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Updated: May 4, 2025
It was ground gained to secure the admission that in any sense Christ was very man. But the monophysites never learned the true manner of the union, namely, that Christ was "one; not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the Manhood into God; one altogether; not by confusion of Substance but by unity of Person."
Perhaps the Greeks would be still involved in the heresy of the Monophysites, if the emperor's horse had not fortunately stumbled; Theodosius expired; his orthodox sister Pulcheria, with a nominal husband, succeeded to the throne; Chrysaphius was burnt, Dioscorus was disgraced, the exiles were recalled, and the tome of Leo was subscribed by the Oriental bishops.
The idea of the native dignity of the human frame and of its being ennobled by the King's indwelling was completely foreign to the monophysites' ways of thinking. Since such was the background of their thought it was inevitable that definitely heretical doctrines should result. In the first place we meet the flat denial of the reality of Christ's body.
The shibboleth of orthodoxy, quoted above, "one incarnate nature of God the Word," passed rapidly into the watchword of heresy. Athanasius had used the word "nature" in a broad sense. The monophysites narrowed it down to its later technical meaning. Thus they exalted Christ into a region beyond the ken of mortal man.
We may instance the deep emotion accompanying His resolve to go to meet His fate at Jerusalem, the rejoicing in spirit at the success of the apostles' mission, His Agony and His universal love. The monophysites could not recognise this duality in Christ's emotional nature. Hunger and thirst, and even the higher human feelings they considered derogatory to the Son of God.
With this view I will quote a passage from the account, which I gave in 1850, of my reasonings and feelings in 1839: "It was difficult to make out how the Eutychians or Monophysites were heretics, unless Protestants and Anglicans were heretics also; difficult to find arguments against the Tridentine Fathers, which did not tell against the Fathers of Chalcedon; difficult to condemn the Popes of the sixteenth century, without condemning the Popes of the fifth.
Without tact and understanding, vicious, moreover, and tyrannical, he oppressed during the two years from 474 to 476 his people, sorely tried by the incursions of barbarous hordes. He also favoured, all but openly, the Monophysites, specially Peter Fullo, the heretical patriarch of Antioch.
While among the Egyptians and all who confess the saving doctrine of Eutyches, among the Monophysites we are the chief, and we will remain so, and close our ears and hearts against all heretics and their superstitions. What! A grandson of Menas, the brother of two martyrs for our glorious faith, married to a Melchite! The mere idea is sacrilege, is blasphemy; I can give it no milder name!
Harnack goes so far as to say that "the whole position of the later monophysites, thought out to all its conceivable conclusions, is already to be found in Apollinaris." Apollinarianism was condemned at the second general council, and there the Church made her first declaration, a negative one, on the subject of the hypostatic union.
While among the Egyptians and all who confess the saving doctrine of Eutyches, among the Monophysites we are the chief, and we will remain so, and close our ears and hearts against all heretics and their superstitions. What! A grandson of Menas, the brother of two martyrs for our glorious faith, married to a Melchite! The mere idea is sacrilege, is blasphemy; I can give it no milder name!
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