Overcoming gridlock between EOs and OOs over Chalcedon's Formula

ArmyMatt · Apr 7, 2016

rakovsky said:
The two remain, but they are not two (divided) in Cyril's logic.

this is why the Formula of Reunion is so important. because the Antiochian school was insistent that the distinction of the Two Natures remain after the union. for St Cyril to approve this maintaining correct understanding, it cannot violate St Cyril to say that they persist.

dzheremi said:
since you accepted the Tome to begin with, you never actually saw any problem with it in the first place. So how should you start now?

and that's the issue. if you are going to refute Chalcedon, you have to refute it as Chalcedonians see it. as an example, if the filioque were always defined as from the Father through the Son (which is what St Gregory of Nyssa says), the only issue would be that the Creed was not to be altered. however, since the the filioque is defined as from the Father through the Son as from one Principle, that is how it is heretical.

so we (and I mean OO as well) should not refute it based on an assumptions we make, but on what they actually confess.

dzheremi said:
But this particular discussion has degenerated into showing me the Tome once again...as though I just need to read it one more time, and a lightbulb will go off and suddenly I will be confessing belief in two natures after the union, or at least not have problems with it. It's not going to happen. Even while accepting the dyophysitism of John of Antioch as Orthodox when properly understood, our common father St. Cyril never backed away from his Orthodox miaphysitism. And so we feel we are in even better company in keeping to it than to accept something like Leo's Tome which only has some things right and other things very, very wrong.

it's not as much for you I would say, but those that read this. and we know he never backed away from miaphysitism, so what I have been asking for is evidence that St Leo has the dyophysitism improperly understood.

dzheremi said:
Anyway, thank you, Rakovsky and ArmyMatt, for the good discussion. I appreciate it, but I feel that this particular discussion has probably outlived any potential usefulness, so I will bow out of it now.

oh I agree, most of these are my attempt to understand your position. I am not trying to turn this into a quote battle.

ArmyMatt · Apr 13, 2016

just some food for thought that I found in St Cyril's commentaries on John.

"He is indivisible after the incarnation except for the knowledge that the Word, who comes from God the Father, and the Temple, which comes from the Virgin, are not the same in nature. That is because the body is not of the same substance as the Word of God."

"He does not allow certain people to say that the Temple taken from the Virgin because of our need is one son and the Word who appeared from the Father is another, except insofar as there is a distinction between what is appropriate to each one by nature."

and St Justinian quotes him as saying:

"Some things He says as man and some as God, for He as authority in both natures.....To be troubled, then, pertains to the passion of His flesh, but to possess power to lay down His soul and to take it up again is an act belonging to the power of the Logos."

so St Cyril himself says that you CAN make the distinction between the Two Natures. again, not a quote battle, but something to consider for our lurkers out there (and this is the only thread where this line seems appropriate.

rakovsky · Apr 14, 2016

Matt,
Cyril writes:

He took it on himself to become man and was made like us in the flesh, from out of a woman, and yet he remained a single Son, though indeed no longer without the flesh as he was of old before the time of his incarnation, but now clothed as it were in our nature.
https://orthodoxjointcommission.wordpress.com/2013/12/15/second-letter-of-cyril-to-succensus/

Was Christ now clothed "in our concrete individual"?
Does not nature here mean essence or category?

ArmyMatt · Apr 14, 2016

rakovsky said:
Does not nature here mean essence or category?

I would say yes. the point in what I posted is that St Cyril himself says that both natures persist after the union, and they can be distinguished. there is nothing in the Tome of St Leo to suggest that he did anything other than what St Cyril did, only that the heretic was Eutyches, so he made mention of the distinction more.

rakovsky · Apr 14, 2016

ArmyMatt said:
I would say yes. the point in what I posted is that St Cyril himself says that both natures persist after the union, and they can be distinguished. there is nothing in the Tome of St Leo to suggest that he did anything other than what St Cyril did, only that the heretic was Eutyches, so he made mention of the distinction more.

I understand.

