'Nestorian Monothelitism'

[Mina Soliman]

In today's ecumenical studies, we also find a group of people talking about and reconsidering Christologies of Theodore, Diodore, and Nestorius. I've read quite a lengthy paper a while ago, and it takes some time to digest (I suggest writing notes for the first couple of pages when talking about the papers and the authors and dates, so that you can have a reference to read the rest of the paper).

It was extremely interesting, and I encourage everyone if interested in "heavy duty" Christology to take the time and read it (or if you like, it might take a couple of days to read and understand it, at least for me it did).

http://romanity.org/htm/rom.09.en.highlights_in_the_debate_over_theodore.0 1.htm

There's also a "Part 2" to the paper in the link.

It's written by none other than Fr. John Romanides who examines the newly found works of Theodore of Mopsuestia, and reads the views of many many many papers concerning the CHristology of Theodore (almost analyzing the debate itself). He considers (but in the end challenges) the belief that Chalcedonian Christology is Theodorian Christology and does a good job at differentiating between the two. He also analyzes Theodore's developments and defences against certain heresies (and how he thinks) connecting them with certain Biblical commentaries, and finally produces from them the way Theodore thinks.

But most importantly in his paper is that he ended it with something completely ironic. That Theodorian Christology (and thus most probably Diodore and Nestorius) had a Monotheletic belief, and it is not just in Christ, but also in all men and women. It is believed that when men and women have salvation, their will is nothing but God's will or a "robot will following God's will", to the point where their own will or freedom does not exist anymore, for to have a human will was "inherently sinful". Such was the case with Christ, except that that man Jesus was already in that heavenly state at the conception in the Virgin's womb (or at least "most perfectly" after the Ressurrection). Thus, it seemed that Christ had no human will to begin with, which is why Nestorius and his "forerunners" stressed a "unity of will" while St. Cyril stressed a "unity of hypostasis."

Here's how Fr. John Romanides explains it (but I do recommend the reading of the whole article):


The union of the two natures in Christ is effected then by goodwill and good-pleasure. However, there is in Christ a special and unique example of such a union, since there was no time when the human nature existed independently of this conjunction based on the divine foreknowledge of the assumed man's merits. Furthermore, whereas all other men have only partial participation in the grace of God, the man Jesus. has a complete communion effected by the perfect conjunction of natures. Because of this conjunction there is in Christ only one will and one energy. Still, the assumed man undergoes a process of perfection which is not completed until the resurrection, when perfect immutability is attained. Starting from such presuppositions concerning the relationship between sinfulness and mutability or between perfection and immutability Theodore comes pretty close to saying that Christ was actually sinful prior to His resurrection. [ 106 ] The very existence of two wills and energies in Christ would clearly presuppose a lack of immutability on the human side and therefore some measure of imperfection and sinfulness. Therefore if there is a real conjunction of natures in Christ there must be one will and one energy. In Theodore one clearly finds a Nestorian type Monotheletism and Monenergism which perhaps goes some way to explaining its diophysite counterpart of the seventh century. There is some possibility that the presuppositions of the heresies condemned by the Sixth Ecumenical Council are to be found not so much in Monophysitism as in Nestorianism.

It seems clear enough that underlying Theodore's thought is a moralism in this life topped by a Platonic type of eudaimonia in the next. Such a concept of human destiny lacks any real understanding of the Biblical doctrine of creation and freedom and logically leads to eschatological determinism, to the íÝêñùóéò and not to the êÜèáñóéò of human will and energy. Salvation is the abolition of human freedom by the absolute submission of the will, not to the will of God, but to some sort of stiff and impersonal and motionless immutability. Thus, if Christ is perfect, He can have no natural will belonging to the very essence of human nature and differing by the will o f God from the will of God. Nor can there be any proper activity or energy of the creature which is not a duplication of the immutable and immobile divine nature. Not to be a duplication is in reality to be sinful.

Now, this debate is not about Chalcedon, but about Nestorianism and the elements of it, especially that of Monotheletism. Has anyone shared this notion or noticed it when reading "Nestorian writings?"

God bless.

Mina

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Mina,

I enjoyed reading your post above (http://www.monachos.net/forum/showpost.php?p=38691&postcount=1); some very intriguing food for thought. I've not yet had the time to read through the article at the link you provided, but look forward to doing so at some point.

