MONOPHYSITE DOCTRINE
The distinctive doctrine of monophysitism, that from which the name of
the heresy is taken, is the assertion that there is but one nature, the
divine nature, in Christ. There existed some difference of opinion
among the monophysites as to whether any degree of reality might be
ascribed to the human nature. Some were prepared to allow it
conceptual reality; they would grant that Christ had been diphysite
momentarily, that He was "out of two natures." But that admission is
quite inadequate. It amounts to no more than the paltry concession
that Christ's human nature before the incarnation is conceivable as a
separate entity. All monophysites united in condemning the diphysite
doctrine that after the incarnation Christ was and is "in two natures."
Such a Christ they would not worship. It was "the image with two faces
that the Council of Chalcedon had set up."[1] They adopted the
Athanasian phrase, "One incarnate nature of God the Word," as their
battle-cry.
Monophysitism can make out a strong _prima facie_ case. It is
attractive at first sight. The heretical formula seems simpler and
more natural than the catholic. The unity of nature appears a
corollary of the unity of person. Human personality is ordinarily
assumed to be monophysite; so it is natural to make the same assumption
as to divine personality. The simplicity of the doctrine is, however,
all on the surface. It will not bear examination. As a definition of
Christian faith it is useless. It cannot account for the recorded
facts of Christ's life. The facts of His body, of His mind, of His
sufferings refuse to fit into it. It affords no foundation for belief
in His transcendent work. No intelligible doctrine of redemption can
be built upon it. It contains no germ of hope for mankind. Therefore
the Church in the name of Christ and on behalf of humanity rejected it.
Although the heresy has been officially condemned, it should none the
less be studied. It is improbable that any one in our time will defend
the formula, or openly profess the doctrines that follow from it. But,
though not recognised as such, it is an ever-present and instant menace
to the Faith. Monophysite tendencies are inherent in religious
thought. The metaphysical idea, on which it rests, still has a
powerful hold over the human mind. Spiritually-minded men are
especially liable to this form of error. It is a mistake to think that
Christological questions were settled once and for all in the fifth
century. Each generation has to settle them afresh. Accordingly, to
exhibit the consequences of the monophysite formula, to show how wrong
abstract ideas develop into wrong concrete ideas and falsify Christian
practice, is a task of practical and present-day importance.
CLASSIFICATION OF MONOPHYSITE ERRORS
Two classes of erroneous beliefs result from a misconception of the
relation between God and man in Christ. There arise, on the one hand,
false opinions about the deity of Christ, and on the other, false
opinions as to His manhood. We shall adopt this classification as we
investigate the doctrinal consequences of the monophysite formula. It
is the method followed in one of the earliest systematic criticisms of
the heresy. Leo's Tome, or letter to Flavian, contains a lucid
statement of the catholic doctrine of the incarnation, and an acute
analysis of the system of Eutyches, the heresiarch. He summarises the
errors of Eutyches under two heads; there are two main counts in his
indictment of the heresy. Eutyches, he contends, makes Jesus Christ
"deus passibilis et homo falsus." Eutyches and his followers
compromised both deity and humanity. The deity becomes passible, the
humanity unreal. All the monophysite misbeliefs can be classified
under one or other of these two heads.
THE CONCEPT "IMPASSIBILITY" AS APPLIED TO DEITY
We shall take first those errors that compromise the nature of the
deity, and shall preface our analysis by an explanation of the meaning
of the term "deus impassibilis." The impassibility of God is the
corner-stone of spiritual monotheism. Christianity owes it, as a
philosophic doctrine, largely to Aristotle. He conceived deity as
"actus purus," as the One who moves without being moved, a "causa sui."
The popular gods of Greece were passible; they were possible objects of
sense; they were acted on largely as man is acted on. They had a
beginning, and were subject to many of the processes of time. They
were swayed by human motives. They were, at times, angry, afraid,
unsatisfied, ambitious, jealous. Aristotle gave to the world the
conception of a transcendent God, a being who is real and yet is
"without body, parts and passions," who cannot receive idolatrous
worship, and is not an object of sense. Impassibility was one of the
highest attributes of this being. The attribute does not involve or
imply absence of feeling. Originally it had no reference to feeling,
in the psychological sense of that word. It certainly excludes
incidentally the lower, specifically human feelings, feelings caused by
external stimuli, feelings due to want or to lack of power. It does
not exclude the higher affections from the deity. Even in the _noesis
noeseos_ of Aristotle, there is room for the transcendent bliss of
divine self-contemplation. Much more in the Christian God is there
room for spontaneous feeling, springing from His own nature, the
necessary concomitant of thought and will. Impassibility is a
comprehensive attribute. Originally negative, it soon acquired a rich
positive connotation. An impassible God is one who is outside space
and time. The attribute connotes creative power, eternity, infinity,
permanence. A passible God is corruptible, _i.e._ susceptible to the
processes of becoming, change, and decay. If to-day theists have to be
on their guard against debased conceptions of deity, in the plausible
garb of an "invisible king," of a finite or suffering God, much more
was such caution necessary in the early centuries of the Christian era.
