CHAPTER I

Produced by Al Haines

MONOPHYSITISM

PAST AND PRESENT

A STUDY IN CHRISTOLOGY

BY

A. A. LUCE, M.C., D.D.

CAPTAIN LATE 12TH ROYAL IRISH RIFLES

FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN

LONDON

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.

1920

PRINTED BY

WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,

LONDON AND BECCLES

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. THE METAPHYSICAL BASIS OF MONOPHYSITISM

II. THE ORIGINS OF MONOPHYSITISM

III. MONOPHYSITE DOCTRINE

IV. THE ETHOS OF MONOPHYSITISM

V. MONOPHYSITISM AND MODERN PSYCHOLOGY

VI. MONOPHYSITISM IN THE PRESENT DAY

BOOKS CONSULTED IN THE

PREPARATION OF THIS ESSAY

J. S. ASSEMANI, "Bibliotheca Orientalis," especially the Introductory

Dissertation to Vol. II.

A. HARNACK, "History of Dogma," translated by Speirs and Millar.

J. C. ROBERTSON, "History of the Christian Church."

WINDELBAND, "History of Philosophy," translated by Tufts.

WRIGHT, "Short History of Syriac Literature."

H. BERGSON, "Les donnees immediates de la conscience," "Matiere et

Memoire," "L'evolution creatrice."

MONOPHYSITISM PAST AND PRESENT

CHAPTER I

THE METAPHYSICAL BASIS OF MONOPHYSITISM

Monophysitism was a Christological heresy of the fifth century. It was

condemned by the church in the middle of that century at the council of

Chalcedon. Surviving its condemnation it flourished in the East for

several centuries. Its adherents formed themselves into a powerful

church with orders and succession of their own. Although the

monophysite church has long since lost all influence, it is still in

being. The Coptic and Jacobite churches of Egypt and Mesopotamia,

respectively, preserve to this day the doctrines and traditions of the

primitive monophysites.

The history of the sect, however, does not concern us here. The

writer's purpose is to review its doctrine. Monophysitism is a system

of religious thought, and, as such, its importance is out of all

proportion to the present or even the past position of the churches

that professed it. Its significance lies in its universality. It is

grounded in the nature of the human mind. It is found in West as well

as East, to-day as well as in the early centuries of our era. Wherever

men bring intellect to bear on the problem of Christ's being, the

tendency to regard Him as monophysite is present.

An examination of the heresy is of practical value. Our subject-matter

is not an oriental antique or a curiosity of the intellect, but a

present-day problem of vital moment to the Faith. If we are concerned

with a half-forgotten heresy, it is because a study of that heresy

serves both as a preventive against error and as an introduction to the

truth. The doctor studies disease to ascertain the conditions of

health; pathological cases are often his surest guide to the normal;

just so the study of heresy is the best guide to orthodox Christology.

It was in conflict with monophysitism that the church of the fifth

century brought to completion her dogmatic utterances about Christ; and

the individual thinker to-day can gain the surest grasp of true

Christology by examining the monophysite perversion.

With this practical purpose in view, we now proceed to an analysis of

the heresy. Monophysitism is a body of doctrine. It is a dogmatic

system, in which the individual dogmata are controlled by a principle

or dominant idea. As all the particular doctrines of monophysitism

depend on this principle, and, as it is not properly a theological

concept, but one borrowed from philosophy, we may call it "the

metaphysical basis of monophysitism." An intelligent grasp of this

basic principle is necessary to an appreciation of the whole system.

Accordingly, our first concern is to ascertain and exhibit this

metaphysical basis. In subsequent chapters we shall analyse in detail

the doctrines specifically monophysite and trace the Christological

errors back to their source in metaphysic.

THE _A PRIORI_ AND _A POSTERIORI_ IN CHRISTOLOGY

The following considerations prove the necessity of this procedure.

Two methods of examining the being of Christ can be distinguished.

