Christological Conceptions within the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewhado Church (EOTC) and the Ethiopian Evangelical Churches (EEC): Possible Christological-Soteriological Unity between the EOTC-EEC By Esckinder Taddesse Woldegebrial A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy At The South African Theological Seminary Date December 2013 Structure and Chapter Outline Chapter one: Introduction/Problem………………………………………………3-40 Chapter Two: Christological sense of the New Testament Texts……………………………………………………………………………….41-134 Chapter Three: Christological Thought Progressions in Church History……………………………………………………………………………135-169 Chapter Four: EOTC and EEC Christological Literatures and Traditions………………………………………………………………………...170-201 Chapter Five: Reflective Epistemological Critique………………………….202-242 Chapter Six: Moving Towards Unity..........................................................243-289 Chapter Seven: Conclusion……………….………………………………… 290-298 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………299-319 2 Chapter One I Introduction/Problem Christological debates have been all through the history of the church. Different exegetes responded differently towards the issue of Christology. All the responses seem to be responses for the doctrinal/theological uncertainties within their own historical context. For instance, the responses of Nestorius and or Eutyches or Cyril or Chalcedon with the philosophical difficulties of the “two natures in one person” led to a hypostatic controversy of the human and the divine or the vice versa. Before we step into the detailed discussions of our own quests, let’s re-enforce the gist of this research by reviewing a little bit of Christological quests from the past. In practice, trying to examine all enigmas of the past is an unfeasible task. Therefore we would be selective in our approach of dealing with seeming puzzles of the past. For this very purpose this research will mainly focus on Nestorius, Euthyches, Cyril and Leo. Then we will try to see how these frameworks have influenced the Christological doctrine in church history, mainly Ethiopian church history. Rationale behind our selection of them is because we see that these are more or less primary and extremes on the continuum. Even though, this thesis will not be silent concerning recent Christological developments in the western world contributed by Scholars such as; debates from Schillebeeckx, DJ Dunn etc. Nestorius a presbyter at Antioch, and later patriarch of Constantinople (428-435 A. D.) distinguished between the two natures; (Schaff 1910 :714, 717, 729) see also (Rochie :346). He was actually against the description of Mary as the Mother of God (theotokos), (Harnack 1961 :181) therefore very careful either not to call Mary theotokos, as he said no one can give birth to anyone older than herself ( Jurgens :200-202). Nestorius seem to hold on to the idea of Christ who is constituted of two persons, as he emphasized the relation between the two natures in terms of a moral ‘conjunction’ or a merging of wills rather than that of 3 an essential union. In actuality he did not divide Christ into two ‘sons’ but he refused to attribute to the divine nature to the human acts (Dowley,1977 :172). Nestorius preferred the Christotokos title to Saint Mary as God cannot have a mother (Kelly,1980 :311) and finally resolved the case saying Mary the “mother of Christ” (Jedin,1980 :100). His first letter to Cyril, as was translated into English which says; it is no small error, but similar to the corruption of Apollinarius and Arius, blending together the Lord’s appearance as man into a kind of confused combination…and openly blaspheme God the Word consubstantial with the father, as if he took his beginning from the Christ bearing virgin (Rochie :347). Nestorius reinforced his argument saying, the two natures (ousia) conjugated voluntarily, than hypostatically/natural (Kelly,1980 :315). It is true that Nestorius made a distinction between the human and the divine natures in Christ which he didn’t say this of the persons as Nestorius speaks of a prosopon of union or a hypostasis of persons not natures (Ousia). Nestorius was very clear in distinguishing the two natures yet the union of his prosopon was not clear that it amounted to almost separation of the two persons, at least by his followers (Jurgens :203). He said Christ Himself was not born, but only the man Jesus. Hence, Mary was not to be called the mother of God. Only to the man Jesus, could birth, suffering and death be ascribed. As a result certain acts of the Lord were ascribed, to His Divine and certain to His human. All his arguments are more or less to protect the divine immutability from the Human acts in which more will be said later concerning this issue (Grillmeier 1979 :462). As was hinted in the above discussion, Nestorius continues saying, we should not attribute the acts of the humanity to the deity; the divine LOGOS is not fed with milk or grow. The union in Nestorius is more of