Position · 451

Miaphysitism

The teaching that in Christ divinity and humanity are united in one nature, without mixture, confusion or change, following Cyril of Alexandria’s phrase “one incarnate nature of God the Word”.

History

Roots

Miaphysitism is the Christology of Cyril of Alexandria kept in his own vocabulary. In the fight with Nestorius that led to the Council of Ephesus (431), Cyril insisted that the Word of God did not merely join himself to a man but became flesh (John 1:14), so that Mary is rightly called Theotokos, God-bearer, and the one who suffered on the cross is God the Word in his own flesh. His third letter to Nestorius and its twelve anathemas, read into the acts of Ephesus, set out that position (Council of Ephesus documents, New Advent).

Cyril’s working formula was mia physis tou Theou Logou sesarkōmenē, “one nature of God the Word incarnate.” He used it in his letters to Succensus and Acacius, and believed it came from Athanasius. Modern scholars hold that it actually came from Apollinaris of Laodicea, whose writings circulated under orthodox names after his condemnation (summary, secondary). Cyril filled the phrase with his own meaning: the Word’s humanity was complete, with a rational soul, and the union caused no mixture. Yet in 433 he also signed the Formula of Reunion with John of Antioch, which spoke of “a union of two natures.” His followers would spend the next century arguing over which Cyril was the real one.

Causes

The split came within twenty years of Cyril’s death. Eutyches, an archimandrite in Constantinople, said that Christ was “of two natures before the union, but after the union one nature,” and refused to say that Christ’s humanity was consubstantial with ours. Pope Leo I attacked him in his Tome (449), which taught two natures that keep their properties in one person: “each form does what is proper to it with the co-operation of the other” (Letter 28, New Advent).

Dioscorus, Cyril’s successor at Alexandria, presided over the Second Council of Ephesus in 449, which restored Eutyches and refused to read the Tome. Leo called it a “robbers’ synod.” Two years later the Council of Chalcedon (451) deposed Dioscorus and defined that Christ is “to be confessed in two natures, unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, inseparably” (acts and definition, New Advent). The acts record Dioscorus accepting the expression “from two natures” but not “two natures” after the union. Miaphysite tradition remembers him as deposed for procedure and defiance, not for heresy, and venerates him as a saint.

To Cyril’s heirs, “in two natures” looked like Nestorius back again: two subjects, a man and the Word, set side by side. The Tome’s language of each form acting seemed to make the man Jesus one agent and the Word another. They kept Ephesus and rejected Chalcedon.

Influence

The emperors spent two centuries trying to undo the break. Zeno’s Henoticon (482) affirmed Nicaea, Ephesus and Cyril’s anathemas while avoiding any ruling on natures (Evagrius, Ecclesiastical History 3.14). It pleased neither Rome nor the strict parties, and led to the Acacian schism between Rome and Constantinople (484–519). Justinian condemned the Three Chapters at the Second Council of Constantinople (553), partly to show that Chalcedon was Cyrilline. Heraclius tried again in the seventh century with “one energy” and “one will,” which ended in the condemnation of Monothelitism in 681 (summary, secondary).

None of it worked. When the anti-Chalcedonian bishops were driven out, Jacob Baradaeus, consecrated around 542 with the help of Empress Theodora, ordained a separate hierarchy across Syria and beyond (summary, secondary). That gave the movement its own churches: the Coptic Orthodox in Egypt, the Syriac Orthodox in Syria and Mesopotamia, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo (tewahedo means “made one”), and the Armenian Apostolic Church, which rejected Chalcedon at synods in Dvin in the sixth century. Together with the Malankara church of India and the Eritrean church they form the Oriental Orthodox family. The Arab conquests of the seventh century cut most of them off from Byzantium, and the division hardened into separate civilizations of liturgy, language and memory.

Key ideas and contributors

One nature, not one ingredient. “Nature” (physis) in miaphysite usage means a concrete, living reality, close to what Chalcedon called hypostasis. To say Christ has “one incarnate nature” is to say he is one subject: the eternal Word, now living a human life. It does not mean that the humanity was dissolved. Mia (“one, united”) is the reason modern Oriental Orthodox prefer “miaphysite” to “monophysite” (monos, “single, alone”), a term they associate with Eutyches.

From two, not in two. Christ is “from two natures”: complete Godhead and complete manhood, with a rational soul and a real body. After the union the two are distinguished “in thought alone,” never as two acting subjects. The divine and human properties are both kept, but they belong to one Christ. The 1973 declaration of Paul VI and Shenouda III states it this way: “His divinity is united with His humanity in a real, perfect union without mingling, without commixtion, without confusion, without alteration, without division, without separation” (Vatican).