According to the one method the facts of His life are reviewed as they

are presented in the New Testament, and a formula is then constructed

to fit them. The other method starts from the concept of a mediator

between God and man. It supposes that concept actualised, and asks the

question, "Of what nature must such a mediator be?" These methods may

be distinguished, but they cannot be separated. No one, however

scientific, can come to a study of the life of Jesus with an absolutely

open mind. Presuppositions are inevitable. Similarly, as the _a

priori_ thinker develops his concept of a mediator, he compares the

results of his thinking at every stage with the picture presented in

the Gospel story, and that picture unavoidably modifies his deductions.

Both diphysite and monophysite used a combination of these two methods.

Each party took the recorded facts and interpreted them in accordance

with their notion of what a mediator should be. Both parties studied

the same facts; but the _a priori_ of their thought differed, and so

their conclusions differed. In the realm of Christology this _a

priori_ of thought is of paramount importance. Preconceived opinions

inevitably colour our mental picture of Christ. Readers of the Gospel

narrative find there the Christ they are prepared to find. On this

well-recognised fact we base our contention that an examination of any

Christological system must begin with the philosophy on which the

system rests. That philosophy supplies the _a priori_, or the

presupposition, or the metaphysical basis, whichever name we prefer.

We do not suggest that theologians have consciously adopted a

metaphysical principle as the basis of their beliefs, and then have

applied it to the special problem of Christology. That is a possible

method but not the usual one. In most cases the philosophic basis

remains in the background of consciousness; its existence is

unrecognised and its influence undetected. If Christian thinkers took

the trouble to analyse the basis of their beliefs about Christ, they

would not halt, as they so often do, at the stage of monophysitism. If

they laid bare to the foundations the structure of their faith, the

danger of error would be reduced to a minimum. Viewed from the

standpoint of timeless reason, monophysitism is based on a definite

metaphysical idea. Not all monophysites have consciously adopted that

basis; many, had they recognised its presence, would have rejected it.

But it was present as a tendency. A tendency may be neutralised by

counteracting causes; but it has its effect, and sooner or later it

will produce positive results.

THE THREE TYPICAL CHRISTOLOGIES

The same truth holds of the other Christological systems. A different

metaphysical idea lies at the root of each. Nestorian, monophysite,

catholic, these three were the main types of Christologian in the fifth

century. Each studied Christ's life. After studying it, the Nestorian

said of Him, "There are two persons here." "Not so," said the

monophysite, "I see but one incarnate nature of God the Word." The

catholic replied, "You are both wrong; there is one person in two

natures." All three types deserve close study. The thinkers were

devout and sincere, and, for the most part, able men. There is no

question here of superficial uninformed thought, nor of moral

obliquity. The disagreement was due not to their vision but to their

view point, not to the object of their thought or the process of their

thinking, but to their different presuppositions and starting points.

Presented in this way the monophysite and other Christological

controversies of the fifth and sixth centuries become phases of the

cosmic problem. They thus regain the dignity which is theirs by right,

and which they lose in the ordinary church histories. The heat of

passion they aroused becomes intelligible. It was no battle about

words. The stakes were high. The controversialists championed

far-reaching principles with a decisive influence on the course of

thought and conduct. Unfriendly critics usually portray the

Christologians as narrow-minded and audacious. So, no doubt, they

were, but they were not wrong-headed. If the matters in dispute

between theist, deist, and pantheist are trivialities, then and then

only can we regard the enterprise of the Christologians as chimerical

and their achievements as futile. The different formulae represented

attitudes of mind fundamentally opposed. No peace between catholic and

monophysite was possible. They had conflicting conceptions of ultimate

truth.

DEPENDENCE OF CHRISTOLOGY ON PHILOSOPHY

We mentioned above the two other chief Christological systems, the

Nestorian and the catholic. No analysis of monophysitism which omitted

a reference to these systems would be complete. They were three nearly

contemporary attempts to solve the same problem. The comparison is of

special interest when, as here, fundamental principles are under

examination. It demonstrates the closeness of the connection between

the Christological and the cosmic problems. In each of the three cases

we find that a school of philosophy corresponds to the school of

theology, and that the philosopher's dominant idea about the cosmos

decided the theologian's interpretation of Christ.

This connection between philosophy and Christology is of early date.

