Sometime in the late second century a Christian theologian wrote this brief exposition of the true meaning of resurrection. Adopting the form of the didactic epistle, the unknown author addresses his remarks to an individual named Rheginos, who himself is also otherwise unknown. From the contents of the treatise we may infer that the author has been asked to supply a defense for the “advanced” position that resurrection for believers in Christ takes the form of a spiritual transformation, experienced by the intellects of those predestined to be saved, perhaps even in this lifetime. Neither the fleshly body nor its animating soul survives physical death, whereas the spirit-mind of the believer departs this material plane of existence for return to the heavenly realm called “the Fullness” (plērōma).

The Council of Chalcedon affirmed that Leo’s Tome to Flavian of Constantinople was in harmony with the creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople and the conciliar letters of Cyril – but not without controversy. Some bishops criticized three passages in the Tome for emphasizing the duality of natures in Christ, which seemed to them to come alarmingly close to the “Nestorian” tendency to divide the natures in Christ so much that they acted and experienced independently of each other. These objections were eventually resolved at Chalcedon, enabling the bishops to acclaim the Tome as a definition of orthodoxy and to commend it in the Definition of Faith they produced as a “confirmation of right doctrines.” But those opposed to the decisions of Chalcedon continued to regard Leo’s Tome to Flavian as tainted by “Nestorianism.”

Eutyches (ca. 378–454) became a polarizing figure in the post-Cyrillian Christological debates leading up to the Council of Chalcedon in 451. A monk since his youth, Eutyches was eventually ordained a presbyter and around 410 became an archimandrite of a monastery outside the walls of Constantinople. At the Council of Ephesus in 431 he emerged as part of Cyril of Alexandria’s circle of supporters and a fierce opponent of Nestorius. Unexpectedly, however, on November 8, 448, when the Home Synod of Constantinople was in session, presided over by Archbishop Flavian, Bishop Eusebius of Dorylaeum accused Eutyches of heresy. The proceedings against the archimandrite were conducted over the course of seven sessions, concluding with his deposition on November 22. The acts of this synod offer a rare glimpse into the debate over Eutyches, allowing the reader to observe the bishops and Eutyches in action as the former prosecute their case and the latter attempts to thwart their efforts. The acts also are a precious record of the archimandrite’s views, which are difficult to reconstruct because his extant writings are few, short, and theologically sparse.

The surviving body of writings from Augustine includes a large corpus of letters, most from his time as bishop of Hippo in his native North Africa. The letters, which include briefs to as well as from Augustine, cover a remarkable range of topics. Letter 137 is part of a fascinating dossier of letters from around 412 between Augustine and the talented young aristocrat Rufus Antonius Agrypnius Volusianus. Volusian, as we will call him, was the son of the famous Christian patroness Melania the Elder, but not himself a Christian. He did not hesitate to share his doubts about Christian teaching with Augustine, who must have been his senior by at least thirty years. At one particular meeting of young aristocrats, which Augustine mentions in Letter 137, Volusian encountered objections to the Christian doctrine of the incarnation, which he vowed to forward to Augustine for a reply.1 The main issue Volusian notes is the seeming incongruity in the doctrine, which posits that the ruler of heaven was confined in the tiny body of an infant and underwent the ordinary experiences of a human being.

The magnum opus of John of Damascus is The Fount of Knowledge, a trilogy consisting of The Philosophical Chapters (aka Dialectica, CPG 8041), On Heresies (CPG 8044), and the dogmatic part, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith (CPG 8043). From its appearance it has been considered a monumental achievement, and it is sometimes referred to as the first summa theologica. Translated here are two chapters from the Exposition: a short chapter (57=Exposition III 13) on the properties of the two natures of Christ, and a longer chapter (58=Exposition III 14) on the two wills of Christ. The two wills remained a live issue for the Jerusalem church for a number of reasons. In 685 a delegation was sent by the Chalcedonian leadership of Syro-Palestine (ostensibly from Jerusalem, but Jerusalem had no bishop at this time and the leadership resided in Damascus) to Constantinople to acknowledge acceptance of the Council of Constantinople (680–681).

