Christ be God, or the divine Logos, He must have an infinite intelligence and an almighty will. If a perfect man. He must have a finite intelligence and a human will. How then can He be one person ? This is indeed incomprehensible ; but it involves no con- tradiction. Apollinaris admitted that the "/'^x'; and ■rrvf.vfx.a in ordi- nary men, although two distinct principles, are united in one life and consciousness. The ^vxrj has its own life and intelligence, and so has the Trvtu/xa, and yet the two are one. But a second and strong inducement to adopting the Apollinarian theory, was the doctrine then held, by many, at least, of the Platonizing fathers, that reason in man is part of the divine Logos or universal reason. So that the difference between man and God, so far as man's intel- ligence is concerned, is merely quantitive. If this be so, it is in- deed diflScult to conceive how there should be in Christ both a part of the Logos and the entire Logos. The part would be necessarily superseded by the whole, or comprehended in it. But notwith- standing the force of this ad hominem argument as directed against some of his opponents, the conviction of the Church was so strong that Christ was a perfect man, possessing within Himself all the ele- ments of our nature, that the Apollinarian doctrine was condemned in the general council held in Constantinople, a. d. 381, and soon disappeared.
Nestorianism.
The integrity of the two natures in Christ having been thus as- serted and declared to be the faith of the Church, the next ques- tion which arose concerned the relations of the two natures, the one to the other, in the one person of Christ. Nestorianism is the designation adopted in church history, for the doctrine which either affirms, or implies a twofold personality in our Lord. The divine Logos was represented as dwelling in the man Christ Jesus, so that the union between the two natures was somewhat analogous to the indwelling of the Spirit. The true divinity of Christ was thus endangered. He was distinguished from other men in whom God dwelt, only by the plenitude of the divine presence, and the absolute control of the divine over the human. This was not the •tvowed or real doctrine of Nestorius, but it was the doctrine charged upon him, and was the conclusion to which his principles were supposed to lead. Nestorius was a man of great excellence and eminence ; first a presbyter in Antioch, and afterwards Patriarch of Constantinople. The controversy on this subject arose from his defending one of his presbyters who denied that the Virgin Mary could properly be called the Mother of God. As VOL. II. 26
402 PART m. Ch. m. — the person of CHRIST.
this designation of the blessed Virgin had ah-eady received the sanction of the Church, and was familiar and dear to the people, Nestorius's objection to its use excited general and violent opposi- tion. He was on this account alone accused of heresy. As, how- ever, there is a sense in which Mary was th-e Mother of God, and a sense in which such a designation is blasphemous, everything depends on the real meaning attached to the terms. What Nesto- rius meant, according to his own statement, was simply that God, the divine nature, could neither be born nor die. In liis third let- ter to Coelestin, Bishop of Rome, he said, " Ego autem ad banc quidem vocem, qu^e est ^eoro/cos, nisi secundum Apollinaris et Arii furorem ad confusionem naturarum proferatur, volentibus dicej'e non resisto ; nee tamen ambigo quia haec vox ^eoroVos illi voci cedat, (juse est xP'^cxTOTOKos, tanquam prolatae ab Angelis et evangelistis." What he asserted was, " Non peperit creatura creatorem, sed
])eperit hominem deitatis instrumentum Spiritus sanctus
. . . Deo Verbo templum fabricatus est, quod habitaret, ex vir- gine." Nevertheless, he obviously carried the distinction of na- tures too far, for neither he nor his followers could bring tliem- selves to use the Scriptural language, " The Church of God which he purchased with his blood." The Syriac version used by the Nestorians, reads Xpio-ro's instead of 0€os in Acts xx. 28. The principal opponent of Nestorius was Cyril of Alexandria, who secured his condemnation by violent means in the Synod of Ephe- sus in A. D. 431. This irregular decision was resisted by the Greek and Syrian bishops, so that the controversy, for a time at least, was a conflict between these two sections of the Church. Ultimately Nestorius was deposed and banished, and died a. d. 440. His followers removed eastward to Persia, and organized themselves into a separate communion, which continues until this day.
JSutt/ehianism.
As Nestorius so divided the two natures in Christ as almost to necessitate the assumption of two persons, his opponents were led to the opposite extreme. Instead of two, they insisted that there was but one nature in Christ. Cyril himself had taught what clearly implied this idea. According to Cyril there is but one nature in Christ because by the incarnation, or hypostatical union, the human was changed into the divine.^ With the extreme Alex- andrian theologians, the humanity of Christ was ignored. It was the Logos who was born, the Logos who suffered and died. All 1 See Dorner, Hagenbach, and Miinscher, on this controversy.