  Judging from the fragmentary evidence, Philoponus’ later theological treatises were characterized by a curious mixture of Christian doctrine and Aristotelian philosophy. On the eve of the fifth Council (Constantinople, 553) Philoponus stepped forward as a partisan of monophysite Christology which, in the course of the century, had become increasingly influential in the eastern part of the Roman empire. For the monophysites it was important to emphasize the divinity of Christ; they were alarmed by the bewildering conjunction of Christological dogmas formulated at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. There Christ was confessed to be (1) consubstantial (homooúsios) with the Father, (2) consubstantial with us humans, (3) one person and one hypóstasis (an important term widespread in Neoplatonism and roughly meaning ‘substantive existence’), but (4) discernible in two natures (en dúo phúsesin  gnôrizómenon), a phrase which was directly influenced by the ‘unitatem personae in utraque natura intelligendam’ (‘a unity of person knowable in both natures’) endorsed by the Bishop of Rome and familiar to theologians of the Latin West. Although propositions 1, 2 and 3 were no longer controversial, proposition 4 could be read as an unholy concession to those who regarded Jesus as a human being merely distinguished by some kind of divine presence or inspiration (the view of the so-called ‘dyophysites’).