Monophysitism

One nature after the union?

The name joins the Greek words for ‘one’ and ‘nature’. Eutyches (c. 380–456), the aged head of a monastery in Constantinople, opposed Nestorianism so zealously that he went to the other extreme. He said that Christ was of two natures before the union but of only one after it, and he hesitated to confess that Christ's body is of the same substance as ours. His words sounded as though Christ's humanity had been swallowed up in his divinity, so that he was no longer a man like us.

A synod under Flavian, bishop of Constantinople, condemned him in 448. The next year a council at Ephesus led by Dioscorus of Alexandria restored him, and Leo of Rome called that gathering a ‘Robber Synod’. Before it met, Leo had written to Flavian that Christ took the form of a servant without losing the form of God, each nature keeping its own character in one person Leo the Great, the Tome of Leo. In 451 the Council of Chalcedon received Leo's letter and condemned Eutyches.

Scripture and Chalcedon

Scripture insists that Christ truly became one of us:

For this reason He had to be made like His brothers in every way, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, in order to make atonement for the sins of the people.

Hebrews 2:17

"Jesus grew in wisdom and stature" (Luke 2:52); at Lazarus' tomb "Jesus wept" (John 11:35); he "was tempted in every way that we are, yet was without sin" (Hebrews 4:15). Remigius, a ninth-century teacher, notes on the feeding of the four thousand: "In that He has compassion on the multitudes, He shews that He has feeling of human frailty; in the multiplication of the loaves, and the feeding the multitudes, is shewn the working of His divinity" Remigius. So, he concludes, the error of Eutyches, that Christ has only one nature, is overthrown. As Gregory of Nazianzus taught, what Christ did not take up he did not heal Gregory of Nazianzus, First Letter to Cledonius. Chalcedon confessed:

the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence

Definition of Chalcedon

In the same spirit the Third Council of Constantinople (680–681) confessed that Christ has both a divine and a human will, rejecting the teaching that he had only one.

A misleading name

The Oriental Orthodox churches, among them the Coptic, Syriac, Armenian and Ethiopian churches, did not accept Chalcedon and have often been called ‘Monophysite’, but they reject the name. Following Cyril of Alexandria, they confess Christ as ‘one incarnate nature of God the Word’. By this one nature they mean not a third thing mixed from God and man, but the one Word made flesh, united without mixture or change; their tradition is therefore called miaphysite, and they too condemn Eutyches. In 1973 the Catholic and Coptic churches, and in 1989 and 1990 the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, agreed that beneath different words they confess the same faith in Christ in substance.

Evangelical churches receive Chalcedon as faithful to Scripture. The Westminster Confession, too, confesses the two natures joined in one person "without conversion, composition, or confusion" Westminster Confession 8.2. The story is told in Chalcedon: one person, two natures and Truly God and truly man; see also the two natures.