THE ORIGINS OF MONOPHYSITISM
The monophysitism of the fifth century had its roots in the past as
well as in the _a priori_. In the previous chapter we treated it as a
phase of philosophic thought and reviewed the metaphysic on which the
heresy rests. In the present chapter its relations as a historical
system of religious thought are to be exhibited. As such, it owes much
to outside influences. Much in the monophysite mode of thought and
many of its specific doctrines can be traced either to other
ecclesiastical heresies or to pagan philosophies. The fact of this
double derivation deserves to be emphasised. It refutes the charge of
inquisitorial bigotry, so frequently levelled against the theologians
of the early centuries. The non-Christian affinities of the heresy
account for the bitterness of the controversy to which it gave rise,
and, in large measure, excuse the intolerance shown by both parties.
Heresies were not domestic quarrels. Contemporaries viewed them as
involving a life and death struggle between believers and unbelievers.
Christianity can afford to be tolerant to-day. It has an assured
position. Its tenets are defined. Christians can almost always
distinguish at a glance errors that threaten the essentials of the
Faith from those that do not. In the fourth and fifth centuries the
case was otherwise. Christianity was then one among many conflicting
systems of religion. Its intellectual bases were as yet only
imperfectly thought out. Any doctrinal error seemed capable of
poisoning the whole body of belief. Heresy, so the orthodox held, was
of the devil. No charitable view of it was allowable. That
uncompromising attitude was, to a large extent, justified because many
articles of the heretical creeds were of purely pagan origin. Given
similar conditions to-day, our easy tolerance of opinion would
disappear. If Islam, for instance, were to-day a serious menace to the
Faith, Christians would automatically stiffen their attitude towards
monophysite doctrines. Toleration of the false Christology would,
under those circumstances, be treason to the true. The Church of the
fifth century was menaced from many sides. Monophysitism was the foe
at her gates. That heresy was not a variety of Christianity. It was a
semi-pagan theosophy, a product of Greek and oriental, as well as of
purely Christian speculation; therefore it was anathema to the orthodox.
THE ELEMENTAL FORMS OF CHRISTOLOGICAL ERROR--DOCETISM AND EBIONITISM
We propose to begin the study of the antecedents of monophysitism by
examining those of a Christian or semi-Christian character. For that
purpose it will be necessary to give a brief sketch of the early
heresies in so far as they bear on the Christological problem.
The two primitive forms of doctrinal error, to which the Church, even
in apostolic days, was exposed, were docetism and ebionitism. These
are the elemental heresies. All the later Christological heresies are
refinements of one or other of these two. They constitute the extremes
of Christological thought: between them runs the _via media_ of
orthodoxy. Each of the two sees but one aspect of the two-fold life of
Christ. Docetism lays an exclusive emphasis on His real divinity,
ebionitism on His real humanity. Each mistakes a half truth for a
whole truth.
The docetists denied that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh. His
body, they taught, was an apparition. He ate and drank, but the
physical frame received no sustenance. He appeared to suffer, but felt
no pain. The reality behind the semblance was the divine spirit-being,
who conjured up the illusion in order to elevate the thoughts of
mankind. This docetic theory commended itself to many of the Greek
Christians. They were familiar with the notion of "the gods coming
down to them in the likeness of men." Greek mythology abounds in
instances of docetic incarnations. The gods of the popular religion
constantly assumed visible form during their temporary manifestations.
The ebionites threatened the Faith from the opposite quarter. They
taught that Christ was real man and only man. According to them, the
whole value of His life and work lay in His moral teaching and His
noble example; there is no mystery, no contact of divine and human in
Christ; what He attained, we all may attain. The ebionites were
recruited from the Jewish element in the Church. The rigid monotheism
of the Jews made it hard for them to conceive an intermediary between
God and man; they were naturally disposed to embrace a humanistic
explanation of Christ.
