A. K. Chidgzey

Following, then, the holy Fathers, we all with one voice teach that it is to be confessed that our Lord Jesus Christ is one and the same God, perfect in divinity, and perfect in humanity, true God and true human, with a rational soul and a body, of one substance with the Father in his divinity, and of one substance with us in his humanity, in every way like us, with the only exception of sin, begotten of the Father before all time in his divinity, and also begotten in the latter days, in his humanity, of Mary the Virgin bearer of God.

This is one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, manifested in two natures without confusion, change, division or separation. The union does not destroy the difference of the two natures, but on the contrary the properties of each are kept, and both are joined in one person and hypostasis. They are not divided into two persons, but belong to the one Only-begotten Son, the Word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.

That is the creed from the Council of Chalcedon, the fourth great ecumenical council in 451 CE that was convoked to address a handful of heresies, mostly relating to the nature of Jesus. This creed includes what is called the ‘Chalcedonian Definition’ which was the definitive statement regarding the nature of Jesus as both divine and human, and went largely unchallenged right up until quite recently.

But let’s do a quick recap.

A couple of weeks ago, we looked at Arianism, which was the idea, set forth by Arius but then continued by his followers through most of the fourth century, that Jesus was a separate being to God. Arius struggled to reconcile this idea of Jesus’ divinity with his belief in a single God. Jesus was the Son and was a created being in and of himself; he was created before the world and was in fact involved in the creation of the world, but he was not God. He was the proto-human if you like. Ultimately this was rejected and the notion of homoousios, that is, one substance, was used to describe the Son and the Father; they are of the same essence.

Some time after that, Nestorius struggled with this word homoousios, how can two beings exist as one? He accepted the notion that Jesus was divine, but thought the Nicene creed, which was formulated largely in response to Arianism, was overly ambiguous and that it just didn’t make sense. The hypostatic union, the term used to refer to the unification of the human and divine within Jesus did not sit well with Nestorius, and so argued instead that there is a unity of will, but not necessarily a unity of essence. The divine and human natures coexist within Jesus but are distinct. That was rejected and Nestorius was declared a heretic. But Nestorianism took a while to die out and so was one of the heresies to be addressed at Chalcedon, which we’ll get to in a moment. But there was another heresy, as there often is, one that was essentially the opposite of Nestorianism. It’s called monophysitism. Mono meaning ‘one’, and physis meaning ‘nature’ – where we get the word physics.

Monophysitism is generally an umbrella term that refers to a bunch of different understandings of Jesus that, to put it overly simply, says that Jesus had one nature, something that was either a bit of a mix of both human and divine or that the divine overwhelmed or even replaced the human.

Docetism was an early version of this, in the second century, and is sometimes connected to Gnosticism. In Docetism, there is no humanity in Jesus, he just seems to be human.

Another version could be what’s called modalism, in that God appears in different modes – he appears as God the Father, as God the Son, and as God the Holy Spirit. These are all different expressions or modes of the one and the same being.

But in the early fourth century, so around the same time as Arianism, a man named Apollinaris, from Laodicea, a town in Asia minor, or what is today Turkey, who was in fact a supporter of Nicene Christology, against Arianism, wanted to understand and explain the incarnation, and how Jesus could be both human and divine – similar to Nestorius. His solution was to say that the divine logos replaced the human soul in Jesus. He had a physical, human body but a divine mind. Those of the Antiochene school, the same school from which Nestorius emerged, did not like Apollinaris’ position because they thought it detracted from his humanity. To say that Jesus was only part human was to say that he was not fully human, and so could not save us humanity. He needed to be fully human. And so this position was rejected at the Council of Constantinople in the year 381, when they also rejected Arianism.

The next major controversy was Nestorianism, which we looked at last week and which developed in the early fifth century and was technically rejected at the Council of Ephesus in 431.

And then another controversy emerged when a monk named Eutyches from Constantinople who, like Nestorius, struggled to see how the two natures – divine and human – could exist as one being within the person of Jesus. But, unlike Nestorius, and a bit like Apollinaris, Eutyches insisted on maintaining a single nature, rather than trying to maintain or juggle two natures. And so Eutychianism is essentially saying that the human and divine natures mix together in such a way that the divine overwhelms the human or that there’s a whole new nature. Like if you take a glass of fresh, clean water, and a glass of vinegar, and mixed them together, you end up with something that is not quite vinegar but is definitely not fresh water. At least you wouldn’t want to drink it. The vinegar overwhelms the water. It’s no longer water. Likewise, the divinity of Jesus overwhelms the humanity, and so he’s no longer really human.

