Christology differences between OO and EO?

[~Anastasia~]

Hello all,

I've been meaning to revisit this question for many months now, and perhaps get a better understanding than I did when I first learned of it.

I'd like to especially invite OO members who might be able to help me understand, and I'm sure I could use the help of fellow EO who understand better than I, as well as anyone else who has an understanding of the issues.

I hope the water isn't deeper than I'm able to navigate. I think it may come down to nuances in the Greek???

But the disagreement is primarily in the "two natures of Christ", which EO would claim, and define as being fully God, fully man, not mixed or confused.

So how exactly would my OO brothers answer this, please?

Thank you!

 

[LastSeven]

Acronyms we're all supposed to know?

 

[~Anastasia~]

Acronyms we're all supposed to know?

My apologies. They are pretty widely used here, so I used them so that the title would fit.

OO - Oriental (non-Chalcedonian) Orthodox

EO - Eastern Orthodox


Though not to be condescending, but anyone who doesn't know what I'm asking wouldn't likely know the answer. It's a very fine distinction, under discussion between these two Churches for some decades now.

I thought it would fit better in Traditional Theology than in the home area of either Orthodox.

 

[dzheremi]

Hello all,

I've been meaning to revisit this question for many months now, and perhaps get a better understanding than I did when I first learned of it.

I'd like to especially invite OO members who might be able to help me understand, and I'm sure I could use the help of fellow EO who understand better than I, as well as anyone else who has an understanding of the issues.

I'm not sure there are any active OO members on this website other than me, sadly. ArmenianJohn mainly posts in other areas, wgw has gone EO (though I imagine he can still give accurate representation of our theology and Christology; Syriac Orthodox have a lot closer relationships to the EO counterpart Antiochians than Copts tend to, so it's less of a dramatic switch in that case), Shanethetheologian is now Anglican, etc.

I hope the water isn't deeper than I'm able to navigate. I think it may come down to nuances in the Greek???

Not that I've noticed. Our fathers such as St. Athanasius the Apostolic, St. Cyril, St. Severus, etc. all wrote in Greek, and Greek is a perfectly fine language in which to express OO theology and Christology. Even today something like ~10% of hymns in the Coptic Orthodox liturgy are Greek (in addition to virtually all the deacons' responses), though I suppose Egyptians have a funny way of pronouncing it.

But the disagreement is primarily in the "two natures of Christ", which EO would claim, and define as being fully God, fully man, not mixed or confused.

Yes, and that disagreement has its roots in the preexisting philosophical traditions embraced and propagated by Alexandria vis-a-vis Antioch, not in which language is used. It would probably help you to review the one-time conflict between St. Cyril of Alexandria and John of Antioch, if mostly to see one real-world, pre-Chalcedon example of conflict between the miaphysites (represented by St. Cyril's party) and the dyophysites (represented by John's party), and more importantly how it was resolved. This would hopefully help make clear how and why we came to be different communions, especially by contrasting the formula of reunion embraced then to the Henotikon of Zeno (482), the creation and propagation of monothelitism as a supposed compromise (which the OO as a communion never accepted, just by the way; in fact, this is theorized by some historians such as Matti Moosa to have been the origin of the Maronites, whose liturgical patrimony points to Syriac Orthodox roots but eventual embrace of monothelitism placed them outside of both OO and EO, theologically), and so on. There is a very brief summary of the 433 Formula of Reunion from the Coptic perspective on the L.A. archdiocese's website, if you are interested in it: http://lacopts.org/story/saint-cyril-of-alexandria-and-the-council-of-ephesus/

Some EO who did not know better have claimed on this very website that we do not accept this, or think of it as coerced or what have you, but as you can read from the above link, we very much accept the reunion of the Antiochians and the Alexandrians. At the same time, we recognize that this is not the same reunion that we could potentially have today with OO and EO, since neither party is exactly the same as it would have been in 433...yes, primarily due to one subsequent council...I bet you can guess which one it is...