Christians who came daily and hourly into contact with polytheistic
beliefs and practices had to be very jealous for the concept of
impassibility. It represented to them all that was distinctive in the
highest region of their Faith.
Monophysitism, as we proceed to show, compromised this article of the
Faith. Its adherents did not, perhaps, do so intentionally. In fact,
the first generation of monophysites maintained that their definition
safeguarded the impassibility. It was zeal for the honour of the Son
of God that induced them to deny Him all contact with humanity. Their
good intentions, however, could not permanently counteract the evil
inherent in their system. In later generations the evil came to the
surface. Theopaschitism, the doctrine that openly denies the
impassibility of the godhead, flourished in the monophysite churches.
MONISM ENTAILS A DEBASED CONCEPTION OF DEITY
The metaphysical basis of monophysitism made this result inevitable.
Extremes meet. Extreme spirituality readily passes into its opposite.
It cuts the ground from under its own feet. It soars beyond its
powers, and falls into the mire of materialism. Illustrations of this
fact can be found in the history of philosophy. The Stoics, for
instance, contrived to be both pantheists and materialists. Coming
nearer to our own time, we find Hegelianism explained in diametrically
opposite ways. After Hegel's death his disciples split into opposing
camps; one party maintained that the real was spirit, the other that it
was matter. Each party claimed the authority of the master for their
view. The divergence is easy to explain. From spiritual monism it is
a short step to materialistic monism. For the monist, all is on one
level of being. He may by constant effort keep that level high. But
gravity will act. We are more prone to degrade God to our level, than
to rise to His. The same truth can be put _in abstracto_. Unless the
relation between God and the world be preserved as a true relation, the
higher term will sooner or later fall to the level of the lower, and be
lost in it. This rule holds as well in movements of religious thought.
The monophysite strove for a lofty conception of deity but achieved a
low one. He undermined the doctrine of impassibility by the very
measures he took to secure it.
In the technical language of Christology the monophysites' debased
conception of deity was a consequence of "confounding the natures."
Attributes and actions, belonging properly only to Christ's humanity,
were ascribed recklessly to His divinity. The test phrase "theotokos,"
invaluable as a protest against Nestorianism, became a precedent for
all sorts of doctrinal extravagancies. The famous addition to the
Trisagion, "who wast crucified for us," which for a time won
recognition as sound and catholic, was first made by the monophysite
Bishop of Antioch.[2] Both these phrases have scriptural authority,
and they are justified by the _communicatio idiomatum_. But they are
liable to misuse and misinterpretation. All depended on how they were
said and who said them. The monophysite meant one thing by them, the
catholic another. The _arriere pensee_ of the monophysite gave them a
wrong turn. He was always on the look-out for paradox in Christ's
life. He emphasised such phrases as appeared to detract from the
reality of His human experiences. He spoke of Christ as "ruling the
universe when He lay in the manger," or as "directing the affairs of
nations from the Cross." The catholic can approve these phrases; in
the mouth of a monophysite they have a heretical sound. They suggest a
passible God; they degrade the infinite to the level of the finite.
The monophysite confounds the natures, and so he has no right to appeal
to the _communicatio idiomatum_. Unless the _idiomata_ are admitted as
such, unless they are preserved in their distinctness, there can be no
_communicatio_ between them. If they are fused, they cannot act and
react upon each other. The monophysite, by identifying the natures,
forfeits the right to use the term "Theotokos" and the Trisagion
addition. On his lips their inevitable implication is a finite
suffering God.
MONOPHYSITISM AND THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
Monophysitism was not originally or _per se_ a Trinitarian heresy.
Equally with catholics and Nestorians its adherents accepted the Nicene
definition. They professed to believe in one God in three co-equal
persons. This belief, firmly held in all that it involves, would have
kept them from attributing passibility to the Godhead, and ultimately
have neutralised the errors of their Christology. But their
Christology corrupted their theology. Abandoning all vital relation
between God and man in Christ, they abandoned the relation in the
Godhead. The internal and external relations of the Godhead are
mutually dependent. If there be no trinity of persons, the incarnation
is impossible. Were God a bare monad, He could not impart Himself and
remain Himself. The fact that there are related persons in the deity
is the only justification for the use of the phrases discussed in the
previous paragraph. When the catholic says, "God was born, suffered,
died," he is right, because his presupposition is right. When the
monophysite uses the same words, he is wrong, because his
presupposition is wrong. The catholic preserves in the background of
his thought the distinction between the _ousia_ and the threefold
_hypostasis_, between the essential godhead and the three persons. So
he is in no danger of ascribing passion to the essence or to the
persons of Father or Holy Spirit. When he says "God was born," he is
compressing two statements into one. He means "Christ was born, and
Christ was God." Not in respect of what He has in common with the
other persons of the Trinity, but in respect of His property of sonship
did He lower Himself to the plane of suffering. The catholic holds not
a suffering God, but a suffering divine person. He maintains an
impassible God, but a passible Christ. A dead God is a contradiction
in terms; a Christ who died is the hope of humanity.
