The Condemnation of Pope Honorius E-Book

Dom John Chapman

• Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 98

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Pope Honorius, who served as pope during the 7th century, is infamous for being considered by some a heretic, thereby calling into question the infallibility of the papacy.

Leseprobe

I.The Point of the Difficulty.

Much ink has been spilt in the cause of Pope Honorius. Some writers have been chiefly occupied in defending or assailing the authenticity of the documents, others in attacking or supporting the orthodoxy of Honorius. But the inner sequence of events as described in the following sketch has never been given in all this voluminous literature.

Though it will, I hope, be made clear in these pages that much has been misunderstood or only half understood, yet the work of so many distinguished writers has no inconsiderable value. Certainty has been attained on some points. The authenticity of the documents is now above suspicion. It has been made clear that Honorius’ meaning was far better than his expression, and that his real mind was confused rather than unorthodox.

This is not, however, a very important point, since at the present day no one is likely to teach that Honorius published his famous letters ex cathedra. The real difficulty has been worded with admirable precision by Bishop Gore in his Roman Catholic Claims. He says :

“Once again, whatever strong language may be quoted from a few later Oriental writers on behalf of the Roman See, as from St. Theodore the Studite in the 8th century, nothing can override the evidence of the formal action of the sixth General, Council in 689, when it condemned Honorius the Pope among the Monothelite heretics. ‘With them we anathematize’, says the Council, ‘and cast out of the Catholic Church, Honorius, who was Pope of the elder Rome, because we found that he followed Sergius’ opinion in all respects and confirmed his impious dogmas’. Roman Catholic writers may endeavor to justify the actual language of Honorius, they may protest that the contemporary Pope never intended to assent to his condemnation except for negligence in opposing heresy—we are not concerned at present with these contentions—but no one can possibly, with any show of reason, contend that the insertion of the name of the Pope in a list of formal heretics by an Ecumenical Council does not prove that the Bishops who composed the Council had no, even rudimentary, idea of the papal infallibility”.

As the history of Pope Honorius has been written up till now by Catholic apologists, this indictment is unanswerable. Bishop Gore’s admission with regard to St. Theodore the Studite might have suggested to him that his conclusion was not certain, had not so many Catholic writers made it seem that the Council in condemning Honorius was resisting the Pope of its own day, and that the latter explained away a decision which he was afraid of refusing to confirm.

In reality, as the history will appear from the original documents, there is no difficulty at all. The Pope and the Council were in agreement as to the necessity of condemning Honorius, and they were certainly right in doing so under the circumstances.

It will also be made clear that there was no difference between Rome and the East with regard to the force of papal decisions. We do not of course look for the enunciation of the Vatican decree in set words by Eastern Bishops of the 7th century. But evidence will be sup­plied to enable us to judge the degree of development which the doctrine of papal infallibility had reached in those times, and the whole history will stand out as an interesting and curious page in the history of the evolution of the dogma.

I shall avoid controversy either with Catholics, Gallicans, or Protestants. The facts will best speak for themselves, and I leave the comparison with the views of former writers to be made or not by the reader as he chooses, so as to avoid burdening these pages with tiresome arguments.

2.The Beginnings of the Heresy.

A few words will explain the theological question. Monothelitism bears the same relation to Monophysitism that the Spanish Adoptionism of the next century bears to Nestorianism. Those who embraced it held firmly the doctrine of the Council of Chalcedon that our Lord’s two natures, divine and human, are united in Him without confusion, so that His humanity remains perfect and complete, just as the Adoptionists held firmly the doctrine of the Council of Ephesus that the two natures belong to one divine Person. But the Adoptionists did not see that adoption is not of a nature but of a Person, and therefore they wrongly taught that our Lord in His human nature might be called the adopted Son of God. And, conversely, the Monothelites could not see that activity and will belong to the nature and not to the Person, so that they held Christ to have but one motive power—energy, activity, operation—and one will, whereas in truth there must be a perfect operation and will of each nature. As in the Trinity of three Persons in one Nature there is one operation, ad extra, and one will, so in the two natures of the one Person of Christ there are two operations and two wills—the divine will common to the Son with the Father and the Holy Ghost, and a human will, without which the human nature taken by the Son of God would be incomplete.

The danger and the attractiveness of this wrong argumentation lay in the fact that it went half way to meet the Monophysites. These heretics called the orthodox Nestorians, and declared that they divided Christ in two. The unity of will and operation was placed before the Monophysites as a proof that those who accepted the Council of Chalcedon safeguarded the oneness of the Person of Christ. The expression “one operation” was indeed a surrender of the perfect distinction of the natures, and therefore was not far off from the more moderate Monophysites, who professed simply to follow the doctrine taught by St. Cyril against the Nestorians.