Philosophically speaking, there are to some extent differing emphases in our respective treatments and understandings of the incarnation. EO user Rakovsky and I got into it for some pages many a thread ago concerning this, with him offering up excerpts from St. Cyril's letters that he felt supported the dyophysite position, and me doing the same from the same letters for the miaphysite position. Since both are supportable (I'm not going to say equally supportable, but y'know...supportable) from the same source materials, I'd prefer to think of it as a difference in emphasis, though no doubt EO would have their own view regarding why only their interpretation of things is correct (as they seem to regarding everything else concerning those matters in which we differ, as is to be expected).

So how exactly would my OO brothers answer this, please?

'This' what? Why we differ? Why we're not one communion anymore? I'm not sure what you're asking.

We differ because of differing traditions and understandings regarding the incarnation and what it means concerning the nature of Christ. As to why we're not one communion anymore, it would be hard to be so after so many centuries of developing separately, and you guys developed far more than we ever have, so there's a lot of stuff that you do and a lot of controversies that you were involved in that frankly do not matter to us, as is the case with, e.g., the issues surrounding the EO-RC 'Great Schism', since we were out of the picture for about five centuries by that point. (We were telling the bishop of Rome to go take a flying leap before it was cool. )

Also, by the time of Chalcedon, there was no longer room for the earlier approach taken by our common father St. Cyril in his letter to John of Antioch (letter 39), wherein our father points out "For one is the Lord Jesus Christ, although the difference of his natures is not unknown, from which we say the ineffable union was made". By Chalcedon, it was clearly not enough to say that He is both perfect God and perfect Man, as we all do say (since we are miaphysites, after the formula of St. Cyril, not monophysites); rather, our teacher St. Dioscorus was told explicitly that unless he said "two natures" as the dyophysites all did, he would be deposed! Thankfully he did not do so, as you will note that in the same letter (available here), HH St. Cyril discusses the humanity and the divinity at length, and while also explicitly referring to the nature, not natures, of the Word of God (as you'd expect from the author of That Christ is One/On the Oneness of Christ, no?):

"But I am far from any such thought as that, and I also consider them wholly to rave who think a shadow of change could occur concerning the Nature of the Word of God"

As surely inadequate as it is, I hope that this post gives you something to think about and research, and I welcome further exposition and/or clarifications from any fellow OO concerning our own position, and any questions from EO. I figure it best to start with a common father like HH St. Cyril, rather than quoting people who are more cross-communally controversial, such as HH St. Severus, HH St. Timothy, etc.

 

[LastSeven]

Though not to be condescending, but anyone who doesn't know what I'm asking wouldn't likely know the answer.

True, but since I didn't know what you were asking, I also didn't know if it applied to me. It doesn't. Carry on.

 

[~Anastasia~]

Thank you, dzheremi. This will actually take me a while. I was actually asking a much simpler question, because I was not aware of some of these details. (Not that I mind, but I'm limited in my ability to research right now - but perhaps the effort will be good for me. )

I'm not sure there are any active OO members on this website other than me, sadly.

I thought there were at least several others, but I may be wrong.

@Paul Yohannan would be proper to invite to comment, I believe?

ArmenianJohn mainly posts in other areas, wgw has gone EO (though I imagine he can still give accurate representation of our theology and Christology; Syriac Orthodox have a lot closer relationships to the EO counterpart Antiochians than Copts tend to, so it's less of a dramatic switch in that case), Shanethetheologian is now Anglican, etc.

I would appreciate hearing if any of them wish to contribute.

I didn't know about the particular relationships. I have a Syriac Orthodox friend (several in fact, but one we've tried to hash this out and understand each other), but English was not his first language, and I couldn't understand his at all, and so we got bogged down in going into details.

Not that I've noticed. Our fathers such as St. Athanasius the Apostolic, St. Cyril, St. Severus, etc. all wrote in Greek, and Greek is a perfectly fine language in which to express OO theology and Christology. Even today something like ~10% of hymns in the Coptic Orthodox liturgy are Greek (in addition to virtually all the deacons' responses), though I suppose Egyptians have a funny way of pronouncing it.

Ah, well this is something I've read and been told. Perhaps I've been misinformed. But then again, later in your reply I see that you include more points than I had in mind, so that might matter to my comment too.

