Eutyches

Life

Eutyches was born in the late fourth century and for many years served as the head of a monastery in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul). He is said to have led several hundred monks. According to tradition, he was the godfather of the eunuch Chrysaphius, who wielded power at the court of the Eastern Roman emperor Theodosius II, and through this connection he exercised influence at court. In Korean his name is also rendered as "Eutikeseu" or "Yutwikeseu."

In 448 Eusebius, bishop of Dorylaeum, brought charges against his teaching. A synod presided over by Flavian, patriarch of Constantinople, deposed and excommunicated him. Eutyches appealed to Leo I, bishop of Rome, among others, and in 449 Leo refuted his views in a letter to Flavian (commonly called the Tome of Leo). That same year the Second Council of Ephesus, led by Dioscorus, patriarch of Alexandria, restored Eutyches and deposed Flavian. Its opponents called this council the "Robber Synod." After the death of Theodosius II, however, the Council of Chalcedon, convened by Emperor Marcian in 451, condemned Eutyches again, and he was sent into exile. His subsequent activities and the year of his death are uncertain.

Teaching and Controversy

Eutyches vigorously opposed Nestorianism, which he believed divided Christ as though into two persons. At his examination in 448 he confessed that Christ was "of two natures before the union, but after the union one nature." He also long hesitated to accept the statement that Christ's body is consubstantial with ours. His opponents understood this to mean that the human nature was absorbed into the divine and disappeared, and they criticized his position for obscuring Christ's true humanity and verging on Docetism.

In response, the Council of Chalcedon defined Christ as possessing two natures, divine and human, in one person, the two natures existing "without confusion, without change, without division, without separation." This definition subsequently became the standard of Christology for both the Western and Eastern churches.

Influence on the Korean Church

Eutyches had no direct influence on the Korean church. The Chalcedonian Definition that condemned him, however, underlies the Christology accepted by most Korean Protestants. Chapter 8 of the Westminster Confession of Faith, which Presbyterians adopt as a doctrinal standard, confesses that the two natures in Christ are joined in one person "without conversion, composition, or confusion," following the language of Chalcedon. In Korean seminaries and graduate schools of theology, Eutyches is presented alongside Nestorius as one of the two extremes in Christology when church history and the doctrine of the Incarnation are taught.

Assessment

The Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and Protestant churches all accept Chalcedon's judgment that Eutyches' teaching was heresy. Churches that did not accept the Chalcedonian Definition, such as the Coptic, Syriac, and Armenian churches, are often called "Monophysite" churches. These churches, however, do not describe themselves that way. Following Cyril of Alexandria, they speak of a single nature in which divinity and humanity are united without mixture, and they likewise reject Eutyches as a heretic. Leo I judged Eutyches to be rash and unskilled. Some modern scholars regard him less as a sophisticated theologian than as a monk who pushed the language of the anti-Nestorian party too far and who became a symbolic figure amid the conflicts of church politics.