Monophysitism was not dead in spite of Chalcedon {86} or Constantinople. [Sidenote: The Aphthartodocetic controversy.] The Fourth and Fifth General Council had still left points of debate for those within as well as those without the Church. In the form which it was asserted that Justinian had himself come to accept, it asserted the Lord's Body to be incapable of sin or corruption, and only subject to suffering by the voluntary exercise of His divine power. While the accusations against Justinian in John of Nikiu and Nicetius of Trier are contradictory to each other, and make it clear that he did not accept the opinion of Julian of Halicarnassus, they may serve to illustrate the confusion of thought with which these subjects were handled. The followers of Julian, whose view has here been summarised, were nicknamed by those of the famous monk Severus (Monophysite patriarch of Antioch in 513), "Aphthartodocetes" or "Phantasiasts." Those who followed Severus, while they were prepared to recognise two natures in Christ, yet dwelt strongly on their union, and especially on the "one energy" of the Lord's will. From this a further step was to be taken. There were some who believed in the transformation of the human nature into the Divine, and who came to be called Aktistetes, and, in a still further extreme, Adiaphorites, when they denied any distinction between the Godhead and manhood in Christ. The error at the root of all these contentions seems to have been the dwelling upon the physical rather than the spiritual effects of the Divine power revealed in the incarnation of the Son of God. Theologians arose to controvert it and to develop the theological decisions of the Council; chief among them was Leontius of Byzantium, a philosophic apologist of real {87} eminence, whose work was taken up later and completed by John of Damascus.
[Sidenote: The Emperor Heraclius as a theologian.]
It is not to be wondered at that a great soldier, filled with a deep sense of the necessity of uniting the Empire against its foes, should be led to accept a theological development which seemed to offer the hope of a reconciliation. From 622, under the advice of Sergius, as a Patriarch of Constantinople, a basis of reunion was sought in the formula that though the Lord had two Natures He had yet only "one theandric energy." The emperor Heraclius turned unwisely from the army to the Church, which, like many able military men, he thought might be coerced or led into opinions which seemed to him to be common sense. For a time it appeared that he would succeed: three patriarchs of Constantinople, one of Antioch, one of Alexandria, one of Rome (Honorius I.), were in agreement, if a little tepidly, favourable to the phrase. Honorius definitely stated that he confessed "one WILL of our Lord Jesus Christ." [1] [Sidenote: The Ecthesis, 638.] Only Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem (634), held out. In 638 the emperor issued the Ecthesis,[2] or Confession of Faith, drawn up by the patriarch Sergius. It professed adherence to orthodox definitions, and continued, "Wherefore, following the Holy Fathers in all things, and in this, we confess one Will of our Lord Jesus Christ, the very God, so that never was there a separate Will of His Body animated {88} by the intellect, nor one of contrary motion natural to itself, but one which operated when and how and to what purpose He who is God the Word willed." This statement was repudiated by Rome, and in 649 condemned in a synod at the Lateran under Martin I., who ended his days in exile for disobeying the imperial power. The quarrel became one between Rome and Constantinople, at a time when the popes had recovered their orthodoxy and the patriarchs were subservient to impetuous emperors. [Sidenote: The Type, 648.] In 648 the Type issued from New Rome as an attempt at pacification; but the Old Rome rejected it, with anathemas. In 680 a synod, under Pope Agatho, at which S. Wilfrith of Ripon was present and signed for the north part of Britain, rejected as heresy the doctrine of the two wills, and local councils (as at Hatfield six months later) agreed with the rejection.
[Sidenote: Sixth General Council, 681.]
All this led on to the summoning of the Sixth General Council at Constantinople, which sat from November, 680, to September, 681. The temporary schism between Rome and Constantinople was healed. Agatho's letter condemning the doctrine of the two wills was accepted; anathema was laid upon those, dead or alive, who had accepted the heresy, and among them Pope Honorius I., a condemnation repeated by many a pope after him. The Council declared that the Lord possesses two wills, "for just as the Flesh is, and is said to be, the Flesh of the Word, so also His human will is, and is said to be, proper [natural] to the Word." And also, "just as His holy and spotless ensouled flesh was taken into God yet not annihilated, so His human will though taken into God was not annihilated." Again, as so often in {89} the days of Justinian, the words of S. Leo were appropriated for a definition of the orthodox belief. The Council was attended by 289 bishops, the emperor occupying the position which had been common since Nicaea, while on his right were the bishops of the East, on his left those of the West. Rightly was the doctrine of one will condemned as contrary to the Chalcedonian assertion of the Lord's perfect Humanity; and the condemnation was readily accepted by the Church. Only in Syria, among the Maronites (followers of John Maro), did Monothelitism linger on for centuries, till they became absorbed in the Latin Church.
[Sidenote: The Monothelite controversy.]
The chief opponent of Monothelitism was Maximus, whose Disputation with Pyrrhus remains the most important survival of the controversy. It is a subtle and rational exposition of the orthodox doctrine. The original phrase, theandric energy, from which the Ecthesis of Heraclius started, seems to have been drawn from the unknown Platonist who came to be called Dionysius the Areopagite, and whose writings had a continued influence in the Middle Age. But to all reasonable thinkers the main question was decided. The truth of Christ's human nature was an essential verity of the faith, and to deny His human will would make His nature incomplete, and His goodness in any true sense impossible. The difficulty would arise again when Luther and Calvin carried further the dispute concerning the nature of the human will, but as regards her Lord the Church had come to a decision based upon her knowledge of His divine life on earth.
The Council in Trullo (named from the {90} dome-shaped place of meeting), 691, called also Quini-sextan, summoned by Justinian II. (685-711), was not Oecumenical, and was disciplinary rather than dogmatic. It condemned many Roman practices, and asserted definitely that the patriarchal throne of Constantinople should enjoy the same privileges as that of Old Rome, should in all ecclesiastical matters be entitled to the same pre-eminence, and should rank as second after it. The Liber Pontificalis, the Roman Church history of the time, states that the pope's legates gave assent to the decrees, which is unlikely. But this one was no more than the repetition of many previous statements, as emphatic in the sixth as in the seventh century. The position was simply that claimed by the patriarch John when he signed the formula of Catholic faith drawn up and proposed by Pope Hormisdas. [Sidenote: Repudiation of Roman claims.] He insisted on prefixing a repudiation of the Roman claim to supremacy over Christendom. "I hold," he declared, "the most holy Churches of the Elder and the New Rome to be one. I define the See of the Apostle Peter and this of the Imperial City to be one See." By this it is clear that he designed to assert both the unity of the Church—which, as it has always seemed to the East, was threatened by the demand of the Roman obedience—and the equality of the two great churches of the Old and the New Rome.
Justinian I. spoke of Constantinople as "head of all the churches" ("omnium ecclesiarum caput"), but it is clear that he did not regard this position as conferring any supreme or exclusive jurisdiction. It was a title of honour which he would use of other patriarchates; and that he did not consider the power {91} of the patriarchates as unalterable is seen by his attempted creation of the new jurisdiction of his own city Justiniana Prima (Tauresium), a few miles south of Sofia, over a large district. To the archbishop whom he here created he gave authority to "hold the place of the apostolic throne" within his province.[3]
[Sidenote: Independent attitude of Constantinople.]