More on Monophysites...

[Anastasios]

Anastasios,

The question, "why are they NOT monothelytes?"
The answer, "...they believe in the suffering..."

Exactly.

Sorry, I don't follow you. Could be because I am writing five papers this week. ugh.

[Vicki]

Anastasios,

The question, "why are they NOT monothelytes?"
The answer, "...they believe in the suffering..."

Exactly.

Sorry, I don't follow you. Could be because I am writing five papers this week. ugh.

Christ is Risen!

OOD,

Am I understanding the above comment to mean that the temptation and physical suffering would not incline One of only Divine Will to sin, as He, having only Divine Nature, insofar as His Will, would remain unaffected BY the temptations and sufferings which could darken the nous of a man...therefore, belief in the FACT that Christ was tempted and suffered, cannot be offered as argument to dispute whether they are Monothelytes.

Christ must have had BOTH natures in order that the New Adam go through life and death with all the temptation, sorrow, joy and suffering of a true man, in order for the Incarnation to have meaning.

Did I understand this correctly?

Vicki

[Mor Ephrem]

Of course the Orthodox say, that because Christ had a Human Nature, He had a Human Will, which was capable of Sin. The centerpiece of the Monothelite heresy, which is really part of the Monophysite heresy, is the conclusion that because the Divine and Human Nature became One Nature, there was no longer a Human Will capable of Sin. After all, without the human Will there is no chance for sin whatsoever. This would be like saying Christ's human Nature was was only good in-so-far as it gave Him flesh, but because he did not have a Human Will, He really did not have all the properties of a man.

This is very profound and important. Without Two Wills, there is no New Adam.

Dear OOD,

The very first words of Anastasios' original post in this thread I feel are applicable also to myself. Rather than embroil myself in the usual fruitless sort of dialogue, I would like to ask some questions. They may or may not be questions which my Church would ask of EO: the only thing I can say for sure is that they are my questions.

If it was just a matter of saying that, at the Incarnation, the human nature which the Son of God took was ours, and thus was capable of sin, then that is one thing. But if I'm understanding you correctly, it sounds like you are also saying that, even after the Incarnation, Christ could have sinned if He chose to, and that is what I'm having a hard time comprehending. It is not that I believe He didn't have a human will: I'm just wondering how it is that a "Divine Person in two natures" (the formula RC's use, and which is the first I learned of Chalcedonianism) can sin. The Incarnate Lord Jesus Christ our God could sin? God can reject Himself (sin being a rejection of God)?

If I understood what it is EO believe about this particular aspect, it would make things a little easier for me to think about. But at this moment, I am having a hard time seeing how this is not exactly the type of quasi-Nestorianism some on our side accuse you of. Please expand on this for me.

[OrthodoxyOrDeath]

Mor Ephrem,

In the Orthodox Church, stress is placed on the Incarnation and life of Christ as an "instrument" of salvation as much as the death. (this is one simple reason why the "Passion of the Christ" movie is dangerous for Orthodox). The crucifiction occupies a special place because it was the most anguishing point of Christ's life. Our Bishop said the crucifixtion was the point in which Christ displayed the most love and self-control toward humanity, since He, who created everything was being tortured by His own creation and could have easily destroyed the world!

But I digress...

So to the Orthodox, the incarnation (and therefore salvation) does not only imply God becoming flesh, generally speaking, but God becoming flesh in uniting himself hypostatically with man in Christ, true God and true man, fully united but without change or fusion. In other words, incarnation is always understood as a reciprocity. The act of salvation understood by the Orthodox is not a one-sided act so that God "forces" His salvation on man. Nor is it a divided act so that Christ as man reconciles God the wrathful Father, as the Latins say, but a cooperative act, an act of reciprocity.

The human Will, is the creation of God and resides in each creature as an aspect of its very essence. If you become tired, in other words, you nature is exhausted, it is inescapable that you have the desire and will to sleep. It is the Creator's own work and an essential part of creation itself, and resides as part of the very nature of a created being. And according to St. Maximus (and the Orthodox Church), each person brings their will to bear in different ways creating individuality. It naturally follows then that there is the power to alter or corrupt.

Since the Human Will is an essential and inseparable property of a man's nature, it follows that Christ had a human will. Christ, as fully human, did fully possess the natural human will. Yet His uniqueness of also being fully divine, allowed Him to overcome the human disposition toward sin.

So just as when we are deified and as individuals our wills become united with that of God, and while also remained two separate wills, we also overcome our disposition to sin. Christ would not have, as you said "chose sin" just as a saint when confronted with the same choice would choose not to sin. He could sin, but He did not.

Simply put, if Christ had no human Will there would definitely not have been a temptation in the desert (and that is not to say Christ was really tempted).

But specifically to your question: "The Incarnate Lord Jesus Christ our God could sin? God can reject Himself (sin being a rejection of God)?"

Of course the Monothelite answer is a very humanly rational one, simply deny Him His humanity (which is what you are doing if he has no human Will.

But the real answer is much more paradoxical as with many things in the Church (which is why man without the Grace of God loses his way).

