The Theology of Chalcedon

V. THE THEOLOGY OF CHALCEDON

Chalcedon and Nicaea

The Acts of Chalcedon often refer to the great theologians of the past as the ‘fathers’ (first at I. 10), a usage that developed after the Council of Nicaea of 325 to refer to the bishops at Nicaea and to those theologians, earlier or later, who bore witness to the Nicene faith. Fidelity to the Nicene Creed was indeed a leitmotif of the Council of Chalcedon, where it was repeatedly insisted that the Nicene Creed contains the whole orthodox understanding of God and Christ in a nutshell, with the result that later texts can be no more than commentaries upon it.²⁰²

The clearest indication, perhaps, of the mind of the majority of the bishops who attended the Council and acclaimed the Chalcedonian Definition is to be found in the Codex Encyclius of the emperor Leo I. The year 457 saw the death of the emperor Marcian, who had masterminded the Council six years earlier. The council’s opponents in Alexandria took advantage of the situation to overthrow and lynch their pro-Chalcedonian patriarch Proterius, and to elect in his place Timothy Aelurus, an uncompromising anti-Chalcedonian.²⁰³ Both the pro-Chalcedonians and the anti-Chalcedonians of Egypt appealed to the rest of the Christian world for support. The new emperor Leo decided on an extensive consultation: he wrote to Pope Leo and to all the metropolitan bishops in his dominions, requesting honest and conscientious answers to the questions: what should be done about Timothy, and what should be said about Chalcedon? The bishops, deeply shocked by the murder of Proterius, answered overwhelmingly against Timothy and in favour of Chalcedon; 470 of them signed letters to this effect (according to Photius), with only the bishops of a single province (Pamphylia Secunda) partly dissenting. The emperor approved their judgement, and issued their replies in a document known as the Codex Encyclius. Half of it survives in an early Latin translation.²⁰⁴

The reason why the Codex Encyclius has not been used as a guide to the meaning of the Definition is that it is from the theological point of view a sadly disappointing document. The bishops show little inclination to discuss theology; few of them offer any detailed comments on the contents of the Definition. One characteristic of all the replies stands out prominently: all the bishops gave their approval to Chalcedon on the grounds that it followed the Nicene Creed. It is, of course, a familiar fact that the Definition begins by quoting this creed, but modern commentators have been slow to appreciate the importance of this for the interpretation of the text as a whole. In view of the reluctance of the fathers to approve any new definition, on the grounds that the Seventh Canon of the Council of Ephesus²⁰⁵ had forbidden the use of any formulary of the faith beyond the Nicene Creed, the composers of the Definition were obviously concerned to claim that it was based on the creed. Did the statement reiterated so monotonously in 457/8 that Chalcedon had confirmed Nicaea mean anything more than that Chalcedon was orthodox? Modern historians of the development of doctrine would consider it absurd to suppose that Nicaea had solved the Christological problem in advance: its creed does indeed contain an article on the incarnation, but this consists of no more than a simple affirmation of the doctrine, expressed in wholly traditional language.

The question that needs to be asked, however, is how the bishops of 457 viewed the matter. If they had agreed with modern interpretation that sees no solution to the fifth-century debate in the early fourth-century formula, it would have been vacuous to argue, as they all did, that the teaching of Chalcedon was orthodox because it was Nicene. Clearly, they thought that Nicaea contained an implicit refutation of the errors that Chalcedon was concerned to condemn – the heresies of Nestorius and Eutyches. An argument that Nicaea had implicitly condemned Eutyches even before the unfortunate heresiarch had been born was spelt out in the Address to Marcian published in the proceedings of the council (our Documents after the Council 1). This text argues that the affirmation in the creed that Christ ‘was enfleshed’ means that he truly assumed our flesh from the Virgin, while the affirmation that Christ ‘became a human being’ expresses that he  assumed not only a human body but also a rational soul. Likewise, the bishops of Syria Prima, in their reply to the emperor Leo’s consultation, argued that the Eutychian denial that Christ shared our nature is refuted by the teaching of the creed on the incarnation.²⁰⁶ Nicaea had condemned Eutyches in advance, and therefore in order to condemn Eutyches all Chalcedon had to do was to reaffirm Nicaea. This means that the full quotation of the Nicene Creed at the beginning of the Definition should not be brushed aside, as in most modern commentaries on the text, as if it were a mere preface, a pious declaration of orthodox intent, before the Definition gets on to the real work.

The close connection that the council asserted between its own work and the Nicene Creed relates to its own conception of its task, which was not to achieve progress in theological understanding but to define the limits of Nicene orthodoxy; this stress on tradition did not represent intellectual sclerosis but rather an awareness that the task of a council in defining orthodoxy and the task of a theologian in developing doctrine are two quite different things. The Second Council of Ephesus of 449 had condemned Flavian of Constantinople less for heresy than for setting up a new doctrinal test as a requirement for full membership of the Christian Church. The fathers of Chalcedon accepted a new doctrinal definition only because it sought to uphold and protect the faith of Nicaea, shared by all members of the church.²⁰⁷ The penalty of not only degradation but also excommunication imposed on Dioscorus of Alexandria at the third session of the council may seem chillingly severe, but the concern of the bishops was to preserve the faith affirmed at every baptism and expressed in each celebration of the eucharist.²⁰⁸ It was the unity of the rites of initiation into the church and the foundations of Christian community that Chalcedon was concerned to maintain, not some academic ideal of precise definition and intellectual progress. Indeed, a modern reader who comes to the Acts in quest of illumination about the niceties of Chalcedonian Christology will be disappointed by the lack of theological debate worthy of the name.

