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375 - Apollinarist

The discussions concerning Christ in all times have necessarily dealt with either his pretemporal and divine or with his historical and incarnate existence. The Arian controversy was employed solely upon the former - Christ in his divine and eternal relations with the Father. But the intimate connection between the two departments enforced as well the careful consideration of the second - the person of Christ in his incarnate and present existence. Consequently, in the very midst of the discussions on the divine nature of Christ there arose the Christological controversies. They raged with great violence, and survived the Arian strife by about three centuries.

The representative of the transition to this new and important field of inquiry was Apollinaris ; or, aa Dorner says, "He was the turning point at which the Church ceased to devote that exclusive attention to the doctrine of the Trinity which it had for a considerable time devoted, and began those Christological investigations which engaged its powers uuremittedly, especially in the East, during centuries to come."

Apollinaris, Bishop of Laodicea, is not to be confused with the earlier Apollinaris bishop of Hierapolis [in Phrygia, A.D. 171 and onwards], or the Apollinaris, first bishop or archbishop of Ravenna [perhaps from 50-78]. Apollinaris the Elder, Bishop of Laodicea, was born about the beginning of the 4th century. After teaching grammar for some time at Berytus in Phoenicia, he removed, AD 335, to Laodicea, of which church he was made presbyter. Here he married and had a son, afterwards the bishop of Laodicea. The elder Apollinaris is chiefly noted for his literary labors.

Apollinaris the Younger, bishop of Laodicea, flourished in the latter half of the 4th century, and was at first highly esteemed, even by Athanasius and Basil, for his classical culture, piety, and adhesion to the Nicene Creed during the Arian controversy, until he brought out a Christological heresy which is called after him, and which in some respects prepared the way for Monophysitism. He did not secede from the communion of the Church and begin to form a sect of his own till 375.

Apollinaris was the first to apply the results of the Nicene controversy to Christology proper, and to call the attention of the Church to the psychical and pneumatic element in the humanity of Christ; but in his zeal for the true deity ot Christ, and fear of a double personality, he fell into the error of a partial denial of His true humanity. Apollinaris believed that the faith of the Church concerning the nature of Christ preserved certain pagan and Judaistic elements. He proposed to eliminate them, and thereby to establish the sinlessness of Jesus. Investigation into the doctrines of faith should, as he supposed, serve to make men fully and clearly conscious of everything contained in these doctrines, and enable them to separate therefrom those foreign elements, proceeding from other sources, which had involuntarily or insensibly become mixed up with them. Scientific development should give to the doctrines of faith the conceptual expression corresponding to their pure substantial contents. Thus, for example, he observed that low Jewish and pagan modes of conception had imperceptibly gained admission into the Christian consciousness ; therefore, to preserve the purity of the Christian faith, he thought it necessary to provide a remedy against this evil by some such reduction of doctrines to clear and distinct conceptions.

He was no advocate of a stiff supernaturalism ; but he would have the supernatural to be so apprehended as that nature and the rights of nature should also be recognized. The supernatural is in harmony with the natural; or, as this principle was expressed by him, " Nature is not disturbed by her Creator " 2 - meaning that God never so brings about supernatural events as to subvert the laws of nature, or to destroy that peculiar property of an essence which has its ground in the laws of its nature.

He feared a double personality of Christ, but in avoiding this he erred in denying his integral humanity, adopting the psychological trichotomy of Plato, or the division of man into body, animal or vital soul, and intellectual or rational soul. He here gives no place to the human reason or spirit, but substitutes for it the divine Logos, who first attained a personal existence in the man Jesus. By transferring the human attributes to the divine nature, and the divine to the human, and merging the two in Christ, Apollinaris made of Christ's humanity a mixed thing. He even justified his position by the analogies of the mule (half horse and half ass), the gray color (combination of white and black), and spring (having the characteristics of summer and winter). The flesh and soul of man were assumed, but not the human spirit, on the ground that the union of full divinity and humanity in one was impossible. Still, Christ is one essence - the unity of the person (volition and thought) and the essential unity of the two aspects, human and divine. He allowed no place for Christ's growth in wisdom, grace, or any respect, but regarded his humanity as eternally complete. He allowed no historical mediation, but described magnitudes already complete. Perfection predominates over reconciliation and redemption. The divine is all that is active in Christ, while the human is only the oi'gan for revealing the divine. This curtailment of the human nature in Christ very justly subjected him to the charge of Docetism.

Apollinaris, it appears, had a clearer insight than his contemporaries into the difficulties of the christological problem. His fundamental difficulty was that the integrity of man's moral and spiritual nature requires his free choice of virtue, and free human choice, according to his psychology, implies a human personality. Hence, on the current theory of two complete natures, it seemed to him hopeless to maintain the oneness of Jesus' person. For on that theory what you get is two personal beings alongside of one another; God the one, the other a man. Push this dual personality to its consequences. Not only have you a double will, the one mutable, as the Arians allege, because human; and the other immutable because Divine, as Catholics teach; anticipating the Monothelite controversy of three centuries later. But you have even a double sonship to God, anticipating, one sees, the Adoptionists of five centuries later. From such difficulties Apollinaris on his psychological assumptions could see no escape save by curtailing our Lord's human nature in the way which has ever since been associated with his name.

The views of Apollinaris were indorsed by very many Christians in the East, especially those who feared the Arian evil of limiting the Divine nature of Christ. His scholarship, piety, and able attacks on the skepticism of Porphyry and Linabism gave him consideration in many circles who saw the fallacy of his teachings and their danger to the Church.

His doctrines were, therefore, met by vigorous measures. They were condemned by a council at Alexandria in the year 362 (without naming him), and by the councils at Rome under Damasus in 377 and 378. The most powerful opposition, however, was at the second ecumenical council of Constantinople, 381, which condemned them in great clearness and positiveness. Imperial decrees, as was the fashion of the age, prohibited the public worship of the Apollinarists (388, 397, 428).

Apollinaris died about 390-392. After his death his followers, who were not numerous, were divided into two parties, the Polemians and Valentinians. During the 5th century they were absorbed partly by the orthodox, partly by the Monophysites. But the peculiar Christology of Apollinaris has reappeared from time to time, in a modified shape, as an isolated theological opinion.