Today the Church keeps the feast of the Holy God-bearing Fathers of the first six œcumenical councils. See the blog entry for 15 July 2012 for an account of this feast. Since the 1st Œcumenical Council, the Council of Nicæa, is included in this feast, I would like to revisit an earlier blog entry, ‘Nicæa the Movie,’ 15 January 2014. There I noted that a movie on the Council of Nicæa was in production. Randy Engel interviewed the movie’s promoter, Charles Parlato, on the Renew America website on 6 February 2014. Parlato said that he planned Nicæa as a response to the 2006 movie made of Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code. ‘If Hollywood has its way, Dan Brown’s version of the history of the Council of Nicaea will prevail unless it is contested on the same battlefield, that is, the battlefield of the popular cinema.’ The version of history that he is referring to is the allegation, now almost mainstream, that ‘the Emperor Constantine, by his machinations and strong-arming, made [the man] Jesus God on earth.’ Parlato shows that he is orthodox on the Trinity: ‘The Council of Nicaea strongly reaffirmed this central teaching that Jesus Christ is both God and man, that he possesses both a divine and a human nature. It was the bishops at the Council, gathered from the four corners of the Empire, who reaffirmed this doctrine. Constantine had nothing to do with it.’ He hoped to emulate another movie, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ (2004), which was very controversial, very popular and made lots of money, but he came face to face with the Hollywood system, which sees movies strictly in terms of how much profit they make and did not think the Council of Nicæa had the same box-office appeal as Jesus being crucified. As a businessman, he came up with a solution to his financial problem: he set up a ‘new fundraising concept called Investors4Charity (I4C)’, in which donors could make an investment on line and specify their favourite charity, to which their share of the profits, if any, would flow. That was all happening a year and more ago. Since then, the production seems to have sunk below the horizon. It got as far as casting one role: ‘a wonderful character actor for one of the important supporting roles although I cannot as yet reveal his name.’ It would be interesting to know what the ‘important supporting role’ was—could it possibly be Arius?—but we are unlikely ever to learn. Jamil Dehlavi, who was to have directed Nicæa, was interviewed by Hasan Zaidi on the Dawn website on 25 July 2014 and made no mention of the project. By now the I4C website is closed and the the domain name nicaeathemovie.com has expired and not been renewed. Perhaps it’s all for the best. Somehow I doubt that the movies are a suitable medium for theology. An example is Peter Jackson’s film of The Lord of the Rings (2001–03), which replaced Tolkien’s profoundly Christian vision with a purely pagan one, probably inevitably. In any case, The Da Vinci Code does not claim to be more than fiction. It makes an appeal to the perennial fascination with conspiracy theories and caters to the popular gnostic taste of the moment but hardly amounts to something worth historical or theological debate.
Today the Church commemorates the Holy 318 God-bearing Fathers of the 1st Œcumenical Council, held at Nicæa in A.D. 325. The Fathers proclaimed the Creed in refutation of the heresy of Arius. Their feast is held on the seventh Sunday after Great and Holy Pascha, the Sunday following Ascension Thursday and preceding the Sunday of Pentecost, when the risen Christ sent down the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. These two feasts, marking the ascension into heaven of the risen Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit, are vivid demonstrations of the divinity of the Son against Arius’s contention that he was the first of created beings. The readings for today’s Liturgy reflect this. As throughout the period from Great and Holy Pascha to Pentecost, the Epistle reading is from the Acts of the Apostles. St Paul warns the church at Ephesus of the danger of heresy: ‘Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.’ (Acts 20: 28–30). And the Gospel is the witness of Jesus to his divinity in his prayer after the Last Supper: ‘And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was’ (John 17: 3–5), and his prayer for the unity of the Church: ‘Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are’ (John 17: 11). The Apolytikion of the feast is: ‘You are glorified above all, Christ our God, who established our Fathers as beacons on the earth, and through them guided us all to the true faith. Greatly compassionate Lord, glory to you!’ The Kontakion is: ‘The preaching of the Apostles and the doctrines of the Fathers confirmed the one faith in the Church. And wearing the garment of truth woven from the theology on high, she rightly proclaims and glorifies the great mystery of piety.’ The Synaxarion in Orthros includes a verse against Arius: ‘Arius saying the Son is a stranger to the substance of the Father, let him be a stranger to the glory of God.’