Docetism was elaborated by Valentinus, Manes and other gnostics and
adopted into their systems, while ebionitism provided the basis for the
Christologies of Paul of Samosata, of the Photinians and Adoptionists.
In contact with these heresies orthodox beliefs, originally fluid,
gradually hardened. The dogma "Christus deus et homo" had from the
beginning been held in the Church. Its full implications were not
realised and formulated until the conflict with error came. The
controversies of the third and fourth centuries threw into bold relief
the unity of the person and the perfection of the divinity and of the
humanity.
THE PROBLEM OF THE HYPOSTATIC UNION
The manner of the hypostatic union then became an urgent problem. The
Church of the fifth century was called upon to attempt a solution. Any
reading of the Gospels compelled the recognition of divine and human
elements in Christ; but speculative theology found it difficult to
reconcile that fact with the equally important fact of the unity of
person.
The theologians of the previous century had bequeathed little or no
guidance. The fifth-century Christologians were pioneers in an
unmapped region. Athanasius' great treatises on the incarnation are
hardly more than eloquent defences of the true deity and true humanity
of Christ. They contain little or no constructive Christology. Their
theme is, _autos enenthropesen_, _hina hemeis theopoiethomen_. He
maintains the fact, but does not deal with the "how." He uses the
phrase "natural union" (_henosis physike_), but does not attempt to
define the mode of that union.
APOLLINARIANISM
Apollinaris was, as far as we know, the first theologian to approach
this subject. We may note in passing that, though he was bishop of
Laodicea in Syria, Alexandria was his native place. His father was an
Alexandrian, and he himself had been a friend of Athanasius. The fact
of his connection with Alexandria deserves mention, because his
doctrine reflects the ideas of the Alexandrian school of thought, not
those of the Syrian. Apollinaris set himself to attack the heretical
view that there were two "Sons"--one before all time, the divine Logos,
and one after the incarnation, Jesus Christ. In doing so he felt
constrained to formulate a theory of the union of natures. He started
from the Platonic division of human nature into three parts, rational
soul, animal soul, and body. He argued that in the statement "the
Logos became flesh," "flesh" must mean animal soul and body. He urged
in proof that it would be absurd to suppose the Logos conditioned by
human reason; that rational soul was the seat of personality, and that
if it were associated with the Logos, it would be impossible to avoid
recognising "two Sons." He expressly asserted that the humanity of
Christ was incomplete, contending that this very defect in the human
nature made possible the unity of His person. According to
Apollinaris, then, the union was a composition. The Logos superseded
the human reason, and was thus united to body and animal soul.
Apollinarianism was a form of docetism. In ascribing imperfection to
the human nature of Christ it _eo ipso_ denied its reality.
Apollinaris, in fact, said of Christ's reason what the early docetists
said of His body. The system is more ingenious than convincing. It is
highly artificial. It provides no intellectual basis for a living
faith in an incarnate Christ. The theory, however, was very
influential in its day, and was intimately connected with the rise of
monophysitism. Eutyches, the "father of the monophysites," was
condemned by a local synod at Constantinople in A.D. 448 on the ground
that he was "affected by the heresy of Valentinus and Apollinaris."[1]
Harnack goes so far as to say that "the whole position of the later
monophysites, thought out to all its conceivable conclusions, is
already to be found in Apollinaris." Apollinarianism was condemned at
the second general council, and there the Church made her first
declaration, a negative one, on the subject of the hypostatic union.
In conflict with the heresies which arose in the next two generations,
she evolved a positive statement of the truth.
THE NESTORIAN REACTION
Opposition to Apollinarianism gave rise to the Nestorian heresy. The
original ebionitism had died away, but its spirit and central doctrine
reappeared in Nestorianism. Nestorianism might be described as
ebionitism conforming to the creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople. The
leaders of the opposition to the Apollinarists of the fifth century
were their own Syrian countrymen whose headquarters was at Antioch.
The Antiochians differed from the Apollinarians in the starting-point
of their Christology and in the controlling motive of their thought.
