Chapter I

SECTION II.

THE SETTLEMENT AND THE LOGICAL COMPLETION OF THE CHALCEDONIAN DOCTRINE OF TWO NATURES.

From the Council of Chalcedon, to the Council of Frankfurt, A.d. 794.

CHAPTER FIRST.

DYOPHYSITISM IN CONFLICT WITH MONOPHYSITISM.

FROM THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON, A.D. 451, TO THE COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE, A.D. 553.

As the threats uttered by the monks and their representatives, prior to the Synod of Chalcedon, would have led us to expect, the Monophysites did not submit to the Council, and considered themselves quite as justified in designating this Synod a Party Synod, as did the Fathers at Chalcedon, the Synod of 449. The doggedness of the resistance offered by the vanquished, may be partially explained from the little moral respect which the history of the Council commands; but was primarily due also to religious considerations. The Monophysite party now separated itself from the great body of the Church, and constituted itself into a sect, as the Nestorian party had previously done. The compass of the former, however, was far greater than that of the latter. Not only in Illyria, but even in Constantinople, did the Monophysites remain for a long time powerful; and more than one Emperor, induced by the consideration of their great influence in the East (specially in one part of Syria and Armenia), in Egypt, and in Abyssinia, was repeatedly on the point of either consigning the decrees of Chalcedon to silent oblivion, or more directly assailing them.¹ The party rose further in intrinsic significance, from the circumstance that many of its adherents exhibited a truly philosophical spirit, and applied themselves in particular to the Aristotelian philosophy. On the one hand, it understood how to enchain the immediate Christian consciousness of the people by its manner, and, on the other hand, displayed both skill, and to a certain extent superiority, in its scientific enforcement of its view of the unity of the nature of Christ. It is quite true, of course, that in the efforts which were put forth, much formal subtlety, sophistry, and scholasticism came to light: this struggle was, to a certain extent, a prelude of the struggle between Nominalism and Realism: finally, moreover, the religious considerations which were the primary motive fell into the background. But still it deserves more favour and attention than have been ordinarily bestowed on it.² If it be interesting to watch how, from the date of the Council of Chalcedon, when the Church formally posited the duality of the natures, it was compelled to inquire what could be done for the assertion of their unity; it must be equally interesting to watch how the Monophysites, starting with the unity, and bent on preserving it untouched, endeavoured to arrive at a duality, if not of natures, of aspects of the Person of Christ And, as though it had been ordained that Christendom should make attempts in all possible directions, we find amongst the Monophysites also, an interesting and internally progressive variety of opinion. To this the more attention should be paid, as it was perhaps necessary to the formation of a more satisfactory Christology, that the process, whose direction was from duality to unity, should also take the direction from unity to duality; although the direction taken by the Church, under the leadership of the Council of Chalcedon, from

¹ The inexpressible confusion introduced into all the Churches of the East and the West by the monophysitic controversy, and its changing phases, are depicted with special vividness by Nicephorus in his Church History, vol. xvi. 25.

* Both Gieseler and Baur have recently done much to throw light on the history of the Monophysites,—the former in his "Commentatio qua Monophysitarum veterum varise de Christi persona opiniones imprimis ex ipsorum effatis recens editis illustrantur," T. i. ii. 1835, 1838; the latter in his "Die christliche Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit und Menschwerdung Gottes in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung," vol. ii. 37-59.

duality to unity, must probably take the precedence and first arrive at a fixed result.

The most notable men of the Monophysite party were, on the one hand, Dioscurus, Timothy Ailuros, Patriarch of Alexandria, Julian, Bishop of Halicarnassus, Stephen Niobes, and Theodosius;¹ on the other hand, Severus from Pisidia, Patriarch of Antioch, and Xenaias or Philoxenus, Bishop of Hierapolis or Mabug, both about the year 500.² The former demanded that the unity of the Person of Christ should be so maintained as to involve, not indeed the total extinction of the human nature, but still its ceasing to be of the same substance with ours. They clung, therefore, to that doctrine of transmutation which represents the human as converted into divine. On the other hand, they asserted that the divine suffered only according to grace, as Dioscurus says, not according to nature; supposing that thus they preserved intact both the unchangeableness of the divine nature, and the power over its own actual condition. Each nature in this way undergoes an alteration by means of the other: the divine communicates its own nature to the human, and the human gives its own attributes, as it were, in exchange to the Logos,—in whom, therefore, its existence is thenceforth guaranteed. This view is directly allied to the teachings of Eutyches. The point of view of Dioscurus is most clearly seen from his relation to the sufferings of Christ. He was very far from wishing to deny the sufferings of Christ: he meant, on the contrary, merely to teach that the blood of Christ is the blood of God,— and that, not in consequence of the intervention of the divine person, but in its own nature. Unless this were the case, it would not be heavenly and imperishable. It would be profane, Dioscurus considered, to say that the blood of Christ was of the same substance with anything merely natural. Similar also is the remark of Timothy Ailuros: Christ has homoousia with us, only so far as He was

Compare the fragments of Dioscurus' letter in A. Mai's " Nova Coll." Tom. vii. 289, and of Timotheus Ailuros, in Tom. vii. 35, 277, 304, 305 of the same work; Evagrius iii. 14, iv. 39; Photius, cod. 162, 227.

