finitum non capax infiniti

The following is the first part of an essay written by Dr. Bruce McCormack. I am posting it here at his request. The second installment can be found here.

Readers of this blog will undoubtedly be wondering what became of my challenge to Dr. Lane Tipton to debate me on questions arising from my earlier post “Reformed Christology and the Westminster HTFC Report.” Dr. Tipton contacted me by phone the same day I issued my challenge.  He wanted, he said, to debate me in a more scholarly venue, and offered the Westminster Theological Journal for that purpose.  His proposal was that I should write a scholarly essay covering all of the issues I thought relevant.  He would then respond – and that would bring an end to the debate.  There followed a reiteration of this invitation from Scott Oliphint as well as from Carl Trueman (in a formal letter).  My answer to all of them was and is that I will not engage in a debate in the pages of the WTJ under the conditions imposed by the editors – for two reasons.

First, it strikes me as inappropriate – in terms of normal rules of civility – for a (relatively unpublished) junior professor to have the final word in a debate with a senior professor.

But second, and more importantly, those responding to my brief analysis of the Christology presupposed in the HTFC report have shown an uncanny ability thus far to shift the ground of the debate from the topics I placed on the table for discussion, changing subjects abruptly, passing by in silence the questions which I posed to them, etc.  Dr. Tipton’s “response” to my response to the HTFC report was no different in this regard.  In his footnote 4, he shifts the ground from the question of the lived relation of the natures to each other (which is where it ought to be, given the debate over the so-called Christological analogy between the relation of the “natures” of Christ on the one hand to the cooperation of divine agency and human agency in the production of Holy Scripture on the other) to a discussion of the anhypostasia – a subject on which we have scant disagreement.  Under the condition that Dr. Tipton be given the final word in the WTJ, I could not participate because I had no reason to believe that he would use that opportunity to address the issues and questions I actually raise and I had no confidence that his “referees” would require him to do so.

I then offered Dr. Trueman (as the highest ranking member of this trio and the closest to me in rank) three alternatives.  First, Dr. Tipton and I could debate in the pages of the WTJ if I were given the final word.  Second, we could try to find a “neutral” journal in which to debate (i.e. one published by neither Westminster Seminary nor Princeton Seminary).  Third, I suggested that we simply cut Dr. Tipton out of the loop and debate each other on the Reformation21 blog site.  The issues I have raised properly belong to the realm of historical theology anyway – which is Dr. Trueman’s field.  And Dr. Trueman is a frequent blogger, whereas Dr. Tipton and Dr. Oliphint profess to hold such practices in scorn.  The response I received from Dr. Trueman was polite (for which I am grateful – he and I have worked well together in the past and will need to do so again in the future), but he simply reiterated the WTJ invitation with the original condition attached to it – with the comment that who was or should be responding to whom is a subject for debate.  So be it.  The best we can do is to agree to disagree – and move on.

To the subject-matter then!  It would be helpful to begin with a brief summary of how I understand the intentions of the majority of those bishops who gave their approval to the Chalcedonian Definition, explaining as I do where the ambiguities lie and why they are there.  It is of the utmost importance to distinguish the history of the production of the Definition from the history of its reception.  As a close understanding of the reasons for the ambiguities began to wane (in some quarters, the intentions of the majority were never well understood), the chance that those ambiguities might give rise to a new round of misunderstandings was great.  My earlier piece on the HTFC report dealt primarily with the history of reception (what the early Reformed understood) and not with the history of the production.  Here I will fill in that lacuna.

It should be noted that in what follows, I will use regular type for my historical exposition and italics for my systematic analysis in response to critics.

The Ambiguities of the Chalcedonian Definition

John McGuckin published his Saint Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy in 2004.  In it, he offered a significant challenge to the then reigning historiography on the outcome of the Council of Chalcedon.  To that point in time, most interpreters in the West, going right back to the conclusion of the Council, had understood the Definition to constitute a victory for the supporters of Leo’s Tome.  Jaroslav Pelikan is typical: “Even though it may be statistically accurate to say that ‘the majority of the quotations come from the letters of Cyril’, the contributions of Leo’s Tome were the decisive ones…” (McGuckin, p.237).  To this list of those who read the Definition in the direction of Leo should be added Aloys Grillmeier, Brian Daley and Robert Jenson.