Whatever claims were made for the Nicene Creed as a perfect expression of faith in Christ, needing no more than precise interpretation to counter later heresies, it can be argued, however, that so far from solving the Christological problem in advance it actually accentuated it. As interpreted by the end of the fourth century, the teaching of the Council of Nicaea on the consubstantiality of Father and Son implied so strong a doctrine of the Son’s full divinity as to highlight the problem of how a single being could be both God and man. Christ as God is timeless, immutable, omniscient, impassible (that is, incapable of suffering), while Christ as man was created in time, underwent the changes attendant on human life, confessed himself ignorant of some things (notably of the day and hour of the end; Mt. 24:36), and suffered on the cross. All the theologians in the Nicene tradition acknowledged the paradox and mystery of this conjunction. All were agreed that Christ possesses two sets of contrasting attributes and yet remains a single person. The Chalcedonian doctrine of one Christ, who is acknowledged in two natures that unite to form a single person, was to this extent common property.

The key final section of the Definition runs as follows (V. 34):

Following, therefore, the holy fathers, we all in harmony teach confession of one and the same Son our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and the same perfect in manhood, truly God and the same truly man, of a rational soul and body, consubstantial with the Father in respect of the Godhead, and the same consubstantial with us in respect of the manhood, like us in all things apart from sin, begotten from the Father before the ages in respect of the Godhead, and the same in the last days for us and for our salvation from the Virgin Mary the Theotokos in respect of the manhood, one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, acknowledged in two natures without confusion, change, division, or separation (the difference of the natures being in no way destroyed by the union, but rather the distinctive character of each nature being preserved and coming together into one person and one hypostasis), not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, Only-begotten, God, Word, Lord, Jesus Christ, even as the prophets from of old and Jesus Christ himself taught us about him and the symbol of the fathers has handed down to us.

Before attempting an interpretation of this text, we need to set it in the context of the Christological controversy of the preceding 25 years.

Antiochene and Alexandrian Christology

In the period before Chalcedon, there were two leading schools of Christological inquiry in the Greek east.²⁰⁹ The Antiochene school of Syrian theologians, of whom the most controversial was Nestorius (d. 450/1) and the most gifted Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 428) and Theodoret of Cyrrhus (d. c. 466), was concerned to protect the changelessness of Christ’s Godhead and at the same time to give scope for the freedom of his manhood; this led to a stress on the distinction between the two constituent elements in Christ, Godhead and manhood.²¹⁰ They therefore used such formulae as ‘two natures’, ‘two hypostases’ (that is, two realities or beings), even ‘two persons’, ‘conjoined’ (not mixed or blended) in ‘the person of union’.²¹¹ Against them was soon ranged what is generally referred to as the Alexandrian school, meaning in effect Cyril of Alexandria (bishop 412–444), developing the thought of his great predecessor Athanasius (d. 373).²¹² Cyril gave prime emphasis to the unity of Christ, which he expressed with such formulae as ‘one incarnate nature’, ‘one hypostasis’, ‘two natures in contemplation alone’ (that is, distinct as we describe them but not separate in reality), ‘one after the union’,²¹³ ‘one from two’, and the like. Cyril did not deny that the natures united in Christ preserve their differences, but he insisted that they were no longer two ontologically distinct realities. Since both sides agreed that Christ is both God and man ‘without confusion, change, division, or separation’ (to use the famous expression in the Definition), the argument over terminology was sterile, and can give the impression that both sides really agreed but were keen to disguise the fact.

However, there was more substance to the debate than this. Modern theologians contrast ‘Christology from below’, which makes the humanity of Christ its main concern, and ‘Christology from above’, which presents the divine Son or Word who ‘became’ or ‘indwelt’ flesh (see John 1:14). However much theologians today may assert that both approaches are valid and need to complement, not oppose, each other, they certainly produce two very different pictures of Christ. In the period before Chalcedon, the Antiochene school presented a Christology from below, while the Alexandrian school presented a Christology from above. It is in their gospel commentaries that the difference comes across most clearly. Compare, for example, how Theodore of Mopsuestia and Cyril of Alexandria comment on the verse, ‘I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself’ (John 12:32):

[Theodore] He says: ‘I do not trust in my own strength, but through the nature which indwells in me I hope to conquer Satan … God the Word made me his own once and for all time when he assumed me; and it is clear that he will not leave me to act at random. When therefore the God of all hears our judgement and sees that Satan has inflicted death on me unjustly and undeservedly, abusing his tyranny against me, he will order me to be freed from the bonds of death, with the result that I shall then have confidence to pray to God for all the children of my race, so that those who share with me in the same nature may also participate in the resurrection.^’214

[Cyril] Christ alone, as God, was able to procure all good things for us … Christ draws [human beings] to himself and does not, like the disciples, lead them to another. Here he shows himself to be God by nature, in that he does not make a distinction between himself and the Father; for it is through the Son that one is drawn to the knowledge of the Father.²¹⁵

The consciousness of the Antiochene Christ is a human consciousness of the one who recognizes the dignity he has received of being united to the eternal Son, while the consciousness of the Alexandrian Christ is that of the divine mind that has condescended to operate in a human being. Theodore’s Christ can even address the Son in the second person or refer to him in the third, as a distinct personal subject. Meanwhile, Cyril was so influenced by Athanasius’ presentation of Christ as a divine mind indwelling a human body that in his long series of homilies on the Gospel of Luke he makes virtually no reference to Christ’s human mind (or soul), even though he never doubted that he had one. Accordingly, critics ancient and modern have faulted the Antiochenes for offering an inadequate account of the unity of Christ, and have accused Cyril of having an inadequate conception of his humanity. The Chalcedonian Definition condemns Nestorius, as the representative of the dangers in Antiochene Christology, for dividing Christ into ‘two sons’ or persons, one divine and the other human, and condemns Eutyches, as the representative of a perversion to which Alexandrian Christology was prone, of undermining the true humanity of Christ.