Monophysite theology became involved in further embarrassments.
Unwillingness to attribute passibility to God, coupled with the desire
to remain in some sort trinitarians, forced many of the monophysites
into the Sabellian position. Deity, they said in effect, did not
suffer in the second person of the trinity, because there is no such
person. The persons of the trinity are simply characters assumed by
the monadic essence, or aspects under which men view it. On this
showing, the Logos, who was incarnate, had no personal subsistence.
The relation between God and man ever remains impersonal. Christ,
_qua_ divine, was only an aspect or effluence of deity. This, for the
monophysite, was the one alternative to the doctrine of a passible God.
He was faced with a desperate dilemma. If he retained his belief in a
transcendent God, he must surrender belief in a triune God. He could
choose between the two; but his Christology permitted no third choice.
For him, the only alternative to a finite God was a lone God. As a
result monophysite theology oscillated between denial of the
impassibility of God and denial of his three-fold personality. In
either case the orthodox doctrine of the godhead was abandoned.
One of the stock questions propounded by the catholics to the
monophysites was, "Was the trinity incomplete when the Son of God was
on earth?" The question is crudely expressed, as it ignores the type
of existence proper to spiritual personality; but it contains a
sufficiently sound _ad hominem_ argument. The monophysite could not
say "yes," or he would then be driven to assert a passible God. If he
said "no," his reply was tantamount to the assertion that the whole
essence of the Godhead was incarnate. The logic of this dilemma was so
cogent that not a few monophysites succumbed to it, and adopted a
position similar to that of the earlier Patripassianists. These
seceded from the monophysite church, and founded an independent sect,
called the Theopaschites. As often happens, the sect is, doctrinally,
more representative than the parent body. The Theopaschites were the
thinkers who had the courage to push the monophysite doctrines to their
logical conclusions. Those who did not secede, unable to defend their
own doctrinal position, retaliated with the counter-charge of
tetratheism. This stroke was simply a confession of weakness. Monism
was strangling their Christianity at every turn. Instead of breaking
free from it, they pretended that their opponents were polytheists.
The catholic, however, was neither monist nor pluralist. The
incarnation was not the addition of a fourth divine being to the
trinity. The essence of the godhead remained complete, unchanged and
impassible; while the hypostatic union of God and man in Christ made
possible the assumption of a passible nature by the person of the Son
of God.
MONOPHYSITISM AND ISLAM--SABELLIANISM THE CONNECTING LINK
It is in place here to point out the somewhat intimate connection that
existed between monophysitism and Islam. The monophysites held the
outposts of the Empire. Mahomet came into contact with them, and it
was probably from them that he formed his conception of Christian
doctrine. The later history of the monophysite churches shows that
they often secured a large measure of toleration at the hands of the
Caliphs, while the diphysites were being rigorously persecuted. Lapses
to Islam were not infrequent, and in some periods apostasy on a large
scale occurred. Cases are on record even of monophysite patriarchs who
abjured their faith and joined the followers of the Prophet. The
connection between monophysitism and Islam was not fortuitous. There
was a doctrinal affinity between them. Both systems were rigidly
monotheistic. Both degraded the notion of deity by a perverse attempt
to exalt it. Both cut redemption and mediation out of their religion.
The family likeness between the two systems does not extend beyond the
realm of the doctrine of supreme deity. In other respects the religion
of the sword and the religion of love have little or nothing in common.
Crescent and Cross are poles asunder. The monophysites as a body
remained nominally and in intention Christians and trinitarians. But
in the doctrinal area specified the resemblance holds. It could hardly
be otherwise. Sabellian tendencies were always present and powerful in
the monophysite communion, and Sabellianism is a long step in the
direction of Islam. Sabellius taught in effect, "Allah is one." The
three persons, for him, were only aspects of the one indivisible deity.
There are no distinct entities corresponding to the names of Father,
Son and Holy Spirit. Sabellianism is intimately associated with monism
in all its phases. Monophysitism being essentially monist could not
escape the taint. Whether Sabellianism made the heretics monophysites,
or monophysitism made them Sabellians, we need not inquire. The two
creeds are bound up in the same bundle by the tie of monism. The
relation of the Son to the Father and the relation of the Son to
humanity are vitally connected. Misconception of the one relation
entails misconception of the other. Denial of relation in the godhead
goes hand in hand with denial of relation in Christ. If the theologian
reduces the latter to bare unity, he does the same for the former.
Catholic Christology is thus a necessary deduction from trinitarian
dogma. Nicaea necessitated Chalcedon. To safeguard the distinction of
persons in the godhead, a distinction in the natures of Christ was
essential. To preserve intact the latter distinction, the proprium of
the Son and His personal subsistence had to be kept distinct from the
proprium and subsistence of the Father.
