IV. The Heresy of Apollinaris

(From Notes, dated August 22, 1835.)

§ 1.

{303} THE Apollinarian heresy is at first sight antithetical to Arianism; Arians denying our Lord's true divinity, and Apollinaris His true humanity.

2. But only at first sight; for the very tenet, which constitutes the Apollinarian heresy, viz. the denial of the existence of any mind or intellect, [nous], in our Lord's human nature, was already professed, and in a still bolder form, by the Arians.

[The Arians denied, not only the [nous] in our Lord's soul, but they refused to ascribe to Him a soul of any kind; whereas the Apollinarians did not deny Him a soul, so that intellect was away, that is, an animal soul. This was not among the original Arian errors. Perhaps they were cut short in their full profession of heresy by the prompt indignation which their denial of our Lord's divinity {304} excited. Denial of His human soul is not found as one of their tenets in the letters of Alexander, Arius, &c., at the beginning of the controversy, nor in the historical accounts of it, A.D. 319-341. It is apparently mentioned by Athanasius, Adelph. 1, (with the words, [nun de kat' oligon hupokatabainontes],) and Apoll. i. 15, A.D. 371-2. And later still by Gregory Naz. 1 Ep. ad Cledon. t. 2, p. 87, by Theod. hær. iv. 1, and August. haer. 55. King (Creed, p. 230) considers it as only partially received among the Arians. It was received, as we find from Theod. supr. and Eranist. ii. pp. 73, 80, by the Eunomians, the extreme party among them, A.D. 357. The Benedictine Editor of St. Hilary, Præf. n. 119, also says, "Neque hic error erat omnium qui Ario favebant communis, sed insignium quorundam Arianorum proprius." He mentions Potamius (vid. Phœbad. contr. Arian. p. 251); also, Ursacius and Valens (Theod. Hist. ii. 8); and, referring, but not assenting, to Baronius (Ann. 324, n. 100), Eusebius. Theodoret (supr.), and Leontius (de Sectis, iii. 4, p. 365), say, that the Arians adopted the tenet to baffle the Catholics, who are accustomed to explain texts indicative of infirmity in our Lord, by referring such to His human nature. However, it was but the natural or necessary result of their original heresy, and of their dislike of mystery in religion. If the Word was not God, why should He not act as, and instead of, the soul of a man?

3. Again, it must be recollected, that the heresies concerning the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation, even though on paper they look contrary to each other, do in fact, when analyzed, run together into one. For they are all opposed to the one Truth, and are thereby a negation of those ultimate principles of thought, on which that Truth rests; and thus really, one and all are ranged on one line over against the Truth alone, which seems at first sight to lie between them. {305}

4. And thus, over and above any direct and avowed identity of doctrine between Apollinarianism and Arianism, there are, as it were, underground communications between the one and the other. For instance, as we shall see presently, inasmuch as Apollinarianism tends to the doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Divine Son with His assumed flesh, so does it necessarily favour the Arian denial of His consubstantiality with the Father.

5. However, Apollinaris does not seem to have been aware that there was really but one falsehood in theological {306} teaching, as there was but one truth. Perhaps he was deceived by the ethical differences of his teaching from that of the Arians; and, as he disliked them, and had zealously opposed them to his own temporal disadvantage, he might easily be induced to think in consequence, that no views which he was putting forward would advance the interests either of Arianism or of heresies cognate to it.

