The Three Chapters and Constantinople II

Justinian’s answer to the schism was not to soften Chalcedon but to prove it Cyrillian. The Fifth Ecumenical Council of 553 condemned the “Three Chapters” — Theodore of Mopsuestia, the anti-Cyrillian writings of Theodoret, and the Letter of Ibas to Maris — in order to cut away every Nestorian reading of the Fourth Council, and defined that the hypostasis of the union is the pre-existent hypostasis of the Word, that one of the Holy Trinity suffered in the flesh, and that both “one incarnate nature” and “two natures” may be said orthodoxly. The separated churches were not won back. The Church’s Christology was permanently secured.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Justinian’s Problem and His Method

The Emperor Justinian I (527–565) inherited an empire whose richest eastern provinces were largely out of communion with their capital. He was a serious theologian in his own right, the author of dogmatic edicts and of a hymn (Ho Monogenes, “Only-begotten Son,” sung to this day in the Divine Liturgy), and he judged, correctly, that the Henotikon strategy had failed: union could not be had by declining to state the faith (Meyendorff, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions: The Church 450–680 A.D., Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1989, on Justinian’s religious policy; Gray, The Defense of Chalcedon in the East (451–553), Leiden: Brill, 1979).

His method was the opposite: to demonstrate that Chalcedon, rightly read, teaches exactly what Cyril taught, and to remove from Chalcedon’s record everything that could be read otherwise. In 532 he convened the Collatio at Constantinople — a formal conference between Chalcedonian bishops and a delegation of Severans, at which the anti-Chalcedonians were invited to state their objections and hear them answered. It produced no reunion, but it clarified what the objections actually were: that Chalcedon’s “two natures” was Nestorian in tendency, that the Tome was Nestorian in substance, and that the council had sheltered the persons and writings of men who had attacked Cyril (Meyendorff, Imperial Unity, 1989; Gray, 1979).

Justinian took the third objection seriously, and the Three Chapters are his answer to it.

Neo-Chalcedonianism

The theological movement behind the policy is what scholarship calls neo-Chalcedonianism: the deliberate reading of the Chalcedonian Definition through Cyril’s Twelve Anathemas and the mia physis formula, holding that both the “two natures” and the “one incarnate nature” idioms are orthodox and that Chalcedon’s hypostasis is Cyril’s one subject. Its representative figures include John the Grammarian of Caesarea, against whom Severus wrote his major work, and Leontius of Jerusalem; its imperial patron was Justinian; and its most durable product is the theopaschite formula, “one of the Holy Trinity suffered in the flesh,” pressed at Constantinople by a group of Scythian monks in the early sixth century and eventually dogmatized (Gray, The Defense of Chalcedon in the East, 1979, the standard study; Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1975).

Neo-Chalcedonianism is not a compromise of Chalcedon and it is not a concession to Severus. It is the Chalcedonian tradition doing what the Definition itself asked to be done — reading the Horos alongside the Cyrilline letters the Horos names as its own standard (see In Two Natures).

The Three Chapters

The Three Chapters (tria kephalaia) were three targets from the Antiochene tradition that the anti-Chalcedonians pointed to as proof that Chalcedon had sheltered crypto-Nestorians:

Theodore of Mopsuestia — the revered teacher of the Antiochene school and, in his critics’ eyes, the true fountainhead of Nestorius’ error; condemned both as a person and in his writings.
Certain writings of Theodoret of Cyrrhus — specifically those against Cyril and the Twelve Anathemas. Theodoret himself had been restored at Chalcedon after anathematizing Nestorius, so only these particular writings, not his person, were condemned.
The Letter of Ibas of Edessa to Maris the Persian — a letter critical of Cyril and of the Ephesine proceedings. The letter alone was condemned, not Ibas, who had likewise been received at Chalcedon.

The delicacy is obvious, and it is what made the Three Chapters controversy so bitter in the West: two of the three had been vindicated at Chalcedon itself, so condemning their writings looked like an implicit reversal of the Fourth Council. Justinian’s theologians answered that the council condemned only what was genuinely Nestorian in these men’s work, leaving Chalcedon’s authority intact — the aim was to fix Chalcedon’s interpretation, not to overturn it (Price, The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009, on the logic of the condemnation).