For Eutyches, Jesus was of two natures, but not in two natures; he came from two natures before the incarnation, but only one when he was in a human body. The water-vinegar mix was two substances but is now one solution.

The Patriarch of Constantinople, named Flavian, thought this sounded a little too much like Docetism, because…well…it kinda does. So the Patriarch condemned Eutyches. Emperor Theodosius II, who was involved in the council of Ephesus convened another council. Not a big one, but just one to figure this mess out. They were to meet at Ephesus again in 449.

But this council was pretty messy. The Patriarch of Alexandria, who was called Dioscorus, had somehow managed to get ahead of everybody else and arrange it so that the council would work to his favour, which happened to be a very Alexandrian position and so basically supported Eutyches. The pope sent a letter to be read at this council, the pope’s delegates were not allowed to read it. Eutyches’ accusers were not allowed to present their case. Flavian was also not given a chance to speak and was in fact condemned. Dioscorus had arranged for a large group of monks and soldiers to come in and take Flavian away. But Flavian grabbed onto the altar and refused to let go. The mob beat him so bad that he died from his injures only days later. Dioscorus had bribed the emperor to basically ignore everything that was going on, except to support his position.

Eutyches was absolved and the two nature of doctrine was declared heretical.

The pope was not happy and so called this council the Robber Synod, but the Emperor ignored him. But then, the Emperor died when he fell off of his horse. He was succeeded by his sister, Pulcheria, who thought that everything that happened at the council of Ephesus in 449 was pretty poor form, and so she called a new council. This council would meet at Chalcedon in 451.

Over 500 bishops attended this council, more than any other ecumenical council, and the controversy that needed to be addressed was this division between those who argued for a radical dyophysitism, or two natures, like Nestorius, and those who argued for monophysitism, or one nature, like Eutyches. So basically this council wanted to find a mediating position between Nestorianism and Eutychianism, or between the Antiochene and Alexandrian schools.

Are you still with me? I hope so. Well done on sticking around. It does get confusing, I do understand.

This council was a big deal. The events of the robber synod were nullified and the pope even excommunicated anyone who supported Dioscorus and what happened at that council. Flavian’s body was recovered and was given an honourable burial in Constantinople.

And then after some deliberation they arrived at a final definition. This was not a creed per se, as it was essentially a reaffirmation of the three major ecumenical councils that been before: Nicea, Constantinople, and Ephesus. It was a clarification of what they came to agree about the nature of Jesus and his incarnation.

Mind you, it is not a technical statement of how Jesus was both divine and human, not a precise explanation of how that works, but rather a clarification of the limitations, within which a Christology could be considered orthodox, or if beyond those limits then it’s heresy.

I quoted this definition at the start of this episode, but I’ll recite a few of the key factors that address some of the issues we’ve covered.

“It is to be confessed that our Lord Jesus Christ is one and the same God” – so clarifying the belief that Jesus was, in fact, divine.

“Perfect in divinity, and perfect in humanity, true God and true human” – so affirming the two natures of Jesus.

“With a rational soul and a body” – against Apollinarianism.

“Of one substance with the Father in his divinity, and of one substance with us in his humanity” – affirming homoosious, one substance, with both the Father and humanity, against Eutychianism.

“Of Mary the Virgin bearer of God” – affirming Mary as theotokos, against Nestorianism.

“Manifested in two natures without confusion, change, division or separation” – this is essentially the key to the whole definition. Jesus has two natures, human and divine, united but distinct.

“The union does not destroy the difference of the two natures, but on the contrary the properties of each are kept.”

This definition basically became the mainstream Christological proclamation ever since, in both the west and the east.

But at first it wasn’t necessarily adopted by all of those in the east. There was a bit of a schism, between those who supported the second council of Ephesus in 449 and those who supported the Council of Chalcedon in 451. And when I say a bit of a schism, it was actually quite large.

