MONOPHYSITISM AND MODERN PSYCHOLOGY
Christology divorced from empirical psychology is a barren science.
Abstract discussions about person, nature and union of natures soon
degenerate into logomachies. If personality is a psychic entity, and
nature another distinct psychic entity, then the question at issue
between diphysite and monophysite is worth debating. If they are
concepts merely, the debate is hollow and of purely academic interest.
A study of psychology clothes the dry bones with flesh. It puts life
and meaning into these abstractions. It shows that they represent
entities, that something corresponding to the terms "person" and
"nature" is actually part of the being of every man, and that therefore
their existence in Christ is a proper and practical subject for
investigation. In so doing psychology provides the _rationale_ of the
Christological controversies. It justifies the church in her
determined adherence to the precise expression of the truth. No
Christian with powers of introspection, who can distinguish in his own
being personality and nature, can be indifferent to the Christological
problem. The problem is one of fact, not theory. The terms and the
formula are only of importance as expressing or failing to express the
true facts of Christ's being. In a word, the psychology of the central
figure of human history is the matter at issue.
Reference to psychological fact is what one misses in the records of
the old controversies. The disputes read as if they were about
shadows. No doubt that was often the case. Catholics and
non-Catholics were often agreed as to the substance of belief, while
owing to their devotion to words and formulae the agreement went
unrecognised. Had the disputants made clear to themselves and to each
other what they meant by their abstract terms, had they translated them
into their concrete psychological equivalents, heresy and schism would
have been less frequent. It was, however, almost impossible for them
to do so, because in their day theology was far more highly developed
than psychology. Systematic observation of the workings of spirit was
almost unknown. There existed no science of psychology as we know it.
No clear notions attached to the terms "person" and "nature." They
represented abstractions necessary to discursive reason rather than
concrete psychic facts. All parties shared this defect. Among
catholics and Nestorians as well as among monophysites knowledge of the
constituents of human nature was of the most rudimentary character.
The catholic party, however, by keeping close to the facts recorded in
the gospels, achieved a Christological formula that is psychologically
intelligible; while the heretical parties were led by their
preconceived opinions to fashion a Christ, whose features are
unrecognisable as God or man, a psychological monstrosity.
BERGSON'S THEORIES THROW LIGHT ON CHRISTOLOGY
Without claiming finality for the findings of modern psychology, we can
consider some results of the science as established. They are
sufficiently well established, at any rate, to provide a starting-point
for our investigation. In particular the brilliant observations and
theories of M. Bergson throw, so it seems to the writer, a flood of
light on Christology. We propose to outline the two key doctrines of
the Bergsonian psychology and show how they confirm the truth of the
orthodox formula and expose the monophysite fallacy. These key
doctrines are, first, the interpenetration of psychic states, and,
second, the distinction between deep-seated and superficial
consciousness.
BERGSON'S THEORY OF THE INTERPENETRATION OF PSYCHIC STATES
It is, says Bergson, characteristic of psychic states that they do not,
like material things remain external to one another. They
inter-penetrate. Cut up by human intelligence into discrete elements,
in their own nature they remain a continuum. States of mind appear
successive and external to one another, because age-long association
with matter has accustomed men to material modes of thought. Man's
intelligence is a by-product of activity. For purposes of action it is
the externality of things that matters. The inner connection is
relatively unimportant. Men act with precision on matter, because
perception cuts up the continuum of matter into bodies, defined bodies
no two of which can occupy the same space. Intelligence originating
thus by contact with matter naturally prefers mechanical categories.
These categories applicable to matter when applied to higher forms of
existence mislead. We naturally conceive psychic states as external to
one another, and their interpenetration seems an abnormality. At this
stage of thought experience is pictured as a line of indefinite length,
infinitely divisible, whose divisions correspond to the moments of
consciousness. This spatial picture of mind is misleading in many
ways, not the least in that it can offer no reasonable theory of the
subconscious. Thinkers who materialise mental experience have no room
in their theory for the sub-conscious. It is for them bare
non-consciousness, a psychic vacuum. When, however, we start from this
unique characteristic, that mind possesses, of remaining one and
indivisible throughout the greatest appearance of diversity, the
sub-conscious falls naturally into the scheme. No part of our
experience perishes. It is essentially self-perpetuating memory. The
needs of action relegate the greater portion of it to the
sub-conscious, but it is there, always linked to our conscious
experience, and only awaiting the occasion to emerge into the full
light of consciousness. Past penetrates into the present. One portion
of our present penetrates into the other portions. Conscious and
unconscious, past and present, combine to form one wonderful whole.