* Philoxenus wrote a work, in three books, on the Trinity and Incarnation; compare Assem. bibl. or. ii. p. 25. A series of fragments of Severus is also extant. Ang. Mai, Tom. vii.; Leontius, "Apology for the Council of Chalcedon," Gallandii Bibl. Tom. xii. 719 f.; Mansi, vii. 881, viii. 817; Photius, 108, 230.

conceived by His mother from our common substance. But this resemblance is merely the starting-point; and had He been born from Mary like any other child, her virginity could not have been preserved. By the act of the Logos, therefore, Christ received a humanity different from ours,—a humanity which Dioscurus unquestionably held to have been from the very beginning the same as it was after the resurrection. This aspect of Monophysitism chimed most in with the feelings and notions of the mass of the people. Monophysitism kept its ground with such firmness, that the Emperor Zeno made an effort to reconcile it with the body of the Church by means of a formula in his Henoticon of the year 482, in which the Council of Chalcedon was not only treated as though it had never existed, but a slur was cast upon the Fathers who assisted at its deliberations. In this formula the Emperor was not content merely to make both the unity and the duality of natures an open question, and to let the dispute take its own course, as one that had not yet been decided; but unmistakeably espoused the cause of the Monophysites (of course with the repudiation of the Eutychian doctrine of the mixture of the natures) by expressly recognising the Council of Ephesus as authoritative, and joining even in the anathemas of Cyrill. Zeno's Henoticon would thus have secured for the unmodified doctrine of Cyrill a position which Cyrill himself could never have realized. The attempt, however, was in vain. The adherents of the Council of Chalcedon were by no means inclined so readily to renounce the advantage they had gained. The influence of the Council of Ephesus had indeed been paralyzed by the Chalcedonian decisions; but still, there could be no hope of effectually preventing Monophysitism, in the form in which it was taught by Cyrill, from attaining to supremacy, unless, at the very least, a demand was made that the decisions of Ephesus should be formally pronounced null and void. The misfortune was, that at Ephesus the Council went too far in the direction of Cyrill's views,—at Chalcedon, in the direction of the views of the school of Antioch. To treat two (Ecumenical Councils not free from blame, or to declare them null and void, would have been, in the estimate of that period, equivalent to shaking the whole foundations of the Church : both, therefore, continued binding. But as the two Councils were animated by a very different, yea, an opposite spirit, the Church was bound by selfcontradictory decrees. This showed itself with special clearness in the fact, that the friends of the Council of Chalcedon did not venture on repudiating the Council of Ephesus, and yet, on the other hand, rejected the Henoticon, whose sole intent was to enforce the doctrine of Cyrill, as inconsistent with the Council of Chalcedon. Again, the Monophysites refused to be satisfied with anything less than the decrees of the Council of Ephesus and the Henoticon ;—no other course, therefore, was open to the Church, than to accept, not only both Councils, but also their consequences.

Monophysitism now entered on a long and more independent course of development, principally in two directions: one of which may be regarded, according to a previous remark, as an evolution of Eutychianism; the other inclined inwardly towards the Church, and carried out Cyrill's views and spirit. The entire history of the Monophysites down to the 7th century, shows how widely and deeply their roots had struck into the soil of the Church; and how not only they were unable to break loose from the Church, but the Church also to break loose from them. Monophysitism cannot justly be termed simple and pure Docetism; it was rather a refined, reflective form thereof, and as such contained within itself an element of ferment the very opposite of Docetism. Should it happen therefore that life was infused into the anti-docetic element in Monophysitism, as would be most clearly evinced, when forms of doctrine developed themselves out of it which contained the docetical element in a pure state, and thus set before it, as in a mirror, a caricature of itself, instead of that image which it desired and supposed itself to present; then would there be a possibility of Monophysitism approximating to the doctrine of the Church. And, on the other hand, should the Church not merely talk about a unity of the person, but really strive, in some way or other, rationally to connect the two natures together, it might easily fall into monophysitic principles,—nay more, it might even outdo a Monophysitism which made earnest efforts to show how distinctions could exist in the one person of the God-man. There was, therefore, an inner necessity for the interaction of the adherents of the decree of Chalcedon and the Monophysites; and however certain it may be that the changing political interests of the Emperors interfered with and disturbed the process by which the two were supplementing each other, through the favour bestowed at one time on the view laid down by the Council of Chalcedon, at another time (as, for example, under Zeno, and partially under both Justinian and Heraclius) on that of the Monophysites, and partially also through the premature construction of formulas of concord under external influence, and the enactment of laws binding to silence; yet the dialogue between the Church and the Monophysites continued, on the whole, its course (Note 29). So long as the heretical character of Monophysitism had not yet plainly manifested itself, the Church continued to experience its influence: nay more, during the immediately following stadia of its development, the Church adopted not a few monophysitic principles ;—the resultant Cbristology, however, was but a composite of very heterogeneous elements.