On this day in A.D. 380, the Emperors Gratian and Theodosius promulgated the Edict of Thessalonica, ending the conflict between orthodox Christians and Arians. Theodosius then summoned a council to meet at Constantinople in May 381, the Second Œcumenical Council, which reaffirmed the Nicene Creed. A much larger significance has been given to the Edict of Thessalonica than it possessed, although it was important enough in its time. This is discussed in my blog entry for this date last year, which see.
Today is the feast of our fathers among the saints, Athanasius and Cyril, Patriarchs of Alexandria. The name of St Athanasius will always be associated with the Symbol of our faith, the Creed first promulgated at the 1st Œcumenical Council, held at Nicæa in 325, and completed at the 2nd Œcumenical Council, held at Constantinople in 381: I believe in one God, Father almighty, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made. The Creed was composed in order to counter the false teachings of Arius. In the Church, Creeds are not a list of everything that a Christian must believe but the statement of true beliefs to counter specific false beliefs. I have just completed the page of this website on Gnosticism, a page that took an unconscionable time to write and a subject that I will be revisiting in this blog. One of the doctors of the Church who combatted the Gnostic heresy was St Irenæus of Lyons. In Adversus Hæreses he formulated a creed in opposition to the Gnostic heresy. This creed, formulated a century and a half before the Nicene Creed in response to a very different heresy, is nonetheless strikingly consistent with it: The Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: She believes in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and His manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father to gather all things in one, and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Saviour, and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess to Him, and that He should execute just judgment towards all; that He may send spiritual wickednesses, and the angels who transgressed and became apostates, together with the ungodly, and unrighteous, and wicked, and profane among men, into everlasting fire; but may, in the exercise of His grace, confer immortality on the righteous and holy, and those who have kept His commandments, and have persevered in His love, some from the beginning, and others from their repentance, and may surround them with everlasting glory. Adversus Hæreses, I, x, 1, trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut, Ante-Nicene Fathers, I (1885). From the New Advent website.
Today the Church commemorates our Father among the Saints, Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem. This entry is related to my previous blog posts for St Maximus Confessor (21 January) and St Agatho of Rome (20 February). Sophronius was born in Damascus c. A.D. 550, educated as a rhetorician but was attracted to the ascetic life. On a pilgrimage to the holy places, he placed himself under the spiritual direction of a monk of the Monastery of St Theodosius the Great, John Moschus. They went to Egypt to learn from the ascetics there and Sophronius decided definitively to abandon the world and don the monastic habit. John Moschus and Sophronius visited many monasteries in Egypt and Palestine, including the Monastery of St Catherine on Mount Sinai, where St John Climacus was abbot, seeking to deepen their understanding of hesychasm—stillness and unceasing prayer. At the beginning of the 7th century, they went to Alexandria to assist with their theological learning and eloquence the patriarchs Eulogius and St John the Merciful in the struggle against monophysitism. Here Sophronius was cured miraculously of an eye disease by the Holy Unmercenary Healers, SS. Cyrus and John. In gratitude, he compiled a collection of their miracles. In 614, the Persians occupied Jerusalem and threatened Alexandria. Sophronius and John Moschus fled for refuge to Rome, where John died in 619. Sophronius returned to Palestine but had to flee again in the face of Arab incursions, going to North Africa, where he met St Maximus Confessor, himself in flight from Constantinople. St Maximus became St Sophronius’s disciple, calling him ‘my blessed lord, my father and master.’ Previously, St Maximus had been concerned to refute the errors of Origen but, in dialogue with Sophronius, he realised that the most pressing question facing the church was the relationship of the two natures of Christ in the one person, and that the immediate threat to doctrine was the monophysite heresy in its most recent form—monotheletism. St Sophronius returned to Egypt in 633 to continue the struggle against monotheletism but, finding the new patriarch of Alexandria, Cyrus, obdurate in heresy, he went to Constantinople to beg Patriarch Sergius to return to the doctrine of the Council of Chalcedon. The doctrine of one action or operation (energeia) in two natures, which Sergius had devised at the insistence of the Emperor Heraclius in an effort to reconcile the monophysites, had merely led the latter to claim, ‘It is not we who are in communion with Chalcedon, but Chalcedon with us.’ Sergius made the gesture of forbidding any mention of one or two operations in the two natures of Christ but this did not prove an adequate resolution of the controversy. It was in response to this visit that Patriarch Sergius wrote a perhaps too clever letter to Pope Honorius I of Rome, saying that the Emperor Heraclius had used the expression ‘one operation of the Incarnate Word.’ He was, he said, himself uncertain of the orthodoxy of this expression but it had been used by his predecessor Mennas in a letter to Pope Vigilius. (In fact the letter was a monophysite forgery, but Sergius was not necessarily aware of this.) He asked for the pope’s opinion on his compromise, forbidding any discussion of the question. Pope Honorius replied in equally vague terms. ‘Following the lead of Sergius, who had said that ‘two operations’ might lead people to think two contrary wills were admitted in Christ, Honorius (after explaining the communicatio idiomatum, by which it can be said that God was crucified, and that the Man came down from heaven) adds: ‘Wherefore we acknowledge one Will of our Lord Jesus Christ, for evidently it was our nature and not the sin in it which was assumed by the Godhead, that is to say, the nature which was created before sin, not the nature which was vitiated by sin’.’ (Quoting from the Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent website.) Sergius then made use of this ambiguous response to assure the other patriarchs that his compromise had papal support—what would lead in due course to the unfortunate Honorius’s anathematisation by the Sixth Œcumenical Council and to 19th-century debates about papal infallibility. (This mosaic portrait of Pope Honorius is a rare example of a contemporary portrait of a churchman. It is in the apse of the Church of St Agnes Outside the Walls, a church rebuilt by Honorius to replace a 4th century basilica.) St Sophronius then in 634 returned to Jerusalem, where the patriarch, St Modestus, had just died. The clergy and monks constrained the elderly St Sophronius unanimously to ascend the patriarchal throne. As soon as he was elected, he wrote a confession of his faith to the Patriarchs of Rome and Constantinople, confessing one single Christ in two natures, divine and human, who implements the function of each nature according to their respective properties, the same Christ who, without confusion or admixture (as the monophysites claimed) and without division (as the Nestorians implied) works miracles as God and suffers as Man, thus offering to human beings the possibility of being united through him with God by grace. St Sophronius was Patriarch when the Arab invasion swept over Jerusalem in 638. He prevailed upon the Caliph Omar to enter the city as a pilgrim rather than as a conqueror and to guarantee the safety of the Christian sanctuaries. Not long after, he gave up his soul to God, going to the Jerusalem that is above.
