Overcoming gridlock between EOs and OOs over Chalcedon's Formula

[dzheremi]

Hello, Dzheremi!
EOs recognize deep spirituality in OO Churches, as shown in visits to monasteries in Egypt and Ethiopia and cooperation between churches in Syria.

So if I visit St. Seraphim of Sarov OCA church two towns over, the schism is healed? Nope.

There are EO and OO saints who are recognized in each others' churches like St John Damascene.

In which OO church is John of Damascus a saint? I am unaware of any who venerate him.

In the case of reconciliation and recognizing orthodoxy or right faith of OOs, for EOs the main hurdle is OO institutional rejection of Chalcedon's formula "in two natures". As you said, the Joint Commission unfortunately does not speak formally for OOs. I think you cited to me an OO hymn before saying that Christ does not have two natures? Forgive me if I am mistaken.

Again you are misunderstanding the references. The Syrian fraction, one of the fraction prayers of the Coptic Orthodox Church, does say "One is Emmanuel our God, who cannot be divided after the union. There is no division into two natures [...]". As with all of our objections with the language of the Tome and the definition of Chalcedon, what we object to is such a division after the union, not naming the two natures of which Christ is composed. Here, I'll do it myself: Christ is perfectly and completely God, and perfectly and completely man, and those are two different natures, as testified in the writings of our fathers. In that sense, Christ 'has' two natures and no one can dispute this without falling into the heresies of Eutyches or Nestorius, both of whom we treat as heretics not any less than you do. But that is not the sense which satisfies the Chalcedonians, so...meh.

Since in common speech we speak of single beings having two natures, defined as categories or essences, it is confusing for most EOs like Matt, or for that matter St. John Damascene, why OOs would object to this. It commonly creates the impression that you deny one of of the two natures, ie. categories, since that is the logical conclusion in common speech.

The 'logical conclusion in common speech' means nothing to me, so that's out the window. Rather, it is our preexisting, pre-Chalcedonian understanding of what the incarnation means -- that is, a union from two natures, as testified to by our common father St. Cyril and others -- that must be maintained by any Christological statement. And the definition accepted at Chalcedon messes with what is our (OO) common understanding of the incarnation, by claiming that two natures remain because He does some things in accordance with His humanity and some things in accordance with His divinity, or however you'd put it. You know, "this nature submits to insults; that nature shines out in miracles" or whatever the actual wording is (I don't keep a copy of the Tome handy for discussions, as I'm sure you can understand). No, that won't do. To paraphrase St. Severus, how can we divide walking upon the waters? (This is a rhetorical question; for the sake of brevity in going over past arguments, I ask that you please keep it that way.)

Since we have people like myself and the Joint Commission who would prefer to resolve the conflict like Paul asks us to, and since there is a decent degree of respect for each others' spirituality, can you think of positive, constructive steps for reconciliation?

Reconciliation is one thing; reunion is another. I think we are better off now than we have been in the past, even the recent past, but then I don't have reunion as a realistic goal. I believe as I have stated that a change in mindset must occur among the people and churches of your communion, because any change in doctrine or confession is a non-starter.

It seems to me that the best thing would be to tackle this as a mutual problem together, in an unbiased way. And the first philosophical step in analyzing the conceptual problem should be to define the meaning of "nature", which is the center of the disagreement. What do you think about that?

I think it's impossible to be neutral when you are convinced that your way is the correct way. I believe that the Alexandrian definition of 'nature' is already fully acceptable and Orthodox, and in no need of reforming. I see no problem with the EO maintaining their own philosophical and linguistic traditions as is proper to them, particularly in light of the fact that you guys dealt in subsequent councils (Constantinople II) with heretical interpretations that came out among your people in the wake of the acceptance of the Tome. This does not make the Tome nor Chalcedon any more acceptable to us than Ephesus II is to you, but it does show that you are at least serious about avoiding giving succor to heretics, which is appreciated. As I believe I already wrote in this thread, I appreciate the seriousness with which your communion approaches such issues, and it is at that level that I have hope that any joint talks we may hold now or in the future may produce tangible gains. I do not see reunion occurring within my lifetime or even my great-grandchildren's lifetimes, but this does not mean that such talks are useless. We just need to be realistic about what they can and cannot accomplish.

 

[rakovsky]

See, but the reason why I don't believe this is actually the case is that you guys see heresy in things and people that we see as Orthodox (obviously), so in practice there is no such separation between seeing something as different and seeing something as heretical. Hence there are frankly silly-sounding passages like in the rubric for Cheesefare Sunday that say of the Armenians (I imagine as shorthand for all OO, as we call all EO "Greeks" in conversation in the Coptic Orthodox Church) “During this week the accursed Armenians fast from eggs and cheese, but we, to refute their damnable heresy, do eat both eggs and cheese for the entire week." I can't for the life of me understand how I'm supposed to take such things seriously. I just can't, and while I have yet to find anything so seemingly petty on its face in our own books, if it's there I wouldn't take it seriously, either.

What the rubric you have in mind would say is that the Armenian practice was mistaken, and in that sense heretical.
See the Syriac OO "Against the Armenians" essay below. It looks like there are OOs who found heresy among Armenians where you and today might say that it wasnt. Further, EOs reading this essay below will also think that some things mentioned are not heretical. I am aware that this criticism of Armenians is no longer followed by OOs, but my point is that it's not foreign to them to think this way. Nor am I endorsing it.



I think that during reconciliation, such secondary things will be forgotten. The main thing like common faith formulas would be agreed on.

That the teaching of the Phantasiasts led by Julian of Halicarnassus was widely spread among the Armenians is also borne out by an independent East Syrian historian, John of Phenek, who writes thus: "The demon caused another offshoot, worse than the others, to rise among (the followers of Cyril) and this was the wicked Julian.... But the grace of the Lord threw him in the midst of an ignorant people, the heretical Armenians, by whom his teaching was accepted."
...
refutation of the uncanonical customs and habits of the Armenians mostly bear on the following subjects:
(1)They fast from morning till morning on Wednesdays and Fridays.
(2)They use unleavened bread for the Eucharist.
(3)They do not mix water with the Eucharistic wine.
(4)They sacrifice lambs at the feast of the Passover.
(5)They bless salt with prayers and canticles as if to sanctify their sacrifices with it.
(6)They believe that if a dog or a cat enter a church the latter becomes desecrated.
(7)They hold that if a mouse falls into food the latter becomes polluted. #s 4-7 bring to mind OT rituals and standards of ritual purity.
...
(9)They re-baptise the members of the other Christian denomina-tions who join them.
(10) They make use of sesame oil in their holy Chrism.
...
(12) They do not permit laymen to read the Gospels.
(13) They hold that laymen are not allowed to recite the Lord's Prayer.
(14)They refuse Holy Communion to repentant sinners for a longtime.
(15) They baptise their crosses and Church bells.
(16)They make use of the Canonical Confession in a wrong way.
...
(18)They celebrate the two festivals of the Nativity and the Epiphany in one day.
(21) They eat oil and ground sesame in Lent.
...
(26) Their priests believe like the Jews that pork is unclean and consequently do not eat it.
(27) They have not the impediment of spiritual affinity in their marriages.
(28) They take the consecrated Host from the Chalice with their hands.
(29) They genuflect on Sundays and Pentecostal days.
(30) They transfer to a Sunday the celebration of all the commemorations and festivals, with the exception of the festival of the Epiphany.
(31) Their priests bless their bishops.
(32) They believe that leaven owes its origin to the digested food of Shem, son of Noah, or to that of Adam himself.
(33) The ordination of their clergy in Cilicia is invalid as they receive it from the dead hand of St. Gregory the Illuminator.
(34) They practise Simony in their ordinations.
(35) They resort to the principle of heredity in the ordination of their high ecclesiastical dignitaries.

https://www.escholar.manchester.ac....amId=POST-PEER-REVIEW-PUBLISHERS-DOCUMENT.PDF

 

[dzheremi]

What the rubric you have in mind would say is that the Armenian practice was mistaken, and in that sense heretical. See the Syriac OO "Against the Armenians" essay below. It looks like there are OOs who found heresy among Armenians where you and today might say that it wasnt.

Yes, there was a time when the Syriac Orthodox were out of communion with the Armenians, for various reasons. What is your point?

Am I exonerating a people, or am I using the text to establish a principle? I think the Armenians are perfectly capable of defending themselves, should they wish to.

Further, EOs reading this essay below will also think that some things mentioned are not heretical. I am aware that this criticism of Armenians is no longer followed by OOs, but my point is that it's not foreign to them to think this way. Nor am I endorsing it.

Okay. I don't think you understand what the point of bringing up that portion of the text is. Perhaps a longer quotation from the article from I have taken it, written by the dean of SVOTS, will make it more clear to you. Rev. Erickson writes:

One final example illustrates particularly vividly the ease with which a minor liturgical difference can be transformed into a symbol of division. In the Coptic, Syrian and Armenian liturgical traditions, a week of strict fasting - variously called the Fast of Heraclius, the Fast of Ninevah or the Forefast (Arachavorats) - preceeds the “Forty-Day” Great Fast of Lent. The same week in the Byzantine tradition calls only for abstinence from meat, not from dairy products. The historical development of the fasting practices of these various liturgical traditions is complex, but the differences between them were not the result of any dogmatic differences. [14] Yet in the context of church division, these differences came to be given a polemical explanation. Here is the rubric given in the Byzantine Triodion for Cheesefare Sunday, which introduces the week in question: “During this week the accursed Armenians fast from eggs and cheese, but we, to refute their damnable heresy, do eat both eggs and cheese for the entire week.” What one side does is enough to prompt the other to do the opposite! We see here the tragic way in which our sense of ecclesial identity has, in the context of division, been formed by opposition rather than by reference to a common faith. The characteristics by which we identify ourselves and our churches as “orthodox” all too often have been simply those extrinsic elements which make us different from others.​

I think that during reconciliation, such secondary things will be forgotten. The main thing like common faith formulas would be agreed on.

One would hope so, yes.

 

[rakovsky]

Hello, Dzheremi.

You asked:

So if I visit St. Seraphim of Sarov OCA church two towns over, the schism is healed?

I was referring to your statement. "When/if you and your communion can come to see Orthodoxy as equally manifest in Byzantium and Holy Etchmiadzin, the God-loving city of Axum, the Mountain of Worshipers at Tur Abdin, and the Coptic monasteries that are the heart of my own church, then reunion will be infinitely more plausible to me than it currently is.:"

The first step I gathered from this was an appreciation of spirituality was important as a first step toward the end goal of recognizing orthodoxy and reconciling.
To first say that in order to reach the end goal we must see orthodoxy as equally manifest does not explain how to get there, unless by that you meant an appreciation of spirituality,.

