After Chalcedon: Re-thinking Western Christology in Light of
the Dialogue with the Oriental Orthodox Churches
Johannes Hoff, Heythrop College, London
Since the second Vatican Councils the Roman Catholic Church was almost always one
step ahead of the Anglican tradition in terms of the ecumenical negotiations with the
Eastern Churches.1
The Anglicans tried to catch up in the 1990’s. This led in 2002 to the Holy Etchmiadzin
Agreed Statement on Christology of the Anglican-Oriental Orthodox International
Commission (AOOIC).
In 2013 all Anglican Churches were asked to revise this statement.
The outcome of this process was then finalised and signed by the AOOIC at the 17
October 2014 in St Mark’s Centre in Cairo.
The topic of this declaration is key to the relationship of Western to the Oriental
Orthodox churches, since the conflict of unity of Christ’s divine and human natures
marked the point where the traditions drifted apart subsequent to the Council of
Chalcedon in 451.
The ancient family of Oriental Orthodox churches2 has been referred to also as
non- or pre-Chalcedonian, Miaphysite or (misleadingly) Monophysite Churches.
Founded in apostolic times, it followed the teachings of the first three
ecumenical councils, and has a strong focus on the Alexandrian school of
thought that built on the teachings of Saint Athanasius (296-372) and Cyril of
Alexandria (376-444). This is particularly relevant for their Christological
teaching, which is firmly attached to Cyril’s formula "One nature of the Word
Incarnate".
For similar reasons, and in contrast to the Christian traditions of Western
modernity, the theology of Oriental Orthodoxy has a strong affinity to the
liturgical, and mystical roots of Christian learning. This relates the Oriental
Orthodox churches to the churches of the Eastern Orthodox (Byzantine)
tradition. However, although both traditions belong to the larger family of the
Orthodox churches, they are not in communion with each other.
1
I.e. the churches that are not part of the Western tradition – not to be confused with the Church of the East or
the Eastern Orthodox churches
2
It comprises six churches, which are not in communion with each other: the Armenian, Ethiopian, Eritrean,
Coptic, Syrian, and Malankara Indian Churches. Today they represent about 60 million Christians.
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The split of 451 was provoked by the Christological teaching of the Council of
Chalcedon, and the suspicion of the Oriental Orthodox churches that the
Chalcedonian definition of the ‘hypostatical union’ of Christ supports the heresy
of Nestorianism.
But was Nestorius really a heretic? Nestorius is (386-450) is still venerated as a
Saint in the (Assyrian) Church of the East.3 The restoration of full ecclesial union
with this tradition currently under negotiation (Mahony, 534), and leading
patristic scholars Luise Abramowski, André Halleux and Alois Grillmeier, as well
as the Pro Oriente Foundation in Vienna, have done significant work to
overcome the suspicion of heresy.
However, although the historical Nestorius did not teach exactly what he was
accused to teach, the theological assessment of Nestorius is still an open
question. For this reason it is advisable to distinguish between the ecclesial
dialogs of the different traditions about their shared doctrines, and more or less
problematic theological traditions that reflect on doctrinal confessions.
To begin with, it is worth to be recalled that the conflicts that led to the
condemnation of ‘Nestorianism’ and the dogmatic definition Chalcedon was not
a battle about words. This becomes clearer if we recall the doctrinal
developments after Chalcedon, which shaped in particular the Eastern Orthodox
(Byzantine) tradition.
Like the Western Tradition, the Eastern Orthodox tradition accepted the
dogmatic definition of Chalcedon. However, it was arguably more committed to
overcome the Nestorian undertones of this definition. Subsequent to Chalcedon,
this commitment led to the Second (553) and Third Council of Constantinople
(680-681).
In the Oriental Orthodox tradition, these councils were no longer received.
However, in the second millennium, after changing periods of estrangement and
rapprochement, a fresh non-official dialogue of the Chalcedonian Eastern
Orthodox churches with the non-Chalcedonian Oriental Orthodox churches
3
A now relatively small church which comprises about 400.000 Christians, although it was originally widely
spread in eastern Syria and Asia (India, China, Central Asia). This Church belongs to the family of the Churches of
the East, which comprises also the Chaldean Church. The Chaldean Church broke away in the 16th century, and
entered later into the communion with Rome as one of the Eastern Catholic Churches. Both churches built on
the Antiochene Tradition (as distinct from the above Alexandrian tradition), and emerged from the ‘Nestorian
Schism’ of the churches in Sassanid Persia (which were not part of the State Church of the Roman Empire).
