THEOPASCHISM

Theopaschism is the teaching that God can suffer. It was explained first by St. Athanasius and
later elaborated on by St. Cyril in his dealing with the Nestorian heresy. It was one of the main
reasons our church refused the Tome of Leo and the council of Chalcedon.

Whence it was that, when the flesh suffered, the Word was not external to it;
and therefore is the passion said to be His.1

Let no one then stumble at what belongs to man, but rather let a man know that
in nature the Word Himself is impassible, and yet because of that flesh which
He put on, these things are ascribed to Him, since they are proper to the flesh,
and the body itself is proper to the Saviour. And while He Himself, being
impassible in nature, remains as He is, not harmed by these affections, but
rather obliterating and destroying them, men, their passions as if changed and
abolished in the Impassible.2

The word impassible means not susceptible to passion, which includes both physical pain (we
call our Lord’s suffering the passion of Christ) and human emotions. The Word was impassible,
which means not susceptible to pain or to human emotions. According to the first statement,
even though the flesh of Christ suffered, yet the suffering is attributed to the Word since the
flesh that suffered was the flesh of the Word.
In the second statement, St. Athanasius tells us that the Word by His nature is not
subject to human emotions, but because of the flesh that he put on, these emotions are
ascribed to Him. In John 12:27, the Lord told the disciples: “Now is my soul troubled” and in
Matt 26:38: “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.” These human affections that
he allowed to happen to Him never harmed Him, on the contrary, He experienced them in
order that by obliterating and destroying them by His impassibility, He gives our human nature
which he took unto him the ability to resist them. The Lord allowed Himself to experience fear
of death so that obliterating and destroying it by His impassibility He will rid humanity from
the fear of death. The result was that in the early church and even until our days, martyrs
march to their death without fear.

He had taken a body corruptible and mortal; for mortal was Holy Mary, from
whom was His body. Wherefore of necessity when He was in a body suffering,
and weeping, and toiling, these things which are proper to the flesh, are ascribed

1
Saint Athanasius, Four Discourses Against The Arians, Discourse III, 32, Nicene
and Post-Nicene Fathers Series II, Volume IV
2
Saint Athanasius, Four Discourses Against The Arians, Discourse III, 34, Nicene
and Post-Nicene Fathers Series II, Volume IV

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 to Him together with the body.3

And how then was He in pain, and in heaviness, and praying? And is it not
written, He was troubled in spirit? Now these things do not belong to a flesh
without a mind, nor to an unchangeable Godhead, but to a soul possessing
thought, feeling pain, and trouble, and in heaviness, and intellectually sensible
of suffering. …Now if the Lord indicates a thought of His own soul, He does so
in order to sympathise with our soul, that so we also may at the same time
consider the Passion to have been His, and confess Him to be impassible. For
as He redeemed us by the blood of His flesh, so too by the thought of His soul.4

Here St. Athanasius is giving us another reason for the Lord accepting these human emotions
on our behalf. First in order to sympathise with us “For in that He Himself has suffered, being
tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted.” (Heb 2:18) At the same time, we can
consider the passion to have been His. Christ redeemed us not only by the blood of His flesh
but also by the anguish of His soul that He accepted on our behalf.

For on this account also did the Lord say, Now is my soul troubled and is in
pain. The word “now” means, when He willed.5

Here St. Athanasius is explaining that our Lord’s soul was troubled only when He willed it to
be troubled and only for the reasons given above, namely so that through his impassibility He
would obliterate and destroy these affections and give to our nature the ability to resist them.
Once again, by saying “when He willed”, St. Athanasius is confirming the one will of Christ.
He later tells us in no uncertain terms:

For the will (of Christ) belonged to the Godhead only, since the whole nature
of the Word (was present) under the exhibition of the human form and visible
flesh of the second Adam, not by a division of persons, but by the real existence
of Godhead and Manhood.6

The same can be said of the death of the Lord, for even though the flesh died yet because the
flesh that died was the flesh of God, we can say that God died for us:

3
Ibid, 56
4
Saint Athanasius: Two books against Apollinaris, Book 1, 16
5
Ibid
6
Saint Athanasius: Two books against Apollinaris, Book 2, 10

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 Whence, as I said before, the Word, since it was not possible for Him to die, as
He was immortal, took to Himself a body such as could die, that He might offer
it as His own in the stead of all, and as suffering, through His union with it, on
behalf of all, “Bring to nought him that had the power of death, that is the devil;
and might deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject
to bondage.” (Heb 2.14)7

For thus also did the Death take place; the body was undergoing it by way of
nature, but the Word permitting it by His will, and in the exercise of a right
delivering His own Body to death that He might suffer for us naturally, and rise
again for us Divinely.8

The Word Who cannot die, by delivering His own body to death, by His will, allowed us to say
that He suffered death for us in order to raise us. Note that St. Athanasius once again ascribes
one will to Christ.