Nope.



In which OO church is John of Damascus a saint? I am unaware of any who venerate him.

He is a saint in the Ethiopian church.

Again you are misunderstanding the references. The Syrian fraction, one of the fraction prayers of the Coptic Orthodox Church, does say "One is Emmanuel our God, who cannot be divided after the union. There is no division into two natures [...]".

OK, thanks for clarifying. I had forgotten the exact words. For Cyril, there was a division in theory only, as the Joint Commission explains.

As with all of our objections with the language of the Tome and the definition of Chalcedon, what we object to is such a division after the union, not naming the two natures of which Christ is composed. Here, I'll do it myself: Christ is perfectly and completely God, and perfectly and completely man, and those are two different natures, as testified in the writings of our fathers. In that sense, Christ 'has' two natures and no one can dispute this without falling into the heresies of Eutyches or Nestorius, both of whom we treat as heretics not any less than you do. But that is not the sense which satisfies the Chalcedonians, so...meh.

I agree with the bold, and you are using normal common sense when you stated it, but maybe you are implicitly too strict with Dioscorus when you added about Eutyches. As Fr. Romanides writes: "Dioscoros simply rejected all talk of two natures after the union. When the imperial representatives asked why Flavian was deposed since he did accept One Nature of the Logos Incarnate, Eustathius of Berytus admitted making a mistake. Dioscoros, however, claimed that Flavian contradicted himself by accepting two natures after the union."

Dioscorus denied two natures being held by Christ after the union, and by implication that puts him in Eutyches' camp, but then it's tough because he also asserted Christ was God and man, which implies two natures, and he asserted two essences, although even Eutyches did that when pressured. I guess it would be helpful to see if Dioscrous ever disavowed Eutyches after Ephesus II. I know that the Copts did later.

The 'logical conclusion in common speech' means nothing to me, so that's out the window.

That makes discussion rather difficult, then, doesn't it, in establishing what that pre-schism understanding was?
If in common logic Christ has two natures based on the pre-schism premises, but common logic is out the window, it seems tough to ever prove anything.

It sounds like arguing whether Christ is "Bog" in Russian, Russian "Bog" meaning god in common Russian speech, and then saying that we cannot use rules of common speech to establish this, and so we cannot accept Russians as Orthodox because they call God "Bog".

This is more like the comment that the Byzantine scholar made about the debate where the schism is based on two of 6 and a dozen of 1, and then when people who want to solve the problem like Paul said go to solve the problem using basic math, the other side they want to reconcile with says No, that's not allowed, we can't use math, we can only say a dozen of one.

It seems strange. Why would someone prefer to have schism over nothing rather than solve problems?

Rather, it is our preexisting, pre-Chalcedonian understanding of what the incarnation means -- that is, a union from two natures, as testified to by our common father St. Cyril and others -- that must be maintained by any Christological statement.

In Letter 53, Cyril wrote that Christ was "in both natures".

However, not everyone I think really liked that Cyril reunited with John Antiochene. I think that this division probably remains. They will say orally now that Cyril was good to reunite, but they still don't like the Antiochene school and consider them to have cryptoNestorianism, even though Cyril said that they didn't.
So I think it would be good for people to go back to Cyril's shared view and John Antiochene's shared view and not to say that "two natures" after the union is wrong. But I think that not everyone really wants to do this.

And the definition accepted at Chalcedon messes with what is our (OO) common understanding of the incarnation, by claiming that two natures remain because He does some things in accordance with His humanity and some things in accordance with His divinity,

This is very strange. Why did you not like Cyril's quote when Cyril said that Jesus suffered "in his humanity", not in his divinity, which I cited to you before?

St. Cyril writes in Letter 46:

Your excellency very rightly and with complete understanding has expounded the matter concerning the Passion of our Savior, by strongly contending that the only-begotten Son of God in so far as he is known to be and is God DID NOT ENDURE THE SUFFERINGS OF THE BODY IN HIS OWN NATURE, BUT SUFFERED RATHER IN HIS EARTHLY NATURE. For it was necessary and proper to maintain with reference to the one true Son both that he did not suffer in his divinity and that it is affirmed that he suffered in his humanity, for his flesh suffered.​

or however you'd put it. You know, "this nature submits to insults; that nature shines out in miracles" or whatever the actual wording is (I don't keep a copy of the Tome handy for discussions, as I'm sure you can understand). No, that won't do. To paraphrase St. Severus, how can we divide walking upon the waters? (This is a rhetorical question; for the sake of brevity in going over past arguments, I ask that you please keep it that way.)

Your question may be rhetorical, but there are two easy answers to how we can treat Christ walking on water. Either the walking an action that does involve both natures acting like Severus said, or it's a divine act, just like God walking in the garden of Eden before the incarnation. The action of walking on water itself is a divine action, whether it uses human instruments like feet or not. The human nature, with human feet, cooperated with that divine action.

Reconciliation is one thing; reunion is another. I think we are better off now than we have been in the past, even the recent past, but then I don't have reunion as a realistic goal. I believe as I have stated that a change in mindset must occur among the people and churches of your communion, because any change in doctrine or confession is a non-starter.

Did Fr. Peter Farrington and the OOs in the Join Commission make a change in doctrine when he said that "in two natures" can be acceptable? If not, it suggests that OOs would not be taking a change inn doctrine to agree with him and assert two natures.

I think it's impossible to be neutral when you are convinced that your way is the correct way. I believe that the Alexandrian definition of 'nature' is already fully acceptable and Orthodox, and in no need of reforming.

OK, then can you say exactly and consistently what that "definition" of the word is?
Is this the same definition that Paul uses when he says that man is master over "every nature of beast"?

I see no problem with the EO maintaining their own philosophical and linguistic traditions as is proper to them, particularly in light of the fact that you guys dealt in subsequent councils (Constantinople II) with heretical interpretations that came out among your people in the wake of the acceptance of the Tome. This does not make the Tome nor Chalcedon any more acceptable to us than Ephesus II is to you,

I am confused. Why should we not try to come together to see if certain phrases are objectively acceptable? If the phrase in two natures is objectively linguistically OK for Chalcedonians to say in greek, why couldn't any OOs use the same objectively acceptable expression? They are not using two different actual languages. They share the same Greek Bible that uses this word in a certain way. Did the Biblical meaning of the word stop having that meaning for OOs in their linguistic tradition? How can they read the Bible then?

but it does show that you are at least serious about avoiding giving succor to heretics, which is appreciated. As I believe I already wrote in this thread, I appreciate the seriousness with which your communion approaches such issues, and it is at that level that I have hope that any joint talks we may hold now or in the future may produce tangible gains. I do not see reunion occurring within my lifetime or even my great-grandchildren's lifetimes, but this does not mean that such talks are useless. We just need to be realistic about what they can and cannot accomplish.

Would you like for EOs and OOs to solve their problems and reconcile, or would it be better to leave their problems unsolved and keep sincere Christians schismated over no actual difference? if the latter, why?

 

[rakovsky]

Yes, there was a time when the Syriac Orthodox were out of communion with the Armenians, for various reasons. What is your point?

My point was to give a helpful analogy as an illustration to help you understand the mindset better, as if this was an issue for EOs only, or an insurmountable one. Just as OOs solved that difference, it should be easy for EOs to solve that same one with Armenians once they agree to basic common sense logic Cyrilline statements, just like the OOs did and in the same way.

Am I exonerating a people, or am I using the text to establish a principle?

You were exonerating the Armenian practice by saying that it was so petty an issue, and attempting to establish a principle that EOs make petty attacks on all OOs just by referencing Armenians in an EO rubric.

Okay. I don't think you understand what the point of bringing up that portion of the text is. Perhaps a longer quotation from the article from I have taken it, written by the dean of SVOTS, will make it more clear to you. Rev. Erickson writes:

One final example illustrates particularly vividly the ease with which a minor liturgical difference can be transformed into a symbol of division. In the Coptic, Syrian and Armenian liturgical traditions, a week of strict fasting - variously called the Fast of Heraclius, the Fast of Ninevah or the Forefast (Arachavorats) - preceeds the “Forty-Day” Great Fast of Lent. The same week in the Byzantine tradition calls only for abstinence from meat, not from dairy products. The historical development of the fasting practices of these various liturgical traditions is complex, but the differences between them were not the result of any dogmatic differences. [14] Yet in the context of church division, these differences came to be given a polemical explanation. Here is the rubric given in the Byzantine Triodion for Cheesefare Sunday, which introduces the week in question: “During this week the accursed Armenians fast from eggs and cheese, but we, to refute their damnable heresy, do eat both eggs and cheese for the entire week.” What one side does is enough to prompt the other to do the opposite! We see here the tragic way in which our sense of ecclesial identity has, in the context of division, been formed by opposition rather than by reference to a common faith. The characteristics by which we identify ourselves and our churches as “orthodox” all too often have been simply those extrinsic elements which make us different from others.​

One would hope so, yes.

i sympathize with Fr. Erickson's criticism. This is analogous to the EO-OO division itself where there is no substantive major difference that can be shown with clear definitions of words. Just as the Armenians' issue was secondary and you said petty, exaggerated to criticize people unnecessarily, could the argument over "natures" be petty and simple enough that educated reasonable sincere people should be able to sit down and solve it in a friendly and intelligent way, when they agree that Christ has two categories and one hypostasis?

 

[ArmyMatt]

Hence there are frankly silly-sounding passages like in the rubric for Cheesefare Sunday that say of the Armenians (I imagine as shorthand for all OO, as we call all EO "Greeks" in conversation in the Coptic Orthodox Church) “During this week the accursed Armenians fast from eggs and cheese, but we, to refute their damnable heresy, do eat both eggs and cheese for the entire week."

well, I would wonder about the context for that passage. monastics and cave-dwellers don't eat eggs or dairy for that week, and we hold them in high regard. since stuff like this is never produced in a vacuum, I would wonder what they were talking about and why that is there.

What you (OO) do does not match exactly what we (EO) do/the traditions of Constantinople, so it's heresy, end of story." And that's what needs to go, in our view -- the attitude that Orthodoxy in toto is whatever you guys inherited from Constantinople/Byzantium, and any other 'foreign' practice is by definition heresy for not exactly matching that.

but with the return of many Western Christians to Orthodoxy, the traditional Western Rites and Western customs are being adapted with the Orthodox understanding. having attended some OO services, I see no reason why those rites and customs would also not be accepted. and you see this as well with the canonical Old Rite.

