Thank you for the detailed explanation.
You are welcome.
I really prefer to stick with Greek terms since the English words 'nature' and 'person' have many different connotations.
Okay. That's fine. My only point was to highlight the different traditions that are inherent in the use of the terms (how they are used), because that explains why the Oriental Orthodox rejected Chalcedon. It violated our preexisting Christology and our understanding of the incarnation.
But this is not what Chalcedonies believe. The Chalcedonian definition is:
"One and the Same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten; acknowledged in Two Natures unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the difference of the Natures being in no way removed because of the Union, but rather the properties of each Nature being preserved, and (both) concurring into One Person and One Hypostasis; not as though He were parted or divided into Two Persons, but One and the Self-same Son and Only-begotten God, Word, Lord, Jesus Christ;"
I'm aware of that, thanks to the subsequent clarification of 553 which ruled out the Nestorian interpretation of the above. I'm explaining how it is that the Oriental Orthodox came to reject Chalcedon, and the Tome in particular.
It is important to note here that what is quoted above is itself
a new definition of faith, and hence can be seen as in violation of Ephesus I (cf. the same logic at play by which both the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox reject the
filioque, even if it too can be understood in an 'orthodox' fashion, at least according to some EO theologians like H.E. Metropolitan Ware). The Chalcedonians themselves apparently recognize that
as in post #2 in a discussion on the term "prosopon" at Monachos.net, where it is recognized that Chalcedon equated
hypostasis and
prosopon, whereas Nicea had equated
hypostasis and
ousia. This was, as the EO poster there puts it, a "distinctly Chalcedonian" definition.
From where I'm sitting (as a non-Hellene), the equation of
hypostasis and
ousia is how we get the Oriental objection in the first place, because it is assumed that if you have a
hypostasis (an individual member, recalling St. Basil from earlier), that
hypostasis is going to have an
ousia which it shares with all other members (e.g., the Father and the Holy Spirit). The
hyposatsis is, to borrow the wording from the Monachos poster, following the Council of Constantinople in 381, "the subsisting, concrete reality of a being or nature". So we have historically looked at that and said "Yes! As
Christ is the subsisting, concrete reality of the incarnate Word, as testified to via the incarnation -- He was truly incarnate, and born of the true flesh of St. Mary, in perfect, unchanged, incorruptible union with the Divine nature which He never ceased nor ceases to share with the Father and the Holy Spirit!" (or something like that)
This -- what was
already present with Constantinople in 381 (not the thing that I just wrote out of my own brain as our reaction; feel free to pick at that as much as you want to) -- is perfect Christology
as it is. Orthodox and still standing, as it will forever.
With the introduction of the equation of
hypostasis and
prosopon, it is introduced that the
hypostases are something
within the
prosopon, is it not? Because now, with the
hypostases being the focus, they are said to operate quasi-independently of one another. Quoting another part of the Tome: "For each form does what is proper to it with the co-operation of the other; that is the Word performing what appertains to the Word, and the flesh carrying out what appertains to the flesh. One of them sparkles with miracles, the other succumbs to injuries." Is this true? Do
ousiai or
hypostases within the
prosopon perform miracles or succumb to injuries? Our fathers said no by rejecting the Tome, but the Chalcedonians I assume would say yes, in conformity with the Tome.
The point is not even "Aha! They're wrong!", because it's
not wrong to point out that some of what Christ does is in keeping with His humanity (e.g.,
Jesus wept), while other things of what He does are in keeping with His divinity (e.g., rising from the dead). Our only point is now and as far as I can tell always has been that
Christ is the one Who does these things in either case. In other words, we do not separate the natures according to what exactly Christ is doing, even as we recognize that whatever He does is a manifestation of the
two natures of which He is composed.
See, I'm a non-Chalcedonian and I can say it: Christ has two natures. No lightning bolts will fly out of the sky to hit me, nor will I be excommunicated, because our fathers did not object to the phrasing of "
from two natures" for precisely the reason: it preserves the unity of the incarnation without denying that, yes, He is composed of two. The 'point' of the incarnation, from the Oriental Orthodox view, is that the incarnation is
the union of those two into one*, such that
after the incarnation, it is no longer appropriate to speak of Him as being
in two natures. This is what I mean when I wrote earlier that it violates our understanding of the incarnation. But if we are speaking of the natures 'in theoria', is as accepted by HH St. Cyril, then there is no problem in recognizing the two of which He is composed. In our hymns, this is explicit, as in Theotokia when the womb of the holy ever-virgin Theotokos St. Mary is referred to as "the uniting place of the undivided natures" (plural).
