Posted on by Jack Kilcrease

Christology in the Early Church

A definitive moment in the history of Christology came at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. At Chalcedon, the bishops worked out a formula that balanced the concerns of both the Antiochene and Alexandrian schools of Eastern Christology. 

The attempt of the Council of Chalcedon to balance the integrity of Christ’s two natures with his one unified person

The Council of Chalcedon Resolves Christological Controversy

Prior to the Council, St. Cyril of Alexandria had supported the formula of “one incarnate nature” (mia physis) to preserve the unity of the person of Christ.1 To Antiochene theologians, this formula sounded very much like a Docetic denial of the humanity of Christ.2 Cyril had never meant to deny the full humanity of Jesus. Rather, he had hoped this formula would affirm Christ’s unitary subjectivity. Lacking later terminological precisions, Cyril used the terms “nature” (physis) in a manner synonymous with “person” (hypostasis or prosopon, i.e., person or center of identity).3 

Nevertheless, some drew more extreme implications from Cyril’s formula and promoted a form of overt Docetism. The key figure in this controversy was Eutyches of Constantinople, who held that the two natures in Christ had been melded into a single divine-human hybrid nature.4 Many claimed that Eutyches faithfully upheld Cyril’s confession and therefore vindicated him at a second council held at Ephesus (the “Robber Synod”).5

Finally, with the encouragement of Pope St. Leo I’s Tome regarding the two natures,6 Roman theologians came together at the Council of Chalcedon.7 With the Alexandrian school, the Council Fathers emphasized the unity of the person of Christ. With the Antiochene theologians, the Council Fathers strictly adhered to the duality and integrity of the two natures in Christ. In this formula, many might be tempted to see a completion of the doctrine of the person of Christ.8 

Lingering Questions About The Person of Christ

Nevertheless, as Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner correctly argues in his essay “Chalcedon: Ende oder Anfang?”9 the Chalcedonian definition does not complete of the doctrine of Christ. Rather, it sets the appropriate and orthodox boundaries within which future debates could take place. After Chalcedon, orthodox Christology affirmed the full divinity and humanity of Christ as well as the unity of the person. Questions, however, remained.

Sarah Coakley implicitly agrees with Rahner and lists a series of questions regarding the person of Christ that Chalcedon did not resolve:

  • 1. Of what does a divine and human nature consist?
  • 2. What is a hypostasis when applied to the person of Christ?
  • 3. How do hypostasis and physis relate to one another in Christ?
  • 4. How many wills does Christ possess? 
  • 5. Who is the subject or center of identity of the Incarnation (i.e., the divine or human nature)?
  • 6. What happened to the two natures of Christ during his death and resurrection?
  • 7. Is the term hypostasis in relation to the person of Christ employed in the same manner as it is in relation to the doctrine of the Trinity?
  • 8. Does the risen Jesus’s humanity remain male?10  

The observations of Rahner and Coakley suggest that although Chalcedon provided boundaries of orthodoxy, it did not resolve more subtle problems. Most especially, it did not resolve the issue of how the two natures relate to and communicate with one another. Neither did it resolve the question of what is often referred to as the “communication of idioms” (communicatio idiomatum).11 

As we will see, in the next section [not excerpted here], debates among Roman Catholic, Reformed, and Lutheran theologians over Christology all occurred within the conceptual boundaries established by Chalcedon. The consistent question was never whether or not there were two natures in Christ (as we have seen, this is quite clear from the biblical witness). Rather, medieval and early-modern theologians debated the implications arising from of the existence of the two natures.

Enhypostasis-Anhypostasis Christology

Leontius of Byzantium, Against the Forgeries of the Apollinarists, Bryson Sewell, trans., 2013.

Among the post-Chalcedonian Christological councils, the Fifth Ecumenical Council made a quantum leap in conceptual clarity regarding the communicatio idiomatum. The final explicitly Christological council, the Sixth Ecumenical Council, affirmed the two wills in Christ.12 However, this was in many ways simply a more detailed re-affirmation of the completeness of the human nature already established at Chalcedon. As we will see in our defense of Lutheran Christology [not excerpted here], the conceptual scheme established by the Fifth Ecumenical Council is of definitive importance for understanding the participation of Christ’s humanity in the fullness of God’s glory without abrogating his true human nature.

