Eutychianism

“ Nestorianism took its origin in the school of Antioch, where the Gospels were studied historically and the earthly life of Jesus Christ highly valued. Antioch was in close touch with Constantinople, and thus the influence of the Syrian city was readily felt in the great metropolis. The opposition to Nestorianism—which ultimately came over the fine edge of orthodoxy on the other side, in the form of Eutychianism—sprang from Alexandria, the home of Athanasius a century before, famed as the stronghold of the doctrine of the Divinity of Christ. ”

“ And [Pg 316] as the Eusebians were ever running individually into pure Arianism, so did the Monophysites run into pure Eutychianism. And as the Monophysites set themselves against Pope Leo, so had the Eusebians, with even less provocation, withstood and complained of Pope Julius. In like manner, the Apollinarians had divided into two sects ”

“ Eutyches was an obstinate, narrow-minded old man who had spent several years in retirement when he came forward to contest the error of Nestorianism. He did this so extravagantly that to his amazement he found himself charged with heresy in an opposite direction. He maintained that the two natures in Christ were fused together in the incarnation, so that there became "one incarnate nature of God the Word." His opinions were condemned at a local synod; but Eutyches would not submit and demanded a general council, which was convened at Ephesus by Theodosius ii. ”

“ The sentiments of Eutyches, even as they are recorded by the party who charged him with heresy, seem to imply so much of soundness in his principles, and of moderation in his maintenance of those principles, that one must feel sorrow on finding such a man maintaining error at any time. The following is among the records of transactions rehearsed at Chalcedon: "He, Eutyches, professed that he followed the expositions of the holy and blessed Fathers who formed the Councils of Nicæa and Ephesus, and was ready to subscribe to them. ”

“ But Eutyches has put himself quite outside this unity, if he perseveres in his perversity, and still does not understand the bonds with which the devil has bound him, and thinks any one is to be reckoned among the Lord’s priests, who is a party to his ignorance and madness. For some time we were uncertain in what he was displeasing to catholics: and when we received no letter from our brother Flavian, and Eutyches himself complained in his letter [2] that the Nestorian heresy was being revived, we could not fully learn the source or the motive of so crafty an accusation. ”

“ EUTYCHIANS, a denomination in the fifth century, so called from Eutyches, abbot of a certain convent of monks at Constantinople, and the very opposite of the Nestorians. He maintained, that there was only one nature in Jesus Christ. The divine nature, according to them, had so entirely swallowed up the human, that he latter could not be distinguished ”

“ Most of the controversies which have again and again imperilled the cause of Christianity, have been due to human frailty, which has been unable to keep the proportion of the Faith. Over-statement on the one side leads to over-statement on the other, and thus the golden mean is lost sight of. Eutyches, an archimandrite (or head of a monastery) at Constantinople, had distinguished himself for zeal during the years 428 to 431 in combating the heresy of Nestorius, who had denied the perfect union of the Godhead and the Manhood in the one Person, Christ Jesus. ”

“ I. Eutyches’ heresy restated.
Nothing, as you know, most beloved of God, is more precious to priests than piety and the right dividing of the word of truth. For all our hope and safety, and the recompense of promised good depend thereon. For this reason we must take all pains about the true Faith, and those things which have been set forth and decreed by the holy Fathers, that always, and in all circumstances, they may be kept and guarded whole and uninjured. ”

“ Eunomius died soon after this contention; and the Eunomian president, at Constantinople, refused to receive Eutychus into communion; for he antagonized him from jealousy because he was not even of clerical rank, and because he could not answer his arguments, and did not find it possible to solve his problems. Eutychus, therefore, separated those who had espoused his sentiments into a personal heresy. Many assert that he and Theophronius were the first who propounded the peculiar views entertained by the Eunomians concerning divine baptism. ”