Sometimes In religion people get very mindlocked into certain ideas. I don't know what you can do when that happens even with a group of people you care about.

OO is one of the more benign. It's not nasty like some cults are. It is practically the same belief except they reject a grammatically and conceptually normal faith statement as if it had heretical implications. It's very tragic.

At the individual level you can find people who can reassess beliefs, but it seems rare.

rakovsky · Apr 14, 2016

In the ideal world people should just be able to talk and give definitions and solve basic, simple logic problems, but that is not where we are at, sadly.

ArmyMatt · Apr 14, 2016

rakovsky said:
It is practically the same belief except they reject a grammatically and conceptually normal faith statement as if it had heretical implications. It's very tragic.

well, I am not going to get into that. I only pointed out what I pointed out to show that St Cyril says that the distinction in the natures persists after the union.

ArmyMatt · May 4, 2016

and again for the lurkers out there. St Cyril's commentary on John 4:6:

"Will you ascribe the weariness of the journey to the very one who is the Only Begotten of the Father so that the one who cannot suffer is understood to be passible? Or will you do the right thing, avoid such thinking and apply the accusation in these matters only to the nature of the body, or rather say that weariness is proper to the human nature, not to the Word when He is considered (and is) bare and in Himself? This is the sense, then, in which the one who possesses all power in His own nature and who Himself is the strength of all is said to grow weary."

"But if we are preserved in a sure faith and are unswervingly confident that, as John says, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, when you see Him speaking as flesh, that is, as a human being, receive the discourse that is fitting for humanity in order to keep the proclamation certain. In no other way could we know clearly that, while being God and Word, He became human, unless the impassible is recorded as suffering something and the highest as saying something humble."

a cool quote from a friend of mine:

"He is indivisible after the incarnation except for the knowledge that the Word, who comes from God the Father, and the Temple, which comes from the Virgin, are not the same in nature. That is because the body is not of the same substance as the Word of God. But they are one by that coming together and ineffable concurrence."-St. Cyril of Alexandria

and from Paschal Nocturnes Ode VI:

Torn wast Thou, but not separated, O Word, from the flesh of which Thou hadst partaken; for though Thy temple was destroyed at the time of Thy Passion, yet the Substance of Thy Godhead and of Thy flesh is but one. For in both Thou art one Son, the Word of God, both God and man.

prayer censing the Altar, after the Great Entrance, and during the Paschal season:

In the Tomb with the Body, in hades with the soul as God, in Paradise with the Thief, on the Throne with the Father and the Spirit, was Thou boundless Christ, filling all things.

Only begotten during the second antiphon:

Only begotten Son and immortal Word of God, who for our salvation didst will to be incarnate of the holy Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary, who without change didst become man and was crucified, who are One of the Holy Trinity, glorified with the Father and the Holy Spirit, O Christ our God, trampling down death by death, save us.

ArmyMatt · May 6, 2016

so I think the issue is, and was not to start a quote battle, but how is St. Leo not Cyrillian? there has to be some specific difference, because St. Cyril distinguishes after the Union, and St. Leo upholds the Unity in the Tome.

rakovsky · May 6, 2016

Matt,

ArmyMatt said:
so I think the issue is, and was not to start a quote battle, but how is St. Leo not Cyrillian?

Maybe if Leo speaks of two natures as two essences and thus denies a compound nature/essence after the union, but Cyril speaks of a single nature after the union after the union of natures as a single hypostasis?

ArmyMatt said:
there has to be some specific difference, because St. Cyril distinguishes after the Union, and St. Leo upholds the Unity in the Tome.

Matt,

One of the first and key challenges is to define the term "nature" and then to see if all authors and all discussions on the unity of natures use the term "nature" in the same way.

In Flavian's Letter to Leo, he labels the two natures - "manhood" and "godhead" .