[The literary remains of Apollinaris, as of the Eutychians, display an unction, very unlike Arianism, which made its way by means of a pretentious logic. These teachers write devotionally rather than controversially. Eutyches in particular refused to argue, out of reverence, as he said, towards our Lord. Whenever his inconsistencies were urged upon him, he said the subject was beyond him. He considered our Lord [atreptos trapenai], and that in His own secret way, quomodo voluit et scit. ap. Leon. Ep. 21. He professed to dislike [phusiologein]. Concil. t. 2, pp. 157, A.D. 164, &c., &c. Leontius remarks on this evasion, contr. Nest. i. p. 665. The same character of mind manifests itself in the Eranistes of Theodoret's dialogues. Vid. Dial. i. p. 18, fin. [me moi logismous], &c. also. i. p. 11, ii. p. 105. Leo, speaking of Eutyches, says that his heresy was "de imperitia magis quam de versutia natus." Ep. 31, p. 854; vid. also Epp. 30, p. 849; Epp. 28, p. 801; 33, p. 865; 34, p. 870; 35, p. 877; 88, p. 1058. After Eutyches there was a change; vid. Leont. de Sect. vii. 3, 4. Severus and his party were skilful controversialists; Damasc. contr. Jacob. ii. and x. Maxim. t. 2, p. 280. Anast. Hodeg. pp. 20, 308, &c. As to Apollinaris, he was a man of education, and wrote with force as well as with warmth, and his followers had soon the evil repute, not only of clever disputation, but also of literary forgeries, as indeed had the Monophysites also. The Pseudo-Areopagite is by Lequien attributed to Monophysites (Dissert. Damasc. ii. 14, &c.), while Leontius has a work de fraudibus Apollinistarum.]

6. Moreover, he might easily persuade himself that he was but following out and completing, clearing and defining {307} and protecting the teaching of the Fathers. The great truth which they had ever propounded, was that the Eternal Son had come into the world in our nature—language which implied that His Personality was divine, and His manhood only an adjunct to it, instrument, or manifestation. The Word was clothed in flesh, he would say; He dwelt, acted, revealed Himself in the flesh, but this was as far from being a real addition to His own self, as a garment or an instrument is from being a part of a man. A garment is made to fit the wearer; so must our Lord's human nature be shaped and adjusted for a union with His divine. It had not a substantive character; it was not an hypostasis; else it would have a personality of its own; accordingly, it could not in all respects be similar to the ordinary make of human kind.

7. In like manner, he would say, as a man was not a garment, so our Lord was not a man; that is, strictly speaking, He had not a manhood; He was God clothed in our nature. {308}

8. But, if our Lord could not be, strictly speaking, considered to be a man, and had not a human personality, it was plain in what His nature differed from ours. The mind or [nous] was the seat of personality; therefore He had no mind. This absence then of mind from His manhood was the characteristic tenet of Apollinaris. He said that our Lord had no mind, because He had no human personality; just as Catholics said, that since He had in all respects a human nature, He had a human mind.

[[ei anthropos, kai dianoetikos; ei de ou dianoetikos, oud' anthropos]. Greg. Nyssen. Antirrh. 22, fin. [ouk ara anthropine sarx, he me koinonesasa psuchei logokei]. Incert. Dial. iv. 9. ibid. v. 16. [ou gar anoun zoion, ho anthropos]. Greg. Naz. 1. Cledon. t. ii. p. 35. Moreover, our Lord's mind is the very medium, by which a union was possible between the Divine and the human, according to Origen, Princ. ii. 6, n. 3. Naz. Orat. ii. 23, p. 24. Incert. Dial. iv. 2. Damasc. Fid. O. iii. 6, p. 213.] {309}

9. Thus, instead of securing especial honour to the Person of Christ, they landed themselves at once in a tenet especially dishonourable to Him. If our Lord's human nature had no intellectual principle included in it, His Divine Self would be constrained to take its place, and act for it, as a sort of soul of the body; but what an indignity, what a subjection and imprisonment, what a state incompatible with the very idea of divinity, for the Eternal Word to be made to share with the flesh a human individuality! This, which is the reductio ad absurdum of Apollinarianism, will of course come before us more directly presently.

10. This is what comes of Reasoning in the province of theology, unless in the first place we inquire our way by Scripture and Tradition, and then proceed to reason under the information thence afforded us.

[St. Basil, Ep. 263, p. 406, speaks of Apollinaris as working out his theological views by logical processes; and Leontius says of him, [diischurizeto to dogma autou, ouk hupo rhetou tinos, all' apo perinoias]. de Sect. iv. 2, p. 636, vid. Anast. Hodeg. p. 98.] {310}

§ 2.

1. Apollinaris denied that our Lord was perfect man, that He had a rational soul in addition to His Divine Nature; and he did so, on the ground that the doctrine of a humanity complete at all points, with a human mind, rendered an Incarnation impossible, as introducing a second being or person into the constitution, as he might call it, of Emmanuel. He argued, as if from the nature of the case, that nothing could be taken up by the Divine Word into His Personality, which was already in itself individual and one; for, otherwise, it would be impossible to maintain the [akra henosis], the summa unio, between the Divine Word and His assumed nature, and that this maintenance was our primary duty.

