Nature of Christ Blog 19

Chalcedonians and Non-Chalcedonians (1)

Blog 19

Both Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians, after the Council of Chalcedon, employed more terminologies to offer more explanations to the doctrine of one hypostasis of Christ.

On one hand, the Chalcedonians explained that there is one hypostasis after the union by utilizing two new words: anhypostatic and enhypostatic . They said that the human nature of Christ, by itself, is anhypostatic, meaning not personal in itself. However, through the union of the human nature and the eternal second person of the Trinity, it became enhypostatic, meaning personalized. In other words, the human nature gained personhood from above. [1]

Another description by the Chalcedonians was taught by Gregory Palamas who said that the divine hypostasis united Himself with human nature and human hypostasis, “Since the Son of God, in his incomparable love for man, did not only unite His divine Hypostasis with our nature, by clothing Himself in a living body and a soul gifted with intelligence . . . but also united himself. . . with the human hypostases themselves, in mingling himself with each of the faithful by communion with his Holy Body, and since he becomes one single body with us (Eph. 3:6), and makes us a temple of the undivided Divinity, for in the very body of Christ dwelleth the fulness of the Godhead bodily (Col. 2:9)." [2]

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[1] Fr. Fred Sanders, and Klaus Issler, Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective: An Introductory Christology, https://books.google.com/books?id=qkWPkbi0NhoC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=enhypostatic&f=false

[2] Gregory Palamas, The Triads, http://www.agape-biblia.org/orthodoxy/Gregory_Palamas_The_Triads_Classics_of_Western_Spirituality.pdf