There is an extensive literature on the spiritual tradition of Eastern Christianity, on Eastern monasticism and asceticism. Unfortunately, very often this spiritual tradition is considered independently of the biblical, New Testament, i.e. Christological and pneumatological categories and as a result is interpreted as esoteric or mystical. For example, the doctrine of deification often becomes a victim of such a distortion. In examining the Christology of the Byzantine period, the question "Who is Christ?" must precede our understanding of Paul's teaching on life "in Christ."

Since Christology is necessarily soteriological in nature, I have not confined myself strictly to Christological concepts as such. In some cases, it seems necessary to answer the question: how was salvation understood by authors who had a significant influence on the general trend of theological thought, but did not write directly about Christ? In addition, a Christological explanation is also necessary when the understanding of salvation is not based on ecclesiastical Christology. In any case, authors such as Evagrius and Pseudo-Dionysius have had a tremendous – if negative – influence on the development of Christological thought, and I cannot fail to pay special attention to them.

Christology in the fifth century

The Council of Chalcedon in 451 opened a new epoch in the history of Eastern Christian thought. In its representativeness, in the number of participants and in the scale of discussions, it met all the conditions that a truly Ecumenical Council had to satisfy at that time. At the same time, it was this Council that was the cause of the schism of the Eastern Church that continues to this day.

In the pre-Chalcedonian period, the Alexandrian and Antiochian schools represented the two centers of theological thought. However, with the conclusion of the Christological controversies of the fifth century, none of the schools retained its specifically independent direction. The theological authority of the Antiochian school was never restored after the blows inflicted on it by St. Cyril of Alexandria. As for the Alexandrian one, it for the most part, with the exception of the insignificant pro-imperial group of the Melkites, followed the leaders of the anti-Chalcedonian schism and isolated itself in the Monophysite confession of faith. The Persian invasion and Arab conquests, for their part, put an end to the existence of independent centers of church life in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. Constantinople, the magnificent capital of the empire and an important center of ecclesiastical life in the East, did not produce an original theological school: intellectually it was strongly dependent on Alexandria and, to an even greater extent, on Antioch. But the circumstances that developed after the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon placed Constantinople in the position of arbiter between East and West and led to the creation of a theology of reconciliation and unification. This type of theology was approved by the emperor, who was not satisfied with the fact that the emergence of the Chalcedonian and anti-Chalcedonian parties divided the empire. Such was the first task of "Byzantine" theology proper. It can be said that the Christological controversies of the fifth and sixth centuries shaped the Byzantine type of theological thinking and predetermined its main theme until the ninth century.

During the time separating Chalcedon from the beginning of the era of Justinian, Byzantine theology managed to carry out a creative synthesis of the Alexandrian and Antiochian traditions. He did not limit himself to a simple combination of heterogeneous elements, but created a new direction of thought, which modern Western researchers, following J. Le Bon, have dubbed "neo-Chalcedonianism." Western historians assert that the new trend, which interpreted the results of the Council of Chalcedon exclusively in the light of Alexandrian theology and in the terms of St. Cyril of Alexandria (somewhat ambiguous) and attributed undeservedly exaggerated importance to Alexandria, failed to reunite the Monophysites with the Church.

If we consider the period of Justinian's reign in isolation, such a conclusion may seem justified. However, with a broader approach, it can be seen that the theology of the Justinian era and the decisions of the Fifth Ecumenical Council (the last and unchanging expression of Neo-Chalcedonian theology) already contain the possibility of new paths of theological development, which led to the creation of the Christological system of St. Maximus the Confessor, in which the positive elements of the Antiochian tradition regain their true meaning. The Councils of Ephesus, Chalcedon and the two Councils of Constantinople (553 and 681) represent the great Byzantine Christological synthesis, and the further development of Orthodox theology must be considered in the light of this synthesis.