Some felt that this definition, particularly the reassertion of the two natures, actually just sounded too much like Nestorianism. The Council of Chalcedon was adamant that it opposed Nestorianism, but many of those in Alexandria were not happy with the solution and broke off to become the Coptic Orthodox Church. This is actually the first major schism in the history of Christianity, because this tradition still exists today, even though it looks a little bit different. At first it was persecuted to various degrees by the Western Church, but it survived the Arab Conquest of Egypt in 639 and though at first Egypt remained largely Christian, the nation slowly converted to Islam by the 12^th century. Under Islamic rule, the Coptic church continued but some times were harder than others as some rulers were more tolerant than others and they generally had to pay a tax, called the jizya tax, a rule in the Quran which required permanent non-Muslims to pay if they were to continue living there. The tax was outlawed in 1855 when the Copts were allowed to serve in the military.

Even though relations were not great between the Coptic church and the western church at first and then generally non-existent, for the most part, under Islamic rule, there has been some reconciliation in the last couple of centuries, and in 1973 the Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church met with the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church for the first time, where they sought to resolve this dispute that started at the Counsel of Chalcedon. They released a joint Christological statement, which was largely a reassertion of the Chalcedonian definition with a few clarifications, particularly regarding Jesus’ divinity. But it did not deny the two natures.

In recent years, the Chalcedonian definition has come under criticism by some. During the Enlightenment, this sort of debate was seen as pure philosophical speculation. And many just straight up rejected the divinity of Jesus.

Others have argued recently that the dilemma that Chalcedon was attempting to solve, namely how the divine and human can coexist in the one being Jesus, only really makes sense if those two natures are wholly incompatible. However, they are not. The human is not divine, but the human is made in the image of the divine, so this is not like mixing oil and water, like two completely incompatible substances.

The dilemma also presupposes, not just that the two natures are wholly incompatible, like oil and water, but that they are thoroughly alike, like two liquids trying to exist in the one container. That is, that the divine logos and the human Christ are the same sort of thing that thinking about how they can coexist can become a problem in terms of how they could mix together or coexist, as if they are two distinct humans. When in reality we’re talking about the creator and a created being; infinite and finite; eternal and temporal. We’re not comparing apples with apples, we’re not even comparing apples with oranges. We’re comparing apples with the atmospheric conditions that enable the apples to grow in the first place.

The great 20th century German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg, who was a major subject of my PhD research adamantly asserted both the divinity and the humanity of Christ, but argued that the Chalcedonian definition was not especially helpful. For him, starting with Jesus’ divinity and then working out how that fits into his humanity creates all sorts of philosophical, logical, metaphysical, anthropological, grammatical problems. So he argued that we should start with his humanity, because regardless of this debate, if he existed, we know that he was a human. So that should be the starting point, and then work up to his divinity. There’s a lot in this argument and his is known as a Christology from below, opposed to a Christology from above. But that debate actually needs a whole episode in itself.  

For Pannenberg, presupposing that Jesus is divine creates irreconcilable difficulties when trying to work out how Jesus, the divine logos, shed himself of his divinity and became human – a process called kenosis – without changing or losing his divine status. And I actually kind of agree. I don’t disagree with the Chalcedonian definition, by no means, and neither does Pannenberg, but again that needs a whole episode to unpack and would probably be a bit boring.

An issue that I have with this is that it imposes Greek philosophical categories upon Jesus and God, which are foreign to the Hebraic conception. First century Judaism was influenced by Hellenism, some corners more than others, so it’s not entirely foreign, but there is some conflict. When we’re talking about essence and person and being and hypostatic union and all this, that is very different to how the authors of the New Testament were thinking.

But for me, it’s less about Greek vs Hebrew philosophy or theology, but divinity expressed in human categories.

A better way of thinking about it, I think, is similar to how we think about the nature of light. Now mind you, I am by no means a physicist or scientist; I had some pretty good maths teachers and I’m pretty good at keeping track of how many points I score when I play basketball, but that’s just because it rarely goes into double figures, but oh boy, whenever I see a number, let alone an equation, I break out in sweats and have an existential crisis. But in quantum mechanics, at least from what I hear, light exists both as a particle and a wave, a paradox which Einstein himself acknowledged was a contradiction, and to this day scientists have not arrived at consensus explanation.

It’s called the wave-particle duality and though this is not an adequate analogy for explaining the incarnation of Jesus, I find it helpful to think that nature itself includes paradox. I’m sure one day, some quantum physicist will explain the nature of light and perhaps then we might be better equipped to explain the nature of Jesus.