Christology after Chalcedon

and the Transformation

of the Philosophical Tradition
Relections on a neglected topic

Johannes Zachhuber

1. Introduction
The question as to what impact the rise of Christian theology had on
the philosophical tradition is not new. Among the various approaches that
have been taken to this topic, however, a detailed analysis of Christological
debates after Chalcedon has not been a prominent starting point. In fact,
this approach has arguably been neglected.1 There are several reasons for
this neglect: Western scholarship has tended to move straight from the
Council of Chalcedon to the early Middle Ages, and those theologians who
have taken an interest in the later Eastern debates were often less inter-
ested in philosophy than in other theological developments. Historians of
philosophy, on the other hand, often bypass Greek theological authors from
late antiquity altogether.2

1. An interesting exception to that rule is Werner Elert’s posthumously published study

Der Ausgang der altkirchlichen Christologie: Eine Untersuchung über Theodor von Pharan und
seine Zeit als Einführung in die alte Dogmengeschichte, ed. W. Maurer, E. Bergsträßer, Berlin:
Lutherisches Verlagshaus 1957.
2. Among the exceptions to this rule the most signiicant was arguably Michael Frede. Cf.
his: “Der Begrif des Individuums bei den Kirchenvätern”, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christ-
entum 40 (1997) 38–54; “John of Damascus on Human Action, the Will, and Human Free-
dom”, in: K. Ieradiakonou, ed., Byzantine Philosophy and its Ancient Sources, Oxford: OUP
2002, 63–95. See also below at n. 9.

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In addition, anyone who seriously wishes to engage with intellectual de-

velopments in this period faces a number of objective challenges: signiic-
ant texts are transmitted in various languages, including Syriac and Arabic,
that are not usually read and understood by students of intellectual history.
Many of these texts, moreover, are not well edited. Critical studies are in
short supply; those that exist do not usually pay close attention to philo-
sophical problems.3 At the same time, the sophistication and complexity
of the arguments advanced by discussants on all sides of those debates is
considerable. Martin Grabmann saw in the theology of those centuries a
form of early scholasticism,4 and there certainly is something to be said for
such an assessment.
In this situation, my own relections can only be provisional and tent-
ative. With this caveat, however, I should suggest that a careful considera-
tion of the philosophical implications of post-Chalcedonian Christological
debates will not simply ill a gap in our knowledge of theological and philo-
sophical developments, but has the potential to transform our understand-
ing of the way the rise of Christian theology changed some of the most fun-
damental patterns of the Greek philosophical tradition.
This is the case I shall make in my chapter, which will begin with some
preliminary remarks about the relationship between philosophy and theo-
logy during the irst millennium before moving on with a historical nar-
rative starting in the late fourth century but focussing on developments
between the sixth and the eighth centuries.

3. This is true for the most comprehensive treatment of the last generation, the multi-
volume work by A. Grillmeier, Jesus Christus im Glauben der Kirche, 5 vols., Freiburg: Her-
der 1986–, but also for J. Lebon’s by now classical study “La christologie du monophys-
isme syrien”, in: Das Konzil von Chalkedon, ed. A. Grillmeier, H. Bacht, 3 vols., Würzburg:
Echter 1951, 425–580. By contrast, philosophical problems are at the heart of the follow-
ing publications: U. M. Lang, John Philoponus and the Controversies over Chalcedon in the Sixth
Century, Leuven: Peeters 2001; R. Cross, “Perichoresis, Deiication, and Christological Pre-
dication in John of Damascus”, Mediaeval Studies 57 (2000) 69–124; id., “Individual Natures
in the Christology of Leontius of Byzantium”, Journal of Early Christian Studies 10 (2002) 245–
265; Ch. Erismann, “The Trinity, Universals, and Particular Substances : Philoponus and
Roscelin”, Traditio 63 (2008) 277–305 ; id., “L’individualité expliquée par les accidents. Re-
marques sur la destinée ‘chrétienne’ de Porphyre”, in : Compléments de substance : études sur
les propriétés accidentielles ofertes à Alain de Libera, eds. C. Erismann, A. Schniewind, Paris:
Vrin 2008, 51–66; B. Glede, The Development of the Term ἐνυπόστατος from Origen to John of
Damascus, Leiden: Brill 2012.
4. M. Grabmann, Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode, 2 vols, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftli-
che Buchgesellschaft 1956, vol. 1, 92–116.

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2. Theology and philosophy in late antiquity

Any attempt to understand the relationship between theology and
philosophy in late antiquity is hampered by the inadequacy of our modern
conceptual and terminological categories. We tend to think of “philosophy”
and “theology” as two disciplines; but this conceptualisation is altogether
misleading when applied to late antiquity. As is well documented, this
particular framework only emerged with the foundation of the medieval
European university with its “theological” and “philosophical” faculties.5
If we ask how early Christian authors conceived of their rational relection
about their faith, the one answer we can give with some certainty, there-
fore, is a negative one: they certainly did not think that their work consti-
tuted a discipline called ‘theology.’ In fact, the term theology in this sense is
once again a product of the high Middle Ages.6
It is much more diicult to give a positive deinition of the character
of Christian “theology” in late antiquity, but for the purposes of this pa-
per I would propose that we may think of it as a kind of philosophy which,
for want of a better word, we may call Christian philosophy. Philosophy
in late antiquity existed in a wide variety of schools, including not merely
the Neoplatonic schools of Alexandria and Athens, but medical and gram-
matical schools as well.7 In some ways, Christian theology can be under-
stood as one such school. The intellectual principles and rules of this philo-
sophy would be determined by the needs and requirements speciic to the
school and imposed on those wishing to participate in its discourse. In the
case of theology, Scripture and a growing body of agreed positions (doc-
trines) would be relevant, but also a particular institutional structure (the
church) that arguably was more rigidly authoritarian than that predom-
inant in other schools. One has to be careful, however, not to simplify a
complex web of relationships. While “theological” relection was curtailed
by these factors, which therefore functioned as external limits imposed on
“theologians” during the period, it is also the case that all these delimiting
factors were themselves conditioned and shaped by theological relection
and thus not merely extraneous with regard to theology. In other words,

5. B. Geyer, “Facultas theologica: Eine bedeutungsgeschichtliche Untersuchung”, Zeitschrift

für katholische Theologie 75 (1964) 133–145: 143.
6. W. Pannenberg, Wissenschaftstheorie und Theologie, Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp 1973, 11–12.
7. Cf. D. King, “What is Ancient Philosophy?”, Journal for Late Antique Religion and Culture 7
(2013) 90–100: 99.