Yes, and that disagreement has its roots in the preexisting philosophical traditions embraced and propagated by Alexandria vis-a-vis Antioch, not in which language is used. It would probably help you to review the one-time conflict between St. Cyril of Alexandria and John of Antioch, if mostly to see one real-world, pre-Chalcedon example of conflict between the miaphysites (represented by St. Cyril's party) and the dyophysites (represented by John's party), and more importantly how it was resolved. This would hopefully help make clear how and why we came to be different communions, especially by contrasting the formula of reunion embraced then to the Henotikon of Zeno (482), the creation and propagation of monothelitism as a supposed compromise (which the OO as a communion never accepted, just by the way; in fact, this is theorized by some historians such as Matti Moosa to have been the origin of the Maronites, whose liturgical patrimony points to Syriac Orthodox roots but eventual embrace of monothelitism placed them outside of both OO and EO, theologically), and so on. There is a very brief summary of the 433 Formula of Reunion from the Coptic perspective on the L.A. archdiocese's website, if you are interested in it: http://lacopts.org/story/saint-cyril-of-alexandria-and-the-council-of-ephesus/

Thank you. This will take me a while - I'm not sure how long since I don't know the complexity or length of the documents. But I'm very slow these days.

Some EO who did not know better have claimed on this very website that we do not accept this, or think of it as coerced or what have you, but as you can read from the above link, we very much accept the reunion of the Antiochians and the Alexandrians. At the same time, we recognize that this is not the same reunion that we could potentially have today with OO and EO, since neither party is exactly the same as it would have been in 433...yes, primarily due to one subsequent council...I bet you can guess which one it is...

I think I know which one, lol. This does introduce more than I'm aware of, but since reunification would be an ideal goal, they would all certainly be important issues.

It does interest me though, as I've noticed there has been certain acceptance and movement towards one another in some situations, but not others.

I don't like to pay too much attention to "Church politics" and I for one am very much for leaving the disposition of souls to God. If anyone claims Christ, he is my brother as far as I am concerned, and I consider OO to be the closest brothers of all. I often read books - particularly those on prayer or monastic-type texts - from OO clergy and monastics.

Philosophically speaking, there are to some extent differing emphases in our respective treatments and understandings of the incarnation. EO user Rakovsky and I got into it for some pages many a thread ago concerning this, with him offering up excerpts from St. Cyril's letters that he felt supported the dyophysite position, and me doing the same from the same letters for the miaphysite position. Since both are supportable (I'm not going to say equally supportable, but y'know...supportable) from the same source materials, I'd prefer to think of it as a difference in emphasis, though no doubt EO would have their own view regarding why only their interpretation of things is correct (as they seem to regarding everything else concerning those matters in which we differ, as is to be expected).

I think this is all I was really asking about. Depending on how it is worded, I can almost think we agree, then something brings it up short and it seems we don't. I just wanted to understand what the OO believe about the nature of Christ in the Incarnation, and how it differs from what we the EO believe.

'This' what? Why we differ? Why we're not one communion anymore? I'm not sure what you're asking.

As I said, I was only asking the basic question of how we agree/disagree regarding the nature(s) of Christ.

But the rest of it is important enough that, since you brought it up, I'm interested.

We differ because of differing traditions and understandings regarding the incarnation and what it means concerning the nature of Christ.

It was the Incarnation I was asking about specifically. I'm curious what other differences in traditions you might mean. I've never visited any OO kind of Church. My experience is limited to online chats, a few photos, and video snippets.

As to why we're not one communion anymore, it would be hard to be so after so many centuries of developing separately, and you guys developed far more than we ever have,

Again, I'd be interested. The main thing I could actually think of are the issues surrounding St. Gregory Palamas and the hesychastic controversies, but I would think hesychasm is not exactly foreign to OO - not by a long shot.

I may certainly of course be unaware of other things. Iconoclasm, but we overcame that, and as you say the Great Schism, which must have had its affects on us, though at the moment I'm not thinking of any except that we explicitly reject a number of points of Catholic teaching.

so there's a lot of stuff that you do and a lot of controversies that you were involved in that frankly do not matter to us, as is the case with, e.g., the issues surrounding the EO-RC 'Great Schism', since we were out of the picture for about five centuries by that point. (We were telling the bishop of Rome to go take a flying leap before it was cool. )

Ok, that made me laugh.

