The Monophysite Crisis

The excessive reaction against Nestorius

After Ephesus, the Catholic faith fixed a boundary: Christ cannot be divided into two subjects, a man Jesus on one side and the Word of God on the other. Saint Cyril of Alexandria imposed the grammar of personal unity: the Word became man, and Mary is Mother of God (Theotokos) because he who is born of her according to the flesh is God the Son.^[6]

This victory carries a risk of misreading. Some disciples of the Cyrillian formula "one incarnate nature of the Word" understand it as if, after the Incarnation, one should no longer speak of two real natures. Yet Cyril himself did not mean to deny Christ's full humanity: he refused two subjects, not the reality of the assumed humanity.^[7]

The Monophysite crisis thus begins as an imbalance of protection. To avoid the Nestorian division, Eutyches and his supporters slide towards a Christology in which Christ's humanity becomes difficult to recognize as truly ours.

Eutyches, influential monk of Constantinople

Eutyches is an old monk of Constantinople, head of a great monastery and declared adversary of Nestorius. In 448, Eusebius of Dorylaeum, who had already denounced Nestorius, in turn accuses him of heresy before a synod presided over by Saint Flavian of Constantinople.^[8]

The synod's debates are precise. Flavian has Cyril's second letter to Nestorius and the letter of union to John of Antioch read aloud. According to the acts of the synod of 448, re-read at Chalcedon (session I), Eutyches refuses to appear, claims to worship "one incarnate nature of God made man", confesses Christ "of two natures" before the union but "one nature" after the union; questioned on the consubstantiality of Christ's flesh with ours, he declares he has "never hitherto" said it, then ends up conceding it.^[9]

Flavian then sums up the faith as the confession of Christ "of two natures" after the Incarnation, supported by Cyril's two letters re-read at the synod: one Christ, true God and true man.^[10]

The difficulty here is decisive. If Christ does not have a humanity consubstantial with ours, he does not truly take on our condition. Yet, according to Saint Gregory of Nazianzus's axiom, "What has not been assumed has not been healed"^[11]: our salvation is at stake, as much as the words.

Flavian condemns Eutyches

The synod of Constantinople ends by deposing Eutyches. The sentence strikes at the refusal to confess "of two natures" after the Incarnation: the synod judges Eutyches's submission insincere and declares unorthodox anyone who does not confess "of two natures". This distinction is crucial: the Church does not choose between unity and humanity. It confesses both.

Eutyches appeals. He enjoys powerful support, notably at the court of Theodosius II and from Dioscorus of Alexandria, Cyril's successor.^[12] The case then leaves Constantinople and becomes an imperial crisis.

A council dominated by Dioscorus

Theodosius II convenes a new assembly at Ephesus in 449. It is Saint Leo himself who calls it the "Robber Council of Ephesus" (Latrocinium): the assembly rehabilitates Eutyches, deposes Flavian, and Dioscorus refuses the reading of Leo's letters, including the Tome to Flavian.^[13][14][15]

Dioscorus presides with overwhelming authority. The bishops who had judged Eutyches in 448 are sidelined. Flavian is condemned; he dies shortly afterwards from the ill-treatment suffered. The scene becomes the symbol of a council where procedure, political pressure and ecclesial violence prevent a free doctrinal judgment.^[16]

Leo's Tome is set aside

Pope Leo the Great had sent Flavian a doctrinal letter, the Tome to Flavian, which would become one of Chalcedon's major texts. Dioscorus refuses to have it read at Ephesus II. This sidelining weighs heavily in the Western reception: once informed, Leo condemns all the acts of the 449 assembly, which protected Eutyches and humiliated the apostolic faith.^[17]

Leo's Tome formulates the balance Chalcedon will take up: Christ is one and the same Son, but the properties of each nature remain. Divinity does not abolish humanity; humanity does not divide the Son.

"Each form does what is proper to it with the co-operation of the other." — Saint Leo the Great, Tome to Flavian (Letter 28, ch. 4)^[18]

This sentence does not mean two subjects acting side by side. It means that one subject, the incarnate Word, acts according to what befits his divinity and according to what befits his humanity.

