Transcript

Welcome to The Way of the Fathers.

I'm Jim Papandrea.

This podcast is a production of Catholic Culture.

Sign up for our newsletter at catholicculture.org

slash newsletter.

Today we continue our series on the heresies with episode 16, Eutyches and Monophysite Christology.

If you're starting to get a little motion sickness from the swinging of the pendulum, you're not alone.

But brace yourself because...

Here we go again.

Apollinarius had overreacted against Arius' separation of the Father and the Son, and he overcorrected by overemphasizing the unity of the divine and human in the person of Christ, and he ended up diminishing Christ's humanity.

Nestorius overreacted against Apollinarius' blurring the line between the divine and human, and he overcorrected by overemphasizing the distinction between the two natures, to the point of trying to keep them separate, as if he had to protect the divine from the human nature.

But in the end, he made it sound like Jesus had a split personality.

Well, now the pendulum swings again, as someone will overreact against Nestorius, going even farther than Apollinarius did, to the point of describing Christ as though the divine in him overshadowed the human so much that the humanity was completely absorbed and effectively cancelled out.

During the time that Nestorius was bishop of Constantinople, there was a monastery in that city with an abbot named Eutyches.

And Eutyches knew that what Nestorius was teaching undermined the unity of the personhood of the Son of God.

And Eutyches was reading Cyril of Alexandria, as everyone should.

And to be fair, sometimes Cyril himself really leans into the unity of the two natures to refute Nestorianism.

But Eutyches was not a great theologian, and although he thought he was reading Cyril correctly and being faithful to what Cyril was teaching, Eutyches took the unity of Christ's two natures farther than Cyril and even farther than Apollinarius ever did.

So, Eutyches started teaching that in the union of divine and human within the person of Jesus Christ, the humanity was absorbed by the divinity, like a drop of oil in the ocean.

But of course, that left a Christ who was no longer human at all.

Or worse, it seemed like the union created some third thing that was no longer the divine nature or the human nature.

When pressed, Eutyches would say, well, there were two natures before the union, but once united, there is really only one nature, the divine nature.

Now, that's a problem, because it implies that Jesus' human nature existed without the divine nature, even if just for a moment, before the union.

But the bigger issue is that this union would result in a Christ with only one nature, a divine nature without any remaining humanity.

And you can probably see what's coming.

There's a fancy Greek compound word for this.

Remember, the word for Apollinarius' Christology, which had only one will, that word was monothelite.

So now, what Eutyches proposed went even further.

Not just only one will, but only one nature.

And the word for that is monophysite, from mono for one nature.

Monophysite Christology is a one-nature Christology, specifically that the divine word had absorbed the humanity to the point where Jesus Christ was really just all-divine.

His humanity was cancelled out by his divinity.

So, while Nestorius had too much separation of the natures, now Eutyches swings the pendulum hard to the other extreme, way past where Apollinarius was, and Eutyches proposed too much unity of the natures, blurring the line between divinity and humanity so much that, as I said, either the humanity is cancelled out, or the end result is some amalgam of the two, which is neither one.

So if Nestorius' two natures were like oil and vinegar, Eutyches' two natures would be like an alloy, the way copper and zinc come together to make brass, but brass is neither copper nor zinc.

The integrity of both the copper and the zinc is affected, and both are changed.

But that presents a problem because divinity can't change.

So what Eutyches was teaching had the unfortunate effects of both compromising divine immutability, implying that the divine could change somehow, and diminishing the humanity of Jesus.

At the end of the day, Eutyches ended up in a similar place as the Docetics and the Gnostics, with a Jesus who was not really human.

Or you could say he ended up in a similar place as the Modalists, with a Savior who is consubstantial with the Father, but not with us.

Now what happened next is really interesting.

Nestorius, as Bishop of Constantinople, was of course deposed in 431 AD after he was excommunicated by the Council of Ephesus.

So the bishops of Constantinople after him were Orthodox.

But when Cyril of Alexandria died in the year 444, he was succeeded as bishop of Alexandria by one Dioscorus, and Dioscorus took the side of Eutyches.

So in effect, the two sides of heresy and orthodoxy in the East switched.

