NAME: OBOH A. ALEXANDER COURSE: PATROLOGY 2 TOPIC: EARLY LIFE AND FORMATION OF EUTYCHES LECTURER: VERY REV. FR.

PETER ODETOYINBO DATE: 11TH OCTOBER, 2011. INTRODUCTION It is so amazing that the early Church was full of controversies and heresies. Immediately after the close of the council of Ephesus on July 27, 432, Pope Celestine died.1 This necessitated another controversy. Many of those who took part in the struggle against Nestorius went to the opposite extreme.2 The Nestorians had divided Christ into two persons; against them St. Cyril had insisted on the unity of the personality of Christ. LIFE OF EUTYCHES He was a Byzantine Monk Eutyches (ca. 380-455) he preached the doctrine of Monophysitism, the belief that Christ had only a divine nature. His teachings were condemned as heresy by the council of Chalcedon in 451. Few facts are known concerning his life. By 450 he was in charge of a large monastery in Constantinople. He was respected for his holiness after long years of prayer and penance, and he had great influence at court through his godson, who was an important official of the emperor. The church had not fully recovered from the recent theological controversy of Nestorianism, concerning the true personality of Jesus Christ. In 431 Bishop Nestorius of Constantinople was condemned and exiled for teaching that Jesus had, in effect, two personalities, one human the other divine. Despite Nestorius condemnation his followers were not convinced he was wrong. Theodoret of Cyrrhus, a learned and able frontier bishop, had drawn up a formula of reconciliation that described Christ as having a union of two natures. TEACHINGS OF EUTYCHES In Church history the heresy of Eutyches is known as Eutychianism or Monophysitism or one nature theory.3 The teaching of Eutyches had tremendous consequences for if today over 30 million stay away from the Catholic Church was because of the heretical teachings of the monk Eutyches. In 448 Eutyches protested loudly against Theodoret of Cyrrhus calling his attempt heretical. Eutyches said he himself professed professed the ancient faith. He believed that Jesus was the Son of God, Jesus was God himself. Jesus, said Eutyches, had only one nature, the divine which absorbed his humanity. The current bishop of Constantinople, Flavian, condemned Eutyches for misrepresenting Christ and the controversy which he simmered for 15yearsboiled over again. Flavian called a synod of all the Bishops under him to consider and solve
1 P.C Thomas General Councils of the Church (Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation) p.33 2 Fr. John Laux, M.A Church History ( New York: Benziger Brothers ) p. 155 3 P.C Thomas p. 35

some local problems. In the course of the meeting, Eusebius, bishop of Dorylaeum, producing written documents accused Eutyches as a heretic. It was at this point that Eutyches was summoned in order for him to answer the charges levelled against him.4 A point of particular notice is that, it was Eutyches who first denounced Nestorius in 429. Many of the Church men and political figures who had opposed Nestorius earlier now supported Eutyches, whom they saw as the voice of orthodoxy. Those who had supported Nestorius rallied round Theodoret . Emperor Theodosius II appointed Dioscoros, Bishop of Alexandria and a friend of Eutyches, to preside at a Church council called to settle the matter in Ephesus in 449. Pope Leo I sent his legates to the council with clear instructions to denounce Eutyches, whom the Pope called an ignorant imprudent old man. Dioscoros succeeded in railroading through the council a series of resolutions that completely supported Eutyches. On the emperors authority, he imprisoned all who disagreed. The Popes legates barely escaped to return to Rome and report what had happened. Pope Leo was furious when he heard of what had happened in Ephesus. Thus he called the synod a latrocinium, which means a Robber Synod this name has clung to it ever since. 5 Hence the emperor refused to call another council, but within months he died from an accidental fall from his horse. His successor, pressed by the pope, called the general council that met at Chalcedon in 451. This time the tables were reversed. Latter on nearly Six Hundred (600) bishops assembled in Chalcedon, opposite Constantinople, on the 8th of October, 451. There came the Dogmatic Epistle of Pope Leo to Flavian, in which the Catholic doctrine of the two natures in the one Divine person of Christ was expounded with admirable clearness. This was read at the first session of the council, all arose and exclaimed: That is the faith of the Fathers; that is the faith of the Apostles! So we all believe! Peter has spoken through Leo!6 CONCLUSION This summation of the Council of Chalcedon was not accepted by the whole Church. The Monophysite controversy went on for nearly a hundred years. Those part of the Eastern Empire in which Greek was not the Language of the people severed themselves from the Church and remained in schism to this present day: they include the Copts in Egypt, the Jacobites in Syria, the Armenians, and the Abyssinians they are considered to be over four million in all. Eutyches was condemned, and his supporter Bishop Dioscoros of Alexandria was exiled Consequently the officials of the Council described Christ in a way that negated the presuppositions of Nestorius or Eutyches. Christ they agreed was one person with two separate and distinct natures, united but unmixed. Notably, this decision of the council has been respected since then by all orthodox Christian faiths.

4 Ibid p.35 5 Fr. John Laux, M.A. Church History (Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation) P.155 6 Ibid p. 156

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Dwyer John C. Church History, Twenty Centuries of Catholic Christianity, New York Paulist Press, 1993 Jurgens W. The Faith of the Early Fathers, Banglore: Theological Publications in India, 2005 Laux. J. Church History, A Complete History of the Catholic Church to 1940, United States of America,Tan Books, 1989 Thomas P.C. A Concise History of the Church, Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation, 1995