Narsai was foundational for the development of theology in the Church of the East. At the School of Nisibis, the intellectual center for the Church of the East, his writings supported theologians whose dyophysite Christological formulations were at odds with the Chalcedonian and miaphysite positions regnant within the territories of the Roman Empire. Thus the need arose to defend Narsai against his detractors.

Jacob of Serugh (ca. 451–521) was a miaphysite (Syrian Orthodox) bishop of Serugh (modern-day Batnan) in Turkey, southwest of Edessa. In the West Syriac tradition Jacob is the most celebrated poet-theologian after Ephrem the Syrian and is called the “Flute of the Holy Spirit and the Harp of the Church.” He is renowned for having written a large number of metrical homilies in Syriac, known as memre (sing. memra), nearly 400 of which are extant. These exegetical poems treat a wide range of theological topics, including exegesis, hagiography, asceticism, and liturgy. The metrical poem gave theologians like Jacob a creative and memorable way to teach the faithful about divine mysteries such as the incarnation or the relationship of Christ’s humanity and divinity. Jacob’s homilies reveal his skill as a poet-exegete as well as his pastoral sense.

Ibas was the bishop of Edessa from 435 to 457. In 449 the second Council of Ephesus deposed him and several other bishops for their dyophysite (“Nestorian”) views, but the Council of Chalcedon exonerated and reinstated him in 451. A century later he would gain infamy as the author of one of the Three Chapters – the letter to the otherwise unknown Persian cleric Mari translated here – that Emperor Justinian had condemned at the second Council of Constantinople in 553. Written in the mid-430s after Cyril of Alexandria and John of Antioch had agreed to the so-called Formula of Reunion, Ibas’s Letter to Mari is important for its succinct narrative account of the Council of Ephesus in 431 and the reconciliation between Cyril of Alexandria and John of Antioch in 433, as well as for the window it provides on the Christological divisions within the Christian community in Osrhoene.

Philoxenos of Mabbug (ca. 440s–523) wrote prolifically in defense of his theological positions. Especially important to him was the unity of Christ’s nature, a position he thought that the most powerful Christians of his day had mistakenly abandoned. Written toward the end of his life and after his removal from his office as bishop in favor of a supporter of the Chalcedonian Definition, this letter outlines the fine details of Philoxenos’s miaphysite Christology. For him, the process by which the Word had become human was key for understanding the entirety of Christianity; the questions about how and when this “humanification,” as he called it, had happened are pursued in the letter to an extent that can seem excessive, but the mechanics of humanification mattered to Philoxenos for two reasons. First, a mistaken idea about this process could lead one to think wrongly about the status of Christ, that of his human mother Mary, and about the efficacy of salvation itself. Second, getting the details of humanification wrong could lead people to think that, in addition to the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, there was a fourth deity, named the Lord or the Son, who resides outside the Trinity.

Justin II became emperor upon the death of his uncle Justinian. During the first eight years of his reign (565–573), that is, before he descended into madness, Justin worked hard to establish a foundation on which the various Chalcedonian and anti-Chalcedonian communities could reconcile. He convened a series of conferences that, despite their contentiousness, culminated in Justin issuing this edict in 571. Sometimes labeled the Second Henotikon because of its similarity in aim and strategy with Emperor Zeno’s Henotikon from nearly a century earlier, this edict drew heavily on Emperor Justinian’s Edict on the Orthodox Faith from 551 with a few crucial differences. Justin II deemphasized “two nature” language and shifted toward a “one nature” formulation: he insisted that God the Word was hypostatically united with the human nature to the extent that the two natures of Christ could only be distinguished theoretically. In fact, most of the edict is little more than a string of quotations from Justinian’s Edict on the Orthodox Faith, carefully modified to lesser or greater extents and subtly selected and woven together to express a Christology that could be the basis for reconciliation.

In the uproar in the moments immediately after Eutyches was excommunicated at the Home Synod of Constantinople on November 22, 448, the disgraced archimandrite tried to appeal to a council of the bishops of Rome, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Thessalonica. His request was ignored, but soon after the synod, likely within weeks of it ending, Eutyches wrote letters to the bishops of these major sees making the same request. In his letter to Pope Leo of Rome – which alone survives of all those sent to the bishops, though they must have been very similar – Eutyches gives a fascinating account of the Home Synod from his perspective. Unsurprisingly, he depicts Flavian as corrupt and himself as the victim of a conspiracy to destroy him. His basic narrative does not deviate significantly from the sequence of events found in the acts of the seventh session of the Home Synod, but Eutyches gives further details and even mentions a few things that were not recorded in the official acts. For example, we learn that he had prepared a statement to read when he first appeared at his trial, which he calls a “profession of faith,” but Flavian disallowed it.