I also cannot claim I've read Theodore's writings with an eye toward this specific question, so cannot claim off-hand to know how accurate the representation by Fr John Romanides is; but assuming for the moment that it is accurate enough, this raises some interesting points.

From your post:



But most importantly in his paper is that he ended it with something completely ironic. That Theodorian Christology (and thus most probably Diodore and Nestorius) had a Monotheletic belief, and it is not just in Christ, but also in all men and women. It is believed that when men and women have salvation, their will is nothing but God's will or a "robot will following God's will", to the point where their own will or freedom does not exist anymore, for to have a human will was "inherently sinful". Such was the case with Christ, except that that man Jesus was already in that heavenly state at the conception in the Virgin's womb (or at least "most perfectly" after the Ressurrection). Thus, it seemed that Christ had no human will to begin with, which is why Nestorius and his "forerunners" stressed a "unity of will" while St. Cyril stressed a "unity of hypostasis."

The actual difficulty encountered by Theodore's (and thus Nestorius') insistence on the independent concrete manifestation of a nature (i.e. the prosopic reality of a nature) in order that its existence be real, was the associated establishment of two centres of subjectivity. If the human nature and the divine nature in Christ each have independent prosopic reality, if they are each independently 'concrete' in their fulness', then there can be seen to be two centres of subjectivity. This is precisely the weakness challenged by the emphasis of the so-called 'Alexandrian school', which tended to emphasise the becoming of the Logos, rather than language of the union of two realities, precisely so as to maintain the single subjectivity of the divine Son.

If one is to maintain that two natures demands two natural prosopa in Christ, as did Theodore and Nestorius, the challenge is then to articulate how the apparent two centres of subjectivity are in fact not dual, but singular. This was Nestorius' famous 'prosopon of union': the single, unified prosopon that was the incarnate reality of the two natural prosopa (human and divine) united. So Nestorius could (and did, time and again) insist that he taught only one Christ, since Christ was the prosopon of union of his two natures.

The interesting question is just what is involved in each of the natural prosopa. While neither Theodore nor Nestorius seem to have articulated a careful dithylete position in the terms of the later debate, the focus on the union as a 'union of will' (which you mention) of course implies that two natural prosopa involves two natural wills: one human, one divine. In a sense, they were thus faced with some (though not all) of the same questions that arose later, questions that were in fact thrust at them by their contemporaries (e.g. Cyril), such as how two wills does not equal two centres of deliberation, which would equal two centres of subjectivity, which would equal two Christs.

I would like to explore Theodore's texts more directly before commenting on whether Fr John Romanides interprets them correctly in this regard. Surely a union 'of will' implies, according to Theodore's own understanding of nature and prosopon, that the two wills remain, not that one is absent. But one can be a functional monothylete as much as an ontological monothylete: if one confesses Christ as having two wills, but denies that one of them does anything, one is monothelitic all the same. The real challenge of the dythelete controversy was not over confessing that Christ had two natural wills in perfect union, but articulating how they could be in such a perfect union while being both active.

INXC, Matthew

[Peter Farrington]

Dear Matthew

If they are in perfect union then there is 'one will', but it is a united will. This does no damage to the reality of and dynamic existence of natural will in the humanity. But if the natural wills are in perfect and complete union then there is 'one united will' in the sense of miathelitis rather than 'one simple will' in the sense of monotheletis.

This is surely the meaning of the passage from the 6th council which says:


And these two natural wills are not contrary the one to the other (God forbid!) as the impious heretics assert, but his human will follows and that not as resisting and reluctant, but rather as subject to his divine and omnipotent will. For it was right that the flesh should be moved but subject to the divine will, according to the most wise Athanasius. For as his flesh is called and is the flesh of God the Word, so also the natural will of his flesh is called and is the proper will of God the Word, as he himself says: “I came down from heaven, not that I might do mine own will but the will of the Father which sent me!” where he calls his own will the will of his flesh, inasmuch as his flesh was also his own. For as his most holy and immaculate animated flesh was not destroyed because it was deified but continued in its own state and nature (ὄρῳ τε καὶ λόγῳ), so also his human will, although deified, was not suppressed, but was rather preserved according to the saying of Gregory Theologus: “His will [i.e., the Saviour’s] is not contrary to God but altogether deified.”