(From Makarios of Simonos Petra, The Synaxarion, (Ormylia, Chalcidice, 2003), IV, 91–96) In my blog entry on ‘Nicaea the Movie’ (25 January 2014) I commented that I have seen little on the Web about Eighth Day Books’ symposium, ‘Constantine, Christendom and Cultural Renewal’ (16–18 January 2014), which contrasted the views on St Constantine the Great of the eminent Mennonite theologian and pacifist, John Howard Yoder (1927–97) and the Reformed minister and theologian Peter Leithart. I recently came across an article by Tim Huber on the Mennonite World Review website, 3 February 2014, reporting the presentation to the symposium of Alan Kreider, retired professor of church history and mission at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana. Prof. Kreider published an essay in the collection edited by John D. Roth, Constantine Revisited: Leithart, Yoder and the Constantinian Debate, (Wipf and Stock, 2013), published in response to Peter Leithart’s Defending Constantine. Prof. Kreider remains unshaken in the Anabaptist conviction that ‘Constantine may have considered himself a pious ruler, but the early Christian church [by which he evidently means the pre-Constantinian church] would have found him an impious follower of Christ.’ He added that the Emperor’s baptism, which he put off until just before his death, shows that he and the church understood that state power was not compatible with the life of a Christian. And yet it is common knowledge among church historians that Christians at that time put baptism off to the last possible moment. It was life in this world that was considered hazardous to our salvation, not just participation in state power. The suggestion that state power is not compatible with the life of a Christian raises problems. The early Church required Christians to submit to state power. Note St Paul’s words: ‘I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.’ (1 Tim. 2: 1-2) And, famously—or notoriously— ‘… rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil … for he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain … Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.’ (Rom. 13: 3-7) The Christian, although enjoined to obedience, could not take full part in the public life of a pagan state, since it required pagan ritual sacrifice. But what would happen when most of the people considered themselves to be Christian—and when pagan sacrifice was no longer a condition of public office? Christians recognised that the state was necessary but how was it to be carried on in the changed circumstances? This was the question that needed to be answered at the time of Constantine. Prof. Kreider is quoted as saying, ‘The more I study the early Christians, and I study them a lot, the more convinced I am they were nonviolent.’ This elicits comments on the website from two Orthodox priests, both of them scholars and historians. First, Fr John W. Morris, Pastor of St George’s Antiochian Orthodox Church in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and teacher of history at a number of universities, expresses disagreement with Yoder’s view (that ‘the obligation [of Christians] to participate in war … [is a tradition] which has prevailed in the churches since Constantine …’ The Politics of Jesus, 1994, p. 210): ‘The Eastern Orthodox Church … never accepted the ‘just war theory’ of Augustine … To this day, an Eastern Orthodox soldier who kills in battle is barred from Communion until after they have been to Confession and have served a penance. In Eastern Orthodox theology all war is evil. However, there are times when war is a lesser evil than allowing a foreign country to invade your country and oppress your people.’ This arouses Fr Alexander F.W. Webster, Pastor of St Herman of Alaska Orthodox Church (ROCOR) in Stafford, Virginia and retired professor of history and National Guard chaplain: ‘I must dissent from my esteemed Orthodox colleague Fr. John W. Morris’s mischaracterization of Eastern Orthodox moral tradition on the issues of war and peace … the ‘lesser evil’ approach to moral issues is decidedly not—and never has been—Orthodox.’ It would be difficult to find two Orthodox theologians who agree completely as to what is the Church’s doctrine concerning war and military service but there seems general agreement that the Church in the East is not explicitly pacifist but neither has it formulated anything as explicit as the Western just-war tradition—at least as far as the jus ad bellum goes; there is less agreement as to the jus in bello. Fr Alexander, however, spurred on by outrage at certain remarks made by the Orthodox Peace Fellowship (which is unusual among the Orthodox in espousing frank pacifism), co-authored with the Protestant Darrell Cole, professor of religion at Drew University, The Virtue of War: Reclaiming the Classic Christian Traditions East & West (2004). They argue (convincingly, to my mind) that in fact the fundamental position of the Church East and West is and has always been the same—the position of which the Western just-war tradition is one expression. More specifically, Fr Alexander holds that the Orthodox Church holds in tension, in this as in other cases, two apparently contradictory notions: absolute pacifism and justifiable war. An unjustifiable war is evil; a justifiable war is not a lesser evil but a necessary work of charity. Further to Fr John’s comment on the requirement of penance for a soldier, it is a fearful thing to kill another human being, even accidentally, and the Church has always required confession and penance. But St Basil the Great in his Canon 13 said, ‘Our Fathers did not consider homicides in war among homicides, it seems to me giving pardon to those who defend temperance and piety. But perhaps it is more advisable, as the hands are not clean, to abstain from Communion for three years only.’ The penance prescribed for a soldier who caused a death in battle is thus just a third of the penance prescribed for someone who has caused the death of another by pure accident.
