CHAPTER III: THE DOCTRINE OF THE PERSONAL UNION OF THE DIVINE AND HUMAN NATURES IN THE

THE DOCTRINE OF THE PERSONAL UNION OF THE DIVINE AND HUMAN NATURES IN THE INCARNATE SON OF GOD. __________________________________________________________________

The course of theological development in ecclesiastical antiquity may in some parts be compared to the windings of a descending spiral. Starting from any given point we seem to be always getting further away, and finally we come back to it again; only we are a stage lower down. The great Trinitarian controversy of the Fourth Century has its starting-point in the Christological doctrine of Paul of Samosata: Christ, the deified man inspired by the power of God and one with God in loving affection and in energy of will. Opposed to this doctrine was the belief that Christ is co-substantial with God, the Theos homoousios, who has become man. This article of faith established itself after Arianism and other middle doctrines had been rejected. But when in the course of the development both the perfect Godhead and the perfect humanity of Christ had been elevated to the rank of an article of faith, it looked as if the unity could be secured only by once more following the path taken by Paul of Samosata, by emphasising the spiritual and moral unity of God and man. This idea of the unity was indeed made more difficult now that the God in Christ had to be conceived of as a personal being, but any other unity no longer offered itself to thinking people who were unwilling to give up clear views on the subject. And it was still permissible to hold this view of the unity; for though the doctrine of Apollinaris had been repudiated, no fixed idea was thereby arrived at as to the nature of the union of the divine and the human. All the conceivable forms in which the conception of the union of the divine and the human might be put, were still at anyone's disposal, especially as no single term was yet in regular use.

As it was the Antiochian Apollinaris who worked out to its logical conclusion the doctrine of the Trinity as regards Christology, so it was his compatriots who worked out to its logical conclusion the formula "perfect God and perfect man." This conclusion was indeed the opposite of the doctrine of Apollinaris. He had shewn every clear thinker that it was impossible to carry out the idea of the incarnation without deducting something from the essence of humanity, and that the incarnate one could have only one nature (mia phusis). But if the human nature in the incarnate one was nevertheless to be complete,--and the Church maintained that it was,--then the conception of the incarnation would have to get a new form. And if piety should suffer in the process, well, there was and there still is a stronger interest than that of piety--namely, that of truth. __________________________________________________________________

§ 1. The Nestorian Controversy.

I. The most zealous opponents of Apollinaris were his compatriots and scientific friends, the Antiochian theologians, distinguished by methodical study of Scripture, sober thinking in imitation of Aristotle, and the strictest asceticism. They alone had during many decades worked out the Christological dogma in a scientific way in opposition to Arius and Apollinaris. Following the example of Diodorus of Tarsus, Theodorus of Mopsuestia treated it with the greatest fulness by making use of the philosophical theological fundamental conceptions which Paul of Samosata had already employed, and by turning to account the biblical results of the exegetical labours of the school of Antioch. The Antiochians based their position on the Homoousios and did not wish either to interfere with the divine personality of the Logos. But at the same time they fully accepted the perfect humanity of Christ. The most important characteristic of perfect humanity is its freedom. The thought that Christ possessed a free will was the lode-star of their Christology. To this was added the other thought that the nature of the Godhead is absolutely unchangeable and incapable of suffering. Both of these thoughts have at least no concern with the belief in the real redemption of humanity from sin and death through the God-man. The Christology of the Antiochians was therefore not soteriologically determined; on the contrary, the realistic-soteriological elements were attached to it by way of supplement. [331]

In the view of the Antiochians it followed from the premises above mentioned, that Christ possessed, strictly speaking, two natures and that the supposition of a natural union (henosis phusike, henosis kath' hupostasin) was prejudicial both to the humanity and the divinity of Christ, as the doctrines of Arius and Apollinaris shewed. It was, on the contrary, necessary to maintain that the God-Logos assumed a perfect man of the race of David and united him with Himself. He dwelt (enoikesis) in the man Jesus from the time of the conception. This indwelling [332] is to be conceived of according to the analogy of the indwelling of God in men generally. It is not a substantial indwelling, not kat' ousian, for this involves a transmutation or else limits the God-head. Nor is it any mere indwelling of inspiration, but a gracious indwelling,kata charin (kat' eudokian), i.e., God out of grace and in accordance with His own good pleasure has united Himself with the man Jesus in the way in which He unites Himself with every pious soul, only that in the case of Jesus the union was besides a perfect one in virtue of the perfection of his piety. It is to be thought of as a species of combination (sunapheia), or we may express it thus: God dwells in the man as in a temple. [333] The human nature, therefore, as nature remains purely unchanged, for grace leaves the nature as it is. This nature, then, like all human nature, was also a free self-developing nature. As man Jesus Christ had to pass through all the stages of moral growth as a free self-acting agent. Over him and in him God did undoubtedly always hold sway as a supporting power, but He did not interfere with the development of the character belonging to his human nature, which by independent action confirmed itself in the good.

In accordance with this the union was only a relative one (henosis schetike) and was at the outset only relatively perfect, i.e., the God-Logos united Himself with the man Jesus as early as the time of his conception, forseeing of what sort he would be (kata pro?gnosin hopoios tis estai), but this union merely began then in order to become a more intimate union at every stage of the human development. [334] It consisted in the common feeling and energy of the two natures as well as in the common direction given to the will; it was therefore essentially a moral union. By means of it, however, there appeared at the close of the human development of Jesus and in virtue of the elevation which was granted to him as the reward of his perseverance, a subject or individual worthy of adoration, (I separate the natures, I unite the adoration: chorizo tas phuseis, heno ten proskunesin). Still we must not speak of two sons or two lords, but, on the contrary, we have to adore one person, whose unity, however, is not a substantial one, but kata charin. The formula of the distinction of the natures and the unity of the person is to be found in Theodore. But the unity of the person is the unity of names, of honour, of adoration. [335] Since, however, each nature in Christ is at the same time person, it was here that the peculiar difficulty of the Antiochian Christology made its appearance. The union does not at bottom result in any unity of the person; it is merely nominal. The Antiochians had two persons in Christ, a divine and a human (duo hupostaseis or prosopa). When, spite of this, they spoke of one, this was really a third, or rather, to put it more correctly, it was only in the combination (sunapheia), and indeed in the last resort it was only in the relation of believers to Jesus Christ that the latter appeared as a unity.

It was in accordance with this that the conception of the Incarnation took its shape. Two natures are two subjects; for a subjectless or impersonal spiritual nature does not exist Since accordingly one subject cannot become the other, for if it did it would either have to cease to exist itself or would have to transform itself, it is also impossible that the Logos can have become man. It is only in appearance that He became something through the incarnation, through "becoming man"; in reality He assumes something in addition to what He had. Since the sphere of the unity is solely the will, the attributes, experiences, and acts of the two natures are to be kept strictly apart. It was the man only who was born; it was he who suffered, trembled, was afraid, died. To maintain that this could be said of God is both absurd and blasphemous. So too accordingly Mary is not to be called the mother of God, not at least in the proper sense of the term. [336] But the Christian adores Jesus Christ as the one Lord, because God has also raised to divine dignity the man who in feeling was united with the Logos so as to form a unity.

In accordance with this conception, though certainly invitis autoribus, the humanity in the person of Christ came again to the front as a humanity which experienced merely the effects produced by the divine Logos who remained in the background. Since the distinction between person and nature was not fundamental, was not made in a realistic way, that is, and since the possibility of the substantial union of two persons was denied as we can see already from the case of Paul of Samosata, since further, in opposition to Paul, the Godhead in Christ was recognised as being a substantial Godhead, unity was not attained, as opponents at a later time justly observed. When again, as in the case of the Antiochians, an approach was made towards this unity, then the divine factor, contrary to the pre-supposition which was strictly clung to, threatened to become an inspiring and supporting power, and hence the reproach brought against them of Ebionitism, Somosatenism, Photinianism, or of Judaising. It would appear that the Antiochians rarely took the doctrine of redemption and perfection as the starting-point of their arguments, or when they did, they conceived of it in such a way that the question is not of a restitution, but of the still defective perfection of the human race, a question of the new second katastasis. The natural condition of humanity, of which liability to death forms a part, can be improved; humanity can be raised above itself by means of a complete emancipation from the sense life and by moral effort. This possibility, which lies open to everyone who summons up courage to raise himself by the exercise of free will above his inherited nature, has become a fact through Christ the second Adam. This fact has an immeasurable significance, for its effects now uphold everyone who honestly strives so to raise himself. The second Adam who has already appeared will once more appear from heaven epi to pantas eis mimesin agein heautou--in order to bring all to imitate him. He already points out to all "the path to the angelic life", and, judging from the way in which they sometimes work out the thought, it almost looks as if in the view of the Antiochians the whole thing reduced itself to this alone. The hints given here towards a spiritual conception of the redemption through Christ have not, as one can see, resulted from perceiving that everything depends on a transformation of the feelings and will, and in the case of the Antiochians themselves they have by no means entirely displaced the realistic and mystical conception of redemption. In the indefinite form which is peculiar to them, they were thoughts of reason and results of exegesis, but not thoughts of faith. We hail them as cheering proofs of the fact that the feeling of the spiritual character of the Christian religion had not at that time wholly died out amongst the Greeks; but there can be no doubt of this, that these Antiochians were further away from the thought of redemption as the forgiveness of sins and regeneration than from the idea of a realistic redemption. While in Christology they illustrated in an admirable way the weak side and in fact the impossibility of this idea, they did not understand how to point these out in reference to soteriology itself. The latter was with them always vague and tinged with a strongly moralistic element. Its connection with the Christology was loose and indefinite, while the development of the latter in the form of positive doctrines was no less questionable, contradictory and uncouth than the theses of their opponents; for the Antiochians out of one being made two and thereby introduced an innovation into the Church of the East. Only Gnostics had before them taught the doctrine of two strictly different natures in Christ. The fact too that the redemption work of Christ was essentially attributed to the man Jesus and not to God was a further innovation. It was a flagrant contradiction that Theodore would not entertain the idea of two Sons although he assumed the presence of two natures and rejected the thought of an impersonal nature. But though we might criticise the Christology of the Antiochians still more severely, we must not forget that they held up before the Church the picture of the historical Christ at a time when the Church in its doctrinal formulæ was going further away from Him. One has indeed to add that they also directed attention to the incomprehensible essence of the God-Logos which ostensibly remained behind this picture, and did not on that account possess the power of presenting the historical Christ to the minds of men in a forcible way. But still that these theologians should have done what they did at that time was of immeasurable importance. It is to them the Church owes it that its Christology did not entirely become the development of an idea of Christ which swallowed up the historical Christ. And there is still something else for which these Antiochians are to be praised. Although they professed to preserve the traditional elements of dogma as a whole, they nevertheless essentially modified them by perceiving that every spiritual nature is a person and that what gives character and value to the person is feeling and will. This view, which was inherited from the Adoptionists and Paul, restores to the Christian religion its strictly spiritual character. But the Antiochians as Easterns were able to get possession of this knowledge only in a way which led from religion to moralism, because they based the spiritual on freedom, while again they understood freedom in the sense of independence even in relation to God. It was Augustine in his thought of liberty as "adhærere deo" and as "necessitas boni" who first united the most ardent piety with the recognition of Christianity as the spiritual-moral religion. It is, however, worth remembering that alone of all the Easterns the Antiochians and the theologians who sympathised with them took an interest in the Augustinian-Pelagian controversy--though they undoubtedly sided with Pelagius. For this interest proves that spite of the Eastern fog of mysteries, they were accessible to the freer air in which that controversy was fought out. Their opponents in the East wished to have mystery and spiritual freedom side by side; they, however, strove to lift the whole of religion up into the sphere of the latter--and they led it in the direction of moralism. [337] What confused the Antiochian theology and involved it in contradictions was apparently the load of tradition, i.e., the adhesion to the belief that Jesus Christ possessed a divine nature. This belief, however, constituted the strong foundation of the theology of their opponents. Their Christology was built up on this thesis. For the Antiochians it was simply a fact to which they had to adapt themselves, although they had not themselves felt its truth in this form.

The view adopted by the Alexandrians, above all by Cyril, is undoubtedly the ancient view, that namely of Irenæus, Athanasius, and the Cappadocians, even when we make allowance for the falsification of tradition by the Apollinarians. The interest they had in seeing in Christ the most perfect unity of the divine and human, and therefore their interest in the reality of our redemption, determined the character of the development of the doctrines. Up till the year 431, and even beyond that time, this was wanting in formal thoroughness and scientific precision. This is as little an accident as the fact that Athanasius supplied no scientific doctrine of the Trinity. The belief in the real incarnation of God was only capable of the scientific treatment which Apollinaris had given it. If this were forbidden then theologians were debarred from all treatment of the subject with the exception of the merely analytic and descriptive or scholastic mode of treatment. This latter was not, however, yet in existence. But also apart from this, belief in the real incarnation simply demanded a forcible and definite statement of the secret, nothing more: siope proskuneistho to arreton--let the secret be adored in silence. We must live in the feeling of this secret. This is why Cyril also stated his faith in what was essentially a polemical form only; he would not have taken long to have given a purely positive statement of it. Therefore it is that without knowing it he has recourse to Apollinarian works when he wishes to bring forward a plain and intelligible formula in opposition to the Antiochians and so to make the mystery clearer--and he is continually in danger of over-stepping the limits of his own religious thought--and therefore it is finally, that his terminology has so little fixity about it. [338] Still he vindicated the religious thought of Greek piety: ("If the God-Logos did not suffer for us in a human way then He did not accomplish our salvation in a divine way, and if He was only man or a mere instrument then we are not truly redeemed." "Our Immanuel would not in any way have benefited us by His death if He had been a man; but we are redeemed because the God-Logos gave His own body to death.") Neither Cyril's personal character nor the way in which he devised and carried on the controversy ought to be allowed to lead us astray as regards this fact: for his Christianity did not succeed in making him just.

It was as easy for Cyril to formulate the thought of faith as it was for Athanasius and the Cappadocians. Faith does not in his case start from the historical Christ, but from the Theos logos, and is occupied only with Him. By the Incarnation the God-Logos incorporated with Himself the whole human nature and still remained the same. He did not transform Himself, but He took up humanity into the unity of His substance, without losing any of it; on the contrary, He honoured it and raised it into His divine substance. He is the same with human nature as He was before the Incarnation, the one indivisible subject which merely added something to itself just in order to take up into its nature this something thus added. Everything which the human body and the human soul of the God-Logos endured, He Himself endured, for they are His body and His soul. [339] The characteristic moments in this conception are "one and the same" (heis kai ho autos) that is, the God-Logos, "the making the flesh His own by way of accommodation" (idian poiein ten sarka oikonomikos), "He remembered who He was" (memeneke hoper en), "out of two natures one" (ek duo phuseon heis), or "the joining of two natures in an unbroken union without confusion and unchangeably" (suneleusis duo phuseon kath' henosin adiaspaston asunchutos kai atreptos), "the Logos with His own flesh" (ho logos meta tes idias sarkos), hence the "physical union" (henosis phusike) or "hypostatic union" (kath' hupostasin), and finally, "one nature of the God-Logos made flesh" (mia phusis tou Theou logou sesarkomene), [340] yet "not so that the difference of the two natures is done away with by the union" (ouch' hos tes ton phuseon diaphoras aneremenes dia ten henosin). Cyril scarcely touched upon the distinction between phusis (ousia) and hupostasis, which had nevertheless already come to be current among the Antiochians so far as Christology was concerned; still he never says "of two hypostases" (ek duo hupostaseon) or "a union in nature" (henosis kata phusin). [341] He was not able to make that distinction, because in his view phusis and hupostasis meant the same thing as applied to the divine nature, but not as applied to the human. What rather is really characteristic in Cyril's position is his express rejection of the view that an individual man was present in Christ, although he attributes to Christ all the elements of man's nature. [342] For Cyril, however, everything depends on the possibility and actuality of such a human nature, on the fact, namely, that in Christ a hypostatic union was reached and that this union forthwith purified and transfigured human nature generally. Christ can be the second Adam for men only if they belong to him in a material sense as they did to the first Adam, and they do belong to Him materially only if He was not an individual man like Peter and Paul, but the real beginner of a new humanity. Cyril's view, moreover, was determined as a whole by the realistic thought of of redemption. [343] Still it is not a matter of accident that he so frequently uses sarx for "human nature", although in opposition to Apollinaris he acknowledged the human conscious soul in Christ. It was only sarx, that he could freely employ straight off in this connection, not pneuma and psuche. The proposition that before the Incarnation there were two phuseis, but after it only one, is, however, of special importance for Cyril's conception of the Incarnation. This perverse formula, which Cyril repeats and varies endlessly, regards the humanity of Christ as having existed before the Incarnation, and therefore in accordance with the Platonic metaphysic, but does not do away with the humanity after the Incarnation, on the contrary, it merely transfers it entirely to the substance of the God-Logos. Both natures are now to be distinguished theoria mone--a phrase which he uses very frequently, i.e., it is in virtue of the physical or natural unity that the Logos has actually become man. This physical unity does not, however, mean that the Godhead thereby becomes capable of suffering: but the Logos suffers in His own flesh and was born of Mary as regards His own humanity. He is thus God crucified, (Theos staurotheis)--the Logos suffered without suffering, i.e., in His flesh (epathen o logos apathos, i.e, en sarki)--and Mary is theotokos, in so far as the sarx, which she bore constitutes an indissoluble unity with the Logos. (What belonged to the Logos thus became the property of the humanity, and again what belonged to the humanity became the property of the Logos--gegone toinun idia men tou logou ta tes anthropotetos, idia de palin tes anthropotetos ta autou logou). Therefore this sarx of Christ can in the Lord's Supper be the means of producing divine life, although it has not disappeared as human flesh. [344]

Is this conception Monophysitism? It is necessary to distinguish here between the phraseology and what is actually stated. As regards their actual substance all conceptions may be described as Monophysite or Apollinarian which reject the idea that Christ was an individual man; for between the doctrine of the hypostatic union and the most logical Apthartodocetism there are only grades of difference. No hard and fast line can be drawn here, although very different forms of monophysitism were possible according as the consequences of the Incarnation for the divinity of Christ on the one hand, or for His humanity on the other were conceived of in a concrete way and definitely stated. But according to ecclesiastical phraseology only those parties are to be described as monophysite who rejected the deliverance of the Council of Chalcedon. But this deliverance presupposes the existence of factors which did not yet lie within the mental horizon of Cyril. In these circumstances we must content ourselves with saying that nowhere did Cyril intentionally deviate to the right hand, or to the left, from the line of thought followed by the Greek Church and its great Fathers in their doctrine of redemption. He was a Monophysite in so far as he taught that the Logos after the Incarnation continues to have as before one nature only; but as the opponent of Apollinaris he did not wish to mix the human nature with the divine in Christ. [345] The assertion of a perfect humanity, unmingled natures, must be allowed to stand, for it is really impossible to put in an intelligible form any part of these speculations which treat of substances as if they had no connection whatever with a living person. It is really not any more difficult to put up with the contradiction here than it is to tolerate the whole method of looking at the question. Both constitute the great mystery of the faith. Monophysitism, which limits itself to the statement that in Christ out of two perfect natures, divinity and humanity, one composite or incarnate divine nature has come into existence, and which will have nothing to do with the idea of a free will [346] in Christ, is dogmatically consistent. It has indeed no longer the logical satisfying clearness of the Apollinarian thesis; it involves an additional mystery, or a logical contradiction, still in return for this it definitely put into words the by no means unimportant element of "perfect humanity". But this Monophysitism, when distinctly formulated as henosis phousike, certainly made it plain to the Greeks themselves that it was no longer possible to reconcile the Christ of faith with the picture of Christ given in the Gospels; for the idea of the physical unity of the two natures and of the interchange of properties, which Cyril had worked out in a strict fashion, swallowed up what of the human remained in Him. Arrived at this point three possible courses were open. It was necessary either to revise the doctrine of redemption and perfection which had the above-mentioned statement as its logical result--a thing which was not to be thought of,--or else theologians would have to make up their minds still further to adapt the picture of the historical Christ to the dogmatic idea, i.e., to destroy it altogether, which was logical Monophysitism, or finally, it would be necessary to discover a word, or a formula, which would mark off the dogma of faith from Apollinarianism with still greater sharpness than had been done by the catchword "perfect humanity". It was therefore necessary to intensify the contradictions still further, so that it was no longer only the concrete union of the natures which appeared as the secret, but the conception of the union itself already involved a contradictio in adjecto and became a mystery. If it could be maintained that the natures had become united without being united, then on the outside everything seemed to be as it should be, and Apollinaris was as certainly beaten as Paul of Samosata--and this was maintained. But certainly no pupil of Athanasius or Cyril hit on a notion such as this, which paralysed the force of the thought: logus sarkotheis. A danger lurked here which had finally a momentous result. The expression of the faith which was constantly being burdened with fresh contradictions so that no legitimate element might be wanting to it, had to forfeit its strength. [347] Its place was finally taken by a complicated formula which it was no longer possible to make one's own through feeling, the mystery of conceptions put in the form of concrete ideas. If theologians might no longer teach as Apollinaris taught and in fact no longer quite in the way in which Cyril taught, they saw themselves under the necessity of using a complicated formula. But to begin with it seemed as if Cyril had carried his point. [348]

The controversy broke out in Constantinople and was throughout carried on with ambitious designs and for the purposes of ecclesiastical policy. In the person of Nestorius an ascetic Antiochian was again raised to the dignity of Bishop of Constantinople (428). The bishop of the capital just because he was the bishop was an object of jealousy to the Alexandrian Patriarch and as an Antiochian he was doubly so. A conceited preacher and one who plumed himself on being an enemy of heretics, but not a man with any meanness about him, Nestorius, who was supported by his presbyter Anastasius, gave offence in the capital by using the catchwords of the Antiochian dogmatic and by the contest he engaged in against the description of Mary as theotokos. With great frankness Nestorius described the statements regarding the God who was wrapped in swaddling clothes and fastened to the Cross, as heathen fables. His Christology [349] was that of Theodore; it cannot be said that he developed it further; on the contrary, one can see the influence of Chrysostom. Nestorius seems scarcely to have mentioned the human development of Jesus, and he seems to have laid greater emphasis on the idea of the union than Theodore ("one Christ"), if also only in the form of the sunapheia and proskunesis; but he was, above all, concerned in getting rid of "the corruption of Arius and Apollinaris." Cyril took advantage of the excitement in the Capital, which would perhaps have quieted down spite of some unruly priests and monks, in order to stir up the Egyptian monks, the Egyptian clergy in Constantinople, and the imperial ladies. The result was an angry correspondence with Nestorius, who was, moreover, protected by the Emperor. Cyril wrote in a more dignified way than his rival, but the hierarchs since the days of Cyprian had always known better how to take up an outwardly dignified attitude than their opponents. The narrow-minded patriarch of the capital was characterised by a simple pride. [350] He expressed himself in an inconsiderate and imprudent way in his letters, and his conduct in his diocese was no less inconsiderate and imprudent, for there he went on with the work of deposition and attacked "Apollinarianism" as if it had been a red rag.

The formula employed by the two opponents were no longer very different. Everything depended on how they were accentuated. Both spoke of two natures and one Christ, and the one wished as little to be an Apollinarian as the other did to be a "blasphemous" [351] Samosatene. Cyril did not deny that the God-head was incapable of suffering, and Nestorius was prepared to use even the formula theotokos with a qualification. [352] But in reality they were undoubtedly separated from each other by a deep gulf represented in the former case by the henosis phusike, (the physical union,) and in the latter by the henosis kata sunapheian, (the union by combination,) and they can scarcely be blamed if they indulged in specious arguments; for both views were intelligible only when one went behind the formulæ, and in the case of many if not actually in that of the leaders, ideas which went a great deal further were as a matter of fact concealed behind the formulæ.
[353] Nestorius addressed himself to the Roman bishop Coelestin as a colleague of co-ordinate rank, Cyril did the same soon after as an informant moved by a sense of duty, and therewith the controversy came to have a universal importance. But owing to the interference of the Roman bishop on behalf of Cyril it also took a wholly unexpected turn; for there is not perhaps in the history of dogma a second fact of equal importance which so thoroughly deserves to be pronounced a scandal nor one which at the same is so little to the credit of its author, as the interference of the Pope on behalf of Cyril.

He had indeed sufficient reason for doing this. Since the time of Athanasius and Julius, and in fact from the days even of Demetrius and Fabian, it had always been the traditional dogmatic policy of the Roman Chair to support the Alexandrian Patriarch, as conversely the latter in his struggle against the ambitious patriarch of New Rome necessarily looked for his natural ally in old Rome. [354] Further Nestorius had shewn himself unwilling to excommunicate right off the Pelagians who had been condemned by the Pope and who had fled to Constantinople. Finally, he had not in his writing generally given token of the submission which the Apostolic Chair already demanded. But what does that signify in face of the fact that Coelestin in interfering on behalf of Cyril disowned his western view and in the most frivolous fashion condemned Nestorius without having considered his teaching. That he did both things may be easily shewn. In his letter to the Pope Nestorius laid before the latter the formula "utraque natura quae per conjunctionem summam et inconfusam in una persona unigeniti adoratur"
[355] ("the two natures which, perfectly joined together and without confusion, are adored in the one person of the only-begotten"). This was substantially the Western formula, and Coelestin himself held no other view. [356] He did not, however, trouble himself about the formula, put his own Christology on one side and declared in favour of Cyril, while he made everything depend on the one point "theotokos" in order at least to produce an appearance of difference, although this was just the very point regarding which Nestorius was prepared to make concessions.