And I respect that this is your view, even as I disagree with it. Really, I would not expect anything other than what we get from EO, because again I recognize that obviously this all comes from a sincere conviction that you have chosen the historically and presently correct path. It's not maliciousness or rigor for the sake of it. And that conviction is also what we believe about our own Church, even as we express it somewhat differently. The bottom line is that we will never grovel or beg that anyone 'accept' us as Orthodox as though we aren't already, hence I already wrote directly to Rakovsky that the only way that true, lasting union will be achieved is with a change of the EO mindset so that you see our churches as equal bastions of Orthodoxy together with your own.

and I know this is your view, but we cannot hold you as an equal bastion of Orthodoxy since the Church is one. this does not mean that the non-Chalcedonian customs and pious beliefs or the "look" would have to be changed. there is a lot of beauty and truth in what I have seen in the OO. it certainly would not need to be gutted or merely made Byzantine from what I have seen. there was a woman who came to the Orthodox mission I was at and she was Ethiopian. she and her son joined the Church after a quick catechesis, and she kept a lot of her piety and no one batted an eye. there was no demand that she give up her "Ethiopianness" and some of her customs became a part of the life of that parish.

while there was some bad blood for a bit, I don't think we would be as closed off as you think to OO practice. the whole point of the Formula of Reunion and the reason behind Constantinople 2, was to show that if our theology is the same, it does not matter the words that we use.

 

[dzheremi]

The first step I gathered from this was an appreciation of spirituality was important as a first step toward the end goal of recognizing orthodoxy and reconciling.
To first say that in order to reach the end goal we must see orthodoxy as equally manifest does not explain how to get there, unless by that you meant an appreciation of spirituality.

And it doesn't say how because I cannot inhabit the mind of a Chalcedonian and see why they can't see what we OO already do. I can tell you why I believe in the Orthodoxy of the OO confession, but I can't make you see it if you don't.

He is a saint in the Ethiopian church.

Interesting. I'll have to read up on this and see under what circumstances he came to be venerated by the Ethiopians. From what I can tell from searching on this matter just right now (it brought up a thread on OC.net), it seems that there are also some Ethiopian saints that are venerated by EO, though I'm not clear whether or not they are officially recognized. St. Tekle Haymanot was mentioned, and he's even later than John of Damascus (by several centuries; if I recall correctly, St. Tekle Haymanot lived in the 13th to early 14th century). Perhaps there is some reciprocity here rooted in some aspect of Ethiopian history that I am unaware of.

OK, thanks for clarifying. I had forgotten the exact words. For Cyril, there was a division in theory only, as the Joint Commission explains.

You are welcome.

Dioscorus denied two natures being held by Christ after the union, and by implication that puts him in Eutyches' camp, but then it's tough because he also asserted Christ was God and man, which implies two natures, and he asserted two essences, although even Eutyches did that when pressured. I guess it would be helpful to see if Dioscrous ever disavowed Eutyches after Ephesus II. I know that the Copts did later.

It really doesn't, though. It is recorded in the Ethiopian synaxarium that HH excommunicated Eutyches (the site that I usually visit to read the synaxarium is down right now, but from what I remember it is mentioned in or around the entry for Nehasse 22). It is also recorded in other OO sources and even by some EO writers. Here, read Fr. Romanides' article on the subject (opens as a pdf), which plainly states "The backbone of Orthodox tradition is the fact that the Logos became consubstantial with us. There can be no doubt that Dioscorus agrees with this fact and hence can never be accused of being a monophysite along with Eutyches." (p.487)

That makes discussion rather difficult, then, doesn't it, in establishing what that pre-schism understanding was?

Not really. I'm just saying that what is proper to a given tradition is not to be established by how we use common language, as Christology and the traditions that inform it are specific to what has developed in particular places (hence before Chalcedon there were the conflicts between St. Cyril and some of the Antiochians). That's the problem of taking what is 'common', as the traditions themselves had developed in their own ways before any of this was recognized to be a problem.

If in common logic Christ has two natures based on the pre-schism premises, but common logic is out the window, it seems tough to ever prove anything.

Not really. Rather, each tradition must be looked at in its own context in order to try to understand what people are meaning to say when they might use words that are held 'in common', but have different shades of meaning or applications according to what has developed in Alexandria, in Constantinople, in Antioch, among the Persians, etc. That won't necessarily resolve any conflicts that come up between them, but at least then you can know based on what you find in their philosophical traditions surrounding the use of these terms if it is something that is compatible with your own tradition or not.

It sounds like arguing whether Christ is "Bog" in Russian, Russian "Bog" meaning god in common Russian speech, and then saying that we cannot use rules of common speech to establish this, and so we cannot accept Russians as Orthodox because they call God "Bog".

It really isn't. Iisous Pekhristos Epshiri Emefnouti and Iisous Christos o Yios tou Theou are the same person.

What I'm saying is that Christological and/or philosophical traditions don't exist in a vacuum whereby we can take things that are in 'common' (in the sense of using the same technical terms) to be evidence of a common tradition when in fact we are talking about different specific traditions.

It seems strange. Why would someone prefer to have schism over nothing rather than solve problems?

Why ask me this? Do you think that because I have not agreed with you that the schism is over nothing that I am such a person? I too desire reunion, but not on terms dictated to me or my church by others who do not seek to understand what they condemn (as I'm sure you guys would also say about us).

In Letter 53, Cyril wrote that Christ was "in both natures".

And what was the context of this statement? I am sensing that we may have a problem in reaching a common understanding if you are going to present isolated clauses from St. Cyril's letters as though they are self-interpreting.

However, not everyone I think really liked that Cyril reunited with John Antiochene. I think that this division probably remains. They will say orally now that Cyril was good to reunite, but they still don't like the Antiochene school and consider them to have cryptoNestorianism, even though Cyril said that they didn't.
So I think it would be good for people to go back to Cyril's shared view and John Antiochene's shared view and not to say that "two natures" after the union is wrong. But I think that not everyone really wants to do this.

I don't consider you guys to be crypto-Nestorian (although it is worth noting that the Nestorians certainly felt themselves to be vindicated by Chalcedon). I consider the Tome of Leo ill-worded and not acceptable, and hence I cannot accept Chalcedon because I cannot see it as Orthodox. That doesn't mean that we should treat this situation as though it is still 451 and the subsequent Second Council of Constantinople hadn't happened. As I've said before, if we were asked to affirm Constantinople II rather than Chalcedon, I have no doubt that many of us would go for it, as it is Constantinople II that makes clear the proper interpretation of dyophysitism in a Nestorianism-denying manner. I could make an analogy here to how EO want to bring up Eutyches and Dioscorus as though it is still 449 and Dioscorus was supposed to be a mind-reader and see that Eutyches was lying, rather than doing the more sensible thing and seeing how every patriarch in the wake of 449 (including Dioscorus himself, according to the Coptic and Ethiopian traditions, at least) has condemned Eutyches.

And to those that say "Why not accept Chalcedon, then, if you feel that the same Christology can be acceptable in light of Constantinople II?" (which is a real question I have been asked on this website), I would say that the wording of the Tome itself is still unacceptable (as we've gone over before), and Constantinople II is itself evidence that it is easily exploitable by heretics. As I've said in the past, if Rome were to come into line with the EO but continue to push its "we've never changed" narrative and hence make acceptance of all of its unique councils a prerequisite for communion with the EO, you guys wouldn't go for it. Because you can't accept the unacceptable in order to have union. We are doing nothing else. If Constantinople II demonstrates a correction to Chalcedon, as I've least heard people of my own church argue, then that's in essence saying that the EO are okay now (or better, or whatever), while at the same time saying that there was something in Chalcedon to be corrected in order to make them so. And that's not anything that the EO will accept, as they feel that Chalcedon got it right in the first place. We don't. So we remain apart, because picking and choosing from the councils you already recognize as needing to be assented to is not going to work.

Don't ask me about that, ask your own people. As I've said before, there's a difference between us in understanding how councils 'work', too, though that could use its own thread.

This is very strange. Why did you not like Cyril's quote when Cyril said that Jesus suffered "in his humanity", not in his divinity, which I cited to you before?

Who says I didn't like it? For sure He did! Again, as is proper to humanity to suffer (read: as He truly assumed our humanity), this is what happened. But this is not saying, as the Tome does, that the nature experiences this. We rather refer everything back to the person, who is in one nature (from two) after the union. To further quote the very same letter (from which you did a very good job extracting the dyophysitism-supporting passages), letter 46:

"Again this question (of how we can assert that the Lord suffered in His humanity without also granting that the two natures subsisted after the union --dzh.) is no less in opposition to those who say that there is one incarnate physis of the Word, and the proposers, desiring to prove that this formula is rather useless, eagerly strive to prove that the two natures always subsisted. But they have ignored the fact that those things which are usually distinguished not just according to speculation, completely and specifically differ from one another in every manner separately into diversity. Let a man like unto us be an example for us again. For we know that there are two natures in him, one the nature of the soul and the other the nature of the body. But when we divide him merely in thought and conceive the difference in subtle speculations or the presentations of thought to the mind, we do not posit the natures one apart from the other, nor indeed do we at all impute to them virtual existence through the division, but conceive of them as the natures of one man, so that the two no longer are two, but through them both the one living being is produced." (Letter 46, p. 203)

Is this not what I have been saying from the beginning, that in our tradition we refer everything to the person of Christ, rather than to this nature or to that nature simply because some things befit one and not the other? This is not a reason to divide the natures, or at least it needn't be so, as this is a perfectly fine and eloquent explanation of the Orthodox miaphysitism to which we adhere: if you want to say two you can say two in the sense that we are speaking of one being who is from two (the divine and the human, in the case of Christ), but with the union the two are no longer two, but one, as the union of the two produces one living being.

This is why we cannot say two without harming our understanding of the incarnation, whereas it is possible to say two if meant in an Orthodox fashion which does not separate the natures. Note however the phrase above "nor indeed do we at all impute to them virtual existence through the division" -- this is precisely what our fathers took the Tome's language of "this nature does/receives X, while this other nature does/receives Y" to be doing (imputing to the natures virtual existence), and it is unacceptable.

Your question may be rhetorical

Good. Let's keep it this way. A rhetorical question is not an unanswerable question, and anyway you and I have discussed this one before.