Monophysitism found a strong support in the predicate of "Mother of God," which had been applied to Mary even in the earlier doctrinal writings of the Church, but especially, since the time of the first Council of Ephesus: of this its advantage it was very well aware. The ever increasing cultus of Mary well discharged the office of deputy and representative of Monophysitism within the fold of the Church. In agreement with this cultus, the birth of Christ was conceived as the birth of God. This was natural enough, in that the divine nature was held to be the only and proper subject of the predicates applied to Christ,—even of that of birth, amongst the rest. If this were right, then were the Monophysites justified in requiring the predicates of suffering and dying to be applied to the divine subject, and in insisting on the use of such words as, " The Second Person of the Trinity endured suffering." This claim was also made by Peter Fullo (The Fuller), the Monophysite Patriarch of Antioch, and the originator of the Theopassian controversy. He propounded the formula, " Holy God, holy Strong One, holy Immortal One, who for our sakes wast crucified, have mercy on us!" The triple invocation seemed to the orthodox to point to the Trinity, and therefore to imply that the divine substance was common to the three Persons. Patripassianism had, consequently, returned in an exaggerated trinitarian form. And although it was affirmed that the essence of the Son alone, and not that which He had in common with the others, suffered; still, as the Son was consubstantial with the Father and the Spirit, Theopassianism in this form must unavoidably follow, unless a difference of essence between Father and Spirit on the one side, and the Son on the other, were admitted, bordering on Arianism. It is, of course, quite possible that Peter may have been led by religious considerations to form such a conception of the divine nature of the Son as permitted of His entering, out of love to men, into their suffering condition : but we lack more accurate information. His conception might also have been an Eutychian one. But against this supposition there is the circumstance, that Monophysites who repudiated Eutychianism, took the formula to mean that suffering is to be attributed to the Son of God solely on the ground of the union with humanity, and defended it as such. Only after prolonged resistance, however, and through the influence of John Marentius, who came to Constantinople with Scythian monks in the year 519, and demanded its recognition, did this formula, in the sense that one of the persons of the Trinity suffered, gain a lodgment within the Church. Marentius himself, indeed, made no way in Constantinople, and therefore he addressed himself to Hormisdas of Rome; but Hormisdas regarded the formula as heretical.¹ Still the formula found many supporters among the monks,—in part also among theologians; of the latter, the Deacon Fulgentius Ferrandus is specially worthy of mention;² it was received also with the greatest applause by the people. The Emperor Justinian therefore issued an edict, prescribing it to the Church; and its rejection was anathematized by the fifth CEcumenical Council, in the year 553." The chief interest of the question lies in its involving a demand that Christology should again be intuited and examined in conjunction with the doctrine of the Trinity. If the Son of God be indissolubly and eternally united with humanity, nay more, if humanity is a constituent

¹ Mansi, T. viii. 498. Otherwise John II. Compare Baur's " Dreieinigkeitelehre," ii. 72.

^J Compare Fulgentius Ferrandus' (of Carthage) "de duabus in Christo naturis et quod unus de Trinitate natus passusque dici possit," Bibl. Max. Lugd. ix. 502 f.—Confessio Maxentii, ib. p. 534 f.