The Pope had determined to put down Nestorius. A Roman Synod (430) demanded of him immediate recantation on pain of excommunication. As if by way of insult Cyril was charged by the Pope himself with the duty of carrying the sentence out. Nestorius himself, whose Church was revolutionised, now urged the Emperor to call a General Council, and in addition to this collected a number of accusations against Cyril for the way in which he had discharged the duties of his office. To the twelve anathemas which an Alexandrian Council under the presidency of Cyril had served on him, and which embodied the teaching of Cyril in sharply cut phrases (theotokos gegenneke sarkikos sarka gegonota ton ek Theou logon--henosis kath' hupostasin--henosis phusike--sarx tou kuriou zoopoios,--the mother of God bore flesh born after the manner of flesh, the Logos of God--hypostatic union--natural union--the life-giving flesh of the Lord) he replied by twelve counter-anathemas. [357] This sealed the breach. The Emperor, displeased with Cyril, summoned a Council to meet at Ephesus at Whitsuntide 431. Cyril who appeared with some 50 bishops, here shewed how an Emperor, such as Theodosius was, ought to be treated. Without waiting for the arrival of the Syrians under John of Antioch, the cautious friend (?) of Nestorius, [358] the Egyptian party supported by the bishop of Ephesus, Memnon, on its own authority and spite of the opposition of the Imperial commissioner, constituted itself the Council, treated Nestorius who naturally did not appear at this meeting, but waited in the city for the Syrians, as an accused person, approved of all Cyril's declarations as being in harmony with Holy Scripture and the Nicene Creed, pronounced the deposition of Nestorius and declared him to have forfeited priestly fellowship. In opposition to this petty assembly, which did not set up any new creed, but which on the contrary took up the position that the sole question had reference to the Nicene Creed which was in danger, Nestorius and his friends, as soon as the Syrians arrived, held the legal Council under the presidency of the Imperial Commissioner and pronounced sentence of deposition on Cyril and Memnon. It was only now that the Papal legates arrived in Ephesus and they at once took the side of Cyril. [359] In accordance with their instructions they reopened the case pro forma, in order to exalt the authority of the Apostolic Chair. Cyril's party complied with this, and the Legates then agreed to everything which had been done, after all the documents had been once more read over. [360] With the cry, "the whole Council thanks the new Paul Coelestin, the new Paul Cyril, Coelestin the guardian of the faith, Coelestin who concurs with the Council: One Coelestin, one Cyril, one faith of the Council, one faith of the whole world," [361] this assembly closed, which sought to maintain the ancient Nicene faith and did maintain it, at which, however, there was no discussion, but at which unanimity was reached solely on the basis of a selection of authorities. [362]

The following will be found in the historical accounts. The Emperor, instead of standing up for the right, allowed himself to be overawed. At first it is true the resolutions of Cyril's Council were annulled, but thereafter the controversy was to be settled in true Byzantine fashion by the removal of the leaders. The Emperor gave the force of law both to the deposition of Cyril and Memnon and to that of Nestorius. The Alexandrians, however, were united and followed one master, but this was not the case with the opposite party. Nestorius who was violent but not tenacious, resigned; soon, however, his isolation was to change to imprisonment. In the eyes of the Emperor the doctrine which he represented was by no means condemned; but Cyril succeeded in getting permission to resume possession of his bishopric, and by means of intrigue and bribery his party continued more and more to gain ground at the Court and the capital. Still he could not reckon on a victory as regards the dogmatic question; he had to be content with knowing that a man who was acceptable to him occupied the chair of Constantinople. The Emperor sought to bring about a union, and the friends of Nestorius became disunited. One section under the leadership of John of Antioch was prepared to come to terms, and to this party Theodoret, [363] the most distinguished Antiochian scholar, also belonged, though undoubtedly with a certain reserve. Another section actively resisted. Cyril's behaviour in the year 432-433 is little to his credit. To him it was of more importance to get the condemnation of his mortal enemy, Nestorius, carried through in the Church, than to preserve his dogmatic system pure. Thus he subscribed the creed submitted by the moderate Antiochians, without, however, retracting his earlier opinions, and in return for this got some of the heads of the opposite party, above all, John of Ephesus, to abandon Nestorius. Cyril could save his consistency by interpreting this Antiochian creed in accordance with his Christology; the friends of Nestorius were not able to escape the disgrace which they had brought upon themselves by their treachery towards their ill-used friend. But in a question which was for him a matter of faith Cyril had agreed to a compromise, in proof of the fact that all hierarchs are open to conviction when they are in danger of losing power and influence. [364] He could, moreover, reckon on the victory of his opponents being a Pyrrhic victory. His own reputation and that of his dogmatic system went on increasing; thousands of monks were busy spreading it, and Cyril himself was constantly working at the Court and in Rome. The condemnation of Nestorius was followed by the most disgraceful treatment of the unfortunate bishop. In consequence of the confusion which arose because he was condemned while his teaching was tolerated by others, the whole party was weakened; the strict Nestorians separated from the others,
[365] and since Cyril had not been under the necessity of retracting anything, he was able to direct his energies towards getting the decrees of his assembly accepted as orthodox, as ecumenical decrees, under cover of the union-creed. He did actually succeed in a few years in getting this done in the East; in the West they had ranked as such from the first. The situation continued to be perplexed and became more and more disingenuous. __________________________________________________________________

[331] In respect of scientific method we may regard Paul of Samosata, Dorotheus, Lucian, the Lucianists such as Arius and Eusebius of Nicomedia, Eusebius of Emesa, Theodore of Heraklea, Eustathius, Marcellus, Cyril of Jerusalem, Apollinaris, Diodorus, Theodore, Polychronius, Chrysostom; Theodoret, etc., as forming a union of like-minded scholars as opposed to the school of Origen. Regarded in a theological aspect their differences are manifold. Diodorus of Tarsus (+ shortly before 394) and his school constitute a special group here. Diodorus "the ascetic who was punished in his body by the Olympian gods", was the recognised head. His numerous works, of which only fragments are preserved, are specified in the Diction. of Chr. Biogr. I., p. 836 sq. He was as prolific an apologist, controversialist, and dogmatist as he was an exegete. His most important pupils were Theodore of Mopsuestia (+ 428) and Chrysostom. The former is the typical representative of the whole tendency. Of the astounding mass of his works a good deal has been preserved. To what is printed in Migne, T. 66, we have to add, above all, the edition of his commentary on the Pauline letters by Swete, 2 vols., 1882; the fragments of the dogmatic works are given in the second volume, pp. 289-339. Sachau edited, in 1869, Syrian fragments with a Latin translation; in addition Bäthgen in the Ztschr. f. Atlich. Wissensch. V., p. 53 ff., Möller, in Herzog's R.-Encykl. XV. 2, P. 395 ff.; Gurjew, Theodor von Mopsu., 1890 [Russian]. On the Antiochian School Münscher (1811), Kihn (1866), Hergenröther (1866). Specht, Theodor v. M. u. Theodoret, 1871; Kihn, Theodor v. Mops. 1880. Glubokowski has written a very comprehensive and thorough monograph on Theodoret in Russian (2 vols. 1890). Bertram, Thedoreti doctrina christologica. Hildesiæ, 1883. On Theodoret's brother, Polychronius, see Bardenhewer, 1879. Chrysostom did not take any part in the work of giving Christology a sharply outlined form. Theodoret taught the same doctrine as Theodore, but finally capitulated.

[332] Athanasius also used the word in a natural way, e.g., de incarn. 9.

[333] Athanasius also employed this image, e.g., l.c. c. 20.

[334] It was always and from the first dependent on God's good pleasure in the virtue of the man Jesus; for to Theodore the general proposition held good without any exception that God bestows grace solely in proportion to the free exercise of virtue. Grace is always reward; see the large fragment from the seventh book of the work peri enanthropeseos in Swete II., p. 293 sq. Theodore paid special attention to the baptism of Jesus also.

[335] "Unam offer venerationem."

[336] The designation theotokos was already quite current about 360. Instances of its use at an earlier period may be found in Pierius and Alexander of Alexandria, see accordingly Julian c. Christ., p. 276 E.

[337] Compare, above all, the full Confession of Theodore in Mansi IV., p. 1347 sq. (Hahn, § 139) which gives an admirable view of the Christology of Theodore and of its tendency. The word sunaptetthai (sunapheia) occurs more than a dozen times (so far as I know the word is first found within Christology in a fragment of Hippolytus [ed. Lagarde, p. 202]; hina ho prototokos Theou prototoko anthropo sunaptomenos deichthe, Julius Afr. in his letter to Aristides [ed. Spitta, p. 121] uses sunapheia in the sense of blood-relationship); logos anthropon eilephe teleion ek spermatos onta Abraam kai Dauid is the principal thesis (also teleion ten phusin). The exaltation is strongly emphasised; then we have: dechetai ten para pases tes ktiseos proskunesin, hos achoriston pros ten theian phusin echon ten sunapheian, anaphora Theou kai ennoia pases tes ktiseos ten proskunesin aponemouses. Kai oute duo phamen huious oute duo kurious . . . kurios kat' ousian ho Theos logos, ho sunemmenos te kai metechon theotetos koinonei tes huiou prosegorias te kai times; kai phia touto oute duo phamen huious oute duo kurious. In what follows the doctrine of the two sons is again disowned and this with a certain irritation, as is also the idea that our Sonship can be compared with that of Christ, (monos exaireton echon touto en te pros ton Theon logon sunapheia tes te huiotetos kai kuriotetos metechon, anairei men pasan ennoian duados huion te kai kurion). Theodore thus did not teach the doctrine of two sons, one natural and one adopted, but that of one son who communicated his name, his authority, and his glory to the man Jesus in virtue of the sunapheia. This was indeed the impossible shift of one in a dilemma. At the end of the Creed the doctrine of the two Adams--a specially Antiochian doctrine cf. Apoll.--and that of the two states are developed in detail. The commentaries of Theodore ought to be studied in order that it may be seen how gnome and mimesis--as opposed to phusis--were for him the main thing. Both in our case and in that of Christ everything was to depend upon freedom, disposition, and the direction of the will. In what follows I quote some passages from the dogmatic works of Theodore by way of explaining and illustrating the account given in the text; Diodorus is in complete agreement with Theodore so far as it is still possible for us to check his statements. Theodore, de myster. I. 13 (Swete, p. 332): "Angelus diaboli est Samosatenus Paulus, qui purum hominem dicere præsumpsit dominum J. Chr. et negavit existentiam divinitatis unigeniti, quæ est ante sæcula"; cf. adv. Apollin. 3 (Swete, p. 318), where Theodore places Paul together with Theodotus and Artemon and condemns him. Theodore, peri enanthropeseos 1. 1 (Swete, p.291): "præcipuum Christo præter ceteros homines non aliquo puro honore ex deo pervenit, sicut in ceteris hominibus, sed per unitatem ad deum verbum, per quam omnis honoris ei particeps est post in coelum ascensum"; l. 2 (p. 291): "homo Jesus similiter omnibus hominibus, nihil differens connaturalibus hominibus, quam quia ipsi gratiam dedit; gratia autem data naturam non immutat, sed post mortis destructionem donavit ei deus nomen supra omne nomen . . . o gratia, quæ superavit omnem naturam! . . . sed mei fratres dicunt mihi: "non separa hominem et deum, sed unum eundemque dic, hominem dicens connaturalem mihi deum"; si dicam connaturalem deum, dic quomodo homo et deus unum est? numquid una natura hominis et dei, domini et servi, factoris et facturæ? homo homini consubstantialis est, deus autem deo consubstantialis est. Quomodo igitur homo et deus unum per unitatem esse potest, qui salvificat et qui salvificatur, qui ante sæcula est et qui ex Maria adparuit"? l.c. 1. 2 (p. 292): "quando naturas quisque discernit, alterum et alterum necessario invenit . . . hoc interim item persona idem ipse invenitur, nequequam confusis naturis, sed propter adunationem quæ facta est adsumpti et adsumentis . . . sic neque naturarum confusio fiet neque personæ quædam prava divisio, maneat enim et naturarum ratio inconfusa et indivisa cognoscatur esse persona; illud quidem proprietate naturæ . . . illud autem adunatione personæ, in una adpellatione totius considerata sive adsumentis sive etiam adsumpti natura"; l.c. 1. 7 (p. 294): ousia men oun legein enoikein ton Theon ton aprepestaton estin . . . oute ousia legein oute men energeia hoion te poieisthai ton Theon ten enoikesin (both would draw him into the sphere of ananke and limit him). Delon oun hos eudokia legein ginesthai ten enoikesin prosekei, eudokia de legetai he ariste kai kalliste thelesis tou Theou hen an poiesetai arestheis tois anakeisthai auto espoudakosin apo tou eu kai kala dokein auto peri auton . . . apeiros men gar on ho Theos kai aperigraphos ten phusin parestin tois pasin; te de eudokia ton men estin makran, ton de engus. This enoikesis, however, as is shewn in what follows, has different tropoi; in its unique and perfect form it is in the "Son" only; l.c. (p. 297): Iesous de proekopten . . . chariti para Theo--chariti de, akolouthon te sunesei kai te gnosei ten areten metion, ex hes he para to Theo charis auto ten prostheken elambanen . . . delon de ara kakeino, hos ten areten akribesteron te kai meta pleionos eplerou tes euchereias e tois loipois anthropois en dunaton, hoso kai kata prognosin tou hopoios tis estai henosas auton ho Theos logos heauto en aute diaplaseos arche, meizona pareichen ten par' heautou sunergeian pros ten ton deonton katorthosin . . . henoto men gar ex arches to Theo ho lephtheis kata prognosin; en aute te diaplasei tes metras ten katarchen tes henoseos dexamenos; l.c. 1. 8. (p. 299): prodelon de hos to tes henoseos epharmozon; dia gar tautes sunachtheisai hai phuseis hen prosopon kata ten henosin apetelesan (Matt. XIX. 6, is now brought in as an analogy; we also no longer speak kata ton tes enoseos logon of two persons, but of one, delonoti ton phuseon diakekrimenon; hotan men gar tas phuseis diakrinomen, teleian ten phusin tou Theou logou phamen, kai teleion to prosopon; oude gar aprosopon estin hupostasin eipein; teleian de kai ten tou anthropou phusin kai to prosopon homoios; hotan mentoi epi ten sunapheian apidomen, hen prosopon tote phamen: l.c. 1. 9 (p. 300): Logos sarx egeneto--entautha to "egeneto" oudamos heteros legesthai dunamenon heurekamen e kata to dokein . . . to dokein ou kata to me eilephenai sarka alethe, alla kata to me gegenesthai: hotan men gar "elaben" lege ou kata to dokein alla kata to alethes legei; hotan de "egeneto", tote kata to dokein; ou gar metepoiethe eis sarka; l.c. 1. 10 (p. 301): katabebeken ex ouranou nen te eis ton anthropon enoikesei; estin de en ourano to aperigrapho tes phuseos pasin paron; l. c. 1. 12 (p. 303): alethe huion lego ton te phusike gennesei ten huioteta kektemenon; hepomenos de sunepidechomenon te semasia kai ton kata aletheian tes axias metechonta te pros auton henosei. For the explanations given of Luke I. 31 f.; 1 Tim. III. 16; Matt. III. 14, IV. 4, see p. 306 f., l.c. 1. 12 (p. 308): henosas auton heauto te schesei tes gnomes, meizona tina pareichen auto ten charin, hos tes eis auton charitos eis pantas tous hexes diadothesomenes anthropous; hothen kai ten peri ta kala prothesin akeraion auto diephulatten; see the sequel where the thought is developed that the man Jesus voluntarily willed the good, his will being protected by the God-Logos; l.c. 1. 15 (p. 309): "utrumque iuste filius vocatur, una existente persona, quam adunatio naturarum effecit" l.c. c. 15 (p. 310): Mary may as well be called theotokos as anthropotokos, but the latter te phusei tou pragmatos the former te anaphora. Adv. Apollin. l.c. (p. 313): the distinction between naos (the man Jesus) and ho en nao Theos logos; next: estin men gar anoeton to ton Theon ek tes parthenou gegennesthai legein. In the eighth Sermon of the "Catechism" Theodore has employed the Aristotelian category "secundum aliquid" in order to shew, that a thing may be a unity in one respect and a duality in another.

[338] In many respects his language is more certain than that of the Cappadocians and Athanasius: he no longer speaks, so far as I know, of mingling, fusion and so on, but in other respects his language is not behind theirs in uncertainty, and in denying "freedom" to Christ, he comes nearer to Apollinaris than they, for they in fact made use also of the conception of "two natures." The works of Cyril are in Aubert. Vol. VI. and VII., Migne Vols. 75-77. Most of what bears on the subject under discussion will be found also in Mansi T. IV., V. Specially notable are his letters to the Egyptian monks, to Nestorius (3) to John of Antioch, to Succensus (2) to the Constantinopolitan and Alexandrian Churches, the liber de recta in Jesum fide addressed to Theodosius, the book and the oration on the same subject addressed to the Empress, the explanation of the 12 anathemas and their vindication as against Theodoret, the five books against Nestorius, the dialogue on the Incarnation of the only-begotten, the other dialogue: "Oti heis ho Christos and the tractate kata ton me boulomenon homologein theotokon ten hagian parthenon. On Cyril's theology see Dorner, Thomasius, (Christology) and H. Schultz. Koppalik, Cyril, Mainz 1881. That the work published by Mai (Script. Vet. Nova Coll. I., VIII.) peri tes tou kuriou enanthropeseos does not belong to Cyril has been shewn by Ehrhard (the work attributed to Cyril of Alex. peri t. t. kur; enanth., a work of Theodoret of Cyrus. Tübingen, 1888). In this treatise will be found a full and thorough account of the Christological formulæ of Cyril.

[339] I purposely cite no passages; they would not, taken separately, prove the doctrine here summarised, but would, on the contrary, point now in one direction and now in another. That the group of phrases given in the text embodies Cyril's view and in a measure embodies it completely, will be allowed by everyone acquainted with the subject. Nor as regards Christology can I hope much from a careful monograph on Cyril on the lines of a history of dogma, such as has recently been asked for; for beyond what is adduced above Cyril had no theological interest; his way of formulating his views might, however, easily lead to his having a very complicated "Christology" attributed to him.

[340] According to an expression taken from a work of Apollinaris which Cyril considered as Athanasian, because the Apollinarians had fathered it on Athanasius.

[341] See Loofs, Leontius, p. 45.

[342] The Ep. ad Succens. supplies the most important proof-passages here. Cyril's thought is that the substance (ousia) of the human nature in Christ does not subsist on its own account, but that it is nevertheless not imperfect since it has its subsisting element in the God-Logos. This either means nothing at all or it is Apollinarianism.

[343] Orat. ad imp. Theodos. 19, 20 (Mansi IV. 641): An apparent body would have been sufficient if the God-Logos had merely required to show us the path to the angelic life. But He became a perfect man, hina tes men epeisaktou phthoras to geinon hemon apallaxe soma, te kath' henosin oikonomia ten idian auto zoen enieis, psuchen de idian anthropinen poioumenos hamartias auten apophene kreittona, tes idias phuseos to pepegos te kai atrepton, hoiaper erio baphen, enkatachrosas aute.

[344] Cyril connected the Christological dogma in the form in which he put it, with the Lord's Supper and also with baptism.

[345] Similarly also Loofs op. cit., p. 48 f. As Loofs rightly remarks, the distinction between the natures which Cyril wished to have made was nevertheless not one solely in thought, but I cannot find any word which expresses what he wanted. It is obvious that as regards the docetic and Apollinarian ideas (apparent-humanity, krasis, sunchusis, trope), which were current and which were still widely spread at the time, Cyril's influence was of a wholesome kind. It is wonderful how firm he was here. Perhaps it is herein that his greatest significance lies. And yet the best of what he had he had got from Apollinaris. Moreover, before Cyril, Didymus in Alexandria had already put together and used the words atreptos, asunchutos in his formula for the Incarnation; see Vol. III., p. 299. They were therefore not a monopoly of the Antiochians.

[346] Like Apollinaris, Cyril also regarded with the deepest abhorrence the thought that Christ possessed a free will. Everything seemed to them to be made uncertain if Christ was not atreptos. We can quite understand this feeling; for all belief in Christ as Redeemer is, to say the least of it, indifferent to the idea that Christ might have done other than He did. But that age was in the direst dilemma; for "freedom" was at that time the only formula for the "personality" of the creature, and yet it at the same time necessarily involved the capability of sin. In this dilemma the true believers resolved to deny freedom to Christ. With these accordingly the Apollinarians who had been excluded from the Church were able once more to unite. "All with the exception of a few," writes Theodoret H. E. V. 3, cf. V. 37, "came over to the Church and again took part in Church fellowship; they had not, however, all the same, got rid of their earlier disease, but still infected many with it who before had been sound. From this root there sprang up in the Church the doctrine of the mia tes sarkos kai tes theotetos phusis, which attributes suffering to the Godhead too of the only begotten."

[347] Thomasius in his description of the Christology of Cyril sees only difficulties, but no contradictions. Nor has he fully understood the relation between Apollinaris and Cyril.

[348] Cyril never sought subsequently to tone down in appearance the paradox of the mystery of the Incarnation by means of logical distinctions. In this connection it is important to note that he allows that Nestorius wishes a henosis ton prosopon (Ep. ad C P. Mansi IV., p. I005), but that he himself rejects such a union because the important thing is the union of the natures.

[349] Some of his writings in Mansi IV., V., see also VI., VII., IX. On the beginning of the controversy Socrat. H. E. VII. 29 sq. cf. the letters of Coelestin and Vincent. Common. 17 sq. The sermons of Nestorius, above all, deserve attention. The history is in Hefele, op. cit. II. 2, pp. 141-288, who is indeed wholly biassed. See Walch, Ketzergesch., Vol. V.; Largent, S. Cyrille et le concile d'Éphèse (Rev. des quest. hist., 1872, July). Older accounts by Tillemont and Gibbon.

[350] Luther ("Von den Conc. u. K K.", Vol. 25, pp. 304 ff., 307), falling back on Socrates, has rehabilitated Nestorius: "One can see from this that Nestorius, though a proud and foolish bishop, is in earnest about Christ; but in his folly he does not know what he is saying and how he is saying it, like one who was not able to speak properly of such things and yet wished to speak as if he knew all about it.

[351] So Nestorius himself in the third letter to Coelestin.

[352] This was the case from the first; see already the first letter to Coelestin. In the third letter he proposed to the Pope that the latter should see that neither theotokos nor anthropotokos was used, but christotokos; "This controversy about words," he adds moreover, "will not in my opinion occasion any difficult enquiry at the Council nor will it interfere with the doctrine of the divinity of Christ."

[353] In this contest Nestorius directs his attack against Photinianism, as representing the idea that the Word had first originated with the Virgin, against Apollinarianism, against the idea that the flesh of Christ was no longer flesh after the Resurrection, and therefore against the "deificatio" of the flesh, and against the mingling of the natures (first letter to Coelestin). As a matter of fact nothing of all this applied to Cyril. The latter fought against Nestorius as if it were a matter of combating Paul of Samosata, and in this Coelestin made common cause with him (see his first letter to the Church of Constantinople c. 3). The real difference was: Did God become man or did He not?

[354] The solidarity between Rome and Alexandria is emphasised also in the letters of Coelestin to Cyril (I. I), to John of Antioch (c. 2) and to Nestorius (c. II).

[355] Ep. II. Nest. ad Coelest. (Mansi IV., p. 1024.)

[356] It was substantially the Western formula: see on this above, p. 145, and Reuter, Ztschr. fur K: G. VI., p. 156 ff. Augustine, Coelestin's authority, had taught the doctrine of una persona and two natures, or still more frequently the "duæ substantiæ" which corresponds more closely with the Western conception; he had further used "deus (ex patre) et homo (ex matre), or "verbum et homo" or "deus-homo." He had rejected every view which taught the changeableness of God, and explained that the "forma dei" remained together with the "forma servi" after the "assumptio carnis". He had not himself questioned the relative correctness of the idea of the indwelling of the Godhead in Christ after the fashion of the indwelling of the Godhead in believers, i.e., as in a temple, if he also clung to the view that the Word became flesh. It is undoubted that according to Augustine, "Christ is the collective person comprising a duality" in connection with which we have to distinguish between what relates to the forma dei and the forma servi. It is only with certain qualifications that the formula "God was crucified" is to be employed, the perfectly correct statement is only "Christus crucifixus est in forma servi." The passages in which Augustine speaks of "caro dei", "natus ex femina deus" etc., are extremely rare, and for him these formulæ have in my opinion no real importance; for the reconciling work of Christ belongs according to Augustine to his humanity; see above. Here he is therefore in agreement with the Antiochians. (The fact that in one passage Augustine, like Tertullian, speaks of "mingling", is of no importance). We meet with the same thing in Ambrose (de incarn. Sacram.) and again in Vincentius and Leo I. They all go back together to Tertullian (see above). Ambrose like Augustine speaks of two substances (natures) and he is "still more zealously intent than the latter in preserving the two in their integrity": "Servemus distinctionem divinitatis et carnis." Apollinaris has no more violent opponent than Ambrose. According to him the Johannine "becoming flesh" first gets its true meaning through "He dwelt among us." When we speak of the death and passion of Christ we ought to add "secundum carnem". And naturally in this connection emphasis is also laid on the "unus et idem", but the co-existence of the formæ dei et servi is maintained. And here, as in Augustine, we meet with the formula that the Logos assumed a man. In fact Ambrose, the keenest opponent of Apollinaris, turned against the antimetastasis ton onomaton as against a dangerous, Apollinarian mode of speech, and went so far in regard to the distinction of the natures as even to hazard (c. 2, § 13) the bold statement: "Fieri non protest, ut, per quem sunt omnia, sit onus ex nobis." (More detailed information in Förster, Ambrosius, p. 128 f., 136 f.) The remaining evidence, moreover, which we possess in the shape of Papal letters etc., proves that the Westerns since the time of Tertullian and Novatian--in the latter also we find the "utraque substantia" (not "natura") and the "sociatus homo et deus"--possessed a christological formula on which they were all agreed, based on their creed, and to which they had strictly adhered, (see the admirable remarks of Reuter op. cit. p. 191 f.). This form was closely akin to that of the Antiochians, although it rested on a different basis. The Antiochians, without being influenced by the West, had reached quite independently the formula "two natures, one person." Not only the "mild" Antiochians (Loofs op. cit., p. 49 f.), but Theodore also (see above) and Nestorius had employed it. We must certainly admit that there is a radical difference, the Antiochian formula would strictly have run thus: The two natures, which are two hypostases, constitute together one prosopon or person who is to be adored, i.e., in the view of the Antiochians nature and hypostasis coincided and the undivided subject possessed its unity only in the union, the name, in the position of authority and in adoration. On the other hand we should have to paraphrase the Western form of the doctrine which was outlined by Tertullian, developed by Ambrose and handed on to the theologians of subsequent times, thus: Jesus Christ as one and the same possesses two substances (properties) or two co-existent forms (status, forma). The difference is obvious at the first glance. The former formula is of a speculative kind and from general conceptions constructs a personal being, the latter on the contrary assigns "the state of life" to a person, it is, so to speak (see above), of a legal or political kind. The two formulæ are thus quite disparate (the Antiochian and Alexandrian are on the contrary formally similar) and therefore it is very possible that the Western form in fine, considered from the religious point of view, contains a side which is more akin to the Alexandrian than to the Antiochian form. But in the formulæ Nestorius was in agreement with Coelestin, and it cannot be proved that the Pope was able to look behind the formula (see the "simplicior" in Mansi V., p. 702). In fact the opposite can be proved. In all his numerous letters he took good care in connection with this affair not to state his own Christological view. If anything escapes him it does not remind us at all of Cyril's views, see, e.g., the letter to the Church of Constantinople (Mansi IV., p. 1044): "Nestorius denies that the Logos assumed a man for our sakes." He fastens solely on the theotokos to which objection had been taken by Nestorius and he adduces a sort of argument in proof of its antiquity taken from a poem of Ambrose. Beyond this nothing else occurs in his letters to shew what was really to blame in the Christology of Nestorius. In place of this he from the very start loads him with abuse, with threats from the Bible and with imprecations of a wholly general character, denounces him to his Church as a heretic and writes him a letter (Mansi IV., p. 1026 sq.), which in its unfairness and bare-faced audacity is one of the vilest compositions we have of the fourth and fifth centuries. In his instructions to his legates too and in his letter to the Council, he carefully guarded against using any Christological formula at all, and he knew very well why. As Nestorius had expressed himself, particularly towards the end, his Christology came so near to that of Augustine that Coelestin at all events was not able to distinguish the one from the other. Coelestin's main concern, however, was by no means with the Christology, but rather with the person of Nestorius because the latter had not treated the Pelagians ad nutum papæ. He accordingly, instructed his legates simply to take Cyril's side, and in his letter to the Council contented himself with an exhortation to the members to preserve the old faith without saying what the old faith was. There is, however, not the slightest ground for the assumption that Augustine's affair with the Galilean monk and presbyter Leporius (about 426, Mansi IV., pp. 518, 519 sq.) probably had an influence upon Coelestin. This controversy, which was quickly settled, undoubtedly shews that on the basis of the formulæ of Tertullian and Novatian, discussions regarding the mystery of the person of Christ had been started in the West too, which led to considerable division of opinion, and that in opposition to this the Westerns held firmly to their "unus et idem" which, however, was something different from the Antiochian hen prosopon (Leporius would have nothing to do with the idea of a deus natus et passus; Augustine and Aurelius of Carthage forced him to recant: the Confession of Leporius is in Hahn, Symbole 2, § 138). But in the affair with Nestorius Coelestin nowhere referred to the heresy of Leporius and to his recantation. The commonitorium of Vincentius best shews how little disposed those in the West were to have their own Christological form of doctrine interfered with by the East or by the recognised Council of Ephesus. In this book, written soon after 431, the Creed of Ephesus is highly praised and Nestorius is abused, but at the same time the Christological formula of Tertullian and no other is used, and what is said exhibits complete uncertainty regarding the teaching of Nestorius.

[357] Mansi IV., pp. 1081 sq., 1099 sq., Hahn, § 142, 143. In the third thesis of Nestorius the permanence of the difference of the two natures also after the Incarnation is strongly emphasised. The fifth thesis runs thus: "Si quis post assumptionem hominis naturaliter dei filium unum esse audet dicere, anathema sit." It is the most questionable one.

[358] John of Antioch was perhaps also one of the false friends of Nestorius. The matter is still not quite clear--spite of the Coptic sources which are now at our command. Probably John came so late intentionally, in order to be able to turn the scale; from the first his attitude towards Nestorius had been an equivocal one. We may indeed assume that he wished to get rid both of Nestorius and of Cyril in order to secure for himself the supreme influence over the Church.

[359] Otherwise the Westerns were not present at all.

