I. The Christological Controversies
Trinity developed along Arian lines? Where along Sabellian lines?
And where along the line of a purely economical Trinity?
Literature: Seeberg, History of Doctrine II, cf. Index; Otten, Manual of the History of Dogmas II, pp. 84–99; Sheldon, History of Christian Doctrine I, pp. 337–339; II, pp. 96–103, 311–318;
Cunningham, Historical Theology II, pp. 194–213; Fisher, History of Christian Doctrine, cf. Index.
THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST
I. The Christological Controversies The Christological problem can be approached from the side of theology proper and from the side of soteriology. Though the early
Church Fathers did not lose sight of the soteriological bearings of the doctrine of Christ, they did not make these prominent in their main discussions. Breathing the air of the trinitarian controversies, it was but natural that they should approach the study of Christ from the side of theology proper. The decision to which the trinitarian controversy led, namely, that Christ as the Son of God is consubstantial With the Father and therefore very God, immediately gave birth to the question of the relation between the divine and the human nature in Christ.
The early Christological controversies do not present a very edifying spectacle The passions were too much in evidence, unworthy intrigues often played and important part, and even violence occasionally made its appearance. It might seem that such an atmosphere could only be productive of error, and yet these controversies led to a formulation of the doctrine of the Person of Christ that is still regarded as standard in the present day. The Holy
Spirit was guiding the Church, often through shame and confusion,
into the clear atmosphere of the truth. Some claim that the Church attempted too much when it tried to define a mystery which from the nature of the case transcends all definition. It should be borne in mind, however, that the early Church did not claim to be able to penetrate to the depths of this great doctrine, and did not pretend to give a solution of the problem of the incarnation in the formula of Chalcedon. It merely sought to guard the truth against the errors of the theorizers, and to give a formulation of it which would ward off various, palpably unscriptural, constructions of the truth.
The Church was in quest of a conception of Christ that would do justice to the following points: (a) His true and proper deity; (b) His true and proper humanity; (c) the union of deity and humanity in one person; and (d) the proper distinction of deity from humanity in the one person. It felt that as long as these requirements were not met, or only partly met, its conception of Christ would be defective.
All the Christological heresies that arose in the early Church originated in the failure to combine all these elements in the doctrinal statement of the truth. Some denied wholly or in part the true and proper deity of Christ, and others disputed wholly or in part
His true and proper humanity. Some stressed the unity of the person at the expense of the two distinct natures, and others emphasized the distinct character of the two natures in Christ at the expense of the unity of the Person.
1. FIRST STAGE OF THE CONTROVERSY
a. The Background. This controversy also had its roots in the past.
Ebionites, Alogi, and Dynamic Monarchians denied the deity of Christ, and Docetae, Gnostics, and Modalists rejected. His humanity.
They simply ruled out one of the terms of the problem. Others were less radical and denied either the full deity or the perfect humanity of Christ. The Arians denied that the Son-Logos, who become incarnate in Christ, was possessed of absolute Godhead. And on the other hand
Apollinaris, bishop of Laodicea (d. 312), denied the true and proper humanity of Jesus Christ. He conceived of man as consisting of body,
soul, and spirit, and sought the solution of the problem of the two natures in Christ in the theory that the Logos took the place of the human pneuma (spirit). In his opinion it would be easier to maintain the unity of the Person of Christ, if the Logos were simply regarded as taking the place of the higher rational principle in man. Over against Arius he defended the true divinity of Christ, and sought to safeguard His sinlessness by substituting the Logos for the human pneuma, which he regarded as the seat of sin. According to him a complete human nature would naturally involve sinfulness.
Moreover, he tried to make the incarnation intelligible by assuming an eternal tendency to the human in the Logos Himself as the archetypal man. But the solution of Apollinaris could not satisfy, because, as Shedd says, "if the rational part be subtracted from man, he becomes either an idiot or a brute." His purpose was praiseworthy, however, in that he sought to safeguard both the unity of the Person and the sinlessness of Christ.
There was considerable opposition to the solution of the problem offered by Apollinaris. The three Cappadocians and Hilary of Poitiers maintained that, if the Logos did not assume human nature in its integrity, He could not be our perfect Redeemer. Since the whole sinner had to be renewed, Christ had to assume human nature in its entirety, and not simply the least important parts of it. They also pointed to a docetic element in the teachings of Apollinaris. If there was no real human will in Christ, there could be no real probation and no real advance in His manhood. Even the opponents of Apollinaris, however, while stressing the complete humanity of Christ, conceived of this as overshadowed by His divinity. Gregory of Nyssa even says that the flesh of Christ was transformed and lost all its original properties by union with the divine.
