also be predicated of the single subject, the Word, even though they don’t apply to “his own [divine] nature.” Nestorius, on the other hand, sought to precisely distinguish between the terms that applied to the humanity (e.g., birth, death) and the divinity (e.g., “God,” “Word”), versus the combination of both (e.g., “Christ,” “Son”). St Cyril saw the communication of attributes as absolutely necessary, because dividing the titles in this way implicitly denies the single subjectivity of Christ.

And so we confess One Christ and Lord. This does not mean we worship a man alongside the Word, in case the shadow of a division might creep in through using the words ‘along with’; rather that we worship one and the same because the body of the Word, with which he shares the Father’s throne, was not alien to him. Again this does not mean two sons were sharing the throne, but one, because of the union with the flesh. But if we reject this hypostatic union as either impossible or unfitting, then we fall into saying there are two sons, and in that case we will be compelled to make a distinction and say that one of them was really a man, honoured with the title of Son, while the other was the Word of God who enjoyed the name and reality of Sonship by nature. (6)

    Nestorius also accepted “one Christ,” and “Lord,” and “Son,” because he applied these titles to the conjunction of the two natures. However, Cyril clarifies that we “do not co-worship [symproskynountes] a man with the Word.” He prefers to not use the term “with” (syn) at all, since this could be taken to imply division between two subjects in Christ. Instead, we should speak of the “union with his own flesh” (henōsis meta tēs idias sarkos) or “the hypostatic union” (tēn kath’ hypostasin henōsin), which makes it clear that Christ is one concrete subject.

And so, we must not divide the One Lord Jesus Christ into two sons. To hold this in no way benefits the correct exposition of the faith, even if certain people do declare a unity of personas; for the scripture did not say that he united the persona of a man to himself, but that he became flesh [John 1:14]. Yet the Word ‘becoming flesh’ means nothing else than that ‘he shared in flesh and blood like us’ [Heb 2:14], and made his very own a body which was ours, and that he came forth as man from a woman, although he did not cast aside the fact that he is God, born of God the Father, but remained what he was even in the assumption of the flesh. Everywhere the exposition of the orthodox faith promotes this doctrine. We shall also find that the holy Fathers thought like this, and this is why they called the holy virgin ‘Mother of God’. This does not mean that the nature of the Word or his divinity took the beginning of its existence from the holy virgin, rather that he is said to have been born according to the flesh in so far as the Word was hypostatically united to that holy body, which was born from her, endowed with a rational soul. (7a)

    St Cyril concludes his letter by defending Mary’s title theotokos, which is what sparked the controversy in the first place. The reason this title is so important is because of the communication of attributes: if the Lord Jesus Christ is one subject, rather than a “unity of personas” (prosōpōn henōsin; i.e., an external relation between two subjects), then everything which applies to his body also applies to himself. It was therefore God the Word himself who was borne by the holy Virgin Mary. Nestorius’ denial of this implies the division of the one Lord Jesus Christ, which was Cyril’s central concern from the very start of the Christological controversy.

“Let the heavens rejoice!”

    St Cyril held a council of Egyptian bishops in Alexandria in 430 to address the Christological issue, and the synod composed a letter to Nestorius which is known as Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius. This letter is more or less an extended discussion of the same issues as the Second Letter, but with twelve anathemas attached to the end. These anathemas were taken by Antiochene theologians, such as Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Andrew of Samosata, to mean that Cyril was confusing Christ’s divinity and humanity, and he had to write several works to defend them. Especially his fourth and twelfth anathemas came under scrutiny:

If anyone interprets the sayings in the Gospels and apostolic writings, or the things said about Christ by the saints, or the 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.

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.

    These could be taken in the sense of Apollinarius, that is, that the communication of attributes applies even to Christ’s divinity and humanity, so that it can be said his flesh is eternal and his divinity suffered. However, St Cyril clearly didn’t mean that in context. Even earlier in this letter, he distinguishes between “the humanly” and “the godly sayings,” and what is said “in a God-befitting way” versus “when not despising the limitations of the humanity,” while emphasizing that both are “attributed to one person and one incarnate hypostasis of the Word” (Third Letter 8). Likewise, in his Explanation of the Twelve Chapters, he makes clear that “we apply all the sayings in the Gospels, the human ones as well as the ones befitting God, to one person” (14), and that the divine nature is impassible, but the Word of God made passible flesh “his own” in which he suffered and died (31).