[360] Besides Coelestin's letter to the Council a similar one from the Carthaginian Archbishop Capreolus who excused the absence of the Africans was read again. This letter too is instructive because the bishop does not go beyond counselling that no change should be made on the ancient faith. He expresses no opinion on the question in dispute, (Mansi IV., p. I207 sq.).

[361] Mansi l.c. p. 1287. At the close the Council did the Pope the further favour of condemning the Pelagians. Thus both parties were quits. Coelestin condemned Nestorius without knowing what his teaching was and thereby disparaged his own doctrine, and the followers of Cyril condemned the Pelagians without thoroughly examining their theses and condemned themselves in condemning them. We may put it thus and yet not mistake the peculiar solidarity which existed between the Antiochians and the Pelagians; for the Ephesian judges knew nothing of this. It was Cassian who first drew attention to it (libr. VII., de incarn. Chr.).

[362] See the Acts in Mansi; Vicentius too in the so-called Second Commonitorium describes the procedure; they interrogated antiquity. "Peter of Alex., Athanasius, Theophilus of Alex., the three Cappadocians, Felix and Julius of Rome were quoted at Ephesus as teachers, councillors, witnesses and judges (what, however, was quoted from them originated with Apollinaris!), and also Cyprian and Augustine." According to Vincentius these constituted "the hallowed decalogue". But in addition to these the opinions of others were also adduced.

[363] He was now the spiritual leader of the Antiochians. He fought untiringly for the view that God was incapable of suffering.

[364] The Creed of Union is in Mansi V., pp. 781, 291, 303. (Hahn § 99). It was composed as early as the year 431, probably by Theodoret; and was sent from Ephesus to be submitted to the Emperor, Cyril subscribed it in the year 433. The Creed is a dogmatic work of art in which the Antiochians, however, could without much difficulty recognise their views, but not so Cyril. The second, and really important half runs thus: duo gar phuseon henosis gegone; dio hena Christon, hena huion, hena kurion homologoumen. Kata tauten ten tes asunchutou henoseos ennoian homologoumen ten hagian parthenon theotokon, [Nestorius had already admitted this, and he might in fact have subscribed this creed without any scruples of conscience] dia to ton Theon logon sarkothenai kai enanthropesai, kai ex autes tes sullepseos henosai heauto ton ex autes lephthenta naon. Tas de euangelikas kai apostolikas peri tou kuriou phonas ismen tous theologous andras tas men koinopoiountas, hos eph' henos prosopou, tas de diairountas, hos epi duo phuseon (Cyril admitted that!) kai tas men theoprepeis kata ten theoteta tou Christou, tas de tapeinas kata ten anthropoteta autou paradidontas. This formula of union which reflects no discredit on the Antiochians, especially as they, like the Arians and Semi-Arians before them, had a theological rather than a religious interest in the problem, is markedly different from the later Chalcedonian formula. It does not abandon an intelligible position as that was understood by the Antiochians. Cyril had to content himself with the words henosis and theotokos and had to put up with the absence of sunapheia. He naturally clung firmly to the mia phusis sesarkomene, declaring that the creed of union merely excluded the misinterpretations of the doctrine he had hitherto taught, misinterpretations which he had himself always disavowed; in fact he went so far as to assert that the Antiochians too understood the difference of the natures after the incarnation as being purely a distinction in thought.

[365] This was a slow process which began with the emigration to Edessa and was concluded only at the end of the fifth century with the formation of a strictly exclusive Nestorian Church. It maintained itself in the extreme East of Christendom, in East Syria and Persia, and soon took on a national colouring; on the strongly marked national consciousness of the Nestorians in Church matters, see Horst, Elias von Nisibis, p. 112 ff. The Emperor Zeno put an end to their existence in the Empire in 489. All the successors of Theodosius II. persecuted them. How the latter came to have such a ferocious hatred of Nestorius whom he had once protected has not, however, been yet explained. The Emperor gave orders that all the writings of Nestorius were to be burned and that his followers were to be called "Simonists". The result was that the writings of Diodorus and Theodore were all the more eagerly circulated in the East and translated into other languages. Edessa in particular did a great deal in the way of getting the Greek-Antiochian literature put into Syrian (Persian, Armenian). Much that is of a free and antique character has been preserved in the Nestorian-Persian or Chaldean Church; Assemani, Bibl. Orient. III., 2; Silbernagl, Kirchen des Orients p. 202 ff.; Kattenbusch, op. cit. I., p. 226 ff. For the history of dogma, in the strict sense of the word, the Nestorians are no longer of any importance. __________________________________________________________________

§ 2. The Eutychian Controversy.

Cyril died in the year 444; there were in his own party some who so far as he was concerned had never forgiven him the union of 433 which had led Cyril to agree to the expression "duo phuseis". [366] His successor was Dioscurus who, according to the testimony of his own adherents, though not indeed the equal of his predecessor, was also not unlike him. The Alexandrian bishops from Athanasius to Dioscurus have something in common. They strove to make themselves the masters of Egypt and the leaders of the Church of the East. [367] Their resistance to the power of the State was not less strong than their hatred of the parvenu, the bishop of New Rome, whose aspirations after power they wished to put a stop to. We can only compare them with the great Popes, and the comparison is so far a just one inasmuch as they aimed at making Egypt a sort of independent ecclesiastical State. Each bishop in the series from Athanasius to Dioscurus came nearer accomplishing this design. [368] In following out this policy they relied upon three powerful forces, on Greek piety and monasticism, on the masses of the lower classes, and on the Roman Bishop who had an equal interest in keeping down the bishop of Constantinople, and in making head against the State. In the respect first mentioned, Theophilus' change of front is specially characteristic. He abandoned science, i.e., Origenism, as soon as he perceived that a stronger force was present in the Church,--namely, the orthodoxy of the monks and of the religious communities. From that time onwards the Alexandrian bishop stood at the head of ecclesiastical traditionalism; he decisively rejected Greek science. But in doing this he surrendered what was an important element in the influence he could exercise on the rest of the churches, and the loss of this was a momentous one. He became a national Coptic bishop. This brings us to the second point. Like all despots, the great Alexandrian bishops sought the support of the masses. They were demagogues. They flattered the people and sought to please them, while they hampered and crushed the aristocracy composed of the bishops, the scholars and the upper classes.

Athanasius had already begun this policy, in fact he was not in all probability the first to follow it. Each of his successors went a step further on these lines. But the Copts were not the Romans; the master of the eternal city could always think of ruling the world. A Coptic despot, however, who had rejected all that belonged to the Greek world, could only dream of world-empire. [369] Cyril had the Egyptian clergy and people completely under his power; but the less wise Dioscurus by his unconcealed despotism created an aristocratic reaction in the country. In him we see the downfall and overthrow of the policy of the Alexandrian chair. Had he been a man like Leo I., Christianity might perhaps have got a second Rome in Alexandria. [370] But there was no room in the world for two such chairs. The traditional policy of common action which had for so long united Rome and Alexandria, was bound to reach a point at which it turned into bitter enmity. The Byzantine patriarch accordingly turned this enmity to account. It is indeed possible to trace back the whole difference between the Roman and the Alexandrian bishop to the brusque and imprudent conduct of Dioscurus, or, with a still greater show of justice, to Leo's love of power; [371] but this would be to take a narrow view of the matter. About the middle of the fifth century the Alexandrian bishop was on the point of becoming master of Egypt and at the same time master of the East. Rome would not have been Rome if she had looked calmly on at a result such as this, to which indeed she had herself contributed so long as she was concerned in defending herself against a more powerful enemy. It is here that we have the key to the proper understanding of the direction taken by Roman policy in the East, and it is owing to it that the history of dogma too has taken a wholly unexpected turn. For once that opposition had sprung up between Rome and Alexandria it could not be but that the profound dogmatic difference between the two which Coelestin had disregarded in order to humble the Emperor and the Constantinopolitan bishop, should find expression. But if Rome came off victorious, then the dogmatic development of the East was bound to enter a new, and what was essentially, a foreign channel. Conversely again, the permanent victory of the Second Council of Ephesus (449) would, owing to the weakness of the State, have been equivalent to the victory of Egypt in the Church and probably also in the Empire; for Empire and Emperor had come to be entirely dependent on the Church which culminated in the Alexandrian chair and its monks. Pope and Emperor therefore made common cause; in the years 450-451 they had a common enemy and realised the solidarity of their interests. But the political victory of Rome did not correspond with the victory of Leo in the dogmatic question over the East under the leadership of Alexandria. The Emperor went about the matter in an extremely clever way. While making use of the Roman bishop in so far as he found him necessary in order to carry out his purpose, which was to deliver the Empire and the Church from the despotism of Alexandria based as it was on dogmatics, he at the same time deprived him of the power of extending in any way his influence in the East by raising his own court-patriarch to a position of equal rank and importance with the Pope. Simultaneously with the downfall of his Alexandrian colleague Leo I. had to direct his attention once more to his Constantinopolitan colleague, behind whom stood no less a person than the Emperor himself--the Byzantine idea of the state. He now promptly resumed the traditional policy of his chair and sought to form a connection with Proterius, the successor of Dioscurus. He, however, no longer found in Alexandria a powerful monarch, but only the shadow of such a ruler, the Melchitian bishop of a small party who soon fell a victim to the fanaticism of the Egyptians. But on the other hand the Emperor had dearly bought his victory over the hankering after independence on the part of the Church in the East, in the form in which it had been fostered by the monkish church of the Copts under the Alexandrian patriarchs. He plunged the East into a state of frightful confusion, and his policy, which was a clever one for the moment, resulted in being the direst calamity for the Eastern Empire, since it set free the centrifugal and national forces of the Eastern provinces. It was possible to overthrow the Egyptian ecclesiastical State, but this done, it was no longer possible permanently to retain Egypt. It was possible to deliver the Empire and Constantinople from the domination of a dogmatic which was hostile to the State, but it was not possible to force a foreign dogmatic on the people of the East. The Roman bishop, however, also soon saw that he was further from the attainment of his aim than ever, and the proud language employed by Leo's successors towards the Emperor and the East and which reminds us of the mediæval Popes, is not so much a token of actual power as a proof of the breach and estrangement between East and West which had occurred, and so of the actual powerlessness of Rome. The Emperor could no longer get at the Pope, but neither could the Pope get at the Emperor and the East; he came to have no influence. A section of the Easterns could come to terms with the dogmatic decree of Chalcedon--it is always possible to come to terms with dogmatic decrees--and while acknowledging its authority could nevertheless give expression to what was truly essential in the Faith of the East; but the twenty-eighth Canon of Chalcedon, which had reference to the Roman bishop, was no "noumenon" which could be got over by scholastic refinement. Rome had the satisfaction of having dictated its Christological formula to the Byzantine State-Church, just as it had previously taken the biggest share in the work of getting the Trinitarian formula accepted, but this very Church now took up a position of extreme isolation relatively to Rome and the West. The Byzantine Patriarch, although his power was always more and more restricted within the domain in the East over which he ruled, was an invincible opponent; for he was simply the exponent of all the peculiar powers still possessed at the time by the State of Constantine and Theodosius I. and by the Greek Church.

This is the general outline of the circumstances we have to take into account in studying the history of the "Eutychian Controversy." What happened here was, mutatis mutandis, repeated in the controversy about images in so far as the State in this struggle in the same way resisted the authority of the Church which sought to crush it. It was successful in both instances. The power which had opposed the State in Egyptian Monophysitism and set itself against it in the matter of the adoration of images, was one and the same. But the nature of the victory was different in the two cases. In the middle of the Fifth Century the State, unfortunately for itself, did not possess the power of putting up with the dogmatic teaching of its opponent while humiliating the opponent himself; or shall we say: it did not think of the power it had, and to its own loss lent an ear to the suggestions of a foreign power, namely, the Roman bishop. In the ninth century, however, it was able to let its opponent have its own way in the domain of dogma and worship--for the adoration of images was restored,--and yet to make it submit to its laws and attach it to its interests. A powerful ruler, who would have accepted the dogmatic decree of the second Council of Ephesus but who would have been at the same time able to break the political power of Dioscurus and to compel the monks and Copts to submit--would perhaps--if it is permissible to make such a reflection--have been able to maintain the unity of the Empire of Constantius and to preserve for the Eastern provinces the Græco-Christian culture. Of what incalculable importance this would have been! But it is useless to pursue a line of thought such as this.

It follows from these considerations that the history of dogma has to be regarded almost exclusively in its connection with politics, not merely after the Council of Chalcedon, but already previous to this. The forces which from 444 onwards determined the great decisions and actions were throughout political. It was individuals only who really thought of the Faith when they spoke of the Faith; they brought about crises, but they no longer determined the course things were to take. Nor is it the case that what was dogmatically "the right thing" gained acceptance here as if by a wonderful arrangement of things; for if, as is reasonable to suppose, "the right thing" here can only be what is in harmony with Greek religious feeling, then it did not gain entire acceptance. And in pronouncing an opinion on this, whether we take our stand at a very much earlier or at a very much later period, it may certainly be maintained that the decision of Chalcedon was the happiest amongst those that were at all possible at the time; but to see this can in no way alter the opinion that the Council of Chalcedon, which to distinguish it from the Robber Council [372] we might call the Robber and Traitor Council, betrayed the secret of Greek Faith. It is only with the forces of history that the historian is concerned; and so, from about 444 onwards, the political historian almost entirely takes the place of the historian of dogmas. If the latter is willing to keep strictly to his own domain but a small extent of ground is left to him, which, since what does not change awakens no interest, gets smaller and smaller from century to century.

If it be asked, what is the saddest and most momentous event in the history of dogma since the condemnation of Paul of Samos ata, we must point to the union of the year 433. The shadow of this occurrence rests on the whole subsequent history of dogma. [373] It bore two sorts of evil fruit. In the first place it permanently prohibited Greek piety from establishing the formula which was alone appropriate to it: mia phusis theou logou sesarkomene--one incarnate nature of the divine Logos. (The relief which the Creed of Ephesus of 449 was supposed to bring, came too late.) In the second place it introduced such a stagnation into the dogmatic question that every one who attempted to state his Christological views ran the risk of being regarded as a heretic, while on the other hand people found it possible when they so desired, to give a favourable turn to every dogmatic utterance. It threw the East into a state of confusion and made of Christology an armoury of poisoned weapons for the warfare of ecclesiastical politics. A middle party was formed from each of the two sides. To one of these Theodoret belonged, and to another Dioscurus (Cyril). But the representatives of these middle parties were no nearer each other than the two extremes. If they employed the same formulæ they nevertheless gave them a different meaning, and they were at the same time intent upon protecting their extreme associates so far as possible.

The Alexandrians had acquired the sovereignty of the East at the price of union. The "high-priest Emperor" and his eunuchs abandoned themselves more and more to their guidance. Under the feeble Theodosius the Empire was in danger of becoming an ecclesiastical state led by Alexandria. In addition to this, under cover of the formula of concord the doctrine of the one nature was propagated, and even the extravagances of earlier times again made their appearance. Cyril himself who was so cautious otherwise in his use of formulae, had not been able to avoid the use of the questionable Apollinarian conception, according to which the nature or hypostasis of the incarnate Logos is a "certain middle something", [374] and accordingly it is not astonishing to find that his followers went still further. The brave and indefatigable Theodoret [375] did indeed keep a look-out against the henosis phusike, "the suffering God", the krasis or mixture, in short, against the anathemas of Cyril, while at the same time he parried the attacks of Cyril on Theodore of Mopsuestia. But spite of the great prudence shewn by Theodoret in keeping to a middle path Dioscurus succeeded in calumniating him at the Court, after he had himself in his character as supreme bishop interfered in the affairs of Antioch. [376] Theodoret was instructed to keep to his diocese. Still greater was the hatred of the Alexandrians against the bold and worldly-minded Bishop Ibas of Edessa, Theodore's enthusiastic supporter. Dioscurus had apparently made up his mind to bring the East under his authority and gradually to exterminate all who in a half way or who wholly accepted the Antiochian theology. The formula: two natures or hypostases, one Christ, was to disappear from the Church.

In the capital the old and respected Archimandrite Eutyches supported his views, taking his stand on the Christology of Cyril. Still it was no mere calumny when his opponents maintained that in the course of the violent attack on the Nestorians he had himself fallen into the error of making Apollinarian statements. Already in the year 448 Bishop Domnus of Antioch had denounced him on these grounds to the Emperor. But no action was taken until Bishop Eusebius of Dorylaum brought a similar charge against him before Flavian who was bishop of Constantinople at the time. Eutyches afterwards asserted that he had done this from personal hatred, and one cannot get rid of the suspicion that he was right; for Eusebius himself had formerly been one of most bitter opponents of Nestorius. In any case a certain obscurity hangs over the outbreak of the controversy, and the energy too with which Flavian at once took the matter up is strange. He was on bad terms with the court and particularly with the all-powerful Chrysaphius with whom Eutyches stood in high favour. The bishop probably felt that he was hampered by the Archimandrite and wanted to get rid of him. It is useless to look for any religious motives in the case of Flavian, whose Christological statements bear a pretty close resemblance to those of Cyril, though they did actually fall short of them. [377] The Council of Constantinople (448) which followed on this and with whose procedure we are well acquainted, shewed the frivolity of the attack on Eutyches, though it shewed too how the influential archimandrite set his bishop at defiance. In reference to the dogmatic question Eutyches acted with great prudence, and, though indeed with some hesitation, gave his assent to the formula of the Creed of Union, "of two natures, one Christ" (one hypostasis, one person). But one can plainly see that this formula, in so far as it was taken as implying the continued existence of the two natures after the union, was one which Eutyches would regard as objectionable. "Two natures after the union" was rightly felt to be Nestorian and above all to be an "innovation". Eutyches, indeed, corrected the incautious statements he had made at an earlier time, divergent from the middle path of the formula of unity--my God is not of the same substance with us; [378] He has no "body of a man" (soma anthropou), but only a "human body" (soma anthropinon). But this was of no avail. It was insisted that he taught a "blending" (sunkrasis) and "confusion" (sunchusis), and after the most disgraceful proceedings the records of which were besides falsified, he was deposed "amid tears" on account of Valentinian and Apollinarian heresy. This was done by people who themselves professed to acknowledge Cyril's second letter to Nestorius and its approval by the Synod of Ephesus, as well as the epistle of Cyril to John of Antioch. Both parties laboured to secure the favour of the Court, the capital, and the Roman bishop, and the Court sided with Eutyches. People's views were still everywhere ruled by the condemnation of Nestorius and there was no inclination to change sides. Flavian, "the moderate Antiochian" played a dangerous game when he sought to increase the authority of his chair in face of the court and the ruling system of dogma. Leo I. who was applied to by Eutyches first, was for some weeks uncertain which course to take (Leon. epp. 20 sq.). He was disposed to regard the Constantinopolitan Patriarch as his born enemy; but he had soon to recognise the fact that his strongest enemy was to be looked for elsewhere. Dioscurus, who substantially agreed with Eutyches and who long ere this took an active part in different provincial Synods in the East as supreme bishop, had already annexed the question and moved the Emperor to summon a Council. The Pope's policy was now marked out for him. He must not strike either upon the Constantinopolitan Scylla or upon the Alexandrian Charybdis, but on the contrary, as his predecessor Julius had done, he must attempt to bring the true faith and with it himself to the East. Dioscurus was determined to use every means to exploit the Council in his own interests. It was to establish the authority of the Alexandrian Patriarch and of the Alexandrian Christology in the Church of the East. He was prudent enough all the same to employ no new formula while attempting this. The Nicene Creed was alone to be regarded as authoritative, of course according to the interpretation put upon it by the anathemas of Cyril. Whoever went a word beyond this was to be considered an innovator, a heretic. This was his standpoint and he found a pliant Emperor and a minister who were favourably disposed toward him and who were prepared to hand over the Church to him in order to humiliate the occupant of the episcopal chair of the capital for the time being whom they hated, a policy which was treachery to the State. [379] Dioscurus was equipped with full powers as master of the Synod. It was called together in accordance with his ideas, even a representative of the monastic order was present--a novelty at a Council--and Theodoret was excluded.

Leo had meanwhile discovered that Eutyches was a heretic [380] (ep. 27) and bethought himself of the Western Christological form of doctrine which his predecessors, Coelestin and Sixtus, and he himself seem up to this time to have forgotten. The summoning of a Council caused him grave anxiety; Flavian, who had seriously displeased the Pope by his independent attitude, nevertheless suddenly became his dear friend who had been attacked, and along with the legates who attended the Council Leo sent numerous letters to all in the East concerned in the affair (epp. 28-38), to Flavian (28, 36, 38), to the Emperor (29, 37), to Pulcheria (30, 31), to the Constantinopolitan archimandrites (32), to the Council (33) and to Bishop Julian of Kos (34, 35). He repeatedly observes that a synodal decision was not at all necessary, and that the Council was superfluous. [381] But what he was now above all concerned with was to furnish Flavian with dogmatic instructions and to draw the attention of the Council to the unique dignity of the Roman Chair which had already decided the question. The latter of these two things he did in Epistle 33, which contains a daring attempt to misrepresent [382] the conditions under which the Council had come together, while he accomplished the former by the dogmatic epistle he sent to Flavian. It contains a paraphrase of the Christological section of the work of Tertullian adv. Prax. (cf. Novatian de trinitate) in accordance with the views, and in part in the words, of Ambrose and Augustine, with special reference to Eutyches, and in combating the views of the latter it accordingly undeniably goes a step beyond what had hitherto been accepted in the West, though not any further than the situation for the moment demanded. This document, which was highly lauded in subsequent times and is to the present day, contains nothing new. What, however, is of importance in it is that the West, i.e., the Pope, has here kept in view the peculiar character of its Church. It is consequently an evidence of power, and the Christology set forth in it may at the same time have actually corresponded with the inclinations of the Pope. But on the other hand it ought not to be forgotten that the situation, as represented by Nestorianism already condemned and Eutychianism about to be rejected, appeared directly to call for the old Western formula "duæ substantiæ (naturæ) in una persona", and that the Pope expressed himself more fully regarding it than tradition justified. [383] The Pope throughout puts the interests of our salvation in the foreground; he wants exactly what Cyril and Eutyches also want, but he goes on to give an explanation which Cyril at any rate would have entirely repudiated, [Cyril said that the idea of redemption demands the deification of the human nature, Leo went on to shew that this same idea demands a true human nature which remains absolutely unchanged], and which, so far, goes beyond the use and wont doctrine of the West and actually approaches Nestorianism, inasmuch as the Pope uses by preference "nature" in place of substance and speaks of a peculiar mode of action on the part of each nature, and thus really hypostatises each nature. In Leo's view the "Person" is no longer entirely the one subject with two "properties", but the union of two hypostatic natures. In a word, the unity is neither made intelligible by Leo nor did he consider what was the supreme concern of the pious Greeks in this matter, namely, to see in the humanity of Christ the real deification of human nature generally. Nor is there any trace in the doctrinal letter of anything like an express repudiation of Nestorius, not to speak of the Antiochian Christology. [384]

The Council was opened at Ephesus in August 449. Dioscurus presided and assigned the second place to the representative of the Roman bishop. There were one hundred and thirty-five members present. The bishops who had sat in judgment on Eutyches were not allowed to vote, since the Synod meant to proceed with a revision of that process. Dioscurus put the Pope's letter to the Council amongst the Acts, but did not have it read out, and in fact treated Rome as non-existent. Not Rome but Alexandria was to speak. It was a bold stroke, but Dioscurus had got authority from the Emperor. As regards its proceedings the Council does not compare unfavourably with other Councils. What gave it its peculiar character was the fact that it was guided by a powerful and determined will, that of Dioscurus. The latter got the Council simply to resolve not to go beyond the conclusions come to at Nicæa and Ephesus. The affair of Eutyches was next taken up; he declared that he took his stand on the teaching of these Councils and repudiated Manes, Valentin, Apollinaris, and Nestorius. In the course of the debate it became evident that those present regarded the formula "after the Incarnation one nature", as alone orthodox--with the addition: "made flesh and made man" (sesarkomenen kai enanthropesasan), and that they condemned the doctrine of two natures after the Incarnation. In this sense Eutyches was declared by all to be orthodox. Rome's legates refrained from voting. Domnus of Antioch and Juvenal of Jerusalem also concurred, and even three of the bishops who had condemned Eutyches at Constantinople did the same. Dioscurus now proceeded to take aggressive steps. Each bishop was required to state in writing whether he considered that those should be punished who in the course of their theological investigations had gone beyond the Nicene Creed. Dioscurus got the answer he wished, and even the Roman legate did not oppose the question when put in this form. On the basis of this resolution the Council pronounced sentence of deposition on Flavian and Eusebius of Doryläum, Domnus and Juvenal concurring. Both of the deposed bishops were present and soon after appealed to the Pope, whose legates, moreover, had at least shewn some hesitation at the Council, though after the first session they took no further share in the proceedings. In the second and third sessions Dioscurus got the detested Ibas deposed (to whom the saying was currently attributed "I do not envy Christ because He became God; for I too can become God if I wish"), the Sabinian bishop of Perrha and several others; [385] also Theodoret, [386] the pillar of the East, and finally even Domnus of Antioch. [387] The fact that he had for so long sided with Dioscurus availed him nothing. He had latterly drawn back, was unwilling to take part in the ecclesiastico-political revision of the Canons of Nicæa and Constantinople which Dioscurus was contemplating, and was generally in his road.

Never before at any Council had a Patriarch scored such a victory, The atmosphere was cleared; the triumph of the old Confession of Nicæa and Ephesus (431) which alone was recognised by the pious Greeks as embodying their faith, had been secured; the Christology of Cyril, the one incarnate nature of the God-Logos, had been acknowledged as the true one; those who opposed it had partly been deposed and partly had submitted; arrangements had already been made for securing suitable successors to those who had been deposed, and an Alexandrian priest, Anatolius, was appointed to Constantinople. The Church of the East lay at the feet of the Alexandrian Patriarch and he had attained everything with the concurrence of the Emperor. [388] He had doubtless made use of force; but it was the State in fact which stood behind him; the police and the monks of Barsumas had, to be sure, over-awed the Fathers; but far worse than the terrors of this Council were the calumnies spread regarding it on the part of those who two years later had to extenuate their dastardly treachery. If we consider who were present at the Council we must conclude that Dioscurus, to whom even Theodoret on one occasion (ep. 60) bore favourable testimony, cannot have found it necessary to employ any very great amount of actual force. That Flavian was trampled on and left half dead is anything but certain, and a Council which more than any other gave expression to the tradition of the religious feeling of the time and to what it considered of vital importance, does not deserve the name "Robber-Council" (Leo, ep. 95). Regarded from the standpoint of the Church of the East something of importance had actually been attained, and what had been thus attained had the guarantee of permanence so long as foreign elements did not come in to disturb it.

But Dioscurus had not reckoned on the death of the Emperor which was near at hand, nor with the Roman bishop, nor finally on the widespread aversion felt towards the right wing of his army which was Apollinarian in disguise. He had rehabilitated Eutyches without, however, getting the questionable statements to which the latter had formerly given utterance, proscribed, though the allegation that he endorsed them is a falsehood asserted by his embittered opponents at Chalcedon. This was a blunder in policy which was calculated to bring on a reaction introduced from the outside, and the reaction taking its start from this, might in the state in which matters then were, overthrow the great work which had been accomplished without in appearance abandoning the position gained in the year 431. At first Dioscurus was still master of the situation. While all those who felt themselves injured by him betook themselves to Leo as the only refuge, [389] and while the latter hastened to reject the resolutions of the Council, Dioscurus pronounced sentence of excommunication upon Leo, [390] prepared now to measure his strength with the last remaining opponent too, whom he had treated at Ephesus as a nonentity. Leo was in an extremely difficult position, as letters 43-72 prove. If the decree of Ephesus were to become permanent it was all over with his orthodoxy as well as with the primacy of his chair. He assembled a Council and at the same time got all the members of the imperial family of the Western Empire, when they came to Rome, to write letters to Theodosius against the "episcopus Alexandrinus sibi omnia vindicans" (45, 2), against the Council in support of his just claim to be considered supreme judge in matters of faith, [391] and in favour of calling a new Council to meet in Italy. He saw himself under the necessity of repeatedly assuring the Emperor of the East that he also held firmly to the Nicene Faith; he took care not to mention what it was exactly that he found fault with in the dogmatic decrees of Ephesus; he simply insisted on the condemnation of Eutyches as a Manichean and a Doketist, and was slow about recognising the new bishop of Constantinople, the creature of Dioscurus. He yielded nothing as the successor of Peter, but neither did he gain anything. Theodosius stood firm, maintained that the Council had merely defended antiquity against the innovations of Flavian, and coldly replied to the letters of his imperial relations in the West, declining to take any action. A less politic Pope than he was, would have brought on a breach backed up as he would have been by the whole West and by the Emperor of the West, but Leo waited and did not wait in vain.