An inquiry into Ephesus II

After the death of Theodosius II, Emperor Marcian and Empress Pulcheria convene a new council at Chalcedon, near Constantinople. The assembly opens on 8 October 451 and at length re-reads the acts of the synod of Constantinople of 448 and those of Ephesus II.^[19]

The first great decision is personal and procedural: Dioscorus is deposed. According to the sentence of the legates, read in session III: Dioscorus is deprived of his bishopric and of all ecclesiastical dignity for his support of Eutyches, his excommunication of Leo and his refusal to answer the accusations.^[20]

This deposition does not yet resolve everything. Many Eastern bishops want to remain faithful to Cyril while receiving Leo. A definition is therefore needed that is neither Nestorian nor Eutychian.

The formula of the four adverbs

Chalcedon's definition is one of the most precise texts in Christian history. It takes up Nicaea, Constantinople I, Ephesus, Cyril and Leo, then confesses Christ acknowledged in two natures. The four Latin and Greek adverbs have become classic: without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.^[21]

"One and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation." — Council of Chalcedon, definition of faith, 451^[22]

This table shows why Chalcedon is not a soft compromise. It is a formula with a double safeguard: it forbids both fusion and separation.

The Catholic faith is not "two Christs"

The anti-Chalcedonians fear that "two natures" means two Christs. Chalcedon answers exactly the opposite: it is one and the same Christ who is known in two natures. The formula does not replace Cyril; it interprets him against Eutyches's excesses.

The difference lies in the grammar of the subject. As the Catechism puts it: "Jesus Christ possesses two natures, one divine and the other human, not confused, but united in the one person of God's Son"^[23]. That is why the human actions of Jesus are truly those of the Son, and his divine acts do not destroy his humanity.

Egypt and Syria reject Chalcedon

The 451 definition is dogmatically decisive, but its reception is difficult. In Egypt, a large part of the people and clergy refuse the Chalcedonian patriarch Proterius; he is killed in 457 in an explosion of ecclesial violence. In Syria and Palestine, lines also shift between fidelity to Chalcedon, fidelity to Cyril and opposition to imperial authority.^[24][25]

The crisis is therefore not only a debate among theologians. It touches liturgical languages, local identities, mistrust of Constantinople and the memory of Alexandria. Christological vocabulary becomes the locus of an imperial fracture.

Zeno's Henoticon fails

In 482, Emperor Zeno publishes the Henoticon, an edict of union drafted on the advice of Acacius of Constantinople^[26]. The text condemns Nestorius and Eutyches, approves Cyril's anathemas, confesses one Christ, God and man, but carefully avoids the words "nature" and "person" and makes only a vague allusion to Chalcedon, without recognizing its authority.^[27]

The device is clever but fragile. For the Chalcedonians, it abandons the clarity of 451. For the radical anti-Chalcedonians, it is not enough. For Rome, it becomes unacceptable because it sacrifices the conciliar definition to a political peace.

"Whoever thinks otherwise, now or formerly, whether at Chalcedon or at any other synod, is anathematized, especially Nestorius, Eutyches and all their followers." — Zeno's Henoticon (482)^[28]

The edict provokes the Acacian schism between Rome and Constantinople from 484 to 519.^[29] The attempt at union thus aggravates the fracture it meant to heal.

Severus of Antioch and moderate Monophysitism

At the beginning of the 6th century, Severus of Antioch becomes the great intellectual figure of the anti-Chalcedonian camp: Patriarch of Antioch from 512 to 518, died in 538, he is the most prolific writer of the anti-Chalcedonian current.^[30]

Severus rejects Eutyches and wants to remain Cyrillian: he confesses one incarnate nature of the Word, not as confusion or absorption, but as the composed unity of Christ. To name this position without assimilating it to Eutychianism, this article uses the word Miaphysitism. In the strict sense, Monophysite denotes the condemned error: the absorption of Christ's humanity into his divinity^[31]. This precision does not erase the historical disagreement over Chalcedon, but it prevents assimilating every Coptic, Syriac or Armenian tradition to crude Eutychianism.

