No*s said:
I read both sides so that I can get a full picture
.
The thing is, St. Cyril used the language "one nature," but when he saw Chalcedon, he said that it also taught his christology. The problem isn't that they claim "one nature," that is that Christ has "one nature" without compromising his humanity or divinity. When it fails to make a distinction that this isn't some hybrid nature, we get some sort of part-God part-man stuff or Christ's humanity is simply swallowed up. The hybrid is "monophysite," and from it a monothelete.
I personally won't go to a Coptic Church, but I'm also willing to say that I'm not sure of their stance right now. I read what looks like a monophysite position in one place, and then, I read what looks like a miaphysite in another
.
You're right that at one point St. Cyril spoke of "one nature" (
mia physis), but that was in the early days of Christology, before the terminology was settled. St. Cyril later wrote of the two natures of Christ. He didn't live to see the Holy Council of Chalcedon. St. Cyril went to be with the Lord in 444, seven years before Chalcedon. It was left to Pope St. Leo the Great (one of my favorite saints) to formulate and best express the Orthodox Catholic doctrine, in his famous
Tome.
Here is an excerpt from St. Cyril's letter to John of Antioch.
"With regard to the Evangelical and Apostolic expressions concerning the Lord, we know that men who are skilled in theology make some of them common to the one Person, while they divide others between the two Natures, ascribing those that are fitting to God to Divinity of Christ, and those that are lowly to His Humanity. On reading these sacred utterances of Yours, and finding that we ourselves think along the same linesfor there is one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, we glorified God the Saviour of all" (St. Cyril of Alexandria,
Letter to John of Antioch, in John Karmiris'
Dogmatic and Creedal Statements of the Orthodox Church, Vol. 1; Athens:1960. p. 154).
"Miaphysitism" is really the same thing as Monophysitism, since both mean the belief that Christ has but one nature.
The fact that Non-Chalcedonians say some things that sound Orthodox should not distract one from the fact that their Christological beliefs remain heretical. They still regard many Orthodox saints - such as St. Leo the Great and the martyrs, St. Flavian, Pope St. Martin, and St. Maximus the Confessor - as heretics, and reject the last four of the seven ecumenical councils.
No one can be considered Orthodox who does those things.
(I know you aren't saying that NCs are Orthodox, just that you think the whole subject is difficult.)
I'm not saying we should not engage in dialogue with NCs, just that we should beware and thus avoid compromise that would betray the Orthodox faith. Some are too quick to pronounce them fully Orthodox - after all, they have beards, incense, and icons - without recognizing the truth that our Fathers knew too well.