God suffered in the flesh. Because the Word is the one subject, the miaphysite liturgies say that God was born, suffered and died, in the flesh. The Trisagion in the Syriac and Coptic rites carries the addition “who was crucified for us,” a phrase associated with Peter the Fuller of Antioch in the 470s. Paul’s “they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8) is a favorite proof text, as is the self-emptying hymn of Philippians 2:6–8.

Severus of Antioch. The great systematic theologian of the position, patriarch of Antioch 512–518, Severus wrote against the Chalcedonians and against extremists on his own side. He argued that Christ is one “composite” nature and hypostasis, and that his human activity remains truly human. Iain Torrance’s Christology after Chalcedon (1988, Archive.org) presents his correspondence with Sergius the Grammarian, who wanted a more radical single-nature view.

Other contributors: Timothy Aelurus of Alexandria, who wrote against the Tome; Philoxenus of Mabbug, the leading Syriac voice of the early sixth century; and, in the twentieth century, the Indian theologian V. C. Samuel, whose The Council of Chalcedon Re-examined (1977) argued that the dispute was mostly about words and that Oriental Orthodox Christology is fully orthodox.

Key controversies

Is “one nature” just Eutyches in better clothes? This was the Chalcedonian charge from the start. Leo’s Tome read any one-nature language as swallowing the humanity. Miaphysites answer that they condemned Eutyches themselves, and that their formula is Cyril’s, the same Cyril that Chalcedon claimed to follow. The 1990 Orthodox statement concedes the point: “both families agree in condemning the Eutychian heresy” (Second Agreed Statement, in Growth in Agreement II, Archive.org).

Is “two natures” just Nestorius in better clothes? The reverse charge. Miaphysites read Chalcedon, and especially the Tome, as splitting Christ into two agents. Chalcedonians reply that the definition says one person and one hypostasis, and that the Second Council of Constantinople later read it through Cyril. The argument here is partly about whether a council is judged by its words or by the reading its successors gave it.

Was the human body corruptible? The miaphysites split among themselves in the 520s. Julian of Halicarnassus taught that Christ’s body was incorruptible from the moment of the union, suffering only by voluntary consent. Severus answered that this made the suffering unreal, and that Christ’s body was passible and mortal until the resurrection (summary, secondary). The “Julianist” party lasted for centuries, especially in Armenia.

One will or two? The 1990 statement affirms that the Word united to himself human nature “with its natural will and energy.” Some on both sides doubt that historic miaphysite writers taught this, since Severus spoke of one theandric activity. Whether the agreement reflects what the fathers held or a modern reinterpretation is still argued.

What to do with the anathemas. Each side condemned the other’s saints: Chalcedonians anathematize Dioscorus and Severus, and the Oriental Orthodox anathematize Leo and reject Chalcedon itself. The Anba Bishoy statement of 1989 took Cyril’s formula as common ground, and the 1990 Chambésy statement concluded that “both families have always loyally maintained the same authentic Orthodox christological faith,” recommending that all anathemas be lifted (Growth in Agreement II, pp. 191–199). Neither family has formally done so. Critics among the Eastern Orthodox objected that the statements leave the later ecumenical councils optional; a 1995 memorandum of the Sacred Community of Mount Athos protested that formal recognition of the fourth through seventh councils could be deferred to the future (Athos memorandum). On the Oriental Orthodox side, the agreement accepts the Orthodox reading of the later councils only “as their interpretation.”

Relations with Rome. Catholic dialogue moved faster on paper. After the 1973 Coptic declaration came the 1984 declaration of John Paul II and Syriac Patriarch Zakka I, which allowed limited sharing of sacraments in pastoral need (Vatican), and the 1996 declaration with Armenian Catholicos Karekin I (Dicastery for Christian Unity). These treat Christology as settled and leave the remaining divisions to questions of Papal Primacy and Authority.

What remains unresolved

Most scholars and both families of Orthodox churches now say the fifth-century parties meant the same thing by different words. What remains is a question of memory more than doctrine. A church that venerates Dioscorus cannot easily accept a council that deposed him, and a church that calls Chalcedon the Fourth Ecumenical Council cannot easily call it a mistake. Until someone finds a way to lift the anathemas without either side disowning its saints, the agreed Christology stays on paper.