At the time of the Third Ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431, the Bishop of Alexandria, Cyril, was Orthodox, and the Bishop of Constantinople, Nestorius, was a heretic.

But by the time of the controversy over Eutyches, less than 20 years later, it was the reverse.

The Bishop of Alexandria, Dioscorus, was the heretic, and the Bishop of Constantinople was a man named Flavian, and he was Orthodox.

These two great metropolitan cities had switched sides.

So the leaders of the heresy of Monophysite Christology at this time were the abbot Eutyches in Constantinople and the bishop Dioscorus of Alexandria.

But I need to add a bit of nuance here, because Dioscorus' reasons for siding with Eutyches may have been more than theological.

In other words, Dioscorus might have been politically motivated to oppose the bishop of Constantinople out of the fear of the loss of his own authority and autonomy.

You see, by rights, Alexandria should have been the second most important metropolitan after Rome.

But now, Constantinople was the capital of the empire, so the authority of Alexandria was becoming subordinated to Constantinople, which means Dioscorus wanted to see the patriarchs there knocked down a peg.

And so, Dioscorus' move might have been more a vote against Flavian than a vote for Eutyches.

Not that this excuses him, but I will come back to this point in the epilogue.

What's at stake here is the balance of unity and distinction between the two natures within the person of Christ.

Just as the Trinitarian controversies resulted in a clarification of the balance of unity and distinction between the persons of the Trinity, the three persons can't be so unified as to slip into modalism, but the three persons also can't be so separate as to diminish the divinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit as the Arians and the Pneumatomachians did.

Now in the same way, with this Christological controversy, the two natures within Christ cannot be so unified that they are blended, because then you lose the integrity of one or both natures.

Either you ascribe change to the divine nature, or the human nature is overshadowed or absorbed and cancelled out, or both.

But on the other hand, the two natures cannot be so separate that Jesus is split in two, giving him a kind of dual personality.

We need to describe Christ in such a way as to make it clear that the two natures are unified enough to maintain a singular personhood and yet distinct enough to avoid mixing them up.

So who were the church fathers who weighed in at this point in this ongoing controversy?

Well, of course, we still have the important writings of Cyril of Alexandria.

And even though Eutyches didn't always understand Cyril correctly, Cyril's writings continue to be important.

But as I mentioned, Cyril had died in the year 444 AD. In the year 448, Bishop Flavian of Constantinople convened a synod there and excommunicated the abbot Eutyches.

But this forced Dioscorus' hand and he came out against Flavian.

So now it was no longer about a rebellious monk being disciplined by his bishop.

Now it was a fight between two archbishops.

And this is where the pope stepped in.

At this time, the bishop of Rome was Leo the Great, who was pope from 440 to 461 AD. And he wrote a letter in support of Flavian, which we now refer to as Leo's Tome.

The word tome usually refers to a book, often a big book, but this isn't that long.

It's a letter.

I suppose it gets the name tome more for its importance than its length.

And also because Leo wrote the letter with the authority of the successor of Peter on the assumption that he, as if he was speaking for Peter himself, had the authority to be the judge over these two eastern patriarchs.

And in the Tome, Leo affirmed the teaching of Flavian of Constantinople.

And then he very succinctly pulled together all of the best thought from both the West and the East on the subject of Christ's two natures and the hypostatic union.

And Leo articulated the precise language that would become standard for the explanation of Orthodox teaching on Christology.

As he said in the Tome, Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, is one person.

Now, actually, he said one person in both natures, but it means the same thing.

Now, it's easy to miss the important part of this because, as it often happens, the littlest words mean a lot.

The Son of God is...

one person in two natures.

Not two persons, obviously, so Nestorianism is ruled out.

But also not one person made out of two natures, since that language could leave room for a Monophysite Christ who started out as two natures but became something else as a result of the union.

One person out of two natures could imply that amalgam or alloy.

No, Leo says Christ remains always and eternally in two natures.

So, Pope Leo put it all together.

Apollinarius and then even more so Eutyches had blurred the line between the divine and the human in Jesus, diminishing his human nature.

Against that, Leo clarified that the two natures have to be eternal.

Well, technically, the divine nature is eternal and the human nature is immortal, since the human nature was created at the moment of Jesus' conception.