MONOPHYSITISM IGNORES THE DUALITY IN CHRIST'S EXPERIENCE
Such in outline is Bergson's theory of the interpenetration of psychic
states. If this psychology be adopted, the abstract character of the
catholic doctrine of Christ's being in large measure disappears. It
becomes easy to conceive the interpenetration of two natures in one
Christ. Further, the Bergsonian psychology furnishes a standpoint from
which criticism of monophysitism is easy. Psychology at the
monophysite stage of thought conceives the moments of Christ's
consciousness in their mutual externality; they follow each other as do
the ticks of a clock. They are discrete elements strung along on a
hypothetical ego. Christ's experience is conceived as unilinear. All
that He did, suffered and thought is regarded as having taken place on
one and the same plane of experience. This psychology has no room for
another plane of experience. It has no room for a positive
sub-consciousness. Consequently that one plane must be the one divine
nature, which, as the monophysites taught, absorbed the human.
The one-nature theory is not true to the facts. It overlooks the
complexity of Christ's experience. His experiences lie on two
different planes. He has different universes of thought, different
actuating wills and sets of feelings. Christ is not in one nature.
The phases of His consciousness are twofold. His experiences fall
naturally into two groups. While one group is in consciousness, the
other is below the level of consciousness. Now the human experiences,
now the divine, are uppermost. Both are always present. Life under
such conditions is inconceivable, unless full recognition be accorded
to the fact that conscious states interpermeate. If each state fall
outside the other, and consciousness be a chain of successive ideas or
emotions, a twofold nature within the one experience is meaningless.
The view of conscious states as discrete leads inevitably to
determinism. The place of one state in the chain is conditioned by its
predecessor. There is no room for the spontaneity and the creative
power which characterise conscious life. Associationism cannot
countenance the unforeseen and incalculable. So it is out of sympathy
with Christian psychology. A function of the divine in Christ is to
introduce the element of the unforeseen and incalculable into His
normal and human experience. The Bergsonian psychology thus supplies
an intellectual basis for belief in the possibility of two natures in
Christ. When ideas are regarded as psychic entities whose essential
property is mutual penetration, the ground is prepared for the catholic
formula. Where this truth is not recognised, there arises inevitably
the tendency to assert that Christ had and must have had but one
uniform level of experience, and that assertion is the essence of
monophysitism.
BERGSON'S THEORY OF DEEP-SEATED AND SUPERFICIAL STATES
Bergson's psychology throws further light on a central doctrine of
catholic Christology. It not only makes conceivable, as we have shown
above, the co-existence of the two natures, but it lends support to the
belief in the independent reality of His personality. Person and
nature of Christology find their modern equivalents in the Bergsonian
"deep-seated" and "superficial" states of consciousness. Bergson draws
a sharp line of distinction between these two. The deep-seated states
constitute the kernel of being. They are the man's existence turned
inwards. They are independent, free, creative. They are a unifying
force. Always present, they only rarely make their presence felt.
Only at moments of deep experience do they interfere with the surface
self. The superficial states form the outward-regarding existence of
man. They represent consciousness relaxed into moments of clock-time,
moments more or less external to one another. They are not truly free.
They are conditioned by the material environment. Whatever be thought
of the metaphysic of this system, recognition cannot be refused to that
part of it which rests on the solid foundation of psychological fact.
Self-analysis discloses a two-fold experience in man. The stream of
his life contains both current and undercurrent. The current is
nature, the under-current personality.
MONOPHYSITISM ANNULS THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN DIVINE PERSON AND DIVINE
NATURE
This distinction is of paramount importance in Christology. Diphysites
hold fast to the distinction. They maintain a human nature in Christ,
but they do not humanise His person. The person cannot be humanised.