One result of this preliminatry skirmish was that the Synod of Alexandria in 362 asserted the existence of a human soul in Christ.
The word "soul" was used by the Synod as inclusive of the rational element, which Apollinaris called pneuma or nous.
b. The Parties to the Controversy (1) The Nestorian Party. Some of the early Church Fathers used expressions which seemingly denied the existence of two natures in Christ, and postulated a single nature, "the incarnate and adorable
Word." From this point of view Mary was often called theotokos, mother of God. It was particularly the School of Alexandria that revealed this tendency. On the other hand the School of Antioch went to the other extreme. This appears especially in the teachings of Theodore of Mopsuestia. He took his startingpoint in the complete manhood of christ and the perfect reality of His human experiences.
According to him Christ actually struggled with human passions, passed through a veritable conflict with temptation, and came out victoriously. He owed the power to keep himself free from sin (a) to His sinless birth, and (b) to the union of His manhood with the divine Logos. Theodore denied the essential indwelling of the Logos in Christ, and allowed only for a mere moral indwelling. He saw no essential difference, but only a difference of degree, between the indwelling of God in Christ and that in believers. This view really substitutes for the incarnation the moral indwelling of the Logos in the man Jesus. Nevertheless, Theodore shrank from the conclusion to which his view would seem to lead inevitably, that there is a dual personality in Christ, two persons between whom a moral union exists. He said that the union was so close that the two might be spoken of as one person, just as husband and wife can be called one flesh.
The logical development of this Antiochian view is seen in Nestorianism. Following in the footsteps of Theodore, Nestorius denied that the term theotokos could properly be applied for the simple reason that she only brought forth a man who was accompanied by the Logos. Although Nestorius did not draw the inevitable conclusion that followed from this position, his opponent,
Cyril, held him responsible for that conclusion. He pointed out (a) that, if Mary is not theotokos, that is, the mother of one person, and that person divine, the assumption of a single human being into
fellowship with the Logos is substituted for the incarnation of God; and (b) that, if Mary is not theotokos, the relation of Christ to humanity is changed, and He is no more the effectual Redeemer of mankind. The followers of Nestorius did not hesitate to draw the conclusion.
Nestorianism is defective, not in the doctrine of the two natures in Christ, but in that of the one Person. Both the true and proper deity and the true and proper humanity are conceded, but they are not conceived in such a way as to form a real unity and to constitute a single person. The two natures are also two persons. The important distinction between nature as substance possessed in common, and person as a relatively independent subsistence of that nature, is entirely disregarded. Instead of blending the two natures into a single self-consciousness, Nestorianism places them alongside of each other with nothing more than a moral and sympathetic union between them. The man Christ was not God, but God-bearer, theophoros, a possessor of the Godhead. Christ is worshipped, not because He is God, but because God is in Him. The strong point in Nestorianism is that it seeks to do full justice to the humanity of Christ. At the same time it goes contrary to all the scriptural proofs for the unity of the Person in the Mediator. It leaves the Church with an exalted example of true piety and morality in the human person of Jesus, but robs it of its divine-human Redeemer, the source of all spiritual power, grace, and salvation.
(2) The Cyrillian Party. The most prominent opponent of Nestorianism was Cyril of Alexandria. According to him the Logos assumed human nature in its entirety, in order to redeem it, but at the same time formed the only personal subject in the God-man. His terminology was not always clear, however. On the one hand he seemed to teach simply that the Logos assumed human nature, so that there are two natures in Christ, which find their indissoluble union in the one Person of the Logos, without any change in the natures themselves. But he also used expressions in which he stressed the unity of the two natures in Christ by means of a mutual
communication of attributes, and spoke of the Person of Christ as if it were a resultant unity. His great significance lies in the fact that, over against Nestorianism, he stressed the unity of the Person of Christ. The three points which he emphasized above all were in perfect, harmony with the catholic doctrine of the day, namely; (a) the inseparable conjunction of the two natures; (b) the impersonality and dependence of the manhood, which the Logos uses as His instrument; and (c) the unity and continuity of the Person in Christ
Occasionally he used expressions, however, which seemed to justify the later Eutichian error. He applied the term phusis (nature) to the Logos only, and not to the humanity of Christ, thus using it as a synonym of hypostasis. This gave some occasion to saddle on him the doctrine that, after the incarnation. there was only one divine-human nature in Christ, and made it possible for the Monophysites to appeal to him, when they wanted to prove that, as there was but one Person, so there was also only a single nature in the Mediator. They continued their appeal to him in spite of his strenuous denial of any mixture of the natures. The Council of Ephesus effected a sort of compromise by maintaining on the one hand that the term theotokos could be applied to Mary, and asserting on the other hand the doctrine of the two distinct natures of Christ.