But you get the idea.

From the moment of his conception, both natures are eternal and in a permanent union.

And so, even right now, in his resurrected state and, as we say in the Creed, at the right hand of the Father, Jesus Christ remains fully human, existing in both of his two natures.

On the other hand, the two natures must remain eternally distinct so that the divine nature does not change and the human nature is a real and complete human nature.

But Nestorius had made too much of a separation between the two natures, and so Leo, following Cyril, affirmed the hypostatic union, that the two natures are really and truly, permanently and eternally united in one person who is the second person of the Trinity.

One person in two natures.

The two natures being united but not changed by the union.

Distinct but not separate.

In fact, and here I'm going to give some more credit to my man Novation, Novation had prepared the West to come to this correct understanding by using Latin terminology related to marriage as an analogy for this union of the human and the divine in Christ.

In a marriage, the two individuals retain their distinct integrity, but they come together in a permanent union in which they act as a unit.

It's not a perfect analogy because, after all, Jesus is one person, not two.

But you can think of the union of his two natures using this analogy in the sense that his divine nature is the groom and his humanity is the bride, and then it becomes the image after which is patterned the image of the church as the bride of Christ.

Okay, so far so good.

But there was another problem.

The emperor in Constantinople at this time was Theodosius II, and he was a Monophysite, and so he supported Eutyches against Bishop Flavian.

And in the year 449 AD, the emperor convened another council in Ephesus, and he let Dioscorus chair this one.

So consequently, anyone known to be against Eutyches was not invited.

And you can see where this is going.

Leo's Tome was rejected without even being read, and both Pope Leo and Flavian of Constantinople were excommunicated.

Of course, this was not legitimate.

The council was completely out of order, and in fact, Pope Leo would later refer to it as a synod of thieves, the robber synod.

In the end, chaos reigned, the people rioted, and the emperor had to call in troops to quiet it down.

But Pope Leo's delegation had to run for it to escape arrest, and they did arrest Bishop Flavian, who was beaten almost to death.

And he was thrown in prison, later exiled, and died in exile.

But eventually, the emperor also died in the year 450, and his successor was Orthodox.

And Leo convinced him to convene a legitimate council.

And this would be the fourth worldwide or ecumenical council of the church, the Council of Chalcedon, in the year 451 AD. Just a quick reminder, my brother from another mother, Mike Aquilina, has whole episodes on each of these four ecumenical councils, so I do encourage you to listen to those.

Well, the first thing the bishops did at the Council of Chalcedon was to affirm the Nicene Creed, the creed written at both the first two ecumenical councils of Nicaea and Constantinople in the previous century.

We don't need to write another creed, they said, because the one we have from the first two ecumenical councils is sufficient.

So we're not going to write a creed.

But they did need to write something.

They needed a definitive answer to the question of the union of the two natures in Christ.

They did need to write some kind of a statement of faith that would refute both Nestorius and Eutyches.

And so they read out Leo's Tome, and it was accepted as authoritative.

And then they wrote what is called the Chalcedonian Definition.

Not a creed, but a definition, which was basically a distillation of the work of Cyril of Alexandria and the Western theologians summarized by Pope Leo the Great.

I'd like to read to you the Chalcedonian Definition.

It's not long at all, and when I read it, listen for how it manages to find that balance of unity and distinction in the hypostatic union, and how the explanation of orthodoxy clarified that middle way, that place of balance between the extremes of Nestorius and Eutyches.

Okay, here it is, the Chalcedonian Definition.

We then, following the Holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood, truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and body, consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead and consubstantial with us according to the manhood, in all things like unto us without sin, begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the manhood, one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably, the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved and concurring in one person and one subsistence.

Not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the prophets from the beginning have declared concerning him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ himself has taught us, and the creed of the Holy Fathers has handed down to us.

That's it.

That's the Chalcedonian Definition.

One person in two natures, the natures being neither changed nor mixed up, and yet the union resulting in a single personhood.

Well, in the end, Eutyches and Dioscorus were excommunicated, and Dioscorus was deposed as bishop from the Sea of Alexandria.

And the council again affirmed the orthodoxy of the Marian title, Mother of God.