From the nature of both disciplines it had to be. Even in apostolic

days the meaning of the incarnation was realised. Christ was

apprehended as a being of more than national or terrestrial importance.

The Pauline and Johannine Christologies gave cosmic significance to His

work, and so inevitably to His Person. Theologians made the tremendous

surmise that Jesus of Nazareth was no other than the Logos of the

Neo-Pythagoreans or the Wise One of the Stoics. That is to say, He

stands not only between God and man, but between Creator and creation.

He is the embodiment of the cosmic relation. From early days, then,

philosophy and religion were working at the same problem; their paths

met at the one goal of the Ideal Person who satisfied both head and

heart. The systematic Christology of the fifth century was, therefore,

a completion of the work begun in the first.

THE CHRISTOLOGICAL AND THE COSMIC PROBLEMS

The essence of the Christological problem is the question as to the

union of natures in Christ. Are there two natures divine and human in

Him? Is each distinct from the other and from the person? Is the

distinction conceptual or actual? The incarnation is a union. Is it a

real union? If so, what did it unite? We have seen that such

questions cannot be approached without presuppositions. What these

presuppositions shall be is decided in the sphere of a wider problem.

This wider problem is known as the cosmic problem. The solution given

to it prescribes the presuppositions of any attempt to solve the

specialised problem. We shall proceed to sketch the cosmic problem,

and to indicate the three main types of answers given to it. It will

then be evident that these three answers find their respective

counterparts in the Nestorian, monophysite and the catholic solutions

of the Christological problem.

As man's intellectual powers mature, two supreme generalisations force

themselves on his consciousness. He conceives his experience as a

whole and calls it the world; he conceives the basis of his experience

as a whole and calls it God. To some minds the world, to some minds

God, is the greater reality; but both concepts are present in varying

proportions wherever thought becomes self-conscious. Here we have in

its lowest terms the material for the ontological question, the first

and the last problem of philosophy. God and the world, at first dimly

conceived and scarcely differentiated, gradually separate and take

shape in the mind as distinct entities. The concepts become

principles, fixed by language and mental imagery. The gulf between

them widens until they stand at opposite poles of thought. In their

isolation they constitute a standing challenge to the mind of man. If

he thinks the world in terms of time, he must postulate a creator. If

he thinks the world out of time, he is forced to conceive a ground of

the world's being. The world cannot be thought without God nor God

without the world. The one necessitates the other. Yet when the

thinker tries to define the terms, he can at first only do so by

negatives. The world is what God is not, and God is what the world is

not. The two primary concepts thus attract and repel each other. The

mind's first task is to grasp them in their difference. It cannot rest

there, but must proceed to attempt to reunite them and grasp them in

their unity. Thus the main problem of philosophy is to conceive and

find expression for the relation between God and the world.

Christology attacks essentially the same problem. Christology is an

attempt to define the relation between God and the world in terms of

personality.

This relation has been conceived in three modes. According to the

level of thought reached, or, as led by their disposition and

education, men have made their choice between three mediating concepts.

Hence derive three divergent types of thought and three outlooks on

life fundamentally opposed. We shall take them in their logical

sequence for convenience of treatment. The historical connection is of

no importance for our present purpose, but it is noteworthy that the

time order both of the schools of philosophy and of the corresponding

Christological systems follows approximately the logical order.

THE FIRST SOLUTION OF THE COSMIC PROBLEM--DUALISM

The first attempted solution of the cosmic problem is best expressed in

the concept "co-existence." God _and_ the world co-exist. God is, and

the world is; their relation is expressed by an "and." "God and the

world" is the truth, all that man can and need know. This solution is

verbal. It leaves the problem more or less as it finds it. The two

principles remain ultimates; neither is reduced to the other. God

still stands outside the world and the world outside God. Neither can

explain the other. This dualism is the lowest stage of ontological

thought. The thinker sees the problem, only to turn away from it. He

surmises that there is some relation between the two; but he cannot

define it, and it remains ineffectual. This was Plato's early

standpoint. He established the idea as the truth of the thing, but he

failed to find expression for the relation between idea and ideate. He

took refuge in symbolical language, and spoke of the thing as a "copy"

of the idea or as a "participant" in it. But as there was no causation

on the one side or dependence on the other side, all that the earlier

Platonic philosophy achieved was in its ideal world to duplicate the

real. Plato's heaven simply co-exists with the world, and the relation

between them is merely verbal.