Today the Church commemorates the Bishop of Rome who brought the monothelite controversy to an end at last after more than half a century. Here I continue the story begun in my blog entry of 21 January for St Maximus Confessor, taking it from St Maximus’s death in A.D. 662 to the convening of the 6th Œcumenical Council in 680. This is a story of weak popes and strong popes. It begins properly with Pope Honorius I (625–638). When Sophronius was elected Patriarch of Jerusalem in 634 and rejected the monothelite compromise, Patriarch Sergius of Constantinople wrote a clever letter to Pope Honorius that led the pope to make a few imprudent remarks, which were thenceforth used by the supporters of the compromise as evidence that they had the support of Rome. Pope Severinus was elected on the death of Honorius in 638 but the Emperor Heraclius refused to confirm him until he subscribed to the Ecthesis, the decree making monotheletism the official doctrine of the Empire. The stalemate lasted a year and a half before Heraclius backed down. Severinus was installed as pope in 640 and thereupon condemned the Ecthesis, but only lived two months longer. Pope John IV (640–642) also condemned the Ecthesis, although he attempted to justify Honorius, saying that, by one will in Christ, he meant only to say that there were not two contrary wills. John was succeeded by a Greek born in Jerusalem, who became Pope Theodore I (642–649). He also condemned the Ecthesis, refusing to recognise the monothelite Paul II as the new Patriarch of Constantinople. Paul, trying to placate everyone, had the Emperor Constans II withdraw the Ecthesis and substitute the Typos in 648—instead of being required to profess one will in Christ, the faithful were forbidden to profess anything at all on the subject. Theodore planned the Lateran Council of 649 to address the issue of monotheletism but did not live to convene it. He is commemorated by the Orthodox Church as a saint, his feast on 18 May. Pope Martin I (649–655) convened the Lateran Council of 649, representing the Western bishops. He had been Pope Theodore’s representative in Constantinople and was well-informed on the politics of the issue. St Maximus Confessor was in Rome by this time and some believe that he wrote the council’s Acta. The council condemned monotheletism and rejected both the Ecthesis and the Typos. The Emperor Constans responded by having him arrested in 653, along with St Maximus, and taken to Constantinople, where he was subjected to much mistreatment. He was sentenced to death but Patriarch Paul obtained the commutation of the sentence. He was exiled to the Crimea where he died in 656. The Orthodox Church commemorates him as a saint and confessor, his feast on 13 April. By this point, there was no longer any ambiguity concerning the theological issues involved. The only question still open was whether political expediency or the doctrinal purity of the Church would prevail. After the arrest of Martin in 653, the papal see remained vacant for a little over a year, until Pope Eugene I was elected in 654. The fate of Saint Martin had its intended effect: the new pope avoided any mention of the number of wills in Christ. He died in 657. His successor, Pope Vitalian (657–672), although orthodox on the question of the number of wills in Christ, followed in the footsteps of Eugene and kept quiet as long as Constans was alive. On the death of Constans in 668, his son came to the throne as Constantine IV. Constantine had little interest in maintaining the monothelite heresy but did not oppose it either, fully occupied as he was defending the empire against Arab and Slav invasions. Thus, while Vitalian now openly criticised monetheletism, he made little impression on the other patriarchs. The subsequent popes, Adeodatus II (672–676) and Donus (676–678) were conciliatory on the question of monotheletism, not wishing to make waves. It was the next pope, St Agatho (feast, 20 February), who broke the deadlock at last. He was born in Sicily, became a monk on his parents’ death, was noted for his erudition and deep humility, and had been serving as treasurer of the Roman Church when Pope Donus died. He succeeded him in July 678. The Patriarch of Constantinople at the time was the monothelite Theodore I. Agatho summoned a council in Rome in 680 which professed the orthodox doctrine of Christ’s wills and then wrote two letters to the Emperor Constantine, refuting monotheletism and proposing a council to resolve the issue finally. A year earlier, Theodore had been succeeded by the orthodox George I as Patriarch of Constantinople, commemorated by the Church as a saint, feast together with Patriarch John V (669–675) on 18 August. Constantine