Given from the Catholic Broadcasting Station 2SM Sydney Australia
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Eutyches was the Superior of a Monastery in Constantinople whostrongly opposed Nestorius. Unhappily his reaction against theerrors of Nestorius led him into an opposite error. The Catholicdoctrine teaches that in Christ there is one Person only, that ofthe Eternal Son of God, and two natures, the one Divine and theother human. Nestorius had wanted two persons and two natures.Eutyches, to safeguard the one Person of Christ, taught that thehuman nature was so absorbed into the Divine Nature as to lose itsidentity, so that as a result there was but one Person and oneNature in our Lord. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D. condemnedthis error of Eutyches as heretical, and redefined the Catholicdoctrine of one Person and two natures in Christ. Eutyches, despitehis first good intentions, manifested a great attachment to his ownideas, refused to submit to the decision of the Church, and gave to the world theMonophysite heresy. The Monophysites, or the "upholders of onenature," have persevered through history to the present day,forming various sects such as the Coptic and Ethiopian Churches inAfrica, and the Jacobite Churches in Mesopotamia. National reasonsaccount for their survival, but they are without vitality.