What Think Ye of Christ?

The answer given to this question by Eastern Christendom in the fifth century was very different from that found in the New Testament. The Easterners had not been convinced that Pelagianism was a heresy, and letters of Augustine (newly found by Professor Johannes Divjak) show him using all his powers to persuade the Bishops of Alexandria and Constantinople that these views did indeed merit condemnation.

The East was concerned with metaphysical problems of salvation and redemption through Christ as God. But how? The Creed of Nicea had defined Christ as ‘of the same substance as the Father’. What then was his relation to man? The Arians had claimed that the divine Word had occupied the same place in Christ as the human mind does in an individual, only that it was ‘created’ and was subject to human weakness as well as being exalted in its glory. These views were condemned, but the problem of the nature of Christ remained.

In the 370s one of the most active anti-Arians, Apollinaris, Bishop of Laodicea in Syria, wrote a series of tracts setting out in trenchant terms his belief that ‘there is but one incarnate nature of God the Word, to be worshipped in the flesh with one worship’. This one nature (Monophysite) Christology was criticised by the Cappadocian Fathers as distancing Christ too far from humanity (‘What he did not assume he could not redeem’), and it was condemned at the Second Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 381. It corresponded, however, to what many people in the East, especially in Alexandria, believed. The Alexandrians were further angered by the decision of the council that Constantinople as New Rome should have precedence over the other sees in the East, yielding honorary precedence only to Old Rome.

Between 381 and 451 issues of precedence were inextricably confused with disputes over doctrine. Down to 449, Alexandria and Rome worked together in opposition generally to Constantinople and Antioch, though the emperors never lost control of the situation.

Thus in 403, when Theophilus of Alexandria attempted to have John Chrysostom of Constantinople (398—404) removed from office on disciplinary grounds, the imperial court intervened to prevent this, only to order John into exile the next year on its own account.

By this time a new development was taking place which ensured that the Christological issue would not be allowed to die. After nearly three-quarters of a century, a school of theological beliefs was emerging in Antioch and its surrounding bishoprics that contrasted in almost every way with that of Alexandria. For the Alexandrians represented by Cyril who became bishop in 412, the key passage in the New Testament that described Christ’s personality was John 1:14, ‘the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us’, i.e. the divine nature assumed humanity at the Incarnation, without being changed in any way. Jesus therefore was God in every sense. Against this Word-flesh Christology, the Antiochenes believed that Jesus possessed a fully human personality as revealed in the New Testament, but that God dwelt in him to a unique degree, the divine nature being joined to the human, enabling him to offer a perfect pattern of virtue for the redemption of humanity.

In 428, the Emperor Theodosius II (408-50) appointed an Antiochene presbyter named Nestorius as Bishop of Constantinople. Within two years his theology and that of Cyril had come into serious conflict. In particular, Nestorius was not prepared to accept that the Virgin Mary was Theotokos (Bearer of God), arguing that she was mother only of the man, Jesus. The Third Ecumenical Council, assembled on the orders of the Emperor Theodosius at Ephesus in June 431, favoured Cyril. His doctrine was held to accord more closely with the Creed of Nicea than that of Nestorius, and the latter was deposed. Alexandria emerged as the most powerful see in the East, and had the support of the Papacy.

A peace was patched up between Cyril and John of Antioch (428—41), and in this Formula of Reunion, agreed in April 433, Cyril was willing to accept that Christ should be confessed ‘in two natures’ (i.e.

divine and human). The Antiochenes for their part were willing to agree the orthodoxy of the term Theotokos as applied to the Virgin.