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doctrinal decisions were only made on the basis of previous theological ar-
gument, and even the use of Scripture was only practicable once hermen-
eutical principles of exegesis had been agreed upon and applied.
All ensuing problems cannot be addressed in the present place, but what
has been said may be suicient to evade the clichés that are conventionally
applied to the relationship of nascent Christian theology to the intellectual
traditions of pagan antiquity. These clichés are the well-known notion of
the “Platonism” of the church fathers (or, more rarely but similarly, their
Stoicism or Aristotelianism) on the one hand and its opposite, the idea that
the fathers were principled anti-Platonists or even anti-philosophers on the
other. Both positions, I think, sufer from the way in which they consider
Christian theology a derivative phenomenon rather than understand it on
its own terms.
It is, then, the fundamental premiss of my own argument that we should
look at Christian theology in late antiquity as a form of philosophy. As
such, it was irst and foremost shaped by its own inherent needs and prin-
ciples. These principles, however, were developed and discussed with the
help of intellectual tools provided by traditional philosophical relection.
While such a distinction between “principles” and “tools” may not be en-
tirely clear-cut it is, I believe, helpful in understanding the dynamics of
Christian theological debate: once the doctrine of the Trinity, as deined
by the Council of Nicaea in 325, had become oicial Church doctrine, Chris-
tian thinkers were not at liberty to adopt a position that was at variance
with it; they would not accept a line of reasoning that led to a diferent con-
clusion however attractive this might seem from a purely rational point of
view. Likewise, a Christian author was not in a position to reject an argu-
ment that used a biblical reference by questioning the authority of Scrip-
ture. Yet within the limits thus set, Christian authors would argue. They
would expose the weaknesses of their opponents’ case and seek to bolster
the plausibility of their own position with the help of rational arguments
or what they thought passed for the latter.
The outcome of this practice, which continued over many centuries,
was the emergence of a Christian philosophy which in fundamental ways
departed from, and was incompatible with, some of the most basic assump-
tions of the older Greek tradition. This observation has tempted scholars
studying the period to think of Christianity as a major force of irrational-
ity, the great opponent of philosophy. Recently, the philosopher William
Matson judged that “the impact of Christianity on the Greek intellectual

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life was like that of an asteroid hitting the earth.”8 Christianity, Matson
suggests, sought to “stamp out philosophy.” This perception is not entirely
unwarranted insofar as Christian thought did indeed pose a radical chal-
lenge to philosophy as it was understood at the time. Where I would beg
to difer, however, is in the equation implicit in Matson’s formulation of
ancient philosophy with “philosophy.” The case I seek to argue is, rather,
that Christian thought produced a new and diferent kind of philosophy. It
is my contention, furthermore, though I shall not be able to argue this case
here in any detail, that the ensuing “Christian” philosophy has remained
inluential over the centuries and, in some ways, is much closer to later me-
dieval and even modern forms of rationality than we might suspect.

* * *
If we accept the interpretation I have just proposed, the question arises
which time period and which authors we ought to consider in establishing
this case? Very recently, George Karamanolis has published a book under
the title of The Philosophy of Early Christianity.9 In some ways, his argument
is similar to my own. Yet the period he chooses for his study begins in the
second and ends in the fourth century. Much can be said in favour of such
a decision. Notably, to speak of “early” Christian theology suggests a time
reasonably close to the historical origin of the religion. And yet, I think
there is also a danger in focussing too much on this very early period. For
reasons that are not entirely easy to explain, Christianity unlike Islam took
a long time to develop a philosophy of its own. In some ways, therefore, the
full result of the transformation efected by Christian theology becomes ap-
parent only towards the end of the irst millennium. It is for this reason that
I shall concentrate instead on the period between the Council of Chalcedon
(451) and the eighth century as a crucial but neglected phase on the devel-
opment of Christian thought.

3. Gregory of Nyssa and the classical theory

While my historical narrative in its essentials covers post-Chalcedonian
developments, it must start in the late fourth century. For it is during this

8. W. Matson, Grand Theories and Everyday Beliefs: Science, Philosophy, and their Histories, Oxford:
OUP 2011, 66, 134.
9. G. Karamanolis, The Philosophy of Early Christianity, Durham: Acumen 2013.

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time that what I would like to call the “classical theory”, was created. This
theory, I would argue, is the irst properly Christian philosophy in the sense
that it contains a notion of what being itself is and how it ought to be un-
derstood. It is Christian insofar as it came about as an ofshoot of the Trin-
itarian debate. It owes its existence to the so-called Cappadocian theolo-
gians, in particular Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa. But while it
could not have been conceived of without this particular doctrinal envir-
onment, it was not, I would suggest, incompatible with earlier Greek philo-
sophy. Thus far, I would agree with those contemporary theologians who
resource the Cappadocians for a broadly Platonic theology10 and disagree
with those, such as John Zizioulas and Colin Gunton, who ascribe to the Cap-
padocians an ontological revolution.11
The latter assessment, as is well known, rests on the notion that the Cap-
padocians introduced a radically innovative valuation of the human person
which, through their emphasis on hypostasis, they postulated as the very on-
tological foundation of all being.12 In reality, I think, the classical theory is
very nearly the precise opposite: it is, for all intents and purposes, a the-
ory of universal being even though it also holds that the latter can only
exist as instantiated in individual entities. It is for this reason that, when
the theory became the classical theory, and was, therefore, assumed to be
applicable to Christology, which was the major problem confronting the
Christian Church from the ifth century onwards, enormous diiculties en-
sued: and these diiculties could no longer be solved within the intellectual
framework provided by ancient metaphysics.
In order to grasp the Cappadocian theory in its essentials, its doctrinal
background is of paramount importance. As Rowan Williams has shown in
a seminal article, one of the arguments advanced against the Nicene dogma
that the Son was homoousios with the Father was this: if Father and Son are
homoousios, there must be a further thing, the ousia; in fact, this third item,
divine substance, would be ontologically irst and the two persons derived
from it.13 This, of course, was meant as a reductio ad absurdum: after all, it

10. S. Coakley, “Introduction – Gender, Trinitarian Analogies, and the Pedagogy of the ‘Song’”,
in: Rethinking Gregory of Nyssa, ed. S. Coakley, Oxford: Blackwell 2003, 1–13.
11. J. Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church, Crestwood, N.Y.: St
Vladimir’s Seminary Press 2002; C. E. Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation,
and the Culture of Modernity, Cambridge: CUP, 7th ed. 2002.
12. J. Zizioulas, op. cit., 36–49.
13. R. Williams, “The Logic or Arianism”, Journal of Theological Studies 34 (1983) 56–81.

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was universally accepted that the Father was the irst ontological principle
and the source of the trinitarian godhead. The Cappadocians, however, de-
veloped their own theory partly in response to this Platonising objection,14
and for what I call the classical theory this insight is crucial. It meant that
whatever the common item (τὸ κοινόν), ousia, was, it could not be some-
thing separate; it could not exist somehow in addition to or on top of the
individual hypostases. Somehow, in the Trinity the three Persons are also
the one God even though at the same time they are irreducibly distinct.
The solution to this conundrum consists in the idea that being is univer-
sal but exists only in a inite number of individuals.15 There is one God who
only exists in three hypostases, and there is equally “one man” (as Gregory
of Nyssa argues16 ) existing in a inite number of human hypostases whose
concrete unity can be compared to a single body.17 In both cases, there is a
dynamic element added to explain the unity-in-diversity: the Godhead has
its origin in the Father, who generates the Son and breathes the Spirit. Like-
wise, the unity of human nature only exists in the temporal progression of
the human race.18
To this concrete account of being is then added an abstract complement.
This is the celebrated Cappadocian doctrine of idiomata or properties.19 We
can diferentiate universality and particularity by means of shared and in-
dividual properties. Taken in itself, this perspective might be seen to cancel
out the emphasis on concrete being I sketched above, as it seems to direct
our attention not to any individual thing or person, but to properties ab-
stracted from them. Alternatively, the notion of shared properties might
seem to suggest the postulation of an immanent form or essence.20 It is
easy to arrive at such an interpretation on the basis of certain Cappadocian
texts, but I am now convinced that such a reading falls short of their inten-
tion. The reason is, once again, that their theory was primarily meant to
serve trinitarian doctrine, and it is evident that divine ousia cannot be an

