If I'm understanding it right, that the "union" of the two "prosopa" involved a co-habitation of the Divine Logos with the Human Christ, not a real, full union as such.
That sounds dangerously close to Apollinarianism.
Not only that, but that it effectively means that Jesus is specifically not the Divine Logos; that Jesus is but the Human Christ who dwelt with, co-habitated with the Divine Logos within Him.
Am I rightly understanding things here?
-CryptoLuthearn
I don't think you're quite right. First, there is only one prosopon. You are right that Theodore saw the human and the Logos as distinguished, but that's simply the two-nature concept, which is the basis of Chalcedon.
You have to look at that together with his statement that the two are united into one prosopon.
"But what does it mean to say “as in a son”? It means that having indwelt him, he united the one assumed as a whole to himself and equipped him to share with himself in all the honor in which he, being Son by nature, participates, so as to be counted one person in virtue of the union with him and to share with him all his dominion, and in this way to accomplish everything in him, so that even the examination and judgment of the world shall be fulfilled through him and his advent. Of course, in all this the difference in natural characteristics is kept in mind." (Theodore, "On the Incarnation", quoted in Norris, "The Christological Controversy")
I think the way in which Theodore differed from Alexandrian language is that he tends to describe Jesus and the Logos each as having actual existence. He speaks of Jesus' human development, and speaks of his relationship as a man to the Logos. But the monothelite controversy drove the orthodox tradition to end up adopting that view. In the 7th council, Christ is said to have a distinct human will and distinct human actions. That makes him in modern terms a distinct human person.
Theodore's metaphysics has three concepts, whereas Chalcedon speaks of only two. For Theodore there is nature, hypostasis, and prospon. Nature is as it is in Chalcedon. Proposon is as it is in Chalcedon. However Chalcedon sees hypostasis as a synonym for proposon. For Theodore it is separate, what Aquinas called an "individual nature."
Western medieval theology actually comes to be essentially Theodore's. In the Summa, Aquinas says that the Logos assumed an individual human nature. To hammer this home, he says that the Logos could have assumed two human natures. He is clearly thinking not of human nature as an abstract collection of properties, but as a nature concretized. His normal term is "individual human nature." Indeed for him the only reason that Jesus is not a separate human person is because he is united to the Word. I believe that this "individual human nature" is precisely what Theodore meant by hypostasis, and that Theodore would be happy with Thomas' descriptions of the union.
Here's the key passage from the Summa:
"The Word of God "did not assume human nature in general, but 'in atomo'"--that is, in an individual--as Damascene says (De Fide Orth. iii, 11) otherwise every man would be the Word of God, even as Christ was. Yet we must bear in mind that not every individual in the genus of substance, even in rational nature, is a person, but that alone which exists by itself, and not that which exists in some more perfect thing. Hence the hand of Socrates, although it is a kind of individual, is not a person, because it does not exist by itself, but in something more perfect, viz. in the whole. And hence, too, this is signified by a "person" being defined as "an individual substance," for the hand is not a complete substance, but part of a substance. Therefore, although this human nature is a kind of individual in the genus of substance, it has not its own personality, because it does not exist separately, but in something more perfect, viz. in the Person of the Word. Therefore the union took place in the person." (Summa, 3.2.2)
As I understand it, Thomas is saying that the human being is a substantial individual. The only reason we don't call it a human person is that it doesn't exist by itself, but in union with the Logos. (This does not mean that I agree with all of Aquinas. I think parts of his account of Jesus' life fail to do justice to the reality of the individual nature, and thus misunderstand the intent of some NT passages.)
It is hard to read the history surrounding Chalcedon without thinking that politics and personalities were more important than theology. A Church that was truly Christian would have tried to reconcile the two viewpoints. Indeed there was an attempt to do so, which held for a while. Orthodoxy consists in the recognition that we must do justice both to the integrity of God and the human being, but we must also see that in Christ God was truly present with us, and died for us. I think Theodore does this.
Theodore addresses the question of the sense in which we can say that God was born and died. He says that God was born and died by virtue of the union, but not by nature. This seems like an inevitable distinction. His actual language could be troubling: "she is God’s mother, since God was in the man who was fashioned—not circumscribed in him by nature but existing in him according to the disposition of his will." In speaking of death, he says "because he was with him." But looking at the pattern of his language, he's actually pretty close to Athanasius. Athanasius saw the Logos as using his body as an instrument. That's unsatisfactory, because the incarnation involves more than a body. So in Theodore, the Logos uses a full human as his instrument. But that human is the Logos' human, just as for Athanasius, the body is the Logos' body.
To me the underlying question is whether we see Jesus as an actual human being, or whether the Logos wields all the parts of a human without having an actual human being there. Theodore clearly thought there was an actual human being. I believe Aquinas and other orthodox writers did as well. Current mainline theology would certainly agree.