³ Mansi, T. viii. 765 ff., ix. 384. Anathcmat. x. Compare Baur 1. c. ii. Walch "Histor. der Ketzer," vii. 248 ff.

of His person, then humanity is introduced within the sphere of the Trinity; for the incarnation is represented as an expression, not merely of the activity, but also of the very being of the Son of God. An alteration cannot by any means be said to have been thus imported into the inner nature of God, for the Son, as such, is not affirmed to have suffered: but still the Son undoubtedly became, by means of the incarnation, what He had not previously been,—although that which He had previously been did not undergo any change. Now, that which He is represented to have become, was either something merely accidental and external to Him,—with which would be incompatible that it should be impossible from henceforth, for ever, to form a true conception of Him apart from humanity,—or, it must be referred back to an eternal purpose of incarnation, arising out of the very nature of the will of God, in order to exclude the appearance of change even in reference to the Divine determination to become man. Thus far, however, they did not advance; but still, the position in which the question stood, shows the need that existed of connecting the external ceconomy of God with His immanent and eternal ceconomy, by referring the former back to the latter. Religious considerations unmistakeably operated in this connection, and that even at an earlier stage than logical considerations. It was meant that the Godhead of the Son, in all the majesty with which we behold Him clothed as a member of the Trinity, should participate in the work of propitiation, in the sufferings on behalf of the world (Note 30).

Theopassianism aimed to further the intimate unity of the Person of Christ by importing the likeness of the human as much as possible into the divine; and from the same motive, endeavours were made to bring the human aspect of the Person of Christ nearer to the divine by representing the Unio as having given rise to a resemblance of the former and to the latter. In general, indeed, not a doubt was entertained, that the humanity of Christ was, somehow, not merely honoured, but even exalted by its connection with the Logos,—at all events subsequently to the resurrection: and as the principle laid down by John Cassian in the words, "nee quasi per gradus et tempora proficientem in deum, alterius status fuisse ante resurrection em credamus Christum, alterius post resurrectionem sed ejusdem plenitudinis atque virtutis,"¹ was universally taken for granted, in all consistency the humanity of Christ ought not to have heen regarded as any longer in the state of humiliation; unless, by its own will, or by the will of the Deity, that servant's form had been again imposed with which the Unio in itself was incompatible. But the opinion that the incarnation was immediately, and at once, an absolutely and perfectly accomplished fact, had not been, as yet, by any means so logically and definitely worked out, that, in opposition thereto, the humanity of Christ could not be represented as at the commencement in its natural state of imperfection and weakness, and as needing development. The monophysitic tendency was destined to aid in bringing the Church to a decision on this point also. One party of Monophysites, founded by Julian, Bishop of Halicarnassus, and thence designated Julianists, deemed it necessary, for the sake of preserving the unity of the Person of the Godman, to teach that the body of Christ, having been essentially united with, shared the indestructible life (a<f>dapaia) of, the Logos; that it possessed this life, by a physical necessity, as a gift conferred upon it by grace; and that it constituted, as it were, a higher second nature, through which the first had been abolished, even prior to the resurrection. Their opponents termed them, consequently, Aphthartodocetists (a<f>dapT09, BoKeiv); and they retorted with the name Phthartolatrists (<pdapros, \arpeia). On one point all were agreed, namely, that the humanity of Christ also possesses quickening power; and that the Logos, who is the life, is its life. But, in the first place, the teachers of the Church would not allow that the human nature underwent any alteration in consequence of the communication of Divine power; or that, in consequence thereof, it ceased to be, as truly as before, of the same substance with us. They preferred rather to define this communication as an increase of its power (according to Leo, "augmentum;" see above). In the second place, they would not grant that these higher predicates became the natural possession of the humanity of Christ. These two things were manifestly self-contradictory. If the Divine communication has merely

¹ See his work, " Dc Incarnatione Domini," editio Cratauder 1524, page 17. The passage is cited from Leporius: compare Cassian's own work, pp. 47 and 137.

the effect of perfecting the nature itself, then, what is communicated, must be held to form part of the nature, in its full and true condition; if, f urth,er what is communicated to the nature does not really belong to it, then, notwithstanding that it is communicated, it is evolved by the nature from its own substance; and thus the very removal of the human imperfections would consist as it were in a permanent extasis or transport of the humanity out of its own strict and proper essence, instead of being the perfection of the humanity.¹ And, inasmuch, as the magical view of the operations of grace had already gained a strong enough hold on the Church, the Monophysites were the more justified in demanding assent to their doctrine, that the humanity of Christ ceased from the very commencement of, and through, the Unio, to be of the same substance with ours, having been rather transfused into another being. They therefore further developed the propositions laid dowu by Eutyches and Dioscurus, and maintained, that the humanity of Christ, according to the <f>vai<; which pertained to it subsequently to the Unio, could not be said to be susceptible of human weaknesses and sufferings; and that, on the contrary, the body of Christ, equally with the Godhead, was in itself, or by its very nature, raised above even innocent physical needs and weaknesses (ttodt) aZid^krjra). It was a<pdapros, and was of the same nature as the body of Adam before the fall, which also would never have died had not Adam sinned. In asserting the supernatural character of the body of Christ, they did not intend to deny its actual reality ; they did, however, aim at giving greater prominence to the love of Christ, by tracing, not merely the sufferings themselves, but even the possibility of suffering, to a free act of love, by which Christ renounced the impassibility which previously characterized His body, and undertook both our capability of suffering, and the sufferings themselves. We have seen above that Hilary of Pictavium came near taking up the same position, although, by his doctrine of the self-abnegation of the Logos, he qualified that of the immediate and direct deification of the human nature. And had not the Julianists attributed a physical character to the process in connection with the results of the Unio, the religious interests involved, would have been completely satisfied by the proposi¹ See Note D. App. ii. P. 2.—VOL. I. I