While Apollinaris had constructed his Christology on the basis of the
doctrine of the Trinity, the Antiochians started from the formula
"perfect alike in deity and humanity." The reasonings of Apollinaris
were governed by the thought of redemption. The fundamental question
of religion for him was, "How can the closest union between divine and
human be secured?" The tendency of the Antiochians, on the other hand,
was to neglect the interests of Soteriology and to emphasize the
ethical aspect of Christ's life and teaching. They put in the
background the idea of the all-creating, all-sustaining Logos, who took
man's nature upon Him and in His person deified humanity. Their
thought centred on the historic Christ, the Christ of the evangelists.
They did not revert to crude ebionitism, but they explained the Nicene
creed from an ebionitic stand-point. They maintained as against the
Apollinarians the completeness of Christ's human nature; with equal
vigour they maintained the essential deity of the Logos. The "poverty"
(ebionitism) of their doctrines consisted in their paltry view of the
hypostatic union. The union, according to the Nestorians, was
subsequent to the conception of Jesus. It was not a personal, but a
moral union. It was a conjunction of two co-ordinate entities. They
taught that the more the man Jesus acted in accordance with the divine
promptings, the closer became his union with the Logos. That is to
say, the union was relative not absolute. Thus the union between
divine and human in Christ differed only in degree from the union of
the same elements in any good man. The unity of the Son of God and the
Son of Mary consisted solely in the identity of name, honour and
worship.
CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA
Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria, led the opposition to Nestorius. He
declared that the moment of conception was the moment of the union, and
that the notion of incarnation involved much more than an association
of natures. He maintained that the incarnation was a hypostatic union
(_henosis physike_). He endeavoured to guard against an Apollinarian
interpretation of his teaching; but in this attempt he was not
altogether successful. He asserted the perfection of Christ's humanity
and the distinction between the two natures. The perfection, however,
is compromised, and the distinction rendered purely ideal by his
further statement that there were "two natures before, but only one
after the union." He cited in proof the words of Athanasius, "one
incarnate nature of God the Word."
Cyril prevailed. Nestorius was condemned and the Antiochian school
discredited. Cyril's victory, however, was of doubtful value to
orthodoxy. His ardent but unbalanced utterances bequeathed to the
Church a legacy of strife. His writings, particularly the earlier
ones, furnished the monophysites with an armoury of weapons. His
teaching could not with justice be styled docetic or Apollinarian, but
its mystic tone was so pronounced that it proved a propaedeutic for
monophysitism. The shibboleth of orthodoxy, quoted above, "one
incarnate nature of God the Word," passed rapidly into the watchword of
heresy. Athanasius had used the word "nature" in a broad sense. The
monophysites narrowed it down to its later technical meaning. Thus
they exalted Christ into a region beyond the ken of mortal man. The
incarnation became a mystery pure and simple, unintelligible, calling
for blind acceptance. The monophysites, following Cyril, heightened
the mystery, but, in doing so, they eliminated the reality and the
human appeal of the incarnate life. They soon began to argue that,
since Christ is monophysite, the properties of deity and humanity in
Him are interchangeable; that therefore, while yet a Babe in the
manger, He ruled the world with the omniscience and omnipresence of the
Logos; that while He hanged upon the Cross, His mighty power sustained
and ordered the universe. The monophysites professed great jealousy
for the honour due to the Redeemer. But the ascription of such
attributes to Jesus Christ detracts from His honour. If the nature
that suffered on the Cross be not distinct from the nature that cannot
suffer, then the Crucifixion was a sham. Monophysitism is docetism
elaborated. It abandons the Christ of history. It rules out His
_prokope_. It ignores a fact, vital to Christology, namely the
_kenosis_ or divine self-limitation. Thus it throws a veil of
unreality over those facts on which the Christian Faith is built.