The dogmatic clashes of the fourth and sixth centuries will remain incomprehensible until their soteriological aspect is taken into account. During the time of the Arian troubles, St. Athanasius and the Cappadocians strongly insisted that salvation is accomplished as a real meeting between God and man. The Incarnate Word was the true God, not a creature, for only God can reunite fallen humanity with Himself. At the same time, the human nature of Christ was not incomplete, contrary to the teaching of Apollinarius, who believed that the human mind was not perceived by the incarnate Logos, but by the true human nature, "our nature," in all its fullness perceived by the Word, since "that which is not received is not healed, and that which is united to God is saved," wrote St. Gregory of Nazianzus.

In order to understand the subsequent history of the Christological controversy, it is necessary to bear in mind that Nicene Orthodoxy, in the form in which it was formulated by the Cappadocians, was determined by its opposition to both Arius and Apollinaris at the same time. Both taught that in Christ the place of the human mind is occupied by the Logos, and both thought of Christ as one being or one nature. But whereas for Arius unity presupposed the "creation" of the Logos, who is only the supreme intellect (nous), for Apollinaris the understanding of unity resulted in the doctrine of Christ as a "heavenly Man" whose source of life and activity is wholly in the Word. Both Arius and Apollinaris agreed in denying the existence of the human soul in Christ, which allowed both to affirm in Christ the complete unity of the Logos and the flesh: created unity in Arius, heavenly unity in Apollinarius.

However, if the anti-Arianism of the Nicaeans of the fourth century received the form of a positive definition, consubstantiality, which excluded the identification of the Logos with creation, then anti-Apollinarianism remained in a more obscure stage and did not acquire a positive conciliar definition. Throughout the fifth century, anti-Apollinarianism dominated the theology of the Antiochian school, which insisted on the fullness of humanity in Christ. An extreme form of this trend, Nestorianism, went so far as to view Christ's human nature as "adopted man," existing virtually apart from His divine nature. The Alexandrians, on the contrary, remained principled anti-Arians. Their position, though imperfect in that they did not react to Apollinarian tendencies for a long time, had the advantage of always being in agreement with the Nicene definition. Shaped by different types of theological thinking and different exegetical methods, these two schools developed conflicting Christological doctrines.

The harsh critical approach of the Antiochians, such as Diodorus of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia and Bl. Theodoret of Cyrus, forcing them to adhere to the letter of the Gospel narrative, they set themselves the task of describing the history of our salvation rather than explaining it. Defending a literal interpretation of the books of the Old Testament, the Antiochian theologians strove to draw attention in their interpretations of the New Testament mainly to the historicity of Jesus as the goal and completion of the history of Israel in all the fullness and reality of His human nature. The divine nature of the Word, solemnly proclaimed at Nicaea, appeared to them as a principle, undoubtedly present in Christ, but nevertheless independent in its essence and external manifestations. The theological language of the time did not have adequate terms to express the modern conception of the person as opposed to nature, and since the main concern of the Antiochian school was to defend the full reality of both natures in Christ, it spoke of the "Word who took" human nature and the Man Jesus, the Son of Mary, "received by the Word." Such a distinction was very convenient for exegesis, since it made it possible to interpret various Gospel episodes, referring them sometimes to God, sometimes to Man; moreover, it made it possible to avoid Christological questions about the "death of the Son of God." However, the great Theodore of Mopsuestia was aware that the Antiochian Christology of "the Word who received the Word" and the "man received" was not sufficient to express the confession of the Nicene Creed "in the One Lord Jesus Christ" and could lead to the doctrine of two "subjects" in Christ. Therefore, in all his works he insisted on the unity of the Lord, mistakenly believing that he adequately expressed this unity by the formula: one person (proswpon) and two natures (juseis). Whatever Theodore's meaning of his terminology was still confusing, since the term "person," which combined the divine and human natures of Christ, could also mean a mask in the language of the time. The term "nature" has always indicated a concrete reality and sometimes a personal reality. According to Theodore, the divine reality "dwelt" in the man Jesus, his system excluded the concept of "God the Word, born of the Virgin Mary."