Theodosius II. [392] died on the 28th of July, 450, and the situation was at once altered. Pulcheria who mounted the throne and offered her hand to Marcian, had always deplored her brother's miserable misrule, and his proteges were her enemies. She specially guided the ecclesiastical policy of the Government, while Marcian fought its enemies outside. The Court resolved to free itself and the State from the Alexandrian despot. This could not be done without the help of Rome, for--and this is a fact of the highest importance--the Council of 449 had really pacified the Church of the East. Of course there were some who were discontented, but they were in the minority. The Court could not in carrying out its new policy reckon on the support of any united and reliable party. It was only in Constantinople that it was able to make way quickly, for there Flavian was not yet forgotten. The Church of the East had enjoyed peace since August. In order that the State might get back its independence, this Church which had been pacified, had to be disturbed anew and reduced to the most lamentable condition.

Marcian, whose recognition as Emperor Dioscurus had sought to prevent in Egypt, at once addressed a letter to Leo. He formally handed over to the latter the primacy with which his predecessor had actually invested Dioscurus, and announced besides his readiness to summon the Council desired by Leo. [393] Soon after an epistle reached Leo from Pulcheria which announced the change of view on the part of the bishop of Constantinople. He had subscribed Leo's dogmatic letter, that sent to Flavian, and had condemned the erroneous doctrine of Eutyches; the Emperor had also ordered the recall of the bishops who had been deposed by the Council, and their reinstatement in office was reserved for the Council over which, if possible, Leo was to preside in person and which was to be held in the East. As a matter of fact in the capital itself, after a local Synod had been called, everything was already going as the Emperor, or rather, as the Empress, desired. The wretched toady, the patriarch, the creature and the betrayer of Dioscurus, was prepared to do everything the Court wished. In view of the completely changed circumstances Leo had no longer any wish for a Council, because a Council might always mean action which was dangerous for the Pope. He now took up the position that his letter was sufficient, that the bishops were individually to bind themselves to accept the doctrine set forth in it, and that by their return to orthodoxy and the erasure of the names of Dioscurus, Juvenal, etc., from the Diptychs, the Robber-Council would be rendered powerless for harm. He wished on his own initiative and apart from any Council, but with the assistance of his legates, to act the part of judge and to receive to favour or punish as impenitent each individual bishop; the bishop of Constantinople was to act with him in the matter as his mandatory. He therewith made an actual beginning with the business and it was now fairly on its way. And as a matter of fact Leo may have been naïve enough to imagine that the solution of the dogmatic difficulty of the East was contained in his sorry letter, for it seems never to have occurred to the Pope that there could be any other Christologies besides the "correct" one, Doketism, and the doctrine of Paul of Samosata. He had no appreciation of the subtle, though no doubt partly incorrect formulæ of the Greek theologians; but he was sure of his ground, and it was with this feeling that the letters 82-86 were composed, in which the Pope sought at all costs to prevent the calling of a Council as being unnecessary and inopportune. [394] But Marcian required the Council for himself and for the Eastern Church, in which, since the change of rulers, no one knew what he should believe, and in which, for the time, many bishoprics were held by two bishops or had no bishop at all. The Emperor had no desire to surrender to the Pope while claiming his help. He issued an edict ordaining the Council to meet at Nicæa in September 451, and Leo had to acquiesce, though with a very bad grace (ep. 89). He arranged to send four legates and deputed to one of them, Bishop Paschasinus, the duty of presiding in his stead; for Marcian had designated Leo himself as leader of the future Council, and so what Dioscurus had got for himself in 449 after a struggle, the Pope now secured without taking any trouble. [395] Still Leo was extremely uneasy. His numerous letters (89-95) prove that he was afraid of "innovations contrary to the Nicene Creed", i.e., divergences from his doctrinal letter. He accordingly kept constantly counselling mildness and forgiveness; whoever would only condemn Eutyches and recognise the Nicene Creed was to be regarded as orthodox. The controversy regarding the Faith was in no case to be renewed, everything was clear and finally decided. In his letter to the Council (93) he expressly guarded his position by hinting that besides the condemnation of Eutyches, that of Nestorius also in the year 431, must remain in force. This request was rather an act of self-justification than a demand; for there were very few in the East who were disposed to rehabilitate Nestorius, but then there was no actual repudiation of the "heretic" in the epistola dogmatica. But all this did not in fine constitute the Pope's greatest anxiety. What he dreaded above all was the restoration of the power of the bishop whom his predecessors in alliance with the Alexandrians had humbled, the bishop of Constantinople, behind whom was Constantius' idea of the State. Now, however, he was at enmity with the old ally and had in fact humiliated him to the dust, [396] but with the downfall of the enemy the support he had given disappeared too. The Pope's anxiety comes out in the precise instructions given to the legates: [397] "You may not permit the constitution set up by the holy Fathers (the sixth Canon of Nicæa according to the Roman forgery) to be violated or diminished by any rash action. . . . and if perchance some trusting to the dignity of their cities shall have attempted to appropriate anything for themselves, this you may check with befitting firmness." ("Sanctorum patrum constitutionem prolatam nulla patiamini temeritate violari vel imminui . . . ac si qui forte civitatum suarum splendore confisi aliquid sibi tentaverint usurpare, hoc qua dignum est constantia retundatis"). In order to ensure the Emperor's personal presence which the Roman legates insisted upon, the Council was at the last moment transferred to Chalcedon in the neighbourhood of the capital, and was opened on the eighth of October, 451.

As regards the number of those who took part in it--between 500 and 600 and perhaps over 600--no earlier Council can compare with this one, which was "politically and ecclesiastically one of the most important of all", [398] [399] a memorial of the restoration of the authority of the State accomplished by Pulcheria and Marcian, but for this very reason a memorial of the enslavement of the spirit of the Eastern Church which here, in connection with the most important doctrinal question, surrendered to the Western supreme bishop allied with the Emperor. We have no right at all to say that possibly the "authorised moment of truth" of the Antiochian Christology triumphed at Chalcedon over the dogmatic ideas of the Alexandrians and the monks, for the representatives of this Christology had long ere this succumbed to the power of the Alexandrian Confession. The unspeakably pitiful behaviour too of the Patriarchs of Antioch and of the largest section of the bishops who were theologians in sympathy with them,--the Antiochian middle-party which dates from 433--proves that the members of this school conscious of their miserable powerlessness, had of their own free will long ere this renounced all attempts to influence the Church. The disgrace attaching to this Council consists in the fact that the great majority of the bishops who held the same views as Cyril and Dioscurus finally allowed a formula to be forced upon them which was that of strangers, of the Emperor and the Pope, and which did not correspond to their belief. Judging by the Acts of the Council we can be in no doubt as regards the following points: [400] (1) that the views of the great majority of the Fathers assembled at Chalcedon agreed neither with those of Leo nor with those of Flavian who represented the Antiochian middle-party, that on the contrary they, and above all the Illyrian, Palestinian, and Egyptian bishops, wished for nothing else beyond the ratification of the Creeds of Nicæa and Ephesus as understood by Cyril; [401] (2) that for this reason the formula, "out of two natures Christ is," with the addition either expressed or understood, that after the Incarnation the God-Logos had only one nature which had become flesh, alone answered to the faith of the Constantinopolitan Patriarch Anatolius and of the majority of the bishops; (3) that far from Theodoret and his friends possessing the sympathy of the majority of the members of the Council, they had to endure the worst forms of abuse, being called "Jews", while Theodoret succeeded in saving his orthodoxy only by allowing his opponents to extort from him the condemnation of Nestorius; [402] (4) that the Imperial Commissioners directed all the proceedings and were resolved from the first to get the deposition of Dioscurus carried through at the Council, although they gave the Council the show of freedom; (5) that the Imperial Commissioners had been at the same time instructed to press for the establishment of a new doctrinal formula on the basis of Leo's letter in order to bring to an end the intolerable state of things which had prevailed in the Church of the East owing to the annulling of the resolution of 449; (6) that the Roman legates were at one with the Commissioners in their determination to get the Council to decree the deposition of Dioscurus and the setting up of a dogmatic confession, but that they differed from them so far in that they wished Dioscurus to be described as a heretic, in other words, as a rebel against the Pope, and at the same time exerted themselves simply towards getting Leo's ep. dogmatica accepted in the Church; (7) that Dioscurus had to submit to a judicial process of an extremely disgraceful and unjust kind, that he acquitted himself worthily, and firmly maintained his position as the successor of Athanasius, and that in the end he was in no sense deposed on the ground of heresy, nor on account of murder, but on the ground of certain irregularities, including contempt for the divine canon, and disobedience to the Council, [403] while his deceased opponent Flavian was on the other hand rehabilitated; [404] (8) that the bishops who had met together with him at Ephesus at first attempted to make out that the vote they gave there had been extorted by force, but that afterwards when they found they could not prove this they described themselves in the most dishonourable way as erring men who had gone wrong and begged forgiveness, although as a matter of fact they did not deny their faith at Ephesus in the year 449, but now at Chalcedon; [405] (9) that, considering the views of the faith prevailing at the time, the great majority of the bishops were able to comply with a new rule of faith even though it might be expressed in the usual terms, only by doing violence to their consciences, and that they finally deceived themselves by drawing the delusive distinction that it was not a question of an exposition (ekthesis) but of an interpretation (hermeneia); (10) that spite of all the pressure put on them by the Roman legates and the commissioners, the majority under the guidance of Anatolius while expressly emphasing the fact that Dioscurus was not deposed on account of heresy--Anatolius had always in his heart agreed with the views of Dioscurus--further attempted to set up a doctrinal formula in which the distinction between the two natures was made one in thought only, and which made it possible to speak of one nature after the Incarnation, [406] and that three statements particularly, in the third and fourth chapters of Leo's letter to Flavian, (see above) appeared to the bishops to be intolerably Nestorian; [407] (11) that the bishops abandoned their proposed formula only after the most violent threats on the part of the Emperor, among which too was a threat to transfer the Council to Italy, and that they outwardly reconciled themselves to the statements of Leo with which they had found fault by deluding themselves with the false idea that Cyril said very much what Leo said and that both were in agreement; (12) that the new doctrinal formula [408] would nevertheless not have been carried through if it had not finally been established under severe pressure at a secret commission, and that this formula is so far lacking in veracity in that it is intended to contain the genuine doctrine of Cyril and recognises the resolution of the Cyrillian Council of 431, while it gives it the go-bye in so far as it sets aside the unity and union of the natures.

The imperial-papal formula was proclaimed and adopted at the fifth sitting. [409] It first of all confirms the decision of Nicæa a, Constantinople, and Ephesus, it then explains that the Creed which had been handed down is sufficient in itself, but that on account of the teachers of false doctrine who on the one hand reject the designation theotokos and on the other wish to introduce the idea of a confusion (sunchusis) and mixing (krasis) of the natures, "and absurdly fabricate only one nature for the flesh and the Godhead," [410] and consider the divine nature of the only-begotten to be capable of suffering, the Council has adopted both the letters of Cyril to Nestorius [411] and the Easterns, as well as the letter of Leo. It is therefore directed both against those who break up the mystery of the Incarnation into two sons, and also against those who consider the Godhead of the only-begotten to be capable of suffering, who imagine a mingling and a fusion and declare the human substance of Christ to be a heavenly substance: "those who on the one hand assert two natures in the Lord before the union and those on the other hand who imagine one after the union, be anathema." (kai tous duo men pro tes henoseos phuseis tou kuriou mutheuontas, mian de meta ten henosin anaplattontas, anathematizei). (This was the sacrifice of the thought of Faith.) "Following therefore the holy Fathers, we all agree in teaching plainly that it is necessary to confess one and the same Son our Lord Jesus Christ, perfect alike in His divinity and perfect in his humanity, alike truly God and truly man," (Hepomenoi toinon tois hagiois patrasin hena kai ton auton homologein huion ton kurion hemon I. Chr. sumphonos hapantes ekdidaskomen, teleion ton auton en theoteti kai teleion ton auton en anthropoteti, Theon alethos kai anthropon alethos ton auton). This is further developed in detail, then we have: "We acknowledge one and the same Christ in two natures unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; nowhere is the difference of the natures annulled because of the union, but on the contrary the property of each of the two natures is preserved; each nature coming together into one person and one hypostasis, not divided or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and only-begotten, God-Logos." (hena kai ton auton Christon . . . en duo phusesin [412] asunchutos, atreptos, adiairetos, achoristos gnorizomen; oudamou tes ton phuseon diaphoras aneremenes dia ten henosin, sozomenes de mallon tes idiotetos hekateras phuseos. kai eis hen prosopon kai mian hupostasin suntrechouses, ouk eis duo prosopa merizomenon e diairoumenon, alla hena kai ton auton huion kai monogene, Theon logou). The decree appeals in support of these statements to the Old Testament, to Jesus Christ Himself, and--to the Nicene Creed; at the close it is said that no one is to accept or teach any other creed, that on the contrary only this form of belief is to be handed down in connection with the instruction of Jews, heathen, and heretics.

The Emperor had now got what he wished. He had shewn that he ruled the Church, and he had got a formula according to which he was able henceforth to decide what was orthodox and what was heretical. [413] An end was put to the uncertain state of things which permitted everyone to appeal to the 318 bishops and in doing this to think whatever he liked. In the full consciousness of his triumph Marcian appeared in person along with Pulcheria at the sitting immediately following (6), and addressed the Council, making express reference to Constantine. He was greeted with acclamations from the whole Council: "We all so believe; we are all orthodox; this Faith has saved the world; hail to Marcian, the new Constantine, the new Paul, the new David! You are the peace of the world; Pulcheria is the new Helena!" But the Pope too had got what he wanted, if not everything. His letter had not been given straight off the place of a doctrinal ordinance, but the Conciliar-decree had proceeded from this letter; his dogmatic teaching was acknowledged, and in his address to the Council Marcian had given expression to this fact. The truth is that without the help of the Papal legates Marcian could not have effected anything. But the Church of the East had been deprived of its faith. [414] The henosis phusike, the natural union, was not mentioned; no one could any longer unhesitatingly teach that the God-Logos had taken up the human nature into the unity of his unique substance and made it the perfect organ of His deity. The construction of a Christology based on the God-Logos was severely shaken; the "two hypostases" (duo hupostaseis) were not expressly condemned. In the "coming together" (suntrechein) each nature continues to exist in its own mode of being; the divinity has not absorbed the humanity nor has the humanity been exalted to the height of the divinity, but the human and divine natures are simply united in the person of the Redeemer, and therefore only mediately and in an individual (individuum). No pious Greek who had had Athanasius and Cyril for his teachers could acknowledge that to be "the right mean"; it was not even a formula of compromise like that of the year 433; it was the abandonment of the work of developing the Christological formula strictly in accordance with soteriology. The latter itself now became uncertain. If humanity was not deified in Christ, but if in His case His humanity was merely united with the divinity by the prosopon or person, then what effect can a union such as that have for us? That formula can only be of advantage either to the detested "moralism" of the Antiochians, or to mysticism, which bases its hope of redemption on the idea that the God-Logos continually unites Himself anew with each individual soul so as to form a union. The four bald negative terms (asunchutos etc.,) which are supposed to express the whole truth, are in the view of the classical theologians amongst the Greeks, profoundly irreligious. They are wanting in warm, concrete substance; of the bridge which his faith is to the believer, the bridge from earth to heaven, they make a line which is finer than the hair upon which the adherents of Islam one day hope to enter Paradise. One may indeed say that the Chalcedonian Creed preserved for the East the minimum of historical conception which the Church still possessed regarding the person of Christ, by cutting short the logical results of the doctrine of redemption, which threatened completely to destroy the Christ of the Gospels. But the Fathers who accepted the Creed did not think of that. They in fact accepted it under compulsion, and if they had thought of this, the price which they paid would have been too dear; for a theology which, in what is for it the most important of all questions, has recourse to mere negatives, is self-condemned. Nor is it of any use to point to the fact that the Council merely gave the mystery a definite standing and thereby furthered the interests of the Greek Church and the Greek theology. The true mystery on the contrary was contained in the substantial union of the two natures themselves. It was seriously damaged by being banished from its place here, and when in place of it the conception of the union, a conception which was supposed at the same time to involve a state of separation, was raised to the position of the secret of faith. The real mystery was thus shoved aside by a pseudo-mystery which in truth no longer permitted theology to advance to the thought of the actual and perfect union. Monophysitism which holds to the statement that, without prejudice to the homoousia of the body of Christ with our body, the God-Logos made this body His own body and for this reason took it up into the unity of His substance, is without doubt the legitimate heir of the theology of Athanasius and the fitting expression of Greek Christianity. [415] The proposition, however, which was now to pass for orthodox, "each nature in communion with the other does what is proper to it," (agit utraque forma cum alterius communione, quod proprium est) actually makes two subjects out of one and betokens a lapse from the ancient faith. That the view we have here expressed is correct is attested by the previous history of the formula of the two natures and the one person. Up to this time scarcely anything had been known in the East of a "nature without hypostasis" (phusis anupostatos), although the Antiochians had distinguished between phusis and prosopon. It is attested further by the melancholy proceedings at the Council itself, and, as will be shewn, it is attested above all by the history which follows. A formula was now introduced which could ultimately be traced to a legal source and which for that reason could be transformed into a philosophical-theological formula only by a scholastic.

At Chalcedon only a part of the deputation of monks who had approached the Council with the prayer that the ancient faith might not suffer harm, and also the majority of the Egyptian monks, remained firm. [416] We cannot say, however, whether the action of the latter was an instance of the courage of faith. Their request that the Council should not compel them to accept the formula since in this case they would be killed after their return to Egypt, their despairing cry, "We shall be killed, if we subscribe Leo's epistle; we would rather be put to death here by you than there; have pity on us: we would rather die at the hands of the Emperor and at your hands than at home," proves that they were still more afraid of Coptic fanaticism than of the Emperor's police. They were allowed to postpone their subscription till a new bishop should be appointed to Alexandria, since they had explained that without a new bishop they could do nothing. They were not, however, to stir from Constantinople till then.

The Council was to be a Council of peace after the downfall of Dioscurus. All were pardoned, even Ibas himself, and on the other hand, the traitorous associates of Dioscurus at whose head stood Juvenal of Jerusalem. All were restored to their bishoprics so far as that was at all feasible. A series of Canons was then issued dealing with the regulation of ecclesiastical matters. The seventeenth Canon asserted in a blunt fashion what was a fundamental Byzantine principle: "let the arrangement also of the ecclesiastical districts follow that of the civil and state places." (tois politikois kai demosiois topois kai ton ekkklesiastikon paroikion he taxis akoloutheito). The twenty-eighth, under cover of an appeal to the third Canon [417] of 381, struck a blow at Rome by ordaining that the patriarch of Constantinople was to enjoy similar privileges to those possessed by the bishop of Rome, was to be second to him in rank, and was to get an enormous extension of his diocese--namely, over Pontus, Asia, and Thrace. The proceedings in connection with this matter do not belong to the history of dogma, although Leo combated the resolution with dogmatic arguments drawn from tradition. The Roman legates, we may note, entered their protest. The Emperor once more created for himself a patriarch primi ordinis, after that the patriarch of Alexandria had had to be overthrown, and it was the bishop of his own capital whom he put alongside of the Roman bishop. The Council had to ask the Pope to confirm the twenty-eighth Canon by way of return, as it was openly put, for the acknowledgment of his dogmatic letter in the East. [418] But the Pope remained firm; his letters 104-107 prove that he had no intention of surrendering the grand success he had secured just in the East. A primacy of the East in Constantinople was the greatest possible danger, and for this reason Leo at once again took up the cause of the chairs of Alexandria and Antioch. In fact he now even shewed some hesitation in giving his approval of the resolutions of the great Councils generally, so that the Monophysites came to be under the pleasing delusion that he was inclined to side with them. (!) [419] He soon entirely broke with Anatolius and entered into negotiations with the new bishop of Alexandria (ep. 129) and with the bishop of Antioch (ep. 119) whose position in their patriarchates he sought to strengthen, and whom he begged to send him more frequently information regarding their affairs that he might be able to render them assistance. Soon, however, the Constantinopolitan bishop Anatolius found himself in such a difficult position owing to the new dogmatic controversies, that he preferred to shelve the Canon complained of and once more to seek the friendship of Leo which he did indeed secure. __________________________________________________________________

[366] See Isidor Pelus. epp. I., Nos. 323, 334; Acacius of Melitene, ep. ad Cyril. in Mansi V., p. 860 (998 sq.). Cyril himself (ep. ad Eulog. Migne, Vol. 97, p. 225) says that people are now speaking reproachfully of him: dia ti duo phuseis onomazonton auton henescheto e kai epenese ho tes Alexandreias. Fuller details in Ehrhard, op. cit., p. 42 f.

[367] See, above all, the Church History of Socrates, who thoroughly understood this aspiration of theirs.

[368] Of all the great bishops of the Empire the Roman and Alexandrian bishops alone possessed a traditional policy which was strictly adhered to, and acted in accordance with it. They accordingly really became forces in history. The Chair of Antioch never had a policy; in the conflicts with the Arians it became a mere puppet after the Church already sixty years before this had had to come to its assistance, and it possessed no fixed traditions. The position taken up in the Nestorian controversy by the feeble and unreliable John is typical of the bishops of Antioch (see his letter to Sixtus of Rome). It is customary to complain of the hierarchial imperiousness of Athanasius, of the violent actions of Theophilus, Cyril, and Dioscurus, and of the unfeeling policy of the Roman bishops, and to contrast them with the Bishops of Antioch. But people do not reflect that when forces manifest themselves they have to adapt themselves to the material upon which they are to work, and quite as little do they try to imagine what appearance the history of the Church would have presented without the "violences" of the Roman and Alexandrian bishops. Those who at the present day complain, together with their dogmatic system, would not at all events have been here at all if these tyrannical and unfeeling princes of the Church had not existed, and the tame dogmatic of the present time would never have made its appearance apart from the fanatical dogmatic of those despots. It may be incidentally remarked that we ought hardly to conclude from Mansi VI., p. 1008, that Dioscurus wished to restore Origen's reputation.

[369] Hellenism in the East received its death-blow owing to the downfall of the Alexandrian bishop in the year 451; with Theophilus the process of estrangement between the Church and Hellenism had undoubtedly already begun.

[370] The unique position of the Alexandrian Chair till 450 and its policy, have up till now not had justice done them in our histories. The bishop of Alexandria ranked as the second in Christendom (see above, at the Council of 381) and corresponding to this position was a certain right which is indeed difficult to define--of oversight, or better, the exercise of an oversight over the churches of the East in the Fourth and Fifth centuries, which was being more and more widely recognised. The Alexandrian bishops attempted to develop the position which they thus occupied to a position of primacy.

[371] Sixtus III., Coelestin's successor, as his letters prove, continued on the best of terms with Cyril and silently repulsed the attempt made by two Nestorian bishops, Eutherius and Helladius, to break up the union between Rome and Alexandria (see the letter of the two amongst the letters of Sixtus). His epistle to John of Ephesus proves (ep. 6) that he had inherited his predecessor's hatred of Nestorius. On the other hand the sole letter of Leo I. to Dioscurus which we possess, and which was written soon after his enthronement (445), surprises us by its tone which recalls the letters of Victor and Stephanus, and by its demands. Dioscurus could not have forgotten a letter such as this. Still it is not till the time of the Council of Ephesus that we have plain evidence of the dissension between the two bishops (see Leo's ep. 43 sq.). The way in which Dioscurus treated Leo's epistle and the legates secured for him the bitter enmity of the Pope. The question now was: Rome or Alexandria? Previous to this Leo himself, like his predecessors, had in Christology used a form of statement which was Cyrillian, or Tertullian-Augustinian. He says Serm.
34. 4: "dei filius naturæ carnis immixtus", and 23. 1: "naturæ alteri altera miscebatur."

[372] Thomasius (Dogmengesch. I. 2, p. 367) also pronounces the Council of Chalcedon "hardly less stormy" than that of the year 449.

[373] The documentary material bearing on the Eutychian controversy has been for the most part printed in Mansi T. V. sq.; where also will be found the letters of Leo I. (cf. the edition of Ballerini) and those of Theodoret having reference to the subject. Historical accounts in Prosper, Liberatus, Facundus, in the hist. eccl. of Zacharias of Mytilene hitherto published only in Syrian, in the breviculus hist. Eutych. (Sirmond's App. ad Cod. Theodos.), in Euagrius, Theophanes, and many later Greek and particularly Oriental chroniclers. To these have been added in recent times, apart from Zacharias (see Krüger, Monophys. Streitigkeiten, 1884) first of all the hitherto unknown Appellations of Flavian and Eusebius of Doryläum to Leo I. (see Guerrino Amelini, S. Leone magno e l'Oriente. Roma 1882, Grisar i. d. Ztschr. f. Kath. Theo]. VII., 1883, p. 191 f., Mommsen, Neues Archiv. XI. 2, 1886, p. 361 f.); second, the Acts of the Robber-Council according to a Syrian MS., in German by Hoffmann (Kiel 1873), in an English translation with rich additions from other Syrian MSS, by Perry, The Second Synod of Ephesus 1881, and previously published by the same writer, An Ancient Syriac Docum. etc., Oxford 1867; Martin, Actes du Brigand. d'Éphese, traduct. faite sur le texte Syriaque, 1875 by the same, Le Pseudo-Synode connu dans l'hist. sous le nom de Brigandage d'Éphese, étudié d'après ses actes retrouvés en Syriaque, 1875, thirdly the publication of Révillout, Récits de Dioscore, exilé à Gangres, sur le concile de Chalcédoine, translated into French from the Coptic, (Rev. Egyptol. 1880, p. 187 sq., 1882, p. 21 sq., 1883, p. 17 sq.); see Krüger op, cit. p. 12 f. Accounts in Baronius, Tillemont, Gibbon, Walch, Schröckh, Neander and Hefele; cf. the works on Leo I. by Quesnel, Arendt, Perthel. Spite of these works we do not yet possess a critical account of the history of the Church and of dogma for the all important years previous to the Council of Chalcedon. The most important preliminary work in this direction would be a monograph on Theodoret, the man who in my opinion was the most truth-loving and the least guided by considerations of policy of the Fathers of that period. This has been done by a Russian, Glubokowski (see above); but it is unfortunately not accessible to German science.

[374] See, e.g., de recte fida ad Theodos. (Mansi IV., p. 693): I. Chr. anthropinois te au kai tois huper anthropon idiomasin eis hen ti to metaxu sunkeimenos.

[375] See, above all, his "Eranistes". The work of the Catholic Bertram, Theodoreti doctrina christologica, 1883, is painstaking but biassed; sec. Theol. Lit. Ztg., 1883, No. 24; Möller in Herzog's R.-Encyklop. sec ed. XV., p. 401 ff., The question of Theodoret's orthodoxy is certainly a very troublesome one for a Catholic.

[376] Dioscurus treated the metropolitan Irenæus of Tyre, and Theodoret in the year 448, in the style of one who was primate of the whole Greek Church and was recognised by the Emperor as such.

[377] Flavian takes his stand on the Union of 433 though he inclines to the Antiochian interpretation of it; see his confession in Mansi VI., p. 541: kai gar en duo phusesin homologountes ton Christon meta ten sarkosin ten ek tes hagias parthenou kai enanthropesin, en mia hupostasei kai en heni prosopo (a distinction is thus drawn between phusis and hupostasis, while hupostasis and prosopon are regarded as parallel terms, and accordingly the way is paved for the Chalcedonian formula in the East also), hena Christon, hena huion, hena kurion homologoumen, kai mian men tou Theou logou phusin sesarkomenen mentoi kai enanthropesasan legein ouk arnoumetha--the letter is addressed to Leo, and Flavian was apparently not yet aware what Leo's views were and whether perhaps he did not adhere entirely to the doctrine of Cyril. The prudent patriarch accordingly "confesses" two natures after the incarnation also and yet one!--dia to ex amphoin hena kai ton auton einai ton kurion hemon I. ton Chr. Tous de duo huious e duo hupostaseis etc.; a condemnation of Nestorius follows. Here at all events the way is paved for the Chalcedonian formula but, characteristically enough, by a bishop who sought to take up a safe position relatively to both sides.

