Church Fathers on the Two Natures of Christ
A Short Florilegium of Quotes
Anyone who knows me knows that I loathe quote mining, it is a very lame and bad way to try to win arguments just by spamming quotes and acting like you are a victor for doing so. Nevertheless, the Fathers saw it fit to collect quotations for a certain purpose and in some instances and scenarios, quote mining is what’s needed to illustrate a certain point. The point here is simple: According to Oriental (Monophysite/Severan Miaphysite/Strict Miaphysite) historiography, the Fathers do not teach a diphysite Christology and that it is ultimately a Chalcedonian innovation. Those quotes that supposedly teach a diphysite Christology in reality are merely talking about Christ being out of two natures, but not in two natures.
As I’ve said, debates don’t start and end with people pointing out a magic term to say “see this proves us!” However, the claim the Orientals make in regards to the Church Fathers is a hard claim, if Chalcedon is theologically Nestorian primarily due to its confession of two natures, then this necessitates that two natures christology in general would be heretical and not seen in the fathers. The challenge I am trying to respond to is simple: The church of Chalcedon is the church of eastern (Sts. Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria etc.) and western (Sts Hilary of Poitiers, Vincent of Lerins, John Cassian etc.) fathers.
In short, the fatality of this argument is that for the Oriental Churches, diphysite christological expressions that speak of two natures fully existing even after the hypostatic union of Christ are completely unacceptable in any way, shape or form, yet this expression is very commonly used by fathers such as not only St. Cyril of Alexandria, but also many more.
St. Paul
Philipians 2:5-11
Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Through the patristics, form is seen as a synonym of nature, not only just in the west with St. Leo and St. Augustine, but also in the east with St. Cyril. Seeing that Christ, who is already in the form of God, takes the form of a bondservant without losing either of those forms He is now in, it is safe to say He is in two forms, meaning two natures. Ultimately, all diphysite christology has its basis from scripture.
St. Gregory of Nyssa
St. Gregory of Nyssa Book 5 Against Eunomius:
It is not the Human Nature that raises up Lazarus, nor is it the power that cannot suffer that weeps for him when he lies in the grave: the tear proceeds from the Man, the life from the true Life. It is not the Human Nature that feeds the thousands, nor is it omnipotent might that hastens to the fig-tree. Who is it that is weary with the journey, and Who is it that by His word made all the world subsist? What is the brightness of the glory, and what is that that was pierced with the nails? What form is it that is buffeted in the Passion, and what form is it that is glorified from everlasting? So much as this is clear, (even if one does not follow the argument into detail,) that the blows belong to the servant in whom the Lord was, the honours to the Lord Whom the servant compassed about, so that by reason of contact and the union of Natures the proper attributes of each belong to both
St. Gregory of Nyssa very blatantly speaks of two natures and their respective energies operating in the one Christ. He speaks of the distinct forms going through their proper experiences. One cannot assume St. Gregory is Nestorian however, even if he calls each of the natures/forms “who”, because he considers them grammatical persons, in the same way St. Paul considers the body and soul grammatical persons when he speaks of the inner man and the outer man.
Letter 32 of St. Gregory of Nyssa (to the monk philip):
Christ then, existing in two natures and truly made known in them, has the person of his sonship as a single entity, yet bears in him-self the unconfusible and indivisible distinction between the Word and the ensouled flesh, through which the principle of the proper-ties is preserved integrally. (Greek: Xristos Duo Iparkon fuseon)
The two natures are indivisibly distinguished, with it having a sole personhood as a single entity within it.
More From the Same Work (Attested by St. John of Damascus and Latins)
From “Anti-Apollinarian Writings” of St. Gregory
St. Hilary of Poitiers
On the Trinity, 9:11
Do you see that thus are proclaimed His humanity and His divinity, that death is attributed to the man, and the quickening of the flesh to the God, though He Who dies and He Who raises the dead to life are not two, but one Person? The flesh stripped off is the dead Christ: He Who raises Christ from the dead is the same Christ Who stripped from Himself the flesh. See His divine nature in the power to raise again, and recognise in His death the dispensation of His manhood. And though either function is performed by its proper nature, yet remember that He Who died, and raised to life, was one, Christ Jesus.
On the Trinity, 9:3
Himself one Person, both man and God. For He, being of two natures united for that Mediatorship, is the full reality of each nature; while abiding in each...