2. Then the Apollinarians proceeded thus:—

[Duo teleia] could not in any real sense coalesce and {311} unite; for this would be like saying that one and one do not make two. As well might two human minds run together into one, as God and man be united, without some accommodation or adjustment in the human nature to the Divine. Does not the Church herself admit this? for what is her denial of personality to our Lord's human nature, but a confessed incompleteness in that nature? Moreover, what is the seat of personality but the [nous] or mind? and how can we consistently deny personality to our Lord's manhood, yet ascribe [nous] to it?

8. To say that our Lord, Emmanuel, was perfect man was to consider Him as [anthropos theophoros], a man full of God or deified, whereas really He was [theos sarkophoros], God incarnate.

4. They accused Catholics of holding two sons, the Son of God and the son of Mary, instead of the One Person of Emmanuel; comparing them to the Paulianists.

[That is, of what was afterwards the heresy of Nestorius. Athan. Apoll. i. 21. Nyssen. t. 2, p. 694. Theod. Eran. iii. p. 193. Leont. de fr. Ap. p. 701 C. and [touto epetai tei Paulianikei diairesei]. Vid. Constant. Epp. Pont. App. p. 63.] {312}

5. Also, they said that Catholics added a fourth Person to the Blessed Trinity, and placed a man before the Holy Ghost.

6. Moreover, they argued that, if our Lord is man as He is God, we are called upon both to worship Him and not to worship; which cannot be done: therefore the Catholic doctrine is not true.

7. Further, they said that a human intellect was unnecessary to the Incarnate Word, whose infinite intelligence would supply every need which a human mind could answer; and, if unnecessary, to teach it was to introduce a gratuitous difficulty into theology.

8. Nay, it was mischievous as well as gratuitous; for it interfered with the simple idea and object of the Incarnation, which was the manifestation of the Invisible God.

[To support this view they referred to Baruch iii. 35-38: "After this He was seen on earth and conversed with men;" vid. Theod. Eran. i. p. 17. {313} Naz. Ep. 2. Cledon. p. 95. Athan. Apoll. ii. 4. Nyssen, t. 2, p. 694. Incert. Dial. iv. 1, fin. and ii. init. If a manifestation were all that was necessary, a phantom would answer the purpose as well as a real body. We shall find this consequence carried out by the extreme Apollinarians.]

9. Whatever tended to represent the union of God and man as more than a simple manifestation of the Invisible, they considered to obscure the truth. An outward form was enough, for it exactly answered the purpose of being an organ, an instrument of manifesting Him.

[The Apollinarian Valentinus says, "Amictum et vestem ac tegumen mysterii occultati assumpsit, et pro hominibus apparuit; nec enim aliter spectatores Dei fieri poteramus, nisi per corpus." Leont. p. 703. And Jobius: "Carnem unisse sibi, et esse unam personam indivisibilem mediam inter Deum et hominem, et conjungentem creaturas divisas cum creatore." ibid. p. 702. And Apollinaris himself: "Organum, et quod movet instrumentum, unam naturaliter perficiunt operationem." ibid. p. 706. "Venerabile, magnum, supramundanum [skeuasma]." ibid. The body of Christ is a [schema organikon]. Athan. Apoll. i. 2, 14. Incert. Dial. iv. 5, fin. "Let us glorify Him," says Apollinaris in Theod. Eran. ii. pp. 173, 174, [hos tina basilea en eutelei phanenta stolei; horontes kai auto to enduma doxasthen]. vid. also Ambros. Incarn. 51.

However, the orthodox disputant, in Theod. Eran. i. pp. 22, 3, speaks of the flesh of Christ as a [parapetasma] and [prokalumma], referring to Hebr. x. 20; and the Eranistes is shy of adopting these words, perhaps under the notion that those words mean a veil rather than a medium of vision. In Hær. v. 11, p. 422, Theodoret calls the word [prokalumma] heretical, as applied to the flesh of Christ, contrasting it with the idea of it as the [aparche] of the whole race. Vid. Note on Athan. Orat. ii. 8, Oxf. trans., or ibid. ed. 2, art. in voc. [parapetasma].]