Also, by the time of Chalcedon, there was no longer room for the earlier approach taken by our common father St. Cyril in his letter to John of Antioch (letter 39), wherein our father points out "For one is the Lord Jesus Christ, although the difference of his natures is not unknown, from which we say the ineffable union was made". By Chalcedon, it was clearly not enough to say that He is both perfect God and perfect Man, as we all do say (since we are miaphysites, after the formula of St. Cyril, not monophysites); rather, our teacher St. Dioscorus was told explicitly that unless he said "two natures" as the dyophysites all did, he would be deposed! Thankfully he did not do so, as you will note that in the same letter (available here), HH St. Cyril discusses the humanity and the divinity at length, and while also explicitly referring to the nature, not natures, of the Word of God (as you'd expect from the author of That Christ is One/On the Oneness of Christ, no?):

"But I am far from any such thought as that, and I also consider them wholly to rave who think a shadow of change could occur concerning the Nature of the Word of God"

This is really the heart of my initial question. I'm still pondering it. Maybe when I read those discourses it will make more sense.

Right now, all I see is nature/natures. But the OO believe (as the EO) that Christ is both God and man. We further say that His nature(s) as God and Man are neither confused (mixed up together) nor can they be divided (which plural natures might imply if that was not stated). So ... simplistically, I'm not seeing yet how we actually disagree?

As surely inadequate as it is, I hope that this post gives you something to think about and research, and I welcome further exposition and/or clarifications from any fellow OO concerning our own position, and any questions from EO. I figure it best to start with a common father like HH St. Cyril, rather than quoting people who are more cross-communally controversial, such as HH St. Severus, HH St. Timothy, etc.

Thank you so much. Indeed, you gave me a lot to research, I think.

I invite further comments or clarification, and I'll hopefully be able to manage the resources you suggested and get back to you after or while reading them, if not before.

Thanks again.

 

[~Anastasia~]

True, but since I didn't know what you were asking, I also didn't know if it applied to me. It doesn't. Carry on.

Fair enough.

And no, it pretty much just applies to Orthodox, and anyone else who might have had enough interest in this particular question to have studied it in detail.

Thanks for stopping by. Happy Thanksgiving to you, btw, if you celebrate it.

 

[Paul Yohannan]

I cannot perceive any actual difference between the EO and OO positions, merely a nominal difference owing to some doctrinaire EOs reading St. John of Damascus criticisms of the tritheist monophysites, who were not Orienral Orthodox.

 

[dzheremi]

Ah, well this is something I've read and been told. Perhaps I've been misinformed. But then again, later in your reply I see that you include more points than I had in mind, so that might matter to my comment too.

To be fair, some in my Church do not help their own case by failing to recognize later polemical writings that equate 'Greek' with Chalcedonian (as I have done in this very thread; darn it...it's just part of the shorthand of how Coptic people talk, so it's hard to avoid), and hence unacceptable, without recognizing that these are in fact later polemical writings. More dispassionate historians do not do so. If you're interested, Coptic researcher Maged S.A. Mikhail makes this point quite clearly in his recent book From Byzantine to Islamic Egypt: Religion, Identity and Politics After the Arab Conquest. We have no problem with Greek, or at least we shouldn't if we know our own history.

I think this is all I was really asking about. Depending on how it is worded, I can almost think we agree, then something brings it up short and it seems we don't. I just wanted to understand what the OO believe about the nature of Christ in the Incarnation, and how it differs from what we the EO believe.

I don't know how/if it does, really. That's why I wrote that it's a matter of emphasis, rather than being completely separate and different things.

It was the Incarnation I was asking about specifically. I'm curious what other differences in traditions you might mean. I've never visited any OO kind of Church. My experience is limited to online chats, a few photos, and video snippets.

