Justinian further cites excerpts from the "Epistle to Suxens" of St. Cyril, trying to prove that only the terminology of St. Cyril is colored by Monophysitism, while the essence of his teaching agrees with the definition of the Council of Chalcedon.

Justinian met the Monophysites halfway as far as his loyalty to Chalcedon allowed. Many Orthodox, such as Hypatius of Ephesus at the conference of 532, unconditionally accepted only those works of St. Cyril that had been officially approved in Ephesus and Chalcedon. Justinian's religious policy, on the contrary, was to fully restore the authority of St. Cyril among the Orthodox, and to lead the Monophysites to accept the Council of Chalcedon. There was only one way to achieve unity of faith: it was necessary to show both sides that the contradictions between St. Cyril and Chalcedon were no more than terminological in nature. In 553, this policy was officially adopted as a result of the posthumous condemnation of those who, of course, could no longer defend themselves, but whose writings represented a serious obstacle to the final triumph of Alexandrian theology.

Justinian's "Confession of Faith" contained 14 anathemas, which the Council of 553 simply reworked without changing the content. The significance of the anathemas is clear: by submitting them for the approval of the Council, Justinian sought to remove from Chalcedon the accusations of Nestorianism (see especially anathemas 5, 6 and 14). The repeated condemnation of the Nestorianism of the Three Chapters, as it is contained therein, is expressed in the repeated affirmation of the unity of the subject of the incarnate Word (anathemas 2, 3, 4 and 5), in addition, in the solemn proclamation of theopaschism (anathema 10) and, in addition, in the prohibition (anathema 13 concerning the works of Theodoret) to express any disagreement with the works of St. Cyril, in particular with the "Twelve Chapters" against Nestorius, which were not officially accepted at the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. There remained only one obstacle to the triumph of Cyril's theology. The Council declared that the expression mia jusis ("one nature") could and should, under the threat of anathema, be understood only in the meaning of mia upostasis (anathema 8). Thus, St. Cyril is recognized as Orthodox, but his Orthodoxy should be understood in the light of the Chalcedonian definition of faith, and, conversely, Chalcedon should not be considered as a renunciation of St. Cyril. Of course, for the Monophysites this was a stumbling block, although the Council met them halfway, accepting the expression of Justinian, according to which the difference between the natures in Christ is only contemplative (en qewria, anathema 7). And indeed, did not Severus of Antioch say the same thing?

A direct condemnation of the "Three Chapters" was included in the last three anathemas. Only Theodore of Mopsuestia was personally condemned. The names of Iva and Theodoret were formally protected by the authority of the Fourth Ecumenical Council. The latter continued to be read and quoted along with the other great teachers of the Greek Church; as for Iva, the text in which he is mentioned cast doubt on the authenticity of his letter to Marius, and thus his personal authority was not affected.

Nevertheless, it is clear that the significance of the theological decisions of 553 is broader than the problems associated with individuals. Even if Theodore's theology could indeed be interpreted in the Orthodox sense (which, however, is doubtful), the proclamation of St. Cyril of Alexandria as an absolute regula fidei in Christological matters, undertaken by Justinian and his Council, was an extremely important event both for the East, where it determined the further development of theology, and for the West, where it was accepted only after long hesitation.

The Fifth Ecumenical Council did not resolve all the problems connected with the mystery of the Incarnation, but by rehabilitating Cyril's teaching on the unity of the subject in Christ, it actualized the enormous significance of the concept of the hypostatic unity of the incarnate Word. Against Apollinarius, the Council affirmed that human nature, hypostasized by the Word, was flesh animated by the rational soul (sarka emyucwmen yuch logikh kai noera, anathema 4), and consequently the humanity of Christ was true humanity, and Christ, as affirmed at Chalcedon, was completely consubstantial with us in His humanity, but the hypostasis of His humanity was the Hypostasis of the Eternal Word. This decision of the Council, which was an expression of New Alexandrian theology, made it impossible to identify hypostasis with the concept of self-consciousness or mind. As a man, Christ possessed everything that is inherent in man, but He was not a human person. Birth, temptations, suffering, and death were all truly human in Him. But His Self, the source and subject (agent) of all these necessary states of freely perceived human nature, was the Word, which is also the basis both for the communicatio idiomatum and for the final deification of human nature. All this is possible only if the hypostasis retains its "open character," i.e., it is thought of as the source and foundation, and not as the content of a concrete being, or as one of the aspects of natural, divine, or human existence. The energies and actions of human nature have not ceased to be truly human because it has been "hypostasized in the Word."