“ Eutyches) afterwards got the name of Monophysites, (that is to say, Maintainers of one nature only,) —because they said that after our blessed Lord had taken on Him the nature of man, His Godhead and His manhood made up but one nature; whereas the Catholics held that His two natures remain perfect and distinct in Him. The party split up into a number of divisions, the very names of which it is difficult to remember. And other quarrels arose out of the great controversy with the Eutychians. The most noted of these was the dispute as to what were called the "Three Articles." ”

“ Through the influence of the Emperor the party of Dioscorus prevailed, for he abetted Eutyches, because Eutyches supported the views of his uncle and his own opinions, and he excommunicated all in the synod who opposed him, and took from them their dignity. Moreover, he and Eutyches wrote a decree, that if any should maintain that after the Union there was other than one Person and one Nature, he should be excommunicated, and whosoever did not receive the Twelve Sentences drawn up by Cyril, should in like manner be expelled the Church. ”

“ And if Eutyches had been content to receive that creed in its entirety with a pure and simple heart, he would at no point go astray from the decrees of the most sacred council of Nicæa, and he would understand that the holy Fathers laid this down, to the end that no mental or rhetorical ingenuity should lift itself up against the Apostolic Faith which is absolutely one. Deign then, with your accustomed piety to do your best endeavour, that this blasphemous and foolish attack upon the one and only sacrament of man’s salvation may be driven from all men’s minds. ”

“ For some time he had been engaged in teaching a doctrine concerning the Incarnation, which he maintained indeed to be none other than that of St. Cyril's in his controversy with Nestorius, but which others denounced as a heresy in the opposite extreme, and substantially a reassertion of Apollinarianism. The subject was brought before a Council of Constantinople, under the presidency of Flavian, the Patriarch, in the year 448; and Eutyches was condemned by the assembled Bishops of holding the doctrine of One, instead of Two Natures in Christ. ”

“ Leo, then Bishop of Rome, entered the lists, and in an admirable epistle, explained the point of doctrine. Speaking of Eutyches, he says: “What can be more wicked, than to entertain impiety, and not to give ear to those who are more learned and more wise than himself? But they fall into this folly, who, meeting with some difficulties in the search after truth, turn not to the words of the Prophets, nor the epistles of the Apostles, nor the authorities of the Evangelists, but to themselves. And thus, because they refuse to be the disciples of truth, they become the teachers of error. ”

“ This notion was maintained by Eutyches, and since his time by Servetus. But it is clearly ascertained from the Scriptures, that in the one 561person of Christ the two natures are united in such a manner, that each retains its peculiar properties undiminished. That Eutyches was justly condemned as a heretic, our adversaries will not deny; it is surprising that they overlook the cause of his condemnation, which was, that by taking away the difference between the two natures, and insisting on the unity of the person, he made the Divinity human, and deified the humanity. ”

“ Men are ever inclined to form their theories beforehand, and then to test God's actions and the course of His Providence by those theories, instead of reversing the order, and testing their theories by facts as God reveals them. This error about the true theory of inspiration and the gifts of the Holy Ghost which Protestants have fallen into is exactly the same as two celebrated mistakes, one in ancient, the other in modern times. The Eutychian heresy was very celebrated in the fifth century. It split the Eastern Church into two parts, and prepared the way for the triumph of Mahometanism. ”

“ Eutyches appears to have been a highly virtuous person, but possessed of a dull, narrow mind, unfit for the subtleties of theological discussion, and therefore unable to grasp the conception of two Natures in one Person: and nothing worse than stupidity and obstinacy is brought against him by his stern but clear-headed opponent Leo. ”

“ Eutyches, the originator of the whole movement, had maintained that Christ's body was not as our body; that the transformation of the human nature in its combination with the Divine affected the body as well as the soul. ”

“ For one (theophiles) is of a kind to be loved cause it is loved, and the other (osion) is loved because it is of a kind to be loved. Thus you appear to me, Euthyphro, when I ask you what is the essence of holiness, to offer an attribute only, and not the essence—the attribute of being loved by all the gods. But you still refuse to explain to me the nature of holiness. And therefore, if you please, I will ask you not to hide your treasure, but to tell me once more what holiness or piety really is, whether dear to the gods or not (for that is a matter about which we will not quarrel) ”

