Ozgeorge,
Nice to see you continue my friend; I could not think of a better candidate to assist me in exposing the futility, absurdity and deception of Chalcedonian polemics against Holy Orthodoxy!
The Orthodox Church teaches Two wills.
You guys teach One Will.
Reductionism…Again! We are not just dealing with words and phrases here ozgeorge, we are dealing with the intended concepts attached to those words and phrases, and contrary to your simplistic logic, there are many possible concepts that can be attached to both phrases, and indeed many differing concepts have been attached to both phrases, not all of which were/are Orthodox. If your Church rejects the concept of One Will in the sense that I have consistently explained it, then your dyothelitism is plainly heretical and blasphemous. Your Christ is capable of internal conflict, hence schizophrenia, hence division hence non-existence. Your refusal to acknowledge proper qualification only leads to the same problem your Church suffered subsequent to Chalcedon. As I pointed out to you, many of your Fathers upheld Chalcedon and the Nestorian Christology of Theodore and Ibas which were later condemned by a certain faction of your own Church at Constantinople 553; many of your Fathers were celebrating the feast day of Nestorius whilst celebrating Chalcedon—historical facts my friend.
The Orthodox Church teaches that Christ has two natural wills that can be conceived in abstract thought alone—a distinct natural divine will and a distinct natural human will, and that those wills, being hypostatised by the One Hypostasis are in such perfect unison that they are indeed for all practical purposes One Will. There is no getting around this; this is Orthodoxy; this is the corollary of Ephesian Christology as understood by the very author of Ephesian Christology himself, St. Cyril, whose Christology was Ecumenically Received and who proclaimed the One Incarnate Nature of Christ as Sts. Athanasius and Gregory the Theologian did before him.
The fact that Pope Shenouda's teachings are not "self-interpreting"
The fact is no human language is self-interpreting; this has nothing to do with His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, it has to do with the intrinsic nature of human language. If Chalcedonian Christology is self-interpreting, then explain why half your Church and the Orthodox Church interpreted it in Nestorian fashion to the point that another Council had to be called to “interpret” it for you? Your ridiculous logic shoots your own Chalcedonian foot. The “in Two Natures” formula was a) interpreted by Nestorians before Chalcedon to mean that Christ exists as two subjects, b) also interpreted as such by St. Cyril and the Oriental Orthodox Church, c) also interpreted as such by a vast number of Chalcedonians subsequent to Chalcedon, d) was interpreted to merely imply the distinction between Christ’s divinity and humanity by other Chalcedonians etc. etc. Ha! In what manner therefore was it ever self-interpreting?
require continual "explanation" and "context"
I’m dialoguing with people who are forcefully taking him out of context and either imputing their own preconceived notions and presuppositions upon his words or simply unwittingly presuming those preconceived notions and presuppositions to be in the mindset of His Holiness. My explanations are only as consistent as your incomprehension, deceit, and ignorance which lead you to a consistent misinterpretation and misrepresentation in the first place.
Any Oriental Orthodox Christian, or open-minded non-Orthodox Christian would not need me to consistently explain what is plain, for such persons are open to letting His Holiness’s words speak for themselves in context; they approach his text to exegete not to eisegete; they approach his work with the intent of learning and understanding, not with malicious intentions or false agendas.
He says you guys believe in One Will and One Nature, and you keep telling us that this is not what he means,
Try again. What I keep telling you, is that our belief in One Will and One Nature does not mean what
are seeking to imply it to mean, it means what
say it means since we’re the ones using those expressions in the first place. I am telling you to accept our phrases on our terms. Your problem is that you don’t want to understand what we mean by it, you want to force your own twisted definition upon it as if it is the only definition capable of being produced by those phrases, which, linguistically speaking, is stupid, because no word or phrase is necessarily constrained to one exclusive meaning. I am doing nothing more than what the great St. Cyril did when he told his heretical opponents who took the same track you are taking with me now, that his confession of One Nature does not mean what they keep telling him it means, but rather what he says it means:
St. Cyril the Great: "For not only in the case of those who are simple by nature is the term ‘one’ truly used, but also in respect to what has been brought together according to a synthesis, as man is one being, who is of soul and body. For soul and body are of different species and are not consubstantial to each other, but united they produce one Nature (physis) of man, even though in the considerations of the synthesis the difference exist according to the nature of those which have been brought together into a unity. Accordingly they are speaking in vain who say that, if there should be one incarnate Nature (physis) ‘of the Word’ in every way and in every manner it would follow that a mixture and a confusion occurred as if lessening and taking away the nature of man.’ (Letter to Bishop Succensus)
much like "I reject monophysitism, but Christ has One Nature."