Did Fr. Peter Farrington and the OOs in the Join Commission make a change in doctrine when he said that "in two natures" can be acceptable? If not, it suggests that OOs would not be taking a change inn doctrine to agree with him and assert two natures.

Why don't you ask him, not me? I have already said in this thread in what sense we can accept two natures, and also why we will only say one nature.

OK, then can you say exactly and consistently what that "definition" of the word is?

Not any better than St. Cyril just did in the above quote. As I have read EO put it over on the OO board relative to your own doctrine, we seem to use 'nature' as you might use 'person', which...okay...I guess that's correct? I'm not well-versed enough in your tradition to say. But I am comfortable with that, I guess.

I hope you are understanding now why I stressed earlier that we can't look at these things in isolation just because we might use the same 'cover terms' to describe things. I don't know enough about how the Alexandrian tradition developed (there are several books about the Catechetical school from the time of Origen forward, but sadly very few have been translated into English, and my Arabic is quite poor) to say when or why we developed this different use of language, but I do know that it is something that well predates Chalcedon, and has been a source of confusion for outsiders for a long time now. Coming from the outside myself as well (I was not born into the OO church, but converted from Roman Catholicism), I suspect that there's quite a learning curve that I have yet to successfully deal with. My books are all inaccessible in storage right now, but if I recall correctly the recent book Christology and the Council of Chalcedon by Fr. Shenouda M. Ishak (who represented us in dialogues with the EO and the RC) goes into the background of these different traditions at some length, though I sadly was not able to get more than a few hundred pages into it before having to put it down due to other work that needed to be dealt with.

I am confused. Why should we not try to come together to see if certain phrases are objectively acceptable? If the phrase in two natures is objectively linguistically OK for Chalcedonians to say in greek, why couldn't any OOs use the same objectively acceptable expression? They are not using two different actual languages. They share the same Greek Bible that uses this word in a certain way. Did the Biblical meaning of the word stop having that meaning for OOs in their linguistic tradition? How can they read the Bible then?

Indeed you are. The point is not whether or not we can say or read the words, but what our tradition obliges us to say. To use an example from Chalcedon itself, I know that some RCs like to argue that the exclamation of the fathers at Chalcedon that "Peter has spoken through Leo!" (said in approval of the Tome) somehow 'proves' that the Christian East accepted Papal supremacy/Papal Petrine exclusivism, yet I do not know any EO who would agree with that. Yes, they are the 'same words' (i.e., the RCs are focusing on a phrase that was actually said, and that the EO would not deny was said), yet the RCs are interpreting it according to their (Ecclesiological) tradition, while the EO are interpreting it according to theirs. It would not be wise, in this context, to say "why can't you all agree that you are saying the same thing?", because indeed they may be saying the same words, but the traditions behind them are different. "Two natures" is a different tradition than "one (mia) nature", and even when approving of John of Antioch in the face of opposition from his own churchmen, our father St. Cyril never ceased to teach his own miaphysite Christology and clearly prefer that as the Orthodox expression of Christology.

We would do the same. Properly understood, two natures can be Orthodox. However, our tradition is one nature, and we will keep to that, as St. Cyril did even after reuniting with John of Antioch.

Would you like for EOs and OOs to solve their problems and reconcile, or would it be better to leave their problems unsolved and keep sincere Christians schismated over no actual difference? if the latter, why?

Again, I do not believe that there is no actual difference, so I can't answer this question as asked.

 

[rakovsky]

well, I would wonder about the context for that passage. monastics and cave-dwellers don't eat eggs or dairy for that week, and we hold them in high regard. since stuff like this is never produced in a vacuum, I would wonder what they were talking about and why that is there.

An internet searchfor the phrase didn't bring up anything besides the writer's quote of it. It could be someplace in a dusty reference centuries ago that isn't used in practice. The writer is just making a point that sometimes people make arguments out of nonessential issues. He wasn't pulling that quote out of deep-freeze to use as ammunitionfor portraying standard EO mentality towards OOs as petty or something focused on cheesefare.

 

[ArmyMatt]

It could be someplace in a dusty reference centuries ago that isn't used in practice. The writer is just making a point that sometimes people make arguments out of nonessential issues.

I know, that's why I asked for the context of the quote if known. it cannot be just a blanket statement if our own people fast from egg and dairy during that week.

 

[dzheremi]

well, I would wonder about the context for that passage. monastics and cave-dwellers don't eat eggs or dairy for that week, and we hold them in high regard. since stuff like this is never produced in a vacuum, I would wonder what they were talking about and why that is there.

Your guess is better than mine. I have no idea. I only meant that as an example of basically what the writer said it was -- the imbuing of a rather slight difference with all kinds of heretical undertones such that it's wrong because it's not what you yourselves do.

but with the return of many Western Christians to Orthodoxy, the traditional Western Rites and Western customs are being adapted with the Orthodox understanding. having attended some OO services, I see no reason why those rites and customs would also not be accepted. and you see this as well with the canonical Old Rite.

Should God will it, sure, but then we are kicking the can down the road because we will eventually have to deal with those differences which really are rooted in what I would call a different experience of Christianity and you have called a different experience of Christ.

and I know this is your view, but we cannot hold you as an equal bastion of Orthodoxy since the Church is one.

And the well-versed among us say likewise to you (as do I, following my good teachers). We do not really have a 'need' to reunite, in that sense. Though of course it is best, it cannot be at the expense of the truth in any case, as I'm sure you agree.

this does not mean that the non-Chalcedonian customs and pious beliefs or the "look" would have to be changed.

I am not referring to such things.

there is a lot of beauty and truth in what I have seen in the OO. it certainly would not need to be gutted or merely made Byzantine from what I have seen. there was a woman who came to the Orthodox mission I was at and she was Ethiopian. she and her son joined the Church after a quick catechesis, and she kept a lot of her piety and no one batted an eye. there was no demand that she give up her "Ethiopianness" and some of her customs became a part of the life of that parish.

Yes, I have seen that too among some local Ethiopians and Eritreans who, lacking a church of their own in the area (or anywhere nearby...there are no OO churches at all in this part of California), had to join the local OCA or Bulgarian congregations. It is perhaps a bit unusual to some people, as they really do still keep to their own ways, but it seems that Fr. Lawrence, the priest at the aforementioned St. Seraphim of Sarov OCA church, treats them as he would any other.

while there was some bad blood for a bit, I don't think we would be as closed off as you think to OO practice.

This really does remain to be seen, because again we are by necessity looking at things from a very macro viewpoint. Get down into the details, as I've tried to over and over with EO people, and suddenly things look very different. "We have the Christological Trisagion because our tradition is X" (something completely different than that of Constantinople). "What?! Tradition X is heresy and must be an invention, because everyone knows that this prayer came into the Church at Constantinople, so the understanding of Constantinople can be the only legitimate one!" (and this was from an archpriest of your church...ugh)

Again, some (and here I'm really stressing some) among you guys think that you're the center of the universe, just like Rome does, and anyone who doesn't do just as you say is inherently heretical for not following you. This attitude is so far beyond the pale of anything I can recognize as Orthodox Christianity, I don't really even see the point of trying to talk about anything else while it is still in place to any degree, as I believe it obscures the ability to see differences for what they are (which leads to situations where differences are imbued with all kinds of meaning and all of the sudden you're condemning the Oriental Orthodox for not eating cheese like you do, to recall the earlier example). And it is. It very much is.

the whole point of the Formula of Reunion and the reason behind Constantinople 2, was to show that if our theology is the same, it does not matter the words that we use.

Okay. And that's good. I agree with that. I suppose then that it remains to be seen if our theology is the same. I certainly believe that we have a different experience of Christianity (how can we not when you are so much bigger, more visible, richer, more ritualistically homogeneous, and more powerful than we are?). But I don't view that as inherently negative or dividing, and I am not in a rush to unify with anybody in the first place. This is Rakovsky's thread. I just happen to be dumb enough to keep responding to it, in hopes that someone who might wonder why things are as they are will then know an OO person's view on these matters.

 

[ArmyMatt]

Your guess is better than mine. I have no idea. I only meant that as an example of basically what the writer said it was -- the imbuing of a rather slight difference with all kinds of heretical undertones such that it's wrong because it's not what you yourselves do.

and just because it was something in a canon somewhere, that does not mean it is the Church's attitude to the non-Chalcedonians as a whole.

Should God will it, sure, but then we are kicking the can down the road because we will eventually have to deal with those differences which really are rooted in what I would call a different experience of Christianity and you have called a different experience of Christ.

right, and those are the issues that we should deal with where actual unity can take place.

And the well-versed among us say likewise to you (as do I, following my good teachers). We do not really have a 'need' to reunite, in that sense. Though of course it is best, it cannot be at the expense of the truth in any case, as I'm sure you agree.

I agree

I am not referring to such things.

I gather, just putting that out there.

Yes, I have seen that too among some local Ethiopians and Eritreans who, lacking a church of their own in the area (or anywhere nearby...there are no OO churches at all in this part of California), had to join the local OCA or Bulgarian congregations. It is perhaps a bit unusual to some people, as they really do still keep to their own ways, but it seems that Fr. Lawrence, the priest at the aforementioned St. Seraphim of Sarov OCA church, treats them as he would any other.

sure, same as the mission parish I was at in TN, same as the OCA parish in Harrisburg

This really does remain to be seen, because again we are by necessity looking at things from a very macro viewpoint. Get down into the details, as I've tried to over and over with EO people, and suddenly things look very different. "We have the Christological Trisagion because our tradition is X" (something completely different than that of Constantinople). "What?! Tradition X is heresy and must be an invention, because everyone knows that this prayer came into the Church at Constantinople, so the understanding of Constantinople can be the only legitimate one!" (and this was from an archpriest of your church...ugh)

well, all I can say is that you do see that and you do see the opposite. one of my professors here gave a stern rebuke when the Malankar started dialoguing with the Orthodox, because they were told all of these Byzantine things to adopt. he pretty much said that is stupid because they should not give up what is beautiful and edifying about their tradition. they should only have to get rid of what is in error, and keep everything that makes them wonderfully and uniquely Indian. that has been the EO method for talking to the Nestorians, as I said earlier and the Old Believers.

