Eutyches

Eutyches (c. 380—c. 456) was a presbyter and archimandrite at Constantinople. He first came to notice in 431 at the First Council of Ephesus, for his vehement opposition to the teachings of Nestorius; his condemnation of Nestorianism as heresy precipitated his being denounced as a heretic himself.

Controversy

The Archbishop of Constantinople — Nestorius, having asserted that Mary ought not to be referred to as the "Mother of God" (Theotokos in Greek, literally "God-bearer"),^[1] was denounced as a heretic; in combating this assertion of Patriarch Nestorius, Eutyches declared that Christ was "a fusion of human and divine elements",^[1] causing his own denunciation as a heretic twenty years after the First Council of Ephesus at the 451 AD Council of Chalcedon.

According to Nestorius, Jesus was born a mere man to Mary, and only subsequently became imbued with a divine nature. In opposition to this, Eutyches inverted the assertion to the opposite extreme, asserting that human nature and divine nature were combined into the single nature of Christ: that of the incarnate Word. This would imply that Jesus' human body was essentially different from other human bodies. In this he went beyond Cyril of Alexandria and the Alexandrine school who, although they expressed the unity of the two natures in Christ so as almost to nullify their duality, took care verbally to guard themselves against the accusation of in any way diminishing the humanity of Christ.

Career

Eutyches in fact denied that Christ's humanity was limited or incomplete, putting him perfectly in line with Alexandrine doctrine, but the energy and imprudence with which he asserted his opinions led to his being misunderstood. He was accused of heresy by Domnus II of Antioch and Eusebius, bishop of Dorylaeum, at a synod presided over by Flavian at Constantinople in 448. His explanations deemed unsatisfactory, the council deposed him from his priestly office and excommunicated him.

In 449, however, at the Second Council of Ephesus convened by Dioscorus of Alexandria, overawed by the presence of a large number of Egyptian monks, not only was Eutyches reinstated to his office, but Eusebius, Domnus and Flavian, his chief opponents, were deposed, and the Alexandrine doctrine of the "one nature" received the sanction of the church. This judgment is the more interesting as being in distinct conflict with the opinion of the bishop of Rome—Leo—who, departing from the policy of his predecessor Celestine, had written very strongly to Flavian in support of the doctrine of the two natures and one person.

Meanwhile the emperor Theodosius died, and Pulcheria and Marcian who succeeded summoned, in October 451, a council (the fourth ecumenical) which met at Chalcedon. There the synod of Ephesus was declared to have been a "robber synod," its proceedings were annulled, and, in accordance with the rule of Leo as opposed to the doctrines of Eutyches, it was declared that the two natures were united in Christ, but without any alteration, absorption or confusion. Eutyches died in exile, but of his later life nothing is known.

After his death his doctrines obtained the support of the Empress Eudocia and made considerable progress in Syria. In the sixth century, they received a new impulse from a monk of the name of Jacob Baradaeus, who united the various divisions into which the Eutychians, or Monophysites, had separated into one church, which exists today under the name of the Syriac Orthodox Church. There are also many adherents of the similar miaphysite doctrine in Armenia, Egypt and Ethiopia (also in the Oriental Orthodox communion), who are often erroneously called "Monophysites" even though they do not, and never have, followed Eutyches.

References

• R. L. Ottley, The Doctrine of the Incarnation, ii. 97 ff.
• Adolf Harnack, History of Dogma, iv. passim
• F. Loofs, Dogmnageschichte (4th ed., 1906), 297 ff.
• article in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyk. für prot. Theol., with a full bibliography.
• This article incorporates text from the article "Eutyches" in the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.