This is entirely the non-Chalcedonian position also. I am not an expert on Theodore but it does not at all ring true that he would ever have suggested any sort of robot activity on the part of the humanity. I think that Fr Romanides has misunderstood Theodore if he is being quoted correctly.

I think that Theodore is speaking throughout this passage from Fr Romanides of two independent wills, and of a natural human will in Christ which is independent from the divine will. Such would be a sinful human will because it would be acting apart from the divine will. But there is no sin in Christ.

It is not the human will which is sinful, but the exercise of that will contrary to the will of God. This is surely why our Christian life is spent in trying to be conformed to the will of God. If that makes us 'less human' then why are we so committed to achieving it?

Personally, I experience the greatest experience of being truly human when I most conform myself to the will of God and am united in a very hesitant and partial sense with that will. True freedom and true humanity are found in such a union.

Best wishes

Peter

[M.C. Steenberg]

If they are in perfect union then there is 'one will', but it is a united will. This does no damage to the reality of and dynamic existence of natural will in the humanity. But if the natural wills are in perfect and complete union then there is 'one united will' in the sense of miathelitis rather than 'one simple will' in the sense of monotheletis.


This is an interesting set of presuppositions. But there is no intrinsic reason to suggest that two things in perfect union are one. They are two, but two in perfect union. To take a human analogy, a man and wife in marriage are as 'one flesh'; but they are ever two. Their union is perfect and true inasmuch as they are always two, never attempting a conflation, and this perfect accord is the definition of their union.

The classical dythelete position is built on similar grounds (though clearly the human analogy of marriage has rather obvious limitations if paralleled to the divine). The union of wills is not a singularity of wills, but precisely that: a union of two. The two remain and are persistently unique, even in their union. This is in some sense what you have tried to describe in the classical distinction between monotheletism and miatheletism, which is an extension of the mono/miaphysite distinction. But within the terms of dythelete / dyphysite articulation, it is clearly problematic. Not to say wrong, but not intrinsic to this school of discussion (it is an attempt to express things via an entirely different means of articulation).

Within the dythelete context, the question is how one articulates two wills which are both fully active and dynamic in their natural characteristic, yet fully and perfectly united. This sanctification of the human will into perfect union with the divine is the 'deification' of the human will spoken of in the sixth ecumenical council: that which remains Christ's 'human will, although deified, [...] not suppressed, but rather preserved'.


I am not an expert on Theodore but it does not at all ring true that he would ever have suggested any sort of robot activity on the part of the humanity.

I suspect the same, as I mentioned in my earlier post. Two speak of a 'union of will' in the manner that Theodore did, is to implicitly define the co-existence of two, rather than the absence of one or the other.


It is not the human will which is sinful, but the exercise of that will contrary to the will of God. This is surely why our Christian life is spent in trying to be conformed to the will of God. If that makes us 'less human' then why are we so committed to achieving it?

Precisely so. This harks to another question, which is the relationship of human nature to sin (being discussed elsewhere at the moment). But the idea that human willing is itself sinful is certainly not found in the fathers of the era we're exploring in any widespread way. So again, the question is not how to understand Christ's human will 'done away with' or avoided, but fully embraced and understood as in perfect union with the divine.

INXC, Matthew

[Peter Farrington]

This is an interesting set of presuppositions. But there is no intrinsic reason to suggest that two things in perfect union are one. They are two, but two in perfect union. To take a human analogy, a man and wife in marriage are as 'one flesh'; but they are ever two. Their union is perfect and true inasmuch as they are always two, never attempting a conflation, and this perfect accord is the definition of their union.


Dear Matthew

You have here used 'one flesh' in the sense meant of 'one will'. I did not suggest that things in perfect union are one in any simple sense. But if the natural human will of Christ is in union with the natural Divine will then it is one in the sense of being united.

St Cyril says that the word 'one' has many meanings. In this area I rarely ever mean one in a simple of confounded sense. Usually one in the sense of union.