“ Eutyches said: I have not said, you will notice, that the body of a man became the body of God, but the body was human, and the Lord was incarnate of the Virgin. If you wish that I should add to this that His body is consubstantial with us, I will do this; but I do not understand the term consubstantial in such a way that I do not deny that he is the Son of God. Formerly I spoke in general not of a consubstantiality according to the flesh; now I will do so, because your Holiness demands it.... ”

“ And from that time he set up a sect of his own for all the men who were of his way of thinking and condemned his betrayal, separated from Eudoxius and joined with Eunomius, whose name they bear up to this day. So Eunomius became the founder of a heresy, and added to the blasphemy of Arius by his own peculiar guilt. He set up a sect of his own because he was a slave to his ambition, as the facts distinctly prove. For when Aetius was condemned and exiled, Eunomius refused to accompany him, though he called him his master and a man of God, but remained closely associated with Eudoxius. ”

“ But the party of Basil, having contrived by their artifices to divide the synod into two factions, and having met together apart from the rest, declared the Son to be like to the Father in substance; they also proceeded to depose such as entertained the opposite opinion, condemned the doctrine which asserts the Persons to be unlike, and finally by themselves ordained Annianus bishop of Antioch. But Eudoxius and Aetius, having subscribed their names to the doctrine of unlikeness, sent their letters about in every direction. ”

“ Elsewhere both name and doctrine of Eutyches were abjured; the heretical bodies in Egypt and Syria took a title from their special tenet, and formed the Monophysite communion. Their theology was at once simple and specious. They based it upon the illustration which is familiar to us in the Athanasian Creed, and which had been used by St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Cyril, St. Augustine, Vincent of Lerins, not to say St. Leo himself. They argued that as body and soul made up one man, so God and man made up but one, though one compound Nature, in Christ. ”

“ Athanasius, who uses the words "manhood," "flesh," "the man," "economy," where a later writer would have used "nature:" and the same is true of St. Hilary. [301:3] In like manner, the Athanasian Creed, written, as it is supposed, some twenty years before [Pg 302] the date of Eutyches, does not contain the word "nature." Much might be said on the plausibility of the defence, which Eutyches might have made for his doctrine from the history and documents of the Church before his time. ”

“ Now by the doctrine of the Eutychian heresy our Saviour's human nature was absorbed in the Divine. To make good this point Eranistes argues from the change of the elements in the Holy Eucharist. "As the symbols of our Saviour's body," says he, "are one thing before the invocation of the Priest, but after the Prayer of consecration has passed upon them, they are changed and become another, so our Lord's body after his ascension is changed into the divine substance." "You are catched in your own net," replies Orthodoxus, who stands for Theodoret. ”

“ Dioscurus now joined in the fray, and wrought upon the emperor, whose minister the eunuch Chrysaphius and whose consort Eudocia he had won over to his side, to pass severe measures against the Syrians, and especially Theodoret, whom the emperor forbade to pass beyond the range of his diocese. Eusebius, bishop of Doryläum, in Phrygia, however, accused Eutyches before an endemic Synod at Constantinople, in A.D. 448, presided over by the patriarch Flavian. Eutyches, though under imperial protection, was nevertheless, upon his refusal to retract, excommunicated and deposed. ”

“ On this day the blessed Apostle Eutychius became a martyr. This holy apostle was the disciple of Saint John the evangelist, and he was filled with the grace of the Life-giving Holy Spirit, whilst he was ministering to John the apostle, and he was subject unto him. He longed to go with Paul the apostle, and John commanded that he should go with him, and he went with him into the preaching. And he preached in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and he converted many of the Greeks and brought them into the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, and he baptized them with Christian baptism ”