10. They succeeded to argue that the human mind was necessarily sinful, and that in consequence it was an {314} impiety to suppose that it was a portion of that manhood which our Lord assumed.

11. Such were the argumentative grounds of the heresy. Its advocates disposed of the difficulty arising out of the Scripture passages which speak of our Lord's soul, by asserting that the animal or physical soul was meant in them, or if the rational constituent or [nous], then that the Divine Word, which supplied the place of a soul, was called soul there. And thus He was "perfect man;" the divinity supplying that in His manhood which was necessary for its perfection. But without the Word, He was not "perfect man," any more than one of us has a perfect manhood, when, by the departure of the soul, he lies a corpse.

This explanation will serve to enlighten us as to an evasion, to which {315} they had recourse in some of their creeds, which seem orthodox. Thus in the Creed included in the Ephesine Acts, (vid. supr. p. 37,) our Lord is said to be [holon theon kai meta tou somatos ... kai holon anthropon meta tes theotetos]; where the [kai] before the first [meta] seems to direct us to the evasion. They meant to say that He was perfect God, His body exclusive, and perfect man, His Divinity inclusive. And so again, [teleios anthropos en pneumati] in Constant. Epp. Pont. App. p. 75; where [pneuma] stands for the Divine Nature, an archaism, which they seem to have affected, because it brought their triple view of human nature into connexion with St. Paul, 1 Thess. v. 23, the human [pneuma] there spoken of, or intellectual spirit of an ordinary man, being changed for the Divine Spirit or Word in the manhood of Emmanuel.

They were called [dimoiritai], as allowing Him only two out of the three constituents of human nature. Basnage strangely mistakes here. Vid. Naz. Ep. 202, [tritemorion].] {316}

§ 3.

1. Such were the statements and arguments, by the aid of which the Apollinarian tenet was recommended to the acceptance of Catholics; but, whatever might be their value, their outcome was nothing short of a negation of our Lord's Divinity, as absolute, if not so immediate, as Arianism.

Apollinaris taught, as a special means of securing that all-important dogma, and of securing the summa unio, the hypostatic simplicity, of the two natures in the Word incarnate, that He, the Infinitely great God, had become the soul of a human being.

2. That is, that He had united Himself to what, viewed apart from His presence in it, was a brute animal; this position being no mere inference of opponents, but what the Apollinarians taught directly and purposely, in order, as they said, to deprive His humanity of that (viz. the intellectual principle) which emphatically constitutes man.

3. Moreover, that the whole, the [sunthetos ousia], which the Word formed with that brute creature, has a completeness and entireness, surpassing that of the Word Himself.

[He taught, says Gregory Naz., [theoteta tou monogeous meros genesthai tou anthropeiou sunkramatos]. Ep. 202, p. 168. [ho kaine {317} ktisis], says Apollinaris himself, [kai mixis thespesia, theos kai sarx mian apetelesan phusin]. Eulog. ap. Phot. p. 850.]

4. Let it be observed, he did not merely say that the Incarnation was analogous to the union of soul and body, as the Athanasian Creed rightly teaches, and as the Eutychians afterwards perversely maintained, but that it was an actual instance of that union. The Word was the very soul of a human body. The Word and the flesh went together to make a compound nature, a [sunthetos ousia], which was neither the one nor the other, as in the case of men generally, being both present, but both changed in that resulting whole. What, separately taken, is ghost and corpse in man, becomes in their union soul and body, each new in itself, as well as in the unit which they together constitute. A change in the Divine Nature of the Word! This then was Apollinaris's expedient for protecting this sacred truth against the blasphemies of Arius.

5. There was no escape open to Apollinaris from these consequences, except the fresh error, into which he seems to have been forced, viz., that of denying that our Lord's body remained human, and of maintaining that it had a celestial nature. {318}

6. Or further still, except the heresy of maintaining that our Lord's body became nothing more than a phantom, such as Angels might wear in order to their intercourse with men.

7. So much on the heretical tenet, viewed in itself; next, as to its bearing on our Lord's mission.

If the Incarnation is mainly or solely intended as a manifestation of the Divine Nature, how is it a satisfaction for human sin?