By differences in other traditions, do you mean other than the incarnation? Because that's the one I mentioned, and it is a difference between considering the two natures as remaining two after the incarnation (~ EO), or being made one with/at it (~ OO). In the Wednesday Theotokia, for instance, we pray "Hail to the uniting place of the unparted natures, that came together in one place without ever mingling." There is most definitely some sense in which EO can pray the same (or so EO have told me, and I believe them), but the insistence that this must be done by having two-nature Christology is what has changed, and that changed at Chalcedon. That's why I pointed to the formula for reunion first, because in it St. Cyril affirms John of Antioch's faith without giving up his own terminology as equally Orthodox. That was no longer possible at Chalcedon, where instead his disciple was told "say two natures or be deposed". St. Cyril didn't, and so St. Dioscorus didn't, and so St. Timothy didn't, and so on and so forth.

What I am saying is that the positions themselves don't have to change if the environment around them does so as to make one or the other (or both) unpalatable precisely because of that change in environment. Hence St. Cyril and John of Antioch could reunite, but we can't seem to manage it despite both looking to them as our model (I'd hope!).

Again, I'd be interested. The main thing I could actually think of are the issues surrounding St. Gregory Palamas and the hesychastic controversies, but I would think hesychasm is not exactly foreign to OO - not by a long shot.

That was long after we were already gone, yeah.

I may certainly of course be unaware of other things. Iconoclasm, but we overcame that, and as you say the Great Schism, which must have had its affects on us, though at the moment I'm not thinking of any except that we explicitly reject a number of points of Catholic teaching.

The OO never had any significant problem with iconoclasm, as far as I'm aware.

Right now, all I see is nature/natures. But the OO believe (as the EO) that Christ is both God and man. We further say that His nature(s) as God and Man are neither confused (mixed up together) nor can they be divided (which plural natures might imply if that was not stated). So ... simplistically, I'm not seeing yet how we actually disagree?

Amen. As I've written, I think it's a matter of emphasis and particular understanding of the incarnation. If you hold to the OO position that the incarnation is the indivisible union of Divinity and Humanity in the person of Christ, then having to 're-confess' that He is both God and man in the form of two united by separable natures seems at best redundant and at worst heretical, depending on how it is understood. And indeed I don't want to sugar coat things: there are some among the OO who see some of the wording in the Tome of Leo as coming dangerously close to breaching the previously-accepted anathemas of our father HH St. Cyril against Nestorius. Heck, I've 'met' (online) some EO who say that, but take it on balance with the rest of Leo's output and conclude that is okay. Fine, then. I don't have any problem with that but that I believe that we don't need something like that in order to confess the Orthodox faith, as we already do and did before Chalcedon happened, and continue to do so afterwards. It is the polemicists among the EO (who I should emphasize here do not comprise all of the EO, only the doctrinaires, as our friend Paul has rightly called them) who would have us accept more than is necessary in order to be in absolute conformity not only with the faith, but with their exact wording of it as well, no matter how alien it is. And that is not something that HH St. Cyril and John of Antioch apparently required of one another.

To further illustrate this, you could look at the Henotikon of Zeno (482) and the reasons why it could not provide lasting reunion either, as the same problem is inherent in it as was inherent in the formula of reunion: One side understands it as a victory for their position, while the other does not. Concerning the formula of 433, it was apparent that some of the anti-Cyrillians, such as Ibas, saw it as HH St. Cyril capitulating to their Christology, when obviously St. Cyril and his party could not have seen it that way! So too with the Henotikon, which was either a victory of Orthodoxy in annulling Chalcedon, or...y'know...not that, if you were a Chalcedonian.

Heck, even things that we both indisputably agree on work that same way, like how nobody needs Rome. Remember how Mark of Ephesus defended your church against the majority who accepted union with Rome at the attempted reunion council of Florence? Less well known to EO is the fate of the OO delegations (Copts and Ethiopians; I think the Armenians also had a delegation there, but obviously under their own Catholicos) who had made the same decision, but sadly without a Mark of Ephesus to stop them at the council proper. Turns out we didn't need one, however, because what wasn't done at the council was done over time, as we realized what the Latins actually meant in practical terms. Here I'll quote from the Coptic Encyclpedia's article on the aftermath of our participation at the council: "This one-sided union had no roots and was doomed to failure, for theological formulas were interpreted differently by both parties. The Romans understood it as a true submission of the Copts and Ethiopians to the Roman church, whereas the Copts and Ethiopians at first understood it as a reunion of equal partners and in the course of time rejected it along with its Latin interpretation."

Thanks again.