    Even so, this widened the rift between the Alexandrian and Antiochene schools. The council of Ephesus in 431 only worsened the situation, because – although the reports about why this happened differ – Cyril began the proceedings of the ecumenical council, and Nestorius was deposed, before the Antiochene bishops arrived. When the Antiochene bishops finally showed up, they held their own opposing council which deposed Cyril instead. This led to a rift in communion between Alexandria and Antioch. However, under imperial pressure toward unity, the two groups worked toward a compromise and finally found a statement of faith that convinced both St Cyril of Alexandria and John of Antioch of the other’s orthodoxy. This Formula of Reunion is preserved in Cyril’s letter to John, which begins, “’Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad,’ for... all difference of opinion has been removed”:

And so we confess that Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, is perfect God and perfect Man, of a rational soul and body. He is born of the Father before the ages according to the Godhead, and the same one in these last days for us and for our salvation was born of the virgin Mary according to the manhood. The same one is consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the manhood, for there was a union of the two natures, and this is why we confess One Christ, One Son, One Lord. According to this understanding of the unconfused union we confess that the holy virgin is the Mother of God, because God was made flesh and became man, and from the very moment of conception he united to himself the temple that was taken from her. As for the evangelical and apostolic sayings about the Lord, we are aware that theologians take some as common, as referring to one prosopon, but distinguish others as referring to two natures; that they interpret the God-befitting ones in accordance with the Godhead of the Christ, and the humble ones in accordance with the manhood. (Letter 39.5)

This statement removes all question of both Apollinarian and Nestorian heresy from either group. On the one hand, the Lord Jesus Christ is “perfect human, from a rational soul and body,” and “consubstantial with us according to his humanity.” On the other, “the same one” was begotten by the Father and by Mary, and Mary is truly theotokos since “God the Word was made flesh and made human.”

    Because of the language of “two natures” in this statement, especially that sayings are “distinguished as referring to two natures,” this was interpreted by some in the Alexandrian party as a betrayal of St Cyril’s earlier principles. In fact, as we saw, even in the Third Letter he distinguished “God-befitting” sayings and “humanly” sayings about Christ. Cyril frequently refers to Christ’s divinity as “his own nature,” and sometimes speaks of his flesh or body as having “its own nature” or “our nature” (esp. see Festal Letter 17), which therefore also belongs to Christ. This language can be found from his earliest to his latest writings, and he even says (when explaining Luke 2:52) that Jesus allowed “the nature like ours to move according to its own laws” (Festal Letter 17.2.8; cf. Comm John 14:20). In all of his writings, St Cyril conceives of Christ as a single separate reality in whom divinity and humanity exist unconfused. [10]

    In his letters to Eulogius and Succensus (letters 44–46), Cyril defends his acceptance of Antiochene “two natures” language against members of his own party. Here is his answer in part:

...even if [Nestorius] does speak of two natures to signify the difference between the flesh and God the Word. For the nature of the Word is one thing, and that of the flesh quite another. But Nestorius does not confess the union along with us. We unite these realities and confess that the self-same is one Christ, One Son, and One Lord, and we confess moreover that there is one incarnate nature of the Son; just as one might say in regard to an ordinary man who results from different natures, that is body and soul. Our intellect and deductive ability recognises the difference, but we unite them and then recognise the single nature of man. This is why to acknowledge the difference of the natures is not to divide the one Christ into two. (44.1)

As I have said, if we understand the manner of the incarnation we shall see that two natures come together with one another, without confusion or change, in an indivisible union. The flesh is flesh and not Godhead, even though it became the flesh of God; and similarly the Word is God and not flesh even if he made the flesh his very own in the economy. Given that we understand this, we do no harm to that concurrence into union when we say that it took place out of two natures. After the union has occurred, however, we do not divide the natures from one another, nor do we sever the one and indivisible into two sons, but we say that there is One Son, and as the holy Fathers have stated: One Incarnate Nature of The Word. (45.6)

These passages make clear that Cyril’s concern is with the division of Jesus Christ into two subjects, and not the difference between Christ’s divinity and humanity (cf. Contra Nestorium 2.6), even though in his own language he prefers not to refer to the divinity and humanity as “two natures.”

