Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

INTRODUCTION 49
words ‘person’ (=prosôpon, in Greek) and ‘subsistent being’ (=
hypostasis), used in the Definition to express the unity of Christ, had
already been used in a Trinitarian context to express the distinctness
of the three members of the Trinity, especially by the Cappadocian
Fathers. The words used in Trinitarian theology to express the unity
of the Godhead—being (=ousia) and nature (=physis)—can also be
employed to express what it is that is dual in Christ: in the
Chalcedonian Definition, physis is thus used and ousia occurs as the
root of the term ‘consubstantial’ (=homoousios). This tendency to
interpret Christological terminology in terms of Trinitarian
terminology, and vice versa, was by no means well-established, or even
commonplace, in the century before Chalcedon, nor can it be claimed
that it is at all likely that the Fathers of Chalcedon clearly intended
any such idea: the events in the wake of Chalcedon suggest rather that
there was a good deal of confusion as to what the decisions of that
council really entailed. But, with hindsight, Chalcedon may be
regarded as at least lending encouragement to the use of a consistent
terminology to be applied in both Christological and Trinitarian
contexts.
Maximus takes this further and seeks to work out a thoroughly
consistent ‘Chalcedonian logic’. He is fond of the four ‘Chalcedonian’
adverbs—asynchytôs, atreptôs, adiairetôs, achôristôs (in the quotation
from the Definition above translated as ‘which undergo no confusion,
no change, no division, no separation’)—as key terms in safeguarding
the integrity of the natural. Confusion, change, division and
separation almost invariably carry a negative connotation with
Maximus: it is in these terms that Maximus describes the effects of
the Fall on human beings and the cosmos, effects that do not alter the
fundamental meaning (logos) of natures, but are to be found in the
way fallen natures act and interact, so that confusion, division and
fragmentation obscure the fundamental reality, disclosed by the logos
of each nature, of what God has created. In his early second letter
(translated below), this tendency is already well-developed. But, more
significantly, he takes over from the Cappadocian Fathers one of their
ways of explaining the difference between subsistent being
(hypostasis) and nature in a Trinitarian context, and uses it much
more widely: in fact, it becomes for him a fundamental metaphysical
distinction. To express what it is that is distinctive about the
subsistent beings of the Godhead the Cappadocians had used the term
‘mode of existence’ (=tropos tês hyparxeôs). This leads Maximus to
suggest that at the level of being, we find natures defined by their
principles, meanings or definitions (all of which can be represented in
Greek by the term logos)—ousia, physis, and logos belong together;
whereas at the level of person we find ‘modes of existence’—hyparxis,