This metaphysical idea survived Plato and Plato's system, and passed

into common currency. It found and still finds expression in numerous

speculative and practical systems. In religious ontology we find it in

deism. According to the deist there was once at a definite point of

time a relation between God and the world, the relation of creation.

But, creation finished, the relation ceased. In other words, God

created the world, and then withdrew into Himself, leaving the world to

work out its own salvation. The deist believes in God; but his is a

self-contained God, who does not interfere in the course of things or

continue creating. Such a conception of God is useless for religious

purposes, because it represents Him as out of all relation with the

world.

CHRISTOLOGICAL DUALISM--NESTORIANISM

The Christological counterpart of dualism and of deism is Nestorianism.

The Nestorians halt at the lowest stage of Christological thought.

They admit Christ to be the meeting-point of God and man, but they

nullify the admission by introducing dualism into the person of Christ.

They set out to find the solution of the cosmic problem in Christ; they

endeavour to express the relation between God and the world in terms of

His personality. They bring the two concepts together, but they do not

weld them. Faith and courage fail them at the critical moment. They

substitute an association for a union. They leave God and man

co-existing in Christ, but not united there.

Nestorianism is a halfway house on the road from Arianism to

Christianity. It is a weak compromise. The deity in Christ is

admitted, but its unity with humanity denied. The divine remains

external to the human nature. According to the doctrine ascribed to

Nestorius two persons, the son of God and the son of Mary, at the

Baptism were mysteriously associated. The union consists partly in

identity of name, partly in the gradual deepening of the association.

As Jesus grew in spiritual power and knowledge and obedience to the

divine will, the union which at first was relative gradually deepened

towards an absolute union. Divinity was not His birthright, but

acquired. Thus throughout His life the two personalities remained

external to one another. The divine worked miracles; the human

suffered. The Nestorian could pride himself on having preserved the

reality of the divine and the reality of the human; he could worship

the one and imitate the other. But his system was non-Christian,

because it excludes the element of mediation. A dual personality could

never make atonement or redeem humanity. God and man in Christ were

brought into nominal contact, but there was provided no channel by

which the divine virtue might pass into the human. The Nestorian

remains content with his solution, because the background of his

thought is dualist. The thinker's attitude to the cosmic problem

decides his attitude to the Christological problem. Content to couple

God and the world by an "and," he similarly couples by an "and" the

Logos and Jesus Christ. Dividing God from the world, he divides

Christ. Abandoning metaphysical relation between the cosmic

principles, he despairs of finding, or, rather, has no motive for

seeking a personal relation between God and man in the being of Christ.

SECOND SOLUTION OF THE COSMIC PROBLEM--MONISM

The second solution given to the cosmic problem is of special

importance for our thesis. It had a direct influence on monophysitism,

and may be regarded as supplying the metaphysical basis for that

heresy. It represents an advance to a higher stage of thought, just as

monophysitism, which depends on it, is an advance on Nestorianism, and

has always been regarded as a more venial heresy.

The mind finding no satisfaction in dualism advances to monism. The

spectacle of two unrelated ultimate principles impels it to seek and,

if necessary, to invent some mode of reconciling them. Explain it as

we may, the craving for unity, for synthesis, for mediation is radical

in human thought. The mind cannot rest at anything short of it. God

and the world, held asunder conceptually or only nominally united,

constitute a contradiction _in excelsis_, and, as such, provide an

irresistible motive for further and deeper thought.

