Post-Chalcedonian Christology

Meyendorff’s Christ in Eastern Christian Thought traces the Christological question from the fracture left by Chalcedon in 451 to the synthesis of St. John of Damascus in the eighth century. Its central historical claim is that the sixth-century “neo-Chalcedonian” settlement — the reading of Chalcedon through Cyril — was not a concession to monophysitism but the correct completion of the council. This file follows that argument through the Three Chapters, theopaschism, the two Leontii, and the monothelite crisis.

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

The Problem Chalcedon Left

The Definition of Chalcedon (451) confessed one Christ “in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation,” in one prosopon and one hypostasis. It settled the dogma and did not settle the reception. To the party formed by St. Cyril of Alexandria, the formula “in two natures” (en dyo physesin) sounded like a betrayal: Cyril had confessed “one incarnate nature of God the Word” (mia physis tou Theou Logou sesarkōmenē), and to number two natures after the union appeared to divide the one Christ (Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, 1975, on the anti-Chalcedonian reaction, as cited at The Definition and the Non-Chalcedonians).

Meyendorff’s account of the following two centuries is that they are the story of the Church discovering how to say Chalcedon in Cyril’s language — not of the Church retreating from Chalcedon.

[Disputed: whether the Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian confessions differ only verbally or substantively. Meyendorff belongs to the convergence side of this question: he holds, with John McGuckin and others, that the mature Cyril himself accepted "two natures" language in the Formula of Reunion of 433, and that the divergence is largely one of terminology and history rather than of faith (McGuckin, *St. Cyril of Alexandria*, 1994; Meyendorff, *Christ in Eastern Christian Thought*, 1975 — both cited on side (a) of the repository's own disputed note at [The Definition and the Non-Chalcedonians](../../the-seven-ecumenical-councils/05-chalcedon-451/the-definition-and-the-non-chalcedonians.md)). The opposing "real-difference" view, held notably in Athonite and other traditionalist quarters, holds that a genuine dogmatic difference remains and that the modern dialogues have understated it. This collection reports Meyendorff's position as his and does not adjudicate; the repository's treatment of the question is at the councils collection file cited.]

Theopaschism and the Communicatio Idiomatum

The first test case is the theopaschite formula: “One of the Holy Trinity suffered in the flesh.” Meyendorff treats this as the hinge of the sixth century. If the subject of Christ’s human experiences — birth, hunger, suffering, death — is the divine Person of the Word, then the union is real at the level of the person, and the communicatio idiomatum is not a rhetorical convention but a statement of fact. If the subject is a distinct human person or a merely notional composite, the union is verbal.

Meyendorff observes that objections to theopaschite language were current in anti-Cyrillian circles at Antioch both before and after Ephesus (431), and that the sixth-century controversy is therefore the continuation of an older quarrel (Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, 1975, ch. on “God suffered in the flesh”). The formula was pressed by the Scythian monks and eventually received; the Fifth Council would incorporate it.

The theological consequence, in Meyendorff’s reading, is decisive for everything that follows. If God can be the subject of human suffering without ceasing to be God, then the categories “divine” and “human” are not mutually limiting quantities. The way is open for an account of deification in which the human is not displaced by the divine (see Hypostasis and the Human).

Constantinople II (553) and Neo-Chalcedonianism

The Fifth Ecumenical Council condemned the Three Chapters — the person and writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, certain writings of Theodoret against Cyril, and the letter of Ibas to Maris — and affirmed the Cyrilline reading of Chalcedon. Meyendorff’s assessment is that it “affirmed the legitimacy of speaking of ‘one incarnate nature of God the Word’ when rightly understood, and of ‘two natures’ — showing that the two vocabularies could both be orthodox,” a move that anticipates the modern dialogues with the Oriental Orthodox even though it failed in its own day to win them back (Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, 1975, as summarized and cited at Constantinople II and the Three Chapters).

This is the position modern scholarship calls neo-Chalcedonianism, a term coined in the study of Severus of Antioch by Joseph Lebon in Le monophysisme sévérien (Louvain, 1909) and now standard (see The Neo-Chalcedonian Retrieval). Meyendorff’s contribution was to insist — against the older Western reading that treated neo-Chalcedonianism as Justinian’s political fudge — that it was a genuine theological advance: “neo-Chalcedonian Christology,” he argued, “was not a simple concession to monophysitism” (Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, 1975).

He treats Justinian’s involvement with corresponding care. The emperor’s religious policy, the coercion of Pope Vigilius, and the schism of the Istrian bishops are reported in full; but the theological outcome is judged on its merits, not discredited by its politics (Meyendorff, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions, 1989, on Justinian’s religious policy and the Vigilius affair; see Constantinople II and the Three Chapters).