[ei me kai ton esothen kai ton exothen sunestesato heautoi ho logos, ... pos to huper tou pantos antedoken antilutron]; ibid. i. 19. Vid. Leon. Serm. 63, p. 249.] {319}

8. What becomes of our boast, that our enemy has been foiled by the very nature over which he had triumphed, and that that nature has been shown capable, and been made the subject, of the most intimate union with Infinite sanctity and wisdom?

9. How is it a union of Himself with our nature, such, as to be the germ of its new life, and the first-fruits of its renovation in holiness?

10. Much as it is to have a perfect pattern set before us, how is this pattern practically available, unless an inward grace is communicated from His Person to realize this pattern in us?

[legete, tei homoiosei kai tei mimesei sozesthai tous pisteuontas, kai ou tei anakainisei kai tei aparchei, kai pos ... ou gar elthen he theotes heauten dikaiosai, oude gar hemarten, all' eptocheuse di' hemas], &c. &c. Athan Apoll. ii. 11. [to ektos hemon katharizousi monon dia tou kainou prosopeiou]. Naz. Ep. 2. Cledon. p. 95.] {320}

11. I do not mean of course that he would not deny the consequences which I have been urging against his doctrine; but I am concerned here, not with him personally, but with that doctrine itself. We may be sure that he felt its difficulties; and this consciousness is the natural explanation of his inconsistencies, which are not few.

He was an eloquent writer, and an able disputant, and boldly affirmed what, according to the undeniable logic of his opponents, he ought to have denied. In one fragment, for instance, he says our Lord's body was glorified, [hos hermotte somati theou kai soteri kosmou, kai spermati zoes aioniou, kai organoi theion energeion, kai lutikoi kakias apases, kai thanatou kathairetikoi, kai anastaseos archegoi]. Eran. ii. pp. 173, 4. vid. also p. 256. These are fine words, but were they reconcilable with his heretical tenet? {321}

§ 4.

1. These inconsistencies, which form the decisive testimony of Apollinaris himself against his own teaching, will partly be seen in his own statements as they remain to us, as contrasted with his profession of the whole Catholic creed, and partly in the extravagances of his followers.

First, as to his own statements:—

He said that, 1. Our Lord was born of the Blessed Virgin (Leont. p. 701 C, p. 702 D, Incert. Dial. iv. 9 fin.) 2. He had no rational principle but the Eternal Word (p. 706 C, D). 3. His body or flesh was an organ or outward form of the Divine Power (p. 706 D). 4. The Only-begotten was a constituent of a compound nature (p. 704 C). 5. What was virtually a new nature in Him was made out of the divinity and the flesh (p. 704 A). 6. Though they remained in their own nature (ibid.). 7. His flesh was of a created nature (p. 702 D). 8. It remained after the union (p. 701 E, A, C. Eran. pp. 171, 2). 9. It was consubstantial with ours (p. 702, C, D. p. 704 A. Eran. p. 170). 10. It was not consubstantial with God (p. 701 E, {322} p. 702 D). 11. It was consubstantial with God, by communication of name, not by change of nature (p. 704 E). 12. It was not from heaven, considered as flesh (p. 701 B, p. 705 A). 13. As being the flesh of Christ, it is God (p. 702 D, p. 704 B). 14. Our Lord was the "cœlestis homo," "propter spiritum cœlestem" (p. 702 D). 15. His flesh, though not from heaven, (p. 701 B). 16. Still possessed the names and the properties of the Word, so as even to be increate (p. 705 E, p. 176 A). 17. It was not changed from created to increate, but was increate, as far as it was God (p. 706 B). 18. It was increate, considered as God (p. 705 B). 19. The man was consubstantial with God (p. 705 C). 20. His flesh was of one substance with the Word (p. 706 D). 21. It was connatural with the Divine Nature (p. 705 B). 22. It was consubstantiated with the Divinity (p. 705 D). 23. It was from the beginning in the Son (Naz. Ep. 202). 24. The Word remained God, not changed into a bodily substance (p. 705 D. Eran. p. 70).

2. Next, as to his followers, some were unwilling to lose the shadow of an orthodox profession, however nominal; while others were prepared to go all lengths, orthodox or not. Some desired to retain a positive doctrine; others recklessly split up their party into fragments as numerous as their doctrinal varieties, bringing it to an end by virtue of the very principles on which it had started.