And yet these criticisms do both sides less than justice. So far from teaching that Christ is a compound of two persons, a divine Son consubstantial with the Father and a human son adopted by the Father as other human beings are, the Antiochenes insisted that Christ is one Son, in whom the humanity is so lifted up as to share in the relationship enjoyed by the eternal Son with his heavenly Father. At the same time they insisted that Christians do not worship Christ’s Godhead while venerating his manhood, but offer one and same worship to Christ, God and man. In other words, although Christ in his internal constitution is a compound of two distinct realities, he is one in his relationships both with the Father and with the human race.²¹⁶ At the same time, Cyril was able to accommodate human limitations in Christ, even mental limitations, through developing the language of St Paul about the self-emptying (kenôsis) through which the one who ‘was in the form of God … took the form of servant, being born in the likeness of men’ (Phil. 2:6–7): as he wrote, Christ ‘has divine knowledge as the Wisdom of the Father but, since he has put on the measure of ignorant humanity, in his condescension he appropriates this together with the rest.^’217 Cyril repeatedly contrasted the reality of Christ’s divine powers with the ‘appearance’ of human limitations – not in the sense of a false appearance, but in the sense that human nature is an ‘appearance’ in contrast to the invisibility of the Godhead.²¹⁸

Controversy and consensus

In the context we have sketched of two Christological approaches, both of which had their strengths and their internal correctives, the crucial question became, which of the two was more faithful to the tradition of the Church? The Christological controversy of the fifth century began in 428 when Nestorius, as the newly installed bishop of Constantinople, publicly criticized the attribution to the Virgin Mary of the title Theotokos (‘God-bearer’) on the grounds that she gave birth not to the Godhead of Christ but to his humanity. He was not perhaps aware that the title had been used by a number of pre-Nicene and Nicene fathers, including Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea, and the Cappadocians,²¹⁹ but he could point out that it was not used in the Nicene Creed; indeed this creed (in contrast to the Constantinopolitan Creed of 381) makes no mention of Mary at all. Against these arguments Cyril insisted that the Theotokos title was simply a corollary of the fact that Jesus’ human birth is ascribed in the creed to the eternal Son – ‘one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God …, consubstantial with the Father …, who for us men and for our salvation came down, was enfleshed and became man.’ He was therefore able to claim that Nestorius was undermining the authority of the creed.

In developing this argument in his Second Letter to Nestorius, written in February 430, Cyril proceeded to defend the ascription of Christ’s human experiences to the eternal Son:

He is spoken of as begotten also according to the flesh from a woman, not as though his divine nature received the beginning of its existence in the holy Virgin …; but since for us and for our salvation he united manhood to himself hypostatically and came forth from a woman, he is for this reason said to have been born in the flesh. … He is said to have undergone fleshly birth, as making his own the birth of his own flesh. So too we say that he both suffered and rose again, not as though God the Word suffered in his own nature either blows or the piercing of the nails or the other wounds (for the divine is impassible because it is also incorporeal); but since it was the body that had become his own that suffered, he himself again is said to have suffered these things for us, for the impassible one was in the suffering body … So again, when his flesh was raised, the resurrection is spoken of as his, not as though he fell into corruption (God forbid!), but because again his own body was raised.²²⁰

Cyril’s argument is cautious: he does not assert crudely that it was God the Word who was born, suffered, died and rose again, but rather that he ‘is spoken of’ as the subject of the human experiences. Since the eternal Son has made a human nature his own, human attributes and experiences may appropriately be attributed to the Godhead in credal profession. This is a defence of the classic communicatio idiomatum – the expression of the union by ascribing to each nature what strictly belongs to the other. In recognition of the duality in Christ, Cyril is happy to use language that expresses the coexistence in Christ of two united natures: ‘The Godhead and the manhood by their ineffable and indescribable coming together into unity perfected for us the one Lord and Christ and Son … He united manhood to himself … The impassible one was in the suffering body’ (ibid.).

It is this that made possible the accord reached by Cyril and his Antiochene opponents early in 433. The Antiochenes accepted the condemnation of Nestorius, while Cyril proved his own moderation by accepting in his Letter to John of Antioch a doctrinal statement drawn up by the Antiochene party, the Formula of Reunion, of which the main part runs:

We therefore acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, perfect God and perfect man made up of a rational soul and body, begotten from the Father before the ages in respect of the Godhead and the same on the last day for us and for our salvation from the Virgin Mary in respect of his manhood, the same consubstantial with the Father in respect of the Godhead and consubstantial with us in respect of the manhood. For there has occurred a union of two natures, and therefore we acknowledge one Christ, one Son, one Lord. By virtue of this understanding of the union which involves no merging, we acknowledge the holy Virgin to be Theotokos, because God the Word was enfleshed and became man and from the very conception united to himself the temple taken from her.²²¹

