How the Church Responded to Governmental Intrusion in the Fifth Century
Over the past year and more, a common refrain of churches who willingly and quickly obeyed governmental shutdowns was that they were obliged to keep the Fourth Commandment and remember St. Paul’s admonition that the governmental power is the servant of God to do you good and “to execute wrath upon him that does evil” (Romans 13:4). Jesus himself, they remind us, said we should render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s (St. Mark 12:17). Leaving aside that fact that Biblically speaking the power of the government is restricted to those matters which are legitimately within the government’s domain, it can also be helpful to learn from our ancestors, our fathers in the faith, who had to deal with such matters in the past. As it happens, the church of the fifth century can be our teacher.
The Council of Chalcedon of AD 451 was one of the church’s ecumenical councils, having been given high status and honor in the church around the world to this day for that very reason. At that council, two heretics were condemned for their teachings against the truths of who Jesus is: one Person of the Godhead, with two natures, divine and human. Nestorius had been teaching that the two natures of Jesus were essentially two persons. The Council rejected this with clear and incisive language, saying such things as declaring Mary to be the Mother of God, which Nestorius could not say, so he was condemned. On the other side was Eutyches, who taught that Jesus did not have two natures, but only one, a mixture of the divine and the human. This was also rejected and condemned as false and contrary to the catholic (i.e. universal Christian) faith.
But the followers of Eutyches did not disappear. Instead, they morphed into a movement called Monophysitism, holding that Jesus has only one nature. These began to take over churches around the empire. Within thirty years, a large number of churches and bishops had become openly Monophysite. There were in those days five centers of Christendom (called Sees or Archbishoprics): Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria. Of these, three—Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem—had become Monophysite. Over 500 bishops were open followers of Eutyches.
When Zeno became emperor in 477, he had great reason to want to heal the breach in his empire. On the one hand he had many friends who were Monophysites; on the other, he had come to power as a champion of the catholics, because he had succeeded in unseating Basiliscus the protector of the Monophysites. Being pulled himself in both directions, as well as wanting to restore peace, he crafted the notorious “Henotikon” (plan of union). It can be seen as a deft and skillful document from a political point of view, but was in fact dreadful from a theological vantage point. The Henotikon reaffirmed Chalcedon’s condemnations of Nestorius and Eutyches, and declared that Jesus is “is con-substantial with the Father in respect of the Godhead, and con-substantial with ourselves as respects the manhood; that He, having descended, and become incarnate of the Holy Spirit and Mary, the Virgin and Mother of God, is one (uno est) and not two; For we affirm that both his miracles, and the sufferings which he voluntarily endured in the flesh, are those of one . . .”
Ah, doesn’t that sound wonderful? So it might seem at first, enough to satisfy both sides. But Eutyches and Nestorius were already dead, and closer inspection of the document leaves one wondering, one what? Person or nature? The document doesn’t say, which is, of course, intentional. While political compromises are often desirable, theological ones can’t be. Christian confessions must be precisely crafted, especially with regard to the very errors they address. Ever since those days, bad theology has often arisen from intentionally imprecise language precisely when it is needed. One thinks, for example, of the altered Augsburg Confession of the sixteenth century, or even more recently the Lutheran-Roman Catholic agreement in the twentieth century on the question of grace.
But Acacius the Archbishop of Constantinople was finally pressured into accepting the document after vacillating over it for a few years, whereupon Pope Felix II, to his credit, being utterly unwilling to accept the Henotikon, sent two legates to Constantinople to call Acacius to come to Rome to explain himself. Acacius refused, and Felix excommunicated him, setting in motion the so-called Acacian Schism which lasted until 518.
So much for Zeno’s brilliance.
When Anastasius succeeded Zeno in 491, he kept the Henotikon’s policy in place, and again hoped to heal the breach. But when in 492 Gelasius became Pope, he, like his own predecessor Felix, wanted nothing to do with the Henotikon, and in 494 he wrote his famous letter (the ad Anastasium) to the emperor making this clear. In fact, I detect a bit of mockery against the Henotikon in his letter, which declares, “There are two (duo sunt), august Emperor, by which this world is chiefly ruled, namely, the sacred authority of the priests and the royal power,” but the priestly power is the greater. Here is a subtle and derogatory reference to the intentional vagary of the Henotikon’s use of the term “one,” but nonetheless in this case the duo sunt, unlike the Henotikon’s uno est, is utterly clear about what these two are: powers; and in any case the simple message of ad Anastasium to the emperor is clear: the Henotikon is dreadfully poor theology and will not be tolerated; you, dear Emperor (he condescendingly calls him “my son”) need to stay out of the Church’s business.
Church leaders in our day will do well to take a lesson from the likes of Felix and Gelasius, and be encouraged speak to the government (and to our own people!) with the same kind of clear and unambiguous language. As we look back at the coronavirus and its draconian lockdowns, pastors and synod officials alike must remember first that the civil government has no business telling churches how to run their affairs: whether to open their doors, or how to operate, or whether to wear masks, or whether to sing aloud, or any such thing. The government has no divine authority over churchly matters. If a plague lurks, it is always going to be the tendency of governmental powers to insert themselves where they don’t belong. And they don’t belong in the pew. Except, if they desire, as respectful listeners, sons of the church.
For additional reading of my sources, see Britannica online s.v. Henotikon (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Henotikon); New Advent online s.v. Henotikon (https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07218b.htm); New World Encyclopedia online s.v. Henotikon (https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Henotikon); Wikipedia s.v. Henotikon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henotikon).
The original text of the Henotikon is in Migne’s Patrologia Latinae (Ep. 8, PL 59:41–47; Ep. 12v).