Who Is Christ? Ephesus and Chalcedon

The next question

Nicaea and Constantinople settled that the Son is fully God. But Christians also confessed that the Son "became flesh" and lived a human life. He was born, grew tired, wept, was tempted, suffered and died. How can one person be both the eternal, all-powerful God and a limited human being? This question, technically called Christology, dominated the 400s.

The debate was shaped by a rivalry between two great centers of theology:

• Alexandria emphasized the unity of Christ. The eternal Word took human flesh and became one of us. Everything Jesus did, the Word did. Its watchword might be "God really became human."
• Antioch emphasized the full humanity of Christ. Jesus had a genuine human mind and will, grew in wisdom, and was truly tempted. To protect this, Antiochene theologians drew a sharp line between what Jesus did as God and what he did as man. Their watchword might be "Jesus was really human."

Both cared about salvation. Alexandria said only God can save us, so Christ must be one with God. Antioch said what is not taken up cannot be healed, so Christ must have a complete human nature. (The phrase about healing was actually Gregory of Nazianzus's.) Both were partly right, which is why the argument was so fierce.

Apollinarius: a divine mind in a human body

An early answer came from Apollinarius of Laodicea, bishop of Laodicea and a friend of Athanasius. He suggested that in Jesus the divine Word took the place of a human mind or soul. Jesus had a human body but a divine mind. This kept Christ's unity but at the cost of his full humanity. Gregory of Nazianzus objected that if Christ had no human mind, our minds are not saved. Apollinarianism was condemned at Constantinople in 381.

Nestorius and the "Mother of God"

The explosion came in 428, when Nestorius, a monk from Antioch, became bishop of Constantinople. He objected to a popular title for Mary: Theotokos, "God-bearer" or "Mother of God." God, he said, cannot have a mother. Mary bore the human Jesus, in whom God dwelt. He proposed Christotokos, "Christ-bearer," instead.

To many ordinary Christians this sounded like an attack on Mary, and on the reality of the incarnation. It seemed to split Christ into two: a man Jesus and a God who lived in him. Cyril of Alexandria, the formidable bishop of Alexandria, pounced. Cyril was a brilliant theologian and a ruthless politician. He insisted that the Word of God was the one subject of everything Jesus did. If Jesus was born of Mary, then God was born of Mary. So Mary is truly Theotokos.

Behind the theology lay church politics. Alexandria resented the rise of upstart Constantinople, which the council of 381 had ranked second only to Rome.

Ephesus, 431

The emperor Theodosius II called a council at Ephesus in 431. Cyril opened it before Nestorius' supporters from Antioch had arrived, and quickly deposed Nestorius. The Antiochenes then held their own council and deposed Cyril. Chaos followed, with rival councils, bribes and imperial arrests. In the end the emperor sided with Cyril. Nestorius was exiled to the Egyptian desert, where he died around 451. Mary's title Theotokos was confirmed, and the people of Ephesus celebrated with a torchlight procession.

In 433 Cyril and the moderate Antiochenes agreed a compromise statement, the "Formula of Reunion." It seemed peace had come.

Who is Christ? The spectrum of answers

Eutyches and the Robber Council

Peace did not last. An elderly monk in Constantinople, Eutyches, pushed Cyril's emphasis on unity to an extreme. After the union, he said, Christ has only one nature, and his humanity is swallowed up in his divinity "like a drop of honey in the ocean." Condemned in Constantinople, he appealed to Cyril's successor at Alexandria, Dioscorus of Alexandria.

In 449 another council met at Ephesus under Dioscorus. It restored Eutyches and deposed his opponents, with monks and soldiers using intimidation. Flavian, the bishop of Constantinople, was beaten and died soon afterward. The pope's letter on the subject was not even read. Pope Leo furiously called it a latrocinium, a "Robber Council," and the name stuck.

Leo's Tome and Chalcedon, 451

The situation changed when Theodosius II died after falling from his horse in 450. His sister Pulcheria, a devout and politically powerful woman, and her husband Marcian, the new emperor, called a fresh council at Chalcedon, across the water from Constantinople, in 451. With about 500 bishops, it was the largest council yet.

The council read a letter from Pope Leo the Great, known as the Tome of Leo. In clear Latin style, Leo affirmed that Christ is one person with two complete natures. Each nature does what is proper to it, the human weeping and the divine raising Lazarus, but always in union. The bishops reportedly cried out, "Peter has spoken through Leo!"

The council then issued its Definition of Faith, which became the standard for most Christians. It confesses one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, "made known in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation." The four negatives were aimed at both extremes:

• "without confusion, without change": against Eutyches, who merged the natures;
• "without division, without separation": against the Nestorian tendency to split Christ in two.

Chalcedon did not explain how God and man are united in Christ. It marked out the boundaries within which Christians should speak of the mystery. Dioscorus was deposed.

The council also passed Canon 28, which gave Constantinople privileges equal to Rome's as the "New Rome," second only in honor. Leo refused to accept this canon. It was an early sign of the East–West rivalry that would lead to the schism of 1054.

A divided legacy

Chalcedon became the official faith of the empire and is accepted today by Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and most Protestants. But it was rejected by many in Egypt, Syria and Armenia. They felt it betrayed Cyril and slid toward Nestorius by speaking of "two natures." They preferred Cyril's formula of "one incarnate nature of God the Word." Their opponents called them "Monophysites" ("one-nature"). They call themselves Miaphysites ("one united nature") and insist they reject Eutyches as firmly as anyone.

For two centuries emperors tried to win them back with councils, compromises and persecution. Justinian I held the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 for this purpose. None of it worked. The result was a lasting split into Chalcedonian churches and the "Oriental Orthodox" churches (Coptic, Ethiopian, Syriac, Armenian), as well as the separate Church of the East, which had sympathized with Nestorius. That story continues in Churches Beyond Chalcedon.

In the late 1900s, theologians from these churches met and concluded that much of the dispute had been about words rather than substance. Several joint declarations, including one by Pope John Paul II and the Assyrian Patriarch in 1994, affirmed a shared faith in Christ. Fifteen centuries after the split, healing had begun.