among themselves, and were divided into different classes. Some liad mino-led with their Jewish opinions more or less of the ele- ments of the Gnostic philosophy. This was the more natural, as many of the teachers of Gnosticism were Jews. The fathers, therefore, speak both of Jewish, and of Gnostic Ebionites. So far as their views of Christ's person were modified by Gnosticism, thev ceased to be distinctly the views of the Ebionites as a body.
Another class of nominal Jewish Christians is known as Naza- renes. They differed but little from the Jewish Ebionites. Both insisted on the continued obligation of the Mosaic law, and both regarded Clirist as a mere man. But the Nazarenes acknowledged his miraculous conception, and thus elevated Him above all ether men, and regarded Him as the Son of God in a peculiar sense. The acknowledgment of the divinity of Christ, and the ability and willingness to unite in worship of which He was the object, was from the beginning the one indispensable condition of Christian fellowship. These Jewish sects, therefore, who denied his divinity, existed outside of the Church, and were not recognized as Chris- tians.
The Grnostics.
As the Ebionites denied the divinity, so the Gnostics in different ways denied his humanity. They were led to this denial by their views of the origin of evil. God is the source only of good. As evil exists it must have its origin not only outside of Him, but inde- pendently of Him. He is, however, the source of all spiritual existences. By emanation from his substance spiritual beings are produced ; from them other emanations proceed, and from those still others in ever increasing deterioration according to their dis- tance from the primal fountain. Evil arises from matter. The world was created, not by God, but by an inferior spirit, the Demi- ourgos, whom some sects of the Gnostics regarded as the God of the Jews. Man consists of a spirit derived from God combined with a material body and an animal soul. By this union of the spiritual with the material, the spirit is defiled and enslaved. Its redemption consists in its emancipation from the body, so as to enable it to reenter the sphere of pure spirits, or to be lost in God. To effect this redemption, Christ, one of the highest emanations from God (or JEons), came into the world. It was necessary that He should appear " in fashion as a man," but it was impossible He should become a man, without subjecting Himself to the pollu- tion and bondage from which He came to deliver men. To meet this difficulty various theories were adopted. Some held that Christ
400 PART m. Ch. m. — the person of CHRIST.
liad no real body or human soul. His earthly manifestation in human form was a phantasm, a mere appearance without substance or reality. Hence they were called Docetae, from the Greek verb SoKe'to, which means to appear, to seem to be. According to this class of the Gnostics, Christ's whole earthly life was an illusion. He was not born, nor did he suffer or die. Others admitted that he had a real body, but denied that it was material. They taught that it was formed of some ethereal or celestial substance, and brought by Christ into the world. Although born of the virgin Mary, it was not of her substance, but only througli her as the mould in which this ethereal substance was cast. Hence in the ancient creeds it is said that Christ was born, not per, but ex Maria virgine, which is explained to mean ex substantia matris suce. It was also in opposition to this Gnostic heresy that the ancient creeds emphasized the declaration that Christ, as to his human nature, is consubstantial with us. Others, as the Corinthians, held that Jesus and Christ were distinct. Jesus was an ordinary man, the son of Joseph and Mary. Christ was a spirit or power which descended on Jesus at his baptism, and became his guide and guardian, and enabled Him to work miracles. At the time of his passion, the Christ departed, returning into heaven, leaving the man Jesus to suffer alone. As nothing is more distinctly revealed in Scripture, and nothing is more essential to Christ's being the Saviour of men, than that he should be truly a man, all these Gnostic theories were rejected as heretical.
The Apollinarian Doctrine.
As the Gnostic doctrine which denied entirely the human nature of Christ was rejected, the next attempt was directed against the in- tegrity of that nature. Many of the early fathers, especially of the Alexandrian school, had presented views of this element of Christ's person, which removed Him more or less from the class of ordi- nary men. They nevertheless maintained that He was truly a man. The Apollinarians, so called from Apollinaris, a distinguished bishop of Laodicea, adopting the Platonic distinction between the crco/Aa, \l/vxrj and TTi'cv/xa, as three distinct subjects or principles in the constitution of man, admitted that Christ had a true body (oraj/xa) and animal soul ("/"^X^/)? but not a rational spirit, or mind (Tr^tD/xa or voGs). In Him the eternal Son, or Logos, supplied the place of the human intelligence. The Apollinarians were led to the adop- tion of this theory partly from the difficulty of conceiving how two complete natures can be united in one life and consciousness. If