14. J. Zachhuber, Human Nature in Gregory of Nyssa: Philosophical Background and Theological Sig-
niicance, Leiden: Brill, 1999, 28–37.
15. I have analysed and discussed this theory in detail in Human Nature…, esp. 61–79 and “Once
again: Gregory of Nyssa on Universals”, Journal of Theological Studies 56 (2005) 75–98.
16. Esp. in Ad Ablabium, GNO III/1, 40, 5–9 and Ad Graecos, GNO III/1, 23, 21–25, and J. Zachhuber,
Human Nature…, 108–118.
17. Gregory of Nyssa, De hominis opiicio 16, PG 44, 185C.
18. J. Zachhuber, “Once again: Gregory of Nyssa on Universals”, 91–97.
19. J. Zachhuber, Human Nature…, 70–79.
20. R. Cross, “Universals in Gregory of Nyssa”, Vigiliae Christianae 56 (2002) 372–410.

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abstract divine essence. I therefore think that the two accounts, which I
would call, for the sake of convenience, the concrete and the abstract, are
meant to be complementary even though there is no evidence, as far as I
am aware, that their precise relationship was ever explained.
Still, for my reconstruction of the Cappadocian theory, the assumption
is crucial that they sought to hold together, in an admittedly tensional
unity, a vision of universal ontological unity, existing in irreducibly indi-
vidual instances and a logical distinction of universal and particular on the
basis of properties. Whereas the former of the two stresses the unity of
being, the latter permits conceptual distinction between the level of uni-
versality and the level of particularity.

* * *
This theory, then, became classical; by this I mean not so much that
there emerged a kind of Cappadocian school comparable to the existence of
Origenist theologians, for example, but that this particular way of thinking
and the speciic elements that made up the Cappadocian account of being
turned into something like a universally shared idiom of Greek theologians
uniting many diferent theological schools and even, or so I would argue,
the diferent churches emerging from the post-Chalcedonian schism.
In fact, problems inherent in the classical theory are to some extent to
blame for the deep divisions emerging within Christendom from the latter
half of the ifth century. As the Cappadocian theory did not have a proper
account of the individual nor indeed of individualisation, it became a liabil-
ity once Christology was the major doctrinal driver of theological debate. I
am aware that this claim goes against the received wisdom of Patristic schol-
arship, which has usually considered the diferentiation of ousia and hypo-
stasis on the analogy of species and individual as the very achievement of
Cappadocian theology. While I am not, of course, denying the signiicance
of this conceptual innovation, it seems to me that the way it was formu-
lated by those fourth century thinkers left crucial problems open or even
prevented them from being properly addressed.
What I mean is this. It is admittedly accurate to say that we can distin-
guish in a human person that which this person shares with other human
beings from that, which marks him or her out as an individual. This in it-
self, however, does not yet explain what it means that humanity becomes
individual in this person. In fact, it stands in the way of such an explana-
tion inasmuch as such an account creates the impression that we deal, as it

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were, with two separate realities, the person’s universal humanity and his
or her individual identity. The problem of individuation, by contrast, can
be put into the proposition that universal humanity becomes individual in
the person. If, for example, Socrates is ill, a human being is ill. This does not
imply that every single human individual is suddenly ill, but Socrates’ sick-
ness does not only afect his “Socratesness” either but his whole humanity.
The lack of such an element in the classical theory was not, I think, an
oversight. We know that Gregory of Nyssa rejected the notion of “particular
substances” as individualised universals because he felt, rightly, that they
threatened the strong realism he needed to defend his trinitarian theology
against the charge of tritheism.21 The needs of trinitarian theology, after
all, irmly determined whatever position could be held in the classical the-
ory! The Cappadocian view proved its worth by settling the trinitarian con-
troversy, which had threatened the very existence of the Christian church
in the fourth century and therefore stood at the centre of theological atten-
tion and concern during that period. When this was no longer the case, its
unique adaptation to trinitarian theology precipitated its crisis.

4. Christology and the crisis of the classical theory

Consider now the case of Christology. Assuming that John 1,14 is short-
hand for the notion of the Incarnation, it can arguably be restated to mean
that “in Jesus Christ God became human”. What does “God” stand for in this
proposition? According to the classical theory only two interpretations are
possible: either “God” denotes divine nature or it stands for the individual
property of one trinitarian person.22 But neither of the two conveys the
meaning this statement has in Christian theology. For if “God” signiied di-
vine nature, the statement would have to be true for the Trinity as a whole,
with the result of Patripassianism; if, on the other hand, it referred to the
individual properties of the Son it would exclude divinity proper from the
Incarnation. Even though the biblical text says that “the Logos” became
lesh, however, it has always been taken for granted that this implies that
in and through the second person of the Trinity Godself became human.
21. Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Graecos, GNO III/1, 23, 4–13.
22. Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Graecos, GNO III/1, 19, 1–5: “Εἰ τὸ θεὸς ὄνομα προσώπου
δηλωτικὸν ὑπῆρχεν, τρία πρόσωπα λέγοντες ἐξ ἀνάγκης τρεῖς ἂν ἐλέγομεν θεούς· εἰ δὲ
τὸ θεὸς ὄνομα οὐσίας σημαντικόν ἐστιν, μίαν οὐσίαν ὁμολογοῦντες τῆς ἁγίας τριάδος ἕνα
θεὸν εἰκότως δογματίζομεν, ἐπειδὴ μιᾶς οὐσίας ἓν ὄνομα τὸ θεός ἐστιν”.