tion,—That Christ's humanity was not, indeed, free from the weakness and capacity of suffering natural to it, but that the spiritual energy of Christ could have overcome every external cause of suffering, and even mortality itself, had His moral nature made it its task. And, in point of fact, according to the account of Timotheus,¹ some Julianists did say that Christ's body remained potentially (Swa^ei) <pdaprb<;; but that by the power of the Logos it was raised above actual <f>dopa. Not that they by any means intended to take a docetical view of the matter: they only sought to give greater prominence to the loving act by which Christ not only shut out His body from the deificatory influence of the Logos, but even gave it up to actual suffering. After what has been advanced, we can well conceive that such expressions, being glorifications of Christ, His majesty and love, would find an echo also in the Church of that period. And, in point of fact, Justinian made another effort to secure to the doctrine of the Aphthartodocetists authority in the Church, by a religious edict. But it failed to gain the approval of the Church: its teachers saw that to acknowledge such a transport of the common human $vai<; of Christ into a supernatural nature, in virtue of the direct physical action of the Unio, would involve the abolition of the humanity itself, as to all its essential determinations of quantity and quality, of tactility, visibility, and limitation, and the substitution of another, that is, in reality of a Divine essence. By consequence, the Unio, in its most perfect operation, would involve the denial of the incarnation itself. Only for single moments, and for distinctly practical purposes, could the humanity then be said to have had a real existence: usually, it would either be non-existent, or, at the utmost, would have a merely potential existence, either in the will of the Logos, or in the supernatural corporeality of Christ. One party of the Julianists went so far as to maintain, that after the incar

¹ De recipiendis hsereticis Cotelerii Monum. eccl. Grsec. T. iii. 397. This was probably also the opinion of Philoxenus, although he asserted the identity of the body of Christ with that of Adam :—" potuit non mori," he says, but not " non potuit mori." With regard to the Julianists or Gajanites, compare Leontius, de Sectis, Actio v. 3, in Galland. Bibl. xii. 640; Nicephorus 1. c. xvii. 29; A. Mai Coll. N. 1. c., and Assem. Bibl. Vatic. Catal. T. i. 3, p. 229. f.; Gieseler, 1. c. P. ii. 4-10.

nation, Christ ought not to be spoken of as a created being, even in respect of His humanity; but that, even as a man, He should be designated God and Creator, and must therefore have been a proper object of worship from the very beginning.¹ This party,—themselves called Actistetes (a/trt<rro? = uncreated), whilst they designated their opponents Ctistolatrists (ktkttos = created; \<npeia = worship),—was ready to go even to the extent of representing everything human in Christ as divine from the commencement. Yet they appear to have had as little intention of teaching pure Docetism as the Apollinarists, when they put forth the doctrine of an eternal humanity in God. It is more probable that they started with the doctrine, universally held by Monophysites, that the incarnation was accomplished by the entire negation of every substratum and vehicle of human predicates, and thus arrived at their view. Inasmuch now as the Logos employed human predicates alone as characteristics of Himself, and from the very commencement disowned all predicates which bore reference to a human development, the substratum necessary to creaturehood seemed to be wanting,—nay more, this predicate seemed no longer to admit of Christ's being included under it.² We may, however, well be permitted to say, that if the continued existence of the human as such is consistent with its losing, from the commencement of the Unio, all predicates which

¹ Timotheus de recept. hreretic, Cotelerius Monuni. Eccl. Grsec. T. iii. 898; Assem. Bibl. Orient. T. ii. The Julianists had their seat especially'in Armenia: the Gajanites were the corresponding party in Egypt. Their opponent was the Monophysite Patriarch Damiau, who himself was an adherent of Severus. In the eighth or the ninth century they appear to have utterly disappeared from Syria, and, in general, from Asia, with the exception of Armenia; as also from Egypt. A portion of them, however, pushed their way to Ethiopia and Nubia, where they had a patriarch of their own.