Cyril’s understanding of the ‘two natures’ in Christ was different from that of the Antiochenes: he came to insist that the two natures are ‘separate’ only in the sense that the human mind has to think of them separately (‘two in contemplation alone’). Nevertheless, he agreed that the differences between the natures are not annulled by the union, and this was an adequate basis for an accord with Antioch.²²²

Cyril’s acceptance of this formula and of the orthodoxy of the Antiochenes, apart from Nestorius himself, caused dismay to some of his followers. The reason was that after writing his Second Letter to Nestorius he had in the meantime adopted a belligerently miaphysite (one-nature) position: he had come to insist that Christ is ‘one incarnate nature’, to employ the Johannine affirmation of the Word becoming flesh with emphasis (while being careful to add that this involved no change in the divine nature itself), and to attribute all the human experiences to the divine Son as their one and only personal subject – in reaction to the Antiochene ascription of the human experiences of Christ to the human nature treated as a distinct subject of attribution. It was this difference regarding the identity of the subject in Christ that was the key factor that set the two schools in opposition to each other. Cyril expressed his stance in a particularly aggressive form in the Twelve Chapters, or Anathemas, which he appended to his Third Letter to Nestorius (of November 430):²²³

Anathema 1. If anyone does not acknowledge Emmanuel to be God in truth and therefore the holy Virgin to be Theotokos – for she gave fleshly birth to the flesh that the Word of God had become –, let him be anathema.

Anathema 12. If anyone does not acknowledge the Word of God as having suffered in the flesh, been crucified in the flesh, tasted death in the flesh, and become firstborn from the dead, since as God he is life and life-giving, let him be anathema.

Dioscorus and his supporters laid great emphasis on these Anathemas, or Chapters, while denying authority to the Formula of Reunion. Our view of how Cyrillian is the Chalcedonian Definition will depend on to which of these two Cyrils – the moderate Cyril of the Second Letter to Nestorius and the Letter to John of Antioch, or the uncompromising Cyril of the Twelve Chapters – we give priority.

Cyril at Chalcedon

The fathers of Chalcedon were profuse in their professions of loyalty to Cyril. Even when judging the Tome of Pope Leo (the great western Christological statement, formally approved at Chalcedon), their criterion of orthodoxy remained agreement with Cyril; this is clear throughout the lengthy discussion of the Tome in the fourth session.²²⁴ Even more revealing was an earlier moment, when in the second session there occurred a reading of the Tome that was interrupted at several points by dissentient voices. Some of the bishops present took offence at the words, ‘[Christ] has from us the humanity that is less than the Father, and he has from the Father the Godhead that is equal with the Father.’ Theodoret of Cyrrhus, the champion of the Antiochene party, defended Leo by pointing out, ‘There is a similar instance in the blessed Cyril which contains the words, “He became man without shedding what was his own, for he remained what he was; he is certainly conceived as one dwelling in another, that is, the divine nature in what is human”.’ (II. 26). Nothing could be more indicative of the mood of the council than the fact that even Theodoret had to defend the Tome by appealing to the authority of Cyril. His own attitude was far more critical: he had strongly attacked Cyril’s Twelve Chapters back in the pamphlet war in early 431 and had been very reluctant to accept Nestorius’ subsequent condemnation. But he clearly recognized that it would be disastrous to argue that there was something valuable in the Tome of Leo that was lacking in Cyril; instead, he played along with the conviction of the majority that Cyril provided the yardstick of orthodoxy. It was as an expression of this conviction that the Second Letter to Nestorius and the Letter to John of Antioch were read out and acclaimed at the second session of the Council (II. 18–19), in the place of honour immediately after the recitation of the creed. These are the two letters that we have already cited as the key texts of ‘moderate’ Cyrillianism; and these are the letters of Cyril that are referred to with immense respect as the ‘conciliar letters’ of Cyril in the Chalcedonian Definition itself.

It is to misconceive the mood of the council to think of the Definition as attempting a synthesis between Cyril’s theology and that of the Antiochene school. It is to be noted that the council fathers always refer to the Formula of Reunion as the ‘Letter of Cyril to John of Antioch’: they treat the formula as having become, by adoption, a Cyrillian text, and accord no credit whatsoever to the Antiochene school for its production. The way they treated Theodoret in the eighth session as virtually a repentant heretic is clear evidence that, although after the quashing of the decrees of Ephesus II they had no choice but to reinstate him, they were only ready to do so after subjecting him to personal humiliation. The fathers only accepted from Antioch what they knew Cyril had not only tolerated but also made his own.²²⁵

It would also be a mistake to interpret the Definition as a synthesis between Alexandria and Rome. The council solemnly approved the Tome of Leo, and it was as a result of Roman insistence that the Definition contains an unambiguous statement of two natures in Christ. There were significant non-Cyrillian features in the Christology of Leo, as of the west in general; in a word, while Cyril treated Christ’s human nature as the instrument of the divine Word, Leo emphasized the cooperation of the two natures in ‘the one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus’ (1 Tim. 2:5).²²⁶ If we take Leo’s Christology as our starting point, a very different interpretation of the Definition emerges. But this was certainly not envisaged by the council fathers themselves: they interpreted the Tome as simply a confirmation of the insistence by the Home Synod of Constantinople of 448, in its condemnation of Eutyches, that Christ is consubstantial both with the Father and with us men, and that therefore there are two natures in Christ that remain distinct even after the union (I. 526). The distinctive features of western Christology echoed in the Tome were of no concern to the council fathers whatsoever.²²⁷ In all, despite the formal approval of the Tome by the eastern bishops both before the council, at the council, and in the Definition itself, it remained far less important for them than the conciliar letters of Cyril.

