Eutychianism

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Eutychianism refers to a set of Christian theological doctrines derived from the ideas of Eutyches of Constantinople (c. 380—456). Eutychianism is a specific understanding of how the human and divine relate within the person of Jesus Christ (that is, Eutychianism is a Christology). At various times, Eutyches taught that the human nature of Christ was overcome by the divine, or that Christ had a human nature but it was unlike the rest of humanity.

The response to Eutychianism resulted in the Fourth Ecumenical Council in Chalcedon in 451, and the statement of faith known as the Chalcedonian Creed.

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[edit] Historical background

As the Christian church grew and developed, so too did the complexity of their understanding of the Triune God and the person of Christ. The issue of how to reconcile the claims of monotheism with the assertion of the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth was largely settled at the First Ecumenical Council held at Nicaea (325). Especially among the Greek-speaking Christians, attention turned to how to understand how the second person of the Trinity became incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ.[1] The Nicene Creed said of Jesus that he was "of one Being (ousia) with (God) the Father" and that he "was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became truly human."[2] However, neither the Nicene Creed nor the canons of the Council provided a detailed explanation of how God became human in the person of Jesus, leaving the door open for speculation.

One such theory of how the human and divine interact in the person of Jesus was put forward by the Patriarch of Constantinople, Nestorius (c. 386–451). Nestorius, a student of the Antiochene school of theology, taught that in the incarnation there were two distinct persons - one human and one divine.[3] Thus, Mary was not the God-bearer (theotokos), but only bore the human nature of the Christ (making her the Christotokos). Nestorius and his teachings were condemned by the Third Ecumenical Council, held in Ephesus in 431.[4] While the Council of Ephesus did not answer the question of how the human and divine interrelated in the person of Christ, it did seem to reject any attempted answer that stressed the duality of Christ's natures to the expense of his unity as a person.

[edit] Eutyches & Chalcedon

"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 reasonable [rational] soul and body; consubstantial [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, inconfusedly, 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 the Lord Jesus Christ himself has taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us."

[edit] References

  1. ^ Alister McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1994) 281-282.
  2. ^ Nicene Creed, trans. by the English Language Liturgical Consultation (ELLC), published in Praying Together (1988).
  3. ^ "Nestorianism" in The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology, ed. A. Richardson and J. Bowden (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1983). The charges against Nestorius - that he taught that there were "two Christs" - were probably distortions of his teachings. However, he does seem to teach a radical Dyophysitism; that is, an emphasis on the two natures of Christ instead of on the one person of Christ. See for example Susan Ashbrook Harvey, "Nestorianism" in the Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, ed. Everett Furgeson (New York: Garland Pub, 1997).
  4. ^ For more info, see Nestorius and Nestorianism.


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