Theological Crisis and Council—Christology..................................

Lecture 19

I

n the last lecture, we traced the steps by which the doctrine of the
Trinity was argued out by opposing teachers over most of a century.
Such controversies continued with even greater ferocity in the 5th and
6 th centuries but now with a focus on Christology: the nature of Jesus Christ,
the God-man. In this debate, we can see the same combination of elements
as in the battle of Arianism: political and personal rivalries between the
great patriarchal centers, divergent philosophical approaches to questions
of theology, the desire of emperors to maintain unity at any cost, and the
summoning of synods and councils of bishops, often serving to worsen
the divide.

Outside the Disputes
• Thinking of the 5th and 6th centuries as totally given over to
theological disputes is a historical distortion resulting from the state
of our sources.
o What has been preserved has been a great mass of literature,
much of it polemical in character, arguing subtle distinctions
concerning doctrine.

o This literature, in turn, was produced by the “great men”

who were the leading figures in the debates, representing

“orthodoxy” (Athanasius, the Cappadocians, Cyril) and

“heresy” (Apollonarius, Nestorius). Also extant are the letters

of bishops and emperors and the acts of councils.

o What the extant evidence leaves out is a sense of what any of

this had to do with the lives of ordinary Christians. For this, we

have little or no literary evidence.

•    The maxim lex orandi lex credendi is certainly true—teaching and

prayer shape each other. It makes a difference to Christian prayer

whether Jesus is regarded as fully divine or not or whether the