In any event, the language in the Tome of Leo is such that the OO's will never accept it, and as Deusveritasest pointed out, it is enshrined in the councils of the EO Church. The EO's won't give it up, and the OO's won't accept it. I think the only way unity will be achieved is if Oriental Orthodox acceptance of Chalcedon is not a precondition, and Eastern Orthodox rejection of Chalcedon is also not a precondition. I don't know how such a thing can happen, but if it is God's will, it can.
If we believe that the Tome was indeed heretical, why in the blazes would we desire a union which does not require its rejection?!
All right, I'm new to the EO/OO re-unification stuff, so go easy on me, but...what in the Tome is so heretical? I've read it. Not in the original Latin, but I've read the English...and I only see one part that could be understood as "heretical" by your church. That is:
"When you cross-examined Eutyches and he replied, "I confess that our Lord was of two natures before the union, but I confess one nature after the union", I am amazed that such an absurd and corrupt declaration of faith was not very severely censured by the judges; and that an extremely foolish statement was disregarded, as if nothing whatever offensive had been heard."I could see how this might upset someone who believes that Christ has one nature. Yet, the context in which this statement is set, I think, makes it clear that Pope St. Leo is attacking the monophysitism of Eutyches (who you also deem a heretic) and not the miaphysitism of Pope St. Cyril and the Oriental Orthodox Church. Chalcedon, of course, proclaimed the writings of St. Cyril and the tome of St. Leo to be compatible. Perhaps this is what you find "inconsistent"? Yet, I don't see that as true (of course, coming from an EO). In his Tome, St. Leo was specifically attacking the idea that Christ was
only divine, and
not human. That Christ's humanity was
swallowed up in his divinity. He says things like:
"So the proper character of both natures was maintained and came together in a single person. Lowliness was taken up by majesty, weakness by strength, mortality by eternity."and
"So without leaving his Father's glory behind, the Son of God comes down from his heavenly throne and enters the depths of our world, born in an unprecedented order by an unprecedented kind of birth."These statements affirm the unity of natures, human and divine. They were "maintained came together in a single person." Christ is fully human and fully God. He contained the fullness of "his Father's glory" and yet also "enters the depths of our world." This is not Nestorian theology! Yes, St. Leo does say:
"So it is on account of this oneness of the person, which must be understood in both natures, that we both read that the son of man came down from heaven, when the Son of God took flesh from the virgin from whom he was born, and again that the Son of God is said to have been crucified and buried, since he suffered these things not in the divinity itself whereby the Only-begotten is co-eternal and consubstantial with the Father, but in the weakness of the human nature."Is the bolded statement objectionable? That he is a single person yet of two natures? Again, this is not Nestorius! For we do not proclaim two persons reside within Christ, the human Jesus and divine Son of God...never! For as I already quoted, St. Leo proclaims him "a single person." He is one man. One man who is God, and God who is man. They are insuperable, yet without confusion. St. Leo's attack against the heretic's response is not to attack a dogma that proclaims Christ maintains humanity and divinity without confusion, mingling or alteration. What St. Leo finds so repulsive is that Eutyches denies Christ is full humanity...yet St. Leo does not rob him of his single personhood. He is one man of full humanity and divinity.
And so, please help me, what is truly so objectionable concerning the Tome of St. Leo?