² All the Monophysitic propositions in which, for the sake of asserting the inward unity of the Person of Christ, human features are on the one hand partially attributed to God, and divine features on the other to man, were adopted in the Lutheran doctrine of a " communicatio idiomatum :" the Lutheran Church, however, maintained an abiding duality of substances as the basis of this " communicatio." Regarded from this point of view, the Lutheran doctrine is a combination of the Chalcedonian and Monophysitic types. The two types, however, are not so brought together as to be mutually inwardly permeant; but rather follow upon ea<h other like two different doctrinal formations.

would be incompatible with the divine being, with its incorporation with the divine substance; then the difference between the human and divine natures is not one of essence, but solely of accidents; and these accidents are abolished by the Unio.

The position, that the divine and human are not merely fundamentally, but even immediately, primitively, the same in essence, was taken up by one of the most eminent Monophysites, Stephen Barsaduili, about the year 488.¹ He is said to have taught that, as Father, Son, and Spirit are one nature, and the body of the Word is of the like substance with Himself, so must every creature be of the same substance (consubstantial) with the Godhead.

He does not, however, appear to have assumed the immediate actual divinity of all things; for he gives, of the passage, "To-day and to-morrow I work miracles, and on the third day I shall cease," the following explanation :—With us it is now the sixth day of the week (Friday), which denotes the present period of the world, and which Christ calls also the evil period. The Sabbath, Christ's day of rest after death, he appears to have explained chiliastically, as a Sabbath-period, followed by the perfectio, when God will be all in all, and everything be of the like nature and the like substance with God. The charge of abolishing baptism and the sacraments, brought against him by Xenaias, may therefore imply, not that he entirely let go the distinction between nature and grace, but perhaps that, after the manner of Origen (conf. Assem. i. 303), he assumed the restoration of all things through the medium, as of punishment for the wicked, so of the manifestation of Christ for the right

¹ Barhebraeus or Abulpharagius reports that lie laid down his views in a work, published under the name of Hierotheus, the teacher of Dionysius Areopagita. Compare Assem. Bibl. Orient. T. ii. p. 30 f. 290, 291. According to the testimony of Xenaias, Barsudaili was a learned man and writer, especially a commentator on the Holy Scriptures, and a native of Edessa. Against him, Xenaias wrote a letter of warning to Edessa. In that letter he represents him as teaching that future punishments are not eternal, but that both the ungodly and demons will be purified by fire and obtain mercy. In the end, as Paul says, God will be all in all, and all things will be transformed into the divine nature. A related phenomenon were probably the looxpiaroi, Origenistic monks in Egypt. See the Church History of Evagrius, iv. 88; Baumgarten-Crusius's "Comp. der Dogmengeschichte," p. 207.

eous. With this it would be quite compatible, that he should regard all things as potentially of the like substance 'with the divine. Well-accredited men, says Xenaias, have reported to me, that they found in his cell the inscription, "All nature is consubstantial with God;" but that, from alarm at the excitement it caused, he had afterwards blotted out the inscription. It may not perhaps be just to attribute to him a coarse Pantheism, but still he must have developed in a more logical way the germs of Pantheism, which, as we have previously shown, slumbered in Monophysitism; and there is no reasonable ground for doubting, that he taught not merely that the divine and human natures were brought to sameness of essence in Christ, but that humanity in general is essentially divine. He does not appear, like Origen, to have ever acknowledged the existence of freedom; what he conceded, was rather a kind of fate.¹

The Monophysites hitherto brought under consideration, may be regarded as the continuation of Eutychianism; and they gradually more and more lost sight of the distinction between the human and the divine. There now remains to be considered the second and more important principal class. The most eminent Monophysites, Xenaias or Philoxenus, and Severus, endeavoured to show that, in the unity, a distinction was preserved between the divine and human.² Xenaias, it is true, still firmly maintained that one of the Persons of the Trinity was crucified :³ he also recognised solely voluntary, not natural, sufferings of Christ.⁴ By the latter expression, however, he might mean, even though he did not employ it solely with respect to the Godhead, that there was no inherent necessity for the suf

¹ Assem. ii. 32.

* With regard to Xenaias, compare Assem. ii. pp. 10—46 ; with regard to Severus, Leontii Monachi Hierosol. Apolog. Cone. Chalcedonens. (about 610); Galland. Tom. xii. 719—750 ; Leontii Byzantini solutiones argumentationum Severi, ibid. 708-715; Ang. Mai, Tom. vii. pp. 8,9,71,73,123,136 ff., 151, 277-281, 283 f., 285-290, and 307. Both flourished during the first quarter of the sixth century, had adopted Zeno's Heuoticon, and lived in the enjoyment of episcopal dignity till the persecution of the Monophysites under Justinian, about the year 522. Both together may be designated the founders of that form of Monophysitism which the Jacobites still profess to the present day, and which rose to supremacy in Egypt, probably subsequently to Damian. The Copts hold the same views at the present time.

