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Alexander Schmemann
3. The Age Of The Ecumenical Councils (50 pages)
From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox ChurchPage 38
Sixth Ecumenical Council.
Every opposition seemed to have been broken, and the whole empire was silent. This does not mean that the Church accepted Monothelitism, however. The West continued to reject it; the power of Byzantium did not extend beyond the borders of Italy and often seemed only nominal in Rome itself. The emperor supported the heresy, but when he died his successor Constantine Pogonatus, wearied by this new division, gave the Church freedom to decide the question in its essence and summoned an ecumenical council — the sixth — which met from November 680 to September 681 in Constantinople. Monothelitism was rejected and the Chalcedonian definition supplemented by the doctrine of two wills in Christ.
We preach also, according to the teachings of the Holy Fathers, that in Him there are two natural wills or willings and two natural modes of action, indivisible, unalterable, inseparable, unmerged. And the two natural wills are not contrary (one to the other), as dishonorable heretics have said — let it not be so! but His human will follows, not as resisting or reluctant but rather as subject to His Divinity and omnipotent will.
The modern mind is again bewildered: what do “two wills” mean? And how can this be disputed and anything decided about it? Yet by overcoming Monothelitism and affirming the human will as well as the divine in Christ, the Church laid the foundation for a Christian anthropology, for a concept of man that has given definition to the whole humanistic inspiration of our world and our culture. Christian humanism, faith in the whole man and his absolute value, is the final result of the Christological disputes and a genuine discovery of Orthodoxy.
The council anathematized the leaders of the heresy, the four patriarchs of Constantinople — Sergius, Paul, Pyrrhus, and Timothy — as well as Cyrus of Alexandria and Pope Honorius, whose condemnation by an ecumenical council has constantly been referred to by the Orthodox as proof that the ancient Church ignored any doctrine of papal infallibility. On the other hand, those mainly responsible, the emperors Heraclius and Constas, were passed over in silence. Nor was mention made of the two martyrs for the truth, St. Martin the Pope and St. Maximus the Confessor; formally they were political criminals. Both names were added to the list of confessors and teachers of the Church only later, and this silence gives a rather unfortunate color to the final victory of Orthodoxy in the Christological dispute. The truth continued to conquer, but men were unfortunately becoming accustomed to the double bookkeeping of Byzantine theocracy.
Changing Church Structure.
While Monothelitism resulted in a fruitful reaction from Orthodox theology and in further development of the Horos of Chalcedon, it justified none of the political hopes that had been placed in it. The problem was finally settled at a time when both Monophysites and Nestorians, whom it was designed to attract, were separated permanently from the empire by Islam and consequently no longer represented a danger of internal separatism. Orthodoxy had become the state and even the national, Greek faith of Byzantium; but this meant also that Orthodoxy itself had merged completely with its Byzantine outer covering and had accepted it as its “historical” canon.
Cf. Books for getting closer to Orthodox Christianity ||| Orthodox Images of the Christ ||| Byzantium : The Alternative History of Europe ||| Greek Orthodoxy - From Apostolic Times to the Present Day ||| A History of the Byzantine Empire ||| Videos about Byzantium and Orthodoxy ||| Aspects of Byzantium in Modern Popular Music ||| 3 Posts on the Fall of Byzantium ||| Greek Literature / The New Testament
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Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/schmemann-orthodoxy-3-councils.asp?pg=38