There is an issue however in that some do take the idea of two natural wills and define the human will as not being in union with the divine will but as even being in conflict with it. It is this use of the idea of two which is defective.

If 'one' is taken to mean 'union without confusion' and 'two' is taken to describe the continuing distinction, then I think that in fact Theodore, you and I are in agreement, probably (because I don't know Theodore well). Since as far as I can see we all three of us also reject the idea of 'one simple will - divine or confused' and 'two independent and contrary wills'.

As you have said, and as is constant in my own tradition from the beginning but which I will not quote here, a union in which one element is destroyed or confused is not a union. Union requires the dynamic continuance of that from which the union is composed.

I would agree with your point



But there is no intrinsic reason to suggest that two things in perfect union are one.


if you mean to exclude confusion. But if you mean to describe separateness and independent activity then I would disagree on the grounds that St Cyril does to. Things which are in union do not act independently or separately even while they retain the distinction proper to their nature. We should not be afraid to confess the difference between those natures of which Christ is, but we should and do reject a division between them which sets them up as independent and separate, such a division destroys the reality of their union.

But I sense that you mean only to exclude confusion, and I agree in that sense.

Best wishes

Peter

[Bratislav]

It is not the human will which is sinful, but the exercise of that will contrary to the will of God. This is surely why our Christian life is spent in trying to be conformed to the will of God. If that makes us 'less human' then why are we so committed to achieving it?

Personally, I experience the greatest experience of being truly human when I most conform myself to the will of God and am united in a very hesitant and partial sense with that will. True freedom and true humanity are found in such a union.

Peter

Forgive me a quick interjection.

Peter, I believe it is completely the human thing to do, given our fallen condition. St Maximos, I believe, reminds us that the deliberation between options is very much a result of our fallen condition. Attemting to comform ourselves to God's will shows precisley that we aren't yet conformed to it, but instead are in relative ignorance of it. So while I agree with you that it is human and right to seek the will of God, it is a human trait that we seek to surpass and a virtue that is relative to our current state of being.

I hope my thoughts are expressed well enough to be understood.

-Bratislav

[Peter Farrington]

Dear Bratislav

Thank you for your interesting post.

This is a subject that allows scope for a great deal of humble consideration.

I wonder what we can find to ponder upon in the exercise of deliberation which we find in Adam before the Fall. Indeed the very giving of a command not to eat of the Tree seems to me to require that there be some deliberative activity in Adam as he was created.

I also wonder whether our ultimate union with the will of God should be understood in the rather static philosophical terms of fathers like Origen, which I tend to find very dissatisfying. Indeed I find that philosophy asks the questions I don't want to and provides rather neat answers that seem to be missing something important.

I wonder then whether just as there is a difference between the faculty of will and the exercise of that will, if there is a difference between deliberation between good and evil, which is a mark of our fallenness, and the deliberation between equal goods, or deliberation within a domain of good.

In very practical terms, and only considering our present state, I wonder if there is a fallen sense of deliberating if I choose to start my prayers in the morning with the Jesus Prayer, and then pray the Office, or if I start with the Office and then pray the Jesus Prayer?

I am not sure there is culpability in such deliberation, rather it seems to me that some sense of deliberation is natural to our humanity, even when it is in union with the divine will.

I guess I am most concerned to question the idea that our perfection lies in a static engagement with the will of God, whereas it seems to me that as has been said, if there is a real union then the elements out of which such a union is composed must remain with their distinct properties, and I am not convinced that deliberation is in itself not part of our humanity, rather the poor exercise of such deliberation, and the ignorance in which we must struggle to find the way of truth and life.

These are only some thoughts, I'll be pleased to read some more from you and others on this thread.