THE CHRISTOLOGICAL ERRORS OF MONOPHYSITISM
We leave here the area of theology and come to that of Christology. We
have exhibited the monophysite errors with respect to the doctrine of
primal deity; we now proceed to analyse their views with respect to the
incarnate Christ. The former subject leads the thinker into deep
water; the layman is out of his depth in it; so it does not furnish
material for a popular controversy. It is otherwise with the latter
subject. Here the issue is narrowed to a point. It becomes a question
of fact, namely, "Was Christ a real man?" The question and most of the
answers given to it are readily intelligible, and they naturally gave
rise to heated controversy. Theopaschitism is, as we have shown, a
tendency inherent in the heresy, but one slow to come to the surface,
and one easily counter-acted and suppressed by the personal piety of
the monophysite. Its docetism, the assertion of the unreality of
Christ's human nature, lies on the surface. No amount of personal
piety can neutralise it. It has had, and still has, a crippling effect
on the faith of devout Christians. Even where it is not carried to the
length of formal heresy, it spreads a haze of unreality over the gospel
story, and dulls the edge of belief.
The second count of Leo's charge against the monophysites was, it will
be remembered, that their presentation of Christ made Him "homo
falsus." Under this heading "homo falsus" may be classed a wide group
of erroneous tenets, ranging from the crudities of early docetism to
the subtleties of Apollinarianism. We propose to sketch those of major
importance. No attempt will be made to take them in their historical
order or historical setting. Further, it is not implied that they all
formed part of the official doctrine of the monophysite church. The
standard of belief in that communion was constantly varying, and the
history of its dogma would need a work to itself. We shall deal with
those Christological errors, which, whether part of the official
monophysite creed or not, are logical results of the monophysite
formula.
Unreality may be predicated of Christ's human nature as a whole, or in
respect of its parts. Consubstantiality with humanity may be denied of
the whole of his human nature; or deficiency in one or other of the
essential constituents of human nature may be alleged. We shall deal
first with those errors that concern the entire nature, coming later to
the errors in respect of one or more of its several parts.
Suspicion of the reality of Christ's human nature as a whole is
characteristic of all monophysite thought. This suspicion, not always
formulated or expressed, is everywhere present. If the monophysites
admitted the fact of His true manhood, they denied or neglected the
religious value of that fact. Their spurious spirituality rebelled
against a dogma which seemed to tie the infinite down to a point in
history. The fact that the Son of God lived a perfect human life
contained no inspiration for them. They idealised the incarnation. It
was not for them a historical event. This is a corollary to the
proposition, maintained by their great champion, Philoxenus, that "no
addition to His person took place." It is tantamount to saying that
the union of divine and human in Christ is purely conceptual. When the
monophysite faced the question, "What change in Christ did the
incarnation effect?" his formula constrained him to reply, "It made no
change." The deity of the person was not denied. The pre-existent
Logos and the Christ who walked in Galilee were admittedly one and the
same. The second person of the trinity and Jesus of Nazareth were one
personality. If Bethlehem made no change in that personality, it was
purposeless, and the import of the incarnation disappears.
THE MONOPHYSITE THEORY OF A COMPOSITION OF NATURES
For the consistent monophysites, then, the human nature, as a psychic
entity with peculiar properties, did not survive the incarnation. They
did, however, allow it a verbal reality. They admitted a composition
of natures, and this composition provided for them whatever degree of
reality the incarnation possessed. On this point their Christology
passed through several stages of development, the later stages showing
progressive improvement on the earlier. They distinguished three
senses of the word "composition." First, they said, it might mean
"absorption," as when a drop of water is absorbed in a jar of wine.
Second, it might imply the transmutation of constituent particles, as
when a third unlike thing is formed from two. Thirdly, there is
composition when, from the association of two whole and entire things,
a third whole and entire compound thing is formed without loss to the
components. They illustrated the third mode of composition by the
union in man of soul and body. The pre-Eutychian monophysites regarded
the hypostatic union as a composition in the first sense of the word.
They spoke of Christ's human nature as absorbed in the divine, as is "a
drop of vinegar in the ocean." Eutyches adopted the term in its second
sense. He taught that the Word became flesh[3] "as the atmosphere
assumes bodily form and becomes rain or snow under the influence of the
wind, and as water becomes ice by reason of the cold air." Philoxenus
in a later generation saw that both these positions were wrong and the
similes misleading. He taught a hypostatic union totally devoid of
confusion or loss or commutation of the elements of the two natures.
To illustrate his meaning he used the simile supplied by the
"Athanasian" creed, "as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so
God and Man is one Christ." This position is a vast improvement on
that of the original monophysites. It was ground gained to secure the
admission that in any sense Christ was very man. But the monophysites
never learned the true manner of the union, namely, that Christ was
"one; not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the
Manhood into God; one altogether; not by confusion of Substance but by
unity of Person."
