The following is a book review by Fr. John McGuckin on the new book by Fr. Shenouda Maher. This is quite the read and the first of its kind. This will become an important work and I hope we can all get a copy and digest it and break down everything Fr. Shenouda has to say. If you are an academic, a priest, or someone who simply likes to read this is the book for you. Enjoy.
Fr. Shenouda M. Ishak.
Christology and the Council of Chalcedon. Outskirts Press. Denver Co. 2013,
681pp.
Fr. Ishak has, for many
years past, been one of the world’s leading Coptic theologians in the international
ecumenical dialogue with both the Catholic and Orthodox churches. He is a
familiar and much respected figure in the counsels of the WCC. His studies over
so many years bore fruit in this present work: a magnum opus summing up an immense set of journeys. The study
represents his notes and analyses of a breath-taking array of Miaphysite
theologians as well as learned presentations on why the Oriental family of
churches will not accept the settlements of the Council of Chalcedon (451) and
its doctrine of the two physeis of
Christ running into consilience in the single divine hypostasis. This is no
work that suggests that the refusal of Chalcedon was a result of political or geographical
isolation (arguments that are often found in modern text from historians who
have clearly never read the theologians carefully). The study progresses from
the well-known characters of the Miaphysite tradition-Dioscorus and Severus of
Antioch for example, and goes on in a wonderfully rich manner to outline the
whole topography of the ecclesial tradition of “the Orientals”.
It carefully
distances this from any suspicion of Eutychianism (Monophysitis). The work is
unique and irreplaceable. If I have a critical remark on its undoubted
achievements it would, perhaps, be to say that it is often better in what it
affirms (of its own sensus fidei)
that in what it condemns about that of others. The work gathers together much
previously existing scholarship in handy synoptic form, but it is priceless for
the intimate way it expounds the theologians of the Miaphysite tradition whom
the western text books rarely ever refer to. It opens with a critical attack on
Nestorian and Syrian thought (chapters 1-2) and gives detailed documentary
evidence of the synodical condemnations Nestorianism called down upon itself.
Chapter 3 sets side by side the manner in which the Byzantine synodical
tradition from Chalcedon to the Synod in Trullo (692), and the
Anti-Chalcedonian Miaphysites respectively attack the Nestorian premises
(namely: Peter the Iberian, Timothy Aleuros, Philoxenos, Severus of Antioch,
Jacob of Serug, Theodosios, Theodore, Damian and Benjamin of Alexandria, and
the Armenian Church). There is a close study of the history of the Council of
Ephesus (431) and the Christological significance of the Theotokos title.
Important sections treat the issue of the “one complete
nature and hypostasis” of the word made flesh, which should be required reading
for all concerned with historical Christology. Fr. Ishak’s studies of St. Cyril’s
Eucharistic soteriology and the analysis of the “two natures only in
contemplation” (the gnorizomenin of
Chalcedon) are rare and finely detailed and much too be welcomed. Here is a
theologian who understands the issues of Mono-Energism and Monothelitism, and
how both were important “acts” in the whole Christological process: a
perspective largely missing from most commonly available textbooks of
Christology.
His work makes it clear why these were attempts by Chalcedonian
theologians doomed to failure from the outset if they were hoping to reconcile
the Orientals. The work ends with a series of the Miaphysite theologians and
synods which have condemned the Council of Chalcedon. This is a source of
immense erudition and will be required reading for anyone involved in future
dialogues, and all who wish to understand the great issues involved in the
crisis of expressing the international Christological faith o the Church in the
5th century, which sadly remain to divide us.
Fr. John Anthony
McGuckin.
The following is a link to the Amazon page to Fr. Shenouda's book:
Great, Thanks Bavly for sharing
ReplyDeleteMonophysitis: (n) inflammation of the monophys.
ReplyDelete(cf. your fourth paragraph)
thanks for this review!