Justinian tries to reconcile the East

In the 6th century, Emperor Justinian wants to win back anti-Chalcedonian circles without renouncing Chalcedon. The Three Chapters controversy targets three dossiers associated with the Antiochene school: Theodore of Mopsuestia, certain writings of Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and the letter attributed to Ibas of Edessa.^[32]

The calculation is pastoral and political: if texts deemed Nestorianizing are condemned, Chalcedon's adversaries will no longer be able to accuse the 451 council of having protected Nestorius. But the method provokes a crisis with the West, for many fear that Chalcedon is being indirectly condemned.^[33]

Constantinople II confirms the balance

The Council of Constantinople II does not replace Chalcedon. It reads it in continuity with Cyril and Ephesus. It condemns those who divide Christ as two subjects, but also those who introduce confusion into the mystery of Christ.^[34]

The Catholic Church has never chosen an anti-Monophysite formula at the price of a return to Nestorianism. It maintains both refusals: no division of the Son, no confusion of the natures.

The 1973 Paul VI–Shenouda III declaration

On 10 May 1973, Paul VI and the Coptic Orthodox Pope Shenouda III sign a common Christological declaration. The text confesses Jesus Christ, perfect God and perfect man, whose divinity is united to his humanity "in a real, perfect union, without mingling, without commixtion, without confusion, without alteration, without division, without separation".^[35]

This declaration does not retroactively turn Chalcedon into a total misunderstanding. Rather, it shows that the Churches can today confess together the heart of Christological faith while recognizing that, since 451, theological differences have been nurtured and widened by non-theological factors.^[36]

Monophysite or Miaphysite?

Monophysite, in the strict sense, denotes the condemned error: one nature understood as confusion or absorption^[37]. Miaphysite denotes here the traditional formula of the Oriental Orthodox Churches, which confess the unity of the incarnate Word without denying his real humanity.

This distinction makes it possible, on the contrary, to name the condemned error exactly and not to attribute Eutyches's thesis automatically to all non-Chalcedonian Christians. Catholic truth requires this double rigor: fidelity to Chalcedon and justice towards its interlocutors.

It protects the reality of the Incarnation

The Monophysite crisis recalls that the Incarnation does not mean only a divine apparition in a body. The Son assumes a real humanity: body, rational soul, human will, human suffering, human growth, real death. If this humanity is absorbed, salvation becomes less concrete.

Catholic faith therefore confesses that Christ is consubstantial with the Father according to divinity (of the same divine nature as the Father) and consubstantial with us according to humanity (of the same humanity as we are). He saves because he is God; he saves us from within because he is truly man.

It avoids a false symmetry with Nestorius

Nestorius separated too much; Eutyches confused too much. But orthodoxy is not a vague middle ground between two errors. It is a positive formula: one personal subject, two real natures. It is this precision that makes it possible to adore the Crucified without dividing Christ, and to contemplate his humanity without dissolving it.

It requires speaking accurately about the Eastern Churches

In contemporary dialogue, to call Copts, Syriacs or Armenians "Monophysites" indiscriminately can be unjust if Eutychianism is meant thereby. The 1973 declaration with the Coptic Church shows that a common confession of Christ, true God and true man, is possible.^[47]

But historical justice does not remove Chalcedon's scope. For the Catholic Church, the 451 council remains a normative ecumenical reference. It gives the classic grammar for holding together the truth of God and the truth of man in the one Jesus Christ.

• The Nestorian crisis — the opposite imbalance, which divides Christ into two subjects.
• Council of Ephesus (431) — the indispensable Cyrillian context.
• Council of Chalcedon (451) — the dogmatic definition of the two natures.
• Constantinople II (553) — the anti-Nestorian reception of Chalcedon.
• Mary Mother of God — the title Theotokos in Catholic Christology.