(3) The Eutichian Party. Many of Cyril's adherents were dissatisfied.
They did not take kindly to the doctrine of the two distinct natures.
Eutichus, an aged monk of rather unbalanced convictions and with a strong anti-Nestorian bias, espoused the cause of the Alexandrian theology at Constantinople. According to Theodoret he maintained in effect, either an absorption of the human nature in the divine, or a fusion of the two natures, resulting in a sort of tertium quid. He was of the opinion that the human attributes were assimilated to the divine in Christ, so that His body was not consubstantial with ours and He was not human in the proper sense of the word. Condemned by the Council of Constantinople in 448, he appealed to Leo, the bishop of Rome. After Leo received a full report of the case from Flavian and was urged to express his opinion, he addressed to Flavian his celebrated Tome. Because this Tome profoundly
influenced the Chalcedonian formula, it may be well to note its main points, which are as follows: (a) There are two natures in Christ, which are permanently distinct. (b) The two natures unite in one
Person, each one performing its own proper function in the incarnate life. (c) From the unity of the Person follows the communication of attributes (communicatio idiomatum). (d) The work of redemption required a Mediator both human and divine, passible and impassible, mortal and immortal. The incarnation was an act of condescension on the part of God, but in it the Logos did not cease to be very God. The forma servi did not detract from the forma dei. (e)
The manhood of Christ is permanent, and its denial implies a docetic denial of the reality of the sufferings of Christ. This is really a compendium of western Christology. c. The Decision of the Council of Chalcedon. After several local
Councils had met, some favoring and some condemning Eutichus, the ecumenical Council of Chalcedon convened in the year 451, and issued its famous statement of the doctrine of the Person of Christ.
This reads as follows:
"We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and also truly man, of a reasonable soul and body; consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the virgin
Mary, the Mother of God, according to the manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly (asuggutos), unchangeably (atreptos), indivisibly (adiairetos), inseparably (achoristos), the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one
Person and one subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, the Only-begotten, God the Word, the
Lord Jesus Christ; as the prophets from the beginning have declared concerning Him, and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself has taught us, and the Creed of the Holy Fathers has handed down to us."
The most important implications of this statement are the following:
(1) The properties of both natures may be attributed to the one Person, as, for instance, omniscience and limited knowledge. (2) The suffering of the God-man can be regarded as truly and really infinite, while yet the divine nature is impassible. (3) It is the divinity and not the humanity that constitutes the root and basis of the personality of Christ. (4) The Logos did not unite with a distinct human individual, but with a human nature. There was not first an individual Person in the Godhead associated Himself. The union was effected with the substance of humanity in the womb of the virgin.
2. SECOND STAGE OF THE CONTROVERSY
a. Confusion after the Decision of the Council. The Council of Chalcedon did not put an end to the Christological disputes any more than the Council of Nicea terminated the trinitarian controversy.
Egypt, Syria, and Palestine harbored many fanatical monks of Eutichian convictions, while Rome became ever-increasingly the center of orthodoxy. In fact, the process of dogmatic development was fast passing from the East to the West. After the Council of Chalcedon the adherents of Cyril and Eutichus were called
Monophysites, because they conceded that after the union Christ had a composite nature, but denied that He-had two distinct natures. As they saw it, two distinct natures would necessarily involve a duality of persons. There was a lengthy and rather unseemly struggle between the different parties. Even the Monophysites were not all agreed among themselves. They were divided into several sects, of which the names alone, says Dr. Orr, "are enough to give one a cold shiver." There were the Theopaschitists, who emphasized the fact that God suffered; the Phthartolatrists, who came nearest to the formulation of Chalcedon, and stressed the fact that the human nature of Christ was, like ours, capable of suffering, and were
therefore said to worship that which is corruptible; and the Aphthartodocetists, who represented just the opposite view, namely, that the human nature of Christ was not consubstantial with ours, but was endowed with divine attributes, and was therefore sinless, imperishable, and incorruptible.