Again, some (and here I'm really stressing some) among you guys think that you're the center of the universe, just like Rome does, and anyone who doesn't do just as you say is inherently heretical for not following you. This attitude is so far beyond the pale of anything I can recognize as Orthodox Christianity, I don't really even see the point of trying to talk about anything else while it is still in place to any degree, as I believe it obscures the ability to see differences for what they are (which leads to situations where differences are imbued with all kinds of meaning and all of the sudden you're condemning the Oriental Orthodox for not eating cheese like you do, to recall the earlier example). And it is. It very much is.

yes, we have them. your confession does as well. a buddy here did a report about the state of the dialogue (and he got a lot of his info from a Coptic priest in Britain) between us, and some of the words are just as harsh. but I don't want to talk to you about how bad some of the silliness can be. I am not gonna not be Coptic because some Coptic somewhere is a jerk, I am not gonna be Coptic because I don't believe it to be true (and I know you think the same way, just saying).

Okay. And that's good. I agree with that. I suppose then that it remains to be seen if our theology is the same.

that's why my personal correspondence with you concerning Chalcedon. to find a heresy in Chalcedon, it must be as the Chalcedonians defined it. not merely something more vague than a chunk of the Church at the time would have liked, but where is the actual heresy. which, if we both follow the Formula of Reunion, the words would not matter as much as the understanding (again, I know you know, just saying).

I certainly believe that we have a different experience of Christianity (how can we not when you are so much bigger, more visible, richer, more ritualistically homogeneous, and more powerful than we are?). But I don't view that as inherently negative or dividing, and I am not in a rush to unify with anybody in the first place.

I can agree on your points, and I don't think that your historical flavor and uniqueness is a bad thing either. if we can express the same theology, no matter how we express it, that stuff adds to the richness of the Church. but that is why I also am in no rush to unite, and not for unity's sake either. we need to unify because of the Truth, not because of some worldly sense of unity.

This is Rakovsky's thread. I just happen to be dumb enough to keep responding to it, in hopes that someone who might wonder why things are as they are will then know an OO person's view on these matters.

I am glad you are posting. if I am ever in a spot where I am near an OO parish, if I want to start a dialogue I should know what you all actually believe, and not some cliche about your beliefs.

 

[dzheremi]

I find you and I substantially in agreement concerning many matters, Matt, although of course still regarding our respective churches and Christologies as those which express the faith without error or confusion. This is as I would have expected at the outset, and I must say I prefer it to the well-meaning but ultimately less-serious among my confession who feel that we ought to conform to Chalcedon for the sake of unity. This misses in a real sense what unity actually is.

As far as finding a flaw in Chalcedon is concerned, I'm not sure what I can say that hasn't been discussed already here and in other places. I do not believe it is merely less clear wording than we would like. I believe it is approving and later mandating something that our tradition does not allow us to say (as I explained in the earlier post to Rakovsky, with an extensive quote from St. Cyril that is very clear: "...so that the two no longer are two, but through them both the one living being is produced"; we can't say two because there are no longer two, as they have become one as a result of the union which has produced the one person), such that becoming dyophysites/Chalcedonians would mean giving up at least some of our tradition, and of course we are not willing to do that, and there is no reason that would justify doing that.

 

[rakovsky]

It really doesn't, though. It is recorded in the Ethiopian synaxarium that HH excommunicated Eutyches (the site that I usually visit to read the synaxarium is down right now, but from what I remember it is mentioned in or around the entry for Nehasse 22). It is also recorded in other OO sources and even by some EO writers. Here, read Fr. Romanides' article on the subject (opens as a pdf), which plainly states "The backbone of Orthodox tradition is the fact that the Logos became consubstantial with us. There can be no doubt that Dioscorus agrees with this fact and hence can never be accused of being a monophysite along with Eutyches." (p.487)

It would be interesting to see when and in exactly what context he said this, what was it exactly that happened, what Eutyches said after the Council of Ephesus II that made the excommunication happen. By having Eutyches give only a paragraph long paper statement at Ephesus II saying that Eutyches was right all along and that he affirmed the fathers and some basic truths, without him being able to get questioned, it makes it look like a manufactured statement at Ephesus to just try to get Eutyches approved and Flavian rejected. The Ephesus II event was a strange affair itself, since it meant deposing Flavian for rejecting Eutyches, when OOs would agree that Eutyches really was a monphysite when Flavian rejected him.

"If in common logic Christ has two natures based on the pre-schism premises, but common logic is out the window, it seems tough to ever prove anything."

Not really. I'm just saying that what is proper to a given tradition is not to be established by how we use common language, as Christology and the traditions that inform it are specific to what has developed in particular places (hence before Chalcedon there were the conflicts between St. Cyril and some of the Antiochians). That's the problem of taking what is 'common', as the traditions themselves had developed in their own ways before any of this was recognized to be a problem.

What you see as your tradition is Dioscorus' rejection of Chalcedon's in two natures. And you do not allow common logic to be a tool that both sides can use to judge whether Chalcedon's in two natures is correct. In your reasoning, Cyril might say in Letter 53 Christ is "in both natures" or say in another letter that there are "two natures in man" (body and soul) as an explicit analogy to Jesus' two natures, but apparently Dioscorus' rejection of in two natures means that when Chalcedonians say in two natures, Chalcedonians are wrong, even though Chalcedon must be understood in light of Chalcedonians' traditions and that in two natures can be acceptable depending on the meaning. And common logic can't be used to judge whether the underlined statement makes sense, only the OO tradition of rejecting Chalcedon's "in two natures" can.

We have reached an area where basic logic and reasoning do not apply any more. If that's the standard, then it shows why we have gridlock. EOs can use logic to show why "in two natures" is sensible, part of OOs do not agree to using logic to try to objectively evaluate the terms used.

It's sad, Dzheremi. I would like EOs and OOs to look at problems and try to solve them, and Paul tells us to do so, but if they can't legitimately question their own past "traditions" of rejecting each other over "natures", I don't see it either.

It's like being in a room without a door.

"It seems strange. Why would someone prefer to have schism over nothing rather than solve problems?"



Why ask me this? Do you think that because I have not agreed with you that the schism is over nothing that I am such a person?

Because you put me in a room with no door, Dzheremi. I am in a place where I want EOs and OOs to unite and solve the basic difference over "natures", and yet I'm not allowed to use "common logic" to get out of the room, only the "tradition" that says that Chalcedon's "in two natures" formula is wrong.

And what was the context of this statement? I am sensing that we may have a problem in reaching a common understanding if you are going to present isolated clauses from St. Cyril's letters as though they are self-interpreting.

To Sixtus, Bishop of Rome (Fragments)

Cyril, to Sixtus,² the Bishop of Rome.
For i never am accused of having thought anything different from the truth in my opinions, nor have I ever said that the divine nature of the Word was subject to suffering.
... I know that the nature of God is impassible, unchangeable, and immutable, even though by the nature of his humanity Christ is one in both natures and from both natures....​

I understand that this is not the full context of the letter, but my point is that the phrase "Christ is in both natures" (plural) can itself be a legitimate statement.

Cyril was getting major flack from his own party for accepting reunion with John Antiochene, as he says in his letter:

Some attack the exposition of faith which those from the East [Antiochene] have made and ask, “For what reason did the Bishop of Alexandria [Cyril] endure or even praise those who say that there are [present tense] two natures?” Those who hold the same teachings as Nestorius say that he thinks the same thing too [as Antiochenes], snatching to their side those who do not understand precision. But it is necessary to say the following to those who are accusing me... ((To Eulogius the Priest, Letter 44))​

There were major forces on Cyril's side who did not want to see his reunion, and it's unfortunately not unforeseeable that they came to the fore on his death.

I don't consider you guys to be crypto-Nestorian (although it is worth noting that the Nestorians certainly felt themselves to be vindicated by Chalcedon).

That's nice.

"Why did you not like Cyril's quote when Cyril said that Jesus suffered "in his humanity", not in his divinity, which I cited to you before?"

Who says I didn't like it? For sure He did!

This was the implication I got from your statement "And the definition accepted at Chalcedon messes with what is our (OO) common understanding of the incarnation, by claiming that two natures remain because He does some things in accordance with His humanity and some things in accordance with His divinity,"
Cyril's statement that Jesus did something in his humanity - suffered, was not the kind of statement that I thought you accepted based on your rejection of this kind of logic.

Again, as is proper to humanity to suffer (read: as He truly assumed our humanity), this is what happened. But this is not saying, as the Tome does, that the nature experiences this.

"it is affirmed that he suffered in his humanity, for his flesh suffered." ~Cyril, letter 46.
The fact that the flesh suffered does not mean that the flesh is its own person, anymore than saying that his human nature suffered.

"Cyril repeatedly speaks of the human nature of Christ as “his own flesh,”"
http://www.academia.edu/185130/Humanity_of_Christ_in_Cyril_and_Maximus

There is no problem in normal speech in saying that his human nature suffered, since it was his flesh, not his divine that suffered, and since it's OK in common speech to say that a "nature suffered". Therefore, it does not divide him into two people to say that his human nature suffered.

We rather refer everything back to the person, who is in one nature (from two) after the union. To further quote the very same letter (from which you did a very good job extracting the dyophysitism-supporting passages), letter 46:

"Again this question (of how we can assert that the Lord suffered in His humanity without also granting that the two natures subsisted after the union --dzh.) is no less in opposition to those who say that there is one incarnate physis of the Word, and the proposers, desiring to prove that this formula is rather useless, eagerly strive to prove that the two natures always subsisted. But they have ignored the fact that those things which are usually distinguished not just according to speculation, completely and specifically differ from one another in every manner separately into diversity. Let a man like unto us be an example for us again. For we know that there are two natures in him, one the nature of the soul and the other the nature of the body. But when we divide him merely in thought and conceive the difference in subtle speculations or the presentations of thought to the mind, we do not posit the natures one apart from the other, nor indeed do we at all impute to them virtual existence through the division, but conceive of them as the natures of one man, so that the two no longer are two, but through them both the one living being is produced." (Letter 46, p. 203)

Is this not what I have been saying from the beginning, that in our tradition we refer everything to the person of Christ, rather than to this nature or to that nature simply because some things befit one and not the other?

He never says in the above quote that we do not refer things " to this nature or to that nature simply because some things befit one and not the other".
As I quoted, previously, he does refer things like suffering "to this nature or to that nature simply because some things befit one and not the other".
Is this a result of looking for a way to say that the Chalcedonian way of talking about natures is wrong.

Did Dioscorus reject making distinctions like "God DID NOT ENDURE THE SUFFERINGS OF THE BODY IN HIS OWN NATURE, BUT SUFFERED RATHER IN HIS EARTHLY NATURE" (Cyril Letter 46), because such distinctions are an assertion of two natures after the union? Is Dioscorus such that he cannot be theologically mistaken?

