Alexander Schmemann

3. The Age Of The Ecumenical Councils (50 pages)

From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox Church

Page 5

The Christological Controversy — Nestorius and Cyril.

The period between the fourth and eighth centuries is usually called in textbooks of Church history the era of the ecumenical councils. Its predominant significance, of course, was the entry of the human mind into the “mind of truth”; its highest point was the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon (451), at which the doctrine of the God-Manhood of Christ was proclaimed. Not only theology but external political events closely connected with this Christological controversy were decided at Chalcedon, but the most profound contribution of the period was its searching inquiry into the meaning of the God-Manhood of Jesus Christ for the world and for mankind.
For a question as to the nature of Christ is always a question as to the nature of man and his task. The passion engendered in this discussion may be explained by its vital significance.

The first theological theme to be taken up by the councils, that of the Trinity, had already been discussed in Christological terms in the disputes of the fourth century. The whole concept of Christ’s Incarnation and earthly achievement depended on whether He was recognized as God or as a “creature.” Was He really both God and man, or was the same gulf still between mankind and its Maker, with man still doomed to enslavement and sin, death, and separation? The triumph of the Nicene term homoousion was the first clear answer. Christ was God; the Incarnation of God was real.
Yet the Nicene recognition, with such difficulty put into words, led inevitably to a further question in the mind of the Church. If God were united with man in Christ, how was such a union possible, and what could be discerned as man in it? Would he not “burn up” in this contact with God? Would not the whole concept lead again to some illusion? If Christ is God, what is the value and significance of His human achievement?

This was not a search for an abstract formula, which would satisfy the Greek philosophizing mind, nor yet a prying into divine secrets, but a reflection on man’s freedom, on the meaning of his achievement and personal effort. Directly connected with the Arian disputes, this question had been posed and unsuccessfully answered by one of the leading supporters of the Nicene Creed, Bishop Apollinarius of Laodicea, who interpreted the union of God and man in Christ as requiring the elimination of some element of human nature. The divine Mind, the Logos, replaced the human and created logos in Jesus; since the mind is the highest and dominant part of man, and since the Man Jesus had the divine Mind itself, He was God. Apollinarianism was immediately condemned as a heresy; there could be no genuine salvation if the fully human were replaced in Christ by a cut-down and diminished version of man. Yet again, as with Arius, mere condemnation was not a positive answer. The dispute and the search for a theologically adequate solution began in earnest at the beginning of the fifth century, in the conflict between Nestorius of Constantinople and Cyril of Alexandria.

 

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