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This problem, it seems, was not immediately recognised. Otherwise, it

would be hard to understand why the Council of Chalcedon included in its
credal formula the statement that Jesus Christ was “of the same substance
as God according to his divinity, and of the same substance as we according
to his humanity.”23 As we have seen, the classical theory mandated, quite
sensibly, that in the case of the Trinity the term homoousios implied two
tenets: on the one hand the applicability of common generic predicates,
such as “eternal,” “good,” and “almighty;” on the other hand, the exclus-
ive existence of the single nature in three hypostases. Above, I have called
the former the “abstract” and the latter the “concrete” component of the
Cappadocian theory. It is easy to see that the “double-homoousion” commit-
ted Chalcedonian theologians to either of two assumptions. If they upheld
the classical theory in both its concrete and its abstract aspects, the con-
sequence would be that Christ’s two natures had to exist in two hypostases.
If, however, they maintained, in line with the teaching of the Council, that
there was only one hypostasis in the saviour, they inevitably reduced the
classical theory to its abstract dimension. In other words, homoousios would
merely mean that two or more objects shared the same set of generic pre-
dicates. Not surprisingly, the opponents of the Council of Chalcedon chided
its supporters for embracing the former, obviously heretical, option, while
the Chalcedonians themselves chose the latter without, initially, realising
how far this removed them from the classical theory.
The self-perception of the Chalcedonian theologians as stalwarts of
the Cappadocian theory has largely been accepted by modern scholarship
where the conlict about Chalcedon has often been presented as a con-
troversy between defenders and critics of the Cappadocian heritage.24 It
should be clear by now that I regard such a view as a considerable simpli-
ication of a rather more complex picture, as it underestimates the degree
to which the Christological problem really was the crux of the classical the-
ory. That it has, nevertheless, gained such wide currency may be due to the
fact that Gregory of Nyssa himself, in his polemic against Apollinarius of
Laodicea, had rejected his opponent’s Christology by reducing the classical
theory to its abstract component. In fact, Gregory came close to endorsing

23. Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum 2, 1, 2, 129, 26–7: “ὁμοούσιον τῷ πατρὶ κατὰ τὴν θεότητα
καὶ ὁμοούσιον ἡμῖν […] κατὰ τὴν ἀνθρωπότητα”.
24. J. Lebon, “La christologie…”, 465 ; B. Glede, Development…, 50–56.

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the double homoousion himself.25 As has often been pointed out, the Bishop
of Nyssa was hardly at his best in this particular controversy,26 but how-
ever this may be, his example supplied some Cappadocian authority for a
prima facie application of the classical theory to Christology as it was later
practised by many Chalcedonians.
It will be the purpose of the remainder of my chapter to present a dif-
ferent account of those debates. Concentrating on Chalcedonians and their
Miaphysite opponents, I shall aim to show how the classical theory formed
the starting point for radical intellectual innovations in both camps. In
other words, defenders as well as critics of the Council of Chalcedon re-
tained elements of the classical theory – in fact, this is why I regard it as the
“classical” theory in the irst place – but both also had to move consciously
and decisively beyond its original framework in order to account for the
argumentative needs created by the context of the Christological contro-
versy. In this sense, I propose to consider the rival philosophies emerging
in the wake of Chalcedon as competing responses to the same fundamental
problem.

5. Chalcedonians and Miaphysites in the sixth century

When read through the lens of the classical theory, the Council of
Chalcedon had dealt a diicult hand to its theological supporters. Their op-
ponents exploited these diiculties to the best of their abilities. Leontius of
Byzantium’s adversary in his Epilyseis – as indicated by the full title of the
work, this was the celebrated Severus of Antioch, the major theologian of
the Miaphysite tradition – opened his case against the Chalcedonians with
the following question:

25. Without ever combining them in a single passage, Gregory in the Antirrheticus applied
both aspects to Christology. On the one hand, he insisted that Christ’s divinity is ho-
moousios with the Father without any intermingling of human nature, as otherwise the
Father too would be incarnate and have a body (GNO III/1, 157, 26–158, 6). On the other
hand, he rejected Apollinarius’ claim that Christ was not homoousios with human beings
“according to the most important part” (κατὰ τὸ κυριώτατον) on the grounds that “that
which is not homoousios is altogether of a diferent substance (ἑτεροούσιος)” (GNO III/1,
165, 8–9).
26. Cf. the criticism in J. Tixeront, Histoire des dogmes dans l’antiquité chrétienne, vol. II, Pa-
ris : Victor Lecofre 1912, 128 (English Text: History of Dogmas, vol. II, St. Louis: Herder
1914, 127.

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Did the Word assume human nature as seen in the species or in the
individual?27

Elsewhere, he explained that without such a distinction no orthodox Chris-

tology was possible:
For if you say that in Christ there are two substances (i.e. natures),
it must by necessity be said also that both Father and Spirit and, to
say it in one word, the Holy Trinity itself is incarnate in the whole of
humanity, that is the human race.28

The line of argument is clear. If the Chalcedonians maintain that in Christ

universal divine nature assumed universal human nature, they are in efect
saying that the whole Trinity became incarnate in the whole of humanity. If
on the other hand they accept (as Severus evidently thought they should)
that the Incarnation is about individual natures, then the coexistence of
two of them in the Incarnate Christ leads to an airmation of two hypo-
stases as well.
Throughout the sixth century, Chalcedonian authors such as John the
Grammarian, Leontius of Byzantium, and Anastasius of Antioch responded
to this question by rejecting its alternative.29 According to Leontius, saying
that the universal is nature “seen in many” (ἐν πλήθει θεωρεῖται), while the
individual is seen in what is numerically one (ἐν ἑνὶ τῷ ἀριθμῷ),30 is mis-
leading, precisely because universal nature is the same in all individuals and
whole in each of them. This he inds indicated in the univocal predication
of the formula of substance or nature:
The same formula of the nature is given in both many and one:
whatever formula you give for nature unqualiiedly, this is given to
you for nature considered in one [sc. subject], and neither does the
fact that many participate in the nature make the one [nature] many
natures, nor does it make the many [individuals] one.31
27. Leontius of Byzantium, Epilyseis I, PG 86, 1916D–1917A: “Φύσιν ὁ Λόγος ἀναλαβῶν
ἀθρωπίνην, τὴν ἐν τῷ εἴδει θεωρουμένην, ἦ τὴν ἐν ἀτόμῳ ἀνἐλαβεν”.
28. Si vero dicitis Christo duas esse substantias, necessario dicendum est et Patrem et Spiri-
tum et, ut summatim dicamus, ipsam sanctam Trinitam toti humanitati incarnatam esse,
id est humano generi. Quoted in : John of Caesarea (“the Grammarian”), Apologia Concilii
Chalcedonensis 14, 8, 72–75, Richard.
29. Cf. also Justinian, Contra Monophysitas, PG 86, 1137D–1140B.
30. Leontius of Byzantium, Epilyseis I, PG 86, 1917A.
31. Leontius of Byzantium, Epilyseis I, PG 86, 1917B. English Text: R. Cross, “Individual
Natures…”, 255.

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Along the same lines, Anastasius of Antioch, time after time in his writ-
ings, denied the conceptual need for individual or particular natures. It
is enough to invoke the universal to provide a full explanation of Christolo-
gical doctrine:
We call him God, not a God, and we call him man, not a man. For he
is God and man, and the [use of the] universal terms indicates that of
which he is [composed] – not of particular hypostases but of universal
substances.32

Both Leontius and Anastasius evidently follow in the wake of Gregory

of Nyssa’s anti-Apollinarian argument. For them, the mere fact that the In-
carnation was said of the universal term was enough to steer clear of the
problem of two hypostases. Christ is not a mixture of an “individual” God
(i.e. a divine hypostasis) and an individual human person, but one indi-
vidual partaking of divine and human natures. Opponents of the Chalcedo-
nian position disingenuously insinuate that it leaves the duality of natures
unresolved; the opposite is true: precisely by insisting on a duality of uni-
versal natures (as distinct from individuals) the problem of “two Christs”
is avoided.
We have already seen that in spite of its seeming congruity with Gregory
of Nyssa’s argument, the position of these Chalcedonians represented a
break with the “classical theory” insofar as they elided its concrete aspect
and reduced community of being to the sharing of generic properties. I now
want to take this argument one step further: not only has traditional schol-
arship been wrong to assert fundamental continuity between the classical
theory and later Chalcedonians; it has also been mistaken, or at least one
sided, in positing a stark contrast between the Cappadocian view and the
philosophical theology of the later Miaphysites. Rather, both sides were
faced with the incompatibility between the classical theory and the tech-
nical needs of Christology. Both camps therefore sought to adapt it, but
also retained as much of it as they could. For the Chalcedonians this meant
giving up on the concrete aspect of the classical theory. What can be said
about their Miaphysite opponents?