This was the subject of the conflict between Nestorius, a disciple of Theodore, and St. Cyril of Alexandria. In soteriology, the Antiochian school sought above all to defend the fullness of the salvation of human nature in Christ, which Apollinaris denied, because as a man Jesus Christ was wholly received by the Word. One of the most obvious testimonies to the fullness of Immanuel's humanity was His death on the cross. Susceptibility to suffering is an essential characteristic of created human nature, while the nature of the Divine is characterized by impassibility. That is why the great Antiochian teacher Bl. Theodoret rejected the "theopaschism" of St. Cyril and never accepted the expression "God died" on the cross. Theopaschism was for him the surest sign of Monophysitism, which denies the presence of true human nature in Christ, for only man can die, but not God. Even after Bl. Theodoret was reconciled with St. Cyril and accepted the teaching of the Mother of God of Mary with the term "Qeotokos" as an expression of the mystery of the Incarnation in a properly theological, and not only rhetorical sense (the latter was accepted by both Theodore and Nestorius), formally he never said: "God is dead." For him, this would not mean the union of natures, but their mixture, the transformation of human nature into the divine.

This "anthropological maximalism" of the Antiochian school (Florovsky's expression) did not allow for the creation of a coherent concept of redemption. In the Antiochian view, Christ's human nature was autonomous: it also had its own free will, developed and acted independently (albeit in unity with the Word). It was to this human nature that the Antiochians appropriated the merit of our salvation. According to Theodore, the Man Jesus "is assisted by the Word in proportion as He freely affirms Himself in good." From this interpretation of salvation, one can easily draw a conclusion in favor of "humanistic asceticism," which sees man's salvation in his own efforts toward goodness and truth, in imitation of the feat once accomplished by Jesus. Nevertheless, apart from this practical moral tendency, which is inherent in the preaching of the Antiochians as a whole, the latter did not draw all possible conclusions from their Christological theories. In their desire to remain faithful to church tradition, they often returned to the already recognized positions that affirmed Christ as the only Conqueror of sin and death. This fidelity to tradition was combined with a striving for a rational explanation of the Incarnation (in Theodore and especially in Nestorius). But such an explanation required a corresponding metaphysics, which Nestorius clearly lacked. His "rational" approach brought him into conflict with certain expressions of common Christian usage, such as the term "Qeotokos," which immediately made him suspect in the eyes of traditionalists. Nestorius did not have serious theological and philosophical arguments against their criticism. There seems to be no doubt about Nestorius' good intentions, and today some authors believe that he was the most "advanced" theologian of his time, and sometimes present him as an innocent victim of the intolerance of St. Cyril of Alexandria. Such a posthumous apology for Nestorius seems to the author even less convincing than the largely unfounded accusations made by St. Cyril and repeated by subsequent theologians.

In contrast to the Antiochians, St. Cyril of Alexandria sought to emphasize, first of all, that salvation is granted and realized only by God. The power of sin and death cannot be destroyed by the human dignity of the man Jesus. The Word took on human nature, really making it His own. In order to understand Cyril, we cannot but attach special importance to this soteriological aspect of his thought. He asserted that the connection between the divine and the human in Christ consists not merely in the cooperation or even interpenetration of natures, but in unity: the incarnate Word is unique, and there can be no duality in the person of the One Redeemer, God and Man. Salvation consists precisely in the fact that the Word was the subject in all the events of Jesus' human life. It was Him that the Virgin Mary gave birth to: to refuse to call Her the Mother of God means to deny the mystery of the Incarnation, since in Christ there is no one else to whom She could give life except the Word. There are no two sons, there are two births of one and the same Word, who, while by nature unchangeably remaining God, takes on the whole of human nature in His being, in order to restore mankind to its original state, freeing it from sin and death. It was the Word that died on the cross. And the death of God the Word was truly redemptive, while the death of man, even the most righteous, would have remained the ordinary death of human individuality.