Subsequent to this split, the Churches of the East accepted only the first two Ecumenical councils (Nicea and
Constantinople) and not the third Ecumenical Council, the Council of Ephesus 431, which defined the holy Virgin
to be Theotokos.
2
began in 1964. It led to official consultations in 1985 in Geneva, and resulted in
an historical agreement on a Christological formula in Wadi-El-Natroun (Egypt)
in 1989. This agreement ended the Christological controversy of the previous
fifteen centuries. In September 1990 both sides signed an agreement on
Christology, and recommended to lift the anathemas, although communion
between the Orthodox churches has not yet been achieved.
By contrast, the Western tradition paid little attention to the teaching of the
ecumenical councils that followed Chalcedon, although they are part of the
Seven Ecumenical Councils that are authoritative for the tradition of Western
orthodoxy. This blind spot is paralleled by the fact that, since the late Middle
Ages, the Western tradition displays an increasing tendency to confirm the
suspicion of Nestorianism, although it displays occasionally also a tendency in
the opposite direction (as most recently in Jürgen Moltmann).
In both cases the heterodox tendencies are symptom of the same problem:
Since the late Middle Ages the Western tradition tends to neglect the mystical
and liturgical roots of Christian learning. Against this backdrop, it might be
argued that the Roman Catholic dialogue with the Oriental Orthodox churches,
subsequent to the Second Vatican Council, was also an attempt to counteract
Nestorian tendencies in modern Western theology.
The latter attempts culminated in the Common Declaration of Pope John Paul II
and His holiness Mar Ignatius Zakka I Iwas, Patriarch of the Syrian Orthodox
church of Antioch (which is part of the Oriental Orthodox churches), of June 23
in 1984. On the one hand, this declaration affirmed that the schisms that
occurred between the two churches “in no way affect or touch the substance of
their faith, since these arose only because of differences in terminology and
culture and in the various formulae adopted by different theological schools to
express the same matter.” On the other hand, the declaration included the
admission that “the true doctrine concerning Christ our Lord” was confessed in
both traditions “notwithstanding the differences in interpretation of such a
doctrine which arose at the time of the Council of Chalcedon [ital.. JoH].” In other
words, there might be theological interpretations of the doctrine of Christ that
are not consistent with what has been consistently confessed in the orthodox
traditions (of the West and East).
For similar reasons, the declaration emphasized the spiritual and liturgical roots
of this confession, which find their ultimate expression in the Eucharist as the
beginning of the deification of humanity: “Sacramental life finds in the Holy
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Eucharist its fulfilment and its summit, in such a way that it is through the
Eucharist that the Church most profoundly realizes and reveals its nature. … By
communion with the body and blood of Christ the faithful grow in that
mysterious divinization which by the Holy Spirit makes them dwell in the Son as
children of the Father.”
Against this background, we might have a look at differences that separated the
Eastern Orthodox from the Western tradition.
The Alexandrian Christology, which became authoritative for the Oriental
Orthodox churches, focuses on the unifying nature of a single Christ. Essentially,
the claim is that whatever is true of Christ’s divinity must also be true of his
humanity, with a focus on his divinity.
The tradition of Western Christology focuses, by contrast, on the dogmatic
definition of Chalcedon (451). According to this definition, Christ is two unmixed
natures in one person, forming not just a moral union, but a ‘hypostatic union’,
that is, a union in a single person.
The challenge of Chalcedon was to find a middle path between the extremes of
Nestorianism (focus on the difference between the human and the divine in
order to prevent them from confusion) and Eutychianism (oneness through
mixing of the human and the divine).
Now we might agree that Nestorius’ teaching does not clearly contradict the
Chalcedonian compromise formula of ‘two natures in one person’. However, the
latter formula is prone to a rationalist misconception that loses sight of the
mystery of the divine nature.
Hence it might still support a kind of ‘Nestorian’ heresy, namely the assumption
that the created, human aspects of Christ can be apprehended dissociated from
the supernatural illumination of humanity through incarnated divine Word.
In my view, the Western inclination to move in this direction can be explained
by the fact that Western tradition has become forgetful of the reasons that
qualify the hypostatical union as a mystery. What are these reasons?
The divine nature is not one nature besides other natures. As Thomas Aquinas
has put it in the Middle Ages, following the Alexandrian tradition, the nature of
God sis a ‘subsistent being’ in which the being of all other natures participates.
Hence, it is not possible to unite the two natures of Christ on an equal plane.
