130. I. Earlier Errors.

I. Earlier Errors.

While it is convenient to make the general distinction between the earlier and later Christological errors, a chronological order is not important in the treatment of the errors as classed in the two divisions. Here it is better to observe, as far as practicable, a logical order.

1. Ebionism.—The Ebionites were probably so named by an opprobrious application to them of a Hebrew word which means poor; but not on account of their low and impoverished views of Christ, as some have held. Ebionism was a strongly Judaized form of Christianity. This is true as a general characterization. However, Ebionism represents several sects, with different Christological tenets. There were two leading sects: the Essene and the Pharisaic. The Essene Ebionites held the Mosaic law to be obligatory on all Jewish Christians, but did not require its observance by Gentile Christians. Therefore they accepted the apostleship and teaching of St. Paul. The Pharisaic Ebionites held that all Christians must observe the law of Moses, the Gentile no less than the Jewish. Therefore they repudiated the apostleship and teaching of St. Paul. They were his virulent and persistent opposers and persecutors.

Both sects held Christ to be the promised Messiah, but their notion of him was the low, secularized notion of the Jew. But, with agreement on this point, the two sects differed on others. The Essene held the miraculous conception of Christ, while the Pharisaic held him to be the son of Joseph and Mary by natural generation. The former of these views is in close identity with the earlier Socinianism ; the latter in a like identity with a more modern humanitarianism, which holds Christ to be a man, just as others, whatever moral superiority may be conceded him. With these statements the errors of Ebionism in Christology are manifest. The divinity of Christ and the divine incarnation in him are both denied.^[584]

^[584] Burton:Heresies of the Apostolic Age, Bampton Lectures, 1829, lect. iii; Reuss:Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age, book i, chap, ix; Neander:History of the Church, vol. i, pp. 344-353; Schaff:History of the Christian Church, vol. li, pp. 431-442, 1886; Dorner:Doctrine of the Person of Christ, div. i, vol. 1, pp. 188-217.

2. Gnosticism.—No doubt the term Gnostic had its ground in the Greek word γνώσις. As appropriated by the Gnostics it meant the profession of a high order of knowledge. As knowledge is possible, such a claim is not necessarily groundless; but it may mean, and with the Gnostics did mean, the profession of a peculiar insight into great problems which lie beyond the grasp of other minds. They dealt freely, and with much pretension of knowledge, with the profoundest questions. We may instance the world-ground or absolute being; all secondary or finite existences; the mode of their derivation from the absolute; the origin of evil and the mode of the world’s redemption. Mostly, however, their treatment of these great questions was in a purely speculative mode. Hypothesis and deduction were in the freest use. Deduction, however, must be kept within its own sphere, and proceed only from grounds or principles of unquestionable truth. The Gnostics were heedless of these imperative laws, carried their speculations into spheres where induction is the only appropriate method, and proceeded from the merest hypotheses or assumptions. With such methods in view the vagaries of Gnosticism should cause no surprise.

Gnosticism divided into various schools. This was an inevitable consequence of its purely speculative method. It was also made certain by the diverse influences to which its speculations were subject. “The principal sources of Gnosticism may probably be summed up in these three. To Platonism, modified by Judaism, it owed much of its philosophical form and tendencies. To the dualism of the Persian religion it owed one form at least of its speculations on the origin and remedy of evil, and many of the details of its doctrine of emanations. To the Buddhism of India, modified again probably by Platonism, it was indebted for the doctrines of the antagonism between spirit and matter and the unreality of derived existence (the germ of the Gnostic Docetism), and, in part at least, for the theory which regards the universe as a series of successive emanations from the absolute unity.”^[585] Theories would thus take form just as one source of influence or another predominated, or according to the elements combined in their construction.

^[585]Mansel:The Gnostic Heresies, p. 32

It is already apparent that leading tenets of the Gnostic heresy flourished in different philosophies long before the Christian era. As a heresy in Christianity it began its evil work while the apostles yet lived and wrote. There are many references to it in the New Testament, particularly in the writings of St. John. It is every-where reprehended as false in doctrine, evil in practice, and corrupt in influence. These characterizations are not limited to its evils as then manifest, but are prophetic of far greater evils in a future not remote. The truth of these prophecies was fully verified in the early history of the Church.

There were two principles of Gnosticism which led to an utterly false doctrine of the person of Christ. These were the tenets of emanation and the intrinsically evil nature of matter. God was not a creator of the universe, but the source of emanations. In this mode all things have proceeded from him. But this process is on a descending scale; so that even the first emanation must be inferior to the original ground of all things. Hence, wherever Christ is placed in the scale of emanated existences, even though it were at the top, he cannot be truly divine. The other tenet that matter is intrinsically evil, and corruptive of all spiritual being in contact with it, was common to the different schools of Gnosticism, and led to a denial of the divine incarnation. That is. Gnosticism denied the reality of the human nature of Christ. What in him seemed a real body was not such in fact, but a mere phantasm or appearance. It was on this ground that the Gnostics were often called Docetae, from δοκέω, to seem or appear. If there was no reality in the bodily form of Christ, of course there was no divine incarnation in him.