Sorry that the quoted passage has the same English terms I objected to <g>.
Hahaha. It's basically impossible to avoid. That's fine. I want to emphasize, though, that while you may prefer Greek terms out of a sense that this might provide a more precise understanding, it is important to note that basically all of the Fathers claimed by the Oriental Orthodox as really central to our Christological and incarnational understanding (e.g., HH St. Cyril, HH St. Severus, etc.) wrote in Greek themselves. So the problem of misunderstanding or whatever you want to call it won't necessarily be solved by appealing to Greek, as these are preexisting traditions which both existed alongside each other in the Greek language. No doubt when HH St. Cyril and John of Antioch communicated well before Chalcedon (and came to an agreement, thanks be to God!), they did so in Greek, as there is no indication that HH St. Cyril was conversant in Syriac (and I don't really know what language John would've used, since I don't know anything about him outside of this exchange; I'm going to assume it was Greek, as Antioch was a major city with a developed political elite, and some distance away from Edessa, which was the center of Syriac Christianity at the time).
I don't see how this is any different from the Chalcedonian definition.
Good, I suppose! That either means that the Chalcedonians are closer to us than we have realized, or that we are closer to them than they have realized. We'll take either. We do not
want to be separated, and never have (the letters of HH St. Timothy II, the successor to HH St. Dioscorus, bearing witness).
The question I have though is whether the hypostasis of the Son _changed_ after the incarnation.
Absolutely not! Here is the priest's confession before the Eucharist that is prayed in every Coptic Orthodox liturgy, and has had its current form since c. 12th century AD (i.e., well after Chalcedon, when if we were truly the heretics they say we are, we could've easily manifested it in our prayers by this time, as it's not like the Muslims care for this kind versus that kind of Christian):
Amen. Amen. Amen. I believe, I believe, I believe and confess to the last breath, that this is the life-giving body that your only-begotten Son, our Lord, God and Saviour Jesus Christ took from our lady, the lady of us all, the holy Theotokos Saint Mary. He made it one with his divinity without mingling, without confusion and without alteration. He witnessed the good confession before Pontius Pilate. He gave it up for us upon the holy wood of the cross, of his own will, for us all. Truly I believe that his divinity parted not from his humanity for a single moment nor a twinkling of an eye. Given for us for salvation, remission of sins and eternal life to those who partake of him. I believe, I believe, I believe that this is so in truth. Amen.
I reached this conclusion decades ago and never found any reason to change my mind.
That's fine, I suppose. At its root, I do not think it is about personalities, though I will certainly grant that this played a large part in it (as is true of all schisms). As our teacher HH St. Dioscorus said of the heretic Eutyches at Chacledon, our concern is with the faith, not with any one man.
But the OO never accepted the Second Council of Constantinople.
But that does not prevent us from noting that it happened, and agreeing with it in so far as we can agree with it. (It's not binding upon us in the first place, so we obviously don't agree with everything in it.)
Part of what keeps us apart is the vastly different way the EO and OO seem to look at councils, with the EO commonly saying that we need to accept all seven councils that they commonly accept (nevermind that some of them say there are more than these) in order to be 'Orthodox', and us brushing that off, because the councils were made for the Church, not the other way around. Where was the Church before the conclusion of the seventh council, then? Surely
it existed. I have seen this attitude called by OO online the 'neo-Chalcedonian' viewpoint, but I don't know or care to know enough about the Chalcedonian mindset to look into what makes it 'neo-', as I'm sure the EO themselves would object to that characterization for a thousand and one reasons I don't even care to look into in the first place, and I don't wish to entertain that viewpoint here, since too many already take discussions online as an excuse to dump on the OO on what is supposed to be our sanctuary on CF, no matter how few active members we may have here. (Thank you for not doing so, by the way.)
* edited to add the forgotten aside: This incarnational theology is present even in the name of the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia and Eritrea, which in their liturgical language is called
Tewahedo, a cognate of the Arabic
tawhid, meaning 'being made one'.