As is natural, the swing of the pendulum carries the mind to the

opposite extreme. Co-existence failing to supply the required

solution, the key is sought in identity. God and the world are thought

as identical. The terms are connected by the copula. God _is_ the

world, and the world _is_ God. This is the truth of being, for the

monist. The two principles are merged in one, and the contradiction

solved by an assertion of the identity of the contradictories. Monism

takes two forms. It may be either materialist or spiritual. One term

must be selected as the reality, and the other written off as an

illusion. If the thinker's bent of mind be scientific, he is disposed

to make the material world the only objective reality, and God becomes

simply a working hypothesis or a creation of the subjective mind. It

would be beside our purpose to do more than mention this phase of

monism. Spiritual monism, however, requires lengthier treatment; it is

of vital importance to our subject. In this case the mind takes sides

with God as against the world. God is the reality and the world the

illusion. The world is God, in spite of appearances to the contrary.

As world it has no substantive reality; it has no existence for self.

It is the shadow of God, an emanation from Him, or an aspect of Him.

Like dualism, monism is only a sham solution of the cosmic problem. It

fails to keep prominent the idea of relation. A relation must relate.

If its terms are merged, the relation falls to the ground. A relation

must be such that, while the terms are unified, they are preserved as

realities. It must both unify and keep distinct. To abandon either

God or the world is a counsel of despair. To detract from the reality

of either is treason to fact and tantamount to a shelving of the cosmic

problem.

PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL MONISM

The systems that identify God and the world range from the crude

materialism of Democritus to the lofty spiritualism of Plotinus. Stoic

cosmology occupies an intermediate position. The Stoic was nominally a

pantheist, but he seems to have oscillated between a spiritual and a

materialist explanation of the universal being. The monist system that

prepared the soil for monophysitism and constantly fostered its growth

was Neo-Platonism. In the hands of Plotinus all the main elements of

spiritual monism were worked up into a speculative philosophy with a

profound bearing on practical life. The world and the human spirit,

for Plotinus, were simply manifestations of God. He taught that, as

light issues from the sun and proceeds forth on its way, growing

gradually dimmer till it passes into darkness, so the world of thought

and thing has no true being apart from God, from whom it proceeded and

to whom it returns. Spiritual monism found in Alexandria a congenial

home. Blending there with oriental mysticism it produced a crop of

gnostic speculative systems, in all of which Acosmism or a denial of

the world was the keynote. Whether the problem was conceived in terms

of being or of value, the result was the same. The world has no true

being. Its appearance of solidity is a sham. It has no value.

Compared with God, it is negligible. It is but the shadow cast by the

eternal sun.

The monophysite tenets traceable to monism will be considered in detail

in later chapters. Here our concern is to show that monism supplies

the metaphysical principle on which the heresy is based; that, as

dualism provides the _a priori_ of Nestorian thought, monism provides

the _a priori_ of monophysite thought.

CHRISTOLOGICAL MONISM--MONOPHYSITISM

The essential doctrine of monophysitism is the assertion of the

absolute numerical unity of the person of Christ. It carries to

extremes its denial of the dual personality maintained by the

Nestorians. All vestiges of duality were banished from His being;

there were not two persons: there were not even two natures. There was

in Christ only the one nature of God the Word. The human nature at the

incarnation was absorbed into the divine. It no more has substantive

existence than has the world in a pantheistic system. This is monism

in terms of personality. Its presuppositions are those of a mind

imbued with an all-powerful feeling for unity. It is faced with the

problem of reconciling God and the world in the person of Jesus Christ.

It brings to that problem a prejudice against the real being and the

real value of the world. Hence it is led to draw the false conclusion

that humanity, which is part of the world, is not a permanent element

in the highest truth; that even perfect humanity, humanity

representative of all that is noblest in the race, cannot be allowed

true existence in the Ideal.

Monism abandons the universal relation by abandoning one or other of

the terms to be related. Monophysitism cuts a similar knot in a

similar fashion. It jettisons redemption by excluding from the

Redeemer all kinship with that which He came to redeem. Nominally

admitting human nature into union with deity, it destroys the reality

of that transaction at a stroke by making the two natures identical.

So the incarnation, for the monophysite, becomes a myth; no change in

the nature of the Logos took place at it, and, consequently, no change

in the nature of the Man Christ Jesus.

