Dear Mor Ephrem,
Of course you see things always from your own eyes. But if you don’t mind, I am going to write this from my own perspective, and I will probably fail to hit on some of the goods point Seraphim Reeves brought up above...
The target of religious syncretism, which is otherwise known as Ecumenism, is the Orthodox Church, because she is the Church of Christ, the hope and the salt of the world. The devil well knows that “if the salt should lose its savor” all mankind will decompose, and this precisely is the purpose of the demons.
Ecumenist “theologians” have tried to paint an unquestionable picture that Monophysites are in fact Orthodox. So that which is simplicity itself, that Christ had two natures and two wills, which acted with distinct purposes, is dissected, examined, and dismembered according to ecumenist systems with the clear an unambiguous purpose of forwarding a false union.
I am not going to try to prove anything here, there is so much history and so much has been written, one would have to write a book to cover all of the topics properly. What I would like to do is lay out some very clear ideas.
As I have said before, there are many different kinds of Monophysitism. While all Monophysites could agree that the human and the divine where somehow present in the single nature of Christ, there are rarely two Monophysites who have the exact same position on how this union was achieved. For instance, Aditus, said that the Divine nature completely swallowed up the Human nature, which was only significant in that it supplied the “flesh” of the Lord. The Eutychian version said that Mary did not even supply the “flesh”, and that the “flesh” simply manifested itself completely on its own. Some Monophysites like Philoxenus thought Christ had a human nature, but that it was mixed with the divine.
And Philoxenus is perhaps key in understanding the version of Monophysiotism we are faced with today, because he taught very staunchly that Christ had two natures and it is often hard to say he does not have the same definition as Chalcedon and St. Leo, but nevertheless, he sometimes refers to the two natures as a “mixture”.
Nobody can deny that during the Monophysite controversies of the Chalcedon period, Dioscoros was defending and forwarding the Eutychian framework of “one Nature”. He later recanted and came up with Monophysitism v4.0, but even still, the Holy Fathers would not accept “One Nature” after the incarnation, no matter how it was watered down. They understood precisely what the difference meant. And as the Holy Fathers have said, the Cyrillian formula was NEVER accepted by the Orthodox outside of the Chalcedonian understanding.
The Ecumenists want us to believe that the definitions of the two natures – one nature are the same thing. Very well. But this fraud was practiced much better by “St.” Severus who declared long ago that Christ’s One Nature consisted of a composite of a Divine and Human – exactly like they say today. But in the end, he confessed One will, which is the product of one nature!
Severus’ version of Monophysitism seems to have been the groundwork for the attempt at a union during the late 600’s. Just as today it was claimed that the Monophysites were Orthodox because they confessed that Christ consisted of two unconfused natures. It was just a difference in terminology. But the Monophysite Sergius, who went further than any Monophysite of modern times and said Christ had Two Natures, ultimately fell back into the Monophysite product of One Will (monoenergism). That is His divine nature made all the decisions and His human nature only carried and acted them out.
So Monothelitism was really just another new version of Monophysitism, which was condemned by the Holy Sixth Ecumenical Synod in 680 AD which said:
“Christ had two natures with two activities : as God working miracles, rising from the dead and ascending into heaven; as Man, performing the ordinary acts of daily life. Each nature exercises its own free will. Christ's divine nature had a specific task to perform and so did His human nature. Each nature performed those tasks set forth without being confused, subjected to any change or working against each other. The two distinct natures and related to them activities were mystically united in the one Divine Person of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
A clear example of this is the when Jesus was asleep in the bow of the boat when the storm hit and threatened to sink the ship. Here is Christ in his human natures acting out human will to sleep - he was after all tired. Then when he was summoned be the apostles, he calmed the sea. Here is is perfect God acting out His divine will.
NOW I ASK, IF MONOPHYSITES HAVE THE SAME FAITH AND ARE NO LONGER MONOPHYSITES ( I WILL NOT EVEN SAY AS THE ECUMENISTS THAT THEY HAVE NEVER BEEN), THEN WHY ARE THEY STILL CONFESSING THE SAME HERESIES!?….
http://www.stmark.toronto.on.coptorthod ... oc_10.html
St. Maximus explains the significance of all of this very nicely. He explained that all activity belongs to the person, though it is undertaken by the capacity given in the nature. As a result, one ought to look to the person of Jesus for an explanation of his fidelity to God. Because this is a divine person, he uses his human powers to their greatest effectiveness.
One could argue that by having a human will which was totally transformed by its union with the divine, the Savior could not sin. To say that would mean that a human will or a human being cannot act perfectly and be free of all sin. Thus one would have to conclude that sin is inevitable and therefore not really culpable. If a person cannot but sin; if every person must sin, then no one can be truly responsible for sinning.
As a result, he was able to argue that Jesus could have sinned because he had a human nature which was capable of failure as well as success. That Jesus did not sin was due to his own consistent decision for the better. Moreover, this is precisely the kind of action that would be expected from a divine person. Jesus did not sin because he is the Word of God, not because his human reality was incapable of failure.
Thus the only question is whether human nature can attain this level of performance. Obviously, it is possible to live a perfect human life: Jesus does this because of who He is rather than what He is. Those who do not live perfectly also because of who they are rather than what. This is the notion of responsibility and salvation itself.