But what of the uncompromising Cyril of the Twelve Chapters? During the first session of the Council of Ephesus of 449 the two conciliar letters were read out in the course of reading the minutes of the Home Synod of Constantinople of 448 (I. 240, 246). Hereupon Bishop Eustathius of Berytus pointed out to the assembly that the Letter to John of Antioch needed to be interpreted in the light of the letters Cyril had written subsequently to his supporters, giving a miaphysite slant to his acceptance of the Formula of Reunion (I. 261). When this comment was read out at Chalcedon, the chairman asked the council whether it could be squared with the two conciliar letters. In an angry response, Eustathius ‘came forward to the centre, threw down a book and said, “If I have spoken wrongly, here is the book of Cyril. Let it be anathematized and let me be anathematized”’(I. 265). The effect of Eustathius’ intervention was marred when he proceeded to adduce the miaphysite sympathies of Flavian of Constantinople, and could then do nothing but humbly apologize when the chairman asked why he had condemned Flavian for heresy (I. 267–9). Similarly, after the reading of Leo’s Tome at the second session Bishop Atticus of Nicopolis argued that the Tome needed to be compared to the Twelve Chapters (II. 29). In a subsequent informal meeting of the bishops, the Roman delegates had to satisfy their eastern colleagues by playing down the dyophysite emphasis in the Tome (IV. 9, after §98), but nothing more was heard of Cyril’s Chapters or indeed of any other of his controverted writings.

An analysis of the Definition

To this emphasis on the Cyril of the Second Letter to Nestorius and the Letter to John of Antioch I have given the name ‘moderate Cyrillianism’. It is this that dominates in the Chalcedonian Definition itself, to an analysis of which we may now turn.²²⁸

The final section of the Definition, as read out at the fifth session of the council, runs as follows:

Following, therefore, the holy fathers, we all in harmony teach confession of one and the same Son our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and the same perfect in manhood, truly God and the same truly man, of a rational soul and body, consubstantial with the Father in respect of the Godhead, and the same consubstantial with us in respect of the manhood, like us in all things apart from sin, begotten from the Father before the ages in respect of the Godhead, and the same in the last days for us and for our salvation from the Virgin Mary the Theotokos in respect of the manhood, one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Onlybegotten, acknowledged in two natures without confusion, change, division, or separation (the difference of the natures being in no way destroyed by the union, but rather the distinctive character of each nature being preserved and coming together into one person and one hypostasis), not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, Only-begotten, God, Word, Lord, Jesus Christ.²²⁹

The Christological model employed here is one that begins with Godhead and humanity as two distinct natures and then affirms their union in Christ.²³⁰

This may seem an Antiochene emphasis on duality, but that there are two elements in Christ, distinct but united, was equally affirmed by Cyril himself.²³¹ Typical of Cyril’s exposition of this model was the use of expressions that shifted the emphasis onto the oneness in Christ. What in fact we have here is a restatement of the Formula of Reunion (quoted at p. 64 above) with modifications taken from Cyril. The Formula’s undeveloped affirmation that ‘there has occurred a union of two natures, and therefore we acknowledge one Christ, one Son, one Lord’ is expanded in a way that echoes the following statement in the Second Letter to Nestorius:

While the natures which were brought together in true union are different, yet from them both is the one Christ and Son – not as though the difference of the natures was destroyed by the union, but rather the Godhead and the manhood by their ineffable and indescribable coming together into unity perfected for us the one Lord and Christ and Son.

The language of ‘coming together into unity’, together with the insistence that this is a unity of ‘hypostasis’, that is, of concrete, individual existence, gives conceptual clarity to the insistent repetition of ‘one and the same Son’. Famously, the clause referring to two natures was redrafted at the last moment to satisfy the emperor and the Roman delegates, who insisted on a formal affirmation of a continuing duality in Christ after the union – in accordance with the Home Synod’s condemnation of Eutyches and with the Tome of Leo. But note that the clause is so worded as to echo closely a less controversial statement a few lines above:

We all in harmony teach confession of one and the same Son our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect IN Godhead and the same perfect IN manhood … one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, acknowledged IN two natures. Here the expression in the Formula of Reunion ‘perfect God and perfect man’ is changed to ‘perfect in Godhead and the same perfect in manhood’ in accordance with Cyril’s paraphrase of the Formula in his Letter to John of Antioch; the effect is to reduce the two natures to two sets of contrasting attributes possessed by the same subject. The same is implied by the way in which in the key clause, ‘the distinctive character of each nature being preserved and coming together into one person and one hypostasis’, it is not ‘two natures’ that are said to be united but the distinctive character, or features, of Godhead and manhood. The verbal ascription of these attributes to ‘two natures’ has the force of protecting the two sets from mutual contamination; it is not to be understood as attributing them to two distinct beings or two subjects of attribution.²³²