We may trace the likeness between the cosmic and the Christological

problems still further. Monism is forced to attempt to give some

account of the world's apparent reality. Similarly monophysitism had

to try to explain those facts of Christ's life which on the face of the

Gospel narrative are human and normal. The explanation offered is

essentially the same in both systems. The monist asserts that the

world exists only in the mind of the thinker. It is an illusion of the

senses. The duty of the philosopher is to overcome the illusion by

turning away from the world of sense and fixing his mind on true being;

by ascesis and contemplation he endeavours to attain the ecstatic

state, in which the illusion of the world's reality disappears, and the

potential identity of man with the universal spirit becomes actualised

in experience. Similarly, for the monophysite, the humanity of Christ

was a creation of the senses. Christ's body was a phantom, and His

human mind simply an aspect of Him. They were impressions left on the

minds of His contemporaries. Having no substantive existence, no

reality in fact, they were to be ignored in Christological dogma. They

were not to be considered as part of the true Christ; they were not to

be worshipped. No spiritual value attached to them. They were

hindrances rather than helps to the religion that aimed at entire

abandonment of self and absorption in the divine.

THE THIRD SOLUTION OF THE COSMIC PROBLEM--IDENTITY IN DIFFERENCE

We come now to the third and last solution of the cosmic problem. As

we develop it, we shall endeavour to show that it supplies that

metaphysical idea which forms the basis of catholic Christology. The

two previous solutions failed. They do not satisfy the philosopher and

they mislead the theologian. The one separates God from the world; the

other merges them. Thus both, in effect, abandon the original

enterprise. They destroy the relation instead of expressing it. The

concepts both of co-existence and of identity have proved fruitless in

the speculative problem, and in Christology have given rise to heresy.

The third school of thought takes as its starting point neither God,

nor the world, nor the two as co-existing, but the relation of the two.

It makes that relation such that the terms related are preserved in the

relation. Neither identity nor difference is the full truth, but

identity in and through difference. God is not the world, nor is the

world God. God is, and the world is. Each are facts. In their

separateness they are not true facts. It is only as we conceive the

two in their oneness, a supra-numerical oneness, that we can give their

full value to each. The world is God's world; therefore it has being

and value. The cosmic relation then is expressed not by an "and," nor

by an "is," but by an "of." The God "_of_" the world is the key

concept that unlocks the doors of the palace of truth.

It was in the prominence given to this concept that Aristotle's system

made a great advance on that of his predecessor. Plato had established

a world of ideas with the idea of the Good as its centre, but he left

it unrelated to the world of experience. Aristotle insisted on

relating the ideal and the real. His concept of relation was that of

form and matter. The world apart from God is matter apart from form.

It has only potential reality. When it becomes united to its form, it

becomes actual. Its form makes it a fact--what it has in it to be.

Aristotle conceives different grades of being. Unformed matter is the

lowest of these grades, and God the highest. Each grade supplies the

matter of which the next highest grade is the form. Ascending the

scale of being at last we reach pure form. Thus the ladder of

development is constructed by which the world rises to its realisation

in God. Aristotle gave to humanity the conception of a God who

transcends the world, and yet is immanent in it, as form is in matter.

Thus Greek philosophy in Aristotle attained that spiritual monotheism

which supplied the foundation for the edifice of Christian doctrine.

The effect of Aristotle's teaching was felt by all the ecclesiastical

parties in the fifth century. As we shall see in a later chapter, some

of the subsidiary elements of his philosophy are reflected in

monophysitism. The dominant ideas, however, of the system, the

conception of God and the world and the relation between them, were

taken over by the catholic theologians, and incorporated into their

Christology. We need not here inquire whether Aristotle's influence

was direct or indirect. No doubt many of the theologians who

constructed Christian doctrine had read his works. Whether that is so

or not, they must have unconsciously assimilated his central doctrine.

It was common property. The determination to keep God a reality and

the world a reality and yet relate the two became the controlling

motive of their thinking.