St. Sylvester of Rome
Against the Jews (Cited in Leontius of Jerusalem’s “Against the Monophysites”)
St. Melito of Sardeis
On Pascha
Let’s look at the Greek translation:
Considering that the Greek “Fusei” is also said in the plural, St. Melito here explicitly states that Christ has a plurality of natures. Credit to Constantin#2992 from Discord for this find.
St. Cyril of Alexandria
Glaphyra on the Pentateuch (also found in Patrologia Graeca Vol. 69, 576B)
Festal Letter 17
“[he was] allowing the nature like ours to move according to its own laws, while at the same time preserving the purity of the divinity”
Or. ad augustas., 37^20–21
“often, with regard to one person the appearance of our speech introduces two persons”.
St. Cyril openly admitting that when he is speaking of the duality in Christ, he grammatically introduces another person on account of the two natures, even though in reality there is only one person.
Oratio Ad Augustas 33^7
“Is indeed being able to execute the works of the divinity fitting to [the] human nature?”
2nd Letter to Nestorius
there is of both one Christ and one Son; for the difference of the natures is not taken away by the union, but rather the divinity and the humanity make perfect for us the one Lord Jesus Christ by their ineffable and inexpressible union.
This is very awkward for monophysites, difference (distinction) is plurality, it means that there is one nature that is not the other nature, this alone strongly presupposes there being two natures.
2nd Letter to Succensus
Your Perfection expounds the rationale of the salvific Passion most correctly and very learnedly when you assert that the Only Begotten Son of God, in so far as he is understood to be, and actually is, God, did not himself suffer [bodily things] in his own nature, but suffered rather in his earthly nature.
If God suffered, but not “in His own nature”, which refers to the divine nature, then in what nature did He suffer? The diphysites along with St. Cyril can easily say “human nature!” The monophysite has to commit extreme mental gymnastics and it still won’t help.
Letter 39
We confess, therefore, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, perfect God, and perfect Man of a reasonable soul and flesh consisting; begotten before the ages of the Father according to his Divinity, and in the last days, for us and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin according to his humanity, of the same substance with his Father according to his Divinity, and of the same substance with us according to his humanity; for there became a union of two natures. Wherefore we confess one Christ, one Son, one Lord. According to this understanding of this unmixed union, we confess the holy Virgin to be Mother of God; because God the Word was incarnate and became Man, and from this conception he united the temple taken from her with himself. For we know the theologians make some things of the Evangelical and Apostolic teaching about the Lord common as pertaining to the one person, and other things they divide as to the two natures, and attribute the worthy ones to God on account of the Divinity of Christ, and the lowly ones on account of his humanity [to his humanity].
This is a very critical letter, because St. Cyril in numerous instances speaks against people dividing Christ’s sayings to two hypostases, but never does this for the natures. Of course, the one Christ can never be divided in reality in any sense, however the “sayings” can be, because the sayings do not cause divisions in reality, but rather describe the incarnate events in a better detail. For instance, when we say “God died in His human nature”, the saying is attributed to its proper nature, but what is described is the reality that God suffered and died on the cross. Monophysites will 10 out of 10 times spam quotes from St. Cyril that speak of one nature or speaking against dividing the natures, yet the implication of the monophysite interpretation is very clear: Either St. Cyril contradicts himself, or he is lying about his beliefs to appease the nestorians. Neither interpretation is correct, nor respectful of the legacy of such an important Saint. The implication of the diphysite interpretation is much more consistent: St. Cyril affirms the integrity of the two natures and wants to make sure there’s no interpretation of mixture while also making certain that the one Christ can never be divided in His natures.
Letter 53
St. Vincent of Lerins
Commonitorium
St. Gregory of Nazianzus
Oration 30 (Fourth Theological Oration)
Their tenth objection is the ignorance, and the statement that Of the last day and hour knows no man, not even the Son Himself, but the Father. And yet how can Wisdom be ignorant of anything-that is, Wisdom Who made the worlds, Who perfects them, Who remodels them, Who is the Limit of all things that were made, Who knows the things of God as the spirit of a man knows the things that are in him? For what can be more perfect than this knowledge? How then can you say that all things before that hour He knows accurately, and all things that are to happen about the time of the end, but of the hour itself He is ignorant? For such a thing would be like a riddle; as if one were to say that he knew accurately all that was in front of the wall, but did not know the wall itself; or that, knowing the end of the day, he did not know the beginning of the night-where knowledge of the one necessarily brings in the other. Thus everyone must see that He knows as God, and knows not as Man;-if one may separate the visible from that which is discerned by thought alone. For the absolute and unconditioned use of the Name "The Son" in this passage, without the addition of whose Son, gives us this thought, that we are to understand the ignorance in the most reverent sense, by attributing it to the Manhood, and not to the Godhead.
