to what seems to have been its original form, it would still be useful in the worship of the Church; for there is a remarkable grandeur and sublimity in it, when properly used. There is less reason to use in public worship the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian Creed than the anathemas of the Nicene; for the Nicene Creed is an oecumenical conciliar Creed, the Athanasian a dogmatic Creed used in the West only on occasions.

CHAPTER VII

THE FAITH OF CHALCEDON

WE have considered the work of the Councils of Nice and Constantinople in connection with the Nicene Constantinopolitan Creed. The Nicene Creed did not for some time win its way to universal acceptance in the Church. It was capable of misunderstandings and misinterpretations, especially in times of heated controversy and prejudiced opinion.1 Many questions, not decided in the Creed, partly based on the Creed, and partly leading away from the Creed or against it, were agitating the minds of the theologians. The Nicene Faith eventually gained the victory, by overcoming not only the chief heresy of the Arians, but also all those minor ones to which the successors of the Arians betook themselves, as well as the survivals or revivals of Modalism in its various forms. This was accomplished, however, chiefly by a more careful and accurate definition of the technical terms of the Nicene Faith, and especially by the distinction in the Godhead of the three hypostases, or persons.2

The Council of Constantinople brought this phase of the conflict to an end, and the Athanasian Creed sums up in Western forms its chief results. Arianism V. p. 240 seq.

IV. p. 239.

was banished from the Roman Empire, took refuge among the barbarians, and gradually died out.

We have now to consider the Christological definitions of the four œcumenical Councils, beginning with Chalcedon. The three Councils, the second and third of Constantinople and the second of Nice, simply supplemented the Faith of Chalcedon, as the first Council of Constantinople did that of Nice. The Chalcedonian formula is to all intents and purposes the final Faith of the ancient Church. The Council of Chalcedon reaffirmed the Nicene Faith, both in the original form of the Nicene Creed, and in the later form of the Constantinopolitan, as the sufficient statement of the Faith of the Church. But it also had to determine other controversies and to make its own deliverance on the questions raised by them. The Council did not think that they were adding anything to the Nicene Faith. The questions that they determined had already been sufficiently decided implicitly in the Nicene Creed. It was only necessary to make these implications explicit, in order to rule out the heresies of the time, some of which claimed not to be inconsistent with the Nicene Creed.

We shall briefly review the controversies leading up to Chalcedon.

In April, 428, Nestorius was consecrated bishop of Constantinople. Soon after his accession he preached a series of sermons in which he objected to the term Mother of God (Theotokos), as applied to the Virgin Mary, and endeavored to distinguish between the man, Jesus, born of Mary, and the Son

of God united to him. It is not altogether clear what Nestorius really did hold and teach. Scholars are divided on the subject. It is probable that he was misunderstood, misrepresented, and unjustly treated, as is usually the case with founders of heresies. At the same time, he was in the pathway of error, and his statements logically imply the heresy that goes by his name, which undoubtedly was so serious that it was necessary for the Church to reject it. It seems that Nestorius did not deny the personality of the Word, or Son of God; but he distinguished too sharply between the two natures; and to say the least did not clearly recognize their unity in one person. This greatly excited the Church in all parts, especially in Alexandria and Rome; and the Pope, Cælestine, and Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria, united in opposition. Undoubtedly ecclesiastical questions were involved in these controversies, as is usually the case; but these were due, not merely to the jealousies of the different patriarchates, but also to the maintenance of the ecclesiastical rights of jurisdiction of the apostolic sees over against the constant encroachment of the new patriarchate of Constantinople, whose only claim to this position was that Constantinople had become an imperial city. The institutional development of the Church goes on side by side and is intertwined with the doctrinal, and questions of Church order are just as truly matters of right and conscience as questions of doctrine.

Cyril wrote a letter to Nestorius in 429, remonstrating and urging him to restore peace by using the

term theotokos; to which Nestorius replied in an unsatisfactory manner. Cyril wrote a second letter in February, 430, in which he explained the right doctrine of the Incarnation, and asked Nestorius whether he held it and taught it. The sum of this letter is as follows:

"The holy and great Synod therefore says, that the only begotten Son, born according to nature of God the Father, very God of very God, Light of Light, by whom the Father made all things, came down, and was incarnate, and was made man, suffered, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven. These words and these decrees we ought to follow, considering what is meant by the Word of God being incarnate and made man. For we do not say that the nature of the Word was changed and became flesh, or that it was converted into a whole man consisting of soul and body; but rather that the Word, having personally united to Himself flesh animated by a rational soul, did in an ineffable and inconceivable manner become man, and was called the Son of Man, not merely as willing or being pleased to be so called, neither on account of taking to Himself a person, but because, the two natures being brought together in a true union, there is of both one Christ and one Son; for the difference of the natures is not taken away by the union, but rather the divinity and the humanity make perfect for us the one Lord Jesus Christ by their ineffable and inexpressible union. . . . We, therefore, confess one Christ and Lord, not as worshipping a man with the Word (lest this expression 'with the Word' should suggest to the mind the idea of division), but worshipping Him as one and the same, forasmuch as the body of the Word, with which He sits with the Father, is not separated from the Word Himself, not as if two Sons were sitting with Him, but one by the union with the flesh. If, however, we reject the personal union as impossible or unbecoming, we fall into the error of speaking of two Sons, for it will be necessary to distinguish, and to say, that He who was properly man was honored with the appellation of Son, and that He who is properly the Word of God has by nature both the name and the reality of Sonship. We must not, therefore, divide the one Lord Jesus