Eutyches, keeping his diseased and sickly opinion hid within him, has dared to attack our gentleness, and unblushingly and shamelessly to instil his own blasphemy into many minds: saying that before the Incarnation indeed, our Saviour Jesus Christ had two natures, Godhead and manhood: but that after the union they became one nature;

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3604026.htm

In this context, it makes good, simple sense what Flavian meant by natures and why he objected to "one nature" compounded of two- there is no such "godheadmanhood" in Orthodoxy.

And it also seems like "natures" are synonymous with essences, substances, and categories/collections of properties (eg. divine-ness).

However, is there another potential meaning of "nature" that can justify or even encourage speaking of a whole, compound nature?

Theodoret said explicitly that "Hypostasis means nature" (as opposed to saying Nature means hypostasis). However, first, by this did he meant that hypostasis only means substance/essence/nature, or did he have in mind that a "nature" was its own entity and that hypostasis must always be used in that sense and not as substance?

Theodoret also repeatedly uses the phrase "hypostases or natures" together, but it isn't clear that hypostasis here means the same thing it does at Chalcedon where it teaches "one hypostasis".
Hypostasis etymologically means 'substance', and we also commonly equate substance with essence in Christian theology.

The Coptic argument is that "nature" to Cyril and to the Copts meant "hypostasis" in the sense of concrete reality or entity in their discussion of the union of two natures. So one of our tasks must be to see whether that definition of natures can be confirmed.

Consider Cyril's use of the word natures, where he gives examples of "body" and "soul".

Let us once more take the example of an ordinary man. We recognise two natures in him; for there is one nature of the soul and another of the body,

https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/st-cyril-of-alexandria-the-one-incarnate-nature-of-christ/
The body has its own nature, the soul does, and a man has his own one nature, even though it has a body and a soul, each with their own natures.

By speaking of the "one nature of God the word incarnate", or as others translate it, the "one incarnate nature of the Word", the point of the expression "one" seems to reflect to me the idea of a whole compound nature, otherwise the idea of "one" would be superfluous.

However, I am not sure that these kinds of quotes by Cyril shows that he meant "hypostasis"/"entity" by "nature".
When he says "the nature of the body", he does not say "the body is a nature", even though it's acceptable to say that the body is its own entity.

The Dyophysite Christology of Cyril of Alexandria By Hans van Loon reviews one author who sees hypostases and natures as sometimes synonymous for Cyril:

Jugie gives several passages, from both before and after the Council of Ephesus, in which the Alexandrian bishop uses the word physis for the humanity of Christ.... Jugie concludes that physis at times is synonymos with ousia in the sense of essence specifque, the essence of a substance....

Jugie stresses that the word did not assume human nature in general, but a concrete, individualised nature. It is a hypostasis, which signifies a reality, something existing, in opposition to pure abstractions or to appearances.... It seems that Jugie defines hypostasis here as a reality. In Contra Theodoretum Cyril writes about a coming together of hypostases or natures. Cyril rejects a union of prosopa; therefore, hypostasis cannot be synonymous with prosopon here, Jugie adds.
...

... one can say that in this formula both terms, hypostasis and physis in fact indicate a person, a separate reality. This one nature is a nature-person, a physis-prosopon.

But rather than just rely on hearsay about Cyril, it would be best to see where he defined "natures" as meaning "hypostases" in the sense of person or a separate entity.

We seem to be left with Cyril asserting two natures after the union in one sense, but maybe not in every sense, if we accept Jugie's view. It's confusing.

ArmyMatt · May 7, 2016

well, yes. St Cyril used his terminology very fluidly. that is why the formula of reunion is so important. provided we are expressing the same theology, the words don't matter. both St Cyril and St Leo express a union with distinction and without division or separation. ie, there is only one Son, one Word, one Logos in the incarnate Christ.

rakovsky said:
Maybe if Leo speaks of two natures as two essences and thus denies a compound nature/essence after the union, but Cyril speaks of a single nature after the union after the union of natures as a single hypostasis?

