Heresy of the Week: Kenosism

This week's heresy is yet another example, as is often the case with heresies, of attempting to over-explain or understand a foundational doctrine of the Church as a way to make some of the more "incomprehensible" bits make sense to our human minds.  Rather than leaving these issues to faith, some feel it necessary to explain them into oblivion and ignore clear doctrine to "understand" some of the mysteries of our faith.

Kenosism comes from the Greek word “kenoo”, which means “to empty”, and is a 19th century Arianism heresy promoted by an errant German Lutheran theologian, Gottfried Thomasius. This heresy teaches that Christ voluntarily gave up some of His Divine attributes (specifically, omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence) in order to function as a man and better fulfill His redemptive mission. While this would make sense to humans, without Christ being fully God and fully man, His redemptive death loses its power and meaning for us.

Heresy of the Week: Eutychianism and Miaphysitism

Because they are related, this week's heresy is a two-for-one: Eutychianism and Miaphysitism.  Both are subsets of Monophysitism, which, as the name might suggest, are heresies that teach Christ only having one nature (sometimes Divine, sometimes Human, and for a variety of reasons or by different means).

Eutychianism is a Monophysitism heresy. This sect teaches that the human nature of Christ was overcome by the divine aspects, or that His human nature was unlike the rest of humanity—it was often stressed that the unity of Christ’s nature was to such an extent that His divinity consumed His humanity. Eutyches (for whom this heresy is named) said that Christ was of two natures, but not in two natures (i.e. that he was homoousian with the Father, but not homoousian with His humanity). Eutychianism was condemned at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, where the Chalcedonian Creed was written to counter the Eutychian and Miaphysitism heresies. This reaction by the Council lead to the schism with the Oriental Orthodoxy Church.

Miaphysitism is a moderate form of Monophysitism (teaching that both natures are merged into one, rather than that the divine subsumes the human). After the 451 Council of Chalcedon, where the two natures of Christ were affirmed, this belief caused a split with the Oriental Orthodoxy Church (other issues, including political, were also at play), who still practice Miaphysitism today (although they object to that term being used to describe them).