Read in this connection the assertion that God and man is one Christ,
"as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man," is orthodox; read apart
from this context, it is ambiguous. If the simile be kept as a simile,
as a mere suggestion or hint as to how, in general, two may compose one
and yet remain two, then no exception can be taken to it. If, however,
the clause be interpreted as a proportion sum, assigning corresponding
values to the different terms, then it savours strongly of
Apollinarianism. Most monophysites, like many moderns, probably
understood it in the mathematical sense. Christ, they argued, was God
and man, just as man is rational soul and body; the terms are in
proportion; therefore the divine nature was the rational soul, and the
human nature was the body. They forgot that the free act of the whole
divine person in assuming man underlies the union and makes it
efficacious; they gave _sarx_; the narrow meaning of _soma_, they set
before themselves the picture, not of the infinite robing in the
finite, but of the union of mind and matter. Consequently they
habitually spoke of the Logos, as assuming, not man or a human nature,
but a body.
Such in its varying phases was the monophysite doctrine of composition.
At its worst, it contained a direct denial of the real humanity of
Christ. At its best, it falls far short of the catholic doctrine of
His real, perfect and complete humanity. The permanent assumption of
human nature into the transcendent personality had no meaning for the
heretic party. If it had taken place, it was, they thought, merely
momentary, with no after-effects, the passing of a summer cloud across
the face of the sun.
We have considered the monophysites' view of Christ's human nature,
regarded as an integral psychic entity. It is evident that they either
undervalued it or denied its existence. The more consistent thinkers
of their party maintained that the incarnation had made no difference
in the being of Christ, and that therefore His human nature had no
objective reality. Those who shrank from carrying the doctrine to that
length conceded to the orthodox that the incarnation had to some extent
modified the being of Christ, that its net result was a composition.
Further analysis showed that this concession was rendered nugatory;
that in whatever sense the word "composition" was taken, it was
inadequate to express the hypostatic union; that the composition proved
in its first significance illusory, in its second, hybridous, in its
third, Apollinarianist. We pass on now to review the human nature in
its constituent parts, and it will be seen that the heretical formula
undermines faith in respect of each several part.
THE "PARTS" OF HUMAN NATURE
From the standpoint of psychology human nature is divisible into parts.
The division must not be taken as absolute; for the whole is a unity,
and the parts are not discrete _quanta_. The division is rather a
classification of psychic states according to predominating features.
The classification corresponds, however, to the facts of experience,
and so psychology is justified in making use of it. We shall adopt it
in our investigation of the psychology of Christ. The sharpest
dividing line is that between immaterial and material, between soul and
body. The states of the soul fall into three well-marked groups,
thought, will, and feeling. The physical and the psychic are not
always distinguishable. Still more uncertain and tentative is the
identification in the psychic of cognitive, volitional, and emotional
faculties. But in every man these parts are found. They are
constituents of human nature. There may be other elements as yet
unanalysed; but there can be no complete humanity that is deficient in
respect of any of these parts. We propose to take them singly in the
above order, to show their existence in the historic Christ, and to
expose the monophysite attempts to explain them away.
CHRIST'S BODY
It is obvious to an unprejudiced reader of the gospels that Christ's
pre-resurrection body was real and normal. It was an organism of flesh
and blood, of the same constitution and structure as ours. It occupied
space, and was ordinarily subject to the laws of space. It was visible
and tangible. It shared the natural processes of birth, growth, and
metabolism. At the resurrection a catastrophic change took place in
it. It was still a body. It was still Christ's body. Continuity was
preserved. The evidences of continuity were external, and so strong as
to convince doubters. We cannot fathom either the change or the
continuity. What we know is that after the resurrection the body was
not so subject as before to the laws of space. It was, it would seem,
of finer atoms and subtler texture. It had reached the height of
physical being, and development apparently had ceased. It was the
entelechy of the human body. It was still real, though no longer
normal. To employ paradox, it was natural of the species
"supernatural." It was the natural body raised to a higher power. It
was natural to human denizens of a higher world. Body's function is
two-fold. It both limits the soul and expresses it. It narrows the
activity of the person to a point, and thus serves as a fine instrument
for action upon matter. At the same time it draws out the
potentialities of the soul and fixes its development. The
post-resurrection body was apparently less limitative and more
expressive.
The foregoing considerations may be summed up in the form of three
dogmata, all of which orthodox Christianity teaches. These are, first,
that Christ's pre-resurrection body was real and natural; second, that
His resurrected and ascended body is real and supernatural; third, that
there was a real continuity, whether by development or by epigenesis
between the two. In all these points the monophysites missed the
truth. Their presuppositions misled them. As monists they were
inclined to regard matter as sinful. They could not conceive the
infinite donning a soiled robe. "Our body with its hateful wants"
could not, they thought, be a tabernacle for the Logos. The idea of
the native dignity of the human frame and of its being ennobled by the
King's indwelling was completely foreign to the monophysites' ways of
thinking.
Since such was the background of their thought it was inevitable that
definitely heretical doctrines should result. In the first place we
meet the flat denial of the reality of Christ's body. Even in
apostolic days those who held this heresy were found. They denied that
Christ had come in the flesh. They were styled docetists or
phantasiasts. According to them the body had no objective reality. It
was a phantom. Its reality was entirely subjective. It was the effect
produced on the perceptions of those who associated with the mysterious
spirit-being. The Logos, as viewed by the phantasiasts, at the
incarnation struck His being into the bounds of time, but not of space.