You speak in the same spirit of St. Cyril’s Nestorian opponents (which makes sense considering Theodoret, an arch-heretic and enemy of St. Cyril and Ephesian Christology, is a Father of your Church) in your attempt to set up a dichotomy between the denial of monophysitism and the confession of Christ’s One Incarnate Nature. If monophysitism is the corollary of a mere confession of One Nature, then you must believe St. Cyril was a Monophysite. Thank you for admitting what the OO Church has taught all along; that the Chalcedonian Church betrayed Ephesus 431 in accusing its president and the one whose Christology defines the spirit of Ephesus 431, to be a Monophysite. I’m glad you don’t deny it as many before you have attempted; it’s good to see just a little honesty for once, even if short-lived. Nevertheless, as St. Cyril quickly shut down his Nestorian opponent's objection, so too do I with his very words:
"For not only in the case of those who are simple by nature is the term ‘one’ truly used, but also in respect to what has been brought together according to a synthesis, as man is one being, who is of soul and body. For soul and body are of different species and are not consubstantial to each other, but united they produce one Nature (physis) of man, even though in the considerations of the synthesis the difference exist according to the nature of those which have been brought together into a unity. Accordingly they are speaking in vain who say that, if there should be one incarnate Nature (physis) ‘of the Word’ in every way and in every manner it would follow that a mixture and a confusion occurred as if lessening and taking away the nature of man.’ (Letter to Bishop Succensus)"
In other words: "I reject monothelitism, but Christ has One Will"
The same logic that you implicitly apply here, whereby the concept of monothelitism becomes the direct corollary of a mere linguistic confession of “one will”, is the same logic you have used to condemn the Great Doctor St. Cyril above. It just doesn’t hold water. Monothelitism is not evidenced by a particular and mere linguistic expression of faith, it is evidenced primarily by the intended concept that one attaches to their linguistic expression of faith. As you should be well aware ozgeorge, Nestorians used your two nature confession well before, and even during and after Chalcedon; this is a historical fact you cannot deny. If we were to play your game with your rules, then you must admit to being a Nestorian on the mere basis that you use the same confession that Nestorians used to confess their concept of Christ subsisting in divinity and subsisting in humanity as if in two different subsistences or grounds of being.
Any person with a basic grasp of logic will realise that a two word phrase can be subject to multiple interpretations and meanings. The OO conception of “One Will” is not monothelitic in any way, and you have yet to deal with the official teachings I have pasted over and over again which evidence principles that directly contradict the concept of monothelitism. Monothelitism is not a linguistic confession it is a concept which denies the existence of a natural will proper to Christ’s humanity; Monothelites may choose a ‘One will’ confession to express that concept, but it doesn’t mean that that linguistic expression necessarily entails that concept. But of course, it would take some humility to accept that you’re just plain wrong in your conclusions, but as I pointed out earlier, you do not even have enough humility to submit to the conclusions of your own Hierarchs and Synods, who have studied and discussed these issues at length in a spirit of prayer and charitable dialogue, so how can I expect you to display some in dialogue with the Orthodox.
The fact is that you guys have misinterpretred the Hypostatic Union by comingling the Natures to the point of making them one combined Nature- which is what Pope Shenouda teaches in "The Nature of Christ".
Considering the fact His Holiness explicitly rejects any concept of commingling, then we can only renounce the above statement as yet another lie in the sea of lies you have purported. There can be no concept of commingling if the distinction of Christ’s Humanity and Divinity are maintained, and this distinction has been stressed ad nauseum by the OO Church, so you have no honest ground upon which to continue your false propaganda.
The One Nature of Christ is the Union of the Two distinct Natures, as St. Cyril of Alexandria whose Christology defines the spirit of Ephesus 431, explained:
"For not only in the case of those who are simple by nature is the term ‘one’ truly used, but also in respect to what has been brought together according to a synthesis, as man is one being, who is of soul and body. For soul and body are of different species and are not consubstantial to each other, but united they produce one Nature (physis) of man, even though in the considerations of the synthesis the difference exist according to the nature of those which have been brought together into a unity. Accordingly they are speaking in vain who say that, if there should be one incarnate Nature (physis) ‘of the Word’ in every way and in every manner it would follow that a mixture and a confusion occurred as if lessening and taking away the nature of man.’ (Letter to Bishop Succensus)
I'm not denying that you say that the Two Natures and the Two wills existed, but your error is in the fact that you consider the Two Natures to have fused to form a Third Nature
No there is no Third Nature; again, your own ignorant rendering of OO Christology. St. Cyril’s One Incarnate Nature is not a third Nature, it is simply the union of the two natures. His Holiness Pope Shenouda appeals to the body-soul and iron-fire union analogy of St. Cyril to emphasise this; human nature is not a third new nature resulting from the fusion of the body and soul, it is simply the unity of those two natures. Again to quote the blessed St. Cyril:
"For not only in the case of those who are simple by nature is the term ‘one’ truly used, but also in respect to what has been brought together according to a synthesis, as man is one being, who is of soul and body. For soul and body are of different species and are not consubstantial to each other, but united they produce one Nature (physis) of man, even though in the considerations of the synthesis the difference exist according to the nature of those which have been brought together into a unity. Accordingly they are speaking in vain who say that, if there should be one incarnate Nature (physis) ‘of the Word’ in every way and in every manner it would follow that a mixture and a confusion occurred as if lessening and taking away the nature of man.’ (Letter to Bishop Succensus)
Please argue with St. Cyril.
And you seem to have missed Our Lord's point in that He emphasised that they are "one flesh".
Huh? The whole stress is on the manner in which he uses the term one, not the term flesh. The Husband and Wife become one flesh…that one flesh is not a third flesh, it is not the confusion of the flesh of the husband and flesh of the wife, it is simply the union. Just as is the case with St. Cyril’s One Incarnate Nature, and the corollary of that, the Orthodox Confession of One Will. And on many occasions in the Scripture One is used to describe a union of things; many souls are referred to as “one soul”; many minds and hearts are referred to as “one mind” and “one heart”. Why? Because as St. Cyril says:
"For not only in the case of those who are simple by nature is the term ‘one’ truly used, but also in respect to what has been brought together according to a synthesis, as man is one being, who is of soul and body. For soul and body are of different species and are not consubstantial to each other, but united they produce one Nature (physis) of man, even though in the considerations of the synthesis the difference exist according to the nature of those which have been brought together into a unity. Accordingly they are speaking in vain who say that, if there should be one incarnate Nature (physis) ‘of the Word’ in every way and in every manner it would follow that a mixture and a confusion occurred as if lessening and taking away the nature of man.’ (Letter to Bishop Succensus)"