It was in view of this heresy as an evil already at work, and as seen in prophetic vision, soon to become a far greater evil, that St. John opened his gospel with a doctrine of the Logos, which could mean nothing less than his essential divinity, and asserted in a manner so definite the reality of his incarnation.^[586] It was in the same view that he wrote in his epistles: “And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God : and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come ; and even now already is it in the world.” “For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist” (1 John 4:3; 2 John 1:7). It is obvious that such texts are indirect reprobation of certain principles of the Gnostics, which determine for them an utterly false doctrine of the person of Christ. According to these principles he could be neither divine nor an incarnation of divinity in our nature.^{[587] [586]} John 1:1-3;John 1:14

^[587]Burton:Heresies of the Apostolic Age, Bampton Lectures, 1829; Mansel:The Gnostic Heresies; Norton:History of the Gnostics; Lightfoot:Commentary on Colossians, pp. 73-113; Ueberweg:History of Philosophy, § 77; Reuss:Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age, book iii, chaps, ix, x; Neander:History of the Church, vol. i, pp. 366-478; Dorner:Doctrine of the Person of Christ, div. i, vol. i, pp. 218-252; King:The Gnostics and their Remains. An appendix to King’s book gives very fully the literature of the subject.

3. Arianism.—The term Arianism was derived from Arius, who became the representative of certain doctrinal views regarded as heretical. Arius was a presbyter of the Church of Alexandria, early in the fourth century, and a man of influence. He set forth and maintained views at issue with the accepted doctrine of the Trinity; but the real point of the issue concerned the divinity of the Son. When, in an assembly of his clergy, Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, maintained the eternity of the Son, Arius openly opposed him, and maintained that in the very nature of his relation to the Father, the Son could not be eternal. This position could not remain as the whole adverse view. It involved doctrinal consequences which could not be avoided, and which, therefore, were soon accepted and maintained. If the Son was not eternal, then there was a time when he was not. This consequence was accepted and avowed. If the Son was not eternal, then his existence must have originated in an optional will of the Father, and either in the mode of generation or in that of creation. These consequences were also accepted; but respecting the actual mode of the Son’s origin the earlier Arianism was vacillating or indefinite. Later, the mode of creation was more in favor. Thus, the Son was held to be of creaturely character. The departure from the orthodox faith was really the same, whichever view of his origin was maintained. A being originating in time, and by an optional act of God, whatever the mode of his operation, could not be truly divine. This consequence was fully accepted. The results of these views respecting the doctrines of the Trinity And the person of Christ are obvious. They are utterly subversive of both. The truth of the Trinity imperatively requires the essential divinity of the Son. He must be consubstantial with the Father, and his personal subsistence must be in the mode of an eternal generation, not by any optional act of the Father. A true doctrine of the person of Christ equally requires the essential divinity of the Son. Hence Arianism subverts the deepest truth of the person of Christ. When the Son is reduced to a temporal existence, to a finite being, to the plane of a creature, there can be no divine incarnation in Christ, no theanthropic character of Christ. No attribution of greatness to the Son can obviate these consequences. Arianism may declare him, as it did, the head of creation, and far above all other creatures, so far as to be like God ; but all this avails nothing because such likeness means, and is intended to mean, that he is not God, and that the divine nature is not in him. No more relief comes with the ascription to the Son of the whole work of creation. Relief might thus come if this work were allowed to mean what it really means for the divinity of the Son; but there is no relief so long as Arianism denies his divinity and reduces him to the plane of a creature. The contradictory ascription of the work of creation to the Son, after he is reduced to the plane of a creature, leaves Arianism in the utter subversion of the truth respecting the person of Christ.^[588]

^[588] Newman, Cardinal:Arians of the Fourth Century; Gwatkin:The Arian Controversy; Waterland:Defense of the Divinity of Christ; A Second Defense of Christ’s Divinity, Works, vol. ii; Cunningham:Historical Theology, vol. i, pp. 276-293; Gieseler:Ecclesiastical History, vol. i, pp. 294-322; Schaff:History of the Christian Church, vol. iii, §§ 119-125, 1886; Dorner:Doctrine of the Person of Christ, div. i, vol. ii, pp. 201-241.