The ablest and most prominent defender of the Chalcedonian theology was Leontius of Byzantium. He added an element to the dogmatical construction of the doctrine of Christ, which was more fully worked out by John of Damascus. The point is this: The rejection of Nestorianism might lead to the idea of an independent impersonal existence of the human nature of Christ. This idea was apt to be fostered by the use of the terms anupostasis and anupostasia. Therefore Leontius stressed the fact that the human nature of Christ is enupostasia, not impersonal but in-personal, having its personal subsistence in the Person of the Son of God from the very moment of the incarnation.
In 553 the emperor Justinian summoned the fifth oecumenical Council at Constantinople, which was favorable to the Monophysites in its condemnation of the writings of Theodore, but unfavorable to it in so far as it anathematized those who declared that the Council of Chalcedon countenanced the very errors which it condemned. This did not satisfy the Monophysites, but rather sealed their separation from the Church of the empire. b. The Monothelitic Controversy. It soon became evident that the attempted settlement of the Monophysite controversy by the Council did not restore harmony. Several vital questions remained unanswered. Not only did the how of the two natures in Christ remain unsolved, but the additional question arose, How much is included in the person and how much in the nature? In this connection the very important question was raised, whether the will belongs to the former or to the latter. This is equivalent to asking, whether there is but one will in Christ or two? To say that there is but one seems to rob Christ of true human volition, and therefore to
detract from the integrity of His humanity. On the other hand, to say that there are two seems to lead right into the Nestorian camp.
The result was that a new sect arose among the Monophysites, called Monothelites. As the name indicates, they started from the unity of the Person and asserted that there is but one will in Christ. This doctrine also took two forms: either the human will was regarded as merged in the divine, so that the latter alone acted; or the will was re garded as composite, resulting from the fusion of the divine and the human. The opponents of the Monothelites were called Duothelites.
These took their stand on the duality of the natures and asserted the presence of two wills in Christ. The Monophysites charged them with the destruction of the unity of the personal life of Christ.
For a time the term energeia (energy) was used in this controversy in preference to thelema (will), but soon the latter, as the more definite term, prevailed. It should be borne in mind, however, that the word
"will" was used in a broad sense. Strictly speaking, we mean by "will" the faculty of volition, of self-determination, and of choice. But the word is often used in a broader sense, as including the instincts, appetites, desires, and affections, with their corresponding aversions.
All this was covered by the term "will" in the ancient controversy, so that this included the question, whether Christ was capable of fear and of shrinking from suffering and death. The denial of the human will in Christ would therefore give His humanity a somewhat docetic character.
The sixth ecumenical Council of Constantinople (680), with the cooperation of the bishop of Rome, adopted the doctrine of the two wills and two energies as the orthodox position, but also decided that the human will must always be conceived as subordinate to the divine. The established opinion was that the human will by its union with the divine did not become less human, but was heightened and perfected by the union, the two always acting in perfect harmony.
c. The Construction of the Doctrine by John of Damascus. In John of Damascus the theology of the Greek Church reached its highest development, and therefore it is of importance to notice his construction of the doctrine of the Person of Christ. According to him the Logos assumed human nature, and not vice versa, that is, the man Jesus did not assume the Logos. This means that the Logos is the formative and controlling agency, securing the unity of the two natures. The Logos did not assume a human individual, nor human nature in general, but a potential human individual, a human nature not yet developed into a person or hypostasis. Through the union of the Logos with this potential man in the womb of Mary, the latter acquired an individual existence. While the human nature of Christ has no independent personality of its own, it nevertheless has personal existence in and through the Logos. It is not nonhypostatic, but en-hypostatic. He illustrates the union of the two natures in Christ by the union of body and soul in man. There is a circumincession of the divine and the human in Christ, a communication of the divine attributes to the human nature, so that the latter is deified and we may also say that God suffered in the flesh. The human nature only is thus affected, and is therefore purely receptive and passive. The Son of God, now including His complete humanity, is an object of worship for the Church. Though there is a tendency to reduce the human nature of Jesus to the position of a mere organ or instrument of the Logos, it is admitted that there is a co-operation of the two natures, and that the one Person acts and wills in each nature. The will is regarded as belonging to the nature, but it is claimed that in Christ the human will has become the will of the incarnate God. d. THE CHRISTOLOGY OF THE WESTERN CHURCH. The Western
Church remained comparatively unaffected by the controversies that were raging in the East. It seems that on the whole the western mind was not sufficiently familiar with all kinds of fine philosophical distinctions to take an active part in the discussion of questions that were so deep and subtle as those that divided the Eastern Church.
