Doctrine of Christ (part 2)

Last time we looked at the Scriptural data concerning the deity and the humanity of Jesus. We saw that Scripture affirms that Jesus is truly human and that he is truly God, and to deny either the true humanity of Christ or to deny the true deity of Christ is heretical. An orthodox view, a biblical view that is to say, of Jesus must affirm that he is truly human and truly divine.

This leads to the question, “How can this be the case?” How can a person be both truly a human being and truly God? There arose within the early church a tremendous debate over the person of Christ which it will be profitable to survey. I find this history to be even more interesting and more intriguing than the trinitarian debates that preceded it.

Historical Survey

Monophysite vs. Dyophysite Christology

We want to begin our historical survey by looking at the debate between Monophysite and Dyophysite views of the person of Christ. Monophysitism is the view that Christ has one nature. Mono means “single” or “one,” and physis means “nature.” So someone who holds to Monophysitism, or is a Monophysite, holds that Christ had a single nature – a sort of mixture of humanity and deity – he was a divine-human person. Dyophysitism holds that Christ had two natures, so that he had both a human nature and a divine nature. The debate between Monophysitism and Dyophysitism raged in the early church.

The presupposition of both of these competing schools is that things do have natures. Things have natures, that is to say, things that exist belong to certain natural kinds such as, say, a dog or a cat or an oak tree. There are natures that make things what they are. There would be essential properties to certain natural kinds. A nature is made up of the essential properties that a thing has, that is to say, properties which it could not lack and still be what it is. On this view, there is such a thing as human nature. There are certain essential properties that go to make up humanity and that every human being, as a human being, must possess. There is a human nature. This human nature differs from the divine nature. God is not a human being and therefore has a different sort of nature.

According to Aristotle, the greatest of the ancient Greek philosophers, the nature of man is that he is a rational animal. That is what human nature is – rational animality. The nature of man is to be a rational animal. So being truly human on Aristotle’s view involves having both a physical body and an intellectual soul. A rational soul conjoined with a physical body goes to make up a human being. This is what constitutes human nature – an intellectual or rational soul and a physical body. The church fathers seemed to have accepted the view that this is indeed what is constitutive of being a human being.

At the same time, the church fathers also believed that God has certain essential attributes such as omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, moral perfection, eternity, and so forth – those classical attributes of God that we surveyed in this class when we discussed the existence and nature of God.1 The common presupposition behind both of these competing schools of thought is that things do indeed have natures. There is such a thing as a human nature, and there is such a thing as a divine nature.

Alexandrian Christology (Monophysitism)

Having said that, what was the issue of dispute between the Monophysites and the Dyophysites? The Monophysite school of thought is very often referred to as Alexandrian Christology because of its locus in the city of Alexandria in Egypt – this was one of the great theological centers of the ancient world. The Alexandrian theologians tended to be Monophysite in their Christology. Examples of this sort of thinking would be, for example, Apollinarius, who, although he was not from Alexandria, nevertheless had an Alexandrian-type Christology. The great church father Athanasius was also Alexandrian. You remember him from his role in leading up to the Council of Nicaea in opposing Arius and the heresy of Arianism. So Apollinarius and Athanasius would be two examples of the Alexandrian approach to Christology.

Apollinarius was an especially interesting and original thinker in this area. Key to understanding his view of Christ was his anthropology – that is to say, his analysis of human being. He believed that human beings are made up of three components. There is the physical body. Then there is the soul, which is a sort of animal soul – it is something we have in common with other living creatures, other living animals. It would be a kind of vitalizing principle that imparts life. So there is the physical body, there is the soul, and then there is what you would call the mind. That would be that intellectual, rational component of human being that makes you a person.

Apollinarius believed that in order to have a genuine incarnation, the second person of the Trinity – the Logos – had to be so intimately connected with the man Jesus of Nazareth that they shared a common component. He suggested that the Logos, the second person of the Trinity, was the mind of Jesus of Nazareth. So Jesus had a human body, an animal soul, but his mind was the mind of the second person of the Trinity – the Logos. It replaced the human mind in Jesus.