4. Apollinarianism.—The Apollinarian Christology was so named from Apollinaris, Bishop of Laodicea, and was disseminated in the fourth century. Its distinctive characteristic is that it denies to Christ the possession of a human mind. Necessarily, therefore, the theory grounded itself in a trichotomic anthropology. Man was assumed to consist of three distinct natures, body, soul, and spirit—σώμα, ψυχή, πνεύμα. In the theory body and mind were held in their usual meaning: the former as the physical nature; the latter as the rational and moral nature. The peculiarity of the theory was in the meaning given to the psyche or soul. This was held to be a distinct nature, intermediate between the physical and mental, and the seat of the sensuous or animal life. Provision was thus made for the theory of a partial incarnation. If man consists of three distinct natures it was possible that in the incarnation the Son should assume two of these natures and omit the third. It was assumed, accordingly, that the rational and moral nature was omitted, and that the Son united with himself merely the physical and psychic natures of man. With such limitation of the human nature assumed in the incarnation, or the omission of the mental nature, the theory must account for the rational and moral facts, such as have a human cast, in the life of Christ. The account was attempted on the assumption that the incarnate Logos so fulfilled the functions of a rational mind in Christ as to account for this class of facts in his life.

While trichotomy provides for a partial incarnation, it is the necessary ground of a Christology which makes such limitation fundamental. If man is only dichotomic in his natures, there is no place for such a Christology. However, the refutation of Apollinarianism is not to be most readily achieved through the refutation of trichotomy. While the Scriptures are seemingly in favor of dichotomy, yet they are not decisive, as appeared in our discussion of that question. Nor can the question be concluded in any scientific or philosophic mode. On the other hand, there is here a fatal weakness of the Apollinarian Christology. In the first place, it is unable to establish the truth of trichotomy, which yet is its necessary ground. In the next place, the established truth of trichotomy could not conclude the Apollinarian Christology ; indeed, could not furnish any proof of it. The disproof of this Christology lies in the historic life of Christ. The facts of a rational and moral life in the cast of the human are as manifest therein as the facts of a psychic life, as here distinguished from the rational and moral. The presence of a human mind in Christ is the necessary ground and the only rational account of these facts. They cannot be accounted for simply by the presence of the incarnate Logos. To assume this possibility would be to assume the compression of his divine attributes into the limits of the human, after the manner of the modern kenoticism. Then there could no longer be a divine incarnation. The humanization of the Logos in Christ contradicts the deepest truth of the incarnation, which lies in the divine consciousness of the human. If the divine is in any way changed into the human there can no longer be a divine consciousness of the human. The reality of the divine incarnation is itself the disproof of the Apollinarian Christology. The assumption of a human nature without the rational mind could not be an incarnation in the nature of man. The mind is so much of man that without it there is no true human nature. Nor could the self-incarnating Son, with such limitation of the nature assumed, so enter into the consciousness of experiences like our own as to be in all points tempted like as we are, and thus appropriate the deepest law of his sympathy with us. Our deepest trials and our deepest exigencies of experience lie in our rational and moral nature; therefore it was necessary that he should take this nature into personal union with himself. Only in this mode could he share the consciousness of such experiences and so appropriate the law of his profoundest sympathy with us.^[589]

^[589] Neander:History of the Church, vol. iii, pp. 428-434; Schaff:History of the Christian Church, vol. iii, § 136; Plumptre:Christ and Christendom, Appendix H; Hagenbach:History of Doctrines, § 99; Dorner:Doctrine of the Person of Christ, div. i, vol. ii, pp. 351-398.

5. Nestorianism.—The term Nestorianism is derived from the name of Nestorius, and means the doctrine of two persons in Christ. This doctrine was propagated early in the fifth century, and at one time very widely prevailed, particularly in the Eastern Church. Nestorius, whose name is so responsibly connected with the doctrine, was a presbyter of Antioch, and, later. Patriarch of Constantinople, and a man of eminence and moral worth. However, he was not the author of the Christological view so directly connected with his name. The true authorship was with Theodore of Mopsuestia, but his doctrine found able advocates in his former pupils, Nestorius and Theodoret, the latter, Bishop of Cyrus.

While it was a special aim of the Apollinarian doctrine to make sure of the oneness of the person of Christ, it was equally the aim of the Nestorian doctrine to make sure of the integrity of his two natures, particularly of his human nature. Each made an unnecessary sacrifice of vital truth in order to the attainment of its aim: the former, of the integrity of the human nature of Christ; the latter, of the unity of his personality in the union of the two natures. It is true that the leaders of Nestorianism, such as we have named, claimed to hold the personal oneness of Christ, or denied the dualism with which Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria, and others charged them. Cyril was their chief opponent. Their doctrine of the union of the Logos with the human nature in Christ fell far short of the requirement of his personal oneness, and left the human in the mode of a distinct and complete human personality. “They called it an inhabitation; and the general nature of the inhabitation, as distinct from that by which God dwells in all men. through his omnipresent essence and energy, they indicated by the phrase ‘by good pleasure’ (καϐ΄ εύδοκίαν); and this indwelling by good pleasure in Christ they further discriminated from God’s indwelling in other good men, by representing it as attaining in him the highest possible degree. This indwelling of the Logos in Christ was also said to be according to foreknowledge, the Logos choosing the man Jesus to be in a peculiar sense his temple, because he knew beforehand what manner of man he should be. . . .Among other phrases current in the same school were such as these; union by conjunction; union by relation, as in the case of husband and wife; union in worth, honor, authority; union by consent of will; union by community of name, and so forth; for it were endless to enumerate the Nestorian tropes or modes of union.”^[590] No such union of the divine nature with the human assumed in the incarnation is here expressed, or even allowed, as will answer for the personal oneness of Christ. Therefore, while Nestorianism might repudiate the doctrine of two persons in Christ, it could not free itself from the implication of such a doctrine.