MONOPHYSITISM A PRODUCT OF POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE CURRENTS OF RELIGIOUS
THOUGHT
The foregoing sketch of the early Christological heresies exhibits
monophysitism as a product of two opposite intellectual currents. A
man's convictions are settled for him partly by acceptance, partly by
rejection of what tradition offers or his mind evolves. The mass mind
works similarly. It accepts and rejects, approves and disallows. The
stabilisation of a body of mass opinions, such as a heresy, is thus
determined by opposite forces. It was so with monophysitism. Its
Christian antecedents comprised positive and negative currents. The
positive current was docetism, the negative ebionitism. Docetism,
originating in apostolic times, passed through many phases, to provide,
at the end of the fourth century, in its most refined form,
Apollinarianism, the immediate positive cause of monophysitism.
Ebionitism, related to docetism as realism to idealism, possessed equal
vitality and equal adaptability. It showed itself in various
humanistic interpretations of Christ. Of these the most elaborate was
Nestorianism, which exerted the most insistent and immediate negative
influence on the early growth of monophysitism.
MONOPHYSITISM AND NON-CHRISTIAN THOUGHT
We leave here the subject of the influence of other heresies on
monophysitism, and proceed to exhibit its affinities with non-Christian
thought. At Alexandria, the home of the heresy, two systems of
philosophy, the Aristotelian and the Neo-Platonist, were strongly
represented. Both of these philosophies exercised a profound influence
upon the origins and upon the later developments of monophysite
doctrine. We propose to take, first, the Aristotelian, and then the
Neo-Platonist philosophy, elucidating those leading ideas in each on
which the monophysite thinker would naturally fasten, as lending
intellectual support to his religious views.
THE ARISTOTELIAN LOGIC
Aristotle was held in high estimation by the monophysite leaders,
particularly in the sixth and seventh centuries. His works were
translated into Syriac in the Jacobite schools. The West owes much to
these translations. For it was largely by this agency that his
metaphysic reached the Arabs, who transmitted it to the West in the
Middle Ages.
The Aristotelian logic was widely known among the monophysites. It
seems to have formed part of their educational curriculum. Taken apart
from the rest of the system, the logic produces a type of mind that
revels in subtle argumentation. It exalts the form of thought at the
expense of the matter. It had this effect on the monophysite
theologians. They were trained dialecticians. They were noted for
their controversial powers, for their constant appeal to definition,
for the mechanical precision of their arguments. These mental
qualities, excellent in themselves, do not conduce to sound theology.
Formal logic effects clarity of thought often at the expense of depth.
It treats thoughts as things. Procedure, that is proper in the sphere
of logic, is out of place in psychology and theology. Concepts such as
person and nature must be kept fluid, if they are not to mislead. If
they are made into hard and fast ideas, into sharply defined
abstractions, they will be taken to represent discrete psychic
entities, external to one another as numbers are. The elusive, Protean
character of the inter-penetrating realities behind them will be lost
to view. The most signal defect of monophysite method is its
unquestioning submission to the Aristotelian law of contradiction. The
intellectual training that makes men acute logicians disqualifies them
for dealing with the living subject. The monophysite Christologians
were subtle dialecticians, but the psychology of Christ's being lay
outside their competence.
ARISTOTLE'S CRITICISM OF DUALISM--A WEAPON IN THE HANDS OF THE
MONOPHYSITES
Leaving the formal element in Aristotle's system, we come to its
material content. Some of the prominent ideas of the Aristotelian
cosmology and psychology reappear in the heresy we are studying. We
shall take first the rejection of the Platonic dualism. Aristotle's
repeated criticism of his master's theory of ideas is not merely
destructive. It formed the starting-point for his own metaphysic. The
ideas, he says, simply duplicate the world of existent things. They do
not create things or move them; they do not explain genesis or process;
they merely co-exist with the ideates. The participation which Plato's
later theory postulated is inadequate. A more intimate relation is
required. The theory of ideas confronts God with a world, and leaves
the relation between them unformulated and inexplicable.