It remained divine after the incarnation, as it was before. Though He
became man, the depth of His being was unchanged. The rain from heaven
and the waters from the earthly spring mingle in one stream, but
beneath the surface the deep undercurrent of being flows on unchanged.
The monophysite in effect abandons this distinction. This is where his
psychology is most seriously at fault. He confuses person and nature.
Deep-seated and superficial states of soul are all one to him. He does
not see the duality in the being of his fellow-men; so he cannot see it
in the ideal man. This is a consequence of monophysitism which has not
attracted the attention of theologians, and which the monophysite
himself did not intend. The doctrine that rules out the human nature
of Christ rules out the divine nature also, by confusing it with the
personality. The monophysite affirms the divine nature while denying
the human. Such affirmation is purely verbal. It is completely void
of significance. The contrast between the divine and human natures is
needed to throw personality into relief. Take away the human nature,
and that contrast disappears, and with it goes the distinction between
divine person and divine nature. Then, instead of a transcendent
personality in whose portrait divine and human features are distinctly
limned, we have a blur. Where God planned a unique though intelligible
psychic harmony, we find a psychic medley.
CONSCIOUSNESS OF PERSONALITY PRODUCED BY A VIOLENT CHANGE OF OCCUPATION
This assertion is justified by an appeal to human experience. Men
become sure of their own or of other people's personality by
experiencing strong contrasts of natures in themselves or by observing
them in others. For instance, a sudden and violent change of
occupation establishes personality as a distinct entity. The civilian
turns soldier. Almost immediately all parts of his nature are
affected. He feels the development, as it were, of a second nature
within him. His faculties are transformed. He enters a new universe
of thought. His range of knowledge narrows in one direction, widens in
another. His volitional nature is altered. His will narrows in scope,
but increases in intensity. Nor does his emotional nature escape the
change. Aesthetic values are reversed. He no longer feels pleasure
and pain at the old objects. Physical desires play a much larger part
in his life, and he loses taste for intellectual pleasures. The
soldier returns to civilian life and, as it were, with his civilian
attire he resumes his former nature, and all his old thoughts and
feelings and impulses come flooding back. Such an experience is of
considerable psychological interest. It exemplifies the
interpenetration of different states of thought and activity. The
contrasts bring home to a man the fact that his spirit is a synthesis
of heterogeneous elements. They force him back on himself. They rouse
in him the dormant sense of personal being. It is the apprehension of
strong contrast in his experience of himself, the apprehension of the
plurality of his being, that accentuates the deep-lying unity. The
more violent the change in the walks of life, the clearer becomes the
concept of the continuity. Civilian or soldier, the man, the person is
the same.
Personality is thrown into relief not only by change of occupation, but
also by moral contrasts. Conflicting passions, opposing motives and
internal debate serve to make a man realise himself. Strong
personalities are often those in whom the conflict between good and
evil is most acute. It is the very opposition of natures which brings
out the personal element into the full light of conscious recognition.
We must now examine human personality in greater detail; we must
indicate its functions and show how it differs from human nature. Only
by coming to grips with this psychological problem is it possible to
appreciate the points at issue in the Christological question and to
judge between catholic and monophysite.
KANT AND THE DUAL CHARACTER OF THE EGO
Kant distinguished the noumenal from the phenomenal ego. The former he
regarded as an idea, the latter as a reality in time. The distinction
corresponds roughly to that between person and nature. The phenomenal
ego is the nature of man. It bears the brunt of the struggle of life.
The noumenal ego is the transcendent personality of the individual--an
idea which pure reason necessarily forms and which practical reason
establishes. Though the Kantian philosophy no longer carries
conviction, it is interesting to see that Kant felt and admitted a
double current in man's being. He recognised that the superficial self
is not the true being of the man. It is not necessary, however, to go
as far as Kant went. We need not with him relegate the core of
personal being to the realm of idea. Granted that personality is not
part of our normal experience as nature is, there are times when the
depths of being are stirred. Moments of crisis drive a man deeper than
will and thought and even feeling, and make him conscious of himself as
a psychic unity, permanent and of infinite value. Personality normally
remains in the recesses of the subconscious. It is the hidden basis of
life. It is active, though its activities are for the most part
underground. It does not, however, lie altogether outside the ken of
consciousness. It may be experienced; it is experienced when great
emotion rends the surface fabric of the man and discloses the true self.