A new movement of Christological thought appeared in Spain, however, in the seventh and eighth centuries, called the Adoptionist
Controversy. The term "adoption" was already familiar in Spain, since a Council of Toledo declared in 675 that Christ was the Son of God by nature and not by adoption. The real champion of the Adoptionist doctrine was Felix, bishop of Urgella. He regarded Christ as to His divine nature, that is the Logos, as the only-begotten Son of God in the natural sense, but Christ on his human side as a Son of God by adoption. At the same time he sought to preserve the unity of the Person by stressing the fact that, from the time of his conception, the Son of Man was taken up into the unity of the Person of the Son of God.
This theory therefore makes a distinction between a natural and an adoptive sonship, the former predicated of the divinity and the latter of the humanity of Christ. Felix and his followers based their opinion: (1) On the distinction of natures in Christ, which, according to them, implied a distinction between two modes of sonship. (2) On passages of Scripture which refer to the inferiority of Christ as man to the Father. And (3) On the fact that believers are sons of God by adoption, and are also called "brethren" of Christ. This would seem to imply that Christ as to his human nature was a Son of God in the same sense. In order to explain their meaning still farther, they distinguished between a natural birth of Christ at Bethlehem and a spiritual birth, which had its inception at the time of baptism and was consummated in the resurrection. This spiritual birth made
Christ the adopted Son of God.
While the opponents of this view did not charge the Adoptionists with the explicit error of teaching a dual personality in Christ, they asserted that this would be the logical result of a dual sonship.
Alcuin, the noted scholar of the days of Charlemagne, took issue with Felix and charged him with dividing Christ into two sons. He maintained that no father could have a son, who was such both by nature and by adoption. Undoubtedly, the Adoptionists were in error, when they assigned to the human nature of Christ a sort of
alien position until He was made to partake of divine sonship by a special act of adoption. This error was condemned by the Synod of Frankfort in 794 A. D.
Questions for Further Study: Did the position of Apollinaris find any point of contact in Arianism? What interests did he seek to safeguard? What traces of Platonic and Manichæan influence are found in his theory? What was his peculiar view of the Logos as the archetype of humanity? What were the main objections to his theory? In what sense was Nestorianism a reaction against Apollinarianism? How many kinds of indwelling did Theodore distinguish? What led to the application of the term theotokos to Mary? Did Cyril really confuse the two natures? How can we account for a great deal of the misunderstanding current on this point? What was the strong point in Nestorianism? How did the Church meet its error? What was Cyril's view of the unity of the Person, and of the relation of the two natures in Christ? What was the particular interest of Eutichianism? In what respect did it err? How did Leo in his Tome construct the doctrine of Christ? What element did
Leontius of Byzantium contribute to the construction of the doctrine of Christ? How did the Monothelite controversy arise? What did it involve and how was it settled? On what was the Adoptionist theory based? Were the Adoptionists really Nestorian in their view?
Literature: Bruce, The Humiliation of Christ, pp. 39–82; Ottley, The Doctrine of the Incarnation, pp. 323–481; Mackintosh, The Doctrine of the Person of Christ, pp. 174–230; Harnack, History of Dogma, IV, pp. 138–267; Seeberg, History of Doctrine, I, pp. 243–288; Loofs,
Dogmengeschiedenis, pp. 153–170; Thomasius, Dogmengeschichte, I, pp. 287–378; Neander, History of Christian Dogmas, I, pp. 316–
339; Shedd, History of Christian Doctrine, I, pp. 393–408; Cunningham, Historical Theology, I, pp. 307–320; Fisher, History of Christian Doctrine, pp. 148–160; Orr, Progress of Dogma, pp. 173–
206.