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August 11 - October 9, 2017
Both sides agreed that Jesus was both divine and human. The question was how to understand that union.
In the preceding generations, guided mostly by earlier Greek philosophy, Christian theologians had come to define God in terms of contrast with all human limitations.
the West simply revived Tertullian’s old formula—that in Christ there were two natures united in one person—and was content to affirm this.
If any part of what constitutes a human being was not taken up by him, that was not saved by him.
the bishops of the older churches in Antioch and Alexandria were not content with being relegated to a secondary position.
This was a typically Antiochene position, which sought to preserve the full humanity of Jesus by making a very clear distinction between it and his divinity.
Thus, the second episode in the christological controversies ended with a victory for Alexandria, and with a truce that would not hold for long.
Theodosius II and his court, who apparently had received large amounts of gold from Alexandria, considered the matter ended.
while rejecting the extremes of both Alexandrines and Antiochenes, and particularly the doctrine of Eutyches, it reaffirmed what had been done in the three previous great councils
this Definition does not seek to “define” the union in the sense of explaining how it took place, but rather in the sense of setting the limits beyond which error lies.
this manner of speaking of the Savior is far distant from that of the Gospels, and has been deeply influenced by extrabiblical patterns of thought.
their concern was that the divine and the human in the Savior not be so divided that the incarnation be rendered meaningless.
the emperors sought theological compromises that would satisfy both them and those who held to the decisions of Chalcedon.
all that the emperors achieved was to alienate both the Chalcedonians and the others, and to force the church into endless controversy.
many, particularly Pope Felix III, declared that the emperor had no authority to prescribe what was to be believed.
what appeared to be purely theological disagreements were in fact the results of much more difficult and intractable cultural, social, economic, and political conflicts.
Although Sergius’s position is not altogether clear, it seems that he meant that in Christ the divine will took the place of the human will.
But then came the Arab conquests, which overran Syria and Egypt. Since those were the areas where opposition to Chalcedon was strongest, imperial policy no longer sought to reconcile the anti-Chalcedonians.
Then came the controversy regarding the use of images. In a way, this was a final episode in the christological debates.
The reasons for these decisions are not altogether clear.
the entire empire was soon divided between “iconoclasts”—destroyers of images—and “iconodules”—worshipers of images.
If Jesus was truly human, and in him God had become visible, how could one object to representing him?
The controversy raged for years. The West simply ignored the imperial edicts, while the East was rent asunder.
But eventually the difficulties were overcome, and most Christians agreed on the use of images in church, and on the restricted veneration due to them.
Since Persia was a traditional enemy of the Roman Empire, Christians in that nation took pains to show that their faith did not make them foreign agents. When they did not succeed in this, they were cruelly persecuted.
After the Arab conquests, the Coptic Church became the main Christian body in Egypt.
his successors Pulcheria and Marcian simply let Armenia be invaded by the Persians.
the country was overrun by the Persians.
Under the Persians, the Armenians proved unwilling to give up their religion and traditions, and were granted a measure of autonomy.
Armenian Christianity flourished.
that title has become such a hallmark of Eastern Chalcedonian Christianity that it is often called the Orthodox Church.
the request was well received in Constantinople as an opportunity to extend Byzantine influence.
for years the Moravian church was torn by a three-way contest between Constantinople, Rome, and the Germans.
In 917, Simeon asserted his independence from Byzantium by taking the title of “czar”—meaning caesar or emperor—and ten years later a similar action was taken in ecclesiastical matters when the archbishop was given the title of patriarch.
it was under her grandson Vladimir (980–1015) that Christianity began making significant progress.
By 1240, when the Mongols invaded Russia and ruled the country for over two centuries, Christianity was the national bond of unity that allowed Russia to survive as a nation, and eventually to be rid of the invaders.
After the Arab conquests, relations between Rome and Constantinople grew steadily worse.
It seems that this alteration of the Nicene Creed arose first in Spain,
One by-product of this controversy was the resurgence of the Old Roman Creed, now called the Apostles’ Creed.
the Apostles’ Creed supplanted the Nicene Creed as the most commonly used among Western Christians.
The Bulgarian archbishop, Leo of Ochrid, accused the West of error because it made clerical celibacy a universal rule, and because it celebrated communion with unleavened bread.
The break between East and West was finally accomplished.
In crowning Charles—or Charlemagne, as he came to be called—Leo revived the ancient Roman Empire, now reborn under the aegis of the church.
Charlemagne had extended his domains beyond the borders of the ancient Roman Empire.
Charlemagne resolved to drown the rebellion in blood and in the waters of baptism.
soon there were Christian leaders among the Saxons, who then employed similar methods for the conversion of their neighbors.
As emperor, Charlemagne felt called to rule his people both in civil and in ecclesiastical matters.
Charlemagne, although not himself an educated man, was a patron of learning.
there should be a school in every church, and that these were to be open to the poor as well as to the rich.
the last years of his reign were marred by civil wars in which Louis’s sons and their partisans fought each other as well as the emperor.
