Monophysitism

her recognition of the spiritual affinities of Byzantium with the Levant — while he was striving to heal an organic separation of two incompatible culture worlds — would have made the Second Rome a far stronger and more durable stronghold

Campbell reads the Monophysite allegiance of Empress Theodora as a politically astute recognition of Eastern spiritual sympathies, contrasting it with Justinian’s failed attempt to reconcile incompatible theological-cultural worlds.

Campbell, Joseph, Occidental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume III, 1964thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Monophysitism, 138

Corbin’s index places Monophysitism within a network of terms — including Mundus imaginalis, light-mysticism, and prophetic typology — indicating its relevance to the treatise’s larger argument about the relationship between divine and human natures in Iranian Sufism.

Corbin, Henry, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

the entire absorption of God the Word into the human soul, and consequent denial that Jesus Christ, the Son of Man, was the same as the Son of God

John of Damascus traces the logical endpoint of monophysite-adjacent Christologies as the dissolution of the human nature of Christ into the divine Word, illustrating the soteriological stakes of the nature controversy.

John of Damascus, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

the Church, distracted by these rival faiths, is in danger of being led by means of truth into a rejection of truth. Doctrines are being forced upon her for godless ends

John of Damascus surveys the proliferating heresies — including those that collapse the two natures into one — as a catalogue of theological one-sidedness that imperils orthodox synthesis.

John of Damascus, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

He took upon Him the flesh in which we have sinned that by wearing our flesh He might forgive sins; a flesh which He shares with us by wearing it, not by sinning in it

The insistence on Christ’s genuine assumption of human flesh implicitly refutes any monophysite dissolution of the material nature into the divine, grounding salvation in the reality of incarnation.

John of Damascus, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016aside

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

The extreme importance of St Maximos the Confessor (580-662) for the Orthodox spiritual tradition is indicated by the fact that no other writer is assigned so much space in the Philokalia

The prominence of Maximos the Confessor — whose theology of two wills in Christ was formulated precisely against Monothelitism, a derivative of Monophysitism — contextualises the Philokalia’s sustained anti-monophysite orientation.

Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.), The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995aside

Dig deeper with Sebastian →