The case for a Leonine victory rested upon two phrases in the Definition, both of which could be found in the Tome.  The first is the phrase “in two natures”; the second is the clause which reads “the property of each nature being preserved and concurring in one prosopon.”  I will treat the significance of each in turn, following McGuckin’s interpretation.

It was undoubtedly the first of these phrases which led most to the conclusion that Leo’s concerns had prevailed.  Cyril’s preferred language had been “out of two natures” (he died in 444, seven years prior to Chalcedon) – meaning that the coming together of two natures in one person or hypostasis resulted in one “nature.”  By this phrase, he intended to lay stress, above all, on the idea that there is only one hypostasis or “person” in the God-human, the hypostasis of the Logos.  The human “nature” (understood as a catalogue of “natural properties”) was given reality in the person of the Logos; it was not “personalized” or made concrete in itself.  Cyril also wanted secondly to lay stress on the unity of action which resulted from the “hypostatic union” so defined.  His controverted phrase mia physis (one nature out of two) was intended to say that the being and activities of the one Person are unified; that they appear to us as the actions of a single subject.  The two natures, for him, remained notionally distinct, but were ‘one in practice’ (McGuckin, p.239).

But, as McGuckin observes, Cyril had shown himself to be quite flexible on the use of the language of the alternative formula “in two natures” (known to him through his Syrian opponents long before it found its way into Leo’s Tome) so long as his opponents were willing to grant to him that “natures” meant “natural properties” and were willing to affirm with him the identity of the hypostasis or “person” with the Logos (McGuckin, p.231).  So the inclusion of this phrase in the Chalcedonian Definition would not constitute a victory for the Romans and the Syrians so long as Cyril’s qualifications of it were in place.  And that, McGuckin argues, is precisely what happened.

Three of the four adverbs by which the “in two natures” are qualified in the Definition (asynchtos, atreptos and ametabletos) can be found in Cyril’s First Letter to Succensus (McGuckin, p.239).  McGuckin’s conclusion is worth quoting in full.  “To have supplied, in substance, three of the four so-called ‘Chalcedonian adverbs’ already, with the fourth missing adverb emphasizing Cyril’s basic point of the inseparability of the natures, is hardly, on anyone’s terms, a ‘triumph’ of western and Antiochene christology.  It is surely the complete vindication of Cyril’s overall ideas, and shows that the Chalcedonian commission constantly attempts to use his terms even in those critical instances where they were ordered not to” (ibid.).  The last point bears explaining.  It was the Emperor Marcian who ordered the inclusion of Leo’s phrase “in two natures” – and his reasons were political.   Marcian wanted to have his “imperial elevation” through marriage to the Augusta Pulcharia recognized by the western Augustus, Valentinian III.  To achieve this end, he sought to obtain a victory for Leo.  But as McGuckin shows, that aim was largely thwarted by the subtlety of Cyril’s followers, who were able to “spin” the mandated phrases to their own ends.

The second Leonine contribution to the Definition is the phrase “the property of each nature being preserved and concurring in one prosopon.”  The key word in this phrase is “preserved.”  It was here that a central difference between Cyril and Leo emerged.  Cyril, as we have seen, wanted to insist upon a unity of action on the part of the one divine subject, the Logos, under the conditions of human life.  Leo, by contrast, wanted to lay stress upon the preservation of the integrity of the natures (or “forms” as he preferred to say), so that he could then assign some works of the God-human to the divine nature and some to the human nature.  “Each form effects what is proper to it in common with the other; that is the Word operated according to what belongs to the Word, and the flesh operated what belongs to the flesh.  One of these shines forth in the miracles, the other succumbs to injuries” (McGuckin, p.234, here quoting Leo).  Or, with even greater emphasis, “Each of the two forms acts” (Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition II/2, p.215, here quoting Leo).  The Cyrilline party was very nervous about the shift in subjects set forth in such passages – now the divine Word acts, not the human nature acts.  To speak in this way was clearly to treat the human nature as a subject in its own right and, therefore, to tear apart the natures.  So clearly, there was a great deal at stake in the word “preserved”!  But again, the Cyrilline bishops succeeded in obtaining a qualification with which they could live.  This Leonine phrase is followed immediately by the identification of the person of the union with the divine Logos.  “…[H]e is not parted or divided into two persons, but is one and the same only-begotten Son, God, Word, Lord Jesus Christ…”