Did Fr. Peter Farrington and the OOs in the Join Commission make a change in doctrine when he said that "in two natures" can be acceptable? If not, it suggests that OOs would not be taking a change inn doctrine to agree with him and assert two natures.​

Why don't you ask him, not me?

His position is that EOs and OOs have been talking past each other. When EOs say two natures, they mean two essences. This is also F. Romanides' position.

Fr. Peter doesn't have a problem with confessing two natures in the sense of essences, and neither do we. This is a normal meaning of the word in common speech going back many centuries.

I have already said in this thread in what sense we can accept two natures, and also why we will only say one nature.

It's kind of weird few people in that fight fight back in 440-451 AD bothered to clearly define what sense they were talking about it. But they really did not discuss theology in the same way we write English textbooks or legal briefs today. I guess they just acted like it was common sense.

Not any better than St. Cyril just did in the above quote.

Cyril writes:
"Let a man like unto us be an example for us again. For we know that there are two natures in him, one the nature of the soul and the other the nature of the body. But when we divide him merely in thought and conceive the difference in subtle speculations or the presentations of thought to the mind, we do not posit the natures one apart from the other,"
If you fully mean that the definition of "natures" is at best what Cyril said in the quote you pointed to, then the problem is easily solved. Cyril posits that there are two natures in man and gives it as an analogy to Christ, later on in the next sentence positing that the "division" was only in theory.
Like the quote above, Chalcedon says that Christ is in two natures and that they are undivided and only one hypostasis. This statement itself has no conflict with Cyril's statement that man, like Christ, is in two natures, the division being only theoretical.

As I have read EO put it over on the OO board relative to your own doctrine, we seem to use 'nature' as you might use 'person', which...okay...I guess that's correct?

Hmmm... A body and a soul are not two persons, but per Cyril they are two natures. Wouldn't OOs say that the Trinity are three persons and hypostases, but not three natures?

I don't know enough about how the Alexandrian tradition developed (there are several books about the Catechetical school from the time of Origen forward, but sadly very few have been translated into English, and my Arabic is quite poor) to say when or why we developed this different use of language, but I do know that it is something that well predates Chalcedon, and has been a source of confusion for outsiders for a long time now.

I understand there is a claim that OOs use natures to mean person or entity, but I am not sure that Cyril used it that way, since in Letter 46 he agreed that Christ was in two undivided natures, and I doubt he would say that the Trinity is in three natures.

The point is not whether or not we can say or read the words, but what our tradition obliges us to say.

Is OO tradition outside the councils and Bible fallible or infallible?
I know that the RC magisterial infallibility rule would basically force one to do mental gymnastics to prove whatever doctrine the RC Church expounded, Biblical and logical or not, but this is not the Orthodox approach.

Personsally, I am Ok with reevaluating whether the "Ecumenical Council" of Chalcedon's formula "in two natures" is acceptable or not. What percent of OOs do you think are? Maybe most of them do not care and think we all believe in Jesus anyway and this is what matters?

To use an example from Chalcedon itself, I know that some RCs like to argue that the exclamation of the fathers at Chalcedon that "Peter has spoken through Leo!" (said in approval of the Tome) somehow 'proves' that the Christian East accepted Papal supremacy/Papal Petrine exclusivism, yet I do not know any EO who would agree with that. Yes, they are the 'same words' (i.e., the RCs are focusing on a phrase that was actually said, and that the EO would not deny was said), yet the RCs are interpreting it according to their (Ecclesiological) tradition, while the EO are interpreting it according to theirs. It would not be wise, in this context, to say "why can't you all agree that you are saying the same thing?", because indeed they may be saying the same words, but the traditions behind them are different. "Two natures" is a different tradition than "one (mia) nature", and even when approving of John of Antioch in the face of opposition from his own churchmen, our father St. Cyril never ceased to teach his own miaphysite Christology and clearly prefer that as the Orthodox expression of Christology.

With Chalcedon, EOs and RCs agree on the same words "Peter has spoken", but reach substantively different implications, which when spelled out reflect what both sides agree are differences in theology, ie the papacy's role.

But with Chalcedon, when EOs and OOs spell out the implications of "in two natures", they do not reflect what are differences in both sides' otherwise stated theologies.

Outside the words "Peter has spoken", RCs and EOs agree they differ. Outside the word "natures", EOs and OOs cannot agree on a substantive difference. When some EOs say OOs are implicitly monophysite, OOs object not just to the implication, but that their own position itself is even monophysite.

It would be wise, in this context, to say "why can't you all agree that you are saying the same thing?"

Why not follow Paul's advice and try to solve simple logic problems and reunite if there is no identifiable substantive logical difference?

However, our tradition is one nature, and we will keep to that, as St. Cyril did even after reuniting with John of Antioch.

Do you follow Cyril's tradition?
What about Cyril's tradition of sincerely seeking reunion over this very difference?

 

[rakovsky]

I believe it is approving and later mandating something that our tradition does not allow us to say (as I explained in the earlier post to Rakovsky, with an extensive quote from St. Cyril that is very clear: "...so that the two no longer are two, but through them both the one living being is produced"; we can't say two because there are no longer two,

You can say "there are no longer two" and you can say that "there are two natures in him", because Cyril used both statements in that same passage:

For we know that there are two natures in him, one the nature of the soul and the other the nature of the body. But when we divide him merely in thought and conceive the difference in subtle speculations or the presentations of thought to the mind, we do not posit the natures one apart from the other, nor indeed do we at all impute to them virtual existence through the division, but we conceive of them as the natures of one man, so that the two no longer are two, but through them both the one living being is produced.​

Therefore, both kinds of phrases, such as "there are no longer two"(in the sense of divided) and "there are two natures" or "he is in both natures" (Cyril's Letter 53) (in the sense of undivided as Chalcedon states) are acceptable.

Cyril was able to use both sets of ideas and thus reunite with John Antiochene, while he complained that others of his party "attacked" him for doing so.

This schism is senseless, as no sane common sense objection to using the phrase "Christ is in two natures" in the Biblical meaning of "natures" has been raised, and Cyril used these expressions himself.

Cyril wanted reunion with the Antiochenes, a major party disagreed with him and after Cyril's death Dioscorus exiled Flavian for correctly deposing Eutyches for Monophysitism. It does not make sense. People need to seek reunion and solve problems like Paul taught and Cyril did.

 

[dzheremi]

What you see as your tradition is Dioscorus' rejection of Chalcedon's in two natures.

Our tradition is to stick with the one-nature Christology of St. Cyril, which predates HH St. Dioscorus.

And you do not allow common logic to be a tool that both sides can use to judge whether Chalcedon's in two natures is correct.

I do not allow for the fact that we share some of the same terminology to be taken to mean that we share understandings in common that we may not in fact share due to the different traditions that arose in Alexandria vis-a-vis Antioch, for instance, no.

In your reasoning, Cyril might say in Letter 53 Christ is "in both natures" or say in another letter that there are "two natures in man" (body and soul) as an explicit analogy to Jesus' two natures, but apparently Dioscorus' rejection of in two natures means that when Chalcedonians say in two natures, Chalcedonians are wrong, even though Chalcedon must be understood in light of Chalcedonians' traditions and that in two natures can be acceptable depending on the meaning. And common logic can't be used to judge whether the underlined statement makes sense, only the OO tradition of rejecting Chalcedon's "in two natures" can.

I feel like you are taking St. Cyril's example more literally than I would. In this example, there are indeed two natures in man, the soul and the body, but as these are both within one man, man is thereby composed of a union of the two, and hence they are not really two, but one. Again, all is referred back to the person. It is not in our tradition to speak of the natures as somehow being separate from the person, even though they can be distinguished as being not the same as each other (as body and soul are 'different natures', and it is by their union that these two become one, such that we no longer say that there are two within the person who nonetheless 'has' both by virtue of being composed of both -- they are simply not separated, despite being distinguishable from one another; thus St. Severus, for instance, says of the incarnation that it is a union which "drives out division", as in it is no longer possible to divide what has been united).

We have reached an area where basic logic and reasoning do not apply any more. If that's the standard, then it shows why we have gridlock. EOs can use logic to show why "in two natures" is sensible, part of OOs do not agree to using logic to try to objectively evaluate the terms used.

Now you are going beyond anything I have written into your wrong interpretation of my explanation. If you'll permit me, the OO point of view is actually very logical and easy to explain. Here is St. Cyril's explanation again, as I cannot hope to improve upon it:

"Again this question is no less in opposition to those who say that there is one incarnate physis of the Word, and the proposers, desiring to prove that this formula is rather useless, eagerly strive to prove that the two natures always subsisted. But they have ignored the fact that those things which are usually distinguished not just according to speculation, completely and specifically differ from one another in every manner separately into diversity. Let a man like unto us be an example for us again. For we know that there are two natures in him, one the nature of the soul and the other the nature of the body. But when we divide him merely in thought and conceive the difference in subtle speculations or the presentations of thought to the mind, we do not posit the natures one apart from the other, nor indeed do we at all impute to them virtual existence through the division, but conceive of them as the natures of one man, so that the two no longer are two, but through them both the one living being is produced."

It's sad, Dzheremi. I would like EOs and OOs to look at problems and try to solve them, and Paul tells us to do so, but if they can't legitimately question their own past "traditions" of rejecting each other over "natures", I don't see it either.

With due respect, the fact that you do not like or perhaps do not fully understand what you are being told does not mean that we are not looking at the situation and trying to see where we might come together on some points, even as we diverge on others. This is what I believe ArmyMatt and I have been doing in this thread as well, despite not necessarily agreeing on everything. We aren't necessarily going to understand each other, either, but so long as we are still talking, maybe that will not always be so.

Because you put me in a room with no door, Dzheremi. I am in a place where I want EOs and OOs to unite and solve the basic difference over "natures", and yet I'm not allowed to use "common logic" to get out of the room, only the "tradition" that says that Chalcedon's "in two natures" formula is wrong.

I'm not sure how I've done that, but if I have hurt you in some way, I'm sorry. That was not my intention. I think you are taking my point about the different preexisting philosophical traditions that inform the Christology of the Alexandrians and others a bit more heavily than I had anticipated. It's not something that needs to shut down any dialogue, but it is something that we need to be aware of whenever someone suggests that maybe we're all saying the same thing by virtue of sharing some terms in common. We may in fact be using the same terms in different ways, as I have been told (by EO) is the case with the OO vs. EO use of the term 'nature', so this would not actually be a point of commonality, but something to keep in mind when we talk to each other.

