Monophysitism

Monophysitism (from the Greek monos, “one,” and physis, “nature”) is the teaching that after the incarnation Jesus Christ possessed only one nature rather than two, his human nature having been absorbed into the divine.¹ The name is used interchangeably with Eutychianism, the one-nature teaching of the fifth-century Constantinopolitan abbot Eutyches.¹ It is a heresy condemned by the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, opposed to the Chalcedonian teaching that Christ has two natures, one divine and one human, united without confusion in a single person.²

Historical Origin

Eutyches, “an extreme disciple of Dioscuros, the successor of Cyril” of Alexandria, pressed his opposition to Nestorianism so far that he confounded Christ’s two natures into one, and his party was “styled Monophysites.”¹ A. A. Hodge’s own catechism poses the question as “the Eutychian or Monophysite Heresy,” treating the two names as covering the same error rather than two distinct ones.¹ The Council of Chalcedon condemned this teaching in 451, adopting the letter Leo the Great, bishop of Rome, had sent to Flavian, patriarch of Constantinople, as its standard of orthodoxy.¹

Chalcedon’s verdict did not end the controversy. The Latin Church received the council’s confession readily, “but it met with great opposition in some parts, and especially in Palestine and Egypt,” a conflict that produced “great disorders and bloodshed” in those provinces and even revolution in Constantinople, where one emperor was deposed and another enthroned in the dispute’s wake.³

Roughly two centuries later, the Emperor Heraclius tried to reconcile the two sides by proposing a compromise: both parties would agree that Christ has two natures, but only one will and operation.³ “This effort was so far successful that a portion of the Monophysites assented to this modification of the creed of the Council of Chalcedon; but the more determined of that party and the great body of the orthodox refused.”³ This compromise position became known as Monothelitism, and the controversy it provoked turned on whether Christ has one will or two.⁴ The dispute was settled at the sixth ecumenical council, held at Constantinople in 681, which decided that Christ’s two natures necessarily entail two wills and two intelligences, one finite and fallible, the other infinite and immutable.⁴ The condemned Monothelites were “persecuted and driven eastward, where they have perpetuated themselves in the sect of the Maronites.”⁴ Louis Berkhof summarizes the whole span in a single sentence: “For some time the Eutychian error was continued by the Monophysites and the Monothelites, but was finally overcome by the Church.”⁵

Core Tenets

The Monophysite claim is that the incarnation absorbed Christ’s human nature into his divine nature, leaving only one nature afterward.¹ Herman Bavinck notes that Chalcedon’s formula “did not… prevent the East from tending toward Monophysitism and erroneous notions of divinization (θεωσις)” even after the council’s condemnation of the error.⁶

Some later Monophysites extended the same one-nature reasoning from Christology into the doctrine of God. Berkhof records that among those “who lost sight of the unity of God to such an extent that they landed in Tritheism,” some, “such as John Ascunages and John Philoponus,” were themselves later Monophysites.⁷ This is a distinct error, about the Trinity rather than Christ’s person, but the same party’s mistakes were not confined to Christology.

Confessional and Biblical Response

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession does not name Monophysitism, but its statement of Christ’s person rules the teaching out directly: Christ’s “two whole, perfect, and distinct natures were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion.”⁸ A confession that insists the two natures remain “distinct” and free of “confusion” and “composition” leaves no room for either nature to be absorbed into the other.

Calvin states the Reformed principle for why Chalcedon’s verdict, and not the “Robber Council” that preceded it, is received: “we embrace the Council of Chalcedon, and repudiate the second of Ephesus, because the latter sanctioned the impiety of Eutyches, and the former condemned it. The judgment of these holy men was founded on the Scriptures.”⁹ A council’s decision carries weight only so far as it agrees with Scripture, and that agreement, not Chalcedon’s conciliar authority as such, is why the Reformed tradition receives its verdict against Monophysitism rather than the Robber Council’s endorsement of it.

Related Doctrines

References

Archibald Alexander Hodge, “Chapter XXIII. The Person of Christ,” in Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), 387-388. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶
Charles Hodge, “Chapter III. Person of Christ,” in Systematic Theology, Volume II (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 402. ↩
Hodge, Systematic Theology, Volume II, 402. ↩ ↩² ↩³
Hodge, 403. ↩ ↩² ↩³
Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1969), 288. ↩
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 14, “The Only Begotten Son of the Father.” ↩
Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 68. ↩
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 8, “Of Christ the Mediator,” para. 2. ↩
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), book 4, chap. 9, sec. 9, 408. ↩