* Assem. 1. c. p. 28. ⁴ Assem. p. 4.

fering of the humanity of Christ, apart from the voluntary determination of the Son of God to subject Himself thereto. His doctrine he laid down in eight propositions ;* and he repudiated the Eutychians, whom he designates Phantasiasts. The very personality of the Son,—that is, God the Word,—he remarks, descended from heaven, and dwelt personally in the Virgin: He became a man, of the Virgin, of her flesh and of her bone, personally without conversion: He became a visible, tangible, compound man; and yet as God, He continued to possess that spirituality, subtilty, and simplicity, which became Him.² He who is God, became man; hence the same who is God was born of the Virgin, and from her derived His true body. He is not another and another (ein Anderer und ein Anderer): the child that was born was no other than the exalted highest God, even the Word. Nor did that one Person of God which became man grow into a duality, but in all words, deeds, miracles, and sufferings, however diverse they were, there was only one and the same God the Word, who became man without change; and as the work of suffering and death is ascribed to Christ, or to the Son, so is it unblameable to say that God or the Word was crucified or died. For, that one only-begotten One who appeared in the world, and was tried in all that is human, with the exception of sin, is Christ, the Son by nature. But He who is Son by nature, must also be God by nature: if, then, the Son suffered, who is not a Son by favour, but by nature, then God suffered and died, and not a man who was separated from, or obedient to, Him, or in whom He dwelt, as one may dwell in another. In asserting the unity of the nature, he did not mean to teach an absorption, either of the deity or of the humanity, by the conversion of the one into the other; nor, further, did he hold that a double transformation or mixture took place, resulting in the evolution of a third, and, as it were, chemical product: he intended to teach the existence of one nature which was constituted out of two, which was not simple, but twofold. The technical term for the unity, in his view of it, would be, fiia

¹ In a book, "de Trinitate et Incarnatione," Assem. 25 ff. Compare especially p. 29.

^s Xenaias, like many of the Monophysites, set his face against imageworship, yea, even against representations of incorporeal beings. God must be worshipped in spirit and in truth. Assem. ii. p. 21.

<f>vai s avvOeroi; or fila diiATi? Bittt). The image in greatest favour both with Xenaias and his followers, was that of the body and soul; only that these two cannot have been regarded by them as two distinct and particular parts or substances. In order to make this image harmless, the teachers of the Church made the remark,—Man also consists of two substances, and it is simply a misuse of terms to speak of one human nature.¹

Although Xenaias enjoyed so great a reputation for orthodoxy among the Monophysites, that Severus, in his controversy with Julian, begged him for his judgment in the matter, still Severus, who became Patriarch of Antioch in the year 511, was, strictly speaking, the scientific leader of the most compact portion of the party, and was treated as such in later times: against him also were mainly directed the more important polemical writings of the Church. According to the accounts we have of him, great difficulty was experienced in gathering up, and forming a connected view of, his opinions. This may, perhaps, have been partly attributable to the relation in which he stood to the Henoticon of the Emperor Zeno, of which he approved, and on the ground of which he and his party regarded themselves as still forming part of the Church. A further reason of the difficulty—one, too, connected with the last mentioned—was the relation in which he stood to Cyrill of Alexandria, with whom he, in all principal points, wished to be and actually was one, and whose pliancy in regard to the Oriental symbolum had also to be taken into consideration.² Matters being in this state, we must pay special attention to the precise words em

¹ So taught the Roman Bishop Gelasius I., in his work, de duabus naturis in Christo adv. Eutych. et Nest. Bibl. Man. PP. Lugd. T. viii. 699 ff., 702. This was connected with, or even gave rise to, the doctrine taught in the Church of Spain, that Christ was one person compounded of three 6ubstances (or natures): see below. Gelasius, bke Leo, made use, in this connection, of the Holy Eucharist. As the elements remain in " sua; proprietate naturae," although they are transfused by the Holy Spirit into the divine substance, So also the human nature of Christ.

^! Timotheus (not, as Leontius of Jerusalem thinks, Ailuros; compare Gieseler l. c. i. 7) says, according to Galland. T. xii., and A. Mai l. c. 138, that, like Noah's sons, Severus tried to cover the nakedness of his father Cyrill, and exposed himself in consequence to the charge of self-inconsistency. But that his self-contradictions were not merely apparent, is evident from the constant reassertion of the fact by those who conducted the Church's polemic against him.

ployed by him; for, in accordance with the conciliatory position he aimed at occupying, he followed the traditional formulas of the Church as closely as possible, although at the same time indicating the sense in which he accepted them.