32. Anastasius I Antiochenus, Oratio III, 54, 15–18, Sakkos. Cf. G. Weiss, Studia Anastasiana I:
Studien zum Leben, zu den Schriten und zur Theologie des Patriarchen Anastasius I von Antiochien
(559–598), München: Institut für Byzantinistik und neugriechische Philologie der Universi-
tät 1965, 200–202.

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Johannes Zachhuber

At the beginning of the second part (“second speech”) of his major po-
lemical work against John the Grammarian, Severus of Antioch gives a thor-
ough and diferentiated account of how he conceived of the theoretical
foundations of their debate.33 At irst sight, this text conirms the suspi-
cion that his thought marks a radical departure from Cappadocian prin-
ciples because Severus starts from the assertion, supported by the authority
of Athanasius, that ousia and hypostasis ultimately mean the same, namely
being. Being, he argues, is one and ultimately grounded in God who, ac-
cording to Exodus 3, 14, is being itself. Both terms can be traced back to
this most fundamental notion and must not, therefore, be separated from
each other.34 Later in the same passage, Severus refers to the distinction
between ousia and hypostasis, but Lebon, in his classical study on the subject,
has dismissed this reference as a mere concession to the prevailing ortho-
doxy of the time.35 Such an assessment, however, fails to take into account
the complexities of the issue. As we have seen, the classical theory only dis-
tinguished between the two terms in its “abstract” component. Insofar as it
also embraced the principle that universal natures only exist in concrete hy-
postases, it indeed all but identiied ousia and hypostasis. Prestige therefore
was not entirely wrong when, in his sharp criticism of neo-Chalcedonian
theology, he essentially took Severus’ view, asserting that for the Cappado-
cians ousia and hypostasis nearly meant the same thing.36 For Severus, the
basic unity of ousia and hypostasis is a premise without which their dis-
tinction by authors such as Basil and Gregory of Nyssa cannot properly be
understood.
Being is one, Severus argues, but it can be looked at in two dimensions –
as concretely existing individual being and as the universal that encom-
passes and includes all individuals.37 If therefore ousia and hypostasis are to

33. Severus of Antioch, Contra impium grammaticum II, 1–2, 43–55, Lebon.
34. Severus of Antioch, Contra impium grammaticum II 1, 44f., Lebon. He refers to Athanasius,
Ep. ad Afros episcopos, PG 26, 1036; cf. also Contra impium grammaticum II 3, 56, Lebon.
35. This seems to be Lebon’s view: “La christologie…”, 455.
36. G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought, London: SPCK 1964, 271: “It is grossly untrue to
airm that theologians had employed ousia in the sense of species. The writer would
have been nearer the mark if he had said that ousia and hypostasis were synonymous”.
37. Severus of Antioch, Contra impium grammaticum II 1, 45, Lebon: Igitus, quoad hoc quidem
communio inter substantiam et hypostasim et existentiam [ὕπαρξις] habetur, quoad aliud
autem magna est longinquitas et distantia atque diferentia. Nam substantia quidem
etiam signiicativa est generis et notionis comprehendentis multas species; hypostasis
autem limitatio quaedam est signiicativa unius formae, id est personae, cum ad ho-

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 Christology after Chalcedon and the Transformation…

be distinguished, this is not because the individual person is not an ousia –

Peter evidently is a human being! – but because it makes sense to diferen-
tiate between the way being subsists and is seen in its individual instanti-
ations, and the way it is seen in their totality. For this duality of perspect-
ive, as it were, Severus adduces scriptural references to “man” (ἄνθρωπος)
in the singular indicating humankind in its entirety (e.g. Gen. 9, 6),38 while
on the other hand citing biblical texts in which individual properties are
added to the generic name to identify the individual person.
Severus’ relationship to the classical theory, then, is no less ambivalent
than that of his Chalcedonian opponents. In many ways, the Cappadocian
view forms the background of his own argument. While his Chalcedonian
opponents reconstruct the classical theory from its conceptual (and thus
abstract) side and for this reason emphasise the distinction between univer-
sal and particular, Severus starts from its concrete side according to which,
as we have seen, physis is the totality of the individuals, and the latter are
the one and only way universal being ever exists.39
Judged from this vantage point, the Chalcedonian assumption of two
natures in one hypostasis must indeed appear a monstrosity. Severus’ ex-
tensive references to the etymological and biblical justiications for the use
of ousia, physis, and hypostasis in theology would seem to suggest that, ac-
cording to him, the transformation of the former pair into the notion of
an abstract essence would cast the shadow of doubt over the whole project
of their adoption by Christian theology. “No nature without a hypostasis”
(οὐκ ἔστιν φύσις ἀνυπόστατος) therefore became the rallying cry of Severus’
followers.40 It is important to realise that in this they felt perfectly justiied
by the classical theory.
Yet if Severus’s position is not as alien from the classical theory as many
scholars seem to think, this is not, of course, to say that he simply accepted
the Cappadocian model. Concerned as he was with the Christological prob-
lem, he could not do that. It was all very well to accuse his Chalcedonian
opponents of teaching an Incarnation of the whole Trinity in the whole of

mogenea secundum proprietatem communionem non habet et distinctio charactere

subiectum includit. Cf. for the wording [Basil], Ep. 38, 2, 11–16, vol. I, 81f., Courtonne.
38. Severus of Antioch, Contra impium grammaticum II 1, 45, Lebon.
39. It is therefore true that in a sense for Severus physis and hypostasis mean the same thing,
but this is less mysterious than Lebon and others have thought (cf. Lebon, “La christolo-
gie…’, 465). After all, the same individual is both “man” and “Peter”!
40. References for this motto in U. M. Lang, John Philoponus…, 63.