To Sixtus, Bishop of Rome (Fragments)

Cyril, to Sixtus,² the Bishop of Rome.
For i never am accused of having thought anything different from the truth in my opinions, nor have I ever said that the divine nature of the Word was subject to suffering.
... I know that the nature of God is impassible, unchangeable, and immutable, even though by the nature of his humanity Christ is one in both natures and from both natures....​

I understand that this is not the full context of the letter, but my point is that the phrase "Christ is in both natures" (plural) can itself be a legitimate statement.

Without the full context, however, it's not really possible to evaluate what is meant by "even though by the nature of his humanity Christ is one in both natures and from both natures". As we do not say that He is in two natures after the union (but rather that "the two no longer are two, but through them both the one living being is produced" -- I am fairly certain that St. Cyril taught that Christ is one... ), I suspect that this is another statement which the full context will show is acceptable to us, just as the portion you have chosen to highlight is acceptable to you.

Cyril was getting major flack from his own party for accepting reunion with John Antiochene, as he says in his letter:

Some attack the exposition of faith which those from the East [Antiochene] have made and ask, “For what reason did the Bishop of Alexandria [Cyril] endure or even praise those who say that there are [present tense] two natures?” Those who hold the same teachings as Nestorius say that he thinks the same thing too [as Antiochenes], snatching to their side those who do not understand precision. But it is necessary to say the following to those who are accusing me... ((To Eulogius the Priest, Letter 44))​

There were major forces on Cyril's side who did not want to see his reunion, and it's unfortunately not unforeseeable that they came to the fore on his death.

Okay. I have no problem with any of this. Those who opposed the reunion of St. Cyril with John of Antioch truly didn't understand the situation as well as St. Cyril did, so I'm not sure what other reaction I'm supposed to have to this. All I have been doing in this exchange with you is showing where and how we take our Christology from the Orthodox saint who you also say your Christology is in line with. I have not said anything about there being no precision among those who say two natures. In fact I'm pretty sure I've at least implied the opposite by mentioning how you guys dealt with the Nestorian-sympathizers who had come out of the woodwork emboldened by the acceptance of the Tome, at your Second Council of Constantinople. So if you are trying to cast me or my communion as those who opposed Cyril in this reunion, you are mistaken. I've dealt with this already with ArmyMatt in a thread recently (I can't remember the title, but perhaps if Matt reads this he might remember) in which it was asserted, with no evidence, that we say that the reunion was forced. In fact we do not say that, and we celebrate the reunion as a triumph and lament the fact that for various reasons it was not lasting.

This was the implication I got from your statement "And the definition accepted at Chalcedon messes with what is our (OO) common understanding of the incarnation, by claiming that two natures remain because He does some things in accordance with His humanity and some things in accordance with His divinity,"
Cyril's statement that Jesus did something in his humanity - suffered, was not the kind of statement that I thought you accepted based on your rejection of this kind of logic.

Huh? I'm not sure how you got that impression, but what I'm saying is that, yes, we recognize that some things He does are things that are appropriate to humanity (he ate), while some are appropriate to divinity (he raised the dead). We do not, however, believe that He must be in two natures after the union in order for this to be the case, because once again we refer everything back to the person of Christ. Whether He was doing a 'divine' or 'human' act, He was and is always one and the same Christ.

"it is affirmed that he suffered in his humanity, for his flesh suffered." ~Cyril, letter 46.
The fact that the flesh suffered does not mean that the flesh is its own person, anymore than saying that his human nature suffered.

But natures do not suffer -- people do. This is why we do not accept the language of the Tome which is seen as too close to imputing to the natures virtual existence, by the virtue of the fact that it says that this nature does this and this nature does that. Nope. Natures, in themselves, do not do anything. The people who have them do.

"Cyril repeatedly speaks of the human nature of Christ as “his own flesh,”"
http://www.academia.edu/185130/Humanity_of_Christ_in_Cyril_and_Maximus

Okay.

There is no problem in normal speech in saying that his human nature suffered, since it was his flesh, not his divine that suffered, and since it's OK in common speech to say that a "nature suffered". Therefore, it does not divide him into two people to say that his human nature suffered.

To say that He suffered in His flesh (a statement with which we all agree, I should hope) is not the same as saying "His human nature suffered". The first statement is about Christ the person (He suffered), while the second is a statement about one of the natures of which He is composed, as though it is itself experiencing the suffering. Again, natures do not suffer, people do, so no, that is most emphatically not acceptable. Jesus, as a human being who is also God, wept. Jesus' human nature did not weep, because it does not have tear ducts, cannot produce tears, etc. Again, natures don't do anything. People do.

Is this a result of looking for a way to say that the Chalcedonian way of talking about natures is wrong.

No. It's being careful to not violate St. Cyril's anathemas by attributing some things to the divinity or the humanity separate from the person, as you appear to have unwittingly just done by making a statement about a nature doing this or that instead of about the person doing this or that.

Did Dioscorus reject making distinctions like "God DID NOT ENDURE THE SUFFERINGS OF THE BODY IN HIS OWN NATURE, BUT SUFFERED RATHER IN HIS EARTHLY NATURE" (Cyril Letter 46), because such distinctions are an assertion of two natures after the union? Is Dioscorus such that he cannot be theologically mistaken?

I am unaware of any such writings of HH St. Dioscorus (he is not known to have left voluminous writings; there is the note sent along with his tooth that says that this is the price he paid for defending the Orthodox faith, but other than that I am not aware of any writings of his, though no doubt there are some; nevertheless, he is called in Coptic "our teacher" -- pensakh -- not "our writer"). But this is immaterial because I do know that such distinctions may be made without asserting two natures after the union.

His position is that EOs and OOs have been talking past each other. When EOs say two natures, they mean two essences. This is also F. Romanides' position.

Fr. Peter doesn't have a problem with confessing two natures in the sense of essences, and neither do we. This is a normal meaning of the word in common speech going back many centuries.

Okay.

It's kind of weird few people in that fight fight back in 440-451 AD bothered to clearly define what sense they were talking about it. But they really did not discuss theology in the same way we write English textbooks or legal briefs today. I guess they just acted like it was common sense.

If this is how you'd prefer to think of things, then okay...common sense told us that Chalcedon was wrong, because we believe in one nature from two after the union, not two, and Chalcedon is a pretty clear violation of that.

Cyril writes:
"Let a man like unto us be an example for us again. For we know that there are two natures in him, one the nature of the soul and the other the nature of the body. But when we divide him merely in thought and conceive the difference in subtle speculations or the presentations of thought to the mind, we do not posit the natures one apart from the other,"
If you fully mean that the definition of "natures" is at best what Cyril said in the quote you pointed to, then the problem is easily solved. Cyril posits that there are two natures in man and gives it as an analogy to Christ, later on in the next sentence positing that the "division" was only in theory.

And even later in the quote (after where you stopped quoting), HH St. Cyril says that two natures do not remain two within the one person who is created from them, but rather become one through the union of the two. In other words, exactly what I have been saying is our position all along, and has always been our position.

Is OO tradition outside the councils and Bible fallible or infallible?
I know that the RC magisterial infallibility rule would basically force one to do mental gymnastics to prove whatever doctrine the RC Church expounded, Biblical and logical or not, but this is not the Orthodox approach.

Er...does it need to be delcared 'infallible' according to some measure in order to be followed? And what does it mean to say that it is or isn't? Obviously if you say that it is not then you presumably have some outside, objective standard by which you are judging it to not be so, but we obviously don't approach our own tradition with the a priori belief that it needs to be validated by outsiders, or that there must be something wrong with it just because some other people might disagree with it. It's not even for you. This is such a weird question. Is EO tradition outside of the councils infallible? What does it matter? I thought this need to have some infallible standard set above the faith itself was more of an RC thing than an EO thing. For us, we know what we have been given, and we trust our fathers because we find in them the faith of the early Church which we are.

Personsally, I am Ok with reevaluating whether the "Ecumenical Council" of Chalcedon's formula "in two natures" is acceptable or not. What percent of OOs do you think are?

I don't know...zero to...negative zero? Four? Two million? What does this matter? Is a hypothetical synod or council to deal with this somehow going to include all ~90 or whatever million of us?

Maybe most of them do not care and think we all believe in Jesus anyway and this is what matters?

Is this an irrelevant and nasty swipe or are you just running out of steam for this topic as I am?

But with Chalcedon, when EOs and OOs spell out the implications of "in two natures", they do not reflect what are differences in both sides' otherwise stated theologies.

So it then your contention that "in two natures after the union" and "from two natures/in one nature after the union" are the same belief? Because that is the crux of our difference, which is of course related to how we understand the incarnation, the use of the term 'nature', and all of these other things we have been discussing in this thread. There have been quite a few, and while they have seemed to go in circles, this does not somehow make them not real. So I'm afraid I must disagree with you here.

Outside the words "Peter has spoken", RCs and EOs agree they differ. Outside the word "natures", EOs and OOs cannot agree on a substantive difference. When some EOs say OOs are implicitly monophysite, OOs object not just to the implication, but that their own position itself is even monophysite.

Huh? This is not a comparable situation. EOs who claim that we are somehow monophysite are quite simply wrong, as our own liturgical prayers and other sources show. We recognize that Jesus Christ our Lord is 100% perfectly and completely God and 100% perfectly and completely man. True monophysites, like Eutyches and others, believe(d) instead that Christ's divinity somehow swallowed up or dissolved His humanity. This is a heresy birthed in hell, and we reject it utterly and completely, forever and ever (amin).

It would be wise, in this context, to say "why can't you all agree that you are saying the same thing?"

Clearly this idea that we are somehow saying the same thing is popular these days, and has some notable antecedents who are not to be dismissed (such as the aforementioned St. Nerses of the twelfth century), but I do not agree with them, and I am not the only one who holds such a view. Honestly I would prefer it if we could find that we are saying different yet complementary things (as I believe that this is more in line with the earlier reunion of John of Antioch and St. Cyril; if St. Cyril really thought that they were the same, rather than being acceptable but different, then it is curious that he would continue to prefer his own formula). It is not up to me to determine that this is so, and it has not been determined to be so to both sides' satisfaction yet (and a one-sided union is no union).

Why not follow Paul's advice and try to solve simple logic problems and reunite if there is no identifiable substantive logical difference?

