16. Council of Chalcedon

May 3, 2009 Speaker: Junius Johnson Series: [2009] Church History

Topic: Theology

Theology: Chalcedon
(Cyril of Alexandria, Eutychianism) (Kelly, pp. 317-343)

 

CPC Church History I
May 3, 2009
Council of Chalcedon


Introduction

What we are concerned with today is the way in which we understand the fact that Christ is both God and man, is in fact simultaneously fully God and fully man. There are two key concepts here: the concept of “nature” and the concept of “person.”

  • Nature is that which all individuals of a species have in common. It is that by means of which they are all judged to be the same species. Thus Peter and Paul both have human nature, or may be said to be human by nature, while Brownie and Bessie both have bovine nature, or may be said to be cows by nature.
  • Person doesn’t receive a strong definition for another century and a half, but in our period it stands for the individual: Peter or Paul, for instance.
  • Another way of thinking this is that nature is what there is one of in God, and persons what there are three of.

It is noteworthy then that the claims of the Church concerning Christ form a compliment to the
claims of the Church concerning the Trinity. For in the Trinity there are 3 persons but one
nature; in Christ there are 2 natures and only one person. It must be kept in mind that neither one
of these cases, as explicated by the Church, is in accord with what we see in everyday life. The
Trinity might seem closest, but the fact that these 3 persons don’t make 3 individuals is a
decisive difference.

Heresies about Christ

Christological errors tend to one of two extremes. On the one side, they tend to create so
much separation between his divine and human natures that it seems that they have no
connection, or are in fact two different people. On the other side, they tend towards pushing the
natures so closely together that they get mingled or confused with one another. We have already
seen those who separate the natures too greatly in Apollinarius and Nestorius. Today we shall
look at the other pole, the mingling of the natures.

Eutyches

Eutyches was motivated by one simple intuition, namely that the body Christ in habits is
God’s body. It seems weird to him to think that God’s body wouldn’t be markedly different
from Tom’s body.

  • He feels that the idea that Christ has two natures, one divine and one human, is unscriptural and contrary to the teaching of the Fathers.
  • This does not, in his view, mean that Christ is not born from Mary, nor does it mean that he is not simultaneously fully human and fully divine.
  • However, he does deny that Christ is consubstantial (of the same substance) with us.
  • He concedes that Christ was of two natures, but interprets this to mean “from two natures” (allowable by the Greek). Thus, he takes this two mean that Christ originated from two natures, but is now just one. His claim is that there were two natures before the Incarnation, and only one after.
  • It follows that if Christ is fully human and fully divine but in only one nature, then that nature must be a nature that is itself fully human and divine (since, as was said earlier, one is human or divine or cow based on one’s nature).
    • There are two ways to understand this. The first is that humanity and divinity morph in Christ into something else, a new, never before seen nature.
      • This is philosophically unsound, but also runs the risk of identifying God and creation, the dangers of which we discussed last week.
    • The second is that the humanity gets absorbed by the divine, but in such a way that it is not entirely absent, even though it no longer has separate existence.
      • The dangers here are 1) similar to when God and the creation are equated, the goodness of creation is not affirmed—it is merely something that must be reabsorbed; 2) is Christ really our brother if his humanity is swallowed up by divinity? Is he truly of Adam’s race? And if he is not, can he then act on our behalf in salvation, and be the second Adam?
  • Kelly attempts to alleviate some of the blame that falls on Eutyches by saying he was a kind of an idiot, too trusting and not really aware of the consequences of what he is saying. While it might be endearing to think of the misunderstood, simple bumpkin out of his depth in such deep disputes, it is important not to loose the thread of the intuition Eutyches had. The idea that Christ is to be seen in terms of unity is orthodox; Eutyches has only mis-identified the locus of that unity. But many Christians today, following the same intuition of the one Christ who is both divine and human, have tacitly switched back to something resembling a Eutychian understanding of Christ.

Orthodox Response

As I just hinted at, Orthodoxy had to properly locate where the union and where the
distinction lay in Christ. When unity was not strongly enough emphasized, there seemed to be
two persons, one divine and one human (Nestorius); when unity was asserted of the natures, it
seemed to reduce the natures to one another.

  • The solution is that it is not a union of the two natures that make up Christ, but rather a union of the two natures in the person of Christ.
    • So, Christ is unlike Peter, who has one nature and one person.
    • Christ is also unlike Sam the Griffin, who is not one animal in two natures (lion and eagle), but one animal out of two natures. Sam’s nature is griffin nature, which is singular. This is a fair approximation of what Eutyches was claiming.
    • Rather, in Christ the divine and human natures each remain what they are, and function as they normally do: that is, they cause an individual to express certain characteristics (omnipotence, omniscience, etc. for the divine, body and soul for the human). However, in this case, both natures are qualifying one and the same individual.
    • Thus, this union is called hypostatic or personal union. It is a union of the strongest sort, for the unity of an individual is very self-evident, yet it also allows for the real distinction of the natures.
    • It also motivates the communication of idioms, for the subject of all statements about the Incarnate one is the person, whose name is Jesus, and who is the Christ. Therefore “God suffered” is easily understood to be shorthand for “Jesus who is God suffered.”