a moral union which so separates the two natures, therefore the becoming in John 1:14 seems to be ignored. The “becoming” is not indwelling, as if the Divine was just inside but not part of the flesh. Nestorius’s justification that the beginning of God the Son is not the incarnation is 4 acceptable with no question. But it seems very obscure for what category Nestorius argued. Is it about the age of God? Or is it about the person of God or the nature of God or what? We don’t also see anywhere that Cyril made God to begin during the virgin birth, as the age or eternality of the Son was not so much a question. His frustration with Arius who so denied the divine, his frustration with the ideas from Apollinarius who so denied the human element also his fear of Cyril’s esteem who so dignified Mary the Mother of the divine (theotokos), seem to make Nestorius to free his thoughts from all the three by making a clear distinction between the divine and the human. If the two natures share a common person, where the person referred here is not from Mary but the eternal person, the divine Son, this person could be enhypostasized into the flesh from Mary, through a dynamic flow of life into both natures. Then right after the incarnation, what belongs to the divine also belongs to the human. The question is, how much of the empowerment is live in the two natures? But if the two natures are so divided as in Nestorius, these may lead that the two natures have their own independent person, independent acts as well. As far as this conversation is concerned the only point supposing discussion from Nestorius is the immutability issue when it comes to a reconciliation of the incarnation in human terms. Therefore, a challenge to Nestorius Christology may be that, if God has not suffered for the cause of human salvation, all purposes of the incarnation would seem futile and fairy-tale. Why incarnation after all? Who is incarnated after all? These questions are basic which Nestorius doesn’t seem to consider in his Christological treatments. As Nestorianism is the result of a dispute at the Synod of Ephesus in 421, hence the church condemned Nestorianism as heresy at the third general council (Ephesus 431), (Qualben: 122). The Synod decided against Nestorius in favor of the Alexandrian theology that he was declared as heretical, accused of taking the Antiochene School to the extreme of creating two ‘Christ’s ’, up until being driven to exile. This is where the Antiochene theology separated itself from the Alexandrian theology. Anyways, in 428, Nestorius became the patriarch of 5 Constantinople and Cyril continued as the patriarch of Alexandria. This discussion incurs a bit treatment of mutability/immutability issue. It is true that the divine is impassible, but impassible in what sense? It is true that the divine is impassible when it comes to what is uncreated. Whereas God’s essence (including the incarnate one) and God’s decree is very natural which is there eternally but has somewhat manifested itself in time and space like creation, incarnation, salvation, etc…. These occurrences appear mutable yet not necessarily implying mutability but actualization of the eternal decrees of God. Having this thought as an option to comprehend passibility/impassibility issues, for the time being, let’s see more comparison of Nestorius and Cyril. While Nestorius favored a moral union as if the divine stands off the human, implying duality, Cyril went for a perfect union, as in the union of the soul and body in human nature, one entity out of duality (Weinandy 2003 :182–92), where the soul and body coexist under one entity but keep their identity. This argument of Cyril actually stands as a strong case for soteriology than Christology. The becoming denotes a shift towards a new functional composition, denoting a perfect union, according to Cyril, or a union with no losing of identity or retaining its former nature, at the same time without separation, according to Chalcedon. When we study Euthyches in this line of discussion; against Nestorius, he favored a total mix with total assimilation of one by the other to the point of losing former peculiar qualities, as far as total confusion of the identities. Euthyches explanation made the human nature mythical; He therefore asserted that the divine swallowed everything to bring a totality of one nature. This was also done away as Monophysite heresy (Haggland,1968 : 98). Historically Euthyches was taken as presenting the docetic form of Monophysitism (Kelly,1968 :331), simply refusing that Christ was consubstantial with us. The relation between the divine and human natures of Christ was actually a set up for early Christian theologians like Augustine in a sort of philosophical framework. The Platonists formula-union without confusion-(they actually used 6 this formula for the union between the soul and body), is made present in the definition of the union of the two natures in one person which was issued by the counsel of Chalcedon (451), (Diogenes :57).