Why are you assuming that I wouldn't if I believed as you do that there is really not difference? Would that there were not! Then we'd all be one or the other and there wouldn't have been any schism over this in the first place. But the roots of the schism were in preexisting differences between different theological traditions which came to a head eventually at Chalcedon. So we live in the world that is today, and not the world that perhaps could have been. And in that world today, the Eastern Orthodox Church is not convinced that we are Orthodox, and for our part we are not all convinced that you are Orthodox, either. This is the reality of life. What can I, a simple layman, say? All I did was pick the side in it that I feel is correct, as you yourself have either done knowingly as an adult or had done for you as a child/baby. So you should also ask yourself this question, and maybe really think about how honest you are with yourself in answering it. After all, you must think the EO are particularly right about something that we are not right about, or else presumably there is no real reason to be one or the other and it's all a matter of person preference. I just love eating beans 200+ days a year and hate bouzouki music, while maybe you love having cheese during cheesefare week or an Armenian pushed you down and called you a bad name in primary school. What a wacky, random world we live in.

Do you follow Cyril's tradition?

Yes.

What about Cyril's tradition of sincerely seeking reunion over this very difference?

Yes. And I also follow his tradition of saying that Christ is in one nature after the union, not two, even as others may say other things.

 

[ArmyMatt]

I find you and I substantially in agreement concerning many matters, Matt, although of course still regarding our respective churches and Christologies as those which express the faith without error or confusion.

same here, it's why I keep asking you stuffs

This is as I would have expected at the outset, and I must say I prefer it to the well-meaning but ultimately less-serious among my confession who feel that we ought to conform to Chalcedon for the sake of unity. This misses in a real sense what unity actually is.

amen

As far as finding a flaw in Chalcedon is concerned, I'm not sure what I can say that hasn't been discussed already here and in other places. I do not believe it is merely less clear wording than we would like. I believe it is approving and later mandating something that our tradition does not allow us to say (as I explained in the earlier post to Rakovsky, with an extensive quote from St. Cyril that is very clear: "...so that the two no longer are two, but through them both the one living being is produced"; we can't say two because there are no longer two, as they have become one as a result of the union which has produced the one person), such that becoming dyophysites/Chalcedonians would mean giving up at least some of our tradition, and of course we are not willing to do that, and there is no reason that would justify doing that.

right, but we both in our personal correspondence referenced saints who did maintain the distinction of the Two Natures after the union. St. Cyril in his letter to John of Antioch, St Athanasius as you pointed out, and St Hypolitus as I pointed out. all of them maintain a distinction, which is not the same as a division of natures which is what St Cyril forbids. Christ Himself says that which is in the Cup is His Body and Blood. He does not simply say this is Him. and yet we all know that the Body and the Blood are in no way divided from His Divinity, because there is only One Divine Person. and we know that when we commune, we commune with the One Christ.

remember, St Leo was on St Cyril's side for Ephesus (he was Pope Celestine's archdeacon) and St Cyril and his writings were the starting point for Chalcedon. so I can see how you might not like the language, but to show that it heresy you actually have to find St Leo dividing the Two Natures.

 

[rakovsky]

remember, St Leo was on St Cyril's side for Ephesus (he was Pope Celestine's archdeacon) and St Cyril and his writings were the starting point for Chalcedon.

Good point.

so I can see how you might not like the language, but to show that it heresy you actually have to find St Leo dividing the Two Natures.

Key words here: "actually" "find", as opposed to inferring that the Chalcedonian Formula's words "in two natures... unseparated" means "in two natures separated".

So again He showed the wound in His side, the marks of the nails, and all the signs of His quite recent suffering, saying, See My hands and feet, that it is I. Handle Me and see that a spirit has not flesh and bones, as you see Me have ; in order that the properties of His Divine and human nature [SINGULAR] might be acknowledged to remain still inseparable: and that we might know the Word not to be different from the flesh, in such a sense as also to confess that the one Son of God is both the Word and flesh. Of this mystery of the faith your opponent Eutyches must be reckoned to have but little sense if he has recognized our nature in the Only-begotten of God neither through the humiliation of His having to die, nor through the glory of His rising again.

~Leo's Tome


Just remember:

Rejecting a common sense logic formula.... over no substantive difference that uses the Biblical definition of words.

 

[ArmyMatt]

"For, as we must often be saying, He is One and the same, truly Son of God and truly Son of Man."
"For although in the Lord Jesus Christ there is One Person of God and man...."
"Accordingly, on account of this unity of Person which is to be understood as existing in both of the natures."
"But the same Everlasting Son of an Everlasting Parent was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary."
"Accordingly, while the distinctness of both natures and substances was preserved, and both met in One Person.....one and the same Mediator between God and man, the Man Jesus Christ"
"Accordingly, the same Who, remaining in the form of God, made man, was made man in the form of a servant."

~Leo's Tome

and that's not including the four apophatic statements, two of which say the union was immutable and indivisible.

and I forgot to mention St Leo also, when he worked for Pope Celestine, commissioned St John Cassian to write an apology against Nestorius.

 

[dzheremi]

Oh boy, a quote fight! I just love getting into these in every thread about this subject.

Actually, I don't, so I'll leave you two to it, and unwatch the thread now, as I've exhausted my willingness to repeat myself here. I'm not even here to say that you shouldn't believe in the Tome (though that's what i would say if directly asked, I'm not naive enough to think that anything I bring forth as evidence of our problems with it will not already be answered, just as we too have our answers to all the above quotes, but recognize it a fool's errand to argue over such things), only to explain how it is that we don't and why we remain apart. That EOs cannot understand why is not really a cause of alarm or concern, as it is entirely reasonable to assume that, 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? It's completely foreign to that on which you base your vision of Orthodox Christology, that the two natures remain after the union. Better to say that we have our miaphysite Christology, you have your dyophysite Christology, and to the extent that the two may meet (as I have no problem with some individual quotes from the Tome, but only certain things that it says; it's not all wrong, it's just...wrong), then it's good to have discussions. 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.

Rakovsky and I already went through St. Cyril's 46th letter a little bit earlier in this thread, with him pointing out those points which can be used to support dyophysitism, and me pointing out what we take from it as supporting our miaphysitism. It is interesting to note that St. Cyril is effectively writing against a dyophysitism that would "impute to (the natures) virtual existence through the division" (hmm...such as saying that this nature does this and this nature does that...?), as well as plainly ending the quoted portion by stating that the two natures, which indeed may be distinguished through "subtle speculation", are no longer two, as through their union one living being is produced.

It would seem that Leo would want it that the two remain and one living being is produced, but this is not true to St. Cyril. So I don't buy the central premise of the Chalcedonians that the Tome is actually in keeping with Orthodox Christology, no matter how many quotes you may find in St. Cyril that speak of two. Indeed we can and do speak of two in our tradition, but in the sense that is in keeping with the saint's preferred miaphysite formula -- that we may conceive of two in the sense that we recognize that divinity and humanity are obviously not the same (we do not confuse one for the other), but that these two natures are made one with the union, and hence are no longer two, but one. And so we agree on many of these other related matters, just not that particular one.

And for us that is enough of a problem, whether you can understand it or see it or not. And, just to preempt one possible (on target) reply, you could absolutely say the same about us, in that our tradition does prejudice us against the Tome such that we cannot reconcile it with what we have been given in the pre-Chalcedonian miaphysite Christology of the fathers. I won't hide from that. I am proud of my faith, and I am proud of our fathers, even those who you wrongly anathematize as heretics for teaching one nature. I would not expect you guys to say anything different about Leo, Theodoret, or any of the rest whom we do not care for. Again, we're not the same, so there's not really any reason to be shocked at any of this.

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.

 

[rakovsky]

That EOs cannot understand why is not really a cause of alarm or concern, as it is entirely reasonable to assume that, 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?

actually, there is an interesting place in the Tome where I think Leo starts to get confusing. At one point which I've quoted in this thread, Leo talks about the "human and divine nature", in the singular, of Christ. Yet later in the Tome he says Eutyches is wrong to say one nature after the union. Taking things literally and rigidly it looks like he could be contradicting himself and denying Miaphysitism after affirming it. It reminds me of the time that Cyril says that man is in two natures, but that this is only theoretical and the two no longer remain two. This could also be a contradiction if interpreted rigidly. So this leaves open to me the idea that I don't strictly agree with either Leo or Cyril, because I'm OK with Miaphysitism and Diaphysitism, even though in those two quotes it looks like they rule them out.

The best way to deal with this challenge I see is to be flexible and to ask in what sense do they reject one nature or two natures? And it looks like Leo rejects one nature after the union when the Monophysite Eutyches says it, because Monophysitism teaches one nature only of those two natures without combination. When Eutyches says one nature only, he means the divine nature and not the human one.

Likewise, when Cyril says no longer two, he must mean no longer two in the sense of separated, which of course Leo agreed with his ally Cyril about.

It's completely foreign to that on which you base your vision of Orthodox Christology, that the two natures remain after the union. Better to say that we have our miaphysite Christology, you have your dyophysite Christology,

actually, many of us EOs and OOs like on the Joint Commission have both Christologies and do not deny either. I find it to be a logically reasonable and correct position.

It is interesting to note that St. Cyril is effectively writing against a dyophysitism that would "impute to (the natures) virtual existence through the division" (hmm...such as saying that this nature does this and this nature does that...?),

What do you think of St John Chrysostom? He wrote in the early 5th century before Chalcedon:

And be not astonished, that the [words] “Himself being tempted” ( c. ii. 18 ) are spoken more after the manner of men. For if the Scripture says of the Father, who was not made flesh, “The Lord looked down from heaven, and beheld all the sons of men” ( Ps. xiv. 2 ), that is, accurately acquainted Himself with all things; and again, “I will go down, and see whether they do altogether according to the cry of them” ( Gen. xviii. 21 ); and again, “God cannot endure the evil ways of men” ( Gen. vi. 5 ?), the divine Scripture shows forth the greatness of His wrath: much more, who even suffered in the flesh, these things are said of Christ. For since many men consider experience the most reliable means of knowledge, he wishes to show that He that has suffered knows what human nature suffers.

http://www.documentacatholicaomnia....annes_Chrysostomus,_In_epistulam_ad_Hebraeos_[Schaff],_EN.pdf

It would seem that Leo would want it that the two remain and one living being is produced, but this is not true to St. Cyril.

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

I appreciate it, but I feel that this particular discussion has probably outlived any potential usefulness, so I will bow out of it now.

I'll miss you.