The Council of 553

The council met at Constantinople from May to June 553, about 165 bishops attending, overwhelmingly Eastern, under Patriarch Eutychius (Price, Acts of Constantinople 553, 2009; Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils, Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990).

Its most troubled relationship was with the West. Pope Vigilius was in Constantinople but refused to attend, fearing that condemning the Three Chapters would betray Chalcedon; he issued a Constitutum declining the condemnation. The council proceeded without him and struck his name from the diptychs while professing to keep communion with the see of Rome. Only afterward, under pressure, did Vigilius reverse himself and accept the decrees (a second Constitutum, 554), so that the Fifth Council was in the end received in the West as well — at the cost of a schism in northern Italy, the “Istrian schism,” that lasted into the seventh century (Price, 2009; Meyendorff, Imperial Unity, 1989). The episode belongs to the history of the papal claims and is treated in Constantinople II and the Three Chapters.

What the Council Defined

Doctrinally, Constantinople II reaffirmed Chalcedon and interpreted it in a firmly Cyrillian direction. Its anathemas:

Confess that the one crucified in the flesh is “true God and Lord of glory and one of the Holy Trinity” — the theopaschite formula, which safeguards the single subject against any Nestorian division.
Define that the hypostasis of the union is none other than the pre-existent hypostasis of the Word, not a new person constituted by the union. This is the point treated in One Hypostasis and the Communication of Idioms.
Affirm the orthodoxy of both idioms — that one may rightly speak of “one incarnate nature of God the Word” when rightly understood, and equally of “two natures” — showing that the two vocabularies can both be orthodox.
Receive Cyril’s Twelve Anathemas explicitly, answering the charge that Chalcedon had quietly shelved them.

(Council of Constantinople II, Anathemas; trans. Percival, ed., NPNF, Second Series, vol. 14; Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1; Price, Acts of Constantinople 553, 2009; Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, 1975.)

The Fifth Council thus stands as the Church’s own authoritative statement that Chalcedon is to be read through Cyril — the two councils are one Christology, not two. This is not an ecumenical courtesy invented in the twentieth century; it is conciliar dogma of the sixth.

Why It Failed

It did not win the separated churches back, and the reasons are worth stating because they recur exactly in the modern discussion.

It came too late. By 553 the parallel hierarchy was already in place. Jacob Baradaeus had been ordaining for a decade (see Severus, Jacob Baradaeus, and the Parallel Hierarchies), and a church with its own bishops does not dissolve because a formula has been clarified.

It came from the persecutor. The same reign that offered the theological concession was imprisoning, deposing, and exiling the men to whom it was offered. The condemnation of Severus in 536 and the coercion that followed it did more to fix the separation than the Fifth Council could undo (see The Condemnation of Severus and the Hardening).

It did not offer what was demanded. The separated party wanted Chalcedon and the Tome repudiated, not reinterpreted; Justinian would not repudiate an Ecumenical Council, and the Church could not. Where the demand is that a council be undone, no clarification will suffice.

And it alienated the West without gaining the East — the characteristic cost of imperial religious policy, and one the Henotikon had already demonstrated.

What It Permanently Secured

The failure was ecclesial; the gain was dogmatic, and it was very great.

After 553 the Chalcedonian tradition possesses an authoritative reading of its own charter. Every subsequent attempt to argue that Chalcedon divided Christ, or replaced Cyril with Leo, or introduced a new subject by the union, runs into a conciliar definition that says otherwise. The Fifth Council supplied the framework within which St. Maximus and St. John of Damascus would work, and without which the answer to monothelitism could not have been given.

It also fixed the shape of the Church’s Christological grammar: one hypostasis, the Word’s own; two natures, each entire; the exchange of properties at the level of the person; and — because will and energy belong to nature — the two wills and two energies that the Sixth Council would define. The councils are cumulative, and 553 is the hinge between the fourth and the sixth.

References

Council of Constantinople II (553). Anathemas. In Percival, ed., The Seven Ecumenical Councils (NPNF, Second Series, vol. 14); Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1.
Price, Richard. The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553. 2 vols. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009.
Gray, Patrick T. R. The Defense of Chalcedon in the East (451–553). Leiden: Brill, 1979.
Meyendorff, John. Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions: The Church 450–680 A.D. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1989; Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, 1975.
Davis, Leo Donald. The First Seven Ecumenical Councils. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990.
Tanner, Norman P., ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. 2 vols. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990.