You're welcome. Thanks for starting this thread. It's nice to get to talk about this stuff on relatively neutral ground.

 

[Basil the Great]

It would be wonderful if the EO and the OO could unite in our lifetime.

 

[Gxg (G²)]

Hello all,

I've been meaning to revisit this question for many months now, and perhaps get a better understanding than I did when I first learned of it.

I'd like to especially invite OO members who might be able to help me understand, and I'm sure I could use the help of fellow EO who understand better than I, as well as anyone else who has an understanding of the issues.

I hope the water isn't deeper than I'm able to navigate. I think it may come down to nuances in the Greek???

But the disagreement is primarily in the "two natures of Christ", which EO would claim, and define as being fully God, fully man, not mixed or confused.

So how exactly would my OO brothers answer this, please?

Thank you!

If you'd like some straightforward answers on the issue of where the differences are between OO and EO, you may be blessed by the following:

Others I've been very thankful for who helped to bring a significant amount of understanding to the issue with misunderstanding are folks like Rev Dr Mebratu Kiros Gebru (who is Ethiopian Orthodox ).

Syrian Orthodox as my background, many of the things based in differences are rather minute and entirely centered on language and I've seen that consistently for some time now whenever I've talked to others. I was just having a conversation on this with one of the leaders at the parish I go to (St. Mary's Coptic Orthodox Church in Roswell, GA) - and as we've both seen Chalcedonians and OO as the same and the vast majority do as well, with the EO tending to want more defintions for things that don't need to be defined. But for some good books on the issue, I'd recommend the following:

• Amazon.com: The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon (Translated Texts for Historians LUP) (9781846311000): Richard Price, Michael Gaddis: Books

• The Council of Chalcedon Re-Examined: V. C. Samuel, Peter Farrington: 9781401016449: Amazon.com: Books

The first work is a Chalcedonian-account and the second is a non-Chalcedonian account, considered among the top publications regarding the issue of Chalcedon, and the issues of nature and wills. The books are beneficial since they are also excellent sources regarding the political situation at the time. Outside of that, there's also a very good paper by the Late Father John Romanides, an EO scholar with a very balanced understanding of the events, as he was heavily involved in the talks from the early 90s.

• ST. CYRIL'S "ONE PHYSIS OR HYPOSTASIS OF GOD THE LOGOS INCARNATE" AND CHALCEDON

What is consistently focused upon is the fact that non-Chalcedonians on one hand, and Eastern Orthodox on the other, centers on the use of terms in Greek:

• The Non-Chalcedonians insist on Saint Cyril’s phrase “mia physis” (one nature) and the formulation that the incarnate Christ is “ek duo physeon” (out of two natures).

• The Chalcedonians (Rome and Constantinople) allow for Saint Cyril’s phrase “mia physis” but prefer the formulation that the incarnate Christ is “en duo physesin” (in two natures).

Essentially, if using a chart, the first image would be how the Chalcedonians see things (two natures in one person):

​

As it is, The Eutychians held that although Christ was both human and divine, his humanity was vanishingly small in comparison with his divinity, so that his nature was essentially divine (monophysitism) - and the OO resisted that. The EO did not agree with the Eutychians either, but they went to the formula of saying Christ was had TWO natures united in one person instead of simply saying he had two natures (and was thus two different people), but the OO came it from different perspective in seeing what Cyril of Alexandria laid out when saying Christ expressed himself in two distinct ways a part of one nature that could not be fully laid out..

Non-Chalcedonians reject the heretic Eutyches and also rightly believe that Christ is consubstantial with the Father and consubstantial with humanity...AND of course, the EO saw to it that Eutyches was condemned by the Council of Chalcedon as he did not profess that Christ was consubstantial with the rest of humanity (and obviously, if Christ does not share our nature, He cannot save us or lift us up). But in so many ways, it really becomes a matter of language differences..

 

[~Anastasia~]

Thank you, GxG. Hopefully I will have time to get to this soon.

 

[thecolorsblend]

If you'd like some straightforward answers on the issue of where the differences are between OO and EO, you may be blessed by the following:

I realize those videos weren't directed to me but they're both good finds. Thanks for posting them! I enjoyed both!