The treatment of the two natures as two sets of attributes raises the question of whom, then, if not the natures, is the personal subject in Christ? A set of attributes, even two sets of attributes taken in conjunction, cannot add up to a personal subject! The obvious candidate is the ‘one person and one hypostasis’. It is true that this features in the Definition almost as if it were the product of the union, with the two natures of Godhead and manhood ‘coming together’ to form a new compound, but this is simply an accident of the Christological model employed, that of two elements that join to form a unity: the language of ‘coming together’ arises from a mental analysis of the union, in which we think of the two constituents separately and then of their union; Cyril used it constantly, without any intention of casting doubt on the affirmation that the union consists in the pre-existent divine hypostasis of the Word uniting to himself a human nature: the one hypostasis for Cyril was not a product but the subject of the union.²³³ Clearly the one person and hypostasis is identical to ‘one and the same Son our Lord Jesus Christ’ who comes in this section of the Definition as the subject who possesses the two sets of attributes. Is this subject simply Godhead and manhood existing and acting together, as equal co-partners in the union, or is it the eternal Word? Now in the second half of this key section of the Definition the Son is further defined as ‘one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten … one and the same Son, Only-begotten, God, Word, Lord, Jesus Christ’. Note here how the Son is defined by some terms that could be applied to both natures (Christ, Son, Lord) and by some that apply only to the divine nature (Only-begotten, God, Word), while none of the terms used is specifically human. This is not, then, a symmetrical definition of the Son, but deliberately echoes the language of the Nicene Creed, where the subject of the incarnation and the human experiences is defined as ‘one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, begotten from the Father as only-begotten …, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father’ – that is, as specifically God the Word.

In all, the ‘one hypostasis’ of the Definition is indeed the eternal Word – not separated from the manhood, but the Word incarnate, that is, a personal subject divine in his own nature and existing from all eternity, who adopted and made his own a second, human nature and all the qualities and experiences of that nature. The Definition is indeed based on the Formula of Reunion, originally an Antiochene document, but it interprets and paraphrases it in strict accordance with what we have called moderate Cyrillianism.²³⁴

Chalcedon’s qualified Cyrillianism

But how would the other Cyril – the uncompromising Cyril of the Twelve Chapters – have judged the Definition? In 437, in a letter that accompanied copies of his last major work, the dialogue That Christ is one, he wrote as follows:

I have written a short book on the incarnation, summing up the faith under three heads: the first is that the holy Virgin is Theotokos, the second is that Christ is one and not two, while the third is that the Word of God, while remaining incapable of suffering, suffered in his own flesh for us.²³⁵

The Definition certainly affirms Theotokos, and is equally insistent that Christ is one and not two, but it does not assert explicitly that the subject of the passion was the eternal Word. Now the Antiochenes had directly attacked ‘theopaschite’ expressions – that is, expressions that attribute the passion on the cross to the Godhead: they insisted that it was the manhood alone that suffered. While agreeing with the Antiochenes about the impassibility of the Godhead, Cyril insisted nonetheless that we must at the same time profess that God the Word is the one who suffered, albeit not in his own nature but in the human nature he had made his own; as he wrote in the Third Letter to Nestorius:

We profess that the very Son begotten of God the Father and Only-begotten God, although in his own nature he is impassible, suffered in flesh for us according to the scriptures, and that he was in the crucified body, appropriating impassibly the sufferings of his own flesh.²³⁶

What do we find in the Definition? On divine impassibility it states that the council criticizes those ‘fantasizing that the divine nature of the Onlybegotten is passible’, and ‘it removes from the list of priests those who dare to say that the Godhead of the Only-begotten is passible’ (V. 34). This was intended to rebut not Cyril’s defence of theopaschite language but the errors of Eutyches, who was (unfairly) understood to teach such a merging of the two natures in Christ that both lost their distinctive properties and the Godhead became as changeable and vulnerable as his creatures. Nevertheless it is a weakness in the Definition that it fails to express the paradox that is arguably the heart and kernel of the mystery of the incarnation.²³⁷

It can still be argued, however, that in the debate between Alexandria and Antioch on the propriety of theopaschite language the Definition is by implication on the Alexandrian side. Let us note that in the creeds that are given pride of place in the text the grammatical subject of ‘suffered’ is ‘Jesus Christ …, God from God …, consubstantial with the Father’. It was the whole burden of Cyril’s Second Letter to Nestorius, a text formally approved in the Definition, that all the human experiences, including the sufferings, are to be ascribed to the Word of God, and I have argued that this is also the implication of the Definition’s concluding section. Chalcedon is not to be read as discouraging theopaschite expressions, but rather as refusing to shove them down everyone’s throat.

A certain reserve about theopaschite language was typical of moderate Cyrillianism. This was not just a position temporarily adopted in the most diplomatic, and therefore possibly the least sincere, of Cyril’s writings, nor a mere compromise concocted at Chalcedon, but had become by the time of the council the dominant theology of the Greek east. This has been illustrated by several writers from the doctrinal position of Bishop Basil of Seleucia in Isauria, who deserves particular attention since he was the originator of the expression adopted by the Definition ‘acknowledged in two natures’.²³⁸ When Basil produced this phrase at the Home Synod of 448 he linked it explicitly to the teaching of Cyril (I. 301); he even defended qualified miaphysite expressions, both at Ephesus II (I. 791) and more surprisingly at Chalcedon (I. 176), as equivalent to the assertion of two natures. Yet his surviving writings avoid theopaschite language, and in their treatment of the passion lay heavier emphasis on the impassibility of God than on the fact that the Word made the sufferings his own. A cautious attitude towards theopaschite expressions could be found within the Cyrillian camp as well as at Antioch.

In all, the Definition, through its emphasis on the creed as interpreted by Cyril, implied that the passion can properly be ascribed to the eternal Son, and yet it refused to elevate this into a criterion of orthodoxy. In so doing it reflected a dominant consensus that appealed from Cyril drunk to Cyril sober, from the Cyril who made enemies to the Cyril who found friends. Of course this moderate position owed something to the determined and sustained rejection of Cyril’s Twelve Chapters by the champions of the Antiochene school, but it would be a mistake to think of the Chalcedonian fathers as themselves consciously attempting a synthesis between Alexandria and Antioch. They believed they were being loyal to Cyril.

