LOOFS

By contrast, Leontius of Byzantium, his contemporary and namesake, does not use the term enhypostatos in order to indicate the in-existence of the human nature in the Logos (as used to be a widespread opinion in patristic scholarship in the wake of Loofs).

Even more, the particular way in which Pamphilus quotes from Leontius confirms precisely the point made by Daley that interpreters such as Loofs were mistaken in relating the phrase [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] and thus holding it to be 'in some kind of halfway stage between subsistent and accidental being'.(58) The correct punctuation and translation of this phrase make it evident that the contrary is meant: the [GREEK TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] [Tau][Alpha][Tau][Omicron][Upsilon] is not an accident; it does not have its existence in another thing.

The treatise De Sectis, attributed to Leontius of Byzantium by Loofs, is now generally acknowledged to have been written between 580 and 608 by an otherwise unknown author,(67) who turns out to be a defender of the strictly Chalcedonian doctrine of two natures in one hypostasis.

I have argued that their reading of Damascene is indeed legitimate and that there is a warrant in the patritic tradition for this theologoumenon,(112) though not in Leontius of Byzantium as was taken for granted until resently under the influence of Loofs' misinterpretation.

Loofs, Leontius von Byzanz und die gleichnamigen Schriftsteller der griechischen Kirche (TU III/1-2) (Leipzig, 1887).

This suggests that the misreading of Leontius, exemplified by the work of Loofs, has deeply permeated Protestant theology and may be difficult to extricate.

This modern interpretation is now commonly attributed most to the influence of Friedrich Loofs.

Loofs suggested that Leontius invented the idea of something having its hypostasis not in itself, but in the hypostasis of another nature, and that this conception played a special role in the development of doctrine.

According to Loofs, Leontius's original contribution was the theory of the enhypostasia of the human nature of Christ.

However, there are several problems with the analysis by Loofs. In Contra Nestorianos et Eutychianos Leontius clearly does not say that the human nature is in the hypostasis of the Logos.