§ 135. THE ALEXANDRIAN AND ANTIOCHIAN SCHOOLS. 707
cliian or SyriaTi school, in which the sober intellect and reflec* tion prevailed, inclined to the opposite extreme of an abstract separation of the two natures.* In both cases the mystery oi the incarnation, the veritable and permanent union of the divine and human in the one person of Christ, which is essential to the idea of a Redeemer and Mediator, is more or less weakened or altered. In the former case the incarnation becomes a transmutation or mixture {avyKpaai<;) of the divine and human ; in the latter, a mere indwelling (ivo[K7](TL<;) of the Logos in the man, or a moral union {a-vvd^eio) of the two natures, or rather of the two persons.
It was now the problem of the church, in opposition to both these extremes, to assert the personal unity and the distinction of the two natures in Christ with equal solicitude and precision. This she did through the Christological controversies which agitated the Greek church for more than two hundred years with extraordinary violence. The Roman church,
place it must be considered that this tract (which is not to be confounded with his large work De incarnatione Verbi Dei, Trtpi t^s ivavbpwTviimQis rod \6yov, in tha first torn. P. i. of the Bened. ed. pp. 47-97), is by many scholars (Montfaucon, Mohler, Hefele) denied to Athanasius, though on insufficient grounds ; and further, that at that time (puats, ovala, and InroaTa^is were often interchanged, and did not become sharply distinguished till towards the end of the Nicene age. " In the indefiniteness of the notions ol cpvats and vrroa-raats," says Neander (Dogmengeschichte, i. p. 340), " the Alexandrians were the more easily moved, for the sake of the one uTroVratris, to concede also only one (pvcrt? in Christ, and set the eVoxris cpvfftKri against those /who talked of two natures." Comp. Petavius, De incarn. Verbi, lib. ii. c. 3 (torn. iv. p. 120, de vocabulis (pvaeaa et viroaraffeais); also the observations of Dorner, 1. c. i. p. 1072, and of Eefele, Conciliengesch. ii. p. 128 f. The two Gregories speak, indeed, of 5vo (pvcreii in Christ, yet at the same time of a avyKpaais and avdicpacriSf i. e., mingling of the two.
' Theodore, bishop of Mopsuestia in Cilicia, the head of the Antiochian school, compares the union of the divine and human in Christ with the marriage union of man and woman, and says that one cannot conceive a complete nature without a com plete person (uTrtJo-Tams). Comp. Neander, 1. c. i. p. 343; Dorner, ii. p. 39 ff. , Fritzsche: De Theodori Mopsvest. vita et scriptis, Halse, 1837, and an article by W. Moller in Herzog's Encycl. vol. xv. p. 715 ff. Of the works of Theodore of Mopsuestia we have only fragments, chiefly in the acts of the fifth ecumenical council (in Mansi, Cone. tom. ix. fol. 203 sqq.), and a commentary on the twelve Prophets, which cardinal Angelo Mai discovered, and edited in 1854 at Rome io bis Nova Bibliotheca SS. Patrum, tom. vii. Pars i. pp. 1-408, together with soma fragments of commentaries on New Testament books, edited by Fritzsche, jun.» Turici, 1847; and oy Pitra in Spicilog. Solesm. tom. i. Par. 1852.
708 THIBD PEKIOD. A.D. 311-590.
tlioiigli in general mnch more calm, took an equally deep interest in tliis work bj some of its more eminent leaders, and twice decided tlie victory of orthodoxy, at the fourth general council and at tlie sixth, by the powerful influence of the bishop of Rome.
We must distinguish in this long drama five acts:
1. The Apollinakian controversy, which comes in the close of the Nicene age, and is concerned with the ftill humanity of Christ, that is, the question whether Christ, with his human body and human soul (anima animans), assumed also a human spirit {vov^, irvev^a, anima rationalis).
2. The Nestorian controversy, down to the rejection of the doctrine of the douUe personality of Christ by the third ecumenical council of Ephesus, a. d. 431.
3. The EuTYCHiAN controversy, to the condemnation of the doctrine of one nature, or more exactly of the absoi'ption of the human in the divine nature of Christ ; to the fourth ecumenical council at Chalcedon, a. d. 451.
4. The MoNOPHTsrrK dispute ; the partial reaction towards the Eutychian theory ; down to the fifth general council at Constantinople, A. d. 553.
5. The MoNOTHELrrE controversy, a. d. 633-680, which terminated with the rejection of the doctrine of one will in Christ by the sixth general council at Constantinople in 680, and lies this side of our period.