Peter Farrington

[John Charmley]

Dear Matthew and Peter,

Reading St. Cyril this morning my eyes were drawn to this from his letter to John of Antioch:


But since God the Word, who came down from above and from heaven, "emptied himself, taking the form of a slave", and was called son of man though all the while he remained what he was, that is God (for he is unchangeable and immutable by nature), he is said to have come down from heaven, since he is now understood to be one with his own flesh, and he has therefore been designated the man from heaven, being both perfect in godhead and perfect in humanity and thought of as in one person. For there is one lord Jesus Christ, even though we do not ignore the difference of natures, out of which we say that the ineffable union was effected. As for those who say that there was a mixture or confusion or blending of God the Word with the flesh, let your holiness see fit to stop their mouths. For it is quite likely that some should spread it abroad that I have thought or said such things. But I am so far from thinking anything of the kind that I think that those are quite mad who suppose that "a shadow of change" is conceivable in connexion with the divine nature of the Word. For he remains what he is always and never changes, nor could he ever change or be susceptible of it. Furthermore we all confess that the Word of God is impassible though in his all-wise economy of the mystery he is seen to attribute to himself the sufferings undergone by his own flesh. So the all-wise Peter speaks of "Christ suffering for us in the flesh" and not in the nature of his unspeakable godhead. For in order that he might be believed to be the saviour of all, in accordance with our economic appropriation, as I said, he refers to himself the sufferings of his own flesh, in much the same way as is suggested through the voice of the prophet coming as it were from him in advance: "I gave my back to the smiters and my cheeks to blows; I hid not my face from shame and spitting" .
[Norman Tanner's translation]

St. Cyril's formulation is designed to avoid the dangers of a 'two sons' Christology, which was where, without care, the Antiochene tradition could lead, but it was also nuanced enough to avoid the pit that lay at the extreme end of the Alexandrian tradition, as he makes clear in this extract. One will after the union?


INXC

John

[M.C. Steenberg]

In the above, Peter wrote:


You have here used 'one flesh' in the sense meant of 'one will'. I did not suggest that things in perfect union are one in any simple sense. But if the natural human will of Christ is in union with the natural Divine will then it is one in the sense of being united.

I think here we're striking some solid common points of expression. I would add that the 'one flesh' analogy of marriage has a notable caveat: one would never consider a husband and wife as 'one' in marriage to be comparable, in that union, to the one-ness of Christ as incarnate Son. The 'one' who Christ is, is one in a way that a husband and wife never will be.


St Cyril says that the word 'one' has many meanings. In this area I rarely ever mean one in a simple of confounded sense. Usually one in the sense of union.

[...] If 'one' is taken to mean 'union without confusion' and 'two' is taken to describe the continuing distinction, then I think that in fact Theodore, you and I are in agreement, probably (because I don't know Theodore well). Since as far as I can see we all three of us also reject the idea of 'one simple will - divine or confused' and 'two independent and contrary wills'.

There is some issue as to the way in which the 'one' is being used beyond even this. Nestorius, as has been pointed out before, would quite happily speaking of the incarnate Christ -- the prosopon of union -- having a single will and act, since the perfected union of the two natures yielded one 'in act', 'in appearance', etc. But here the 'one will' of the prosopic union is a kind of metaphorical one: he emphatically means two, but two which are in such perfect alignment as to seem to be, function to be, and be considered as one.

In this sense, Nestorius is not so far off the point Cyril wished to make in his own language of one nature. Though Cyril doesn't follow Nestorius' compositional understanding of the incarnation as 'two parts coming together', his conception of hypostatic union always delineates between the natural and the human, expressed singularly in the incarnate Logos. The 'one' nature is one in the sense that it is the singular hypostatic reality of two ever-distinct natural realms.

Ultimately, Cyril's lack of terminological clarity, or consistency, needed some hedging in (this in some sense the project of Chalcedon); but he's made an important advance in articulation here.

INXC, Matthew

[M.C. Steenberg]

St. Cyril's formulation is designed to avoid the dangers of a 'two sons' Christology, which was where, without care, the Antiochene tradition could lead, but it was also nuanced enough to avoid the pit that lay at the extreme end of the Alexandrian tradition, as he makes clear in this extract. One will after the union?

Dear John and others,

I think we must be very careful of reading Cyril through the standard compositional-incarnational lenses most people do -- i.e., seeing the incarnational becoming as two compositional parts 'coming together', somehow, into one. Nestorius was quite right that this ultimately cannot work in any sense other than conjunction, which is what his Christology ultimately boils down to: two natures coming into perfect conjunction, or alignment, with one another.

The other extreme -- but an extreme of the same basic compositional starting point -- some manner of modified Apollinarianism or Eutychianism, where one nature changes to accommodate union with the other (e.g. the absense of a human rational mind in Christ, so as not to conflict with the rational power of the Logos).