[378] The statement when compared with Cyril's doctrine can scarcely be regarded as open to suspicion. Eutyches recognised the existence of two natures previous to the incarnation, i.e., allowed that the distinction in thought was an ideal moment, but he could not admit the perfect homousia of the body of the Logos with our body after the incarnation, since that body was to be thought of as having been deified. Cyril had not indeed openly said that the actual body of the Logos was not homoousios with our body, but still he could scarcely avoid that conclusion. Eutyches rejected as a calumny the charge brought against him of teaching that Christ brought his flesh from heaven, on the contrary indeed he was the first to declare in the course of the debate that the Holy Virgin is homousios with us and that from her our God became flesh. He wished in this way to escape making any direct admission.

[379] See the letter of the Empress Eudokia to Theod. II. (Leo. ep 57): egraphe gar entautha pasan philoneikeian kekinesthai, hoste phlauianon ton episkopon ek ton anthropinon pragmaton eparthenai.

[380] Leo's admission is amusing reading (ep. 34 I): "Diu apud nos uncertum fuit, quid in ipso Eutyche catholicis displiceret." Now Eutyches is the child of the devil who denies the reality of the body of Christ. Leo represents him in the bluntest fashion as the out and out doketist.

[381] Ep. 36 ad Flav.: "Et quia clementissimus imperator pro ecclessiæ pace sollicitus synodum voluit congregari, quamvis evidenter appareat, rem, de qua agitur, nequaquam synodali indigere tractatu" etc.; ep. 37 ad Theod. II.: "præsertim cum tam evidens fidei causa sit, ut rationabilius ab indicenda synodo fuisset abstinendum" etc.

[382] Leo writes here as if in this affair of Eutyches the Emperor had had recourse to him first as the successor of Peter, and as if he had at once unfolded the true doctrine of the Incarnation on the basis of the confession of Peter and thereby refuted Eutyches ("religiosa clementissimi principis fides sciens ad suam gloriam maxime pertinere, si intra ecclesiam catholicam nullius erroris germen exsurgeret, hanc reverentiam divinis detulit institutis, ut ad sanctæ dispositionis effectum auctoritatem apostolicæ sedis adhiberet, tamquam ab ipso Petro cuperet declarari, quid in eius confessione laudatum sit, quando dicente domino: quem me esse dicunt homines filium hominis?" etc.). The Council is merely an opus superadditum, "ut pleniori iudicio omnis possit error aboleri." Thus the condemnation of Eutyches is already decided upon and the Council has merely to repeat it. The Pope enjoins this.

[383] The letter to which not till a later date, however, (see Mansi VI., p. 962 sq.) though by Leo himself, proofs were appended from Hilary, Augustine, Gregory of Nazianzus, Chrysostom and Cyril, begins with a reference to the Roman Creed which in the view of Leo decides the whole question in its opening words; for the three statements: "Credere in patrem omnipotentem, et in Christum Iesum filium eius unicum dominum nostrum, qui natus est de spiritu sancto et Maria virgine", demolish "the devices of almost all heretics." They involve the nativitas divina, and the nativitas temporalis which in no way injures the former. We should not have been able to overcome the author of sin and death if the deus ex deo had not assumed our nature. If Eutyches was unable to recognise that this was taught in the Creed, then certain passages (which the Pope now adduces) ought to have convinced him--as if Eutyches had ever denied the truth of this thought! The idea of a non-human body of Christ cannot be proved from the miraculous birth; for the Holy Spirit merely gave the impulse; the reality of the body of Christ was got from the body of Maria semper virgo (c. 2). This is followed by the proposition in the style of Tertullian: "Salva igitur proprietate utriusque naturæ et substantiæ (both words should be noted) et in unam coeunte personam suscepta est a maiestate humilitas", attached to which we have a series of expressions which are supported by statements in Damasus, Ambrose, Augustine, and partly also in Tertullian; thus, "natura inviolabilis unita est naturæ passibili", "mediator dei et hominum homo Iesus Christus", "mori potest ex uno, mori non potest ex altero", "in integra veri hominis perfectaque natura verus natus est deus, totus in suis, totus in nostris", "assumpsit formam servi sine sorde peccati, humana augens, divina non minuens", "exinanitio inclinatio fuit miserationis, non defectio potestatis", "tenet sine defectu proprietatem suam utraque natura, et sicut formam servi dei forma non adimit, ita formam dei servi forma non minuit" This was the way in which God met the cunning of the devil, in order that we should not be lost contra dei propositum (c. 3). Next follow the old Western paradoxes of the "invisibilis factus visibilis" etc. The fourth chapter contains the detailed development of the doctrine. The human nature in Christ was not absorbed by the divine; on the contrary "agit utraque forma cum alterius communione, quod proprium est verbo scilicet operante quod verbi est et carne exsequente quod carnis est." The flesh never loses the "natura nostri generis". In accordance with this the evangelic history is apportioned between the human and the divine nature of him "qui unus idemque est". "Quamvis enim in domino T. Chr. dei et hominis (!) una persona sit, aliud tamen est, unde in utroque communis est contumelia, aliud unde communis est gloria". "Propter hanc unitatem personæ", as it is put in c. 5, "in utraque natura intelligendam et filius hominis legitur descendisse de coelo" etc., that means as Leo now shews, that we can and must interchange the opera. "That the Son of God was crucified and buried, we all confess in the Creed." Christ established this article of faith in the 40 days after the Resurrection, after Peter had already before this acknowledged the identity of the Son of God and the Son of Man. All ought accordingly to see that the "proprietas divinæ humanæque naturæ" "individua permanet" in Him, and consequently know that "Word" and "Flesh" are not the same, but that the one Son of God is Word and Flesh. Eutyches, who has by the most barefaced fictions emptied of its meaning the mystery to which alone we owe our redemption and separates the human nature from Jesus, incurs the sentence pronounced in 1 John IV. 2, 3. He must also necessarily deny the reality of the passion and death of Christ and thus subvert everything, the Spirit of sanctification, the water and the blood. In his concluding chapter Leo discusses the statement of Eutyches that before the union there were two natures and one after it and expresses his astonishment that "none of the judges censured such a foolish and perverse avowal and passed over such an absurd and blasphemous utterance as if they had heard nothing to which to take exception." The first half of the statement is as impious as the second; this statement which had been passed over ought "si per inspirationem misericordiæ dei ad satisfactionem causa perducitur," to be made a clean sweep of as a pestilential opinion. The Pope hopes that Eutyches will amend and in this case the greatest mercy will be shewn him. The statements in this twenty-eighth letter were further supplemented in letter 35 addressed to Julian. Here (c. 1) Nestorius too is regarded as a heretic; as against Eutyches the view is made good that it is not only a question of the Creator being known, but also of the creature being redeemed. Here we meet with the statement "in susceptione hominis non unius substantiæ, sed unius eiusdemque personæ", here the unity of the person is made intelligible (see Cyril) by pointing to unity of body and soul in man, and here finally the statement of Eutyches examined in the sixth chapter of letter 28 and which was not censured at Constantinople, is further dealt with. Leo understands it as meaning that the human nature of Christ had been already created before the Incarnation and accordingly classes it along with the statement of Origen regarding the pre-existence of the soul which had been already condemned. See also letter 59. A few remarks on the catchwords asunchutos, atreptos will perhaps not be out of place here. (The words adiairetos and achoristos do not require any special genetic explanation.) They have sprung from two sources in the history of dogma. The first of these is to be found in Tertullian's work adv. Prax. Tertullian c. 27 wrote in opposition to certain monarchian ideas, according to which the spiritus (= deus = pater = Christus) was either changed into the caro (= homo = filius = Jesus) or else was united and mingled with the caro so as to form a tertium quid and therefore a new being, and thus disappeared in the new being. The view thus developed became universally known through Novatian who adopted it in part, but particularly by means of Leo's doctrinal letter. It runs: "Si enim sermo ex transfiguratione et demutatione substantiæ caro factus est, una iam erit substantia ex duabus, ex carne et spiritu, mixtura quædam, ut electrum ex auro et argento et incipit nec aurum esse, id est spiritus, neque argentum, id est caro, dum alterum altero mutatur et tertium quid efficitur." Thus Jesus would be no longer either God or Man: ita ex utraque neutrum est; aliud longe tertium est quam utrumque. But both the passages in the Psalms (LXXXVII. 5) and the Apostle (Rom.
I. 3) teach de utraque eius substantia. Videmus duplicem statum, non confusum sed coniunctum, in una persona, deum et hominem Iesum . . . Et adeo salva est utriusque proprietas substantiæ, ut et spiritus res suas egerit in illo, i.e., virtutes et opera et signa, et caro passiones suas functa sit, esuriens sub diabolo, sitiens sub Samaritide . . . denique et mortua est. Quodsi tertium quid esset, ex utroque confusum, ut electrum, non tam distincta documenta parerent utriusque substantiæ. Sed et spiritus carnalia et caro spiritalia egisset ex translatione aut neque carnalia neque spiritalia, sed tertiæ alicuius forma ex confusione . . . Sed quia substantiæ ambæ in statu suo quæque distincte agebant, ideo illis et operæ et exitus sui occurrerunt." The second source is to be found in the Eastern and Western authors who wrote against Apollinaris; these maintained the asunchutos and atreptos, and this was quite the current view in the time of Cyril. Cyril, in a great number of passages asserts that according to his doctrine the two natures are joined together asunchutos, atreptos, analloiotos, ametabletos, without there having been any kind of mingling (sunchusis, sunkrasis, sunousiosis) (see adv. Nest. 1. 5, c. 4--ad Theodos. n. 6, 10--ep. 3 ad Nestor. Migne, Vol. 77, p. 109--adv. neg. deip. n. 2--epil. ad. I--adv. Theodoret. ad. 4, 5, 8, 10--adv. Orient, ad 1, 10, 11--ep. ad Maxim., Vol. 77, p. 152--ad Acac. Ber. 160--ad Joan. 180--ad Acac. Mel. 192--ad Eulog. 225--ad Valerian. 257--1 ad Succ. 232, 36--2 ad Succ. 237, 40--ad Euseb. 288--Explan. Symb. 304--Quod un. Christ. Vol. 75, p. 1361--Hom. XV., Vol. 77, p. 1092--in Luc., Vol. 72, p. 909--c. Julian. I., 10, Vol. 76, p. 1012--Hom. ad Alex., Vol. 77, pp. 1112, 1113--in ep. ad Hebr., Vol. 74, p. 1004--Resp. ad Tiberium ed. Pusey c. 6, 7, III., p. 587 sq. Cyril devoted a special work to this subject entitled kata sunousiaston which I regard as one of his last). Nevertheless he defended the word krasis as against Nestorius (adv. Nestor. c. 3) as an expression used by the fathers to bring out the closeness of the union of the two natures, and unhesitatingly employs certain forms of speech compounded of it or its synonyms. (Ehrhard op. cit., p. 44.) Further, both of these, the amplifications of Tertullian and those of the anti-Apollinarian Greek fathers, refer back to philosophical usage, but this usage explains at the same time why Cyril and others could indeed adopt the expression krasis but not sunchusis. The Stoics (see Zeller. Philos. d. Griechen III. 3, p. 127) drew a distinction between parathesis, mixis, krasis and sunchusis. "The parathesis is the somaton sunaphe kata tas epiphaneias, as in the case of the mixing of different kinds of grain"--they have the Nestorians in view--: mixis on the contrary is duo e kai pleionon somaton antiparektasis di holon, hupomenouson ton sumphuon peri auta poioteton, as in the case of the union of fire with iron and of the soul with the body; but speaking more accurately a mingling of this sort of dry bodies should be called mixis, and of fluid bodies krasis (the krasis di holon of the Stoics presupposes the permeability of the bodies and assumes that the smaller body when mingled with a larger body spreads itself over the entire extent of the latter and is thus to be found in every particle of it [hos meden morion en autois einai me metechon panton ton en to migmati], but that both preserve their own peculiarities in the mingling; thus the "mixtio" does not exclude, but on the contrary includes the salva proprietas utriusque substantiæ). The sunchusos finally is duo e kai pleionon poioteton peri ta somata metabole eis heteras diapherouses touton poiotetos genesin, i.e., the old substances and their qualities cease to exist (phtheiresthai) and a third body comes into existence." Tertullian, the Stoic, rested his ideas apparently on these philosophical theorems and first of all applied this materialistic view to the relation of the two substances in Christ (he and Novatian, who was also a Stoic, accept the mixis and reject the sunchusis; but along with this Tertullian has further a juristic set of conceptions (una persona, duæ substantiæ). In his treatise "Ammonius Sakkas and Plotinus" (Archiv. f. Gesch. d. Philos. VII. Vol. H. 3) Zeller, however, has called attention to the fact that Ammonius Sakkas (Plotinus) described the relation of body and soul in man in the sense of the Stoic krasis (mixis) (the soul entirely permeates the body and unites itself with it so as to form one substance, but nevertheless remains unchanged and retains its proprietas salva) and that Nemesius expressly says that this view of the matter, in support of which he appeals to Porphyry, is to be applied to the relation of the two natures in Christ. Now, however, not only the Eastern bishops but also Leo I. expressly appeal in support of their Christology to the relation between body and soul. There can therefore be no doubt but that this is to be traced back to the Neo-Platonic school which had adopted a Stoic terminology. Plotinus calls the soul not only apathes but also atreptos (because in the union it undergoes no change); but, as Zeller observes, he never speaks of asunchutos. This word, however, once more occurs in Porphyry and is used to designate the union. Consequently so far as the Easterns are concerned the atreptos is to be referred to Plotinus and the asunchutos to Porphyry (Zeller), while the West through Tertullian took the "non confusus" direct from the Stoa.

[384] It may also be said that the speculations of Cyril and the Alexandrian theologians begin where Leo leaves off, and for this reason it is altogether astonishing to read in Thomasius (Dogmengesch., Vol. I., p. 365) that Leo in his epistle seeks to gather up both negatively and positively the results of the Christological movement so far as it had gone. Leo did not think of this. He contents himself with making the thought definite and confessing with full assurance that Christ was perfect God and perfect man, and points out that redemption demands the divinity and the humanity. But the question as to the relation into which the divinity and the humanity have come to each other, was one which really never gave him any concern when he thought of redemption. This, however, was the main question with Cyril, Eutyches and Dioscurus. It cannot accordingly be said that Leo and they are in direct contradiction. On the contrary, Cyril and his followers further developed the problem in concrete fashion in the name of the Faith, ex necessitate fidei so to speak, while with Leo it was in true Western fashion left in the indefinite form of conceptions. This is how the matter stands on a favourable view of Leo's position; for as soon as we take his development of the doctrine in a concrete sense and transfer it into the region of the Eastern controversy it can be understood only as Nestorian. With Leo it is not at all a question of a union of the two natures. It may, however, help towards forming a fair and correct estimate of Leo's position to note that he (mistakenly) saw in Eutychianism the recurrence of a danger which he had so energetically warded off in his struggle with Manichæism (see his sermon). He in fact opposes "Eutychianism" as if it were Manichæism.

[385] This has reference to the proceedings of the year 448 (Irenæus of Tyre) into which I cannot enter. The Syrian Acts first threw light on them as well as on the Councils of Tyre and Berytus.

[386] See Martin, op. cit. p. 186 sq.
[387] See Martin, p. 196 sq.

[388] The charges brought against him by Egyptians at the third sitting of the Council of Chalcedon (Mansi VI. p. 1006-1035) even after making all due allowance for the calumnies in them, afford interesting proofs of how he disregarded the imperial authority in Egypt and how he weakened the authority of the State there and also of the extent to which he was master of Egypt and now threatened to become master of the State. Tillemont XV. p. 589, very justly says: "Dioscore règne partout." See, above all, p. 1032: Dioskoros panta akathosiotos pratton, nomizon te anotero panton einai, oute tous theious tupous oute tas megistas apophaseis sunechoresen ekbibasthenai, heautou ten choran mallon e ton kratounton einai legon.

[389] See Theodoret's letters 113 and ff. Theodoret speaks in terms of high praise of Leo's ep. dogmatica, and as a matter of fact he had no reason for suspecting it in any way. In letter 121 he expressly says that Leo's letter agrees with tois par' hemon kai sungrapheisi kai ep' ekklesias keruchtheisin aei.

[390] See the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon in Mansi VI., p. 1009; the matter is, however, not quite certain. It is even probable that Dioscurus did not excommunicate Leo till shortly before the Council of Chalcedon.

[391] Valentinian III. writes to Theod. II. (ep. Leon. 55): "The Faith must get into confusion, hen hemeis apo ton progonon paradotheisan opheilomen meta tes prosekouses kathosioseos ekdikein kai tes idias eulabeias ten axian to makario apstolo Petro atroton kai en tois hemeterois chronois diaphulattein, hina ho makariotatos episkopos tes Rhomaion poleos, ho ten hierosunen kata panton he archaiotes paresche, choran kai euporian echein peri te pisteos kai hiereon krinein. Flavian was right in appealing to him. It is a curious spectacle! Both Emperors are entirely in the hands of their Patriarchs, the one in the hands of Dioscurus, and the other as here in the hands of Leo. Never yet had the State been so much under priestly authority. The Emperors who were powerless to do anything themselves played the one primate against the other.

[392] He had, however, begun to shew a certain amount of hesitation during the last months, as is evident from the recall of Pulcheria and the banishment of his minister Chrysaphius. See Krüger, op. cit. p. 56.

[393] Marcian ep. in Leon. epp. 73: "Pro reverenda et catholica religione fidei Christianorum tuam sanctitatem principatum in episcopatu divinæ fidei possidentem sacris litteris in principio justum credimus alloquendam . . . omni impio errore sublato per celebrandam synodum te auctore maxime pax circa omnes episcopos fidei catholicæ fiat!" It was in these terms that Marcian wrote to Leo! But he had in view merely an Eastern Council; see the second letter (ep. 76).

[394] The Westerns could not come, he writes, because of the distress occasioned by the Huns.

[395] Still the presidency was only an honorary presidency; even Hefele admits that "the official conducting of the business" was looked after by the Imperial Commissioners. As a matter of fact the Romish Legates were merely the first to record their vote.

[396] One of the instructions given by Leo to his legates is to the effect that Dioscurus ought not to have a seat in the Council, but should only be heard as a defendant; Mansi VI , p. 580 sq.

[397] Mansi VII., p. 443.
[398] Ranke, Weltgesch. IV. 1, p. 324.

[399] Luther, who is, speaking generally, not favourably disposed towards the Chalcedonian Council, says of it (von Conciliis and Kirchen, Erl. Ed., Vol., 25, p. 351): "The Fourth Council of Chalcedon had 630 members, almost as many as all the others, and yet they were quite unequal to the Fathers at Nicæa and Constantinople."

[400] From the Récits de Dioscore (Krüger op. cit. 12 ff. 61-68) we gather--what was hitherto not known--that Dioscurus was to be won over in a friendly way by the Court after he had arrived at Constantinople from Alexandria. accompanied by fewer bishops than he had intended to have with him, in consequence of an intrigue. We now know that he was conducted to a meeting of ecclesiastical notables and that there he also met the Emperor and Pulcheria. Every effort was made to get him to agree to the ep. Leonis; but he remained firm and it is said that by his glowing words against the two natures he for the time being again won over the bishops (Anatolius, Juvenal, Maximus of Antioch and others) as well as the Senate to his doctrine. This is very probable. The story given in Krüger, p. 62, shews by what a spirit of rebellion against the State and Emperor he and his followers were animated. It follows from the Acts that during the first session of the Council of Chalcedon he was still a power.

[401] Those too who held Antiochian views were undoubtedly no small number, namely, bishops from Syria, Asia, Pontus, and Thrace; they could accept Leo's letter: but (1) they were in the minority. (2) Partly by their repudiation of Nestorius and partly by what they did at Ephesus in 449 they had made the sacrifcium intellectus fidei and were thus spiritually demoralised. Others might without trouble have gained all they wanted so far as they were concerned.

[402] The threatening and abusive language ("Whoever divides Christ ought to be divided himself; dismember them, cast them out, etc.") used at Chalcedon was not any milder than that used at Ephesus in 449. Theodoret condemned Nestorius at the eighth sitting, Mansi VII., p. 185 sq. From the time of Leo I., moreover, the orthodox and those whose views were more of the type of the school of Antioch, applied the worst term of abuse, "Jew", to the Eutychians (Monophysites) because they ostensibly denied the Incarnation.

[403] Dioscurus protested that he did not assume that there was any mixing of the natures; and nobody was able to prove the opposite against him; see Mansi VI., p. 676: Dioskoros eipen; oute sunchusin legomen oute tomen oute tropen. anathema to legonti sunchusin e tropen e anakrasin. On the other hand he was not refuted when he (p. 683) asserted: "Flavian was justly condemned because he still maintained two natures after the union. I can prove from Athanasius, Gregory, and Cyril that after the union we ought rather to speak only of one incarnate nature of the Logos. I will be rejected together with the Fathers, but I am defending the doctrine of the Fathers, and yield on no point." He approved of the expression "out of two natures"; one can readily understand how as early as the second session he no longer wished to appear at the Council.

[404] In connection with this affair Juvenal and the Palestinian bishops changed their opinion in the most disgraceful fashion.

[405] Some of them had agreed with Flavian in 448, with Dioscurus in 449, and now they agreed with the Council! Even the Imperial Commissioners blamed the bishops for the contradiction in which they entangled themselves when they gave out that their vote of the year 449 had been purely extorted from them; see Mansi VI., p. 637 fin. It has to be noted, moreover, that throughout the proceedings it was much more--in fact it was almost exclusively--a question of persons, of their standing, or of the right or wrong of their condemnation, and therefore as to Nestorius, Cyril, Flavian, Eutyches, Theodoret, Dioscurus, Leo, than a question of the actual matter in hand. In the first place everyone took care not to touch the real point or to have anything to do with constructing formula., and in the second place the personal question was with most of them the main thing.

[406] See the proceedings in Mansi VII., p. 97 sq.

[407] The expression so frequently used by the Westerns, God has assumed "a man", was also found fault with, but not officially.

[408] The formula was probably already drawn up when the Chalcedonian Council began; that commission cannot have got it ready in the short time it had; it even appears to follow from what is said in the Récits de Dioscore that it had already been laid before the Court previous to the meeting of the Council.

[409] See Mansi VII., p. 107 sq.

[410] Rarely had any one to my knowledge expressed himself in this way after Apollinaris (mian einai tes sarkos kai tes theotetos phusin), but the Bishops had first to distort the faith which they themselves had avowed and which they now nevertheless rejected, in order to turn it into a heresy. The "Eranistes" of Theodoret, however, attacks those who "make the divinity and humanity into one nature."

[411] The Anathemas of Cyril are also implicitly to be understood as included in these; see Loofs, op. cit. p. 50 f.

[412] It is here that the difficulty occurs which has been so much discussed, namely, that the Greek text gives ek duo phuseon and the Latin "in duabus naturis". Judging from all that preceded this, one cannot but hold that Tillemont, Walch, Gieseler, Neander, Hefele and others are right (as against Baur and Dörner) and look for the original reading in the latter phrase. The form in which we have the Greek text is of course not a mere error, but is an ancient falsification. In the period from the fifth to the seventh century the falsification of acts was an important weapon for the defence of what was sacred.

[413] This prospect was indeed a delusive one; for since the Council had expressly appealed both to Cyril and to Leo, its decree could be interpreted according to the views either of the one or of the other, and consequently the old trouble was really there again. The three decrees of February 7th, March 13th, and July 28th, 452, (Mansi VII., pp. 476, 477, 501) are a proof of the energy and vigour with which the Emperor purposed to enforce the Chalcedonian Creed. According to the first of these all controversy was to cease, nobody was to dispute publicly regarding the faith. Whoever does this is looking in broad daylight for a false light, commits an act of sacrilege, insults the holy Council and betrays the secret to the Jews and the heathen. He must accordingly expect severe punishment, which has been already fixed and which will he of different degrees for the separate classes of the community. According to the third edict Eutychians and Apollinarians are forbidden to have pastors; those who contravene this order are to be punished with confiscation of their goods and exile. The right of assemblage, the right of building churches, and of being together in monasteries, is withdrawn from them. Their property is to go to the Exchequer. So too they are deprived of the power of inheriting anything and of bequeathing anything. Eutychian monks are to be treated as Manicheans, are to be driven from their "stalls" and removed from the soil of the Empire. Eutychian writings are to be burned, etc. Eutyches and Dioscurus themselves must go into exile.

[414] In respect of its relation to the orthodox faith and of the fact that it owed its origin to the Emperor, the Chalcedonian Creed may be compared with the decrees of the last Councils of Constantius. It is true that orthodoxy afterwards found it easier to reconcile itself to the two natures than to the "likeness". Still perhaps it might have come to terms with the latter also.

[415] We can only adduce one consideration here, namely, that it was essential to this Christianity which had the New Testament beside it, that it should never, just because of this, develop in a logical way as a mystical doctrine of redemption. Understood in this sense no objection can be taken to the statement that the logical development of the monophysite faith even in its least extravagant form, was bound to come into conflict with certain elements of the ecclesiastical tradition, or with certain New Testament passages which could not be given up.

[416] See the proceedings of the fourth sitting.

[417] The Romans before this had no official knowledge whatever of this Canon, and in praxi it had not been entirely enforced, even in the East itself, as the Robber-Synod shews.

[418] Leo, ep. 98. The letter is full of flattery of the Pope; see c.
I. It follows too from the formally very submissive epistle of Anatolius to Leo (ep. 100) that an attempt had been made to induce Leo by flattery to acknowledge the 28th Canon. We gather from Marcian's epistle to Leo (ep. 100) that the Emperor considered that Canon as the most important ordinance of the Council together with the doctrinal decision. For details see Kattenbusch, op. cit. I., p. 87 ff., where the Canons 9 and 17 are discussed.