now agreed and the council was duly held in Constantinople, November 680–September 681, the 6th Œcumenical Council, condemning monenergism and monotheletism. After the reading of the pope’s letter to the assembled prelates at its opening, they declared, ‘Peter has spoken through the mouth of Agatho,’ echoing the famous cry, ‘Peter has spoken through the mouth of Leo,’ at Chalcedon. But before the council could conclude, the pope had already fallen asleep in the Lord on 11 January 681. Leo II, not consecrated until August 682 because of disagreements with Constantinople over imperial control of papal elections, succeeded him and confirmed the acts of the council. This was the most important act in his brief reign. He attempted to mitigate the anathema of Honorius, pronounced by the council, saying that his fault was not heresy but being insufficiently active in refuting heresy. (A thousand years in the future, this anathema was to be hotly debated when the First Vatican Council (1869–70) defined the dogma of papal infallibility, although in fact it was quite irrelevant, Honorius having been musing rather than pronouncing ex cathedra.)
Today the Church remembers a ‘physician of souls, captain of the army of Christ and pilot of the ark of the Church buffeted by the storm of heresies’ in the troubled decades following the Council of Nicæa in A.D. 325. St Meletius, a humble and pious man, was elected Archbishop of Antioch, metropolitan see of the East, in 360 when the Arian Eudoxius was deposed. The see had been racked by a schism ever since the earlier deposition of the orthodox St Eustathius in 330 but both the supporters of Nicæa and the Arians welcomed him, the former sure that his virtues could only be the reflection of purity of faith, the latter misled by his meekness to believe he would tolerate their heresy. His enthronement took place before the Emperor Constantius, who favoured the Arians. The emperor proposed slyly that the bishops present expound the passage, ‘The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old’ (Proverbs 8: 22), the classic proof text of Arianism. George of Cappadocia, who had been placed on the patriarchal throne of Alexandria on the banishment of St Athanasius, and Acacius of Cæsarea (described by St Gregory the Theologian as the ‘hand’ and ‘tongue’ of the Arians), first gave the Arian interpretation of the passage, by which the Logos was a creature, although before Creation. St Meletius then gave the orthodox interpretation, as declared by St Athanasius, that in this passage ‘created’ could not be taken to mean ‘he was made’ but rather ‘he was begotten.’ An Arian archdeacon attempted to silence the archbishop by putting his hand over his mouth but St Meletius extended his own hand to the people with three fingers together and the thumb and little finger folded over, a gesture that said that the three Persons of the Trinity are equal in nature and one only God. St Meletius was exiled to Melitene by Constantius but was able to return to his see at the emperor’s death in November 361. However, the orthodox faithful of Antioch had become divided in the year he was absent between those who supported him and those who viewed his election as invalid because of the participation of Arians in it. The latter had elected Paulinus as archbishop, creating a schism that would last eighty-five years, long after the death of both men—the notorious Meletian Schism that weakened the Church in its struggle against Arianism while it lasted. He was responsible for turning from secular learning to sacred studies one John, born in Antioch in 349, who would earn the epithet Chrysostom and be canonized a saint. He baptized him and later ordained him deacon. St Meletius was exiled once again by the Arian emperor Valens (reigned 364–378). He went to Cappadocia, where he had the opportunity to meet St Basil the Great, one of the ‘Three Cappadocians’ who clarified the doctrine of the Trinity, the other two being St Gregory of Nyssa, Basil’s brother, and St Gregory the Theologian, Basil’s friend. The pious Emperor Theodosius the Great (reigned 379–395), just before his accession, had a vision in which St Meletius vested him with the purple and placed the diadem on his head. He determined to put an end to the Arian conflict, summoning the 2nd Œcumenical Council to meet at Constantinople in May 381, with St Meletius presiding. St Meletius gave up his soul to God not long after the council convened. St Gregory of Nyssa preached his funeral sermon, from which comes the quotation opening this entry. He was succeeded as president of the Council by St Gregory the Theologian, who had been made Patriarch of Constantinople by Theodosius shortly before.