In the aftermath of the conflicts that led to Chalcedon, many of the followers of Cyril were dissatisfied with the settlement, which they believed gave too much to the Antiochene side. Most specifically, Chalcedon abandoned Cyril’s language of a “single nature” in favor of the formula a “single person and two natures.”13 Stalwart followers of Cyril pointed out that this created a significant ambiguity because as a rule natures possess their own hypostasis. They therefore argued that the Chalcedonian definition inescapably led to the conclusion that each of Christ’s two natures must have its own person. This conclusion was unacceptable to many Alexandrians since they saw it as heretical Nestorianism.14  

The resolution of the problems raised by Cyril’s followers fell to two theologians named Leontius: Leontius of Byzantium15 and Leontius of Jerusalem.16 The two Leontiuses recognized that throughout the Gospels Jesus spoke of himself in the first person as the Second Person of the Trinity. Significantly, he did not speak of himself as a man who had a distinctive center of identity: “Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed” (Jn. 17:5). On this basis, they developed a conceptual framework that could account for Christ’s two natures as affirmed by Chalcedon, while at the same time maintaining that the Logos is the subject of the Incarnation. Most specifically, they developed enhypostasis-anhypostasis Christology, which the Fifth Ecumenical Council established as orthodoxy.17  

According to the conceptual scheme of enhypostasis-anhypostasis Christology presented by the two Leontiuses, the Second Person of the Trinity is the subject of the Incarnation. In becoming incarnate, the Logos incorporated a unit of human nature (enhypostasis) into himself. The human nature of Christ is anhypostatic in that it is a complete human nature, but lacks a personal center of identity within itself. Rather, Christ’s human nature finds its personal identity in the person of the Logos. This is a unique instance wherein a nature finds its center of identity outside itself in another hypostasis.18 

Most importantly, contrary to the charge often made by modern theologians,19 this in no way abrogates the completeness of Christ’s human nature. Natures are ontological configurations through which persons act. The question of the completeness or incompleteness of a nature is a different question than where the center of identity of a nature subsists.  

Implications of the Fifth Ecumenical Council for the Communicatio Idiomatum

The enhypostasis-anhypostasis Christology of the Fifth Ecumenical Council has significant implications for the communicatio idiomatum. In terms of the agency of Christ, the teaching of the Council of Ephesus was vindicated. The man Jesus found his center of identity in the Logos. Therefore, whatever happened to the human nature could be properly attributed to the divine person who serves as the human nature’s center of identity. Hence, it is appropriate to call Mary the “Mother of God.” Denying Mary this title inadvertently denies biblical and orthodox teaching concerning the person of Christ.

Likewise, the Fifth Ecumenical Council upheld the orthodoxy of Theopaschitism. The council rejected heretical Patripassianism (the Modalistic belief that the Father was crucified in Christ),20 but approved the theopaschite formula as orthodox: “one of the Trinity suffered.”21 Thus, we may say God died on the cross. Again, if the human nature is anhypostatic and finds its center of identity in the person of the Logos, then it was the very flesh of the Logos himself that suffered, even if the divine nature in itself cannot and does not suffer.  

Finally, since the human nature finds its center of identity in the person of the Logos, Christ’s human nature participates in the divine glory. The later Greek Fathers, such as St. John of Damascus, used the analogy of fire and a piece of metal.22 Fire heats a piece of metal, which then takes on the characteristics of fire. Likewise, because of the union between the human nature and the Logos, the human nature in itself participates in the glory of the divine. The metal does not transmute into fire, but rather participates in the characteristics of the fire. 

Hence, the attribution of the divine glory to the human nature is not merely verbal, but a real communication and participation of finite humanity in the infinite God. John of Damascus (following St. Gregory of Nazianzus)23 even spoke of a perichoresis between the two natures.24 The participation of the humanity in divine glory is the logical outcome of the anhypostatic reality of the human nature. The human nature of Jesus participates in the divine glory in a proper sense because it finds its center of identity in the person of the Logos who possesses the fullness of the divine glory.

