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Edited from a variety of translations (mentioned in the preface) by H. R. Percival
THE ECUMENICAL COUNCILS Resources Online and in Print
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62 Pages
Page 21
In fact Theodore of Mopsuestia was the first to object to it, so far as we know, writing as follows: "Mary bare Jesus, not the Word, for the Word was and remained omnipresent, although from the beginning he dwelt in Jesus in a peculiar manner. Thus Mary is properly the Mother of Christ (Christotocos) but not the mother of God (Theotocos). Only figuratively, per anaphoram, can she be called Theotocos also, because God was in Christ in a remarkable manner. Properly she bare a man, in whom the union with the Word was begun, but was still so little completed, that he was not yet called the Son of God." And in another place he says: "It is madness to say that God is born of the Virgin....Not God, but the temple in which God dwelt, is born of Mary." [251] How far Theodore had departed from the teaching of the Apostolic days may be seen by the following quotations from St. Ignatius. "There is one only physician, of flesh and spirit, generate and ingenerate, God in man, true Life in death, Son of Mary and of God, first passible and then impassible, Jesus Christ our Lord." [252] Further on in the same epistle he says: "For our God, Jesus the Christ, was borne in the womb by Mary etc." [253] With the first of these passages Bp. Lightfoot very aptly compares the following from Melito. "Since he was incorporeal, he fashioned a body for himself of our likeness...he was carried by Mary and clothed by his Father, he trod the earth and he filled the heavens." [254]
Theodore was forced by the exigencies of his position to deny the doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum which had already at that early date come to be well understood, at least so far as practice is concerned.
(Hefele, Hist. of the Councils, Vol. iii., p. 8.)
This doctrine, as is well known is predicating the same properties of the two natures in Christ, not in abstracto (Godhead and manhood), but in concreto (God and man). Christ himself had declared in St. John iii., 16: "God...gave his only begotten Son" (namely, to death), and similarly St. Peter declared (Acts iii., 15): "ye...killed the Prince of Life," when in fact the being given up and being killed is a property (idioma = predicate) of man, not of God (the only begotten, the Prince of Life). In the same way Clement of Rome, for example, spoke of "the sufferings of God" (pathemata Theou) (1 Ad Cor. 2), Ignatius of Antioch (Ad Ephes., c. 1, and Ad Rom., 6) of an haima and pathos Theou, Tatian of a Theos peponthos (Ad Graecos, c. 13); Barnabas teaches (c. 7) that "the Son of God could not suffer except on our behalf...and on our behalf he has brought the vessel of his Spirit as a sacrifice." Similarly Irenaeus (iii., 16, 6) says, "The Only-begotten impassible Word (unigenitus impassibilis) has become passible" (passibilis); and Athanasius, estauromenon einai Theon (Ep. ad Epictet., n. 10, t. j., p. 726. ed. Patav.)
It is, however, to be remarked that the properties of the one nature were never transferred to the other nature in itself, but always to the Person who is at the same time both man and God. Human attributes were not ascribed to the Godhead, but to God, and vice versâ.
For a full treatment of the figure of speech called the communicatio idiomatum the reader is referred to the great works on Theology where it will be found set forth at large, with its restrictions specified and with examples of its use. A brief but interesting note on it will be found in St. John Damascene's famous treatise De Fide Orthodoxa, Book III., iij. (Migne's Pat. Graec., col. 994).
[251] I take this passage as cited by Hefele, Hist. Counc., Vol. III., 9,
[252] Ignat., Ad. Eph., vii.
[253] Ibid. xviij.
[254] Melito, Fragm. 14 (ed. Otto); cit. Lightfoot, Apost. Fath., II., 1, p. 48, n.
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/ecumenical-councils/third.asp?pg=21