The short answer: It is essentially (essence) impossible for Him to sin.

The longer answer: If you had even one ray from heaven come down and shine in your heart and see Him dwell there how could you deny God? And how much more so if Christ was fully revealed to you and you had a constant vision of Heaven?

I didn't want to say this but to really make my point, I will ask, how possible is it that you would intentionally do some sin in church in front of all the people which you knew would cause harm to people? It is possible, but would you? And think of why you would not, perhaps for some earthly reasons but also of heavenly ones to. It is essentially impossible.

And this example is good because it is something we can relate to in our fallen human state, but to Christ in His life and having a divine nature, any sin would be out of the question.

I hope that helps. Feel free to expound your thoughts, I'm not sure this is complete and pray I didn't make any mistakes.

[Lucian]

This is a very interesting thread. OOD brings up an important point that I noticed myself sometime back, when I first began to investigate these issues.

It seems to me that Monothelitism is a logical consequence of Non-Chalcedonian theology.

Here is something I quoted here once before, but it bears repeating in this context. It is a statement made by Fr. Paul Verghese, who later became Metropolitan Paulos Mar Gregorios of the Syrian Orthodox Church of India, in a speech given in Geneva in 1970 at the third consultation of EO and Non-Chalcedonian theologians and printed in the Greek Orthodox Theological Review, Vol. XVI, nos. 1 and 2, 1971, pp. 133-143.

Here, as earlier in the decree, the Tome of Leo is expressly affirmed. The decree actually calls the Tome "the pillar of the right faith." You can perhaps understand that all this is rather difficult for us to accept. For us Leo is still a heretic. It may be possible for us to refrain from condemning him by name, in the interests of restoring communion between us. But we cannot in good conscience accept the Tome of Leo as "the pillar of the right faith" or accept a council which made such a declaration. The council approves explicitly what I clearly regard as heresy in the Tome of Leo: "Each form does in communion with the other what pertains properly to it, the Word, namely doing that which pertains to the Word, and the flesh that which pertains to the flesh." If one rightly understands the hypostatic union, it is not possible to say that the flesh does something on its own, even if it is said to be in union with the Word. The flesh does not have its own hypostasis. It is the hypostasis of the Word which acts through the flesh. It is the same hypostasis of the Word which does the actions of the Word and of his own flesh. The argument of the horos [dogmatic definition] in this Sixth Council is basically unacceptable to us (Review, p. 139; Does Chalcedon, p. 133).

We are unable to say what this council says when it affirms "two wills and two operations concurring most fitly in him"....

To summarize: Acceptance of the Sixth Council is much more difficult for us than the acceptance of Chalcedon. The following are the chief reasons:...

b) We are unable to accept the dithelete formula, attributing will and energy to the natures rather than to the hypostasis. We can only affirm the one united and unconfused divine-human nature, will and energy of Christ the incarnate Lord.

c) We find that this Sixth Council exalts as its standard mainly the teaching of Leo and Agatho, popes of Rome, paying only lip-service to the teachings of the Blessed Cyril. We regard Leo as a heretic for his teaching that the will and operation of Christ is to be attributed to the two natures of Christ rather than to the one hypostasis. The human nature is as "natural" to Christ the incarnate Word as is the divine. It is one hypostasis who now is both divine and human, and all the activities come from the one hypostasis.

[OrthodoxyOrDeath]

Christ is Risen!

OOD,

Am I understanding the above comment to mean that the temptation and physical suffering would not incline One of only Divine Will to sin, as He, having only Divine Nature, insofar as His Will, would remain unaffected BY the temptations and sufferings which could darken the nous of a man...therefore, belief in the FACT that Christ was tempted and suffered, cannot be offered as argument to dispute whether they are Monothelytes.

Christ must have had BOTH natures in order that the New Adam go through life and death with all the temptation, sorrow, joy and suffering of a true man, in order for the Incarnation to have meaning.

Did I understand this correctly?

Vicki

Vicki,

Essentially this is it, except I am ignoring the suffering part of it for now so as to not confuse the issue.

But what I am really trying to do (reading between the lines), is elicit any argument, if one even exists among ecumenists, that Monophysites are not Monothelites.

This is very profound, especially for someone who has unwittingly accepted these modern-day ecumenist agreements which say "anti-chalcedonians" have the same faith as the Orthodox, and that this was all a big mis-understanding (to qoute my former OCA priest).

Here I am saying very well, I certainly have no need to debate the meaning of their one nature theology and whether or not it is Orthodox. The mere fact that it produces monothelitism and that they are monothelites is enough to know that the world wide ecumenist communion has once again flung themselves over the cliff.

[OrthodoxyOrDeath]

Lucian,

Clearly, the "Greek Orthodox" knew the theology of the Monophysites and only worked to produce a white-wash, which is what I always said these agreements were.

I recently read Shenouda's treatise on their monothelite theology.

And with that, there can be no question for an Orthodox Christian that the "Oriental Orthodox" are outside the Church and that the ecumenist communion is with them.