Severus of Antioch's Objection to the Councel of Chalcedon
A re-assessment

www.monachos.net/patristics/christology/severus_chalcedon.shtml

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Severus was an uncompromising critic of the Council of Chalcedon and the Tome of Leo. The Council adopted the formula of faith affirming that Jesus Christ was ‘one Person’ made known ‘in two natures’. The Council and the Tome were rejected by a large part of the Christian East, which has maintained since that time an organized existence in communities in Egypt, Syria, Ethiopia, Armenia and India, which are commonly referred to as the Oriental Orthodox Churches. This group of Churches maintains that the ‘in two natures’ of Chalcedon was not the tradition of the pre-Chalcedonian Church, which proclaimed ‘from two natures’ and ‘one incarnate nature’.

As Severus criticized the Council and the Tome on the one hand and defended the ‘one incarnate nature’ on the other, scholars of the Chalcedonian and the pro-Chalcedonian theological persuasion refer to him as a ‘monophysite’ . In doing so, these scholars base their point of view on two assumptions: first, they take for granted that the Council of Chalcedon and the Tome of Leo together represent exclusively the orthodox understanding of the Person of Jesus Christ; and second, that Severus, who criticized them both, cannot possibly have taught the faith of the Church in its purity .

Was the rejection of Chalcedon by Severus the result of a Christology that ‘explained away’ the human reality of Christ? To show that Severus did not in fact dissolve the human nature of Christ, Fr. V.C. Samuel points to the heresies Severus rejected: Manichaenism, Apollinarianism and Eutychanism . He also considers the accusations made against Severus in 536 . Fr. Samuel argues that Severus was not a Monophysite with the statement: ‘Severus never objected to the dynamic continuance of the two natures in the one Christ, and the ascription of the term ‘monophysite’ to his theological position is nothing but the legacy of the polemics of a bygone age’ [6]. Severus is rooted, he suggests, in the theology of Cyril. In the formula mia fusij tou Qeou Logou sesarkwmenh, Severus’ interpretation of ‘mia’ does not mean simply ‘one’. The reality of Christ’s divinity and humanity is indeed strongly affirmed by Severus. In his study on the Severus’ Christology, Zambolotsky tells us: ‘Severus’ human nature is not “hypostatic” but like the human nature of Leontius of Byzantium and John of Damascus ‘hypostatised’, received to the unity of the hypostasis of the Logos’ [7].

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4. Conclusion.

The epithet ‘monophysite’ is applied to the non-Chalcedonian side of the Christological debate due to its affirmation of the one Person or hypostasis of Christ, without admitting the phrase ‘in two natures’ or ‘two natures after the union’. However, with respect to Severus, this criticism does not hold in its strictest sense, as he believes that God the Son united to Himself perfect manhood, which became hypostatic in the union, wherefore the manhood of Christ was not merely manhood in the abstract made concrete and particular in a body endowed with the rational soul, but was also hypostatic. As such, the manhood was endowed with the human activating principle, or the personal element. ‘Monophysitism’ as a theological position taken in the usual sense, cannot be found in the Christology of Severus of Antioch.

Although the confession of the Church in the Person of Jesus Christ as God the Son incarnate is central to the Christian faith, the issues that have caused the division of the one Church into different ecclesiastical traditions is not by any means insoluble. To find a solution to the problem, a sustained and determined effort is necessary on the part of theologians and Church leaders of the present time. If they are able to reach an agreed basis, which would be considered honourable by every tradition, they will realize that they have all along been holding to that one faith of the Church through the centuries.

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