Monophysite heresy
Monophysite in Christianity was the one who believed that
Jesus Christ's nature remains altogether divine and not human even
though he has taken on an earthly and human body with its cycle
of birth, life, and death.
Monophysite doctrine thus asserted that in the Person
of Jesus Christ there was only one (divine) nature rather than two
natures, divine and human, as asserted at the Council of Chalcedon
in 451. In the development of the doctrine of the Person of Christ
during the 4th, 5th, and 6th centuries, several divergent traditions
had arisen. Chalcedon adopted a decree declaring that Christ was
to be "acknowledged in two natures, without being mixed,
transmuted, divided, or separated."
This formulation was directed in part against the Nestorian doctrine
- that the two natures in Christ had remained separate and that
they were in effect two Persons - and in part against the theologically
unsophisticated position of the monk Eutyches, who had been condemned
in 448 for teaching that, after the Incarnation, Christ had only
one nature and that, therefore, the humanity of the incarnate Christ
was not of the same substance as that of other men. Political and
ecclesiastical rivalries as well as theology played a role in the
decision of Chalcedon to depose and excommunicate the patriarch
of Alexandria, Dioscorus (d. 454). The church that supported
Dioscorus and insisted that his teaching was consistent with the
orthodox doctrine of St. Cyril of Alexandria was labeled monophysite.
The label also was attached to various theologians and groups,
although some who were called monophysite, notably Severus
of Antioch (d. 538), repudiated the terminology of Chalcedon as
self-contradictory. Most modern scholars agree that Severus as well
as Dioscorus probably diverged from what was defined as orthodoxy
more in their emphasis upon the intimacy of the union between God
and man in Christ than in any denial that the humanity of Christ
and that of mankind are consubstantial.
In modern times, those churches usually classified as monophysite are generally accepted by Roman Catholic, Eastern
Orthodox, and Protestant Christendom as essentially orthodox in
their doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ.
|