Cyrill, says he, was right in teaching, "of two natures:" but out of his expression the Council of Chalcedon made, "in two natures;" assuming also the continuous existence of an evepyeia of the humanity, even subsequently to the incarnation. Leo also went so far as to say that Christ performed human acts in His human nature, and divine acts in his divine nature: whereas, on the contrary, after the Unio, everything must have been the act of the God-man. But, as a purely human ivepyeia presupposes a purely human substratum, or a purely human monas, side by side with the divine—that is, a second focus, as the active cause of the pure human activity, —the unity of the life is destroyed.¹ If such a duality of substrata or subjects (tx£earSna) be objected to, we must not assume a duality of activities. Again, if we aim to preserve the unity of the activities, we must not admit a duality of natures in the sense of special and independent foci (fiovaBes IBwavaTdroi). He thus argues from the fact of the redemptive activity having been at once divine and human (divine-human), that there can have been but one nature.

On the other hand, however, he is ready to speak of ovaiai, </>wo"6t9, IBuofiara, within the Person of Christ. He not only repudiates the opinions of Eutyches, but, equally with Nestorius, affirms that the attributes of the human aspect continued to exist even after the Unio, and that, in distinction from the attributes of the divine aspect. He spoke most decidedly against a Julianistic Monophysite, the grammarian Sergius; condemning not only the idea of the annihilation of the one nature by the other, but also the mixture or blending of both by means of a compromise.² The two different natures, he urged, continueil rather to enjoy an uncurtailed and unaltered existence in Christ—remaining, as Leontius of Jerusalem said, the same both in quantity and quality.¹ And yet he speaks in the most decided terms against the doctrine of a permanent duality of natures, of the divine and human, and anathematizes the Synod of Chalcedon. How are we to reconcile these various statements? Did he perhaps merely mean, as we found in the case of Cyrill, that we can discriminate the two natures in thought even after the Unio, but that there was nothing in reality answering to the discrimination, although the unity, as it actually existed, was constituted out of two veritable and different factors? Or, in consideration of the fact of the person having been constituted out of two natures, did he sometimes admit of a plurality of ovalai, in the sense in which causes can be said, in some way, to continue their existence in the effects? He undoubtedly did employ these distinctions (the one of them may be found in A. Mai vii. 136", 278*; the other, 280⁴), but they are not sufficient, because he was really and seriously anxious, especially in his controversy with the J ulianists, to maintain the permanent existence of a plurality of natures even in Christ; and yet, on the other hand, he was quite as persevering in his opposition to the duality of natures in the Person of Christ. The only explanation that we can find of this apparent incongruity is the following,—that he used the word nature in the sense which it bears, when we speak of the nature or essence of righteousness, or of any other quality. In this sense, he might, of course, admit of a plurality of natures in Christ, even after the Unio—of natures which all unite in one focus, and which, in the higher signification of the term nature, constitute fiia <f>vaK or vir6<rraais; but against the duality of natures he unremittingly protested, because in that connection the word

¹ A. Mai vii. 71. H avvoio; xxi Aiun—iuo Qieei; tis\ "X.pnzoii xa\ Swo rouTuo Inpysia; (tpwixal;, xxi inri 6tXtifixra; compare the following fragment) opioaf&tM y.STK Ttiu citppxaron Sdovin, bixxt'u; xvxfcfiari^fofcw&t, u; rot ttx XpioTon tl; iuo icpoouirx xxTxpupisxrrt;, ov yap impyti won $ivi; ov% vQtoTuex.

² Galland. xii. 736. Epist. ad Serg. II.: £px yip tpxh f*fn (both, in the view of Sergius) ii ttuci; ix cvyx^v"^fu!^ *«' iriirxvrxi tj einiiat; xai i!; pt.lxn swiai fitTixupnott; ha, if fc«yf/f, i xyix rpix; ((vXxxiri rpia;, xxi fiii Ttpntot -xpiquson irxpaii%nrrxi.

¹ Severus contra Joannem Grammaticum, lib. II. cap. i., in Galland. Bibl. xii. 735. Kai ra» e£ u» tj i»oais, fie»o»roii ttfitionuv xccl a»«?iAo«»raiv h ovtiiati 8f itpurrincn x«l oix i» fioiiccoti i ili<xrv<rrirois, ib. 786. In the Ep. iii. ad Sergium, he says, "I have proved to the Julianists, by many testimonies, that it is not allowable to call the Immanuel, fnis oinias n *«i vtuirirros xxl r»of lliufiarof. No reasonable man will say that the nature of the Logos and the besouled rational humanity hypostatically united with Him, became fiiis ovai'as xxi woienrrof." The word Qiais he employs less willingly within the Unio; though, in the sense of Iwi'«, he does not altogether object to it.