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The fifth, sixth and seventh ecumenical councils (II Constantinople, 553; III Constantinople, 680-81; II Nicaea, 787) were all in some sense christological councils, all concerned in some way or another with problems of Monophysite tendencies. For instance, II Constantinople fostered a "Cyrillian" interpretation of Chalcedon, in the vain hope of reconciling separated Monophysite Christians; III Constantinople condemned those who argued for one will (i.e., divine) in Christ, or one operation -- positions which would deny the integrity of his human nature; and II Nicaea condemned the iconoclasts, on the grounds that their rejection of images representing Christ betokened a denial of his true humanity. Byzantium, while remaining true to the letter of the Chalcedonian definition, manifested always, throughout its history, in its political theology and in the character of its spirituality generally, the "Neo-Chalcedonian" standpoint which emphasizes the "divinizing" of the natural, and is therefore uneasy with the Chalcedonian duality of natures.
----------------------------------------The first important Latin interpretation of Chalcedon is the tractate by Boethius, Contra Eutychen et Nestorium, probably written in 512, as Boethius meditated upon questions posed by certain oriental bishops in a letter to Pope Symmachus.[5] Boethius' tractate, much read and commented on in the Middle Ages, was particularly important for its clear exposition of the Monophysite and Nestorian alternatives, and its precise definitions of the terms involved. What is meant by "person"? Boethius answers: "person is the individual substance of a rational nature". What is meant by "nature"? "Nature is the specific property of any substance".[6]
Thus, Christ is understood to be one individual rational substance (i.e., one "person"), possessing the specific properties (or "natures") of both divinity and humanity. Thus, "in him", says Boethius, "nature becomes double and substance double because he is God-man (homo-deus) and one person since the same is man and God. This is the middle way between two heresies...."[7]
The Chalcedonian definition, in the Boethian understanding of it, remains standard for Latin Christendom throughout the Middle Ages; but even the precision of Boethius left certain questions unresolved, notably questions as to the manner of the union of natures in Christ. Peter Lombard, in the twelfth century, in that most successful of medieval theological text-books, his Libri sententiarum, says that there are three opinions, all of which, he says, can be found in St. Augustine: 1. The Son of God assumed a man; 2. The Word of God was clothed with humanity; 3. The person of the Son composed a human nature, of soul and body, taken separately.[8] These opinions were matters of extended debate throughout the scholastic era----------------------------
For the medieval doctors, as for the Church Fathers before them, christological discussion had always a soteriological dimension. Nowhere is that fact more evident than in the works of St. Anselm, De conceptu virginali, Epistola de incarnatione verbi, and above all, Cur deus homo. Jaroslav Pelikan, in his book on Jesus Through the Centuries says of Cur deus homo, that
more than any other treatise between Augustine and the Reformation on any other doctrine of the Christian faith, Anselm's essay has shaped the outlook not only of Roman Catholics, but of most Protestants, many of whom have paid him the ultimate compliment of not even recognizing that their version of the wisdom of the cross comes from him, but attributing it to the bible itself.Anselm's essay is, in fact, thoroughly biblical and traditional in its substance: all that is really new is the attempt to cast the argument in the form of "necessary reasons". His position assumes and rests firmly upon Chalcedonian christology, serving to bring out more sharply the soteriological dimensions of that christology. Most twentieth-century criticism of the argument arises chiefly from cultural prejudices and lacks theological seriousness. The one serious theological criticism, found in Gustav Aulén's very influential Christus Victor and elsewhere, is that Anselm makes of redemption a human work. But such a criticism involves overlooking Anselm's Chalcedonian presuppositions: for him, redemption is seen as the work of the Deus-homo, the God-man. For Anselm, as for Chalcedon, both sides, the divine and the human, are crucial. It is the Son of God, in his human nature, who is offered to pay the price which fallen man can never pay.[10]
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NOTES
1. The most useful modern studies of this history are A. Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon 451 (tr. J. S. Bowden, New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965); A. Grillmeier and H. Bacht, Das Konzil von Chalkedon. Geschichte und Gegenwart, II (Würzburg: Echter-Verlag, 1954), especially section VII, "Chalkedon und die abendländische Theologie von 451 bis zur Hochscholastik", pp. 763-939. Still valuable, especially for extensive consideration of the Greek Fathers and Eriugena, is J. Bach, Die Dogmengeschichte des Mittelalters vom christologischen Standpunkte, Part I (Frankfurt/M: Minerva reprint, 1966). Also generally useful is J. Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1985).2. Translation from H. Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1947), p. 73.
3. Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, p. 491.
4. H. U. von Balthazar, Kosmische Liturgie. Maximus der Bekenner, quoted in P. Piret, Le Christ et la trinité selon Maxime le Confesseur (Paris: Beauchesne, 1983), p. 23.
5. The Latin text of the tractate, with English translation, is published in H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand, S. J. Tester, Boethius, The Theological Tractates, The Consolation of Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1978); on the christology, cf. A. Trapè, "Boezio teologo e S. Agostino", in L. Obertello, ed., Atti. Congresso internazionale di studi boeziani (Rome: Herder, 1981), esp. pp. 21-24.
6. Boethius, Contra Eutychen, ed. cit., IV, p. 93.
7. Ibid., cf. Trapè, op. cit., p. 23.
8. Peter Lombard, Libri sententiarum, III, dist. VI.
9. Pelikan, op. cit., pp. 106-107.
10. For more detailed criticism of Aulén's argument, see my essay "Atonement and Sacrifice: Doctrine and Worship. St. Augustine and the Fathers", together with Gavin Dunbar's response to that essay, in G. E. Eayrs, ed., Atonement and Sacrifice (Charlottetown: St. Peter Publications, 1990), pp. 24-40; and W. Hankey's essay, "St. Anselm and the Medieval Doctors", in the same volume, pp. 41-62.
11. See, e.g., the classic work in this field, E. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies (Princeton, Princeton Univ. Press, 1959), esp. pp 78, 128-129.
12. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, 1, 8, ad 2.
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