This criticism is of first importance for theology. Faith as well as
reason demands a real relation between idea and ideate. The Christian
student in the fifth century, familiar with Aristotle's criticism of
Plato, would inevitably apply it in Christology. Any theory of
redemption that ascribed duality to the Redeemer would seem to him to
be open to the objections that Aristotle had urged against the theory
of ideas. The Nestorian formula, in effect, juxtaposed the ideal
Christ and the real Jesus, and left the two unrelated. This was
Platonism in Christology. Aristotle's attack on Plato's system
provided a radical criticism of Nestorianism. The monophysite
theologians were blind to the difference between the Nestorian position
and that of the orthodox. They saw that Aristotle had placed a
powerful weapon in their hands, and they used it indifferently against
both opposing parties.
ARISTOTLE'S PSYCHOLOGY
We turn now to Aristotle's psychology. We must give a brief sketch of
it in order to establish the fact that the Aristotelian and the
monophysite science of the soul labour under the same defect. It is a
radical defect, namely, the almost complete absence of the conception
of personality. The principle of Aristotle's psychology, like that of
his metaphysic, is the concept of form and matter. The soul of man
comes under the general ontological law. All existence is divisible
into grades, the lower grade being the matter whose form is constituted
by the next highest grade. Thus there is a graduated scale of being,
starting from pure matter and rising to pure form. The inorganic is
matter for the vegetable kingdom, the vegetable kingdom for the animal
kingdom; the nutritive process is material for the sensitive, and the
sensitive for the cognitive. Man is an epitome of these processes.
The various parts of his nature are arranged in an ascending scale;
form is the only cohesive force. The animal soul is the form of the
body, born with it, growing with it, dying with it; the two are one in
the closest union conceivable. Besides the soul of the body, there is,
says Aristotle, a soul of the soul. This is reason, essentially
different from animal and sensitive soul. It is not connected with
organic function. It is pure intellectual principle. It is
immaterial, immortal, the divine element in man. This reason is not a
bare unity. As it appears in human experience, it is not full-grown.
Potentially it contains all the categories, but the potentiality must
be actualised. Consequently reason subdivides into active and passive
intellect. The action of the former on the latter, and the response of
the latter to the former, constitute the development of the mind, the
education of the truth that is potentially present from the beginning.
This hierarchy of immaterial entities contains nothing corresponding to
our idea of personality. There is in it no principle that is both
individual and immortal. Aristotle allows immortality only to the
universal reason. The psychic elements are condemned to perish with
the body. There is no hope for the parts of the soul which are most
intimately connected with the individual's experience.
Monophysite Christology shares this fundamental defect. The
monophysite thinker attempted to express the union of two natures
within one experience. But his psychology, not containing the notion
of personality, could furnish no principle of synthesis. An agent in
the background of life, to combine the multiplicity of experience, is a
_sine qua non_ of a sound Christology. Personality was to the
monophysites a _terra incognita_; and it was in large measure their
devotion to Aristotle's system that made them deaf to the teaching of
the catholic church.
INTELLECTUALISM AND MYSTICISM COMPLEMENTARY SYSTEMS
After this sketch of the Aristotelian features recognisable in
monophysitism, we turn to the other great pagan philosophy that
assisted in the shaping of the heresy. Intellectualism and mysticism
are closely allied; the two are complementary; they are as mutually
dependent as are head and heart. It is not then surprising that
monophysitism should possess the characteristics of both these schools
of thought. The intellectualism of the heresy was largely due, as we
have shown, to the Aristotelian logic and metaphysic; its mystic
elements derive, as we proceed to indicate, from Neo-Platonism and
kindred theosophies.