Thus, you can see that you would have a union of God and man in Christ, and you would have a single nature. Sometimes this is referred to as a “theanthropic” nature – “the” from theos for God and then “anthropic” from anthropos for man. So “theanthropic” – divine- human – a divine-human nature in Christ, a single nature that is composed of God and man together. As an argument for his view, Apollinarius claimed that anything less than that would be a mere indwelling of God in the man Jesus, and that is not a full incarnation. The Holy Spirit indwells every Christian believer, and yet that doesn’t make us God, even though we are indwelt by the third person of the Trinity. Some people are demon possessed – they are indwelt by a demonic being – but that doesn’t make that person a demon. There is still a distinct human person there that is different from the demon that is indwelling him. Apollinarius argued that unless you have some sort of a common component that links the humanity of Christ with his deity, at best you get an indwelling of God in the man Jesus of Nazareth, and you do not get a genuine incarnation.2

Apollinarianism was attacked by other early church fathers and in the end condemned at the synod of Rome in 337. Why? What was the problem with Apollinarius’ Christology? Two deficiencies in Apollinarian Christology seemed especially serious to the church fathers.

First, they argued that a body without a mind is a truncation of human nature. It is not a complete human nature to have just a humanoid body but not to have a human mind. By merely clothing himself with flesh, the Logos, on Apollinarianism, didn’t truly become a man. It is essential to human nature to have a rational soul. Remember Aristotle said that that is one of the essential components of human nature – not just a physical body, but a rational soul as well. And in Christ there was no human rational soul, there was the Logos. So all the Logos had assumed in his incarnation was the human body of Jesus (with its animal soul), but there was no human mind; and therefore there was no complete human nature. Christ was not truly human. He was like us only with respect to our flesh, and that is something we share with animals. We have that in common with other biological organisms. One of the church fathers, Gregory of Nyssa, said of Apollinarius’ view of the incarnation that Apollinarius had in effect reduced the incarnation to God’s becoming an animal, because that is all he assumed! The second person of the Trinity just assumed this (living) hominid body – the incarnation was God’s becoming an animal! Therefore, Apollinarianism is theologically unacceptable because it denies the true humanity of Christ.

The second deficiency that was seen in Apollinarianism is that if Christ did not have a human mind, then the human mind could not be redeemed. If there was no human mind in Christ, then the human mind is not redeemed. This is based upon the fundamental principle that underlay the whole doctrine of the incarnation, which says quod non est assumptum non est sanatum – that which is not assumed is not saved. The whole rationale behind the incarnation is that in order to save human beings, Christ had to assume a human nature. And if you say that he didn’t have a human mind, then the human mind is not saved. If you deny this principle and say God can save humanity without assuming human nature, then why have an incarnation at all? It would undercut the rationale for any sort of incarnation. If you believe that the incarnation is a vital part of the plan of salvation, then the other church fathers believed you must grant this principle that that which is not assumed is not saved and that therefore, on Apollinarius’ view, the salvific work of Christ is also threatened.

These are two important criticisms. The one says that it gives us an inadequate view of Christ’s person – he wasn’t truly human. The other criticism says it also undercuts his work because his salvific work will be in vain. It won’t accomplish the salvation of human beings because he didn’t truly become a human being.

Just as the Monophysite Christology was centered in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, so the Dyophysite Christology tended to be associated with another center for theological thought in the ancient world, Antioch. The Antiochene theologians developed a view of Christ’s person which says that Christ has two complete natures – one human and one divine. These are not mingled together in the way that Apollinarius imagined. Next time we will look at what the Antiochene theologians had to say and the criticisms of their view that were launched by the Alexandrian theologians.

Notes

1 5:02

2 10:02

3 15:11

4 The tripartite view holds that man is a composite of three distinct components: body, soul, and spirit. The alternative view, known as the bipartite view, holds that “soul” and “spirit” are taken as different terms for the same entity, and thus man is composed of two parts – material and immaterial, or body and mind.

5 20:02