^[590]Bruce:The Humiliation of Christ, pp. 48, 49. The disproof of Nestorianism lies in the proofs of the personal oneness of Christ in the union of the divine and human natures. These proofs were given in the treatment of that question; hence they need not here be repeated. Further, this doctrine, as the Apollinarian, and even more fully, is refuted by the reality of the divine incarnation. The great texts adduced in the treatment of that question mean, and must mean, that the divine Son took the nature of man into a personal union with himself ; so that of the two natures so united there is one Christ, very God-man. The Nestorian Christology must deny the reality of the divine incarnation, and, therefore, must be false to the Christology of the Scriptures.^[591]

^[591] Hefele:History of Church Councils, book ix, chaps, i, ii; Schaff:History of the Christian Church, vol. iii, §§ 137-139, 1886; Neander:History of the Church, vol. ill, pp. 446-524; Cunningham:Historical Theology, vol. i, pp. 315-320; Gieseler:Ecclesiastical History, vol. i, pp. 343-355; Hagenbach:History of Doctrines, § 100; Dorner:Doctrine of the Person of Christ, div. ii, vol. i, pp. 25-79.

6. Eutychianism.—This error is coupled with the name of Eutyches, a monk without other distinction, unless we reckon to his account a notable lack of culture, an intense love of debate, and an extreme doggedness. He is not reckoned the author of this Christological error, though he may have contributed something toward its extreme form. His intense activity in the propagation of the doctrine seems to be the only reason for its bearing his name.

Eutychianism is monophysitic as it respects the nature of Christ; that is, that as the incarnate Logos Christ possessed but one nature. This view was in direct contradiction to the Chalcedonian symbol, which so formally declared that in him there were two complete, unmixed, and unchanged natures, the human and the divine. Eutychianism admitted the reality of the divine incarnation, and the incipient duality of the natures, but denied that their distinction remained in Christ. Just when, and in what mode, the distinction ceased, and the two natures became one, are questions on which the doctrine was quite indefinite. Respecting the time, it was held that it might have been instant with the incarnation, or at the baptism of Christ, or after his resurrection. Nor was the theory less indefinite respecting the change in the natures whereby the two became one. Whether the divine was humanized, or the human deified, or the two so mixed and compounded as to constitute a nature neither human nor divine was not determined, though the stronger tendency was toward the view of the deification of the human nature. In this view Christ was wholly divine. The human nature was transmuted into the divine, or absorbed by the divine, as a drop of honey is absorbed by the ocean. Such an illustration was in frequent use for the expression of the change to which the human nature assumed in the incarnation was subject and the monophysitic result determined. Much is thus expressed. The drop of honey absorbed by the ocean would no longer be a drop of honey; nor would it be distinguishable from the body of the ocean. Hence the frequent use of such an illustration fully justifies our statement, that the doctrine strongly tended to the view of a deification of the human nature in Christ.

It seems quite needless to subject such a doctrine to the tests of criticism. Unless this change is held to have occurred at least as late as the ascension of Christ, the doctrine is openly contradicted by the daily facts of his life. We may as readily question his divinity as his humanity. His life is replete with facts so thoroughly in the cast of the human that he must have possessed a human nature; for otherwise these facts have no rational or possible account. Besides, if the human nature assumed by the divine was so transmuted or absorbed, the incarnation loses its own true, deep meaning and assumes a purely docetic form. Thus all grounds of the atonement and of the sympathy of Christ through a law of common suffering with us are utterly swept away. It may suffice to add that such a transmutation of the human nature into the divine is an absolute impossibility. We mean by this that it is not within the power of God. This must be manifest to any mind which takes the proposition into clear thought.^[592]

^[592] Hefele:History of Church Councils, book x, chap, ii; Neander:History of the Church, vol. iii, pp. 504-511 Schaff:History of the Christian Church, vol. iii, §§ 140-145, 1886; Hooker:Ecclesiastical Polity, book v, §§ 52-54; Dorner:Doctrine of the Person of Christ, div. ii, vol. i, pp. 79-119.