Oration 38
He came forth then as God with that which He had assumed, One Person in two Natures, Flesh and Spirit, of which the latter deified the former. O new commingling; O strange conjunction; the Self-Existent comes into being, the Uncreate is created, That which cannot be contained is contained, by the intervention of an intellectual soul, mediating between the Deity and the corporeity of the flesh. And He Who gives riches becomes poor, for He assumes the poverty of my flesh, that I may assume the richness of His Godhead. He that is full empties Himself, for He empties Himself of His glory for a short while, that I may have a share in His Fulness. What is the riches of His Goodness? What is this mystery that is around me? I had a share in the image; I did not keep it; He partakes of my flesh that He may both save the image and make the flesh immortal. He communicates a second Communion far more marvellous than the first, inasmuch as then He imparted the better Nature, whereas now Himself partakes of the worse. This is more godlike than the former action, this is loftier in the eyes of all men of understanding.
What is important is not only the explicit mention of two natures, but also the way St. Gregory describes the hypostatic union, this union is a “new commingling”, “strange conjunction” two terms that might confuse some people: Don’t both sides reject commingling and conjunction? If we can reject those can we also not reject “in two natures?”
The commingling is referring to the exchange of the properties of two natures that are happening in Christ. This commingling of the natural properties is what allows us to for instance call the Virgin Mary “Theotokos”. Likewise, it is also why we can say “God suffered in the flesh”. The strange conjunction simply refers to a unity, it doesn’t mean that the natures are merely united by conjunction. This is not specific only to the Theologian, but also St. Gregory of Nyssa regularly speaks of the union of natures in this way. This doesn’t mean they are nestorian, nor does it mean that we shouldn’t listen to what they have to say. On the contrary, it shows us how heretics can abuse innocent christological expressions for evil purposes.
St. John Cassian
St. John Cassian, Book I, Ch. 5-6, “Seven Books Against Nestorius”
And again a little later on [Quote from Presbyter Leporius]: “But because the Word of God vouchsafed to come down upon Manhood by Assuming Manhood, and Manhood was taken up into the Word by being Assumed by God, God the Word in His Completeness became Complete Man. For it was not God the Father who was made man, nor the Holy Ghost, but the Only Begotten of the Father; and so we must hold that there is One Person of the Flesh and the Word: so as faithfully and without any doubt to believe that One and the Same Son of God, Who can never be divided, Existing in Two Natures (Who was also spoken of as a “Giant” ) in the days of His Flesh truly took upon Him all that belongs to man, and ever truly had as His Own what belongs to God: since even though He was Crucified in weakness, yet He liveth by the power of God.””
“This Confession of his therefore, which was the Faith of all Catholics was approved of by all the Bishops of Africa, whence he wrote, and by all those of Gaul, to whom he wrote. Nor has there ever been anyone who quarreled with this Faith, without being guilty of unbelief: for to deny what is right and proved is to confess what is wrong.
CONCLUSION
As we can see from the quotes above, various fathers both from the east and the west explicitly state that Christ is in two natures in various different manners. Unlike the orientals, we don’t rely on a single father who got unfortunately influenced by forgeries made by Apollinarius, but rather the consensus of the fathers of which St. Cyril himself is a part of. To deny Chalcedon is not only to deny a theological and “semantical” opinion, but an inheritance given by the fathers and scripture itself.
Miaphysites Recognize Dual Nature in One Complex. Like Shampoo two in One))
Cyril of Alexandria, as far as I understand, does not contradict the Miaphysites
St Cyril of Alexandria “Even though it says there were two birds, however, we are certainly not saying that we understand there to be two Christ’s.This concept brings us to a learned and necessary theory.For bore the flesh of the holy Virgin, and was indeed composed, as it were, of two, by which I mean his heavenly nature and his human nature, in a way that is ineffable and beyond understanding. Notwithstanding, the Lord Jesus Christ is one. The account, then, in these two birds gives consideration to the coming together of two into one.”(St Cyril, Glaphyra on the Pentateuch, (CPG-5201 Patrologia Graeca (Migne)69, 560)