Divine personality, they thought, did not require and could not use a
material medium. This doctrine was not part of the official
monophysite creed; but, as pointed out in the previous chapter,
monophysitism was a lineal descendant of docetism, and always showed
traces of its lineage. The saying that, "Christ brought His body from
heaven," was commonly attributed to Eutyches. He denied having said
it, but, at any rate, the general feeling of his followers was that
Christ's physical nature was divine and therefore not consubstantial
with ours.
Such doctrines destroy the discipline of faith in the resurrection.
The radical difference between the natural and the resurrection body is
blurred by them. The immense change is abolished. The resurrection
becomes purely a spiritual change, which even a non-Christian could
accept. The body, according to the tenor of monophysite teaching, was
spirit before the resurrection and spirit after it. Thus the ascension
too becomes purely spiritual. It is shorn of half its significance.
The Christian's hope for the human body rests on the fact that Christ
returned to heaven with something that He did not bring from heaven,
namely, a glorified human body. If He brought that body with Him from
heaven, the main significance of His human dispensation falls to the
ground. The incarnation becomes unreal, illusory, impotent.
An offshoot of docetism that flourished among the monophysites is the
aphthartodocetic heresy. This is of considerable historical
importance. Large numbers of the Syrian and Egyptian monophysites
embraced it, and seceded from the parent church. It became part of the
official creed of Armenian Christianity, and that church has not
repudiated it to this day. There are good, though hardly conclusive,
grounds for holding that the emperor Justinian, profound theologian and
life-long champion of orthodoxy, was converted to the heretical theory
in the last few months of his life.[4] Aphthartodocetism, affirming
the reality of Christ's body, denies that it was subject to the wear
and tear of life. The body, as this heresy taught, was superior to
natural process; it was neither corrupted nor corruptible. The term
"corruptibility" has the wide significance of organic process, that is
the lot of all created living things. A milder form of the heresy
asserted that Christ's body was corruptible but was not corrupted.
Aphthartodocetism springs from a spurious spirituality, from a
fastidiousness that has no place in true religion. It is symptomatic
of Manicheanism, which associates matter with sin. Christians affirm
sinlessness of Christ's humanity; they do not affirm immateriality of
His body. The monophysites, in abandoning the true Christology, were
predisposed to the infection of this heresy. A being in whom organic
process was present seemed to these heretics no fit object of worship.
They called the orthodox Ctistolatrae or Phthartolatrae, worshippers of
the created or corruptible.
Monophysites of all shades of opinion united in condemning the practice
of worshipping Christ's human nature. That practice was in their eyes
both idle and injurious; idle, because the human nature did not exist
as a separate entity; injurious, because it fixed the mind of the
worshipper on the finite. In consequence they were much opposed to all
observances based on a belief in His humanity. Images or other
representations of Him in human form seemed to them idolatrous. The
monophysite church was not directly concerned in the iconoclastic
controversy, but their doctrines were indirectly responsible for it.
In fact the great monophysites, Severus and Philoxenus, have been
styled "the fathers of the iconoclasts."
MONOPHYSITISM BLIND TO THE DUAL CHARACTER OF CHRIST'S EXPERIENCE
Such were the difficulties and errors into which their Christology
forced the monophysites with respect to Christ's body. Difficulties
equally great and errors equally fatal attended their attempt to
conceive the conjunction of psychic elements with the divine person.
Their formula was too narrow. It compelled them to shut their eyes to
one outstanding fact, namely, the duality of Christ's earthly
experience. This fact confronts the reader on every page of the
gospels. The duality is deep-seated; it extends to each psychic
element, yet stops short of the personality. In the world of Christ's
nature there are two hemispheres. His experiences are on two planes.
In both of these hemispheres or planes we find thought, will, and
feeling. His thought on the higher plane is radically different in
mode and scope from His thought on the lower plane. The two are of a
different order. The same difference holds with respect to the other
two psychic elements. We propose to exemplify this assertion, first,
in the case of cognition, and then in the case of will and feeling.
This procedure will simplify the task of exposing the further
consequences of the monophysite Christology.
THE DUALITY OF CHRIST'S COGNITION
The duality of Christ's intellectual experience is evident to a New
Testament student who has any acquaintance with psychology. We find in
Christ two cognitive faculties with two dominant universes of thought
and knowledge. On occasions He speaks and acts as if He read at a
glance all the secrets of nature and the human heart, as if all time
past, present, and future was an open book to him, as if He were in the
counsels of the Most High. On those occasions divine intuition
superseded in Him the slow and faulty methods of human intelligence;
thought was vision, intellect intuition, knowledge omniscience. Thus
His divine nature cognised and knew. That, however, is only one half
of the picture. On other occasions his mind appears to have been
perfectly human. His intelligence and perceptive faculties differed
not essentially from ours. He asked questions and sought information.