In sum, the Chalcedonian “settlement” constituted a most uneasy truce between two parties with distinct interests.  The competing views surface clearly in the document itself, in spite of their outward unity.  Indeed, it is only by close historical exegesis that one is able to understand which phrases served the interests of which party.  The Cyrilline party went home feeling that they had put one over on the uncomprehending Romans and Syrians.  But the Westerners were equally convinced that they had won a great victory.  As I say, my own conviction is that McGuckin is right.  The Cyrilline party was the more clever and astute.  And in the end, they got far more of what they wanted than did the Romans and Syrians.  The recurring phrase “one and the same” (which takes up the language of Constantinople I) was intended to support an identification of the person of the union with the pre-existent Logos.  That was pure Cyril.  The same is true of the affirmation of theotokos and the rejection of two sons Christology (McGuckin, p.238).

The only point remaining to be made here is this.  If the language of the Definition occasionally brought together phraseology of differing provenance, phraseology which reflected differing theological emphases, it is quite understandable that theologians in a later age, far removed from the battles that led to the settlement, should not grasp what was at stake in those phrases in their original settings but should have used them instead for addressing their own concerns.  In and of themselves, the differing emphases might be compatible.  But the uses made of these differing emphases could render them incompatible – and produce a polarized situation.

We may pause, here, before turning to the history of the reception of Chalcedon and the shifts in interpretation of its key phrases and terms which occurred in that history, to respond to a couple of objections raised my critics.

First objection. Scott Clark wrote the following.  “I am puzzled by his [McCormack’s] analysis of the Definition.  When it says ‘into a single person’ it is not obvious that it intends to teach that the person of Jesus is composite. … The one person of Jesus subsists in two natures.  This seems to be a flawed premise in his argument.  It seems that McCormack finds something in Chalcedon that isn’t there…”  My answer is as follows.  First, Clark is right on one point.  He is right to say that it is not obvious that Chalcedon intends to teach that the person of Jesus is composite.  Based on the foregoing analysis, it clear that the intention of the majority of the bishops was to teach the identity of the “person” with the pre-existent Logos as such.  That was the point in my first post in saying that I thought McGuckin had the Definition right.  So when I said in reference to the Leonine clause “the property of each nature being preserved and concurring in one prosopon and one hypostasis” that “it would seem that the person is formed out of the coming together of the natures”, I was referring to how it would seem later, to those not intimately familiar with the pre-history of the Definition.   For those in the West conditioned by the history of reception to believe that Leo’s party had won a victory, that clause could easily be taken to mean that the One to whom the attributes of both natures were rightly to be ascribed was the God-human in His divine-human unity, not the Logos as such.  The bishops at Chalcedon did not treat the problem of the “communication of attributes”; had they done so, the majority would have tipped their hand that they were, in fact, Cyrilline.  The fact that they left that problem untouched, however, allowed later theologians to draw conclusions which differed from their own.  I will return to this problem shortly, in treating Leontius of Byzantium and John of Damascus.  Suffice it here to say that it makes a world of difference as to whether you ascribe natural human properties (and experiences) to the Logos as such or to the whole Christ, composed of both divinity and humanity.  For in the former case, you are treating the “person” as the Logos as such; in the latter you are treating the “person” as the God-human in His entirety (a composite person or hypostasis).  Second, Clark doesn’t really want to say that “the one person of Jesus subsists in two natures.”  The teaching of Chalcedon is that two natures, divine and human, subsist in the Logos, not in Jesus.