Now, there is no way whatever to read Cyril from such a compositional framework, without turning him into an heretic through and through. If you read his mia physis statements and his larger comments on union from a compositional framework, he's simply a bad Apollinarius -- making the same mistakes as Apollinarius, but refusing to follow the earlier writer's means of making this reasonable by modifying one of the natures.

But Cyril mustn't be read this way (which was the way Nestorius certainly read him). Part of his project was precisely to show that compositional models of incarnational becoming are simply inadequate from the very start. The incarnation is not about 'two bits' coming together, but the hypostatic change in being of the eternal Son. How the eternal Son of the Father exists changes in the incarnation, so that the unchanged who of the divine Logos now exists humanly. All that the divine Son is, he now is as human. He has not joined some human 'thing' (compositional element) to himself; he has 'created for himself' an existence as human.

Cyril's point, boiled down, is that trying to think of two natures as 'two things' simply won't do. If that is the starting point, the end point is always either Nestorianism or Apollinarianism.

So there is a sense in which asking questions like 'were there two wills before the union and one after?' simply don't apply to his articulation, as the very question bespeaks a compositional framework. What are the two pre-union 'things' that unite? Is there some human quiddity that collides with the divine quiddity in the womb of Mary?

I often find that in conceiving of Cyril's expression, it's helpful to think of the natures adverbially. The divine Son exists humanly -- not in a diminished sense of 'rather like the human than as human', but in acknowledgement that humanity, the full human natural realm, is now the way in which the Son divinely exists. He has a divine will humanly, which means equally that he has a human will divinely, since it is the human will of the divine Son. It is both a human and a divine will, inasmuch as it is the singular will of the God-man.

INXC, Matthew

[John Charmley]

Dear Matthew,

An immensely helpful post, for which many thanks.

You help pin point exactly why Nestorius and Theodore failed to understand St. Cyril. They were trying to fit him into the Antiochene way of thinking about Christology, and so ended up accusing him of being like Appolinarius - which, as the extract I cited showed quite clearly, he rejected with contumely.

One of the things that makes St. Cyril such a rewarding Father to study is the way in which he goes beyond the dogmatic details of Christology. The incarnation is, for him, the primary way in which we, as Christians, experience Our Lord and His saving grace. He therefore transcends his predecessors who, it seems to my reading, had been preoccupied with the division between God and humanity, and with how the divine and the human aspects of Christ 'worked' together.

As you say, Matthew, St. Cyril recognised the crudeness of even posing this sort of question, because he had a more subtle, and far-reaching way of thinking about the Incarnation. One of the keys to Cyril's Christology seems to be its link to his soteriology; how is it we are saved?

Cyril's use of the word 'henosis', union, brings us the the heart of what he saw so clearly. The Incarnation is an 'economy', through which God unites us to himself - through which theosis is achieved. As a good Alexandrian, St. Cyril brings us to a renewed understanding of Athanasius' great insight that the Word became man so that 'man might become God'.

McGuckin puts it better than anyone else I have read when he writes:


Cyril understands that the incarnation of God as man is not a static event, but rather the pattern and archetype of a process. He points to the seamless union of God and man in the single divine person of Jesus, truly God amnd man at one and the same time, founded on the single subjectivity of Christ, as not merely a sacrament of the presence of God among us, but a sacrament of how our own human lives are destined to be drawn into is divine life, and transformed in a similar manner.


if we are made in the image of God but disfigured by sin, the Logos is like unto us in everything save sin - that surely makes Him what we are supposed to be - in which case, we can become what He calls us to be? As Cyril puts it, 'What He was by nature, we become by Grace.'

It is part of St. Cyril's greatness that he recognises the Ineffable mystery of the Incarnation, but does so in a way that enables us to discern what 'economy' is at work. Human philosophers may say it is impossible that the human and the divine can be combined - yet that is what God does in the Incarnation. God is invisible, but visible in Christ; He is omnipotent, but He suffers impassibly in Christ; He is without limit; but accepts the limitations of an earthly life; He is immortal, yet willingly comes to death for our sake. Through such bold paradoxes, St. Cyril reminds us how foolish it is to think that we can limit Him through our logic and its feeble categories.