It was the concept of hypostasis that allowed Byzantine theology to preserve in its understanding of the Incarnation the positive content of Antiochian thought and the fundamental meaning of the Tomos of Pope Leo, according to which each nature "acts as it is peculiar to it."

However, the Byzantine Christology of the Justinian era is criticized for "leaving in the shadow the reality of the psychological life of the soul of the Saviour" and modifying the properties of human nature as such. Since this judgment extends to the subsequent history of Eastern Christianity, the question is of no small importance.

In order to answer this question, it must be remembered that the decisions of the Fifth Ecumenical Council do not represent the final result, but only an intermediate stage in the development of Christology. Their dogmatic content should be viewed through the prism of the later stages, first of all, the teaching of St. Maxim on the Two Wills and His Concept of Deification. One gets the impression that the critics of the Christology of the Fifth Council base their argument on the Thomistic concept of "pure nature", which is incompatible with the patristic teaching on sin and deification. Deified human nature, humanity that has become a partaker of the Divine nature, is not nature "with modified natural properties," but restored to the divine glory for which it was intended from creation. Human nature, in contact with the Divine, does not disappear, but, on the contrary, becomes truly human, for God cannot destroy what He Himself created. The fact that the humanity of Jesus was hypostasized in the Word does not exclude His humanity, but, on the contrary, conditions His human perfection and, consequently, consubstantiality with the entire human race. By the deed of St. Maxim was the development of this cosmic dimension of salvation.

However, even before the seventh century, Byzantine theologians, such as the author of De sectis (a treatise written between 581 and 607 and previously attributed to Leontius of Byzantium), were fully aware of the significance of Christ's consubstantiality with all mankind, in particular, the unknown author just mentioned admitted that Christ did indeed possess a certain ignorance. He writes: "Most of the Fathers recognized that Christ did not know certain things; since He is of the same essence with us in all things, and since we ourselves do not know certain things, it is evident that Christ also had ignorance. Scripture says of Christ: "But Jesus increased in wisdom and stature" (Luke 2:52); it means that He knew what He did not know before."

This thought of the author of De sectis, which was borrowed and used by Orthodox writers of the eighth and ninth centuries in polemics against iconoclasm, testifies to the fact that the Christology formulated at the Council of 553 in no way excludes in Christ a perfect human consciousness; moreover, it shows that the concept of hypostasis, which in Christ is the hypostasis of the Logos, cannot be identified with the concept of consciousness, which is one of the natural phenomena.

Most Byzantine writers, however, refused to admit any ignorance in Christ and explained passages such as Lk. 2:52, a kind of pedagogical tactic on the part of Christ. Perhaps this stemmed not so much from their Christology as from the concept of ignorance, which for the Greek mind was automatically associated with sin. This is especially evident in the theology of Evagrius. Leontius of Byzantium, for example, was not a neo-Chalcedonian, and while not acknowledging, as we have seen, the hypostatic unity in the Logos, refused to accept that Christ could be "ignorant" because He was sinless.

The concept of hypostatic unity, which presupposes the absence of a human "I" in Christ, since the only subject in Christ is the Logos, could not have been the essential reason that led the Byzantine authors to deny ignorance in Christ. There was also a certain philosophy of gnosis, in which knowledge was considered as a sign of the natural perfection of unfallen nature. Christ could not have been unaware of something, because He was the New Adam. To assert such a thing, it was not necessary to be a neo-Chalcedonian.

The author of De Sectis did not share such philosophical views, and his position in the Byzantine Church remained very stable even after 553, especially since St. Cyril (who was also not a supporter of Evagrius) recognized that it was in the nature of mankind, united to the Word, which had accepted a state of slavery out of obedience, to worship the Father and to remain in ignorance. Of course, for St. Cyril this was ignorance, voluntarily accepted in the order of oikonomia, but it was quite real, and the author of De Sectis could thus refer to the authority of the great Alexandrian teacher.