The broader perspective

In arguing for the essentially Cyrillian character of the Definition, in accordance with the best modern studies,²³⁹ one may hope to do justice to both the logic of the Definition and the circumstances of its composition. But to understand the persistence and inconclusiveness of the subsequent debate over the Definition, which in the ecumenical context as well as in the world of scholarship continues to this day, it is equally important to recognize its ambiguities.²⁴⁰

We have seen how the Definition took as its basis the Formula of Reunion; this was in origin an Antiochene document, dyophysite in structure as well as in details of wording. We noted also how, in the final revision, pressures from Rome and the emperor imposed the inclusion in the Definition of an unambiguously dyophysite formula (‘in two natures’). The work of the editorial committee in making this material serve as an expression of Cyrillian Christology was brilliant but artificial. There is something defective in a conciliar document that requires such nicety of exegesis as we have attempted above.

The assertion of two natures and the avoidance of theopaschite expressions were open, as we have shown, to a perfectly Cyrillian interpretation. But the fact that they were accompanied in the work of the council by the condemnation of Dioscorus and reinstatement of Theodoret (and his controversial ally Ibas) gave plausibility to the charge that the Definition, while pretending to honour Cyril, had in fact betrayed him.²⁴¹ It is this that led immediately after the council to determined opposition in some parts of the east, and eventually to the schism between the rest of the church and the churches variously called ‘Monophysite’ (a pejorative term, best avoided), ‘miaphysite’, ‘Oriental Orthodox’, or simply ‘non-Chalcedonian’.²⁴² Meanwhile, while the bishops of Chalcedon interpreted Leo’s Tome according to the teaching of Cyril, western theologians down the centuries have read the Definition in the light of the teaching of Leo and of western Christology generally; despite their common loyalty to the Chalcedonian formula, more divides Eastern Orthodox Christology from the main current of western Christology than from that of the miaphysite churches. None of these various readings of the Definition is simply erroneous, since all can be traced back to voices within the council itself. The great majority of the council fathers who signed the text assured themselves (as is clear from the Codex Encyclius) that it did no more than expound the obvious meaning of the Nicene Creed in terms indebted to Cyril of Alexandria; but history was to show that the Chalcedonian Definition had opened a Pandora’s box.

(Acts of Chalcedon, Richard Price, pp. 56-74)

²⁰¹ On the development of miaphysite Christian churches and cultural traditions in lands beyond the borders of the eastern empire, see Fowden 1993, 100–37. On the evolution of the various Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian churches in the east, see Binns 2002.

²⁰² For the crucial importance of the Nicene Creed both at Chalcedon and in the preceding stages of the controversy, see de Halleux 1985.

²⁰³ He was also firmly anti-Eutychian; see Lebon 1908, 685–6.

²⁰⁴ ACO 2.5 pp. 24–98. For a full analysis, see Grillmeier 1987, 195–235.

²⁰⁵ This canon, adopted on 22 July 431, comes in the minutes of Session I of Chalcedon (I. 945).

²⁰⁶ ACO 2.5 p. 33.

²⁰⁷ Note that the final paragraph of the Definition, insisting that ‘no one is allowed to produce or compose or construct another creed or to think or teach otherwise’, is a reaffirmation of the definitive status of the Nicene Creed, not a reference to the Definition itself.

²⁰⁸ A credal recitation was standard at baptism from at least the second century. The adoption of the creed into the eucharistic liturgy was a post-Chalcedonian development (Dix 1945, 485–8), but expressed a sense of the link between communion and belief that was traditional.

²⁰⁹ The best treatments in English are Young 1983, 178–289, and Grillmeier 1975, 414–519. For a caution over talk of two ‘schools’ see Gavrilyuk 2004, 137–9.

²¹⁰ This is illustrated in the collection of excerpts from Nestorius given in the Acts at I. 944.

²¹¹ For ‘nature’, ‘hypostasis’ and ‘person’, see Glossary, vol. 3, 207–10.

²¹² See Russell 2000, esp. 3–63, and 2004, 191–205.

²¹³ ‘One after the union’ balanced ‘two before the union’ – expressions that were not intended in a temporal sense, as if the two natures existed in separation before the union and then came together, but in a logical one: only if we mentally set aside the union does Christ appear as two, while in reality Christ is a single being.

²¹⁴ Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentario al Vangelo di Giovanni, 209–10.

²¹⁵ Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel of John, PG 74. 96 AB.

²¹⁶ See the important summary of Antiochene doctrine in the expanded paraphrase of the creed attributed to Theodore of Mopsuestia and used by Nestorius’ agents in Asia Minor (I. 921).

²¹⁷ Cyril, Defence of the Twelve Chapters against Theodoret, PG 76. 416C.

²¹⁸ It remains a weakness that Cyril invokes kenôsis when interpreting specific gospel testimonies to human limitations in Christ but tends in most contexts to treat Christ’s humanity as ‘deified’, that is, so taken up by the Godhead as to enjoy divine powers. The difference between the earthly Christ and the heavenly, ascended Christ is constantly blurred.

²¹⁹ See Lampe, PGL, 639. Bishop John of Antioch, a critical ally of Nestorius, pointed this out to him, ep. 4, ACO 1.1.1 p. 95. 19–20.