Leo does not deny that Christ is compound and that He is a single Person. they may have used different terms, but I have yet to see anything that shows a differing theology.

rakovsky said:
By speaking of the "one nature of God the word incarnate", or as others translate it, the "one incarnate nature of the Word", the point of the expression "one" seems to reflect to me the idea of a whole compound nature, otherwise the idea of "one" would be superfluous.

correct, the term mia that he used means one, but with some allowance of duality. it was not monos which is more akin to "one and only." Leo hammers this oneness home in the Tome, and remember, the heresy he was fighting was that of Eutyches, who denied any distinction at the Incarnation.

rakovsky said:
But rather than just rely on hearsay about Cyril, it would be best to see where he defined "natures" as meaning "hypostases" in the sense of person or a separate entity.

he often did because he was more fluid in his language use than others, and he was fighting Nestorius.

all of this goes back to the importance of the formula of reunion. because it was the Cappadocian Fathers understanding that hypostasis=prosopon=person, and substance=essence=physis=ousia that he came to terms with and said is correct even though St Cyril was as much as a stickler for those terms because they were expressing the same truth. the balanced view of Word-man and Word-flesh are the same.

rakovsky · May 7, 2016

ArmyMatt said:
Leo does not deny that Christ is compound and that He is a single Person. they may have used different terms, but I have yet to see anything that shows a differing theology.

In the Tome he uses the phrase "human and divine nature" of Christ in the singular.
Yet later in the Tome he quoted Eutyches' statement approved at Epehesus and he stated that it is wrong to speak of one nature in Christ.
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3604028.htm

When Leo does this, I think that maybe that he uses the word "nature" in two different senses. Or maybe he means it in the same sense both times but the second time he is just asserting that Eutyches is wrong, even though he doesn't spell out what exactly he sees wrong in the phrase one nature that was approved at Ephesus II.

What I've just italicized is what I am a little bit vague about. Some writers sound like everybody knows exactly what they are talking about when they use the word nature, and they don't both to define it.

ArmyMatt said:
all of this goes back to the importance of the formula of reunion. because it was the Cappadocian Fathers understanding that hypostasis=prosopon=person, and substance=essence=physis=ousia that he came to terms with and said is correct even though St Cyril was as much as a stickler for those terms because they were expressing the same truth. the balanced view of Word-man and Word-flesh are the same.

Would you be able to show me where the Cappadocians said that hypostasis was EXACTLY the same as prosopon and where either physis always meant ousia or where they said physis meant hypostasis?

Some OOs' argument (Fr. Peter's at least) seems to me to be that everyone knew that hypostasis meant entity/concrete substance, and from this they conclude that two hypostases meant in Theodore Mopsuestia's system that Christ was two persons. This is a strange conclusion for me since Theodore M. openly taught that Christ was only one person. Yet some OOs seem to argue that: Theodore M. was a founder of Antiochene Thought, like the thinking of his student Blessed Theodoret, and Theodore M. was excommunicated at Council 5 or 6 posthumously. Then they argue that since Blessed Theodoret wrote back after Chalcedon that it was OK to confess one hypostasis because hypostasis in the Creed meant person, that Bl. Theodoret was basically making a cop out about terminology and still in effect teaching two hypostases but just not calling it that. Thus they conclude that Bl. Theodoret was basically a Nestorian like Theodore M. allegedly was (according to the 5th-6th Councils).

Next, they argue that since Bl. Theodoret at one point said that hypostasis meant nature, then basically Bl Theodoret was confessing two hypostases when he confessed two natures. The implications of that argument feel strange to me, because if it's true that 2 natures means 2 hypostases, then we have the fact that Cyril himself did repeatedly appear to confess and used terminology of two natures in Christ and thus two hypostases in that sense. So that means that two hypostases is OK after all when not used in the sense of persons?

Do you see the confusion?