Alexandria had been for centuries the home of the mystics. The
geographical position, as well as the political circumstances of its
foundation, destined that city to be the meeting-place of West and
East. There the wisdom of the Orient met and fought and fused with
that of the Occident. There Philo taught, and bequeathed to the
Neo-Platonists much of his Pythagorean system. There flourished for a
while and died fantastic eclectic creeds, pagan theosophies
masquerading as Christianity. Gnosticism was a typical product of the
city. Valentinus and Basilides and the other gnostics made in that
cosmopolitan atmosphere their attempts to reconcile Christianity with
Greek and oriental thought. There Ammonius Saccas, after his lapse
from the Christian faith, taught and laid the foundation of
Neo-Platonism. Plotinus was the greatest of his disciples, and, though
he taught at Rome for most of his life, it was in the spirit of
Alexandria that he wrought his absolute philosophy, the full-orbed
splendour of the setting sun of Greek thought. Neo-Platonism did not
die with Plotinus. In the middle of the fifth century, when
monophysitism was at its zenith, Proclus was fashioning an intellectual
machinery to express the Plotinian system. The story of Hypatia
evidences the dominant position of Neo-Platonism in Alexandrian
culture. The violence of Cyril's measures against her shows what a
menace to the Church that philosophy was. Cyril was not a monophysite,
but much that he said and did promoted their cause. Dioscurus, his
nephew and successor in the see of Alexandria, championed monophysitism
at the council of Chalcedon. In later generations Alexandria always
offered an asylum to exiled monophysite leaders.
These facts render it impossible to regard the connection between
Alexandria and monophysitism as fortuitous. They further suggest that
Neo-Platonism was the connecting link. Such in fact it was.
Monophysitism, we might almost say, was Neo-Platonism in Christian
dress. The ethos of the two systems is the same, and the doctrinal
resemblance is marked. It was natural that the home of pagan mysticism
should cradle the kindred system of heretical Christian mysticism.
NEO-PLATONIST ONTOLOGY
The representative figure amongst the Neo-Platonists is Plotinus. His
comprehensive mind gathered up the main threads of Alexandrian thought,
and wove them into the fabric of a vast speculative system. The system
is as much a religion as a philosophy. It is the triumph of
uncompromising monism. The last traces of dualism have been
eradicated. God, for Plotinus, is true being and the only being. He
is all and in all. God is an impersonal Trinity, comprising the One,
the cosmic reason and the cosmic soul. The One is primal, ineffable,
behind and beyond all human experience. All we know of Him is that He
is the source and union of reason and soul. Creation is effected by a
continuous series of emanations from God. Emanation is not an
arbitrary act of divine will; it is a necessary consequence of the
nature of the One. God must negate Himself, and the process is
creation. The further the process of negation is carried, the less
reality does the created object possess. Last in the scale comes
matter, which has no self-subsistence, but is the absolute
self-negation of God. We referred in the last chapter to Plotinus'
favourite illustration. We may be allowed, perhaps, to repeat it here.
As light, he says, issues from the sun and grows gradually dimmer,
until it passes by imperceptible degrees into the dark, so reason
emanates from God and, passing through the phases of nature, loses its
essence gradually in its procession, until finally it is derationalised
and becomes its opposite.
NEO-PLATONIST PSYCHOLOGY
Human souls are at an intermediate stage of this cosmic process. Like
the ray of light which touches both sun and earth, they have contact
with God and with matter. They stand midway in creation. They are
attracted upwards and downwards. Reason draws them to God; sense
chains them to earth. Their position decides their duty. (Here the
philosophy becomes a religion). The duty of man is to break the
sensuous chains and set the soul free to return to its home in God.
This return of the soul to God is attained by the path of knowledge.
The knowledge that frees is not speculative; for such enhances
self-consciousness. It is immediate consciousness indistinguishable
from unconsciousness. It is intuitive knowledge. It is vision in
which the seer loses himself, and what sees is the same as what is
seen. It is the absorption of the soul in the world reason, and so
with God.
The Neo-Platonist took practical steps to attain this mystic state. He
submitted to rule and discipline. By mortification of the flesh he
endeavoured to weaken sensuous desire. The arts of theurgy were
employed to wean the mind from sensuous knowledge, and to fix
aspiration on unseen realities. Contemplation and self-hypnotism were
widely practised. In ecstasy the mystic found a foretaste of that
blissful loss of being, which is the goal and crown of philosophic
thought.
