Severus of Antioch: Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Perspectives

[Thomas_Deretich]

SOURCE: Fr. John Behr, “Severus of Antioch: Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Perspectives.” St. Nersess Theological Review 3:1-2 (1998) 23-35. .... the issues addressed by the Council of Constantinople in 680/1 may be particular to the Chalcedonian tradition, and as such may not need to be formally recognized by the non-Chalcedonian Churches.... As Severus writes in ep.15: For those hypostases or natures, being in composition without diminution, and not existing separately and in individual existence, make up one prosopon of the one Lord and Christ and Son, and the one incarnate nature and hypostasis of the Word." .... That Severus speaks quite plainly of the union “from two hypostases,” is probably what gave occasion to the charge levelled at him by Justinian – that he has fallen, somehow, into the opposite errors of Nestorianism and Eutychianism. .... Although John of Damascus, when discussing the hypostatic union, refers in passing to the union of the two natures “in one composite hypostasis,” it is more characteristic of the post-Chalcedonian writers to deny the very possibility of a composite hypostasis, and to speak instead of the “properties” of the hypostasis of the Word as becoming more composite through the Incarnation.... Severus emphatically affirms the unimpaired continuity of the two realities out of which the one hypostasis of Christ is composed. It is in this sense that Severus can affirm that Jesus Christ had both a human will and a human energy....There are certainly, according to Severus, two types of activity, yet it is one and the same who works both: "Between the things performed and done by the one Christ, the difference is great. Some of the acts are befitting the divinity, while the others are human. … Yet the one Word performed the latter and the former, … Because the things performed are different, we shall [not however] on this account rightly define two natures or forms as operating." This difference between the activities appropriate to each nature is simply a consequence of the fact that the two natures united are radically different: uncreated and created.

Since Severus "affirms the unimpaired continuity of the two realities out of which the one hypostasis of Christ is composed" and since he calls these two realities "natures," he, logically, should confess two natures after the union. If the two natures are united in one person "without confusion" of the two natures, then the two natures persist as two unconfused natures. If there is a "great" difference between the two energies/operations, then there are two operations (divine and human) within the one divine-human hypostasis. Behr is ridiculous when he asserts (stupidly) that the issues dealt with in the Fifth and Sixth Universal Councils pertained only to the Chalcedonians and not the non-Chalcedonians. The issues dealt with were the completely self-refuting claims of the non-Chalcedonians and the pseudo-Chalcedonians who were influenced by the Monophysites to become compromising Monothelites and Monoenergists. The desire for ecumenistic unity is preventing Behr from saying the obvious: non-Chalcedonian teaching is self-refuting. Lastly, I suspect that Behr is unfair to Saint John of Damascus: The one uncomposed hypostasis acquires a second nature and becomes a composite hypostasis. Not a hypostasis that had it eternal origin out of two. But a single hypostasis that acquires a second nature. This is what Saint Cyril meant by "one nature, [that had become] enfleshed." That is why Cyril could also speak of two natures after the union. Even Theodotus of Ancyra, who was less tolerant towards two-nature language than Cyril, had a sense of two realities persisting after the Incarnation. So, although Theodotus made a mistake in departing from Cyril's more balanced terminology, he still sometimes hinted at the two realities persisting. Theodotus does not at all prove the strict Miaphysite claims, but can be cited as an example of someone who said "one physis" to mean "one person." Thus the almost-certainly-forged phrase "one nature or hypostasis of God the Word, enfleshed" is accepted as Orthodox if the meaning is that deity and humanity are united without confusion in one undivided hypostasis. The Orthodox Chalcedonian tradition has balance and increasing precision in terminology, in the face of heresies over time. Saint Gregory the Theologian (Orat. 39.12) speaks of limited "innovation" in terminology that can provide greater precision (in the face of heresies that twist older expressions). Thus, "in two natures" is true, even if it was used more in Latin than in Greek before AD 451. The "one person, two natures" language might have seemed new to some in Alexandria, but it had been standard Orthodox terminology in the Orthodox West for centuries and language with that meaning (but not that exact four-word phrase) can be found in Cyril (as van Loon has proven, with countless quotations from the great saint). Even most Greek Fathers, who spoke of "one physis" or "two physeis," spoke more of two (see quotations in Lampe). The evidence is overwhelming.