ArmyMatt · May 7, 2016

rakovsky said:
In the Tome he uses the phrase "human and divine nature" of Christ in the singular.
Yet later in the Tome he quoted Eutyches' statement approved at Epehesus and he stated that it is wrong to speak of one nature in Christ.

because Eutyches was not using it the way St Cyril was. the non-Chalcedonians anathematized him as well. this is why it is improper to call them monophysites.

rakovsky said:
When Leo does this, I think that maybe that he uses the word "nature" in two different senses. Or maybe he means it in the same sense both times but the second time he is just asserting that Eutyches is wrong, even though he doesn't spell out what exactly he sees wrong in the phrase one nature that was approved at Ephesus II.

What I've just italicized is what I am a little bit vague about. Some writers sound like everybody knows exactly what they are talking about when they use the word nature, and they don't both to define it.

well, Leo knew what he was writing. the issue is that "hypostasis" in Latin is "substance." he every well could have meant one thing that got lost in translation because he was fighting a different heresy. at Nicaea the term Theophoros was used to fight the Arians by some saint. Nestorius picked up on this and used it is a heretical way. so he very well could have used nature more fluidly like St Cyril. this is why understanding is key more than word choice.

rakovsky said:
Would you be able to show me where the Cappadocians said that hypostasis was EXACTLY the same as prosopon and where either physis always meant ousia or where they said physis meant hypostasis?

not off the top of my head, twas something my patristics professor said.

rakovsky said:
Some OOs' argument (Fr. Peter's at least) seems to me to be that everyone knew that hypostasis meant entity/concrete substance, and from this they conclude that two hypostases meant in Theodore Mopsuestia's system that Christ was two persons. This is a strange conclusion for me since Theodore M. openly taught that Christ was only one person. Yet some OOs seem to argue that: Theodore M. was a founder of Antiochene Thought, like the thinking of his student Blessed Theodoret, and Theodore M. was excommunicated at Council 5 or 6 posthumously. Then they argue that since Blessed Theodoret wrote back after Chalcedon that it was OK to confess one hypostasis because hypostasis in the Creed meant person, that Bl. Theodoret was basically making a cop out about terminology and still in effect teaching two hypostases but just not calling it that. Thus they conclude that Bl. Theodoret was basically a Nestorian like Theodore M. allegedly was (according to the 5th-6th Councils).

Next, they argue that since Bl. Theodoret at one point said that hypostasis meant nature, then basically Bl Theodoret was confessing two hypostases when he confessed two natures. The implications of that argument feel strange to me, because if it's true that 2 natures means 2 hypostases, then we have the fact that Cyril himself did repeatedly appear to confess and used terminology of two natures in Christ and thus two hypostases in that sense. So that means that two hypostases is OK after all when not used in the sense of persons?

Do you see the confusion?

yes I do, that is why it is the meaning as I say again. the word hypostasis used to mean an "underlying reality" so it depended on how it was used since the definitions changed and since Christianity is not bound by language. so I can totally see the confusion. this is why we don't look at any Council or saint in a vacuum. but in all of St Cyril and Chalcedonian Christology, no matter the term, there is only one "Who" and that is the Logos.

rakovsky · May 7, 2016

Matt,

Yes, I've also heard from a lecture that hypostasis=person for Chalcedonians. However, I am inclined to think that this is a simplification of the way that the term is used by EO theologians, and that hypostasis may have different connotations. It seems to me that a body could be a hypostasis and so could a soul be, but a body by itself does not seem to be a person to me.

ArmyMatt said:
yes I do, that is why it is the meaning as I say again. the word hypostasis used to mean an "underlying reality" so it depended on how it was used since the definitions changed and since Christianity is not bound by language.

Even this term "underlying reality" is confusing and not clear. In Christ we accept only one "underlying reality"? And yet then we seem to have Cyril speaking of two hypostases...

One professor, Marinides, who recently wrote on the AFR that Christ has two natures not a compound one, proposed to me in an email that "nature" means "concrete substance". This seems to be the same mysterious kind of language as "underlying reality". But if nature is defined as concrete substance, then I suppose it makes sense that there are only two, as we agree that there are two substances.

