Monophysitism
Christological doctrine which emphasizes the one holy, divine aspect and nature of Christ
Monophysitism ( mə-NOF-ih-seye-tih-zəm) or monophysism ( mə-NOF-ih-zih-zəm; from Greek μόνος monos, "solitary" and φύσις physis, "nature") is a Christological doctrine that states that there was only one nature—the divine—in the person of Jesus Christ, who was the incarnated Word. It is rejected as heretical by the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Anglicanism, Lutheranism, Reformed Christianity (Calvinist), and all mainstream Protestant denominations, which hold to the dyophysitism of the 451 Council of Chalcedon—as well by Oriental Orthodoxy, which holds to miaphysitism.
Background
The First Council of Nicaea (325) declared that Christ was both divine (homoousios, consubstantial, of one being or essence, with the Father) and human (was incarnate and became man). In the fifth century a heated controversy arose between the sees and theological schools of Antioch and Alexandria about how divinity and humanity existed in Christ, with the former stressing the humanity, the latter the divinity of Christ. Cyril of Alexandria succeeded in having Nestorius, a prominent exponent of the Antiochian school, condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 431, and insisted on the formula "one physis of the incarnate Word", claiming that any formula that spoke of two physeis represented Nestorianism. Some taught that in Christ the human nature was completely absorbed by the divine, leaving only a divine nature. In 451, the Council of Chalcedon, on the basis of Pope Leo the Great's 449 declaration, defined that in Christ there were two natures united in one person.
Those who insisted on the "one physis" formula were referred to as monophysites (), while those who accepted the "two natures" definition were called dyophysites, a term also applied to followers of Nestorianism.
Groups called monophysite
The forms of monophysism were numerous, and included the following:
Acephali were monophysites who in 482 broke away from Peter III of Alexandria who made an agreement with Acacius of Constantinople, sanctioned by Emperor Zeno with his Henotikon edict that condemned both Nestorius and Eutyches, as the Council of Chalcedon had done, but ignored that council's decree on the two natures of Christ. They saw this as a betrayal of S. Cyril's use of "mia physis" and refused to be subject to the Chalcedonian Patriarch of Alexandria, preferring to be instead ecclesiastically 'headless' (Latin: acephalī).
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