Yuichi Tsunoda: Composite physis without particularities: Leontius of Byzantium’s understanding of Severus of Antioch’s Miaphysite Christology

This paper elucidates how Leontius of Byzantium (c. 485-c.543) understood the composite physis, which is the fundamental concept in Severus of Antioch (c. 465-538) ’s Miaphysite Christology. First, Severus of Antioch understood the Incarnation as the process of the dynamic economic activity of the divine Logos, which makes the humanity its own. Severus held that Christ is the one composite physis as the incarnate Logos, which possesses the humanity. The composite physis comprises two particularities, namely the divine particularities and the human particularities. The divine particularities contain the divine properties and the human particularities include the human properties. The notion “particularity” indicates the integrity of entity and the intrinsic otherness. In the single physis of the incarnate Logos, the otherness of the divinity and the humanity continues and thus the two particularities remain without any confusion. Second, Leontius of Byzantium interpreted Severus’s Christology from his perspective of the hypostatic union. Severus held that the two properties indicate the two particularities. In contrast, Leontius thought the two properties should indicate their underlying realities, namely the two distinct physeis. He did not recognize the entities of two particularities and so he did not recognize any real distinction of the divinity and the humanity in the one composite physis. Consequently, without considering the two particularities, he understood that there is a confusion of the divinity and the humanity in the composite physis of Severus’s Christology.