2 118. DOCTEINE OF ADOPTIONISM. 517
Felix himself appeared, 799, at a Synod in Aix-la-Chapelle, and after a debate of six days with Alcuin, he recanted his Adoptionism a seeond time. He confessed to be convinced by some passages, not of the Scriptures, but of the fathers (espe cially Cyril of Alexandria, Leo I., and Gregory I.), which he had not known before, condemned Nestorius, and exhorted his clergy and people to follow the true faith.1 He spent the rest of his life under the supervision of the Archbishop of Lyons, and died in 818. He left, however, a paper in which the doc trine of Adoptionism is clearly stated in the form of question and answer ; and Agobard, the successor of Leidrad, felt it his duty to refute it.
Elipandus, under the protection of the government of the Moors, continued openly true to his heretical conviction. But Adoptionism lost its vitality with its champions, and passed away during the ninth century. Slight traces of it are found occasionally during the middle ages. Duns Scotus (1300) and Durandus a S. Porciano (1320) admit the term Films adoptivus in a qualified sense.2 The defeat of Adoptionism was a check upon the dyophysitic and dyotheletic feature in the Chalcedon Christology, and put off indefinitely the development of the human side in Christ's Person. In more recent times the Jesuit Vasquez, and the Lutheran divines G. Calixtus and Walch, have defended the Adoptionists as essentially orthodox.
§ 118. Doctrine of Adoptiomsm.
The doctrine of Adoptionism is closely allied in spirit to the Nestorian Christology; but it concerns not so much the consti tution of Christ's person, as simply the relation of his humanity to the Fatherhood of God. The Adoptionists were no doubt sincere in admitting at the outset the unity of Christ's person, the communication of properties between the two natures, and
1 Hard. IV. 929-934; Alcuin, Epp. 92, 176; and the Confessio Fidei Felicis in Mansi, XIII. 1035 sq.
2 See Walch, Hist. Adopt., p. 253; Gieseler, Church History, 4th Germ, ed., vol. II., part I., p. 117, note 13 (E. tr. II. 78).
518 FOUETH PERIOD. A. I). 590-1049.
the term Theotokos (though in a qualified sense) as applied to the Virgin Mary. Yet their view implies an abstract separation of the eternal Son of God and the man Jesus of Nazareth, and results in the assertion of two distinct Sons of God. It empha sized the dyophysitism and dyotheletism of the orthodox Christology, and ran them out into a personal dualism, inasmuch as sonship is an attribute of personality, not of nature. The Adoptionists spoke of an adoptafus homo instead of an adoptata natura humana, and called the adopted manhood an adopted Son. They appealed to Ambrose, Hilary, Jerome, Augustin, and Isidore of Seville, and the Mozarabic Liturgy, which was used in Spain.1 Sometimes the term adoptio is indeed applied to the Incarnation by earlier writers, and in the Spanish liturgy, but rather in the sense of assumptio or dvdty</>t£j i. e. the eleva tion of the human nature, through Christ, to union with the Godhead.2 They might, with better reason, have quoted Theo dore of Mopsuestia as their predecessor; for his doctrine of the ofoc #£roc is pretty much the same as their Filius Dei adoptivus?
The fundamental point in Adoptionism is the distinction of a double Sonship in Christ — one by nature and one by grace, one by generation and one by adoption, one by essence and one by title, one which is metaphysical and another which is brought about by an act of the divine will and choice. The idea of sonship is made to depend on the nature, not on the person ; and
1 A strong passage was quoted in the letter of the Spanish bishops to Char lemagne from Isidore of Seville, who says (Etymolog., lib. II., c. 2; see Migne's ed. of Alcuin II. 1324) : " Unigenitus vocatur secundum Divinitatis excellentiam, quia sine fratribus : PRIMOGENITUS xecundum susceptionem hominis, in qua per adoptionem gratice fratres habere dignatus est, de quibus esset primogenitus." From the Mozarabic liturgy they quoted seven passages. See Hefele III. 650 sqq.
2 In a passage of Hilary (De Trinit. II. 29), there is a dispute between two readings — "carnis humilitas ADOPTATUR," and "adoratur" (Alcuin) — although the former alone is consistent with the context, and ''adoptaiur'' is used in a more general sense for assnmitur (so Agobard). See Walch, Hist. Adopt. , p. 22 sqq , and Gieseler, II. 76, note 2.
3 See Neander, Kirchengeschichte, III. p. 318 sqq. ; E. ed. III. 159 sqq.