Figure 1: The Chalcendonian “Box” of Christological Orthodoxy
  1. Hans van Loon, The Dyophysite Christology of Cyril of Alexandria (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 525-529. ↩︎
  2. Olson, The Story of Theology, 227. ↩︎
  3. Paul L. Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 140; John Anthony McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria, The Christological Controversy: Its History, Theology, and Texts (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 149. ↩︎
  4. Olson, The Story of Christian Theology, 226-229. ↩︎
  5. Olson, The Story of Christian Theology, 227-231. ↩︎
  6. Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon), 465-479. ↩︎
  7. Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon), 480-491. ↩︎
  8. Ferguson, Church History: From Christ to Pre-Reformation, 70. ↩︎
  9. Karl Rahner, “Chalcedon: Ende oder Anfang?” in Das Konzil von Chalcedon. Geschichte und Gegenwart, vol. 3, eds., Aloys Grillmeier and Heinrich Bacht (Würzburg 1954), 3–49. ↩︎
  10. ↩︎
  11. See the classic study: Hermann Schultz, Die Lehre von der Gottheit Christi: Communicatio Idiomatum (Gotha: Friedrich Andreas Perthes, 1881). ↩︎
  12. See discussion in: Cyril Hovorun, Will, Action and Freedom: Christological Controversies in the Seventh Century (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 86-90. ↩︎
  13. Bengt Hägglund, History of Theology, trans. Gene Lund (St. Louis: Concordia, 1963), 99. ↩︎
  14. See discussion in Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, Pt. 2, vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1995), 341, 387, 402- 10, 419-62, 463; John Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought (Washington, D.C.: Corpus Book, 1969), 38-40, 59-64;  Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, 5 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971- 1989), 2:29-30.  ↩︎
  15. See: Leontius of Byzantium, Leontius of Byzantium Complete Works, trans. Brian Daley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). ↩︎
  16. See: Leontius of Jerusalem, Against the Monophysites: Testimonies of the Saints and Aporiae, trans. Patrick T. R. Gray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).  ↩︎
  17. Hägglund, History of Theology, 102. ↩︎
  18. See: U.M. Lang, “Anhypostasis-Enhypostasis: Church Fathers, Protestant Orthodoxy and Karl Barth,” Journal of Theological Studies 49, no. 2 (1998) 630–658. ↩︎
  19. See examples in I.A. Dorner, A System of Christian Doctrine, 4 vols., trans. Alfred Cave and J. S. Banks (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark,1888), 3:216; Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, 402-403; Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christ the Center (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 81. ↩︎
  20. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction, 207. ↩︎
  21. Paul L. Gavrilyuk, “God’s Impassible Suffering in the Flesh: The Promise of Paradoxical Christology,” in Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, eds. James Keating and Thomas Joseph White (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2009), 143. ↩︎
  22. John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 3.15; NPNFb, pt. 2, 9:62. ↩︎
  23. Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistle 101; On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius, trans. Lionel Wickham (Crestwood, NY: St. Valadimir Press, 2002), 159. ↩︎
  24. John of Damascus, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 3.4; NPNFb, pt. 2, 9:49. ↩︎

From the draft manuscript for Lutheran Dogmatics: The Evangelical-Catholic Faith for an Age of Contested Truth (Lexham Press).

Cover image by Vasily Surikov, detail of Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon, 1876, at “Council of Chalcedon,” Wikipedia, accessed July 12, 2024, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Chalcedon; other images from Vivien King, “A Theology of Christmas,” SlidePlayer, accessed July 15, 2024, https://slideplayer.com/slide/4249486/; Fr. V., @father_rmv, “Today is the optional memorial of St. Cyril…,” X, June 27, 2024, accessed July 12, 2024; “Relational Ministry and the Hypostatic Union,” The Surprising God, Grace Communion Seminary, May 6, 2014, accessed July 15, 2024, https://thesurprisinggodblog.gci.org/2014/05/the-relational-pastor-part-11.html.