THe Catholic church and the oriental church now recognize each others Christologies as Orthodox. THerefore their Christological fathers and proponents are Orthodox, right?
In the period 518-520 AD Severus engaged in a correspondence with a certain Sergius. This Sergius had been attempting to expound the Orthodox teaching about the Incarnation of Christ, but had been criticised by his local synod because he had spoken without discretion…
…Sergius’ problem was that in opposing the Nestorian position that in Christ the Divinity and humanity were naturally separate and united only in a personal manner, he strayed too far from the truth and failed to expound the Orthodox teaching. This Sergius taught that the opposite of a natural disunity was a simple unity in which there could only be one nature, which Sergius took in the sense of ousia or essence, and therefore created a new Christ nature which was neither essentially human or Divine. In most modern Christian’s eyes this is the teaching of the Oriental Orthodox Churches. We are assumed to confess in one nature a simple and confused unity which destroys the distinction between humanity and Divinity. Severus’ opposition of Sergius will clearly illustrate the fundamental difference between the ‘one nature’ of Sergius and the ‘one incarnate nature’ of Cyril and Severus.
Here is an excerpt from one of the letters
“For even if the Only-Begotten Son of God, incarnate and inhominate, is said by us to be one, he is not confused because of this, as he seems to those people, nor has the nature of the Word passed over into the nature of the flesh, nor indeed has the nature of the flesh passed into that which is his, but while each one of them continues together in the particularity that belongs to the nature, and is thought of in accordance with the account which has just been given by us, the inexpressible and ineffable union shows us one nature of the son, but as I have said, incarnate.”
“…particularity implies the otherness of natures of those things which have come together in union, and the difference lies in natural quality. For the one is uncreated, but the other created…Nevertheless, while this difference and the particularity of the natures, from which comes the one Christ, still remains without confusion, it is said that the Word of Life was both seen and touched.”
“There is no share in any blame that one should recognise, for example, that the flesh is one thing in its own nature, apart from the Word which sprang from God and the Father, and that the Only-Begotten is another again, with respect to his own nature. Nevertheless to recognise these things is not to divide the natures after the union.”
THis is EXACTLY the point that II constantinople made when in their Capitula they proclaim:
VII.
"If anyone using the expression, “in two natures,” does not confess that our one Lord Jesus Christ has been revealed in the divinity and in the humanity, so as to designate by that expression a difference of the natures of which an ineffable union is unconfusedly made, [a union] in which neither the nature of the Word was changed into that of the flesh, nor that of the flesh into that of the Word, for each remained that it was by nature, the union being hypostatic; but shall take the expression with regard to the mystery of Christ in a sense so as to divide the parties, or recognising the two natures in the only Lord Jesus, God the Word made man, does not content himself with taking in a theoretical manner the difference of the natures which compose him, which difference is not destroyed by the union between them, for one is composed of the two and the two are in one, but shall make use of the number [two] to divide the natures or to make of them Persons properly so called: let him be anathema.
THis is totally in agreement with Everything Severus Just said about the continuing difference of the natures in the one incarnate nature (I.E. Hypostasis)
When we say Christ is two, we only mean theoretically, abstractly, contemplating him, for we cannot divide the ineffable union. THe nature of a union is unity, and unity is by nature single, and if single, then one. BUt not elementally one as fluids are one and comingled, but compositely one as two things brought into union like soul and body.
I know you know all this Malphono. Can you think of another reason the Jury might be out on Severus?
and Philoxenus and DIoscorus. AKA Orthodox.