Second Objection. The young grad student who seems to fancy himself Thomas Goodwin redivivus has stated repeatedly (on various blogs) that I have “dichotomized” the Chalcedonian formula in raising the question of the identity of the person.  I have done no such thing.  I have simply reported on the current state of patristic research where the meaning and significance of the Chalcedonian Definition for our understanding of the person of the union is concerned.  Chalcedon clearly teaches that there are “two natures in one person.”  That was never at issue in my previous posts (and could not be understood to be had Goodwin bothered to consult my many published writings on Christology).  So let me be clear: that Chalcedon teaches that there are two natures in one person is something that everyone in the debate over identity agrees upon (both McGuckin and myself on the one side and Grillmeier and Daley on the other).  The “Antiochene” two Sons theory was rejected emphatically.  But the question which was not given a straightforward answer at Chalcedon was this: what is the identity of this one person?  Is it the Logos as such or it the whole Christ (the God-human in His divine-human unity)?

If you say that it is the Logos as such, then you will quickly face the problem of whether and how to ascribe human attributes and experiences to this “person.”  In other words, the question of the nature of the communication of the attributes is immediately placed on the table.  Everyone says you have to ascribe the attributes of both natures to the “person”, but what they meant by this differs from theologian to theologian.  The problem facing the ancient church was that everyone involved in the christological debates was committed to the notion of divine impassibility.  How then could human suffering be ascribed to the Logos as such, how could the Logos be made the subject of that human suffering, without setting aside divine impassibility?  Some, under the pressure of this question – and in order to defend an absolutized impassibility – confined the suffering to the human nature alone and, in so doing, made the “person” to be the God-human as a whole.  The advantage of this move lay in the fact that one could ascribe human suffering to the “person” (defined in this case as the God-human as a whole) without thereby ascribing it to the Logos as such.  But if you make the move Cyril did, you have a larger problem on your hands (assuming that you affirm, as he did, the doctrine of divine impassibility).  Cyril identified the “person” directly with the pre-existent Logos.  So he had to make the Logos as such to be the subject of human suffering.  But he, too, was committed to divine impassibility.  In the end, he would up speaking  paradoxically of the Logos having suffered impassibly.

This leads me to a second observation.  However tempting it might be (in the light of the Chalcedonian Creed, understood in its historical context as a victory for the Cyrilline party) to side with Cyril’s identification of the “person” with the pre-existent Logos, that position does come at a price.  For the identification in question led directly to an instrumentalization of the human nature; that is to say, the Logos became, in Cyril’s hands,  the sole effective agent of all that is done in and through the human nature.  As McGuckin puts it, “The human nature is, therefore, not conceived [by Cyril] as an independently acting dynamic (a distinct human person who self-activates) but as the manner of action of an independent and omnipotent power – that of the Logos; and to the Logos alone can be attributed the authorship of, and responsibility for, all its actions.  This last principle is the flagship of Cyril’s whole argument.  There can be only one creative subject, one personal reality, in the incarnate Lord; and that subject is the divine Logos who has made a human nature its own.”  The problems which surround such a thoroughgoing instrumentalization should be obvious.  Not only does it render the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus in His baptism superfluous (since the explanation for the “divinity” of Jesus’ mediatorial activities lies not in the Spirit’s equipping of Him for that role but in the use made of Him by the Logos within); it also makes renders the affirmation of a fully functional human mind, will and energy of operation in the human Jesus to be theoretical only.  In practice, it is the Logos alone who is the author of all that the God-human does (as McGuckin puts it).

In any event, I did not “dichotomize.”  I simply acknowledged, as Clark also did, that it is not obvious to those unfamiliar with the pre-history of the Council of Chalcedon, whether the “person” spoken of in the Formula refers to the Logos as such or to the Logos made flesh (living under the conditions of humanity).