[419] See ep. 110; the approval followed in ep. 114, with certain reservations because of Canon 28; see ep. 115-117. __________________________________________________________________

§ 3. The Monophysite Controversies and the Fifth Council. [420]

I. The severest condemnation of the Chalcedonian Creed as decree wrung from the Eastern Churches, is to be found in the history of the next 68 years. These years are not only marked by the most frightful revolts on the part of the populace and the monks, particularly in Egypt, Palestine, and a part of Syria, but also by the attempts of the Emperors to get rid of the decree which had been issued with a definite end in view, and which was a source of difficulty and threatened the security of the Empire. [421] They were all the more under the necessity of making these attempts, that in the East energetic theologians who could defend the Chalcedonian Creed were entirely lacking. At this period it maintained its position only by means of the great importance given to it by the imposing Council, by the majority of the clergy in the capital, and by the Roman bishop. These were strong forces; but the strength of the opposition to it, which was supported by the increasing aversion to the Byzantine Emperor and his Patriarch, by national aspirations and personal antipathies. [422] was also great. In addition to this the pious-minded felt as much aggrieved by the fact that a new formula had been introduced at all as by what was in the formula itself. [423] The Encyclical letter (enkuklion) of the usurper Basilikus (476) which abrogated the Chalcedonian Creed and decided in favour of Monophysitism, had certainly only a passing importance. [424] But state-policy was successful in uniting a section of the Chalcedonians and Monophysites by means of a Henoticon (482), which, when issued as an imperial edict by Zeno, virtually annulled the decree of 451. [425] The result was that soon instead of two parties there were three; for not only did the strict Monophysites renounce their allegiance to the Alexandrian patriarch Peter Mongus who had concluded a union with his Constantinopolitan colleague Acacius, but the Roman bishop too, Felix II., (see the epp.) rejected the Henoticon and pronounced sentence of excommunication on Acacius. Old and New Rome, which were already separated by political circumstances, now came to be divided ecclesiastically, and this schism lasted from 484 to 519. Since the Henoticon soon shewed itself to be ineffective, it would have been brought to an end sooner if Rome had not insisted on the condemnation of Acacius by his successors. The Monophysites soon came forward again openly rejecting the Chalcedonian Creed, and those in the Eastern Empire who adhered to it, and also the Henotics, had at first difficulty in preventing the new Emperor Anastasius from formally doing away with the unfortunate decree. [426] The confusion was now greater than it had ever been. People who used one and the same Christological formula were often further apart and more bitter against one another than were those who were separated by. the wording of the formulæ. If the Emperor had not been a capable ruler, things in the Empire would have got out of joint. He was meanwhile always approaching nearer to Monophysitism with which he was personally in sympathy, and on the side of which stood not only the more fanatical, but also the more capable theologians, such as Philoxenus of Mabug, and Severus. In Syria and Palestine the Monophysite cause already triumphed amid terrors of all sorts; but the capital, Constantinople, and Thrace, with the true instinct of self-preservation held to the Chalcedonian Creed against the Emperor, the patron of heretics, and Vitalian, [427] a fierce general, a semi-barbarian, and rebel who was yet the forerunner of Justinian who taught him politics, made common cause with the Chalcedonians against his monarch. The Emperor had to submit to the powerful general; but it was not possible, even by making all sorts of concessions in regard to the dogmatic question, to get Rome, which put forward exorbitant claims, to agree to a policy of oblivion in reference to Acacius. Anastasius did not come to any agreement with the Pope Hormisdas. But what he did not succeed in doing was successfully accomplished by his successor Justin, or rather by the nephew and director of the new Emperor Justin, Justinian, in conjunction with Vitalian. They saw that for the re-establishment of the authority of the Emperor and the state in the Empire, the re-establishment of the Chalcedonian Creed and of the league with Rome, was indispensable. After that the authority of the four Councils had been once more solemnly recognised in Constantinople, everywhere throughout the Empire the orthodox raised their heads. Hormisdas did not himself appear in the capital; but his legates succeeded in getting almost everything he had asked. Again did the Roman bishop, like Leo before him, help the Byzantine State to gain the victory over the ecclesiastical movements. Orthodoxy was again restored and the names of the authors and defenders of the Henotikon, from Acacius and Zeno downwards were erased from the sacred books (519). The purification of Syria and its chair from the monophysite heresy meanwhile created some difficulty. The attempt to get the more determined Monophysites out of the way was, it is true, successful, but as soon it became a question as to who were to be their successors, it at once became evident again that the Chalcedonian Creed was understood in a different way in Rome and in the East respectively, and that the East had not got rid of the suspicion of Nestorianism so far as Rome was concerned.

This difference emerged in a very characteristic fortn in the so-called Theopaschitian controversy. [428] The formulæ, "God has suffered", "God was crucified", were time-honoured forms [429] of speech in the Church and had never been quite forgotten. But after there had been so much speculation regarding the Trinity and the Incarnation, these formula came to be discussed too. Still, even after the formation of the Chalcedonian Creed, it seemed to be impossible to disapprove of them; for if Mary was to be called theotokos this meant that they were approved of. Nevertheless opposition soon shewed itself when the Monophysite patriarch of Antioch, Petrus Fullo, with the approval of his co-religionists, formulated the Trishagion as follows: Holy God, Holy the mighty one, Holy the immortal one who was crucified for us: hagios ho Theos, hagios ischuros, hagios athanatos, ho staurotheis di' hemas. The Emperor approved of this innovation which, however, at once met with opposition in Antioch itself, and which cost one of those who had to do with it his life. In the capital a controversy broke out when some Scythian monks, whose soundness in the faith was unimpeachable, defended the orthodoxy of the formula, "one of the Trinity was crucified--suffered in the flesh" ("unum de trinitate, esse crucifixum--passum carne"), about the year 518. The legates of Pope Hormisdas, bearing in mind Leo's doctrinal letter, opposed it as being incompatible with the Catholic Faith! The Pope himself was now concerned in the matter. A decision was necessarily urgently desired--on the part of the Emperor too; for the relations had become so strained that any sudden movement might throw the whole Church into confusion. Hormisdas hesitated about giving an answer; he neither wished to disavow his legates nor too openly to reject the formulæ. The decision which he finally gave in a letter to the Emperor Justin (521), was to the effect that everything was already decided, without, however, saying what was to be regarded as authoritative. This declaration which shewed his perplexity roused just indignation not only in Constantinople but also in North Africa. Justinian, who at first did not approve of the formula,--so long, that is, as he still followed in the wake of Vitalian,-- afterwards held to it all the more strongly, the more he urged the strictly Cyrillian interpretation of the Chalcedonian Creed. When he had the power he got the Popes too to acknowledge it, had the faithful but impolitic partisans of Rome, the Akoimetan monks in Constantinople, excommunicated, and finally got the formula sanctioned at the Fifth Ecumenical Council, that our Lord who was crucified in the flesh, Jesus Christ, was one of the Trinity. [430]

It is apparently necessary to make a sharp distinction between the attempt of the Monophysites to give an extension to the Trishagion in a Theopaschitian sense, and the assertion of the Scythian monks that the doctrinal formula: "One of the Trinity suffered in the flesh", was orthodox. That attempt was rejected because it involved an innovation in worship and because it could be interpreted in a Sabellian sense. Orthodoxy putting this meaning on it, gave the name "Theopaschitian" a permanent place in its collection as a heretical name. On the other hand it was, to begin with, purely owing to Roman obstinacy that the formula proposed by the Scythians, and which, moreover, rather justifies than adopts the monophysite formula, was objected to. But it has been recently very justly remarked [431] that the cause of the offence which the formula gave, even to some of the Chalcedonians, is not to be looked for within the Christological, but on the contrary within the Trinitarian, domain. This brings us to a complete change which took place in the theology of that period and which claims the most serious attention.

Attention has been already drawn to the fact, (Vol. III., p. 154 and above p. 126) that in the course of the transition from the fifth to the sixth century Aristotelianism once more became the fashion in science. This revolution helped to bring about the naturalisation of the Chalcedonian Creed in the Church, or what amounts to the same thing, contributed towards reconciling Greek religious feeling to it. While up to the beginning of the sixth century orthodoxy was without any theologians, we come across a man in the first half of the century who both as theologian and student of dogma was as able as he was prolific, and in the case of whom one feels that while he believes and thinks as Cyril believed and thought, his determined defence of the Chalcedonian Creed was nevertheless not in any way forced out of him--Leontius of Byzantium (c. 485-543). [432] When, however, we try to find out by what means he, as a theologian of the school of Cyril, succeeded in accommodating himself to the Chalcedonian Creed, it becomes clear that he was helped to this by the Aristotelian conceptual distinctions, and therefore by scholasticism. Leontius was the first scholastic. [433] While, owing to his faith, he stood in an intimate relation to Greek religious feeling, the Chalcedonian formula presented itself to him as an inviolable doctrine promulgated by the Church. But while he unweariedly defended it against Nestorians, Apollinarians, and Severians, dogmatic and religious considerations were put entirely into the background; their place was taken by an exposition of doctrine based on philosophical conceptions. [434] He treated of substance, genus, species, individual being, of the attributes which constitute the substance, of inseparable accidents and of separable accidents.
[435] It was on the result of these discussions that the conceptions of the natures and the hypostasis in Christ were based; the Aristotelian deutera ousia, or second substance, was given a place of prominence, and thus the Chalcedonian Creed was justified. All the Aristotelian splitting of conceptions did not, it is true, cover the most crucial point of all--namely, the exposition of the unity. Here, however, Leontius had recourse to the idea of the Enhypostasis of the human nature; thus proving in the clearest way that he wished to keep the Chalcedonian definition on the lines laid down by Apollinaris and Cyril and not on those laid down in Leo's doctrinal letter. [436] In the whole way in which Leontius transferred the Nestorian-Monophysite controversy into the region of Philosophy, we may accordingly see a momentous revolution. This much, however, is certain, that his violent metabasis eis allo genos was the condition of the gradual reconciliation of the East with the Chalcedonian Creed [437] and that in intrinsic importance it may be classed along with the method of counting up authorities. Only in this way was it possible for Leontius to accept the formula as authoritative, and, spite of the dry form in which it was put, to regard it with respect from the religious point of view and at the same time to see in it an inexhaustible subject for the display of dialectical skill. It is undeniable that Chalcedonian orthodoxy was first firmly established in the East in the age of Justinian, that is to say, inner agreement with the Chalcedonian Creed was then first secured to any large extent, and this without abandoning Cyril's religious theology, but on the contrary while emphasising it and giving it the preference. [438] If this is so then the only possible explanation of these facts is that supplied by the entrance of Aristotelian scholasticism into the Church. The Chalcedonian dogma is lost in philosophical theology. The Faith and the Church were to a certain extent relieved, feeling reassured by the knowledge that the dogma was in safe keeping and in good hands, as it were. One can forget the scruples to which it gives rise, when one is confident that there are scholars who are able by the aid of a definite set of technical terms to make everything right. Here, too, for this reason, the work of the historian of dogma ceases; his place is taken by the historian of theology.

Leontius was himself one of the Scythian monks. [439] The fact that this great opponent of the Monophysites championed the Theopaschitian formula and his criticism of the Antiochian theology, prove how far removed he was from Nestorianism. But the formula by its characteristic difference from the older conception, that of Petrus Fullo, further proves that the introduction of the Aristotelian philosophy into theology called for a restatement of the docttine of the Trinity. The "unus ex trinitate" is opposed to the "thrice holy" who was crucified for us. Tritheistic tendencies were not wanting at that period, and this is true of both sides in so far as attention was given to the Aristotelian philosophy. That Petrus Fullo, who as a Monophysite so energetically made the Trinity into a unity, was, it is true, no Aristotelian, but neither is his formula in any way typical of Monophysitism as a whole.

The latter on the contrary for the two or three generations after the Chalcedonian Creed, shews that it had in it sufficient life and vigour to be accessible to the influence of the most varied movements and thoughts. It shews during this period that it was the expression of spiritual and theological life in the East generally. The state of petrifaction, barrenness, and barbarism into which it afterwards got, did not yet actually exist, although signs of its approach were evident amongst the fanatical masses and the ignorant monks. It is significant, to begin with, that Monophysitism did not allow itself to be carried to extremes by the blow dealt it by the Chalcedonian Creed. That is a proof of the goodness of its cause and of its power. The Monophysites were strongly bent on keeping clear of "Eutychianism". Anything like mingling or transformation was out of the question, in fact Eutyches himself was abandoned to his fate. [440] Then the readiness shewn by a large section of the Monophysites to come to terms with orthodoxy if only the Chalcedonian Creed and the objectionable dogmatic development in Leo's doctrinal letter were got out of the way, is a proof that they really strictly maintained the position of Cyril. This is true very specially of the most important champion of Monophysitism--Severus. The attempt has indeed been to draw a distinction, as regards doctrine, between Cyril and Severus, but the attempt does not seem to me to have been successful. [441] Cyril, equally with Severus, would have objected to Leo's assertion that each nature in Christ effects what is peculiar to it, though in conjunction with the other. The emphasis laid by Severus on the one energy is genuinely Cyrillian, and the expression borrowed from the Areopagite, energeia theandrike, "theandric energy", by no means approaches so near the limits of the permissible as the expression theotokos. But neither is there any difference in the formulæ, mia phusis tou logou sesarkomene, "one incarnate nature of the Logos" and mia phusis tou logou sesarkomenou, "one nature of the incarnate Logos"; for Cyril too, logically attributed one nature not only to the God-Logos but also to the Christ. The communication of properties according to him, involves in every respect the natures. But there is not even any trace of a theological difference between Severus and Leontius. [442] The difference consists purely in the extent to which each was desirous of accommodating his views to the Chalcedonian Creed and interpreting Leo's doctrinal letter in bonam partem, and also in the philosophico-theological terminology employed. The statements of Severus regarding the one composite nature, the metastoicheiosis [443] or transformation etc., express absolutely nothing else than what is found in the formulæ of Leontius which are in part expressed in an entirely different and in fact in an opposite way. Leontius accepts the enhypostasis of the human nature in Christ, and Severus strictly defends himself against the supposition that he teaches that the human nature in any way loses its natural peculiarity in the union. It is simply that unfortunate Chalcedonian Creed which stands between the opponents, and what separates them therefore is the question as to whether the Western terminology is to be followed or not. That this is the case is proved by the attitude taken up by Severus to the Extreme Right of his party. The Henoticon had already split up the Egyptian Monophysites. One section of them had renounced connection with Petrus Mongus (akephaloi). But in Syria, too, at the beginning of the Fifth Century we find several tendencies amongst them. The blow dealt them after the restoration of orthodoxy in 519 drove them to Egypt, and there actual splits took place. Even the strictest party amongst them did not put forth the catchword "transformation"; but in seriously reflecting on the problem as to how a human nature must be constituted after a God had made it His own, they arrived at propositions which were perfectly logical and which for this very reason referred back to Irenæus, Clemens Alex., Origen, Gregory Nyss., Hilary, Apollinaris, and to some utterances of Dioscurus and Eutyches. Their leader, Julian of Halicarnassus who was opposed by the Severians, developed the doctrine of the one nature into the doctrine of the identity of the substance and properties of the divinity and the humanity in Christ. The hypothesis of the indestructibleness of the body of Christ from the moment of the assumptio, became the shibloleth of the "Julianists" or Gaians, who, now nicknamed Aphthartodoketæ and Phantasiasts by the Severians, retorted with the word "Phthartolatry". The Julianists, whose point of view was determined solely by the thought of redemption, did not shrink from maintaining the perfect glorification of the body of Christ from the very first, and in accordance with this saw in the emotions and sufferings of Christ not the natural--though in reference to the Godhead the voluntary--states consequent on the human nature, but the acceptance of states kata charin, which were regarded as having no inner connection with the nature of the Redeemer as that of the God-man. This nature being entirely free from all sin was also supposed to have nothing in common with suffering and death. [444] In opposition to this view the Severians laid so much stress on the relation of the sufferings of Christ to the human side of Christ's nature in order to rid them of anything doketic, that no Western could have more effectively attacked doketism than they did. [445] We find in general amongst the Severians such a determined rejection of all doctrinal extravagances--though these are not to be regarded as absurdities, but as signs of the settled nature of the belief in redemption--that we are glad to be able clearly to see how unnecessary it was in the East to adopt the Chalcedonian Creed, and to replace the mia phusis of Cyril by the doubtful doctrine of the two natures. One section of the Monophysites nevertheless went the length of asserting that the human soul of Christ was not omniscient ("Agnoetæ"), so that as regards the one energy of the God-Man, a distinction is to be drawn even in the sphere of knowledge between what it did as possessed of divine knowledge and what it did as humanly ignorant. This idea yields to none of the Monophysite eccentricities in absurdity, [446] and indeed it differs from them for the worse by the fact of its having no religious thought as its basis. While one section of the Monophysites thus did the work of criticising their own party better than any Chalcedonian could have done without incurring the reproach of Nestorian-ism, a philosophy of identity made its appearance amongst certain individuals in the party itself, which might have raised the fear that it would turn into Pantheism, if there had been any danger of its doing this at the time. On the mystical side, this had indeed been accomplished long ago, but this was very far from involving an intellectual mode of conceiving of things. Still it is of importance to note that an approach was made in this direction from two sides. First there were Monophysites who took up with the thought that the body of Christ from the moment of the assumptio was to be considered as untreated, the view of the Aktistetæ. If the Father can communicate to the Son the attribute of unbegottenness, and at that time no one any longer doubted that he could, why should the Logos not also be able to give His body the attributes of the uncreated; and in fact if it is His body, could He help doing this? Here already we meet with the thought that something created can nevertheless be something eternal. We hear no more of a flesh which was brought hither from heaven, but a kindred idea takes the place of this heretical thought. In the second place there were people, the Adiaphorites, [447] who refused to make any distinction between the divinity and the humanity in Christ, and this denial of all distinction further led some Syrian and Egyptian monks to the speculative idea, or to put it otherwise, gave increased strength to the speculative idea, that Nature in general is of one substance with God (see Vol. III., p. 302), a thought which had points of contact with mystical religious practices. [448] If all these movements illustrate the inner life of Monophysitism which within itself once more passed through old forms of development, the attention it gave to the Aristotelian philosophy and such excellent works as those published by Joh. Philoponus, finally proves too that it did not in any way shrink from contact with the great spiritual forces of the time. The tritheistic controversy was in all essential respects fought out on its own ground, and the boldness and freedom shewn by the scholarly Monophysites, in the face too of tradition, [449] bears witness to the fact that in the Chalcedonian Creed a foreign power had imposed itself on the Church of the East. [450]

2. The restitution of orthodoxy in the year 519 coincides with the successful efforts of the theologians who were skilled in the Aristotelian philosophy, to furnish the Church which clung to the Chalcedonian Creed with a good conscience. It is possible to accept the Chalcedonian Creed as authoritative and at the same time to think exactly as Cyril thought: this was the result arrived at by the "new Cappadocians", the "new Conservatives", as Leontius and his friends came to be called, who made terms with the two natures in the same way as the oriental scholars in the Fourth Century did with the homoousios; and it is this conviction which lies at the basis of Justinian's policy in reference both to the Church and the State. If the efforts of former emperors in so far as they favoured Monophysitism were directed towards getting rid of the Chalcedonian Creed or consigning it to oblivion, the policy of the Emperor, which had the support of the new conservative theology, was to make use of the power which every fait accompli, and therefore too a Council, supplies, and at the same time to do justice to the old tendencies of Greek piety. It was the Roman bishop who was hardest hit by such a policy. For the second time he had contributed towards giving the Emperor of the East a firmer position in the country, this time by doing away with the schism. But the friend had not become any more harmless than he was in the year 451. As at that time he was, after having done what was required of him, quietly pushed back within his own boundaries by the 28th Canon of the Council, so on this occasion too he was to get a poor reward for his services. It was not intended that Rome should triumph in the East, but that the Emperor of the East should once more become the Lord of Rome. The dogmatic union with the West represented the terms on which it was to be made ecclesiastically and politically subject to the Emperor.

Justinian's policy has in it an element of greatness. He once more set up the world-empire and pacified the Church, and yet his civil and ecclesiastical policy of conquest was unsound and its results lacked permanence. He did not know how to win over the Monophysites, and by his Western policy he did harm to the much more important Eastern policy. Some years after his accession Justinian arranged a grand religious discussion in Constantinople between the Severians and the Theopaschitian Orthodox (531). It is of some importance because it shews the extent of the advances made by the Orthodox towards the Monophysites under the guidance of Hypatius of Ephesus in conformity with the wish of the Emperor. [451] The orthodox held firmly to the Chalcedonian Creed, but allowed that the Council had also approved of the phrase, one incarnate nature (!); [452] on the other hand they rejected as Apollinarian forgeries the testimonies of their opponents in reference to the condemnation of the words "in duabis naturis" on the part of the ancient fathers. [453] About the same time the Emperor issued several edicts regarding the true Faith (533), which in thesi were based on the Chalcedonian Creed, but did not reproduce its formulæ; on the contrary they evaded the use of them and contained besides, the addition that it is necessary to believe that the Lord who suffered was one of the Holy Trinity. [454] The Emperor, who had himself an interest in dogma, already here shewed what his policy was, namely, to take back the Church in all that was essential entirely to Cyril, but to allow the Chalcedonian Creed to remain authoritative. Thus as matters stood, the formula: hena tes hagias triados peponthenai sarki, "one of the Holy Trinity suffered in the flesh", was a henotikon. But the Empress went still further. She had always favoured the Monophysites, one cannot even say secretly; the various threads of the undertaking the object of which was to assist "the pious doctrine" to triumph, all met in her cabinet, and it appeared not impossible that the Emperor might in the end be got also to agree to the formal abandonment of the Chalcedonian Creed and consequently to a new actual henotikon. [455] The appointment of Anthimus, a Monophysite in disguise, as patriarch of the Capital, and the admission of Severus to the Court, prepared the way for the final blow which was to be struck at the Chalcedonian Creed. But once more did the Roman bishop, who was informed of what was going on by Ephraem of Antioch, save orthodoxy. In the year 536 Agapetus appeared at the Court of the Emperor and succeeded in getting Anthimus removed from his post and excommunicated. A Council which was held under the presidency of the new patriarch Mennas at Constantinople in the year 536, after the death of Agapetus who died in the capital, and which has left behind an extensive collection of Acts, [456] put an end to the Monophysitism which was making overtures in an underhand way, acknowledged anew the expression: "en duo phusesi", "in two natures", and deposed and anathematised Anthimus. It is important that the Council which followed in the track of the theology of Leontius and upon which Leontius himself had some influence, roundly declared through its leader that nothing whatever ought to be done in the Church contrary to the will and command of the Emperor, but at the same time also added the following: "We both follow and obey the apostolic throne (Rome) and we regard those in communion with it as in communion, and those condemned by it we also condemn": hemeis to apostoliko throno exakolouthoumen te kai peithometha kai tous koinonikous autou koinonikous echomen, kai tous hup' autou katakrithentas kai hemeis katakrinomen. [457] The days when the names of Marcian and Leo were mentioned together, seemed to have returned. But the Pope at this time was no Leo, and Justinian was more than Marcian. Besides Anthimus, Severus, about whom the very worst calumnies were spread--that he was a heathen in disguise--and the heads of the Monophysite party of conciliation, were condemned. Justinian confirmed this sentence [458] by a decree (Aug. 536), while he threatened all adherents of the accused with exile and ordered the books of Severus as also those of Porphyry, [459] to be burned. At the first glance it seems paradoxical that the Emperor, who was himself not without Monophysite leanings, was now so genuinely furious at Severus and accused him at once of Nestorianism [460] and Eutychianism. But after what has been remarked above, (p. 241) the charge of Nestorianism is quite intelligible, and we can understand too the aversion felt by the Emperor who had himself an interest in dogma. A Monophysitism, such as that of Severus, which merely rejected the Chalcedonian Creed, but which, moreover, in combating Aphthartodoketism got the length of teaching in the most definite way the "division" of Christ, when once it was thoroughly understood, could be regarded only with antipathy by the Imperial theologian who had on the contrary always wished to have the Chalcedonian Creed and Aphthartodoketism. A Jerusalem Council repeated the decrees of the Council of Constantinople; [461] but it was impossible to restore tranquillity in Egypt. The Severian Theodosius had to make way for the Julianist Gajanus as Patriarch, and the Patriarch sent by the Emperor so seriously compromised his patron that he had to be excommunicated. [462]

In the measures he took the Emperor, however, never lost sight of his design which was to win over the Monophysites, and it is at this point that the humiliation of the Roman bishop begins, though he was himself undoubtedly mainly to blame. The theology of Antioch was still something highly objectionable in the eyes of all pious-minded persons. It seemed to be favoured by Leo's doctrinal letter and in fact to be put in a place of honour, and yet a large section of the Eastern Orthodox were at one with all Monophysites in holding that the great Antiochians "would have betrayed the secret". People hated it for the same reason that they hate the Liberals in the Church at the present day, and the Emperor certainly did not hate it least, not to speak of the Empress, the patroness of all pious monks. The Antiochians got the blame of "denying the divinity of Christ" and of dividing the one Christ into two. The influential bishop, Theodorus Askidas of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, is said to have advised the Emperor to make use of this widespread hatred in the interest of his ecclesiastical policy. This man, an enthusiastic pupil of Origen, had suffered seriously from the condemnation of the latter [463] to which he had assented against his will, and in order to divert attention from Origen (Euagr. E. H. IV.
38) he got the Emperor persuaded to believe that a great many Monophysites could be won over if a blow was struck at the Antiochians.
[464] As a matter of fact what had given most serious offence to the Monophysites in connection with the Council of Chalcedon, was that it pronounced Ibas and Theodoret orthodox and was silent about Theodore.
[465] The Emperor, supported by Theodora, who had long ago established a Monophysite branch-regime which made its influence felt as far as Rome, issued, apparently in 543, an edict, [466] in which the person and writings of Theodore, the Anti-Cyrillian writings of Theodoret, and the letter of Ibas to the Persian Maris, [467] were condemned. This was the edict of the tria kephalaia, the three points or chapters. The orthodox found themselves placed by it in a most painful position. It was a political move on the part of the Emperor forced on him by the circumstances in which he was placed, and a better one could not have been contrived. [468] The faithful adherents of the Fourth Council had to face the alternative either of actually departing from orthodoxy by the rejection of heterodox doctrines--for it was evident that a revision of the Chalcedonian Creed was intended, which limited freedom in the interpretation of it--or of having to defend what was questionable by way of protecting doctrinal unity; for nobody could deny but that Theodore in particular had actually taught heterodox doctrine. At the same time a sort of question du fait was to be decided in addition. The question as to the views held by the Council regarding things which it had not discussed, was to be settled. The Emperor dictated what these views were. Distinctions were to be made between what the whole Council had approved of and what had been approved of merely by individual members; for example, in reference to the letter of Ibas. It was plain that all this was bound only to be to the advantage of the Monophysites. It might be easy to point out to the Western opponents of the imperial decree that they had been too sharp-sighted in hunting for traces of Monophysite leaven, but as regards the main point they were entirely in the right. The condemnation of the three chapters, so far as its tendency was concerned, involved a revision of the Chalcedonian Creed. But the Emperor was in the right too; for he corrected the conciliar-decree in accordance with the spirit of the Eastern Church, which had been repressed at Chalcedon itself. He destroyed the Western influence; he carried the Chalcedonian Creed back to Cyril; he restored the dogmatic thought of the two Councils of Ephesus, without meddling with the Creed of Chalcedon. All four patriarchs of the East took offence at the condemnation of the Three Chapters and all four signed it after a brief hesitation. Thus powerfully did the Emperor make his rule felt in the Church; there had been no such monarch since Constantius and Theodosius
I. The patriarchs worked their bishops and they too all submitted, although they felt it difficult to consent to the condemnation of a bishop who a hundred years before this had died at peace with the Church. What, however, they did not feel, was the desolation created by this imperial measure. Origen was already condemned; the condemnation of the Antiochene theology now followed on his. It was now that the Church first fully provided itself with a falsified tradition, by shutting out its true Fathers as heretics under the patronage of Justinian. It is pretended that its theology had always been the same, and any one who at an earlier period had taught otherwise, was no Father and Shepherd, but an innovator, a robber and murderer. This Church tolerated no recollection of the fact that it had once allowed room within it for a greater variety of opinion. Justinian who closed the School of Athens, also closed the schools of Alexandria and Antioch! He is the Diocletian of theological science and the Constantine of scholasticism! In doing this he did not, however, impose anything on the Church; on the contrary he ascertained what were the true feelings of the majority, probably realised them himself, and by satisfying them made the Church obedient to the State; for the World-Church is to be feared only when provoked; when satisfied it will allow any kind of yoke to be imposed upon it.