But sadly, in the aftermath of this fourth ecumenical council, the followers of Nestorius, as well as those of Eutyches and Dioscorus, did not submit to the church and the councils, but left the church in schism.

And this was the first major schism of the church and one which remains to this day.

Those communions which are descended from these factions are known today collectively as the non-Chalcedonian communions because they still do not accept the authority of the Fourth Ecumenical Council.

And I'll come back to that point in a moment.

Before we get to that, for those of you who are following the superhero analogies, if Apollinarius' monothelite Christology could be represented by Iron Man and Nestorianism could be represented by the Incredible Hulk, is there a Monophysite superhero?

Well, maybe.

Perhaps the Silver Surfer or Vision.

Heroes who never really become human.

Or, for you Doctor Who fans, you could find an analogy for the Monophysite Christ in the Cybermen or the Daleks, beings who once were human, but the union with the superhuman has erased the humanity in them.

The point being that Monophysite Christology, like Apollinarian and Nestorian, is not really an incarnation.

If Apollinarianism was more of an indwelling, the divine word in a skin suit, and Nestorianism was more of a juxtaposition, like oil and vinegar, Monophysite Christology is something like a God who visits us but never really becomes one of us.

And as I hinted earlier, this ends up not being very different from a Docetic or even a Gnostic view of Christ.

Now, there is an epilogue to all of this that we have to talk about.

Since the 5th century, the non-Chalcedonian factions have coalesced into legitimate ecclesial communions.

The Nestorians became what is now called the Assyrian Church of the East, and those who broke away in support of Eutyches and Dioscorus are now known as the Oriental Orthodox Churches.

So before we close, I want to say a word about each of these, if you'll bear with me while I presume to speak for them for just a bit.

Now, full disclosure, when it comes to the Assyrian Church of the East, I have never had any direct contact with anyone from that communion.

Back in the day when I first started teaching this material, I had reached out to both sides of the non-Chalcedonians in the hope that I could invite someone from their communions to come to my classes and speak to my students.

But the Assyrians never returned my calls or my emails, so I don't know anyone in that communion personally.

But I do know this.

They seem to have softened their opposition to the Chalcedonian definition.

Some of them even claim that Nestorius himself had agreed to it, or would have, though he died in 451, the same year as the council.

But it seems that in the context of ecumenical dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East, we can agree that there were some things lost in translation, that perhaps Nestorius himself was misunderstood, or that his followers after him took things farther than he did, so that it could be said that Nestorianism went farther than Nestorius.

Now, whatever the truth of that is, our point is not to excuse Nestorius for heresy, but to say that the Assyrian Church of the East of today has been willing to distance themselves from the specific heresy of Nestorianism, and perhaps even admit that the title Mother of God for the Blessed Virgin Mary is appropriate even if they don't use it much.

And so, in 1994, the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East dropped their mutual accusations of heresy, and each affirmed that the other is a valid expression of Christianity.

In other words, we don't call them heretics anymore, because through dialogue we've been able to clarify how we may see things slightly differently, but both ways of describing Christ are within the bounds of orthodoxy.

Now, when it comes to the Oriental Orthodox, they did return my phone calls, and I have been blessed to become friends with some of them.

The Oriental Orthodox churches today include the Coptic Church, which is primarily the Egyptian church headquartered at Alexandria, and also the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, with a few other groups.

My friends are in the Coptic Church, and so I know their situation best.

Just like the Assyrian Church of the East has distanced itself from Nestorianism, and don't get me wrong, Nestorianism is still a heresy, but they have distanced themselves from it.

Well, like that, the Coptic Christians would also distance themselves from Eutyches.

Today they would say that Eutyches was indeed a heretic.

Monophysite Christology is still a heresy.

But they see their legacy connected more to Dioscorus, who, they will say, got railroaded for political reasons.

But really, their hero is Cyril of Alexandria, who was never accused of heresy.

In addition, the Coptics don't refer to their Christology as Monophysite, because they agree that Christ must have two natures, and that the human nature can't get cancelled out by the divine, and that the divine nature can't change into some third thing like an alloy.

In fact, it doesn't sound to me like they have any objection to the Chalcedonian definition at all.

