04 — Christ in Eastern Christian Thought

Meyendorff’s monograph on Byzantine Christology — Le Christ dans la théologie byzantine (Paris: Cerf, 1969), Englished the same year as Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (Washington, DC: Corpus Books, 1969) and reissued in a revised form by St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press in 1975 — is the most technically demanding of his books and the one that carries the deepest argument. It traces the Christological question from the aftermath of Chalcedon to St. John of Damascus, and argues that the whole development is driven by a doctrine of what it means to be human.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (emigration) / Orthodox Church in America

What This Section Covers

• Post-Chalcedonian Christology — the sixth- and seventh-century material: the anti-Chalcedonian reaction, theopaschism and the Scythian monks, the “neo-Chalcedonian” settlement of Constantinople II (553), Leontius of Byzantium and Leontius of Jerusalem, monothelitism and Constantinople III (680–81), and the Damascene synthesis.
• Hypostasis and the Human — the theological payload: the doctrine of hypostasis, the “enhypostatized” humanity of Christ, the two natural wills, and the anthropology Meyendorff draws from them.

Publication Data

• French original: Le Christ dans la théologie byzantine. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1969.
• First English: Christ in Eastern Christian Thought. Washington, DC, and Cleveland: Corpus Books, 1969. 218 pp.
• Revised and expanded English: Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1975 (the edition normally cited, and the one this repository cites elsewhere).

(St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, “Protopresbyter John Meyendorff,” svots.edu; Barrois, review of Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, 1970, giving the Corpus Books extent and date.)

[Corrected: the repository's file at orthodoxy/01-foundations/christology.md cites the 1969 Corpus Books edition, while most other files cite the SVS Press 1975. Both are real editions of the same book; the 1975 SVS edition is revised and is the standard citation. This collection cites 1975 with the 1969 originals noted.]

Why It Matters for This Collection

Christ in Eastern Christian Thought is where Meyendorff’s governing thesis is argued rather than asserted. Everything in Byzantine Theology about the human person being fulfilled rather than diminished by participation in God is here derived from the Christological councils. And it is the book that made him an anchor source for the repository’s councils collection, where it is cited on the anti-Chalcedonian reaction, on Constantinople II’s double vocabulary, on Maximus’s doctrine of the will, and on iconoclasm (The Seven Ecumenical Councils).

A Note on Standpoint

The Christological dogma expounded here is the Church’s, defined at Chalcedon, Constantinople II and Constantinople III and confessed as such (METHODOLOGY §4.1). Meyendorff’s readings of that dogma — the specific account of neo-Chalcedonianism, the placing of Leontius of Jerusalem, the anthropological conclusion — are his scholarship, and one of them (the assessment of the Chalcedonian/non-Chalcedonian divergence) lies on a question the repository treats as genuinely disputed. That is flagged where it arises.

See Also

• Byzantine Theology — where this argument becomes a survey
• The Seven Ecumenical Councils — the conciliar record
• St. Maximus the Confessor — the theologian at the book’s center
• Christology — the repository’s doctrinal treatment

References

• Meyendorff, John. Christ in Eastern Christian Thought. Washington, DC: Corpus Books, 1969; rev. ed. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1975. French original: Le Christ dans la théologie byzantine. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1969.
• Barrois, Georges A. Review of Christ in Eastern Christian Thought. Theology Today 27.2 (1970). (The Corpus Books extent, 218 pp.)
• St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. “Protopresbyter John Meyendorff.” svots.edu.