I learn from James Kushiner’s column (The Fellowship of St James) that a new movie will be in production this year called Nicæa. It even has its own website, www.nicaeathemovie.com. I am absolutely certain that this is the first movie ever to be made about an œcumenical council. It is being produced by a small U.S. company, Electric Avenue Radio, with only two productions to its credit so far, and directed by Jamil Dehlavi, an independent Pakistani director living in London known for films on obscure subjects. A year and a half ago in the Express Tribune (Karachi), an aspiring young Pakistani director, Jibran Khan, described his films about Pakistan as displaying an ‘erratic yet daring depiction’ of their subject. While I don’t know what he will make of St Constantine the Great, I am not sure that the subject will respond well to ‘erratic yet daring depiction’—or that we are likely to get much theological depth from a production thinking in terms of ‘blood, grit and pageantry.’ Who would you cast as St Athanasius? Who as Arius? Will they even appear in the film? Kushiner’s reference to the movie was in a comment on Eighth Day Books’ symposium, ‘Constantine, Christendom and Cultural Renewal,’ 16–18 January 2014 in Wichita, Kansas, where Peter Leithart, author of Defending Constantine, spoke. Leithart’s talks inspired Kushiner with the interesting and possibly disquieting thought, ‘Wouldn't you pray for the conversion of your ruler? What if your prayer was answered?’ I am looking forward to hearing more on the proceedings of this symposium, so far little reported in the blogosphere.
Today we remember one of the greatest theologians among the Fathers, St Maximus (A.D. 580–662), who not only interpreted the faith, clarifying the Church’s christological doctrine and completing the doctrinal work of the first five œcumenical councils, but professed it and suffered grievously for it. His most important contribution to Orthodoxy was the refutation of the heresy of monotheletism. (The icon of the saint is an 11th-c. mosaic in Nea Moni, Chios, from Wikimedia Commons.) People today find almost incomprehensible the vehemence and sometimes violence with which Church and State debated the ‘persons’ and ‘natures’ of Christ for two hundred and thirty years between the Councils of Chalcedon in 451 and III Constantinople in 680–81. But the debate is closely tied to the Orthodox understanding of Christ’s sacrifice for our salvation. To save mankind, it is necessary that the Logos be both perfect God and perfect Man, therefore able to bridge the gap between the divine and the human that Adam’s sin had opened up in the Garden of Eden. In the words of Chalcedon, it is necessary that there be ‘one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, acknowledged in two natures which undergo no confusion, no change, no division, no separation; at no point was the difference between the natures taken away through the union, but rather the property of both natures is preserved and comes together into a single person and a single subsistent being.’ But some Christians, especially in Egypt and Syria, rejected the doctrine of Chalcedon, influenced by a misunderstanding of St Cyril of Alexandria’s formula ‘one nature [physis in Greek] incarnate of God the Word’ against the Nestorian heresy that Christ was two persons, and so insisted that Christ must be professed as having one nature (hence they were called ‘monophysites’ as opposed to the orthodox ‘dyophysites,’ ‘two natures’). The orthodox view was that St Cyril intended merely to emphasise that Christ was one person, using ‘nature’ to mean ‘subsistent nature.’ What made the debate difficult for persons at the time was an inconsistent use of the terms ‘person,’ ‘nature’ and ‘substance.’ People today find it even more confusing, since we no longer use these words in the way they were used before the modern period. In ancient and mediæval theology, their technical sense was that worked out by Aristotle in the 4th century B.C. ‘Nature’ is what makes a thing what it is, whether the thing actually exists or not. ‘Substance’ is what makes a ‘nature’ an actually existing thing, a ‘person.’ But people then as now were not always exact in their use of them. The monophysite heresy divided the Church but it was not until the beginning of the 7th century that the division became a pressing political issue. The Persians invaded the Empire, capturing Jerusalem in 613 and Egypt in 618, and the Arabs were threatening invasion. The Persian success was due in part to the disaffection of the Empire’s monophysite subjects. The Emperor Heraclius wanted a compromise that would reconcile the monophysites and restore them to their allegiance. Sergius, Patriarch of Constantinople (610–638) devised a formula for the purpose that would preserve the wording of the decree of Chalcedon while emptying it of meaning. He professed the two natures in Christ, human and divine, but asserted that Christ possessed only one divine active principle. As a political dodge, this assertion took two successive forms. Until 638, it was that Christ possessed a single divine ‘energia,’ to use the Greek term, after that, that he possessed a single divine will (hence the term ‘monotheletism’ from the Greek monos, one, and thelô, I wish). These terms also must be understood in the Aristotelian sense they were given at the time: ‘will’ is what results in action; ‘energia’ (sometimes, and misleadingly, translated ‘energy’) is the action. The change was made for political reasons, because too much controversy had arisen around the claim of a single divine energia, but the effect was the same—to deny that Christ was fully human. By 630, Patriarch Sergius had convinced the Patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch (the Patriarch of Jerusalem was in Persian captivity for most of this time) to accept the compromise, which they interpreted correctly as the abandonment of Chalcedonian dyophisitism. However, in 634, a monk from Damascus, Sophronius, a defender of the doctrine of Chalcedon, was elected to the patriarchal throne of Jerusalem and denounced the compromise. The Emperor Heraclius attempted to suppress the debate by issuing a decree, the Ecthesis (638), ordering all the subjects of the Empire to confess one will in Christ. It also forbade any further reference to the doctrine of one energia in Christ, attempting thus to end the controversy roused by that term. Meanwhile, St Maximus, who had been a monk of the Monastery of St George in Cyzicus on the Sea of Marmara and had been driven out with the other monks by the Persian invasion and sent wandering across the empire, was in Carthage in North Africa, where he met Sophronius, who was also in flight. He rejected the Ecthesis and led the resistance to monotheletism, clarifying the theological issues definitively. He argued that our salvation depends on Christ being true Man and true God, two natures in one Person, as Chalcedon had decreed. How could he be said to be truly Man if his human nature was switched off, so to speak, by being deprived of will and action? The Emperor Constans II, who succeeded his father Heraclius in 641, had no interest in the doctrinal issue but wanted to end the debate finally. In any case, the Arab conquest of Syria in 634 and of Egypt in 641 had rendered moot the need to reconcile the monophysites. He issued a decree known as the Typos in 648, making it illegal to discuss in any manner the topic of Christ possessing either one or two actions, or one or two wills: ‘the scheme which existed before the strife arose shall be maintained, as it would have been if no such disputation had arisen.’ Most of the patriarchs were prepared to go along with the Typos for the sake of a quiet life, but St Maximus would not accept that true doctrine could not be professed and rejected the Typos. Arrested, brought back to Constantinople and put on trial for sedition, he was asked, ‘What Church do you belong to, then? To Constantinople? To Rome? To Antioch? To Alexandria? To Jerusalem? For you see that all are united with us.’ He replied, ‘To the Catholic Church, which is the right and salutary confession of faith in the God of the universe.’ He was condemned, his right hand was cut off and his tongue cut out, and he was paraded through the streets of Constantinople covered in blood. He died not long after, on 13 August 662, but his teaching was vindicated twenty years later at the Sixth Œcumenical Council, III Constantinople.
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