3. Both parties claimed Apollinaris as their master.

[Valentinus, the moderate, says, "Magister noster Apollinarius {323} blasphemos et insanos scripto vocavit eos, qui," &c. Leont. p. 703 D. Timotheus, the extreme, "cum Magister noster Apollinarius dicat," &c. p. 704 C.]

4. Both parties taught that our Lord's body was originally consubstantial with ours, and that it was made divine. But it was debated between them, whether by being made divine, it was changed merely in properties, or was changed into the divine substance.

5. Valentinus, of the moderate party, maintained that its properties alone were affected by the presence of the Divine Word, not its substance.

6. Even on this more cautious ground, questions had to be met and satisfied. If the Word and His flesh were in Emmanuel as rational soul and body, the Divine Nature suffers in Him, as the soul suffers in and with the body. His party answered that it was His animal soul that suffered; but could the mere animal soul say, "Eli, Eli, lama," &c.? However, there was an alternative by which to escape the conclusion that the Divine Nature suffered; viz. to maintain that there had been no passion at all, only a manifestation of the Word. {324}

7. A further difficulty lay in our Lord's death. As the cessation of warmth, sense, and motion are signs of death on the part of the body, so on the part of the soul is the descent into Hades; now the Word was the soul of Emmanuel; did the Word then take a place among disembodied spirits? Again, was His body any longer divine, now that the Word had left it? But why need they embarrass themselves with teaching His death, since His coming was only a manifestation? And to this conclusion they inclined.

8. Now to turn to those, as Timotheus, who adopted the extreme views to which the heresy led. They maintained our Lord's body became, on its union, consubstantial with the Divine nature; else, it was idolatry to worship Him as incarnate. Hence they were called [sunousiastai].

[Leont. p. 703 E, p. 704, and p. 707 A. [homoousion to ek Marias soma tei tou logou theoteti]. Athan. Epict. 2. [sarka proaionion tina kai sunousiomenen]. Naz. Ep. 202. Theod. Hær. iv. 9. Facund. viii. 4, p. 471 and note. (Yet Malchion says [theon sunousiomenon toi anthropoi]. infr. Cyril's Formula, 17.) That our Lord was not in His {325} human nature consubstantial with us, was one of the two points of Eutychianism, though he wavered about it. vid. Concil. t. 2, p. 164, 5. Flavian ap. Leon. Ep. 26, Ep. 30.]

9. But, if this was so, that a change of substance took place in our Lord's body on His assuming it, so that it even was increate and everlasting, how was it a body at all? For if it could remain a body, after this change, then that into which it was changed would itself be of a material nature already. Either this, or it was no longer a body, but a phantom, as the old Docetæ had said. And thus, when they called His body increate, perhaps they meant non-create, that is, that it never had been brought into existence at all.

10. Another question arose. They confessed that our Lord's body was originally human; did this mean that it had existed before its union with the Word? If so, they were falling into the heresy afterwards called Nestorianism.

[Athan. Epict. 8. Leont. de Sectis, vii.1. vid. Petav. Incarn. i. 14, 5, p. 35.] {326}

11. There are those, among whom is numbered Apollinaris himself, who made short work with this difficulty by maintaining our Lord's body was of a divine nature from the first, being taken, not from the Blessed Virgin, but from the internal essence of the Word Himself, a celestial development, for the purpose of a manifestation.

12. It is obvious how easily this last opinion might pass into Sabellianism by identifying the Word with this mere visible development, which was superficial to the Divine Essence. Accordingly, we find one large section of the Apollinarians accused of that heresy, and they favoured this imputation by teaching that our Lord was the image of the Father, not in His divine, but in His human nature.

13. On the other hand, those who scrupled to assert that the Divine Nature suffered on the Cross, yet denied with Apollinaris that Christ had a human mind, would {327} be tempted to consider Him not strictly God at all, and therefore of course passible. And in fact the Apollinarians are accused by some writers of considering the Son inferior to the Father, and the Spirit to the Son, which is the heresy of Arius.

14. As we know that the party of Valentinus were not Sabellians, it is probable that it was the Timotheans who favoured Sabellius, and the Valentinians who inclined towards Arianism.

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