The Development of Byzantine Christianity
The Council of Chalcedon did not put an end to theological controversy even within the Byzantine Church. The influence of the third-century Alexandrian theologian Origen was still strong, particularly in monastic circles in Palestine.
Some aspects of his teaching were condemned by Justinian in 543 in a letter to Mennas, Patriarch of Constantinople, and later that year at a council in Constantinople. Not long after, the Emperor also condemned some aspects of the teaching of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Ibas of Edessa, noted teachers of the Antiochene school closely linked with Nestorius. To resolve the continuing doctrinal disputes Justinian called the Council of Constantinople, the Fifth Ecumenical Council, in 553, which, under Monophysite pressure, condemned these so-called ‘Three Chapters’. Rome, in the person of Pope Vigilius, was unhappy about the condemnation, but finally accepted the council’s decision.Controversy over Christological doctrine continued in the seventh century. The Empire had not abandoned all hope of reconciling the Monophysites, and renewed its efforts for union in the face of Persian invasion. After discussions with Monophysite leaders, the Emperor Herac- lius (610-41) proposed making Chalcedon more acceptable to them by explaining that although there were two natures in Christ there was only one energy, or will. On the basis of this monothelite (‘one will’) doctrine, approved by Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople and Pope Honorius of Rome, a union between Orthodox and Monophysites was agreed in 632. It was opposed by Sophronius ofjerusalem. Heraclius tried to impose the new doctrine on the Church by his Ekthesis of638, which forbade discussion as to whether there were one or two energies in Christ, and insisted there was only one will. It was accepted by two councils in Constantinople in 638 and 639, but Rome, under Pope Martin, opposed the new policy, which was resisted strongly within the Empire by Maximus the Confessor.
Constans II withdrew the Ekthesis in 648, and issued a new edict, the Typos, forbidding the assertion of either one or two wills in Christ, and limiting teaching on the nature of Christ to what the first five Ecumenical Councils had defined. The Council of Constantinople of 680-1, the Sixth Ecumenical, reaffirmed the doctrine of Chalcedon, and insisted that two wills and two energies, human and divine, in Jesus Christ were a necessary consequence of Chalcedon. Attempts to heal the Monophysite schism by doctrinal compromise finally came to an end.If the Church in the Empire was becoming firmly Chalcedonian, it was also becoming strongly imperial. Justinian saw himself as the Christian Emperor ruling the Christian Empire, which was the instrument on earth of God’s purposes. That instrument, in the belief of the New Testament and the early Church, was the Church itself. But since Constantine’s acceptance of Christianity, Church and Empire had come to be more and more coterminous. In Justinian’s view, there was no place for a Church whose identity differed from that of the Empire. It came to be a commonplace in Byzantine thought that Church and Empire were related as body and soul. The earlier problem of relations between Church and State was replaced by that of relations between Patriarch and Emperor, the twin pillars upholding Byzantine society. It was a view deriving more from the pagan vision of the theocratic state than from Christian sources, and one which saw religion as a function of the State. The Church, and even monasticism, existed, according to this view, for the benefit of the Empire. Although this view was incompatible with the Church’s own selfunderstanding, the Church in the Byzantine Empire was often too ready to accept the State’s evaluation of its role in Byzantine society.
The centuries between the Council of Chalcedon and the outbreak of the iconoclastic controversy in the eighth century were formative for the Orthodox tradition.
The Fifth Ecumenical Council of 553 approved a list of earlier Christian writers whose authority was undisputed. On the basis of their teaching Orthodox theology was consolidated. The doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity received their final form. The life of the Church was regulated by the canons issued by the council ‘in Trullo’ of 692, sometimes called the Quinisext, since its canons supplemented the doctrinal decisions of the Fifth and Sixth Councils, which did not concern themselves with disciplinary matters. Its forms of worship, deriving immediately from the tradition of Antioch, but influenced by the traditions of Jerusalem and other neighbouring churches, developed under the dominant influence of Justinian’s Great Church of the Holy Wisdom in Constantinople. The growing cult of the Virgin Mary, Mother ofGod, and the saints, and the ascetic tradition within the Church, made their contribution to the services of the Byzantine Church and its calendar. Their main lines were laid down in this period, and were determinative of subsequent Orthodox worship.The Byzantine Empire provided the historical and cultural setting in which the Orthodox tradition took shape, and which moulded it in all its aspects, doctrinal, liturgical, canonical, iconographic and devotional. But the Empire was constantly shrinking. Muhammad conquered Mecca in 630. By the time of his death in 632 he had united the Arab tribes on the basis of a new religious faith, which inspired their military expansion throughout the Middle East. By 642 the forces of Islam had overrun Persia, Syria, Palestine and Egypt. The barbarian invasions had already detached the West from the Roman/Byzantine Empire. Now the Empire finally lost the non-Greek part of the East. Byzantium became a Greek state rather than an international empire. The horizons of the Byzantine Church correspondingly narrowed. Constantinople was the only patriarchal see left within the Empire, and its position was as a consequence enhanced.