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Dear Forum Members,
Glory be to Jesus Christ!

After years and years of meetings, discussions, joint statements, etc...between the Catholic & Orthodox Churches with the Non-Chalcedonian Churches, do the Non-Chalcedonians now accept that the phrase, "two natures after the union" is orthodox and not Nestorian as they once thought?
Thank You.

Apparently they accept our explanation of why it is not, but that doesn't mean they'll be using the Chalcedonian formula in their own Churches any time soon--if ever. We have agreed to unity in the essence and diversity in the expression.

The Armenian and Syrians do. The Copts and Ethiopians not so much.

Father Deacon,
Evlogite!

Could you please explain a bit-do the Syrians & Armenians use the term "two natures after the union" themselves, or just accept it? The Copts & Ethiopians accept it or no? Is there any concrete examples of any of their hierarchs saying they accept it as orthodox that you could direct me to? I have a friend who is extremely skeptical that they accept anything of Chalcedon as orthodox, even after all the agreed statements.
Thank you!

Pope St. Leo's Tome does contain a few vague expressions that can cause confusion, which is why it is important to remember that the Tome was only approved by the Council Fathers after it was examined by a committee of Bishops who compared it to St. Cyril of Alexandria's writings in order to confirm that St. Leo's teaching was in agreement with St. Cyril. Moreover, it should be borne in mind that the Council Fathers refused to use St. Leo's Tome as the horos of the Council choosing instead to compose what we now call the "Chalcedonian Definition."

As far as the somewhat vague phrase "two natures after the union" is concerned, it is allowed in order to make it possible for one to distinguish - in contemplation only - between the properties of the two natures, which are united inseparably and without confusion in the one person of Christ.

Here is a link to the official statements of the dialogue, as well as some official statements of various local churches in response.

http://www.orthodoxunity.org/official.php

As the dialogue itself seemed to have imagined it, the remaining tasks were the acceptance of the christological statements and the mutual lifting of anathemas and the restoration of full communion. Though those things have not happened, there have been a number of more local initiatives.

The Coptic Orthodox Church and the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria, as did the Patriarchate of Alexandria with the Syriac Orthodox Church.

I also found online this summary by Fr. Erikson in 2000 of the 'where we are' then. It is very good.

http://www.svots.edu/content/beyond-dialogue-quest-eastern-and-oriental-orthodox-unity-today

I seem to have left one thought uncompleted in the last post.

I meant to say that the Eastern Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria and the Coptic Orthodox Church reached a pastoral agreement (especially dealing with marriages among members of their respective flocks.) The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch also reached a number of decisions about relations with the Syriac Orthodox Church, which also include a number of generous pastoral guidelines.

Both documents can be found at http://www.orthodoxunity.org/official.php

Thank you for the link to Fr. Erikson's article. A question though. He mentions in the article:
"Even during the long centuries of division there were some on both sides who recognized that differences between the churches’ preferred Christological formulations were essentially verbal rather than substantive. And during those centuries there also were efforts to reach agreement and to restore communion. These early efforts are instructive and merit closer examination. They illustrate what both sides - at the time at least - regarded as the proper basis for reunion."

He does not really give many examples of this. Where can they be found? Does anyone know? I would like to read them. Thank you.

Meyendorff's Christ in Eastern Christian Thought [amazon.com] provides a thoroughgoing examination of the issues and of the various attempts to reconcile the two sides, efforts that were brought to a premature end by the Muslim conquest of Egypt and Syria, and the concomitant inward turn of the Byzantine Church.

Thank you!

The new Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch called for full unity with the Oriental Orthodox in a recent enyclical. (see 9).

http://araborthodoxy.blogspot.com/2013/02/john-xs-vision-for-patriarchate-of.html

That phrase was clarified in the Seventh Canon of the Fifth Ecumenical Council when it declared that the two natures are distinct ". . . only in the onlooker's mind (τὴ θεωρὶα μόνη)." It is heretical to try and concretize the two natures as existentially separate.

It's pretty narrowly Constantinople-centric to think that the Orthodox gave up on interaction with the non-Chalcedonians and the Church of the East immediately after the Islamic conquests-- especially when we could think of someone like St Anastasius the Sinaite in the 8th century, who spent much of his itinerant preaching career seeking unity with the non-Chalcedonians. In the 10th and 11th centuries, there was even a renewal of imperial efforts at Christian unity, most likely brought on by the Byzantine reconquest of Northwest Syria. This is not even to mention that a significant proportion of Arabic and Syriac literature from the 8th century until the early modern period is wholly concerned with Christological questions, ranging in tone from irenic and conciliatory to polemic.

Two significant, strongly irenic examples are the cases of Nazif ibn Yumn, a 10th century Melkite (i.e. Orthodox) philosopher and Barhebraeus, the 13th century Jacobite (i.e. Syriac Orthodox) bishop and philosopher, who both argued that the three Christological groups do not differ in anything essential...

For those of you who read Russian, here's a link to an article by Nikolai Seleznyov entitled СРЕДНЕВЕКОВЫЙ ВОСТОЧНОХРИСТИАНСКИЙ
ЭКУМЕНИЗМ КАК СЛЕДСТВИЕ ИСЛАМСКОГО УНИВЕРСАЛИЗМА ("Medieval Eastern Ecumenism as a Result of Islamic Universalism")-- http://iph.ras.ru/uplfile/root/biblio/pj/pj_8/5.pdf

Within the context of late classical-early medieval ecclesiology, no outreach between the two factions could succeed without imperial sanction, hence the end of imperial outreach to the Jacobites was the de facto end of outreach, despite individual initiatives (no matter how well intentioned). After the 7th century, the Roman Empire (such as was left of it) ceased to be multicultural and multilingual, and became exclusively Greek--in theology as much as anything else. The situation was not ameliorated by the Muslims, who in general supported the Jacobites and persecuted the Chalcedonians in order to drive a wedge between the two parties, one of which was seen as a potential Byzantine fifth column within the Caliphate.

I think a much closer examination is needed of how ecclesiology worked in the "Melkite Patriarchates" from the time of the Monothelete controversy up until the middle of the 10th century (when things get reshuffled with massive numbers of Orthodox fleeing Egypt and Palestine as the Fatimids come in, simultaneous to Byzantine reconquest of Antioch and coastal Syria) before this assertion can be born out. John Lamoreaux has dug up some materials that relate to this, but hasn't published much on it yet (but see-- http://www.johnlamoreaux.com/jcl/lamoreaux_2010_cmr2_prepub.pdf ). But my general feel of things is that after the Monothelete controversy really moved the center of where people felt like doctrinal purity and intellectual life in general existed to Palestine, you get a very little interest in any theology of empire. Certainly there's none to speak of in St John of Damascus or even St Sophronius (where one might expect to find it). By the time you get to Abu Qurrah (himself once sent as a theological emissary to the Armenians), basically a generation after the Damascene, Rome becomes quite important notionally for his ecclesiology, while the empire gets no mention.


I'm not so sure about this either. Really, there's too many different times and places you can examine. Generally speaking, most of the voices we have from the early Islamic period about Islam's interaction with the different sects- say, up to the 11th or 12th century- are complaints by Nestorians and Melkites about how the Muslims treat the Christian sects equally, what with the "disbelief forms one community" principle. I can't think of any examples of Jacobites being favored in this period-- in the Ummayad period (661-750), Melkites were definitely favored in the civil administration in both Egypt and Syria.