    His affirmation of “one incarnate nature of the Word” seems at odds with this, and in his own writings from prior to the controversy over “two natures,” he prefers to use the language of “hypostatic union” instead. [11] St Cyril mistakenly believed that “one incarnate nature of the Word” was a phrase used by St Athanasius, when in fact it is from Apollinarius’ Letter to Julian; because he thought that this phrase was from the Fathers, he found it useful for defending his own view against other Alexandrian theologians. However, when he explains this phrase in his second letter to Succensus, he is clear that “one nature of the Word” refers to Christ’s divinity, while “‘incarnate’ implies the whole system of the economy with flesh,” including the rational soul, sufferings, and consubstantiality with humanity (46.2ff).

    In summary, St Cyril of Alexandria’s main Christological insight is that the Lord Jesus Christ is one concrete subject who cannot be divided. Nestorius’ claim that the Virgin Mary is not “strictly” theotokos implies, in Cyril’s view, that Jesus Christ who was born from her is not “strictly” God. To divide the sayings about Christ is to implicitly divide him into more than one subject. This is unthinkable for St Cyril because the entire economy of salvation is that the Word of God, the Son of the Father, is one and the same as Jesus, the son of Mary, who died for us and rose on the third day, thereby redeeming us from death and raising our nature.

Part Two

______________________________

[1] See part 1 of my post, in which I explained the monarchy of the Father (that the one God = the Father), and part 2 in which I showed how the Trinity is (the) one God. St Athanasius sums up trinitarian theology much more concisely in his first letter to St Serapion of Thmuis, in an excerpt which is one of the readings for the Catholic Office for Trinity Sunday (see here, second reading), often quoted as “Light, radiance and grace are in the Trinity and from the Trinity.”

[2] For a great overview of the ecumenical councils and their theology, see Sergey Trostyanskiy (ed.), Seven Icons of Christ: An Introduction to the Oikoumenical Councils (Gorgias Press: 2016).

[3] For this overview of Christology prior to the fifth century, I’m heavily relying on John Behr, The Way to Nicaea (St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001); The Nicene Faith (St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004).

[4] εἷς ἰατρός ἐστιν, σαρκικός τε καὶ πνευματικός, γεννητὸς καὶ ἀγέννητος, ἐν ἀνθρώπῳ θεός, ἐν θανάτῳ ζωὴ ἀληθινή, καὶ ἐκ Μαριας καὶ ἐκ θεοῦ, πρῶτον παθητὸς καὶ τότε ἀπαθής, Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς ὁ κύριος ἡμῶν. Don’t read too much into St Ignatius’ statement that Christ is “unborn” (agennētos), since the hard distinction drawn in the fourth century between agenētos (uncreated) and agennētos (unbegotten) had not been drawn yet.

[5] For a great overview of the fourth-century Christological debate, see Christopher E. Beeley, “The Early Christological Controversy: Apollinarius, Diodore, and Gregory Nazianzen,” Vigiliae Christianae 65 (2011): 376-407.

[6] This is most clearly seen in Apollinarius’ work On the Body’s Union with the Divinity in Christ, written around 370, which is precisely about his view of the communication of attributes.

[7] Christopher E. Beeley, “The Early Christological Controversy,” 388-390.

[8] This seems correct to me. In the same sermon, Nestorius says that “the incarnate God did not die, but he raised up the one in whom he was incarnate”; that the Incarnation is like if one person, while remaining what he is, lifts up another hurt person by joining body to body; that Christ “assumed the person of the debt-ridden nature... assumed a person of our same nature”; that he worships the man Jesus “as the instrument of the Lord’s goodness... the one who is borne because of the one who carries him... the one I see because of the one who is hidden”. He never refers to two prosōpa (“persons”), which St Cyril accuses him of believing, but this is because, in his ontology, prosōpon is not a real being but an external manifestation, which is one in the case of the Son of God and Son of Man (e.g., Bazaar of Heraclides 58). The union of prosopōn is not natural, but voluntary, on the part of “the natures” even after the union (Bazaar 47). For a more detailed overview of Nestorius’ metaphysics and Christology, see Sergei Trostyanskiy, Seven Icons of Christ, 119-139.

[9] Translation from John A. McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy: Its History, Theology, and Texts (Brill: 1994), 262-265.

[10] See especially Hans van Loon, The Dyophysite Christology of Cyril of Alexandria (Brill, 2009).

[11] Hans van Loon, The Dyophysite Christology of Cyril of Alexandria, 521-530.