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.
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]
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]
[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]
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[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.
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