Dear Subscriber, Regards from Vancouver! I mistakenly used an older mailing list, so some of you haven't received my October 24 report. Please accept my apology. Here is the link to this report dedicated to Fr. Vasilii Vinogradov of Mozhaisk and Munich. The sixth session of the Fourth Ecumenical Council concluded on this day in Chalcedon in 451. One way to look at Christological debates of the first millennium is as attempts to answer the question that Christ placed before His disciples: “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” (Matt. 16:14). Nestorios, Archbishop of Constantinople from 428 to 431, in attempting to explain the Incarnation, taught that Christ had two hypostases (essences), those of both God and man. Responding to this, St. Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria, used the problematic formula “one nature of God the Word incarnate” (“mia physis tou Theou Logou sesarkomeni”). In doing so, St. Cyril provided an Orthodox explanation arguing against the coexistence in the person of Christ of two “independent sons.” After the death of St. Cyril in 444, Archimandrite Eutyches from Constantinople continued to develop St. Cyril’s theology and began to deny that the Lord was “consubstantial” with humanity through His nature. His defense of the literal understanding of the “miaphysite” formula resulted in the teaching known today as monophysitism being condemned at the Council of Chalcedon. The issue of different understandings of terminology played a role in the disputes leading up to this Council. The Council proclaimed the Orthodox doctrine that there is one hypostasis of the Logos which includes in itself the divine and human natures. The whole Creed of Chalcedon reads: “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; coessential 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, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; 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 the Lord Jesus Christ Himself has taught us, and the creed of the holy fathers has handed down to us” (Protestant Reformed Churches in America, http://www.prca.org/about/official-standards/creeds/ecumenical/chalcedon.) On this day, October 25, Emperor Marcian, addressing the Council, expressed the hope that this creed would put an end to all disputes about the faith. This did not happen. Masses of Christians in Syria, Armenia and Egypt refused to accept the diophysitism of Chalcedon. Source: “Vselenskii IV Sobor” [The Fourth Ecumenical Counci], Pravoslavnaia Entsiklopedia [Orthodox Entsiklopedia]. |