The Two Leontii

The technical work of the sixth century was done by theologians who supplied the conceptual vocabulary the councils then used — above all the figures known as Leontius of Byzantium and Leontius of Jerusalem, whose distinction from one another and whose relative dating have been debated for a century. It is in this literature that the notion later summarized as enhypostaton is worked out: Christ’s humanity is not a nature without hypostasis (which would be an abstraction, not a man), nor a nature with its own human hypostasis (which would be Nestorianism), but a real and complete human nature subsisting in the hypostasis of the Word.

Meyendorff’s treatment of these figures is one of the parts of the book most affected by later scholarship. The dating, authorship and relations of the Leontian corpus have been substantially reworked since 1969 by specialists in sixth-century Christology, and readers should consult current editions rather than rely on the 1969/1975 account for the technical questions. What has not been overturned is the substance of the doctrinal point about enhypostaton, which remains the standard way of stating how Chalcedon avoids both errors.

Maximus, the Two Wills, and Constantinople III

The book’s center of gravity is the seventh century and St. Maximus the Confessor. Monothelitism — the doctrine of a single (divine) will in Christ, promoted as an imperial formula of reunion — was, in Meyendorff’s reading, the last and most subtle form of the monophysite instinct: it granted two natures and then evacuated the human one of its proper activity.

Maximus’s answer, which the Sixth Ecumenical Council (Constantinople III, 680–81) received, is that will and operation belong to nature, not to person, so that two natures entail two natural wills and two natural operations, humanly and divinely willing in perfect concord. And the reason it matters is soteriological: if Christ did not assume a human will, then the human will — the very seat of the fall — is not saved (Maximus, Opuscula theologica et polemica; Disputation with Pyrrhus; Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, 1975, on Maximus’s doctrine of the will, as cited at Constantinople III and Monothelitism; cf. Bathrellos, The Byzantine Christ, 2004; see Dyothelite Christology and Natural and Gnomic Will).

Meyendorff also treats the Honorius question — the condemnation by the Sixth Council of a pope who had written incautiously in favor of one will — and draws from it the ecclesiological conclusion that the guarantee of orthodoxy lies with the whole Church in council, not with any single throne (Meyendorff, Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions, 1989, cited on side (a) of the repository’s disputed note at Constantinople III and Monothelitism).

Dionysius, Iconoclasm, and the Damascene

The book closes with three further chapters that carry the argument forward. On Pseudo-Dionysius, Meyendorff advances the reading that would become his most contested thesis: that the Areopagite’s hierarchical and Neoplatonically-shaped scheme required a Christological correction, which the later tradition — supremely Maximus, and after him Palamas — supplied (see The “Christological Corrective” Debate; and note that a reviewer of the 1969 edition already queried whether Dionysius was in fact so Neoplatonic as the book assumed). On iconoclasm, the argument is that the image is a Christological necessity: what can be circumscribed is the humanity the Word truly assumed (Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, 1979, and Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, 1975, both cited at The Iconoclast Controversy; see also Icons and Iconoclasm). On St. John of Damascus, the Exposition of the Orthodox Faith is presented as the summation in which the whole development is codified (see St. John of Damascus).

The Book’s Standing

Christ in Eastern Christian Thought remains a standard reference for the post-Chalcedonian centuries and is cited across this repository — in the collections on Chalcedon, Constantinople II and III, Cyril of Alexandria, Leo the Great, Dionysius the Areopagite, and the Church Fathers. Its central historical claim about neo-Chalcedonianism has been broadly vindicated by subsequent scholarship; its technical treatment of the sixth-century authors has been superseded in places; and its Dionysian thesis is contested. That is a normal fate for a monograph of 1969, and a better one than most.

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. (The anti-Chalcedonian reaction; theopaschism and the Antiochene objections; neo-Chalcedonianism “not a simple concession to monophysitism”; the Leontii; Maximus on the will; Dionysius; iconoclasm; John of Damascus.)
Meyendorff, John. Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions: The Church 450–680 A.D. The Church in History II. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1989. (Justinian’s religious policy; Vigilius and the Istrian schism; the Honorius question and conciliar authority.)
Meyendorff, John. Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes. New York: Fordham University Press, 1974; 2nd ed. 1979. (The iconoclast Christology.)
Lebon, Joseph. Le monophysisme sévérien. Louvain, 1909. (The coinage and definition of “neo-Chalcedonianism.”)
McGuckin, John A. St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological Controversy. Leiden: Brill, 1994. (The Formula of Reunion of 433 and Cyril’s acceptance of two-natures language.)
Bathrellos, Demetrios. The Byzantine Christ: Person, Nature, and Will in the Christology of Saint Maximus the Confessor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Maximus the Confessor. Opuscula theologica et polemica; Disputation with Pyrrhus.
Barrois, Georges A. Review of Christ in Eastern Christian Thought. Theology Today 27.2 (1970).
Chalcedon, 451, Definition; Constantinople II, 553; Constantinople III, 680–81.