Scripture teaches that the Passion took place by means of God, in His flesh, and
not that God suffered through flesh.9

Saint Athanasius anticipating the error of Leo of Rome one hundred years before it happened
is here correcting that error. (We will deal with Leo’s heresy in a separate article)
St. Cyril followed faithfully in the footsteps of his great teacher St. Athanasius:

We say that He both suffered, and rose again, not meaning that the Word of
God suffered in His own nature .... but in so far as that which had become His
own body suffered, then He Himself is said to suffer these things for our sake,
because the Impassible One was in the suffering body.10

(God) ever remains what He is and does not change or undergo alteration.
Moreover all of us confess that the divine Word is impassible, even if in His
all-wise economy of the mystery he is seen to attribute to Himself the sufferings
that befall His own flesh (I Pet. 4.1.). He bears the suffering of His own flesh in

7
Saint Athanasius, On The Incarnation Of The Word of God 20.6, Nicene and
Post-Nicene Fathers Series II, Volume IV
8
Saint Athanasius: Two books against Apollinaris, Book 1, 6
9
Saint Athanasius: Two books against Apollinaris, Book 2, 11
10
Saint Cyril Of Alexandria: Second Letter To Nestorius in: John McGuckin: Saint
Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy p 203

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 an economic appropriation to Himself, as I have said, so that we may believe
Him to be the Saviour of all.11

The Word became flesh in the senses already exposed by us so often before. He
has laid down His life for us, for since His death was to be the salvation of the
world He “endured the cross, scorning the shame” (Heb.12.2) even though, as
God, He was Life by nature. How can Life be said to die? It is because Life
suffered death in its very own body that it might be revealed as Life when it
brought the body back to life again.
Come now, and let us carefully examine the manner of our own deaths. Is it not
the case that men of good sense say that souls are not destroyed at the same
time as are bodies that come from the earth? In my opinion this is something no
one questions. However, what befalls us is still called the “death of a man”. This
is how you should understand in the case of Emmanuel. For He was the Word
in His own body born from a woman, and he gave it to death in due season, but
He suffered nothing at all in His own nature for as such He is Life and
Life-giver. Nonetheless he made the things of the flesh His own so that the
suffering could be said to be His. The same is true in the rising up on behalf of
all, having died for the sake of all to redeem all that is under heaven with His
own blood, and to acquire for God the Father all that is on the face of the earth.
... For if He had not suffered for us as man He would not have achieved our
salvation as God.12

For He Himself, just like His Begetter is unalterable and immutable, and was
never capable of any passibility. But when He became flesh, that is became man,
He appropriated the poverty of humanity to Himself. ... Even though He is
equal to God the Father, He obediently endured His sufferings and the Cross.
Because all these things were part and parcel of the human condition He
adopted them as being implied along with the flesh, and so He fulfilled the
economy, though always remaining what He was.13

11
Saint Cyril Of Alexandria: Letter to John of Antioch in John McGuckin: Saint
Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy p 203
12
Saint Cyril Of Alexandria: Letter to the Monks of Egypt in: John McGuckin: Saint
Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy pp 259, 260
13
1Saint Cyril of Alexandria: Scholia on the Incarnation, in: John McGuckin: Saint
Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy p. 298

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 It is fitting to understand the union of Emmanuel to be such as the soul of a
man might be thought to have with its own body. For the soul appropriates the
things of the body even though in its proper nature it is apart from the body's
natural passions, as those which impinge on it from without. ...If the body was
struck by a sword, or tortured on an iron grid, then the soul would share in its
grief, because it is its own body which is suffering. But in its own nature the soul
does not suffer anything of these things.
This indeed is how we attribute the union to Emmanuel. For it was necessary
that the soul united to it should share in the grief of its own body, so that rising
above these sufferings it could submit itself as obedient to God. But it is foolish
to say that God the Word shared in feeling the sufferings. For the Godhead is
impassible and is not in our condition. Yet [the Word] was united to the flesh
endowed with a rational soul, and when the flesh suffered, even though He was
impassible, He was aware of what was happening within it, and thus as God,
even though He did away with the weakness of the flesh, still He appropriated
those weaknesses of his own body. This is how He is said to have hungered, and
to have been tired, and to have suffered for our sake.14

And so, even though He said through the holy prophets; “I gave My back to the
scourge, My cheeks to their blows. I did not turn away My face from the shame
of their spitting” (Is.50.6); and again: “They have pierced My hands and My
feet, they have numbered all My bones” (Ps.21.17-18); and again: “They gave
Me hyssop for food, and in My thirst they offered Me vinegar” (Ps.68.22); even
so we attribute all these things to the Only Begotten himself. For He suffered
them economically in the flesh for our sake and in accordance with the
scriptures: “For by his wounds we have been healed, and He himself was
wounded because of our sins” (Is.53.5). We recognise, however, that He was
impassible by nature, yet if, as I have just said, the same one was at once God
and man, then the sufferings certainly belonged to his humanity, while it was the
proper characteristic of God to be understood to be impassible.15

The doctrine of the suffering God “Theopaschism” taught by St. Athanasius and St. Cyril was
one of the main obstacles towards reconciliation between the Chalcedonians and the
non-Chalcedonians as we are told by Fr. John Meyendorff:

14
Ibid, p 300,301
15
3Saint Cyril of Alexandria: Scholia on the Incarnation, in: John McGuckin: Saint
Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy p. 335

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 The council's (Chalcedon) main adherents between 451 and 518 did not
encourage Severus and his disciples toward conciliation. As has been shown, for
the Monophysites the best proof of the Chalcedonian crypto-Nestorianism was
the rejection by many supporters of the council of the formula “one of the
Trinity suffered in the flesh.” … Not only did St. Paul speak of the princes of
this world, who “crucified the Lord of Glory” (1 Cor 2:8), but theopaschite
expressions can be found in pre-Nicene theology as well, and St. Gregory
Nazianzen makes it the essential element of his doctrine of salvation: “We need
a God made flesh and put to death in order that we could live again”…. Does
not the Nicene- Constantinopolitan Creed itself explicitly proclaim the faith of
the church in “the Son of God…. Crucified for us under Pontius Pilate?”16

It was only at a council in 553, more than one hundred years after Chalcedon that this formula
was accepted.17

16
Fr. John Meyendorff: Christ in Eastern Christian Thought p. 44
17
Ibid p. 71