The outbreak of the controversy of the Three Chapters which followed on this and its history, have an interest for the history of dogma merely owing to the fact that the North African bishops and, speaking generally, most of the Western bishops made such an energetic resistance to the condemnation of the Three Chapters. The conduct of the Africans and especially the work of Facundus "pro tribus capitulis", are honourable pages in the history of the Punic Churches. On the other hand in the conduct of the Roman Bishop we have a tragedy, the hero of which was no hero, but on the contrary a rogue. Vigilius, the creature of Theodora, the intellectual murderer of his predecessor, the man who was Monophysite or Chalcedonian in accordance with orders, constantly changed his opinion in the course of the controversy, according as he considered compliance with feeling in the West or compliance with the commands of the Emperor, the more necessary. Twice over he was forced by the Emperor to appear before the tribunal of the Church as a liar when Justinian produced secret explanations of his which contradicted his public utterances. His conduct both before the great Council and after it was equally lamentable. The poorest of all the Popes was confronted with the most powerful of the Byzantine Emperors. [469]

Justinian considered a great Council to be necessary although he himself, about the year 551, issued a second edict dealing with the affair of the Three Chapters. This edict [470] which was framed by the Emperor himself who was always theologically inclined, contains in the most verbose form the strictly Cyrillian interpretation of the Chalcedonian decree. The Cyrillian formula of the "one nature" is approved of, attention being, however, directed to the fact that Cyril made no distinction between nature and hypostasis. Christ is one "composite hypostasis"--hupostasis sunthetos. The Antiochian theology is rejected in strong terms, the three chapters are condemned in this connection; but it is asserted that we must abide by the Chalcedonian Creed. In order to sanction this edict, the Fifth Ecumenical Council was opened at Constantinople in May 553, Vigilius protesting. The patriarch of the capital presided. The Acts have not come down to us in their original form; we have only part of them in a Latin translation. But we know from the proceedings of the Sixth Council that interpolations were put into the Acts in the 7th century (on the part of the Monothelites?) and that these interpolations were traced at the time by means of palæographic investigations, though the documents which had been foisted in were in no sense forgeries. The proceedings of the Council which consisted of about 150 members amongst whom there were very few Westerns, were unimportant; all it had to do was to throw the halo of the Church round the imperial edicts. It condemned Origen, as Justinian desired; [471] it condemned the Three Chapters and consequently the Antiochian theology as Justinian desired; it sanctioned the theopaschitian formula as Justinian desired, and in its 14 long-winded anathemas it adopted the imperial edict of 551 as its own. But amongst those who thus said yes to everything, there were few who spoke contrary to their convictions. The Emperor was really the best dogmatist of his time and of his country--if it is the duty of the dogmatist to ascertain the opinions of the majority. While giving a position of exclusive authority to the interpretation of the Chalcedonian Creed on the lines of the theology of Cyril, he hit upon the sense in which it was understood by the Church of the East, i.e., by the majority in it. [472] The importance of the dogmatic finding of 553 ought not to be underrated. In a certain sense the blow which the West gave to the East at the Fourth Council was parried by the Fifth Council--in the fashion in which this is done in general in matters of dogma. Rome had given the formula of the two natures to the East, but a hundred years later the East dictated to the West how this formula was to be understood, an interpretation of it which in no way corresponded to the actual wording of the formula. At first undoubtedly the decree of the Fifth Council called forth serious opposition in the West. [473] But first Vigilius submitted, [474] then five years later the African Church followed his example. [475] Still the position of the successor of Vigilius, Pelagius I., was very seriously endangered in the West. The Churches of Upper Italy under the guidance of Milan and Aquileia renounced their allegiance to Rome. Never in antiquity was the apostolic chair in such a critical condition as at that time. Its occupant appeared to many in the West in the light of a State bishop at the beck of Constantinople and deprived of ecclesiastical freedom. The Lombard conquests set him free and rescued him from his position of dependence on Byzantium. Gregory I. having once more regained strength politically and his help being regarded as indispensable by those in Upper Italy who were threatened by the Arians and the pagans, again gained over the larger part of Upper Italy together with the Archbishop of Milan, though indeed it was at the price of a temporary disavowal of the Fifth Council. [476] Another part stood aloof from Rome for a whole century. But in the West too at the same period there was a decay of all independent interest in theological questions; when it once more revived, the Church had the Fifth Council and the Cyrillian Dogmatics, The East had revenged itself.

And yet one may doubt if Justinian's policy was the right one which in dogmaticis aimed at a mean between the Western and the Egypto-Syrian dogmatic. It stopped half-way. For the sake of the West and of the basis supplied by the Council of 451, the Emperor had adhered to the Chalcedonian Creed; for the sake of the Monophysites and of his own inclinations he decreed the Theopaschitian formula and the rejection of the Three Chapters. But in doing this he roused the West against the spirit of Constantinople and against the Byzantine State, at the very moment when he was making friendly overtures to it, and yet he did not gain over the Monophysites. [477] He could not find the right dogmatic formula for the World-Empire which he created; what he did settle was the specific formula for the patriarchate of Constantinople and its immediate belongings. He, however, saw that himself; he wished to sanction Aphthartodoketism (564) [478] which was in harmony with his own dogmatic views and which might perhaps win over the Monophysites. His policy was a logical one, and the Emperor set about carrying it out with his wonted energy, beginning as usual by deposing the patriarch of the capital. We cannot now say what would have happened; the opposition of the Bishops, led this time by the Patriarch of Antioch, Anastasius Sinaita, would perhaps have been overcome; but the Emperor died in November, 565, and his successor Justin II. did not continue this policy. Still, under Justin II. the attempts to gain over the Monophysites, by dragonnades and by friendly methods, did not cease.
[479] Even at that time the Imperial bishops were throughout kept from acceding to the extreme demands of the Monophysites by their desire to preserve communion with the West. The vacillation in the imperial policy, its partial success and partial failure, and the divisions among the Monophysites themselves, etc., belong to Church-History. The way was being prepared for renouncing entirely the authority of Byzantium--and here the political-national movement everywhere preceded the other,--and for the organisation in each case of a separate ecclesiastical constitution. These aims were not definitely accomplished till the seventh century, under entirely altered political conditions. [480] __________________________________________________________________

[420] The enormous and varied documentary material is given only in part in Mansi VII-IX. The Pope's letters are in Thiel, 1867. Much new in Mai's Script. Vet. Nova Coll.; Joh. of Ephesus (Monophysite) hist. eccl., German translation by Schönfelder, 1862, something different in Land, Anecd. Syr. Information regarding further sources in Möller, Monophysiten (R.-Encykl. X.) and Loofs, Leontius, 1887, (Texte u. Unters. III. 1, 2). Accounts by Tillemont, Gibbon, Walch, Schröckh, Hefele, Dorner, Baur, cf. the articles on the subject by Möller, Gass, and Hauck in the R.-Encykl.: in the same place the special literature in connection with the Theopaschitian, Tritheistic, and Origenist controversies and that of the Three Chapters. The special investigations, however, which had been carried on up till the beginning of the 18th century have rarely been resumed in recent times, but see Gieseler, Comment., qua Monophys. opin. illustr., 2 parts, 1835, 1838; Krüger, Monophys. Streitigkeiten, 1884 and Loofs, op. cit.; Kleyn, Bijdrage tot de Kerkgeschiedenis van het Oosten gedurende de zesde Eeuw, 1891 (from the chronicle of Dionysius of Tellmahre, who made extracts from the Church History of John of Ephesus. Kleyn gives the portions referring to the 6th century; they are identical with the second and third parts of John's Church History. Kleyn has published for the first time the sections for the years 481-561 [in Dutch]; they are of great importance for the history of Monophysitism, its spread, and the persecution it underwent).

[421] Leo I., Martian's successor, had already made a beginning with this, though he proceeded cautiously; see Leon. papæ ep. 145-158, 160-165, 169-173. One can see here what trouble it cost the Pope to maintain the Chalcedonian Creed. The opposition parties made the strongest efforts to prove that the Chalcedonian Creed was Nestorian. Of the memorial of Timotheus Aelurus (Heruler? hardly) the Monophysite Patriarch of Alexandria, Gennadius says (de vir. inl. 73): "librum valde suasorium, quem pravo sensu patrum testimoniis in tantum roborare conatus est, ut ad decipiendum imperatorem et suam hæresim constituendam pæne Leonem, urbis Romæ pontificem, et Chalcedonensem synodum ac totos occidentales episcopos illorum adminiculo Nestorianos ostenderet." The fact that the Emperor Leo called for an expression of opinion regarding the Chalcedonian Creed, was a step towards getting rid of it.

[422] Monasticism which was hostile to the State, the aspirations after independence on the part of the Egyptians, and jealousy of the influence of the Byzantine Patriarch, all played a part behind Monophysitism. This feeling of jealousy was shared by the Roman bishop who, however, felt himself under the necessity primarily of guarding the dogmatic formula.

[423] See the opinion of a Pamphylian Council supplied to the Emperor, printed in Mansi VII. p. 573-576. We can see from this that not only was the new definition which went beyond the Nicene Creed felt to be objectionable by the bishops, but that they disapprove too of the distinction of nature and person, prefer to speak with Cyril of one nature and wish to make the Chalcedonian Creed authoritative only in connection with controversies as being a formula which originated in and was rendered necessary by controversy, but not for the instruction of ordinary Christians. The Armenian Church has kept to this position; it is not Monophysite, but Cyrillian; see Arsak Ter Mikelian, Die Armenische Kirche in ihren Beziehungen zur Byzantischen vom. 4-13 Jahrh., Leipzig 1892, cf. Karapet, Die Paulikianer, (Leipzig 1893) p. 54 ff.

[424] Basilikus had the ep. Leon. ad Flav. and the Chalcedonian Creed condemned. About 5oo bishops of the South and West actually subscribed it, but not Acacius; see Euagr. h. e. III. 4. The decree takes its stand upon the Nicene Creed and the two following Councils, but orders the Chalcedonian canons to be burned. Basilikus afterwards withdrew it (Euagr. III. 7), see also the epp. Simplicii papæ.

[425] The Henotikon (Euagr. III. 14) declares in the first part that the sole authoritative creed is the Nicene-Constantinopolitan, and excludes all the other sumbola or mathemata; it then expressly condemns Nestorius and Eutyches while accepting the anathemas of Cyril. Then, however, there further follows a full Christological Confession in which the following statements are specially worthy of note: homologoumen ton monogene tou Theou huion . . . hena tunchanein kai ou duo; henos gar einai phamen ta te thaumata kai ta pathe haper hekousios hupemeine sarki . . . he sarkosis ek tes theotokou prostheken huiou ou pepoieke. memeneke gar trias he trias kai sarkothentos tou henos tes triados Theou logou . . . panta de ton heteron ti phronesanta e phronounta, e nun e popote e en Kalchedoni e hoia depote suoodo anathematizomen. An appeal on behalf of union is then made to the Egyptians to whom the epistle is addressed. Its dogmatic substance is not orthodox; the insincere way, however, in which the Council of Chalcedon is not condemned, but ignored, shews that there was a desire to tolerate Monophysitism. The Emperor. indeed cannot be blamed for issuing the edict; in doing this he simply did his duty. But Petrus Mongus played a double game, and so too did Acacius.

[426] See Rose, Kaiser Anastasius I., Halle, 1882.

[427] On the importance of the part played by Vitalian, see Loofs, p. 243 ff., and in addition Joh. Antioch. in Müller, Fragm. hist. gr. V., p. 32 sq.

[428] See Hauck in the Realencyklop. Vol. XV. p. 534 ff.

[429] See Vol. I., p. 187.

[430] See on the controversy Marcellinus, Euagr. Theophanes, Victor Tun., The Letters of Hormisdas, Mansi VIII. c. IX. Noris, Hist. Pelag. Disser. I. 1702. On the Scythian Monks, see Loofs, pp. 229-261.

[431] See Loofs, op. cit., pp. 53, 231 f., 248 ff., whose splendid investigations have been made use of is what follows.

[432] Loofs was the first to throw light on his works, his personality, and his history.

[433] This description is to be taken with the qualification that in his theological thinking he still shewed a certain freedom. While the proofs alleged by Loofs in favour of the view that the "Origenist" Leontius is identical with the Byzantine (pp. 274-297) are indeed not absolutely decisive, though to my mind they are convincing, one can see that Leontius held the great master in veneration without following him in his doubtful statements. But nothing is more characteristic of the period upon which the Church had now entered than the fact that even this academic veneration for Origen was no longer tolerated. Leontius was described as "Origenist" and Loofs' conjecture is quite correct (p.
296) that Joh. Damascenes, that in a certain sense the Eastern Church itself, consigned this theologian of theirs to oblivion because he was still too liberal.

[434] See Loofs, p. 60: "It is neither exegetical, nor religious arguments which are given a foremost place, but philosophical, and the philosophical theory upon which the arguments of our author rest, has a decidedly Aristotelian and not a Platonic origin. Our author is a forerunner of John of Damascus."

[435] See the explanations given by Loofs of the apparatus of conceptions used by Leontius, p. 60-74. The entire distinction between the Western conception and that which combines the views of Cyril and Leontius is to be found in scientific form in the statement of Leontius: ouk esti phusis anupostatos . . . anupostatos men ou phusis, toutestin ousia, ouk an eie pote. The Western legal fiction of a distinction between person and nature is here pitched aside. I do not enter into further detail regarding the theology of Leontius because in an outline of the History of Dogma it must suffice to ascertain its tendency and methods. Anything further belongs to the history of theology.

[436] The expedient of the enhypostasis was adopted in order to meet the objection urged by the Monophysite Severus against the Chalcedonian Creed and Leo's doctrine, that two energies necessarily lead to two hypostases. Leontius, following up a hint of Cyril herewith shews that if the relative standards of criticism are once abandoned, all Greeks who start from the doctrine of redemption, must be Apollinarians in disguise. Leontius was the first who definitely maintained that the human nature of Christ is not anupostatis nor on the other hand an independent hupostasis, but that it has its hupostenai en to logo. Leontius refers to the mode of the existence of the poiotetes ousiodeis in the ousia. The comparison is naturally defective since these poiotetes do not in themselves constitute a phusis. In fact all comparisons are defective. Neither Plato nor Aristotle is responsible for this philosophy. A pious Apollinarian monk would probably have been able to say with regard to the hupostenai en to logo: "Apollinaris says pretty much the same thing only in somewhat more intelligible words."

[437] Loofs, p. 72 ff. shews that the Chalcedonian element is strongly represented in the doctrine of Leontius and that in the efforts he made to do it justice we see the presence of the modern element of personality as distinguished from physic, though indeed only as a kind of shadow of it.

[438] The energetic opposition to the Antiochian theology is specially worthy of note in this connection. lip to the beginning of the Sixth Century the Chalcedonians were in such a state of alarm owing to the decree, that they could find no. fixed point from which to carry on the old and to them supremely important struggle against the "dismemberment". Leontius was the first to resume Cyril's attack on it and to carry on the interrupted work of repelling the most dangerous of all enemies.

[439] See Loofs, p. 228 ff.
[440] See Martin, Pseudo-Synode, p. 53.

[441] See Loofs, p. 53 ff. The sources of information regarding the Christology of Severus are given there, p. 54. I refrain from giving any account of it (see Gieseler, op. cit. I., Dorner II., p. 166 ff.), since its identity with Cyril's doctrine seems to me to follow from the evidence brought forward by Loofs. It is interesting to note that Severus deduces from the Chalcedonian Creed the hypothesis of two natural energies and two wills, and further employs this deduction against his opponents as an argumentatio ad absurdum. No one in the East knew just at that time what was still to come in the succeeding century. The statement of Severus: ouk energei pote phusis ouch huphestosa, from which he concludes that in Leo's view there are two hypostases, is highly noteworthy and is quite in accordance with Cyril's ideas. Gieseler, op. cit. I., p. 9.

[442] See the 30 kephalaia of Leontius kata Seuerou (Migne 86, 2, p. 1901 sq.). See the notice in Loofs, p. 79 ff. It is highly amusing to notice how two authors whose ideas are exactly the same appear to have absolutely distinct views owing to the different terminology, "one nature", "two natures". In Thesis XI. where the Trinity and Christology are treated together in a scientific way, Leontius says: "If, according to Gregory, we have in the case of the Holy Trinity the reverse of what we have in the oikonomia kata ton sotera, then in the case of the latter we must have two natures and one hypostasis, just as in that of the former we have three hypostases and one nature."

[443] See Gieseler, op. cit. II. p. 3.

[444] The extremely instructive second treatise of Gieseler supplies us with abundant material. Gieseler has brought out two things at the same time (1) that these Julianists (see the sixth anathema of Julius, p. 6) started from the idea of redemption, according to which the Logos assumed our flesh (homoousios), but that as it (second Adam) was not subject to sin so neither was it subject to corruptio, and that in the moment of the assumptio He raised it to the state of the Divine. A homousia of the body of Christ with our body after the Incarnation would do away with all the comfort and the certainty of redemption. For the Logos assumed our nature just in order that He might free it from phthora; if therefore the human nature of Christ had been still subject to phthora then redemption would be rendered uncertain. Gieseler has shewn (2) that this idea is identical with the idea of the classic fathers of the Church, that while they undoubtedly shewed some hesitation as regards the conclusions to be drawn from it, still all the conclusions drawn by the Julianists, or by Philoxenus, are represented in one or other of the classical witnesses. Above all the Julianist and Philoxenian statement that in the case of Christ all passiones were not assumed naturally, but in the strictest sense voluntarily, kat' oikonomian or kata charin, (Gieseler, p. 7) is merely the vigorous echo of the oldest religious conviction. It was the sharper distinction between the divinity and the humanity in the incarnate one, worked out in the Arian controversy, that first endangered this conviction. Apollinaris sought to give some help here, but it was no longer of any avail. Gieseler very rightly calls attention to the fact that in the Apollinarian school the dispute between the Polemians and Valentinians corresponds exactly to the dispute between the Julianists and Severians, i.e., in the case of the former the same conclusions had been already drawn and had in turn been denied, which the Monophysites afterwards drew. Of these some went the length of assuming the divinity of Christ's blood and spittle (see besides, Athanasius, ad Serap. IV. 14; "Christ spat as a man, and His spittle was filled with the Godhead"), and, strictly speaking, the Church itself never could nor would dispense with this ancient idea spite of its doctrine of the two natures. The very same people who got excited about Aphthartodoketism had never any scruples in speaking about the blood of God, and in thinking of that blood as actually divine. We cannot therefore avoid seeing in Aphthartodoketism the logical development of the Greek doctrine of salvation, and we are all the more forced so to regard it that Julian expressly and ex necessitate fidei acknowledged the homousia of the body of Christ with our body at the moment when the Logos assumed it, and rejected everything of the nature of a heavenly body so far as its origin was concerned.

[445] The passages are in Gieseler I. p. 20. The distinctions which were made are highly significant in view of the period of scholasticism which was approaching. There are two sorts of phthora; Christ was subject to the natural pathe of the body, but not to the phthora as he eis ta ex hon sunetethe to soma stoicheia dialusis. (Gieseler, p. 4).

[446] Thomasius indeed finds it "remarkable" (p. 375) that the majority of the orthodox teachers of the Church, Jerome, Ambrose, the Patriarch Eulogius, the Roman Gregory, rejected the doctrine of the Agnoetæ and attributed to Christ an absolute knowledge which he concealed temporarily only kat' oikonomian. These Fathers had not yet succeeded in doing what the Agnoetæ and the modern theologians can manage and do--namely, to imagine a Christ who at the one and the same time knew as God what he did not know as man and was yet all the while one person.

[447] See Möller, R.-Encykl. X., p. 248. Stephanus Niobes is mentioned as the originator of this line of thought.

[448] Frothingham in his Stephen bar Sudaili (1886) has now given us information regarding the Syrian Pantheistic thinkers amongst the Monophysites about the year 500 and further down. All Scotus Erigena is in Barsudaili. The Pantheistic mysticism of this Syrian and his friends merits the serious attention not of the historian of dogma, but of the historian of philosophy and culture. Scotus and the Pantheistic Mystics of the Middle Ages stand in closer connection with these Syrians than with the Areopagite. 1 Cor. XV. 28 supplies the central doctrine here.

[449] See Stephanus Gobarus in Photius, Cod. 232. He is also Aristotelian and Tritheist; noteworthy also for his bold criticism of tradition.

[450] On the Tritheists, see Schönfelder, Die Kirchengesch. des Johann v. Ephesus, p. 267 ff. The works of Philoxenus, Bishop of Hierapolis, who has lately been termed the best Syrian stylist, have been hitherto wholly neglected and still await an editor.

[451] See the Acts in Mansi VIII., p. 817 sq., Loofs, p. 263 f. Leontius took part in the discussion and it was dominated by his theology.

[452] See 823: "Sancta synodus utrosque sermones (two and one natures) pari honore suscepit et pertractat."

[453] It was here that the Areopagite was first cited as an authority--by the Severians, p. 820; his writings were, however, described by the orthodox as doubtful.

[454] Cod. Justinian (ed. Krüger), de summa trinit. 6-8. The words: henos kai tou autou ta te thaumata kai ta pathe, haper hekousios hupemeinen sarki . . . oute tetartou prosopou prostheken epidechetai he hagia trias, are worthy of note. Pope John II., 534, had to approve of the Theopaschitian addition.

[455] Loofs, p. 304 f., has shewn, however, that at this time Justinian was following the lead of Leontius.

[456] Mansi VIII., pp. 877-1162.
[457] P. 970.
[458] P. 1150 sq.
[459] P. 1154.
[460] P. 1151.
[461] Mansi VIII., p. 1164 sq.
[462] Liberat. Brev. 23.

[463] On this (in the year 544) see the concluding chapter. Since in the conflict with Origenism Christology did not constitute the main cause of offence, we can leave it out of account here. Still it must be admitted that certain features of the Christology of Origen were acceptable to the Monophysites and to the monks with Monophysite tendencies, and the discussions about Origen in the sixth century took their start from here.

[464] Regarding the Three Chapters' dispute and the Fifth Council, there has been a great controversy in the Catholic Church, which dates very far back and which is still continued. We owe this controversy to the writings of the Jesuit Halloix (for Origen; and unfavourable to the Fifth Council); the Augustinian Noris (Diss. historica de synodo V., in favour of the Council) the Jesuit Garnier, in the 17th century, and later, to those of the Ballerini. In more recent times Vincenzi has sought in a big work which falsifies history (In S. Gregorii Nyss. et Origenis scripta et doctrinam nova defensio, 5 Vols. 1864 sq.) to justify the theses of Halloix, to rehabilitate Origen and Vigilius, and on the other hand partly to "re-model" the Council and partly to bring it into contempt. The Romish Church is not yet quite clear as to the position it should take up in reference to the older Antiochians and Theodoret, and further, to Origen and Vigilius. I am not acquainted with the work of Punkes, P. Vigilius und der Dreicapitelstreit, München
1865. The fullest Protestant account is still that of Walch, Vol. VIII. The most thorough study of the chief opponent of the imperial policy, Facundus of Hermiane in North Africa, has been published by a Russian, Dobroklonskij (188o); see on his work Theol. Lit. Ztg. 1880, n. 26.

[465] Theodore had still in the East and even in the monasteries some secret adherents, apart from the Nestorians; see Loofs, pp. 274-297, 304.

[466] No longer preserved.
[467] Mansi VIII., p. 242 sq.

[468] Loofs, op. cit. has shewn that Justinian's policy, which struck at once at Origen and at Theodore, was occasioned by the disturbances in the monasteries of Palestine where both had their sympathisers who had already come into sharp conflict with each other. "The explanation of the fact that Justinian pretty much about the same time struck at Origen with the one hand and at the Three Chapters with the other, is to be found not in the ill-humour of Theodorus Askidas, but in the state of things in Palestine." The energetic attack already made by Leontius on Theodore in the years 531-538 had prepared the way for a decree which enjoined that the Chalcedonian Creed must positively not he interpreted in the sense in which it was understood by Theodore; see Loofs, p. 307. The resolution to add the writings of Ibas and Theodoret, seems only to have been come to at the last moment.

[469] Duchesne, Vigile et Pélage, 1884.

[470] Mansi IX., p. 539 sq. Loofs has briefly indicated the nature of the Emperor's theological writing (p. 310 f.) and has shewn how closely it is related to that of Leontius.

[471] So with reason Noris, the Ballerini, Möller (R. Encykl. XI., p. 113) and Loofs (pp. 287, 291) as against Hefele and Vincenzi.

[472] The anathemas so far as their positive form is concerned come very near Monophysitism without actually falling into it--the most distinct divergence is in No. 8. No. 7 goes furthest in the direction of meeting Monophysitism: ei tis en duo phusesi legon, me hos en theoteti kai anthropoteti ton hena kurion hemon Iesoun Christon gnorizesthai homologei, hina dia toutou semane ten diaphoran ton phuseon, ex hon asunchutos he aphrastos henosis gegonen, houte tou logou eis ten tes sarkos metapoiethentos phusin, oute tes sarkos pros tou logou phusin metachoresases--menei gar hekateron hoper esti te phusei, kai genomenes tes henoseos kath' hupostasin--, all' epi diairesei te ana meros ten toiauten lambanei phonen epi tou kata Christon musteriou, e ton arithmon ton phuseon homologon epi tou autou enos kuriou hemon Iesou tou Theou logou sarkothentos, me te theoria mone ten diaphoran touton lambanei, ex hon kai sunetethe, ouk anairoumenen dia ten henosin--heis gar ex amphoin, kai di enos amphotera--all' epi touto kechretai to arithmo, hos kechorismenas kai idioupostatous echei tas phuseis; ho toioutos anathema esto. Observe how the conception of number too gets a new meaning in Dogmatics and how in the dogmatic sense the conception of number is to be taken in one way in connection with the dogma of the Trinity and again in a different way in connection with the Christological dogma. There we have already the whole of scholasticism! In the same way "theoria" is now a conception which has first to get a new form for Dogmatics. All throughout in these conceptions things which are irreconcileable must be shewn to be reconciled.

[473] The opposition in the East was wholly unimportant; see Hefele, p. 903 f.

[474] Two statements of Dec. 553 and Feb. 554. Hefele, 905 ff.

[475] Hefele, p. 913 f.

[476] Gregor I., epp. 1. IV., 2-4, 38, 39. Gregory had to make his orthodoxy certain by acknowledging the four Councils. He was silent about the Fifth.

[477] It was only temporally that the Melchites, led by some distinguished patriarchs, once more got the mastery in Egypt; see Gelzer, Leontios von Neapolis, Lehen des h. Johannes des Barmherzigen, Ezbischofs v. Alexandrien 1893.

[478] Euagr. H. E. IV. 39, 40.

[479] A sort of henoticon of Justin's in Euagr. V. 4; cf. the Church History of John of Ephesus.

[480] On the Syro-Jacobite-Monophysite, the Coptic-Monophysite, the Abyssinian Church, as well as on the Armenian Church which continued to be Cyrillian, not Monophysite in the strict sense of word--see the article in Herzog's R. Encykl., and better in the Dict. of Christ. Biog. and in Kattenbusch, op. cit. I., p. 205 ff.; cf. also Sibernagl op. cit. __________________________________________________________________

4. The Monergist and Monothelite Controversies. The Sixth Council and Johannes Damascenus. [481]

Paul of Samosata equally [482] with the old Antiochians [483] had affirmed the doctrine of the one will (mia thelesis) in reference to Jesus Christ. The statement of the former, "the different natures and the different persons have one single mode of union,--agreement in will, from which it plainly appears that there is a unity as to energy in the things thus joined together," (hai diaphoroi phuseis kai ta diaphora prosopa hena kai monon henoseos echousi tropon ten kata thelesin sumbasin, ex hes he kata energeian epi ton houtos sumbibasthenton allelois anaphainetai monas), lies at the basis of the Antiochene Dogmatic even after it had taken definite shape as a doctrine of two natures. They were thus Monothelites. On the other hand, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril, and the Areopagite had taught the doctrine of one energy in Christ, the latter with the definite addition "theandrike". [484] The Antiochians and those last mentioned meant, however, something different by their respective statements. The view of the Antiochians was that the human nature by placing itself at the service of the divine was wholly filled with the divine will--their mia thelesis was not the product of a physico-psychological, but of an ethical, mode of regarding Christ. The Alexandrians regarded the God-Logos as the subject of the God-Man who had made the human nature His own and used it as his organ; they thus thought of a unity of energy having its roots in the unity of the mysterious constitution of the God-Man. In Leo's doctrinal letter there was what was for the East a new conception of it--"Agit utraque forma quod proprium est", "each nature does what is peculiar to it", though undoubtedly "cum alterius communione"--"in union with the other". This way of conceiving of it was indirectly sanctioned by the Chalcedonian decree. In the century following it gave great offence; it besides rendered it necessary to consider the nature of the energy, the willing and the acting of Christ, and as a matter of fact it was the most serious stumbling-block for the Severians whose thesis "one composite nature" (mia phusis sunthetos) naturally demanded the "one energy" (mia henergeia). But still owing to the Chalcedonian Creed a theory gradually got a footing in the Church according to which each nature was considered by itself while the unity was consequently conceived of as a product, and the doctrine of the Agnoetæ (see p. 239) which made its appearance amongst the Severians proves that even this party could not avoid what was a sort of splitting up of the one Christ. The neo-orthodox theology of a Leontius and Justinian spite of its Cyrillian character required that Christ should be conceived of as having two energies, although it is going too far to maintain that already in the time of Justinian the question had been decided [485] in accordance with the later orthodox view. [486]

One might try to explain the fact that the question was raised in the seventh century at all, from the "inner logic" of the matter; but the dogma in the form in which it was settled under Justinian, still left room for the raising of countless other questions which were not less important. As a matter of fact it was a purely political consideration, the desire, namely, to win back the Monophysite provinces, which conjured up the controversy. The latter accordingly essentially belongs to political history and it will be sufficient here to fix the most important points, since the doctrine of one will equally with that of two wills would have been in harmony with the decisions of the Fourth and Fifth Councils.