What they object to is the authority of the Council of Chalcedon itself on the basis of the political intrigue surrounding it and their feeling that Dioscorus got a raw deal.

Now, to be precise, they still prefer Cyril's language of one person out of two natures over Leo's language of one person in two natures.

But nevertheless, just like with the other side, we can see how they have a slightly different way of describing Christ, yet still stay within the boundaries of orthodoxy.

And so, in 1973, the Catholic Church and the Coptic Church dropped the mutual accusations of heresy, and Pope Paul VI and the Coptic Patriarch issued a joint statement on Christology clarifying the common ground, all of which is orthodox.

So, if the Coptics don't call their Christology Monophysite, what do they call it?

They call it Meaphysite.

What's the difference between mono and mia?

It's like the difference in English between mono and uni.

Mia, like uni, means both in one.

So if you go to a unisex hairstylist, they do hair of both men and women.

So Monophysite Christology means only one nature, and that's still a heresy.

Meaphysite Christology means both in one, both natures in one.

They will say one composite nature, but it's both in one as opposed to only one.

Slightly different than the way we say it in the mainstream Catholic Church, but still within the bounds of orthodoxy.

Now, I know that's a very slight distinction, but it does make the difference between heresy and orthodoxy.

And that's not just me talking.

That's Pope Paul VI and Pope St. John Paul II. So here's another analogy that might help you think about the difference.

Think of the two natures of Jesus Christ as singers, two voices singing a song.

Monophysite Christology, the Christology of Eutyches, which is a heresy.

Monophysite Christology is a monotone, like only one voice singing a solo, and that's a heresy because there's only one voice.

We need two natures, so the analogy has to have two voices.

Now, Nestorian Christology has two voices, but that would be like two different people singing two different songs, which of course is also a heresy.

But Meaphysite Christology is like two voices singing in unison, whereas mainstream Catholic Christology is like two voices singing in harmony.

So the Coptics have a Jesus who is two natures singing in unison.

We Catholics have a Jesus who is two natures singing in harmony.

Both ways of looking at Christ's two natures are acceptable because they both have two natures.

The Coptics are just leaning more into Cyril of Alexandria's language and the union of the two natures, and we Catholics are leaning more into the Western way of thinking about it, which is like that marriage analogy.

The bottom line is that the heresy of Monophysite Christology results in a conception of Christ who is just not human enough.

So he's not really one of us, not consubstantial with us.

Meaphysite Christology, as we see in the Oriental Orthodox Communions, doesn't fall into the trap of diminishing Christ's humanity, so their description of Christ is one of us, is consubstantial with us.

Now, of course, when I say that we have dropped the mutual accusations of heresy with the non-Chalcedonian communions, that does not imply that we have Eucharistic unity with them.

We do not.

And so we cannot share that ultimate act of unity, which is the sacrament of the Eucharist.

But that Eucharistic unity, however far out in the future it may be, that is the stated goal of the Dicastery for the Promotion of Christian Unity, which is what used to be called the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity.

And it is true that dialogue with the Eastern Communions, especially the Coptics, has been strained lately.

But I hope that you will join me in praying for increasing unity in the near future.

The point of this whole epilogue is that, in spite of the fact that Nestorianism and Eutyches' Monophysite Christology are both heresies, we no longer think of the Assyrian Church of the East or the Oriental Orthodox Churches as heretics.

We call them our Christian brothers, separated brothers, but still Christians.

But now, if you're thinking, hey, wait a minute, how is it that the heretics of Chalcedon are no longer heretics, but the heretics of Nicaea still are?

Well, I'm going to get into that question in the concluding episode to this series on the heresies.

At this point, it looks like that will be episode 18, just after the next one, which will be the heresy of Iconoclasm.

Thanks for listening.

Way of the Fathers is a production of CatholicCulture.org.

Check out our other podcasts, including Catholic Culture Audiobooks, bringing to life classic Catholic writings, Criteria, the Catholic Film Podcast, featuring deep analysis of great films from a Catholic perspective, and the Catholic Culture Podcast, an interview show exploring Catholic arts, culture, and issues.

You'll find all of this, as well as Catholic news, commentary, liturgical year resources, and much more at CatholicCulture.org.