07 — The Fathers Against Them

The mature answer to the rejection of Chalcedon was not given by emperors or commissions but by three Fathers: St. Sophronius of Jerusalem, who saw at once what the compromise of “one energy” would cost; St. Maximus the Confessor, who worked out why will and energy belong to nature and paid for it with his tongue and his right hand; and St. John of Damascus, who gathered the whole tradition into a synthesis and wrote directly against the Jacobites and the Acephali. This section is the theological climax of the collection.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Contents

File Description
sophronius-and-maximus.md Why the seventh-century monothelite crisis is the sequel to the fifth-century schism; Sophronius’ Synodical Letter of 634; Maximus on will and energy as belonging to nature, the natural and the gnomic will, Gethsemane; the Lateran Synod of 649 and Maximus’ trial and death; the Sixth Council in brief, deferring detail to the councils collection
st-john-of-damascus-and-the-summing-up.md The Damascene’s setting outside the empire; On Heresies and how it classifies the parties; Against the Jacobites and On the Composite Nature against the Acephali — arguments about physis, hypostasis, and composition addressed directly to the non-Chalcedonians; the Exact Exposition as the classical synthesis; what the Damascene’s method teaches about arguing with an interlocutor

Reading Order

Read Sophronius and Maximus first; the Damascene presupposes them. Then St. John of Damascus and the Summing Up.

A Note on Deferral

The Sixth Ecumenical Council in the framework of the seven, and the case of Pope Honorius, belong to The Seven Ecumenical Councils and are treated here only so far as the Chalcedonian question requires. St. Maximus’ cosmology, ascetic teaching, and Mystagogia belong to St. Maximus the Confessor; the Damascene’s defense of the icons and his hymnography belong to St. John of Damascus.

See Also