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Johannes Zachhuber

humanity, but Severus must have been aware that the problem ultimately
lay with the classical theory itself. There is no reason to doubt that he be-
lieved his innovative conceptual distinction, the introduction of particular
natures, was merely an adaptation of the classical theory to the needs of
Christology. After all, it seemed designed to specify what was implicit in
Gregory of Nyssa already, that universal nature subsisted only in particu-
lars. To say, then, that nature insofar as it was seen in one particular could
be distinguished from nature insofar as it was seen in all particulars might
appear as a mere terminological and conceptual clariication. In reality,
however, this modiication of the classical view was not at all innocent.
The weak point in Severus’ argument was perceived already by his dir-
ect opponent, John of Caesarea (“the Grammarian”). John responded to the
charge that without individual natures the Incarnation could not be concep-
tualised with the following riposte:
For they [i.e. the opponents, speciically Severus] mean to subject the
substance of the Godhead to division so that one of its parts appears
in the Father, another part in the Son and another in the Holy Spirit
so that the properties of divinity are seen in each of the hypostases in
part rather than [whole] in all of them.41

The Grammarian does not make the ultimate consequence of his charge ex-
plicit, but it seems evident that what emerges here is the spectre of trithe-
ism. Is not, John insinuates, the mention of individual natures tantamount
to denying the actual unity of universal nature? He clearly has a point.
Gregory of Nyssa had emphatically rejected the theory of individual or par-
ticular natures, arguing they were precisely what he meant by hypostasis.42
For Gregory, the possibility of maintaining realism rested on his construc-
tion according to which particulars are in essence the same; they are noth-
ing but their nature insofar as it subsists. If Severus now insisted there were
individual natures as well, he was either introducing a mere terminological
innovation or he believed that those individual natures were a third cat-
egory in addition to, or better in between, universal nature and individual
41. Putant enim [sc. adversarii, i.e. Severus] divinitatis substantiam divisioni subiacere eius-
que partem quidem in Patre, partem autem in Filio, partem autem in Spiritu sancto ap-
parere, ita ut unaquaeque ex hypoastasibus in parte, non autem in omnibus iis, quae di-
vinitatis propria sunt, concipiatur: John of Caesarea (the Grammarian), Apologia Concilii
Chalcedonensis 14, 8, 76–80, Richard. Cf. A. Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, II/2,
56–63.
42. Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Graecos, GNO III/1, 23, 4–13.

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hypostases. Yet if this meant universal nature was itself modiied in the
process of individuation, this would jettison the very realism that had en-
abled the classical theory to underwrite the trinitarian settlement of the
late fourth century.43
Severus had indeed not been clear about the relationship he envisaged
between individual and universal nature. His followers, however, found it
diicult to escape from the vicious alternative his proposal seemed to pose:
either they would concede that individual nature was nothing other than
a diferent name for hypostasis, in which case the Miaphysite argument (a
single hypostasis requiring a single nature) was tautological; or they had
to accept that Severus’ use of individual natures implied that the nature
once individuated was no longer common. The latter interpretation would
be able to explain how in the Incarnation God, “one of the holy Trinity” as
a famous slogan had it, became man without this entailing the unwanted
consequence that all three Persons became incarnate. Yet it would seem
diicult, to say the least, to uphold such a theory without at the same time
denying the realistic universal Gregory of Nyssa had stipulated to escape
from the charge of tritheism.
Given this unattractive alternative, it is not too surprising that within
the Miaphysite community the Trinity once again became a controversial
topic of debate. So-called tritheists maintained that it was admissible to
speak of “three natures” and “three substances” with regard to God insofar
as any of the three members of the Trinity could be called (and had been
called by the Fathers) “a substance” and “a nature.”44 For most of them, it is
diicult or impossible, due to the dearth of sources, to know how precisely
they understood these claims or how they justiied them. This is diferent
only, and only to some extent, for the most prominent advocate of tritheism,
John Philoponus.
Philoponus, in a way, marks one endpoint of the development this
chapter seeks to establish.45 He certainly exempliies the notion that Chris-
43. I leave to one side here the interesting question of whether the fact that Severus tends to
refer to the relation between genus and species for ousia and hypostasis is of any relevance
(cf. Severus, Contra impium grammaticum II 1, 45, Lebon; the full quotation is given above
at n. 37). It was generally acknowledged that the genus was modiied by the species (cf.
A. C. Lloyd, The Anatomy of Neoplatonism, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1990, 76–78). Philopo-
nus in his tritheistic fragments seems to emphasise the genus-species relationship as the
paradigm for the Trinity (cf. On theology, fr. 13).
44. Monophysite Texts of the Sixth Century, ed. A. van Roey, P. Allen, Leuven: Peeters 1994, 127.
45. On Philoponus cf. U. M. Lang, John Philoponus…; Ch. Erismann, “The Trinity…”.

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Johannes Zachhuber

tian thought led to philosophical ideas that were incompatible with the
earlier Greek tradition. He is well known for his cosmological arguments
deployed against the major representative of pagan Neoplatonism, Proclus,
and ultimately against Aristotle himself. Philoponus’ ideas, consciously
based on a Christian foundation, were eagerly picked up by Islamic as well as
early modern thinkers. Most of them, arguably, follow from theistic prin-
ciples and the speciic character of the Christian doctrine of creation. Is
there, in addition, evidence that his particular stance in the Christological
debate shaped his Christian philosophy?
His theory of the universal, which he defends extensively in his theolo-
gical works, is largely indistinguishable from the mainstream Neoplatonic
theory known to us from commentaries on Aristotle’s Organon. Philoponus
then, one might say, was the irst consciously to apply a philosophical the-
ory to arbitrate in a theological controversy, an attitude altogether alien
to earlier generations of theologians.46 Yet even if it is granted that the
philosophical notions underwriting Philoponus’ theological stance can be
traced back to the Aristotelian commentaries he authored as a young man,
his willingness to use them in doctrinal debates sets him apart from his Neo-
platonist peers who consistently upheld Porphyry’s principle according to
which Aristotle’s philosophy – and the logical writings in particular – only
applied to sensible reality.47 By contrast, Christian authors from the time
of Basil of Caesarea had found it unexceptionable to use principles culled
from the Organon for the clariication of doctrine. In this practice they had,
of course, been eclectic; in fact, in some ways the “classical theory” can
be described as a selective reception of Aristotelian logic in Neoplatonic in-
terpretation.48 Thus far, Philoponus is in continuity with a time-honoured
Christian tradition.
With Severus and his followers, Philoponus considered the central task
of Christology that of being able unambiguously to express that it was the
Son who had become incarnate; in this sense he accentuated the traditional
μία φύσις-formula by speaking of the “one incarnate nature of God the

46. This is why his major Christological treatise is called Arbiter – a writing addressed to the
Emperor Justinian in the run-up to the council of 553 with the express advertisement that
using philosophy was key to the solution of the doctrinal impasse. Cf. U. M. Lang, John
Philoponus…, 42–47.
47. Cf. Ch. Evangeliou, Aristotle’s Categories and Porphyry, Leiden: Brill 1988, esp. 9–10.
48. J. Zachhuber, Human Nature…, esp. 79–93.