²²⁰ The full text is in the Acts of Chalcedon, I. 240.

²²¹ For the full text, see I. 246. I omit the final sentence on the distribution of the sayings between the two natures, for this could not really be squared with Cyril’s theology and was accordingly omitted in the paraphrase of the Formula incorporated into the Chalcedonian Definition.

²²² See de Halleux 1993a.

²²³ Cyril of Alexandria, Select Letters, 28–33.

²²⁴ See Diepen 1953, 74.

²²⁵ Contrast Chadwick 1983, 12, ‘The Council of Chalcedon protected the droit de cité of Antiochene Christology’, and de Halleux 1990b, 52, Chalcedon ‘guaranteed the values of the “Antiochene” view of Christology’. It could be argued that this was implied by the Definition’s Dyophysite language, but it was not the intention of the council fathers, nor was it the actual fruit of the council after the debates of the sixth century. For the lack of Antiochene sympathies in the members of the committee that produced the final form of the Definition, see our commentary on Session V (vol. 2, 188–9).

²²⁶ For Leo’s Christology, see Grillmeier 1975, 526–39, and 1987, 149–72; Sellers 1953, 228-53; Studer 1985; Mühlenberg 1997, 14–16.

²²⁷ This was due not merely to Greek indifference towards western theology but to the deficiencies of the Tome itself, which was a contribution to rhetoric rather than theology. Not until the Monoenergist and Monothelete controversies of the seventh century did it make any positive contribution to theological understanding.

²²⁸ The main points in the following discussion accord with those of Norris 1996, 140–7.

²²⁹ V. 34. For the stages in the drafting of the Definition, see our commentary on the fifth session, vol. 2, 184–90.

²³⁰ Note that the attributes that define the two natures include individualizing notes (such as begotten of the Father and born of Mary) as well as generic ones. Later Greek theology treated the two natures as generic and attributed all the individualizing notes to the one hypostasis; this changed the meaning of the Chalcedonian formula.

²³¹ For a correct understanding of the Definition, it is crucial to realize that Cyril used the ‘composition’ model of two elements that make up the one Christ as well as the ‘narrative’ or ‘kenotic’ model of the divine Word who emptied himself to become flesh. See Norris 1975.

²³² This interpretation agrees with that in the Assurance issued by Cyrus of Alexandria in 633, ‘The same [Christ] is perfect in Godhead and perfect in manhood, and is discerned in two natures in this respect alone’ (ACO, Ser. 2, vol. 2, 598.16–18). Unfortunately the expression ‘two natures’ was widely used at the time of Chalcedon to express a less nuanced Dyophysitism; this naturally led many Cyrillians to criticize Chalcedon’s adoption of the expression.

²³³ In the west, however, this clause of the Definition, which derives with modifications from Leo’s Tome, was understood in the opposite sense. ‘For Leo the one person is not the point of origin but the result of the union’ (Studer 1985, 454).

²³⁴ Our analysis may seem to do less than justice to what was new at Chalcedon: ‘The Chalcedonian Definition is a landmark in the history of Christian thought by reason of its distinction between nature and person’ (Chadwick 1983, 11). In applying ‘nature’ to the duality in Christ and ‘person and hypostasis’ to the unity, Chalcedon paved the way for developments in the sixth century when the meaning of these terms was exhaustively analysed, but since in the Definition itself they were vague and undefined it cannot be said that the council itself marked any advance in Christological understanding; nor did it claim to.

²³⁵ Ep. 64, ACO 1.4 p. 229 (Collectio Casinensis 299); see Cyril of Alexandria, Deux dialogues christologiques, 75–8. Note the falsity of the oft-repeated assertion that Cyril moderated his language and effectively dropped the Chapters after agreeing to the Formula of Reunion.

²³⁶ Cyril of Alexandria, Select Letters, 20.

²³⁷ This criticism was forcibly made by Severus of Antioch, Homiliae Cathedrales 1.12–25, PO 38, 260–7. For the importance of the theopaschite issue, see O’Keefe 1997a and 1997b.

²³⁸ For Basil’s Christology, see van Parys 1971 and Martzelos 1994. For the meaning of ‘acknowledged in two natures’ see vol. 2, 189, n. 15.

²³⁹ The outstanding analysis of the text and its sources is de Halleux 1976. De Halleux 1994 is sharply critical of an attempt by Martzelos 1986 to read the full Cyrillian position into Chalcedon, but agrees that ‘Catholic and Protestant historiography of the dogma tends nowadays to recognize the Cyrillian character of the Definition’ (pp. 468–9). The dominance of the Cyrillian reading of the Definition in current scholarship is confirmed by Wendebourg 1997, 208. But some scholars still see the council as a defeat for Cyrillian Christology, e.g. Mühlenberg 1997.

²⁴⁰ For recent ecumenical dialogue between Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox and western Christians, centred on problems arising from Chalcedon, see Gregorios et al. 1981; de Halleux 1991; Kirchschläger and Stirnemann 1992; Wendebourg 1997; Olmi 2003.

²⁴¹ The simple fact that the Definition used a ‘two nature’ formula damned it in the eyes of the allies and followers of Dioscorus, quite apart from any other consideration.

²⁴² ‘Non-Chalcedonian’ to designate the miaphysites ignores the existence of the Dyophysite non-Chalcedonian tradition maintained in the Assyrian Church or ‘Church of the East’ (the ancient Church of Persia), which has never accepted the condemnation of Nestorius.