HUMAN PERSONALITY AND HUMAN NATURE
What is human personality? It is a psychic entity whose most important
function is to unify the parts of a man's nature. It is the principle
of unity and the instrument of unity. A man's thought, will and
feeling are distinct and real entities. His intelligence takes various
forms from perception to abstract thought; it may be directed to
outward things, to thoughts of things, or to pure idea. He wills many
things, and wills them in different modes and with varying degrees of
intensity. A wide range of feeling is found in him, from physical to
mental, from organic to ideal feeling. His nature is tripartite. Each
part admits of variation in itself and in its interaction with the
other parts. Each of the three expresses the man at the moment. No
one of the three gives the whole account of his being. Nor do the
three taken together. Though his nature is tripartite the man himself
cannot be resolved into component parts. He has his faculties and
states, but he is more than their sum. He may lose himself in thought
or activity, or abandon himself to feeling, but when he is fulfilling
his true function, when he is most himself, all parts of his nature are
concentrated to a point. Partial activity of thought, will, or feeling
is then replaced by activity of the personality. Personality is the
synthetic unity of all parts of a man's nature. It has the wonderful
power of compressing to a point a medley of psychic elements. Moods
and memories, perceptions and ideas, wishes and purposes, it tensions
them all up, merges them and expresses them in characteristic acts
representative of the man.
Personality differs from nature also in respect of relation to
environment. It is relatively independent of circumstances. Habit and
education mould the nature, but if they touch the person they do so
only indirectly. The nature must be deeply affected before a change in
the person is registered. Personality is not synonomous with inherited
disposition; but it bears a similar relation to nature as inherited
disposition does to acquired habit. It is to nature what character is
to action. It is to nature what in Weismann's theory the germ plasm is
to the somatic cell. Changes in it are mediated by nature and are
almost imperceptible in a life time.
Again, nature is the superficies of the soul. It is the part that
comes in contact with the world of things and people. A man's nature
is what he is for other people; what he is in and for himself alone is
personality. There is a substance or self-existence of the psychic
states. Thought, will and feeling have all and each an external
reference. The internal reference of the whole is the core of being.
Our perception of personality in other people is a subtle thing. In
the ordinary give and take of life we are not aware of it. It is when
we realise the subject as a self-existent unity that we recognise
personality. We judge a man's nature by his thought or will or
feelings as conveyed through the ordinary channels of communication.
Personality is felt. It is a magnetism that influences, but remains
inarticulate.
Person and nature differ also in respect of relation to the body. The
co-existence of heterogeneous natures in the same body is a fact of
experience. Different universes of thought, different levels of will
and feeling can be lodged in one organism. The higher the development
of the individual, the more clearly marked is the duality or plurality
of nature. It is otherwise with personality. In normal cases no two
personalities can tenant the one body. The unity of the organism is
the outward expression and guarantee of the unity of the person. There
are of course pathological cases which form exceptions to this rule.
Such cases, however, only serve to emphasise the distinction between
person and nature. In cases of dual personality the occupancy of the
one body is not simultaneous. Jekyll alternates with Hyde. Dual
personality is a totally different phenomenon from duality of nature.
Duality of nature is relatively superficial. In dual personality the
divergence in mental and moral outlook is so radical that
responsibility for the acts of the one entity cannot attach to the
other entity.
Personality then is the synthetic principle in man's being. Psychology
reveals it as unifying the parts of a man's soul and welding into an
indivisible whole the various elements of conscious and subconscious
experience. The student of Christology welcomes this account of
personality, but he requires more. He seeks a parallel for the union
of two whole and perfect natures. He demands some reason for holding
the central dogma of the incarnation to be intelligible and probable.