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Logos.”49 He rejected the Chalcedonians’ insistence on universal natures

in the Incarnation with the same arguments we have encountered before.
Uwe Michael Lang summarises Philoponus’ doctrinal reasoning as follows:
The common nature of the divinity that is recognised in the Trinity
has not become incarnate, otherwise we would predicate the Incarn-
ation also of the Father and the Holy Spirit. Nor has the common in-
telligible content of human nature been united with God the Logos,
otherwise the whole human race before and after the advent of the
Logos would have been united to him.50

For Philoponus, this problem was identical or at least very similar to a well-
known logical diiculty: we can say that a man dies, and yet this does
not mean that human nature in its entirety dies. To resolve this, it was
convenient to allow particular substances; once instantiated in the partic-
ular, human nature is no longer common to all, but modiied by individual
properties and therefore this or that person’s human nature. So if Peter
falls ill or gets married, this concerns his humanity, but not Paul’s. In
fact, this was more or less the standard view among the Aristotelian com-
mentators, and Philoponus certainly subscribes to it in his philosophical
works.51 It is on the basis of this very theory that he subsequently sugges-
ted far-reaching and radical solutions to the central doctrinal problems of
the Christian faith.
Philoponus irst of all asserts that natures cannot exist apart from indi-
viduals.52 This, as we have seen, is a restatement of Severus’ position with
perfectly traditional, Cappadocian credentials. John, however, on the basis
of his philosophical considerations moves one decisive step further, clearly
and unequivocally asserting that the nature is one (and thus truly “univer-
sal”) only when abstracted from the many because in them it is diferent
with each:
Now, this common nature of man, in which no one difers from any
other, when it is realised in any one of the individuals, then is partic-
ular to that one and is not common to any other individual […]. Thus
that rational animal that is in me is common to no other animal.53
49. John Philoponus, Arbiter 7 = John of Damascus, De haeresibus 83 addit., 52, 86–53, 87, Kotter.
50. U. M. Lang, John Philoponus…, 62.
51. John Philoponus, Arbiter 7 = John of Damascus, De haeresibus 83 addit., 52, 55–65, Kotter.
52. John Philoponus, Arbiter 7 = John of Damascus, De haeresibus 83 addit., 51, 46–48, Kotter.
53. John Philoponus, Arbiter 7 = John of Damascus, de haeresibus 83 addit., 52, 52–55, Kotter;
English Text: Ch. Erismann, “The Trinity…”, 289f.

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We can see how Philoponus thought this solved the Christological problem
and at the same time demonstrated that there could only be one nature in
the saviour. In the Logos, God truly became human, but this did not imply
that the whole Trinity became incarnate because it was, as it were, only
Christ’s “own” divinity that was the subject of the Incarnation. The same
was true on the human side as well, and so Jesus was fully man without the
need to predicate the Incarnation of the entire human race.
What, however, did this mean for universal nature? If this was another
ontological reality, existing in addition to, and on top of, its particularised
instantiations, the explanatory value of Philoponus’ theory was once again
lost. For if, in this case, the Incarnation, could not be predicated of uni-
versal nature, this would mean that God had not truly and fully become
human. But if the Incarnation was predicated of universal divine nature,
Philoponus had not achieved anything because it was, once again, unclear
how Patripassianism could be avoided. Philoponus therefore opted for an
alternative: he denied that universal nature as shared was an ontological
reality. It was real as individualised but universal only as abstracted from
its individual instantiations.
This is a view frequently found in the Aristotelian commentators and
usually justiied by Aristotle’s famous line in De anima I (402b 7) that “the
universal animal was either nothing or posterior,” a passage Philoponus
himself was evidently fond of. Yet nothing in this tradition can explain
the radical consequences he drew from this philosophical theory. In or-
der for Christ to be properly individual, Philoponus was willing to jettison
the unity of God as resting in the single substance (mia ousia) taught by the
Nicene Fathers:
For what should the one nature of the divinity be if not the common
intelligible content of the divine nature seen on its own and separated
in the conception (τῇ ἐπινοίᾳ) of the property of each hypostasis?54
This theory has earned Philoponus his reputation of being a tritheist. It
is not crucial for the present purpose to assess the fairness of this charge.
More important is the recognition that, on this point, the Alexandrine
stands in radical antagonism to the classical theory of the Cappadocians.
Gregory of Nyssa’s undivided in re universal is replaced by a conceptual post
rem universal that abstracts from in re forms modiied in each individual and
54. John Philoponus, Arbiter 7 = John of Damascus, de haeresibus 83 addit., 52, 72–73, Kotter;
English Text: U. M. Lang, John Philoponus…, 62.

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thus particular to them. Individuation, therefore, can no longer be under-

stood as the hypostatisation of a universal, which at the same time remains
one and whole, but crucially involves individuating properties functioning
more or less exactly like speciic diferences at the level of genera. Individu-
als, inally, are no longer mere hypostases of one common ousia, but become
particular substances whose being rests at least partly in themselves.
At the same time, it would be wrong to reduce Philoponus’ theory to
an alternative model intended to supersede and replace the Cappadocian
one. While it is likely that he felt some professional contempt for the am-
ateurish philosophy of fourth century Fathers,55 he is not simply detached
from the earlier Patristic tradition. He accepts their fundamental premiss
that logical principles can be applied to doctrine and thus to God, considers
nature as immanent, and subscribes to the irreducible complementarity of
nature and hypostasis. Even the principle that nature is only known by and
through individuals is by no means a departure from the Cappadocians. It is,
really, in one regard only that his theory reverses the one Gregory of Nyssa
had ofered. For the latter, nature is one-in-many, a reality whose unity ap-
pears no less distinctly when encountered in its individual instances. On
the contrary, it was the empirical study of the physical world, which for
Gregory revealed behind its plurality a deeper ontological unity in a way
that, perhaps, ultimately even threatened to obliterate the particular.56
For Philoponus, on the other hand, the fact that nature appears only in
the particular turns the empirical world into a mass of individuals whose
unity becomes an abstract postulate sprung from mental activity. What is
more, this plurality is no longer grounded in the absolute unity of a single,
metaphysical source of being, but persists even at the level of deity. While
the fragmentary remains of John’s writings makes it diicult to gauge the
extent of his metaphysical pluralism, it is evident that the emphasis on true
individuality required by Christology opened the door to novel and unpre-
cedented metaphysical options.

55. Cf. his fragments De resurrectione as cited in: L. Wickham, “John Philoponus and Gregory
of Nyssa’s Teaching on Resurrection: A Brief Note”, in: Studien zu Gregor von Nyssa und der
christlichen Spätantike, eds. H. Drobner, C. Klock, Leiden: Brill 1990, 205–210: 206.
56. Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, De anima et resurrectione, PG 46, 25A–29B and J. Zachhuber, “Die See-
le als Dynamis bei Gregor von Nyssa: Überlegungen zur Schrift ‘De Anima et Resurrec-
tione’”, in: Patristik und Resilienz: Frühchristliche Einsichten in die Seelenkraft, eds. C. Sedmak,
M. Bogaczyk-Vormayr, Berlin: Akadmie Verlag 2012, 211–231.