MONOPHYSITISM AND NEO-PLATONISM
When we compare monophysitism with the system of Plotinus, several
points of resemblance appear. There is first the impersonal character
of the deity. Monophysitism was not a Trinitarian heresy, and the
Catholic doctrine of the three persons in the godhead was the official
creed of the heretical church. But their theologians refrained from
laying emphasis upon the distinct personalities of Father, Son and Holy
Ghost. Their sympathies were Sabellian to the core, and Sabellian
heresies were constantly recurring within their communion. The
impersonal Trinity, such as Plotinus taught, was thoroughly in keeping
with their Christology. They lacked a clear conception of personality
in the second Person of the Trinity. It was inevitable that they
should overlook the same element in the incarnate Christ.
The Neo-Platonic view of matter finds its counterpart in monophysite
theory. The monophysites, without formally denying its real existence,
nursed a Manichean suspicion of it. It was, to them, the seat of
illusion; it was an obstacle to spirit, the enemy of spiritual
development. If not unreal, it was at any rate unworthy. The
association of Christ with matter through His body and through His
human nature was, in their eyes, a degradation of deity. That Christ
took matter up into His being as a permanent element, that He dignified
the body and glorified human faculties, these facts seemed to the
monophysite mind improbable, and, if true, devoid of religious
significance. It came natural to him to explain Christ's body as a
phantom. He was prepared to regard the human nature as unsubstantial.
The mystic's view of matter, of sense and human existence characterises
the whole monophysite outlook.
In the spirit of Plotinus the monophysites conceived the incarnation as
the supreme example of the _unio mystica_. The _unio mystica_ was a
state of rapture, abnormal and temporary in earthly experience, in
which the identity of the mystic was actually merged in the cosmic
reason. The lower nature disappeared completely into the higher. It
was absorption. This word "absorption" was in common use among the
heretics. It was a trite saying among the first generation of the
monophysites that "the human nature of Christ was absorbed in the
divine, as a drop of honey in the ocean." They conceived His thought
as lost in the universal reason, His will as surrendered to the will of
God, His human affections as fused in the fire of divine feeling, His
body as a phantom. They could not admit that He lived the real life of
a real man. They could not see the value of such a life.
Neo-Platonism had paralysed their optic nerve. Thinkers such as the
Christologians of Alexandria, imbued with the spirit of Neo-Platonism,
had no motive for preserving the distinct subsistence of Christ's human
nature. It was their boast that their Ideal had faced and overcome and
trampled on the lower elements of His being. He was a proof from fact
that body and sense and all that is distinctively human could be
sublimated into the universal substance, which is the primary effluence
of the Plotinian One. In a word, the incarnate Christ was, to them,
the personification of the Neo-Platonist _unio mystica_.
We may conclude this comparison of monophysitism with Neo-Platonism by
pointing out that the two systems had a similar bearing on the conduct
of life. Neo-Platonism was a religion. Its speculative aspect was
subordinate to its practical. A knowledge of the soul's position in
creation and of its destiny laid the philosopher under strict
obligation. Fasting and self-denial were essential preliminaries to
the higher mystic practices. Ecstasy could not be reached until body
and sense had been starved into complete submission. Monophysitism
adopted this tradition, and made ascesis the central duty of the
Christian life. The monophysite church became celebrated for the
length and rigidity of its fasts. The monastic element dominated its
communion. Indeed, it is hardly too much to say that the monophysite
movement, on its external side, was an attempt to capture the Church
for monastic principles. The heresy drew its inspiration from the
cloister. The Christ of the monophysites had withdrawn from the market
to the wilderness; so His followers must needs go out of the world to
follow in His steps.
[1] Harnack, "History of Dogma," vol. iv. chap. ii. p. 160.