Of Ibas and Theodoret and the post-Nestorian Christological controversies

[James Ghiorsi]

I am very interested in the Christological controversies which troubled the Church from in the period starting with the heresy of Nestorius up to the controversy about the Three Chapters and the Second Council of Constantinople.

I'm wondering if anyone knows if that notorious Letter of Ibas is available anywhere in English, whether on line or in print. One can't even begin to understand the delicate issues involved in Constantinople II's condemnation of it if one hasn't read it.

[Nicholas Marinides]

Dear James,
I too am very interested in this topic. A few years ago I tracked down the letter of Ibas in the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon in the massive series by the German church historian Eduard Schwarz. But that is the original text, in Greek. Fortunately a complete translation of the Acts has recently been published:
The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, translated by Richard Price and Michael Gaddis

You can find it on Amazon. I haven't looked at it myself yet, so I don't know how good this edition is. I also don't know which pages Ibas's letter is on, but the Table of Contents or Index should help with that.
I hope this helps. If you have any further questions, or would like to discuss what you read there, let me know.

cheers,
Nick

[Michael Stickles]

Amazon.com's listing does not have the table of contents, but the University of Chicago Press (http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/168966.ctl) website does. The most likely place for the letter to be would be in Volume Two, under Session IX or Session X (both of which dealt with Ibas).

A couple of sources say that Ibas' letter is only "partially preserved in Greek translation in the acts of the Council of Chalcedon", but I saw no indication that it is preserved at all anywhere else.

I only found excerpts of the acts of the Council of Chalcedon online (in Philip Schaff's work The Seven Ecumenical Councils (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.html), at the CCEL website). Unfortunately, those excerpts do not include Ibas' letter, just a summary of the offenses in it (in The Capitula of the Council (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.xii.vii.html), at the bottom of the page).

Since Price and Gaddis' translation of the acts is listed as "the first translation in a modern western language", it's probably the only place you'll find what there is of Ibas' letter in English. I noticed that Barnes and Noble lists it on their website, so if they have a store near you, you can ask them to order a copy; the store near me stresses that ordering puts you under no obligation to buy, and they encourage people to order something they might be interested in, even if they're not sure they'd want to buy it. If you think you might consider buying the set, that would be a safe way to check it out (if your store has the same attitude). The publication date lists as September 2007, so there might be a bit of a wait.

Note that I haven't read Ibas' letter in Greek or English, so I'm afraid I can't be of any help beyond the little I've found out above.

In Christ,
Mike

[Ryan]

I'm coming to think that the question of Ibas and his reception at Chalcedon is the fundamental sticking point in the modern polemics I have seen by OO's against Chalcedon. Their critiques of the actual definition tend to be fairly weak- IMO the fundamental points of St. Cyril's 12 anathemas are held up in the definition. I was previously of the opinion that the simple statement "we have read his letter and find him Orthodox" was ambiguous enough to be interpreted that Ibas was accepted without his letter necessarily being so, but I have seen further quotes from this session which seem to show that indeed the individuals judging Ibas, including the Patriarch of Antioch, saw the letter as orthodox.

If the letter of Ibas to Maris, one of the Three Chapters condemned at Constantinople II, was really approved at Chalcedon, what implications does this have on the Orthodoxy of the Council as a whole?