He used human categories. He progressed in wisdom. The development of
His mind was gradual. His knowledge was relative to His age and
surroundings. Memory and obliviscence, those complementary and perhaps
constituent elements of soul-being, attention, sensation, recognition,
and discursive reasoning, all these exhibitions of the workings of the
normal mind appeared in Christ. In this manner His human nature
cognised and knew.
MONOPHYSITISM ENTAILS THE APOLLINARIAN VIEW OF CHRIST'S HUMAN NATURE AS
MERELY AN ANIMATED BODY
The Catholic welcomes these evidences of the duality of Christ's
intellectual life. On the theoretical side, they confirm the central
dogma of orthodox Christology. On the practical side, they give him
authority for seeking Christ's sympathy in matters intellectual. He
realises that since Christ understands the education of the mind and
can share his intellectual difficulties, there is hope for the
redemption and regeneration of the highest part of his nature. The
monophysite finds neither support for his dogma, nor inspiration for
life, in the fact that Christ had a human mind. He is blind to the
fact. He has seen half the picture and regards it as the whole. His
ideal is a being in whom intuition supersedes intellect, whose
knowledge is immediate, absolute, and complete. The orthodox who held
that Christ had and, at ordinary times, used a human reason, perfect of
its kind, but still human in all the implications of the word, were in
his eyes Agnoetae; they were unbelievers who asserted the ignorance of
Christ and set bounds to the vision and knowledge of the infinite. The
monophysite would modify his opinions and approach the catholic
position on other doctrinal points, but never on this. He might be
persuaded to admit that Christ's body and "animal soul" were real and
human, but to the consubstantiality of Christ's mind with man's he
would not subscribe. The Apollinarian strain in monophysitism was
persistent. The later monophysites never succeeded in banishing it
from their system. By Apollinarianism the humanity of Christ is
crippled in its highest member. It is a realm shorn of its fairest
province. According to Apollinaris, all that Christ assumed was an
animated body. His theory is like an ingenious system of canal locks
for letting divine personality descend from the upper to the lower
waters. The ingenuity displayed in it condemns it. It is an
artificial makeshift. The psychology on which it rests is antiquated.
The picture of Christ it presents does not correspond to the recorded
facts of His life. Christ's human nature, as chiselled by the
Apollinarian sculptor, is a torso. Such an image fails to satisfy the
demands of religious feeling, and the doctrines, Apollinarian and
monophysite, that enshrine it are therefore valueless.
TWO WILLS IN CHRIST
We here leave the subject of cognition and pass to that of volition.
Orthodoxy teaches that Christ had two wills. This doctrine has a
double basis. In the first place, it is a corollary of the doctrine of
two natures. In the second, it is established by the recorded facts of
the gospel narrative. To take first the _a priori_ argument. A nature
without a will is inconceivable. A cognitive faculty without the
dynamic of the volitional would be a machine without driving force.
The absurdity of the supposition, indeed, is not fully brought out by
the simile. For we can consider the machine at rest; it would then
have existence and potential activity. Will, however, is essential to
the existence as well as to the activity of thought. The connection
between them is vital to both. The psychologist distinguishes the
respective parts each plays in life and marks off faculties to
correspond to each. But his distinction is only provisional. The two
develop _pari passu_, they are never separable; they act and re-act on
one another. Without some degree of attention there is no thought, not
even perception of external objects. Attention is as much an act of
will as of thought. Man does not first evolve ideas and then summon
will to actuate them. In the very formation of ideas will is present
and active. Accordingly from the duality of Christ's cognitive nature
the psychologist would infer that He had two wills. There is in Christ
the divine will that controlled the forces of nature and could suspend
their normal workings, the will that wrought miracle, the eternal will,
infinite in scope and power, that was objectified in His age-long
universal purpose, in a word, the will that undertook the superhuman
task of cosmic reconstruction and achieved it.
It is not easy for us to conceive the co-existence of two wills in one
person. The difficulty is part of the discipline of faith. Christ's
human will is no less a fact than His divine will. The former played
as large a part in His earthly experience as the latter. It was
present in all its normal phases, ranging from motor will to psychic
resolve. The lower forms of volition, motor impulse, desire and wish,
the higher forms, deliberation, choice, purpose and resolve. He shared
them all with humanity. There is in Him a human will, limited in
scope, varying in intensity, developing with the growth of His human
experience, a will like ours in everything, except that it was free
from moral imperfection. It was a finite will, inasmuch as the
conditioning cognition was finite, perfect of its kind, adequate to its
task, never faltering, yet of finite strength. The two wills have each
their own sphere. They operate in perfect harmony. Only at crises,
such as the Agony, is there any appearance of discord. The opposition
there is only apparent. The human will reaches its limit, and the
superhuman will interposes to perform the superhuman task.