The patriarch of the capital, Sergius, advised his emperor, the powerful and victorious Heraclius, (610-641) to secure the conquests he had once more made in the South and East by meeting the Monophysites half way with the formula that the God-Man consisting of two natures effected everything by means of one divine-human energy. In support of this doctrine Sergius collected together passages from the Fathers, large numbers of which belonging both to ancient and recent times, lay to hand, won over influential clergy in Armenia, Syria, and Egypt, and succeeded in conjunction with the Emperor in filling the eastern Patriarchates with men whose views were similar to his own and actually laid the foundation of a union with the Monophysites (633). But a Palestinian monk named Sophronius, who was afterwards bishop of Jerusalem, came to Egypt, declared the mia energeia to be "Apollinarianism", seriously embarrassed the imperial Patriarch, Cyrus, in Alexandria, and impressed even Sergius to whom he had recourse. As on the one hand, however, there was a desire not to abandon again the position gained in reference to the Monophysites, and as on the other it was necessary to avoid the appearance of endangering orthodoxy, Sergius now declared that all discussion of the question of energies was to cease, and signified his wish in this matter to his colleagues in Alexandria and to the Emperor himself. He wrote at the same time to Bishop Honorius of Rome. [487] The latter at that time published the celebrated letter which played such an important part in 1870 and the treatment of which in the second edition of Hefele's History of the Councils has justly occasioned so much surprise. [488] Honorius in this letter describes Sophronius as a man who is stirring up new controversies, praises Sergius for his great prudence in discarding the new expression (mia energeia) which might be a stumbling-block to the simple, declares that Holy Scripture makes no mention either of one energy or of two energies, that the latter expression is suggestive of Nestorianism and the former of Eutychianism, and incidentally states as something self-evident that "we confess one will of the Lord Jesus Christ" (hen thelema homologoumen tou kuriou Iesou Christou), that is, the one will of the Godhead. This was not yet in any sense a controversial question; but Sergius in his letter to Alexandria had regarded it as likewise self-evident that in putting the question of the energies into the background he could not in any case agree to the doctrine of two wills. [489] Meanwhile Sophronius in his character as the new bishop of Jerusalem had issued a work definitely based on the Chalcedonian Creed as interpreted by Leo's doctrinal letter. Two energies are to be recognised in the one Christ who is in both the same. One and the same Christ followed the energy both of his divine and also of his human nature. Still Sophronius does not say anything of two wills. He likewise had recourse to Rome, and Honorius, like Sergius, made an effort to bring about union between the contending parties in the Eastern Church by dissuading them from employing the formula. Heraclius gave his support to these efforts and published an edict drawn up by Sergius (638), the Ecthesis, which forbade the use both of mia energeia and of "two energies" as equally dangerous expressions. The latter expression, it was maintained, leads to the assumption of two conflicting wills in Christ, while Christ has only one will since the human nature acts only in accordance with the God-Logos who has assumed it. [490] The personality of the Redeemer thus appears, in strict accordance with the theology of Cyril, as built up on the basis of the God-Logos.

But already Rome and the West once more bethought themselves of their dogmatics. Every attempt to meet the views of the Monophysites always brought the Byzantine Emperor into conflict with Rome. Pope John IV. as early as the year 641 condemned Monothelitism at a Roman Council. Immediately thereafter Heraclius died, putting the responsibility of the Ecthesis on to Sergius. The latter had died previously to this; Pyrrhus, who held similar views, took his place. After severe struggles in the palace, which Pyrrhus had to pay for by his deposition, Constans II., a grandson of Heraclius, became emperor. Those at the Court were resolved to maintain the Ecthesis and not to submit to the Roman bishop, Theodore. [491] Meanwhile North Africa had become the second headquarters of the Dyothelites. The Byzantine governor there, Gregory, the patron of the monks, who was on bad terms with the Court, made use of the African dislike of Byzantium and its dogmatics in order, if possible, to detach the Province from Constantinople, and with him sided the most learned Chalcedonian of the East, Maximus (Confessor) and many other Easterns, monks especially, who had fallen out with the Emperor. [492] Pyrrhus too took up his quarters in North Africa and was easily converted to dyotheletism. In Rome he completed his change of opinion and was recognised by Theodore as the legitimate bishop of Constantinople. The Emperor was flooded with addresses from North Africa the aim of which was to induce him to enter the lists on behalf of orthodoxy. But the defeat of Gregory by the Saracens weakened the courage and interfered with the plans of the Anti-Byzantine coalition. Pyrrhus with all possible speed once more made his peace with the Emperor and with the Imperial dogmatics; but the Roman bishop stood firm, condemned Pyrrhus, and pronounced sentence of deposition on Paul who was at the time occupying the Byzantine chair. The Emperor, on the advice of Paul and in order to pacify the Empire, issued in the year 648 the Typus, which bears the same relation to the doctrine of the wills as the Ecthesis does to the doctrine of the energies. It simply prohibits under severe penalties all controversy regarding the question as to whether it is necessary to believe in one will and one energy or in two wills and two energies, and forbids the prosecution of any one because of his position on this question. For the sake of the Westerns the Ecthesis was removed from the principal church of the capital.
[493]

But Rome was far from accepting this part-payment as a full discharge. It had wholly different plans. The situation seemed a favourable one for estranging from the Emperor the entire orthodoxy of the East and binding it to the successor of Peter, in order to shew the Byzantine ruler the power of the Apostolic chair. What Justinian had done to the latter was to be requited, although Constans was the Sovereign of Rome. The new Pope, Martin I., who, like many of his predecessors, had formerly been the Papal Apokrisiar in Constantinople, got together a large Council in the Lateran in October 649. Over a hundred Western bishops attended; they were surrounded by numerous Greek priests and monks who had fled from Constans, first to North Africa, and then after the catastrophe there, to Sicily, Calabria, and Rome. The Council was a conspiracy against Constantinople, and he who was at the head of it was raised to the throne without the imperial sanction. We have here a continuation of the policy of Gregory I., but in a more energetic and menacing form. The dyothelite doctrine after a discussion lasting over several sittings, was made a fixed dogma by the help of the huge patristic apparatus contributed by the Greeks, [494] and finally a symbol was adopted which added on to the Chalcedonian Creed the words, "two natural wills" ("duas naturales voluntates") "two natural operations" (duas naturales operationes), without detriment to the unity of the person ("one and the same Jesus Christ our Lord and God as willing and effecting divinely and humanly our salvation"--"eundem atque unum dominum nostrum et deum I. Chr. utpote volentem et operantem divine et humane nostram salutem"), and allowing in fact the validity of the proposition when correctly understood; "one incarnate nature of the divine Logos"--mia phusis tou Theou logou sesarkomene. The twenty canons attached to the Creed define the doctrine more precisely and cover the whole of Christology. In the eighteenth canon Origen and Didymus are reckoned amongst the other "nefandissimi hæretici". In addition, the fathers of Monothelitism, of the Ecthesis and the Typus, Theodore of Pharan, Cyrus of Alexandria, and also the three Constantinopolitan patriarchs, Sergius, Pyrrhus, and Paul were condemned. Monothelitism was designated as Monophysitism, while the Typus again was described as the godless decree which robbed Jesus Christ of His will, His action, and consequently of His natures generally. Maximus Confessor too stated this brilliant thought with many variations. [495] When we read the resolutions of this Council the impression produced is that of a polemic encounter arranged with some secret end in view.

Martin now made the most strenuous endeavours to get authority over the Churches of the East by the help of the decision of the Council. Like a second Dioscurus he interfered with Eastern affairs, made use of the desperate state of the Churches in the East which were in part in the possession of the Saracens and consequently were no longer in connection with Constantinople, in order to play the roll of supreme bishop, and accordingly worked in direct opposition to the imperial interests and perhaps even conspired with the Saracens. The Emperor now proceeded to take energetic measures. The first attempt to seize the Pope miscarried, it is true, owing to the faithlessness of the Exarch who was sent to Italy. But the new Exarch succeeded in getting Martin into his power (653). As a traitor who had secretly made common cause with the Saracens and as a bishop who had been illegally appointed, he was brought to Constantinople. Dishonoured and disgraced he was then banished to the Chersonesus where he died in the year 655. At the same time proceedings were taken against the dogmatic theologian of Dyothelitism, the monk Maximus, the mystic and scholastic, who for the sake of scholasticism was unwilling to do without the complicated formuke of the two natures, two wills, two operations in the one person, and who had actually made a profound study of them. In Rome Eugenius was now chosen as Pope and he was disposed to come to some arrangement. At the same time the most reasonable proposal was made which could possibly have been made in the circumstances: It was allowable to speak of two natural wills which, however, in accordance with the hypostatic union, become one hypostatic will. Maximus probably endeavoured to prevent the West from falling into this "heresy", but the successor of Eugenius (+ 657) Vitalian, gave in without any explanations and once more restored the communion with Constantinople which had for so long been interrupted. Constans himself visited Rome in the year 663; the peace lasted till the violent death of the Emperor (668) when he was staying at Syracuse. Rome's lofty plans seemed to be destroyed.

The revolution in policy which now followed in Constantinople is not perfectly comprehensible spite of the obvious explanation that the Monophysite provinces were lost and that consequently there was no longer any reason for shewing any enthusiasm on behalf of Monothelitism or for opposing the establishment of Dyothelitism. Then we may reflect further that, as a matter of fact, the Chalcedonian Creed the more it was regarded from the outside demanded the doctrine of two wills, and that this doctrine alone possessed in Maximus a theologian of weight. But these considerations do not entirely clear up the facts of the case. Constantine Pogonatus seems really to have held the memory of Pope Vitalian in honour because the latter had supported him in putting down the usurpers. For this very reason he hesitated to comply with the wish of the Eastern Patriarchs that Vitalian's name should be erased from the diptychs--the bishop of Constantinople could never desire to enter into alliance with Rome. [496] It was perhaps a real love of peace or still more a perception of the fact that Italy must not be lost to the Empire, and that Italy, moreover, could be retained only by an alliance with the Roman see, which induced the Emperor to arrange a meeting and a conference of the opposing parties. In the year 678, taking up an entirely impartial attitude, he requested the Roman bishop to send representatives to the capital to attend a gathering of this kind. Rome, i.e., the new bishop Agatho, said nothing at first; why is not quite clear. At any rate he once more set afloat in the West certain declarations in favour of the doctrine of two wills. Meanwhile the Patriarch Theodore of Constantinople and Macarius of Antioch who, however, resided in the Capital, succeeded in getting the Emperor's sanction for erasing Vitalian's name from the diptychs. Finally, Agatho sent the desired deputies, together with a very comprehensive letter which was modelled in imitation of Leo's doctrinal letter, and in which at the same time the infallibility of the Roman see in matters of faith was expressed in a supremely self-conscious fashion. [497] From this time onwards the Emperor was resolved to yield to the Pope in everything (why?). By means of an edict addressed to George, the new patriarch of the Capital, who had shewn himself pliable, he now summoned a Council to meet, which though it was not originally intended by the Emperor himself to be ecumenical, did nevertheless come to be this. It lasted from November 680 to September 681, had 18 sittings and was attended by about 170 bishops. (The Byzantine East was already very seriously curtailed owing to the Mohammedan conquests.) It was presided over by the Emperor, or, what is the same thing, by the imperial representatives, while the Roman Legates voted first. It may be called the Council of antiquaries and palæographists; for really dogmatic considerations were hardly adduced. On the contrary, operations were conducted on both sides by the help of the voluminous collections of the Acts of earlier Councils and whole volumes of citations from the Fathers, which, however,--and this is in the highest degree characteristic--were after delivery sealed until the exact time when they were to be read out, so that they might not be secretly falsified at the very last moment. Moreover, palæographic investigations were conducted which were not without result. [498] Monothelitism had not a few supporters; the most energetic of these was the Patriarch of Antioch, Macarius, who amongst other things appealed to Vigilius, but was forbidden to do so; the letters, it was alleged, were tampered with, which was not the case. Other fathers expressed a desire that it should not be permissible to go beyond the conclusions of the Five Councils in any direction. A proposal was also made at the sixteenth sitting to grant two wills for the period of Christ's earthly life, but to allow of only one after the Resurrection. [499] But the new "Manichean" and "Apollinarian" was promptly expelled from the place of meeting. The experiment made by another Monothelite and which he carried on for two hours, of laying his creed on the body of a dead person in order to restore him to life and thus to prove the truth of the doctrine of one will, miscarried. [500] The Council knew what the will of the Emperor was, and following the lead of the Patriarch of the Capital, placed itself at the disposal of "the new David" who "has thoroughly grasped the completeness of the two natures of Christ our God"! Vitalian's name was restored; in accordance with the wish of Agatho a long series of Constantinopolitan patriarchs from Sergius downward together with Macarius and other Monothelites were condemned, amongst whom Pope Honorius too was put. [501] Finally a creed full of coarse flattery of the Emperor was adopted, [502] and this completed the triumph of the Pope over Byzantium. Two natural theleseis e thelemata were acknowledged and two natural energies existing indivisibly (adiairetos), unchangeably (atreptos), undividedly (ameristos), unconfusedly (asunchutos) in the one Christ. They are not to be thought of as mutually opposed, on the contrary, the human will follows the divine and almighty will and far from resisting or opposing it, is in subjection to it. The human will is thus not done away with; but there is on the other hand a certain interchange; it is the will of the divine Logos, just as the human nature without being done away with has nevertheless become the nature of the divine Logos. The Conciliar epistle to Agatho extols the latter as an imitator of the prince of the Apostles and as the teacher of the mystery of theology. [503] The Monothelites who had been condemned by the Council were handed over to him to be further dealt with--an unheard of act hitherto. In the West the decrees were universally accepted--in Spain too, where, soon after, the Augustinian interpretation of the Chalcedonian Creed was advanced yet a stage further (as we see in Adoptianism). In the East again the adoption of Dyothelitism which, backed up by the authority of Rome had gained the victory, did not by any means proceed smoothly. Not only did a Monothelite reaction ensue, which was, however, definitely disposed of [504] in the year 713, but there was, above all, a reaction against the penetration of the Roman spirit into the East. This which began with the second Trullan Council in 692 was continued in the age of the iconoclastic Emperors and of Photius. Apart, however, from the controversy about the "filioque" which was dragged in and which has already been treated of above p. 126, it belongs entirely to political history, or to that of worship and discipline.

It is incontrovertible that Rome at the Fourth and Sixth Councils permanently gave her formula to the East and that this formula admits of a Græco-Cyrillian interpretation only by the use of theological artifice. But this interpretation had been given to it already at the Fifth Council and had an effect on Rome herself, who from this time onward had to tolerate also the mia phusis tou Theou logou sesarkomene--the one incarnate nature of the divine Logos. [505] This circumstance explains on the one hand the strange lack of vigour shewn by the Easterns in combating Dyothelitism, and on the other hand the paradoxical fact that the ablest of the Eastern theologians, even the Mystics, supported the doctrine of the two wills. But in order to explain the action of the Mystics it is necessary further to point to the fact that it was no longer possible to do without the scholastic theology of the neo-orthodox, Leontius and Justinian, which had the "duality" as its presupposition, and in conjunction with Mysticism presented a subject for endless speculations. To this was added the fact that the Eucharist and the whole system of worship, already satisfied in a much more certain and more living way than did the system of dogma which had become purely "sacred antiquity", the feeling of the Church as to what was of direct concern and of supreme importance in the past--namely, the thought of deification. This is shewn by the nature of the discussions in the Sixth Council. The impression we get that at that time believing thought, in the sense of a direct and living interest in the spiritual and religious substance of the Faith, had been entirely blighted, very strongly induces us to look for the life of this Church in some other sphere. And if we ask where we are to look for it, the image-controversies on the one hand, and the scholastic investigations of Johannes Damascenus on the other, supply the answer. The dogma which had been already settled at the Fifth Council and which at the Sixth Council had been once more revived and--not without danger--meddled with, embodied itself in cultus and science.

The Christological propositions which are worked out in the Dogmatics of Johannes Damascenus, especially in the third book, are--even according to Thomasius--stated in "what is pretty much a scholastic form". It is the idea of distinction which dominates the method of treatment. Christ did not assume human nature in its generic form--for John as an Aristotelian is aware that the genus embraces all individuals--but neither did he unite himself with a particular man; on the contrary he assumed the human nature in such a way that he individualised what he assumed and what is not a part but the whole. This is the kind of cross which had already been recognised by Leontius, which has no hypostasis of its own and yet is not without it, but which possessing its independent existence in the hypostasis of the Logos is enhypostatic. Thus Christ is the composite hypostasis. The "centaur" and "satyr" against which Apollinaris had warned the Church, have thus not been avoided The hypostasis belongs to both natures and yet belongs wholly to each of them. But the divine nature preponderates very considerably (cf. the old deceptive analogy of the relation between soul and body in man, III., 7) and it has been correctly remarked that with Johannes Damascenus the Logos is at one time the hypostasis and then again the composite being of Christ as something between. In any case the humanity is in no way considered as formally entirely homogeneous with the divinity. This is shewn too in the doctrine of the interchange (metadosis), appropriation, exchange, (oikeiosis, antidosis) of the peculiarities of the two natures, which John conceives of as so complete that he speaks of a "coinherence or circumincession of the parts with one another"--eis allela ton meron perichoresis. The flesh has actually become God, and the divinity has become flesh and entered into a state of humiliation. This exchange is to be conceived of as implying that the flesh also is permitted to permeate the divinity, but this is allowed only to the flesh which has itself first been deified; i.e., it is not the actual humanity which permeates the divinity; hence the Logos too remains entirely untouched by the sufferings. Everything is accordingly in this way assigned to the two wills and the two operations. The religious point of view of the whole system is that of Cyril, but this point of view cannot be perfectly realised by means of the "duality" already laid down in the dogma. Just for this reason a certain amount of room is left for the human nature of Christ and for the work of the philosophers. That is why the Christology of Johannes Damascenus has become classical. [506] __________________________________________________________________

[481] See the material in Mansi X., XI.; in addition the works of Maximus Confessor, of Anastasius Biblioth., of Anastasius Abbas, and the Chronographs; see also the Lib. pontif. and the works of Joh. Damascenus. Accounts by Combefis (1648), Tamagnini (1678), Assemani (1764), Gibbon, Walch (Vol. 9), Schröckh, Hefele, Baur, and Dorner. Further, Möller in Herzog's R. Encykl. (Art. "Monothel."), Wagenmann, there also, Art. "Maximus Confessor".

[482] See Vol. III., p. 41.

[483] In the "Ekthesis" it is expressly admitted that Nestorius did not teach the doctrine of two wills.

[484] Dionys. Areop. (Opp. ed. Corderius, edit. Veneta 1755, T. I., p. 593), ep. 4, (ad Caium): hemeis de ton Iesoun ouk anthropikos aphorizomen; oude gar anthropos monon (oude huperousios e anthropos monon) all' anthropos alethos, ho diapherontos philanthropos huper anthropous kai kata anthropous ek tes ton anthropon ousias ho huperousios ousiomenos . . . kai gar hina sunelontes eipomen oude anthropos en, ouch hos me anthropos, all' hos ex anthropon, anthropon epekeina, kai huper anthropon alethos anthropos gegonos. Kai to loipon ou kata Theon ta theia drasas, ou ta anthropeia kata anthropon, all' androthentos Theou kainen tina ten theandriken energeian hemin pepoliteumenos.

[485] Loofs, p. 316.

[486] According to anathema No. 3 of the Fifth Council the active principle in the Redeemer is the undivided person who as such performs miracles and suffers. No. 8 is undoubtedly opposed to this: menouses hekateras phuseos, hoper estin, henosthai sarki nooumen ton logon. The dispute as to whether there was one will or two, dates at least as far back as the beginning of the 6th century; but the assertion of two wills is as a rule charged against the orthodox by their opponents as the logical result of their views.

[487] Shortly before this the controversy between Rome and Byzantium regarding the title "Ecumenical Patriarch" had been going on; see Gelzer in the Jahrbb. f. Protest. Theol. 1887, p. 549 ff., and Kattenbusch, op. cit. I., p. 111 f.

[488] See S. Theol. Lit. Ztg., 1878, No. XI. The letter is in Mansi, XI., p. 538 sq.

[489] The heterodoxy of Honorius does not certainly amount to much, since he adheres to Leo's doctrinal letter and since nothing was yet decided regarding the energies and the will.

[490] Mansi, X., p. 931 sq.: "We must confess one will in our Lord Jesus Christ, the true God, implying that at no time did his flesh animated by a reasonable soul accomplish what was natural for it to do, separately, and by its own impulse, in opposition to the suggestion of the God-Logos who was hypostatically united with it, but that on the contrary it acted only when and how and in the way the Logos wished."

[491] John IV. had already, moreover, attempted to hush up the conduct of Honorius, to excuse it, that is.

[492] Battifol, L'abbaye de Rossano, Paris, 1891, has given us information of first-rate quality regarding the exodus of the Greek monks and priests to (North Africa) Sicily and Calabria. Lower Italy underwent at that time a new Hellenisation.

[493] Mansi X., p. 10t9 sq. The form of the Typus as distinguished from the Ecthesis is worthy of note. It no longer speaks the theological language which Justinian above all had naturalised. Constans in fact more and more gave evidence of possessing qualities which make him appear akin in spirit to the iconoclastic Emperors of a later time. Conversely, amongst the most outstanding monks and priests of the seventh century we already meet with that enmity to the State, in other words, that desire to see the Church independent of the State, which occasioned the frightful struggle in the eighth and ninth centuries. In this respect the position taken up by Maximus Confessor who contested the right of the Emperor to interfere in dogmatic questions and disputed his sacerdotal dignity, is specially characteristic.

[494] "We have a library, but no manuscripts," wrote the Pope in that same year to Bishop Amandus.

[495] The Acts of the Council, which even yet enjoys a special authority in the Romish Church, are in Mansi XI., the Creed, p. 1150; see also Hahn 2, § 110.

[496] There was once more friction between Rome and the patriarch of Constantinople, and this threatened to make the old controversy a pretext for quarrelling.

[497] Mansi XI., pp. 234-286.
[498] The Acts of the Council in Mansi, XI.
[499] Mansi XI., p. 611 sq.
[500] Fifteenth Session, Mansi XI., p. 602 sq.

[501] For the mode in which this "problem" is treated by Roman theologians, see Hefele III., pp. 290-313.

[502] Mansi XI., p. 631 sq.
[503] Mansi XI., p. 658 sq.

[504] On the Maronites, see Kessler in Herzog's R.-Encykl. IX., p. 346 ff.

[505] Why in accordance with this the use of the formula hen thelema theandrikon not allowed together with the doctrine of the two wills, is a point that is not easily understood. It was owing to Romish obstinacy.

[506] It is characteristic of the way in which John works out the doctrine, that his arguments throughout are based on passages quoted verbally from the Fathers, though the names of the authors are frequently not given. A mosaic of citations lies at the basis of the scholastic distinctions; Leontius is most frequently drawn upon, but he is never mentioned by name. John is also dependent to a very great extent on Maximus. How scholasticism has stifled theology is most strikingly shewn in proposition III. 3 (ed. Lequien 1712, I., p. 207): alla touto esti to poioun tois hairetikois ten planen, to tauto legein ten phusin kai ten hupostasin. I imagine that as late as the fifth century any theologian who would have drawn the inference of heresy in this fashion, would have made himself ridiculous. That was the achievement of the neo-orthodox, the Aristotelians from Leontius onwards. A detailed description of the Christology of the Damascene belongs to the history of theology. But it may not be without use to mention the topics which he dealt with here: III. 2: How the Word was conceived and concerning his divine incarnation. 3: Of the two natures in opposition to the Monophysites. 4: On the nature and mode of the antidosis. 5: On the number of the natures (ho arithmos ou diaireseos aitios pephuken, p. 211). 6: That the whole divine nature in one of its hypostases united itself with the whole human nature and not a part with a part. 7: On the one composite hypostasis of the divine Logos. 8: Against those who say that the natures of the Lord must be brought under the category either of continuous or discrete quantity. 9: An answer to the question whether there is an enhypostatic nature (here, p. 218, the enhypostasis). 10: On the Trishagion. 11: peri tes en eidei kai en atomo theoroumenes phuseos kai diaphoras, henoseos te kai sarkoseos kai pos ekklepteon, ten mian phusin tou Theou logou sesarkomenen (one of the main chapters from the scholastic point of view). 12: On theotokos as against the Nestorians. 13: On the properties of the two natures. 14: On the wills and the autexousia of Christ (the fullest chapter together with 15: On the energies which are in Christ). 16: Against those who say: as man has two natures and two energies, so we must attribute to Christ three natures and the same number of energies--a very ticklish problem. 17: On the deification of the nature of the flesh of the Lord and of His will. (As is the case throughout the discussion here starts from the contradictio in adjecto and conceals it under distinctions: the flesh has become divine, but in the process has undergone neither a metabole, nor trope nor alloiosis nor sunchusis; it has been deified kata ten kath' hupostasin oikonomiken henosin or kata ten en allelais ton phuseon perichoresin. The old image of the glowing iron). 18: Once more regarding the wills, the autexousia, the double-understanding, the double-gnosis, the double-wisdom of Christ. 19: On the energeia theandrike. 20: Of the natural and blameless feelings (Christ possessed them, but the number of them given is very limited). 21: Of the ignorance and servitude of Christ (because of the hypostatic union neither ignorance nor servitude can be attributed to Christ relatively to God). 22: On the prokope in Christ (as a matter of fact the idea of prokope is plainly rejected: the "increase in wisdom" is explained: dia tes auxeseos tes helikias ten enuparchousan auto sophian eis phanerosin agon. This is genuine docetic Monophysitism; to this it is added that "he makes man's advance in wisdom and grace his own advance." John is here in the most patent perplexity). 23: Of fear (the fear which Christ had and which he did not have. He had natural fear "voluntarily"). 24: Of the Lord's praying (He prayed, not because there was any need for Him to do it, but because He occupied our place, represented what was ours in Himself, and was a pattern. Thus the prayer in Matt. XXVI. 39 was meant merely to convey a lesson; Christ wished at the same time to shew by it that He had two natures and two natural but not mutually opposed wills--this is just the explanation formerly given by Clemens Alex. when he stated that Christ, whom he himself conceived of in a docetic fashion, voluntarily did what was human, in order to refute the Docetae. Christ spoke the words in Matt. XXVII. 46 purely as our representative). 25: On the oikeiosis (this chapter too begins, like most of them, with the distinction, that there are two forms of assumption, the phusike and prosopike or schetike. Christ assumed our nature phusikos, but also schetikos, i.e., took our place by way of sympathy or compassion, took part in our forlorn condition and our curse and "in our place uttered words which do not suit His own case"). 26: Of the sufferings of the body of the Lord and of the absence of feeling in His godhead. 27: That the divinity of the Word was not separated from the soul and the body even in death, and continued to be an hypostasis. 28: Of the corruption and decay (as against Julian and Gajan; but here again a distinction is drawn between two kinds of phthora). 29: Of the descent into Hades. The contents even of the Fourth Book are still Christological, but this may be due to an oversight. One may admire the energy and formal dexterity of Johannes, but still what we have is merely one and the same method of distinction, which, once discovered, can be easily and mechanically employed, as the application of a new chemical method to an indefinite number of substances. Even this brief synopsis will, however, have brought out one thing, if it was still necessary that this should be done--namely, that in Greek Dogmatics in their religious aspect Apollinaris had triumphed. The moderate docetism which the latter expressed in a plain, bold and frank way forms the basis of the orthodox idea of Christ, though it is indeed concealed under all sorts of formulæ. As regards these, orthodoxy approaches much nearer to the Antiochians than to Apollinaris; but as regards the matter of the doctrine, all that was preserved of the Antiochian doctrine was the statement that Christ had a real and perfect human nature. This statement came to have a great importance for the future, not of the East, but of the West; but, if I am not mistaken, it helped to preserve the Byzantine Church too from getting into that condition of desolation into which the Monophysite Churches got, though it is true that in the case of the latter other causes were at work. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________

C. THE ENJOYMENT OF REDEMPTION IN
THE PRESENT.