The next step in the argument accordingly is to ask, "Why limit the
synthetic power of personality?" If personality can synthesise parts
of a nature, why should it not also synthesise natures? If human
personality can unify such heterogeneous psychic elements as thought,
will and feeling, and present them as a harmonious whole, is it not
credible that divine personality should carry the synthesis a step
further and harmonise in one being the thoughts, wills and feelings of
God and man? The hypostatic union of natures in Christ is a phenomenon
not psychologically improbable, and one which can be paralleled from
human experience. There is in man what is tantamount to a conjunction
of the two natures. Man is rather diphysite than monophysite. We
pointed out above the extensive modifications that can be produced in a
man's nature by environment. There is in him a deeper duality which we
can only characterise as an association of divine and human. Man is an
inhabitant of the earth, of earthly descent and finite destiny; yet the
divine is not totally foreign to him. He has hopes of heaven, moments
of supraconsciousness, at times vision, resolve and emotion that are
supra-normal. The divine is an element in him. It is more than an
aspect of his nature. Its influence operates often in opposition to
the human element. He is, as Bergson puts it, at the meeting-point of
the upward and the downward currents. He can know God, can do the will
of God, can be filled with the love of God. Here are the three factors
of his nature, raised to a higher power. His experience may lie and
often does lie on two planes. He is "double lived in regions new."
In applying this human analogy to the ideal man caution is necessary.
The duality of natures is a fact in both cases, but there is one
essential difference. The personal substratum of the natures in one
case is human, in the other case divine. In man the divine element is
part of his nature, but not part of his person. The ego remains human
through all spiritual development. "The best of saints is a saint at
the best." The secondary element in him is a fact, but it is part of
his nature, not of his person. It is otherwise in the case of Christ.
He came from the ideal world and returned there. The background of his
experience was and is divine. The secondary element in Him was the
human, the primary the divine. He shared man's experience and shared
it really, but it did not form part of the core of His being. When He
thought or willed or felt as a man, it was a _kenosis_, a limiting of
his natural mode of self-expression. Divine and human are both present
in the experience of Christ and of mankind, but with this
difference--man rises to the divine; Christ condescended to the human.
VALUE OF BERGSON'S PSYCHOLOGY TO ORTHODOX CHRISTOLOGY
Person and nature are then real and distinct psychic entities. They
are real alike in God and man. The distinction between them is not
artificial or verbal; it is perhaps elusive, but it is genuine and
capable of proof from experience. The synthetic faculty of personality
manifests itself in uniting without confusing, first, parts of the
nature, second, entire natures. These theses supply what is requisite
for an intelligent appreciation of Christology. Without them
Christology is a battle of shadows; with them it becomes a practical
problem of first importance for religious minds. The psychology which
justifies orthodox Christology is that which proclaims the
interpenetration of psychic states, and which distinguishes between the
surface states of a relaxed consciousness, and the deep-seated states
which are ever present, but of which we are conscious only at moments
of tension.
The catholic mind conceives the person of Christ as an eternal
self-existent synthetic unity that has combined in an indissoluble
union the natures of God and man. Human parallels make intelligible
the co-existence of the two natures in the one person and the one body.
What is normal in man is surely possible in the ideal man. Heretical
Christologies err in their psychology. In Nestorian Christology Christ
is presented as a dual personality, an abnormal association in one body
of two distinct self-existent beings. Thus a pathological case would
be elevated to the rank of mankind's ideal. The monophysite psychology
plunges men into the opposite error. An undiscriminating craving for
unity among the phenomena of psychic life prevents any recognition of
the dual character of experience. Monophysitism is blind to the
difference between person and nature because it places all psychic
experiences on the one level. Determined to find unity in its ideal,
it seeks an inappropriate unity, the mathematical unity, the unity that
excludes plurality. To the monophysite the major part of the gospels
is a sealed book, because the major part of the facts there recorded
about Christ could not possibly have happened to a one-natured Christ.
His human knowledge, normal, limited, progressive, His human will,
natural, adequate to the human, inadequate to the superhuman task, his
human feelings, his body consubstantial with ours are to the
monophysite merely shadows or symbols or aspects of something greater.
They are dwarfed into nothingness. They are lost in the divine
omniscience, omnipotence and transcendent love.