The 3rd Ecumenical Council of 431 AD dogmatically defined the orthodox position, against the Nestorian heresy, that Jesus was one person with a human and a Divine nature, not two persons (a merely human Jesus possessed of the separate Divine Christ), as in the Nestorian interpretation of the Bible. Afterwards the Monophysite (“one nature”) heretical interpretation of the Bible became popular in the Church, agreeing that Jesus was initially one person with a human and Divine nature, but arguing that Jesus’ finite human nature was immediately absorbed into His infinite Divine nature, leaving Jesus with one nature only, the Divine, no longer truly human at all. The proponents of this heretical interpretation of the Bible were so determined that when a 4th Ecumenical Council was called to settle the controversy in 449 AD, they stacked the Council with Monophysites, bullied the orthodox representatives, and refused to allow Pope Saint Leo the Great’s famous Decree of Leo to be read. This 449 Council then declared the Monophysite heresy to be the true form of Christianity! Pope Saint Leo the Great declared the 449 Council null and void, a “robber” council, called another Council to replace it, held in 451 AD at Chalcedon, and directed it to adopt his Decree of Leo which brilliantly articulated and explained the previously more implicit orthodox faith of the Christian Church, clarifying just why Monophysite Christianity was heretical, because it violated the fundamental Christian truth (in the Bible but not explicitly) which Leo had at last clearly articulated and explained: that Jesus Christ is one person in two natures, Divine and human, that exist in Jesus Christ without confusion or change (versus the Monophysite heresy), without division or separation (versus the Nestorian heresy), such that Jesus is consubstantial (of the same substance) with the Father with respect to His Divinity, and consubstantial with us with respect to his humanity. In other words, Jesus Christ was not just one person who was both Divine and human, as the 3rd Ecumenical Council had dogmatically proclaimed against the Nestorian heretics within the Church, but Jesus Christ was and remained fully Divine and fully human, which is the standard mature expression of orthodox, Apostolic Christianity to this day, still shared in common by the (Eastern and Western) Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and most (Western) Protestant Churches, but not necessarily by the “Lesser Eastern Churches.”
Nestorianism and Monophysitism were and are major Christological heresies, and the various “Lesser Eastern Churches” at the time of the 3rd and 4th Ecumenical (worldwide) Councils of the Universal (Catholic) Christian Church for a variety of reasons refused to condemn these heresies and so refused to remain within the Catholic (Universal) Communion of Orthodox Christian Sister Churches. Portions of these Churches recanted their Christological error and returned to the Catholic (Universal) Christian Communion in later centuries and remain faithful Eastern (non-Roman) Rite Catholic Christians to this day (such as the Chaldean Catholic Church, which formerly included Nestorian heretics).
It is very worth noting, however, that there is a very real potential for eventual (even soon) reunification with what remains of those ancient “Lesser Eastern Churches” who at the time did not accept the 451 AD 4th Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon’s dogmatic definition of Jesus as “fully God and fully man” and so did not remain in the ancient Undivided Catholic Communion of Orthodox Christian Sister Churches of East and West (the great majority of Christians whose descendent churches today, (Eastern and Western) Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and most (Western) Protestant, remain united in this Chalcedonian fundamental definition of Christian faith).
This reunification would be based on fact that it can now be shown that in some cases mere political concerns [1] or language and culture barrier issues clouded the issue so that sometimes the “Lesser Eastern Churches” were not embracing the Nestorian and Monophysite heresies, but were simply not yet prepared to anathematize (condemn) these new heretical positions they did not fully understand, not yet compelled by new, more precise dogma from the Councils they did not fully understand. In some cases they were simply more comfortable maintaining the previous, less developed theology of the time which remained open to the heretical interpretations without promoting them.
Now, this did result in some of the “Lesser Eastern Churches” becoming a haven for genuine Nestorian and Monophysite heretics, unwelcome in the majority territories of the strongly-tied Catholic Communion of Christian East and West, to flock to in order to practice their heretical form of Christianity. But still, it was often not the case that a “Lesser Eastern Church” embraced or promoted the heresy but only accepted it among some of their members because their theology of Christ (Christology) had not yet developed sufficiently to the point, as it did in the more mature theology of the 3rd And 4th Ecumenical Councils recognized by the great majority of Christians, that these heresies could be clearly seen as heresies, ultimately incompatible with the orthodox Christian faith as passed on in the Christian Tradition at least implicitly since Apostolic times.
In the centuries since, many of the minority “Lesser Eastern Churches” of today have developed their Christology along orthodox lines and would now better understand the 431 and 451 AD Councils’ objections, so they would now clearly condemn Nestorianism and Monophysitism, or at least would now interpret Nestorian or Monophysite formulas, if still in use, in ways acceptable to the highly developed theology and dogma of the Orthodox and Catholic (Universal Christian) Church Communion.
If any of the “Lesser Eastern Churches” are no longer committed to nor even open to the possibility of these long-condemned heresies, but are now prepared to likewise condemn them, even if they might reasonably claim to never have actually held the heresies but were victims of misunderstandings and confusion (tools which Satan regularly uses to keep Christ’s Church divided), and even if they still use some formulas used by the ancient heretics but now formally interpret them in ways compatible with orthodox Christianity, and willingly renounce all heretical interpretation of these formulas, and desire reunification within the much larger Catholic Church Communion they left which they can add to within its unity in diversity; if these conditions are met there should be no remaining barrier to their full reunification with today’s enduring Catholic Communion of (currently 26) Orthodox Christian Rites or Sister Churches of East and West, as other formerly Nestorian or Monophysite Churches have already reunified (for example the Chaldean Rite of the Catholic Church).
© 2011 Peter William John Baptiste, SFO
[1] Merely political and historical factors involved in the “Lesser Eastern Churches” non-acceptance of Chalcedon’s newly-defined orthodoxy included things like the fact that the Armenian Christians were too busy fighting the Persians at the time and so did not even participate in the Council. Yet today (and for centuries) there have been reunified Armenian Catholics who repudiated their past association with a Christological heresy (an association coming about perhaps only because Armenians initially were not involved in the resolution of the Monophysite controversy). In fact, so faithful to the orthodox and Catholic faith are they that the Armenian Catholic Patriarch Gregory Peter Cardinal Agagianian was considered a frontrunner among the Cardinals to be elected pope of the Catholic Church in the 1958 Conclave (which elected Pope John XXIII instead).