The uneasy truce lasted until Cyril’s death in 444. His successor, Dioscorus (444—51), was more intransigent than Cyril had been, and in a few years set about eradicating what he conceived as the remains of Nestorianism. This time he found an ally in Constantinople, in the Archimandrite Eutyches. The latter, having been condemned by his bishop, Flavian (446-9), for holding Monophysite opinions concerning the nature of Christ, appealed to the other major sees of Christendom, but in particular to Rome and Alexandria. Supported by the emperor, Dioscorus presided at a second council at Ephesus in August 449, and was able to pronounce sentence of deposition on Flavian and also on Domnus, Bishop of Antioch. Papal legates who had attended were insulted. The letter which they brought with them from Pope Leo known as the ‘Tome of Leo’, arguing the two nature Christology and requiring adherence to it, was refused a reading.

Two years later, the wheel turned full circle. Theodosius died suddenly (28 July 450). His successor Marcian (450-7) preferred communion between Old and New Rome to the supremacy of Alexandria. In the autumn of 451 a council of no less than 520 bishops assembled at Chalcedon on the east side of the Bosphorus. Dioscorus was deposed for indiscipline (not for heresy), and the Christological belief of Christendom was defined in balanced phrases providing a compromise between Alexandria and Antioch and accepting also the orthodoxy of the Tome of Leo.

The crucial passage, which remains the faith of Christendom, runs as follows:

Following then the Holy Fathers, we all unanimously teach that our Lord Jesus Christ is to us one and the same Son, the self-same perfect in Godhead; the self-same perfect in Manhood; truly God and truly Man; the self-same of a rational soul and body; consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead; the self-same consubstantial with us according to the Manhood; like us in all things, sin apart; before all the ages begotten of the Father as to the Godhead, but in the last days, the self-same, for us and for our salvation (born) of Mary the Virgin Theotokos as to the Manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten; made known to us in two Natures, unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the difference ofthe Natures being in no way removed because of the Union, but rather the properties of each Nature being preserved and concurring into one Prosopon and one Hypostasis; not as though he were parted or divided into two Prosopa, but one and the self-same Son and only-begotten God, Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as from the beginning the prophets have taught concerning him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ Himself hath taught us, and as the symbol ofthe Fathers hath handed down to us.

The council also confirmed Constantinople’s position as senior bishopric, barring only Old Rome’s primacy of honour (Canon 28).

Chalcedon was a triumph for the Emperor Marcian, who with his lay advisers oversaw the proceedings of the council and, practically speaking, piloted the Definition through the acrimonious debates ofthe bishops. It was a triumph, too, for Cyril’s theology, as modified by the terms of the Formula of Reunion. It was also an historic effort at compromise involving Alexandria, Antioch and Rome, and a supreme attempt to find a common interpretation of the faith acceptable to both Greek and Latin Christianity. Chalcedon remains one of the landmarks in the history of the Church.

The sequel, however, showed how brittle even the most finely constructed compromises can be. Rome never accepted Constantinople’s standing. Apostolic foundation, its Popes argued, could not be compared with any civil status, such as was now Constantinople’s as the Empire’s capital. In addition, the majority opinion in the East outside Constantinople remained wedded to a Monophysite definition of Christ’s person, and disliked Chalcedon. In 482 the Emperor Zeno (474—91) attempted to appease this opinion by publishing the Henotikon or Letter of Unity addressed to the Church of Alexandria, which acknowledged that Christ was ‘One and not two’, but did not repudiate Chalcedon. This and other similar efforts by his successors could not avert the gradual break-up of the religious unity of Christendom, until by the end of the sixth century, the great divisions of Latin, Orthodox, Nestorian and Monophysite had come into being and were destined to remain for centuries to come.

In five centuries the Church had moved from the position of reforming sect within Judaism to that of a world religion. To account for this, there was the contribution of the Jewish Dispersion which provided the Church with communities throughout the Mediterranean lands in which to work and the basis of an organisation and liturgy.

But there was also intense conviction in the truth and relevance of the message itself and a willingness to die for it. Christian apologies were not always convincing; miracles were usually no more than what was expected of a religious movement; but to proclaim that death was liberation was a new phenomenon among the provincials of the Greco-Roman world. This, combined with worldwide organisation ensured that Christianity would survive pressures against it and prevail.

What Think Ye of Christ?

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