Rather, the ‘hypostatical union’ has the character of an asymmetrical relation,
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in which the divine nature of the incarnated Word takes the lead in every
existential act of the person in which the two energies and wills of its human
and divine nature have become united.
For similar reasons (although the terminological is in my view not as precise as
in Aquinas) the oriental Churches emphasized from the beginning that “in the
one incarnate nature of the Word of God, two different natures continue to exist
without separation, without division, without change, and without confusion
(italics JoH).” And for the same reason the oriental Churches insist to speak of
“one hypostasis of two natures" and not of “one hypostasis in two natures”, as
Chalcedon did.
Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) argued in the same direction when he pointed
out that Chalcedon was only one step in the development of Christian doctrine.
If Christological reflection comes to an end with Chalcedon “dogmatic
Christology comes to a stop with a certain parallelism of the two natures in
Christ.” (1986, Thesis 6). As long as we focus only on the dyophysitism (two
natures) of Chalcedon, Christology becomes vulnerable to a misconstruction
that leads back to the theological heresy of ‘Nestorianism’.
More recently, Sarah Coakley made a similar point with regard to Chalcedon:
“In the Chalcedonian Definition itself it is not clear that the hypostasis is
to be straightforwardly identified with the pre-existent Logos, since it
(the hypostasis) is mentioned only in the context of its being the point of
'concurrence' of the humanity and the divinity”
For the same reason, already Karl Barth emphasized that of anhypostasis
and enhypostasis of the human nature of Christ ….
As already indication, the tendency of modern Western Christians to separate
considerations on the ‘true humanity’ of Christ from considerations on his
divinity, is a characteristic symptom of a deficient Christology, that stops with
the definition of Chalcedon.
This modern tendency suggests that we can know what it means to be ‘truly
human’ without looking in the face of Christ.
By contrast, the orthodox tradition (both East and the West) always insisted
that our true being can only become manifest in the divinization of our human
nature via the participation in the body of the incarnated Son of God.
According to this logic, Christ was truly human not despite but precisely
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because he was inseparably and indivisibly united with the divine nature of the
eternal Word.
The practical and spiritual implications of quasi-Nestorian misconstructions of
the fundamentals of Christian faith become most evident in the spiritual and
liturgical crisis of Western Christianity. According to Ratzinger’s criticism,
Western Christians tend to imitate the ‘human’ Jesus apart from his ‘divinity’:
Liturgy turns increasingly into a self-centred celebration of ‘our humanity’ –
Christianity becomes reduced to a kind of moral religion, that is no longer in
touch with liturgical and contemplative foundations of the Christian veneration
of Christ.
Against this background, it might be argued that a certain Nestorian inclination
in Western Christianity marks the root of the contemporary liquidation of
Christianity in Europe. It is the logical consequence of a secularized, ‘humanist’
culture and spirituality that considers the Orthodox focus on the divine mystery
either as superfluous or as a rhetorical prop.
As Aaron Riches has argued most recently, the Eastern Orthodox tradition
escaped this Nestorian fate because it realized that the teaching of Chalcedon
needs to be supplemented by the so called “dyothelite” doctrine of
Constantinople III (680-81).
This doctrine taught the irreducible duality of Christ’s divine and human wills,
and combined this teaching with a focus on the absolute unity of the real act of
will on the level of Christ divine person. Only the actual Christ can show us the
face of a truly human person, and this person acts always in the inseparable
unity of his human and divine will. Like in Aquinas, it is the act of being that
unites – and this act is (as it becomes most evident in Aquinas) but a
manifestation of the divine word.
Moreover, the teaching of Constantinople III saved the mystery of Christ,
because it recalled that the leading acts of his divine will can only be understood
as ‘acts of adoration’. The mysteries of his live are acts of filial doxology that
reveal the communicative relationship of the uncreated, divine Son to the
Father through the Holy Spirit in the unity of their divine nature.
As John Paul II has put it in his Encyclical Redemptor hominis: “Christ the Lord,
Christ the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of
his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling”
(para. 8)
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Seen from this angle, the dialogue with the Oriental Orthodox churches could
provide us with an opportunity to reflect critically on the theological and
spiritual flaws of our own tradition. The suffering of Christians in the Middle East
makes it urgent to overcome confessional divisions for the sake of our Eastern
brothers and sisters; but the spiritual evacuation of Western Christianity makes
it no less urgent to seek the encounter with our Eastern counterparts for our
own sake.
Prof. Johannes Hoff
Heythrop College, University of London
Literature
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