By Fred Sanders
Scriptorium Daily
Chalcedon was a fifth-century council, and theologians in the fifth century wrestled with a particular set of problems. Just as the fourth-century saw two opposite errors (Arianism which could not confess the deity of Christ, and an Apollinarianism which could not confess his humanity), the fifth-century saw both a Nestorianism which could not confess the hypostatic union of the two natures, to and a Eutychian Monophysitism which could not confess their distinction. Eutychian Monophysites certainly knew that divinity and humanity were not the same thing. But their dread of Nestorianism in any form led them to view the result of the incarnation as the mixing of the two natures into a new nature which the incarnate Christ had: a nature both divine and human. The Eutychians who were the subject of Chalcedon’s anathemas believed themselves to be loyal adherents of Cyril of Alexandria’s theology, but they are best viewed as pushing the Cyrillian insight to a drastic extreme. Against this error, the fathers of Chalcedon anathematized “those who imagine a mixture or confusion of the two natures of Christ” and also “those who, first idly talk of the natures of the Lord as ‘two before the union’ and then conceive but one ‘after the union.’” (more)