St. Cyril constantly uses the anaology of body and soul in order to explicate his vision of henosis; these may in one formulation be two different 'natures', but they are inextricably 'one' subjectivity; his other images, such as the coal within the fire, make the same point more poetically.

Or, to put it more concisely than St. Cyril usually managed:


The divine Son exists humanly -- not in a diminished sense of 'rather like the human than as human', but in acknowledgement that humanity, the full human natural realm, is now the way in which the Son divinely exists. He has a divine will humanly, which means equally that he has a human will divinely, since it is the human will of the divine Son. It is both a human and a divine will, inasmuch as it is the singular will of the God-man.

Your comment, Matthew, seems a masterly summary of how St. Cyril is to be understood - and we are in your debt for it.

In Christ,

John

[M.C. Steenberg]

As a postscript to the above, I should say that there is a certain danger in reading too much of Cyril too frequently; namely, that one can get rather absorbed in his thought, and with a kind of articulation that often stands at rough odds with many others, so that even sounds points become hard to square, given Cyril's rather unique mode of expression. This is a problem Cyril had in his own day, and one is drawn into it if one relies too exclusively on his own today also.

I have a general rule of thumb on reading the fathers, to the effect that if one comes from a tradition or background that emphasises one father or one 'school' in any pronounced degree, one's spiritual duty is to articulate one's own thought as much as possible without the words of that father or the systems of that school. It's healthy for the soul and the mind, and productive for dialogue.

Strongly Alexandrine readers should lay aside Athanasius and Cyril (though Cyril, despite his origins, is hardly a proper Alexandrian theologically) and spend more time with the Cappadocians, Maximus and Dionysius. Strongly Antiochians should find their way to Cyril of Alexandria and Cyril of Jerusalem. Points made in articulation of the Chalcedonian position should be made, whenever possible, without recourse to the council's text -- not as a dogmatic practice (clearly one wants to know, read and comment on the text), but as a way of coming to understand that mysteries are articulated in different ways.

INXC, Matthew

[John Charmley]

Dear Matthew,

Many thanks for this. Coming from an Anglican tradition, there are so many dangers that at times it is like walking on the proverbial egg shells. The Cappadocians await the new year, but in the light of what you say, I may go there earlier!

INXC

John

[Peter Farrington]

Dear Matthew and John

Thank you both for your interesting posts.

I am especially grateful for Matthew's description of the incarnation as being dynamic rather than static, since I have not often found Byzantine correspondents who make that distinction. I agree entirely that we are not talking about bolting two different 'things' together in a variety of ways, and this is why St Cyril is insistent that the union of the divinity and humanity in Christ cannot bring about any confusion or change in the divine nature simply because it is not a union of 'things', but rather the taking up into the hypostasis of the Word a new way of being.

I have to admit that while I accept entirely the need to read a balanced selection of writers I have never found St Cyril to be anything other than entirely Orthodox and understandable. I think that perhaps a reader coming from a less overtly Cyrilline background might find his writings challenging and even confusing but I have never done so.

I would also add that if you quite rightly suggest additional reading in Maximus and Dionysius, then I would add Leontius and Severus, especially Severus. Indeed some have thought that Dionysius might have been Severus himself, and though I doubt that he certainly seems to have been part of the Severan community as Severus is the first writer to quote him.

For myself, I am forcing myself to read Theodore and Theodoret, and I might have a go at some of the so-called Bazaar of Heraclides for a paper I am working on. So I do agree that balance is important.

When 'of two' is used it is never in a temporal sense, rather it entirely describes a dynamic and continuing process of union, a dynamic union 'of' two ways of being. This is why 'in two' was seen as problematic since it seemed to say that Christ was existing 'in two' different and separate ways of being, rather than that his incarnate way of being was a union 'of' two different ways of being such that his one incarnate way of being is both authentically human and authentically divine.

As you have said, and as the anti-Chalcedonians have always said, a union requires the preservation of those ways of being otherwise it is not union but mixture and confusion. We should not be afraid of speaking of difference but only of setting up a division.

You mention elsewhere that you try to describe theological positions in the language and terminology of those you correspond with. Would you like to have a stab at describing the core Christological points in a more Cyrilline terminology?