The origin of Monothelitism is thus told by Sergius. The Emperor Heraclius, in a disputation held before him in Armenia in 622, had spoken of “one operation in Christ”, and had later asked Cyrus, Bishop of Lazoe in Phasis, whether this was correct. Cyrus replied that he did not know, and referred the question to Sergius, Patriarch of Constantinople. Sergius was in favor of the expression, and sent him a letter said to have been addressed by the Patriarch Mennas, his predecessor, to Pope Vigilius, in which “one operation” was mentioned. Sergius declared that he intended no absolute decision on the matter. Cyrus, however, was satisfied. About 630 he became Patriarch of Alexandria, one of the strongholds of the Monophysites. These were very much divided among themselves, and Cyrus induced one considerable section of them to be reconciled with the Catholic Church by a sort of compromise, which was nicknamed “the watery union”. The doctrine agreed upon was summed up in nine propositions, which profess to render the teaching of Chalcedon, but express themselves in Monophysite phraseology, borrowed indeed from St. Cyril, but meant in a wrong sense by the heretics. The seventh of these propositions anathematizes all who do not confess that the same one Christ works both the divine and human works by “one theandric operation”. This expresses the main thesis of Monothelitism.

Nothing could be more pleasing to the Emperor and Sergius than such a union, and the latter wrote a joyful letter of congratulation to Cyrus. But the Palestinian monk, Sophronius, was in Alexandria at the time, and he disapproved of the teaching of “one operation” as contrary to the Chalcedonian doctrine. His reputation for sanctity was great, and Cyrus proposed that he should lay his objections before Sergius. Sophronius accordingly proceeded to Constantinople, and so far persuaded Sergius that he withdrew the “one operation” for the sake of peace, and Sophronius promised to say no more. It is evident that Sergius now distrusted this formula, but could not formally withdraw it without imperiling the union of the Alexandrian heretics.

In this dilemma he took the obvious course of laying the whole matter before the Pope.

3.The Letter of Honorius.

His famous letter to Honorius begins by saying that he would desire, were it possible, to bring all his actions day by day to the Pope’s cognizance and receive his advice. He relates the circumstances, how very hard it seemed to destroy the recent joyful union effected by Cyrus, with all its promises of peace, “of those who once would not hear the name of the divine Leo and the Council of Chalcedon, but who now proclaim them in a loud voice in the holy mysteries”. Sophronius, he says, was not able to quote explicit testimonies of the ancients for two operations; but it seemed that the term “one operation” was novel, and he, Sergius, had therefore written to Cyrus to permit neither one nor two operations to be spoken of, when once the union of the Monophysites with the Church had been effected. Sophronius had agreed to this. At the end of the letter Sergius quotes the celebrated words of Pope Leo, Agit enim utraque forma cum alterius communione, which obviously imply two operations; and he seems to have been orthodox enough in meaning, though his expressions are incorrect. He has started from the Chalcedonian doctrine, but has made a sorry conclusion. He does not openly support one will, which he only mentions in connection with the supposititious letter of Mennas to Pope Vigilius, but he thinks “two operations” to be a misleading expression. He concludes:

“We have thought it fitting and also necessary to give an account to your Brotherhood and concordant Blessedness, by the copies which we are sending, of what we have partially related above; and we beg your Holiness to read the whole, and, following its meaning with your God-pleasing and full charity, if there be anything wanting in what has been said, to fill this up with the charity which God has given you; and with your holy syllables and with your desirable assistance, to signify your opinion on the matter”.

The letter of Honorius, in reply, praises Sergius for his circumspection in disapproving the new expression, “one operation”. So far so good. But he goes on to admit one will, because our Lord took to Himself a human nature free from the curse of original sin. The reason given implies that our Lord has a human will, only not also a corrupt lower human will. This is in answer to Sergius, who had argued that if two operations were admitted there would follow two contrary wills. The Pope declares that to teach one operation will seem Eutychian, while to teach two will seem Nestorian. Both expressions are consequently to be avoided.

Honorius is thus logically and theologically as much astray as Sergius, though both are orthodox in intention. It would no doubt be uncharitable to regard either the Pope or the Patriarch as a “private heretic”.

Unfortunately these letters were afterwards treated as if they were definitions of faith. As definitions they are obviously and beyond doubt heretical, for in a definition it is the words that matter.

It is, of course, absurd to regard the letter of Honorius as a definition ex cathedra, as was done by Hefele, Pennacchi and others. It was natural to exaggerate at the time of the Vatican Council, but to­day the decree is better understood. If the letter of Honorius to Sergius is to be ex cathedra, a fortiori all papal encyclicals addressed to the whole Church at the present day must be ex cathedra, quod est absurdum.