If it's true that hypostasis means underlying reality, and if there cannot be two underlying realities, then it is confusing why Cyril could equate nature with hypostasis (underlying reality), if indeed he did. This is because in the passage on the union of natures when he supposedly equated hypostases with natures, he spoke of there being "two natures" in man (body and soul) that "are not two", which must mean in the sense of divided.

so I can totally see the confusion. this is why we don't look at any Council or saint in a vacuum. but in all of St Cyril and Chalcedonian Christology, no matter the term, there is only one "Who" and that is the Logos.

Neither Chalcedon nor the Tome nor Theodore Mopsuestia said that there were two persons.
However, sometimes they (not Chalcedon's formula) used expressions that some OOs interpret with hostility as teaching that the nature is a hypostasis and a who, like:
"let him see what was the nature that hung pierced with nails on the wooden cross" (The Tome)
My answer is that this is a figure of speech that sometimes happens in common language and it doesn't actually mean that the nature is a person.

ArmyMatt · May 7, 2016

rakovsky said:
Yes, I've also heard from a lecture that hypostasis=person for Chalcedonians. However, I am inclined to think that this is a simplification of the way that the term is used by EO theologians, and that hypostasis may have different connotations. It seems to me that a body could be a hypostasis and so could a soul be, but a body by itself does not seem to be a person to me.

using strict early terminology, that very well may be (definitely be something for me to ask in class). but remember the initial break was the non-Chalcedonians accused the Chalcedonians of being Nestorian. the whole point of Constantinople 2 (and the Formula of reunion) was to show that Chalcedon is not Nestorian, and that the Antiochian school as well as the Alexandrian school are the same in their Christology, even if not for their terminology.

rakovsky said:
Even this term "underlying reality" is confusing and not clear. In Christ we accept only one "underlying reality"?

right, because it began as a pagan philosophical term that the Church had to define. for us, the Ultimate underlying reality is a Who, the Logos.

rakovsky said:
And yet then we seem to have Cyril speaking of two hypostases...

because he was more fluid in his use of the terms.

rakovsky said:
One professor, Marinides, who recently wrote on the AFR that Christ has two natures not a compound one, proposed to me in an email that "nature" means "concrete substance". This seems to be the same mysterious kind of language as "underlying reality". But if nature is defined as concrete substance, then I suppose it makes sense that there are only two, as we agree that there are two substances.

well, they are both correct. Christ is compound in that He has a human and Divine nature, fully united in One Person, with both being completely inseparable and distinct only in theory.

rakovsky said:
If it's true that hypostasis means underlying reality, and if there cannot be two underlying realities, then it is confusing why Cyril could equate nature with hypostasis (underlying reality), if indeed he did. This is because in the passage on the union of natures when he supposedly equated hypostases with natures, he spoke of there being "two natures" in man (body and soul) that "are not two", which must mean in the sense of divided.

but again, context. if that was the case in how he was defining it, he would not have had any beef with Nestorius..

rakovsky said:
Neither Chalcedon nor the Tome nor Theodore Mopsuestia said that there were two persons.

well, Chalcedon and the Tome certainly didn't, but Theodore did. Theodore said that the union was like a marital one where husband and wife became one flesh, yet remained two persons. that is why he was condemned.

rakovsky said:
However, sometimes they (not Chalcedon's formula) used expressions that some OOs interpret with hostility as teaching that the nature is a hypostasis and a who, like:
"let him see what was the nature that hung pierced with nails on the wooden cross" (The Tome)
My answer is that this is a figure of speech that sometimes happens in common language and it doesn't actually mean that the nature is a person.

well, again, this all goes back to the meaning and not the word itself.

Overcoming gridlock between EOs and OOs over Chalcedon's Formula

To EOs: Which do you consider more preferable? To OOs: May one say Christ is "in two natures"?

EO reply: Keeping Chalcedon Ecumenical and using its main faith statement as a basis for reunion

EO reply: Reunion w OOs, even if the debate on natures is unresolved, IF there is no real difference

EO reply: Other

OO reply: Yes, it can be OK.

OO reply: No.

OO reply: Other

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