Best wishes

Peter

[M.C. Steenberg]

I have to admit that while I accept entirely the need to read a balanced selection of writers I have never found St Cyril to be anything other than entirely Orthodox and understandable. I think that perhaps a reader coming from a less overtly Cyrilline background might find his writings challenging and even confusing but I have never done so.


I think perhaps you misread my intention, Peter: my point was not that Cyril is anything other than Orthodox and understandable -- he is both. My point was that one must not fall into the trap of expression only through the pen of one writer or school of patristic theology. If one finds oneself 'deeply Cyrilline' (which I would certainly say of myself, in context), one should try whenever possible not to call upon Cyril.

INXC, Matthew

[M.C. Steenberg]

Above, Peter wrote:



You mention elsewhere that you try to describe theological positions in the language and terminology of those you correspond with. Would you like to have a stab at describing the core Christological points in a more Cyrilline terminology?


A couple of thoughts on this. Firstly, I'm curious first to go further on the idea of 'Nestorian monotheletism', which I find particularly interesting (and many thanks again to Mina for creating this thread).

As to the potential new topic: I'm of mixed thoughts. I'm not entirely sure that a conversation aimed at expressing things in a specifically Cyrilline way is terribly useful (though it might be interesting). More interesting, and more fruitful, might be conversations on a specific Christological question that attempt to discuss and articulate it in a patristically-orientated manner, deliberately trying not to call upon any individual father, set of terminologies, etc. Simply looking at the issues.

Do feel free to create a thread in an appropriate part of the forum if you'd like, and we can see where things go.

INXC, Matthew

[Peter Farrington]

Hi Matthew

That is a good idea. Do you mean trying to describe the basic Christological themes without using our normal lexicons?

I think that is very interesting and very useful, since even now I am not entirely sure what you think about things, and I am not sure you know what I think about things, because our lexicons are still a source of confusion rather than illumination.

Do you also mean that we should explain and explore our Christology using patristic and scriptural sources other than, for instance, Leo, Chalcedon, Cyril and Severus?

Explain a bit more what you are thinking of if you would?

Peter

[Mina Soliman]

Okay,

So, while we are in the process of studying this, or understanding this, few questions come to my mind.

1. When I read this article, I thought, "Wow, very interesting," but I also agree with Dr. Steenberg that there may have been a misunderstanding. In fact, that last part, I continue to read and reread, and I'm in awe, wishing I can have Theodore's writings in front of me to read for myself. It's amazing how Fr. John Romanides also does a great job in the article to show you how Antiochian theologians like Theodore thought differently, even when refuting Paul of Samosota or Arius or Apollinarius. They way they refuted them is not the same way the Cappadocians or the Alexandrians refuted them.

So, this leads to the question of theletism. Is there another meaning for "thelete." Does it necessarily mean natural will, or can it also mean action or decision? A Coptic bishop wrote an article articulating the differences between a "natural will" and a "personal will," the former being a desire, while the latter being the action/decision taken. I've seen it also explained in the Catholic encyclopedia as well, and even Maximus the Confessor mentioned the difference between the two, the will versus the "will willed." So, replacing Theodore's ideas of a natural will with a personal will, could we then say that the position is not enough to characterize it as "Monotheletism?" And if so, what about Pyrrhus, who had a famous disputation with Maximus? Was he really a Monothelete (I haven't read the disputation to understand this myself, but from what I've heard, Pyrrhus seemed to have held to a position of "personal will" and really never articulated anything about "natural will" as Maximus did)?

2. Diodore and Theodore were condemned much after they were considered as "doctors of the Church" already by many theologians. We have the most famous Orthodox father of all, (and no, not St. Isaac, although he's extremely interesting to study), St. John Chrysostom. Many don't realize that he was taught by Diodore, who St. John considered as an angel in human form, and that he was very good friends with Theodore of Mopsuestia. If we understand the Christology of St. John Chrysostom, can we say that he was in personal agreement with Theodore and Diodore? What would the theletic beliefs of St. John Chrysostom be, if he had any?

These are some questions I consider when I study the Nestorian debate (along with a possible inherent belief of Barlaamism in Nestorian circles).

God bless.

Mina