The reality of the two wills, established for the orthodox both _a
priori_ and by an appeal to fact, is denied by the monophysite. He
regards will as the fundamental psychic state and makes it an attribute
of personality. Two wills, he says, would necessitate two persons. He
does not see that personality lies deeper than will, and that will and
cognition are co-ordinate attributes of nature. If Christ had but one
nature, it follows that He had but one will and operation. The
monophysite thinks of two wills as necessarily antagonistic, as are
conflicting motives in man; so he sees no ethical value in dithelite
doctrine. As a matter of fact the moral influence of Christianity
would be much weakened by an abandonment of the doctrine of two wills.
The belief in Christ's human will prevents men from despairing of their
will. Human will cannot be wholly warped, or wholly misdirected, or
utterly powerless, since Christ in His life has shown that it can work
along the same lines as the divine will, that the two can co-operate,
and that where the lower reaches its limit, the higher can step in and
perfect the work.
From the historian's point of view the monothelite controversy is quite
distinct from the monophysite. So we need only take a glance at it
here. It originated in an attempt to win back the monophysites to the
orthodox communion by a doctrinal compromise. The emperor Heraclius
endeavoured to unite catholic and monophysite on the basis of the
formula, "two natures with one will and operation." That formula will
not bear analysis, and the emperor's attempt to use it as an eirenicon
was a complete failure. Imperial pressure induced a few monophysites
to modify their doctrine so far as to admit "one theandric operation;"
but the concession of "one will" from the orthodox side failed to win
from the monophysites the expected concession of "two natures." The
monophysites were quite consistent here. To deny will of nature is an
elementary mistake in psychology. Only a tyro in introspection will
ascribe will directly to personality. A one-willed two-natured
personality is little short of a psychological monstrosity. An attempt
to rally Christendom round such a figure was bound to fail. The only
lasting result of the emperor's activity was the formation of a new
sect, the Maronites.
THE DUALITY OF CHRIST'S EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE
We come now to the third element in the human spirit. It is only in
modern psychology that feeling has secured recognition as a distinct
constituent of man's nature; so it is not surprising that the question
as to its position in the incarnate Christ was not raised in former
days. Now, however, the psychology of feeling has come into its own,
and it has become important to consider whether in this particular,
too, Christ shared our human experience. Here, again, the argument for
maintaining the duality of Christ's emotional experience is twofold.
It follows, on the one hand, from the duality of the other parts of His
nature; and, on the other hand, it is proved by the facts of His life
as recorded in the gospels.
Human nature involves feeling, and two natures involve two universes of
feeling. Divine personality cannot be conceived as devoid of feeling.
With men feeling lies in the depths of being; it is the dynamic of
life. Feeling is the inner reflex of acts of thought and will. It
invariably accompanies cognition and volition. If thought and will be
attributed to the supreme being, the attribute of feeling cannot be
left out. When the God in Christ acted, divine feeling accompanied the
act.
This surmise is proved correct on reference to the records of His life.
We find there two distinct emotional zones. Christ has all the
blameless feelings natural to man. There are in Him the feelings
accompanying sensation; physical pleasure and pain, hunger, thirst,
weariness, and, in addition, the higher grades of feeling, aesthetic,
sympathetic, and ethical. He experienced wonder, surprise, righteous
anger, the sublime, joy and love. A life rich in emotion was the life
of the Man Christ Jesus. When, however, we look more closely into His
experience, we catch glimpses of feeling such as no man could know. We
see there transcendent passion, great sorrow, great joy, so great that
they would break a human heart. We may instance the deep emotion
accompanying His resolve to go to meet His fate at Jerusalem, the
rejoicing in spirit at the success of the apostles' mission, His Agony
and His universal love.
The monophysites could not recognise this duality in Christ's emotional
nature. Hunger and thirst, and even the higher human feelings they
considered derogatory to the Son of God. Even when they admitted that
He suffered, they threw a veil of mystery over His sufferings. They
idealised the Passion. They made it seem as if His flesh was
privileged, as if His omnipotence excused Him from the emotional
experiences of humanity.
SUMMARY OF THE CHAPTER
We have examined the doctrine of one nature, and exposed its chief
consequences. We have considered its effects in respect of the deity
of Christ and in respect of His manhood. We have applied the doctrine
to the human nature as a whole, and to the several parts that compose
it. The result of the examination may be summarised in brief.
Monophysitism destroys what is divine in the deity and what is human in
the humanity. It offers to Christians a Christ who is not sufficiently
above man to be able to help them by His power, nor sufficiently man to
be able to help them by His sympathy. The monophysite Christ is
neither very God nor very man, but a composition in which all traces of
the original entities are lost to view.
[1] "The Chronicle of Zachariah of Mitylene," translated by Hamilton
and Brooks, chap. iii. p. 46.
[2] This addition to the Trisagion was officially condemned at the
close of the 7th century owing to its monophysite associations.
[3] "Chronicle of Zachariah of Mitylene," translated by Hamilton and
Brooks, ii. 2, p. 21.
[4] The question of Justinian's orthodoxy has been debated by Bury and
Hutton. See _Guardian_, March 4th and April 15th, 1896.