John Cassian is more renowned for his seminal monastic writings than for his polemical tract against Nestorius. Around 380 Cassian traveled from the Roman province of Scythia Minor (modern-day Dobrudja) to Palestine, where he lived as a monk in Bethlehem for a few years. Around 385 he departed for Egypt to live among and learn from the Egyptian anchorites. In 399 or 400 he was forced to leave Egypt in the wake of a controversy that had reached violent proportions, when Origenist monks questioned the validity of Anthropomorphite theology. He accompanied the exiled Origenist monks through Palestine to Constantinople, where John Chrysostom ordained him to the deaconate. Toward the end of 404 the supporters of Chrysostom sent Cassian to Pope Innocent of Rome with information that exonerated the archbishop of some of the charges made against him. Chrysostom had been (falsely) accused of crimes ranging from excessive punishment and harassment of the clergy to gluttony and refusing to pray either inside or outside of the church.1 Eventually Cassian settled in Gaul (France), near Marseille.

The Council of Ephesus was the culmination of two years of machinations on the part of Cyril of Alexandria to isolate Nestorius of Constantinople both theologically and ecclesio-politically.1 This required a high degree of coordination between the sees of Alexandria and Rome as well as with Emperor Theodosius II. But from start to finish the Council of Ephesus unfolded in a way that no one could have anticipated, as highhanded maneuvering and factionalism destroyed any possibility of collaborative deliberations. A counter-council even met in opposition to the majority council. In the end Nestorius was deposed, but Cyril himself was too, at least for a time, and temporarily placed under house arrest in Ephesus. Furthermore, the council did not resolve the Christological issues that had pitted Cyril and his allies against Nestorius and his supporters; rather, the council only exacerbated the divisions. It would take nearly two years for a compromise to be reached, in 433, when the Formula of Reunion was issued.

On November 30, 430 Cyril of Alexandria, acting on behalf of the churches of both Rome and Alexandria, had his Third Letter to Nestorius delivered to Nestorius, openly accusing him of heresy.1 To this letter Cyril appended the Twelve Anathemas, Christological propositions threatening with excommunication everyone who did not subscribe to them. Being thus threatened with excommunication by Rome and Alexandria, Nestorius swiftly wrote a letter to his friend and compatriot John of Antioch, asking for advice.2 John then asked two prominent bishops from the Antiochene milieu, Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Andrew of Samosata, to respond in writing to Cyril’s Twelve Anathemas.

This anonymous letter to the otherwise unknown Diognetus is an early Christian apology in epistolary form. Since the seventeenth century it has been included in the collection of early Christian writings known as the Apostolic Fathers. Most scholars suggest a date between 150 and 200 for its composition – that is, at least for sections 1–10. The original text breaks off before its conclusion, and sections 11–12 were apparently appended at a later date from some other work. Sections 1–10 are addressed to an inquirer who wants to learn more about Christianity, whereas sections 11–12 appeal to Gentile converts to Christianity. The apologetic intent of the epistle is evident from its first part where the author mocks paganism and Judaism, emphasizing instead the distinctiveness and superiority of Christianity in terms of way of life (sections 2–6). In addition to section 1, translated below are sections 7–12. In sections 7–10 the author explicates the role of Christ in God’s plan of salvation. Particular stress is placed on the necessity of acquiring the knowledge of God revealed by Christ and the moral obligation that it entails, which is described as imitating God.

The letter presented here is part of a corpus of Greek writings by an unknown Christian author of the late fifth or early sixth century. The author wrote under the pseudonym of Dionysius the Areopagite, who according to Acts 17:34 converted to the faith after hearing the apostle Paul’s preaching in Athens. The texts penned in this persona would exercise an enormous influence on Christian thought up until the time of the Renaissance.