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6. The Chalcedonian solution: introduction

. of the concept of an anhypostatic nature

On the Miaphysite side of the debate, then, Christology led to a new

form of radical particularism. It remains to be seen what the philosoph-
ical consequences of the same debate were among the Chalcedonian theolo-
gians. Throughout the sixth century, as we have seen, the major represent-
atives of this tradition simply refused to accept there was a problem with
the classical theory. From the seventh century, however, things begin to
change. The result of that change is the view that Christ’s single hypostasis
is his divine Person within which his humanity exists without a hypostasis
of its own (anhypostaton).57 Given that the traditional sense of the term an-
hypostatos was that something was non-existent, it is understandable that
authors felt somewhat uneasy using this particular term. Evidently, their
intention was not to deny that Christ’s humanity “was there.” What they
asserted, however, was in its own way no less radical: that this nature exis-
ted without being a separate hypostasis. In a way, of course, this had been
the Chalcedonian position right from the beginning insofar as the Council’s
formulation had to be defended against the charge that alongside the two
natures it also mandated two hypostases. Yet something like a viable ex-
planation for this anomalous assumption which, moreover, is incompatible
with the classical theory, did not emerge until much later.
In the present context the details of the doctrinal debate are less im-
portant than their philosophical underpinnings. I hope to show that, while
very diferent from the principles we found in John Philoponus, they too
move decisively beyond not only the classical theory but also, ultimately,
the frame provided by ancient metaphysics more generally. Let me begin
by considering the relationship between this new view and the classical
theory of the Cappadocians. The latter had held in a (tensional) unity two
assumptions: (1) that the universal is the concrete whole consisting of hypo-
static individuals and (2) that universal and particular can be distinguished
by means of shared and individual properties. We have seen, further, that
Chalcedonian Christology early on led to an elision of the concrete univer-
sal: the so-called “double homoousion” in efect reduced universal nature
to an abstract essence in which any number of individuals can participate.

57. For a full account of the emergence of this doctrine see now B. Glede, The Development….

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 Christology after Chalcedon and the Transformation…

The logical next step on this way, then, is the elision also of the concrete
individual.
This occurs in the concept of an “individual nature” that becomes in-
creasingly accepted by Chalcedonian authors from the seventh century on-
wards and is found in classical form in John of Damascus. At irst sight, it
might appear as if its emergence signiies that these theologians had inally
given in to the remorseless hammering of their doctrinal opponents who
had for centuries demanded that particular natures had to be recognised in
order to make sense of Christology. However, I believe that Richard Cross
was right to argue for a diference between the two.58 To put it briely, the
individual nature to be found in Leontius of Jerusalem and John of Damas-
cus is not so much an individualised universal (as it is found in Peripatetic
authors from the time of Alexander of Aphrodisias59 ), but an abstracted no-
tion of a complete individual. In other words, it is the notion of a partic-
ular, the sum total of universal and particular properties, but consciously
detached from that person’s actual existence.
We can see the ingenuity of this, as far as I can see absolutely novel,
philosophical concept by considering it relative to the doctrinal need it
was meant to serve. Christ, we are to think, was fully human (that is, not
merely possessing the properties of human nature but also those of an in-
dividual: being Jewish, a carpenter, of a certain age, with facial and other
physical features etc.), but there was no human “hypostasis” correspond-
ing to this. Now we may say that this was a rather rare instance; on the
principles of Christian doctrine, it was, in fact, a unique case. Yet the philo-
sophical nature of doctrinal debate meant that it could only be defended
with the help of a generalised theory, and the participants in this doctrinal
debate are fully conscious of this principle. So we ind Leontius of Jerusalem
appealing to the example of people who are dead or whom we only know
from biblical stories to press the point that we can have the full concept of
an individual without connecting them with actual, hypostatic existence.60
The concept of an individual nature, I believe, provides a real solution
for the philosophical problems that had arisen when the “classical theory”
had been confronted with Christology. But this solution, much as its sibling

58. R. Cross, “Individual Natures…”, 250–253.

59. This is what Simplicius in a famous passage calls the universal “in the many” (ἐν τοῖς
πολλοῖς): In Categorias Commentaria, 83, 12–14, Kalbleisch.
60. Leontius of Jerusalem, Contra Nestorianos II 19, PG 86, 1580AB.

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on the Miaphysite side, comes at a price. In order to explain how a fully in-
dividualised human being could exist without a hypostasis of its own, the
Chalcedonian theologians come up with two ontological innovations: irst,
they introduce the concepts of essence and existence into philosophical
thought. This distinction, which later becomes so fundamental in medi-
eval thought, had no place in ancient philosophy nor indeed in the classical
theory inaugurated by the Cappadocians. In Basil and Gregory, hypostasis
meant the concrete realisation of a universal nature; in John of Damascus
it only means existence pure and simple. Ousia and physis, consequently,
which in Gregory of Nyssa could not be conceived independently of their
concrete existence in particulars, lose any such necessary attachment to
their hypostatic realisation. These two new concepts, secondly, are treated
in strict separation from each other. The later Chalcedonians detach being
from existence making it thus abstract both on the universal and on the
particular level. Their ontology is concerned with essences, we might say,
whose actual existence is contingent.
This is, I think, as complete a break from the Cappadocian “classical the-
ory” as Philoponus’ particularism. While Basil and Gregory often speak ab-
stractly of an individual’s properties, this for them was just another way of
speaking about that individual’s concrete, hypostatic existence as one in-
stantiation of an equally concrete species. Being for them was one, even
though it could be conceived from diferent perspectives and, therefore,
had to be described in more than one way. Leontius of Jerusalem and John
of Damascus, by contrast, operate with a duality of being and existence.
While there is no trace yet in them, as far as I have found, of the later idea
that in God essence and existence are, uniquely, identical and that, there-
fore, he exists of necessity, it is now only a small step to this line of argu-
mentation.

Conclusion: the rise of Christian theology

and the end of ancient metaphysics
In this chapter, two major theories have been described as emerging
in the process of post-Chalcedonian Christological debate. Both theories
ultimately have the same starting point: they go back to the Cappadocian
theologians of the late fourth century and their uniquely inluential Chris-
tian philosophy. This “classical theory,” however, could not account for
the speciic doctrinal requirements posed by Christology and was therefore

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radically modiied. While neither of the two views speciically examined in

my paper, gave up on all the tenets that had made up the classical theory,
they both resulted in philosophies that were fundamentally incompatible
with it, albeit in diferent ways: the Miaphysite tradition, most radically
developed in John Philoponus, preserves the notion that being only exists
in concrete individuals but gives up on an ontologically real universal and
thus creates an extreme form of particularism. The Chalcedonian tradition,
on the other hand, unties being (ousia) from existence (hypostasis) and thus,
in a diferent way, gives up on ontological realism as well.
Yet with this eclipse of realism, the two schools emerging from the
Christological controversy not only modiied the classical theory of earlier
Christian thought, but also took leave of the older Greek ontological tra-
dition. This tradition had been sustained by a vision of universal nature
whose reality was never really in doubt. It therefore, in spite of its unique
fruitfulness had overall little to say about the individual nor indeed about
contingency. From a philosophical point of view, the rise of Christian theo-
logy signiied the end of this certainty: earthly existence became contin-
gent and ultimately rooted in the creative will and power of God, not the
continuity of nature. At the same time, individual existence became a fo-
cal point of intellectual engagement. While the need to conceptualise the
unique personality of the God-man was not the only context within which
this happened – one could also, for example, think of the doctrine of the re-
surrection – it was not just any context: the Church’s decision to turn Chris-
tology into formal dogma may have been the direct cause of the unique in-
tensity of these debates, but this decision itself is ultimately rooted in the
awareness that faith in Jesus Christ is at the very heart of Christianity and
its conceptualisation, therefore, at the centre of Christian theology.

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