Christology Essay Part Ii

While the Alexandrian component of the Chalcedonian settlement focused on Christ's divine nature, and the traditional Antiochene element on his humanity, the Western contribution enabled a coming together of the mutually exclusive and static 'nature' doctrines by its dynamic focus on temporal movement in the different salvation-historical states of the Logos: (his pre-existence as God, his self-emptying as God and man, and his exaltation as God and man made perfect) [Pelikan'74:256-7]

As well as containing a formula of words which provided a neat and adequate account of the inevitability of Christological paradox when considered in the limiting terms of ontological 'natures', The document of the agreement at Chalcedon in 451 cited Cyril's second letter to Nestorius alongside Pope Leo's declaration, giving to each its official sanction [Kelly'77:339].

The exiled and 'heretical' Nestorius recognised much that agreed with his own thought in the Tome of Leo I. Writing on his fate, Nestorius showed a type of saintly virtue noticeably absent in the behaviour of the canonised Saint Cyril of Alexandria: 'It is my earnest desire that even by anathematising me, they may escape from blaspheming God. But as for Nestorius, let him be anathema.'[Young'83:229].

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