UNITED STATES (1908)
Methodist Episcopal Church............. 14,057 African Methodist Episcopal............. 15,885 Methodist Episcopal South .............. 4,800 Colored Methodist Episcopal............. 2,786 African Methodist Episcopal Zion ........ 1,520 Free: Methodistinriereiace race srauete stererayels 1,299 MethodistsProtestanticc.-c)cisi ens eles 1,135 African Union Methodist Protestant...... 750 Other Methodist Churches............... 665
42,847
H. Jmrrs.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: A. P. Stanley, Christian Institutions, London, 1881; C. Ullmann, Reformers before the Reformation, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1874-77; W. G. Townsend, H. B. Workman, and G. Eayrs, New History of Method-
Lindberg. Monophysitism
THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
a
ism, London, 1909; H. B. Kendall, History of the Primitive Methodist Church, London, 1905; J. Telford, Lay Preaching in the Christian Church, London, 1896; S. Horne, Popular History of the Free Churches, London, 1903; A. L. Garvie, Guide to Preaching, London, 1906; H. Jeffs, Practical Lay Preaching, London, 1907; idem, Modern Minor Prophets, London, 1909.
LINDBERG, CONRAD EMIL: Lutheran; b. at Jénképing (80 m. e. of Gothenburg), Sweden, June 9, 1852. He was educated at the gymnasium of his native city; Augustana College, Rock Island, Ill.; Augustana Theological Seminary (1872); and Philadelphia Lutheran Theological Seminary (1876). He was pastor successively of Zion Church, Philadelphia (1876-79), and Gustavus Adolphus Lutheran Church, New York (1879-90), being also president of the New York Conference of the Augustana Synod from 1879 to 1889. Since 1890 he has been professor of systematic theology, liturgics, and church polity
at Augustana Theological Seminary, Rock Island, and has also been vice-president of the Augustana Synod (1899-1907), and vice-president of Augustana College (1901-10), besides being a member of his synodical mission board since 1899 and a member of the committees.on the Swedish and English catechism (1894-1902) and liturgy (1894-99). Theologically he belongs to the conservative wing, and he has written, besides many minor contributions, as to, the Augustana Theological Quarterly (of which he was chief editor in 1900-02), the following treatises in Swedish: ‘“ Exegesis on the First Three Chapters of the Book of Revelation ”’ (Chicago, 1883), “On Baptism” (New York, 1890), “‘ Syllabus in Church Polity ”’ (Rock Island, 1897), and “ Dogmatics and History of Dogmas ” (1898). In 1901 he was decorated by the king of Sweden with the Royal Order of the North Star.
MONOPHYSITISM AND THE ORIENTAL SEPARATED CHURCHES.
I. The Monophysite Controversies.
Early Views on the Two Natures of Christ (§ 1).
Controversies between Judaizing and Platonizing Schools (§ 2).
Struggle between Antiochene and Alexandrine Theology (§ 3).
Controversies of the Fourth Cen-
II.
The Eutychian Controversy (§ 8).
Adoption of the Creed of Chalcedon (§ 9).
The Separated Syrian Churches.
Creed of Chalcedon Rejected by the Syrians (§ 1).
Reasons for this Rejection (§ 2).
Fruitless Attempts at Reconcilia-
tury (§ 4). tion (§ 3). Conflict between Nestorius and Syrian Christology at this Period Cyril of Alexandria (§ 5). (§ 4).
Condemnation of Nestorius (§ 6). Unavailing Compromise between
Christology of Philoxenus (§ 5). Modern Syrian Confession of Faith
III. The Separated Armenian Churches.
Reasons for Non-Representation at Ecumenical Councils (§ 1). Hesitation to Accept the Creed of Chalcedon (§ 2).
Armenian Doubts on Leo’s Letter to Flavian (§ 3).
Armenian Confession of (§ 4).
Armenian Teaching on the Two Natures (§ 5).
Armenian Rejection of Eutychianism (§ 6).
Faith
Antioch and Alexandria (§ 7). (§ 6).
I. The Monophysite Controversies: The incarnation of Christ has given to the historic development of human life an irresistibly transforming impulse, and to human thought an even more irresistibly transforming intuition of the relation of God to man and of man to God. Divinity descends to humanity, that humanity may ascend to divinity. From the beginning of that earthly ministry to man, the first followers saw in the person of Christ the Messianic ideal of humanity (cf. the synoptic gospels), a Godlike man. He was so real to their expectant Jewish minds that his perfect humanity
seemingly obscured his hidden divinity,
1. Early and it was only later, after the resur-
Views on rection and the ascension, when they
the Two saw no longer the once visible presence
Natures of of the Messiah of Israel, that they be- Christ. gan to perceive the reality of his invisible yet truly incarnated divinity
(cf. the Johannine gospel), a manlike God, “ the Word made flesh.” Henceforth the question came continually to the minds of men, was this a man become God, or a God become man, since both conceptions of the relation of divinity and humanity have persisted from the primitive period of human history. The answer of the Evangelists and the Apostles is that Christ the Messiah was truly God and truly man. The Christian Church of that apostolic and subapostolic age was a preaching, proselyting, and expanding missionary ecclesia. Exact theological definition and dogmatic declaration were alike alien to its primitive principles and antagonistic to that first freedom in the faith. But the speculative tendencies of those transitional times
soon showed that two opposite opinions concerning the person of the Messiah Christ were already active. The one was that of the Jewish Ebionites (q.v.), who, tenacious of the inherited tradition of those first followers, permitted the historic presence of his visible humanity to obscure or occlude his invisible divinity. This erroneous overemphasis of the humanity of the Messiah, which was evoked by a defective perception of his dual nature as true God and true man, was not as evident during the apostolic age as it afterward became, when it persisted in more or less definite denials of his true divinity. The other opinion was that of the Jewish and Gentile Gnostics (see GNostTiIcIsM), who, seeking to combine the Christian revelation with various Oriental and Greek systems of speculative cosmology, and equally tenacious of acquired dualistic tendencies, permitted their differing theories of the divine Logos to obscure or occlude his visible humanity; and this equally erroneous exaltation of the Logos Christ above the material world in which he had been incarnated led logically to that overemphasis of his invisible divinity, which was likewise evoked by a defective perception of his dual nature as true man and true God, which had been more or less evident from the first in the doubt, orin the docetic denial, of his true humanity (see DocETIsmM).
The insidious, persistent influences of these two speculative schools of opposite opinions, neither perceiving the dual aspect of the traditional apostolic teaching that in Christ the Messiah and the incarnate Logos both divinity and humanity must be united in the one person of the Redeemer of man, was to become more and more evident in the Chris-