Aristotle in theory and application of theory has always a feeling for

fact. The individual thing and the world of individual things are, for

him, never negligible. Realised matter, life, the human spirit, human

nature, are actualities and have their value as such. They are not all

on the same level of being; they do not occupy the same rank; and it is

the philosopher's business to determine their respective positions in

the scale of being and value. But he cannot have his head in the

clouds of contemplation, unless he have his feet on the earth of fact.

THE ESSENCE OF CATHOLIC CHRISTOLOGY

Catholic Christology has caught the spirit of Aristotle's teaching. It

is not primarily speculative. It is in close touch with fact. It is

the outcome of a deep-felt want. Redemption is the first demand of

religious experience; so it is the motive and theme of all Christology.

The soul views itself as a member of a world of souls estranged from

God, and for its own peace and welfare seeks to effect a union between

God and the world. Such a union, to be effective, must preserve the

being and value of the world. If there were no world or only a

valueless world, there would be nothing to redeem, or nothing worth

redeeming. Seeking that union in personality, and in the most

marvellous personality of history, the orthodox theologians by a true

instinct ascribed to Him both divine and human natures. He is the

cosmic unity of opposites. His person is the cosmic relation. In that

person the lower term of the relation has true being and full value.

Thus the Church steered a middle course between the Scylla of

co-existence and the Charybdis of identity.

These _a priori_ deductions as to the being of Christ were verified by

a reference to fact. The life-story of the historic Christ comprises

two distinct groups of experience. There are thoughts, deeds, and

words attributed to Him that only God could have thought, done, and

said. There are as well thoughts, deeds and words of His that only a

man could have thought, done and said. Hence the diphysite doctrine

was verified _a posteriori_. Again, in both groups of experience there

is a never-failing connecting link. There is a unity lying deeper in

His consciousness than the duality. Christ, the Agent, is the same in

both parts. Whether as God or man, He is never out of character.

Hence the unity of the person also was established _a posteriori_.

Thus, to the orthodox Christologians, the expectation that the human

Ideal would be a unity, comprising divinity and humanity, was justified

by historical fact.

They found a further verification on applying the test of practice.

Orthodox Christology satisfies the requirements of the soul. Man's

chief spiritual need is access to God through "a daysman that might lay

his hand upon both." An exemplar, even though perfect, is not adequate

to his need. The _unio mystica_ can only be experienced by the

leisured few. Man demands a religion of redemption, a redemption that

allows value to labour, to endeavour, to human thought, that recognises

the reality of pain and sorrow and sin, a redemption that redeems

humanity in all its phases and in the wealth of its experiences. An

Agent that has not shared to the full those experiences is useless for

the purpose. Redemption must be the work of One who knows God and

knows man, of One who has the touch of sympathy; for to such a touch

alone can humanity respond. The Christology that makes Christ Jesus

consubstantial with God and with man satisfies man's deep-felt need.

SUMMARY OF THE CHAPTER

We have taken a triad of ontologies and a triad of Christological

systems, placed them side by side, and examined them. The result of

that examination is a triple correspondence. The metaphysical

principle is found in each case worked out in a corresponding

Christology. The comparison is of general interest. It reveals

Christology as intimately connected with the workings of intellect, as

in the main stream of the current of human thought, as capable of

philosophic treatment. Further than that, the comparison is vital to

the main argument of this essay. It provides the clue to the heart of

our subject. The scientist, who wishes to understand a botanical

specimen, pays as much attention to what is in the ground as to what is

above ground. The seed and roots are as full of scientific interest as

are stem, leaf and flower. Similarly, to understand the monophysite

heresy, to be able to detect it and expose it, we must take it in the

germ. We may push the illustration further. The properties of a

botanical specimen are best studied in connection with organisms of

allied species. We cannot isolate unless we compare. By comparison

the essential features, functions and properties of the specimen under

examination are elucidated.

It is by isolating the three germinal ideas of these three

Christological systems and comparing them, that a full comprehension of

monophysitism in all its stages, from seed to flower, is reached. We

have used this method, and have found that the roots of the heresy lie

in spiritual monism. In subsequent chapters we shall analyse its

origins as a historical system, its specific tenets and its practical

consequences. It will then be seen that the spirit of monism pervades

the whole system.