a set of sanctioned phrases, and a longer list of phrases which -are proscribed as heretical. The long and dubious conflicts of opinion concern Church history but left few traces on doctrine; Athanasius never flinched through all the reaction against Nicaca, and his faith ultimately conquered the Catholic Church. There is only this to notice, that it conquered under the great Cappadocians The Cappadocians. (Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa), who represented a somewhat different type of teaching.[1] The Trinity in Unity stood firm; but, instead of recognizing God as one yet in some sense three, men now began to recognize three Divine beings, somewhat definitely distinguished in rank each from each and yet in some sense one. Athanasius’s piety is thus brought into association with the details of Logos speculation. The new type passed on into the West through Augustine, and the so-called Athanasian creed, which states an Augustine’s Trinitarianism. Augustinian version of Greek dogma. There is indeed one immense change. Subordinationism is blotted out, more even than by Athanasius. On these lines modern popular orthodoxy maintains the doctrine of the Trinity. It seeks to prove its case by asserting first the divinity of Christ, and secondly the personality of the Holy Spirit. The modern idea of personality, though with doubtful fairness, helps the change.
The first great supplement of the doctrine of the Logos or Son was the more explicit doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Macedonius, who defended the semi-Arian or Homoiousian position that the Spirit was merely a Divine influence—Origen had held the Spirit to be a creature—was branded as a heretic (Synod of Alexandria, 362; Council Doctrine of the Spirit. of Constantinople, 381); a strong support to Cappadocian or modern Trinitarianism. Then, in the light of the affirmation of Christ's full divinity, the problems of His person necessarily received further attention. Did the Divine Logos take the place of the higher rational soul in the humanity of Jesus? So Apollinaris or Apollinarius of Laodicea taught, but the Council of Constantinople (381) marked the position as heretical. Did the two natures, human and divine, remain so separated in Jesus as to jeopardize the unity of His person ? This was the view which Cyril of Alexandria ascribed to Nestorius, who hesitated to call Mary 0«ot6kos, and represented the tradition of the Antiochene school. Such views were marked as heretical by the Council of Ephesus (431), the decision resulting in a profound and lasting schism. Did the two natures coalesce in Jesus so as to constitute a single nature? This is the Monophysite or Eutychian view, developed out of the Alexandrian tradition (“Eutychianism is simply Cyrillianism run mad,” A. B. Bruce). The Council of Chalcedon (451) rejected the Alexandrian extreme in its turn, guided by Leo of Rome’s celebrated letter, and thus put the emphasis on the duality rather than the unity in Christ's person. Another grave and lasting schism was the result. Two great doctrinal traditions had thus been anathematized ; the narrow line of orthodoxy sought still to keep the middle track. Was there at Monotheletes. least unity of will in Jesus? No, said orthodoxy; He had two independent faculties of will, divine and human. The Maronites of Syria, reconciled to the see of Rome in 1182, probably represent the Monothelete schism. John of Enhypostasy. Damascus’s theory of Enhypostasy (Christ's manhood not impersonal, but made personal only through union with His Godhead) is held by some to be the coping-stone of this great dogmatic development.
In the Trinity the problem is to combine independence and unity; in Christology, to combine duality of nature[2] with the unity of the person. Verbally this is done; is it done substantially? The question, Who is Jesus Christ? has been pushed to the very end, and authoritatively answered in the definitions of Church orthodoxy. With these the Orthodox Greek Churches—and with their divergent decisions the various non-Orthodox Eastern Churches, Coptic, Armenian, &c.—desire to rest satisfied; theology has finished its work, unless in so far as it is to be codified. It is never true while men live that thought is at a standstill; but, as nearly as it may be true, Eastern theology has made it so. In the West the decisions of the great councils have been accepted as a datum. They enter into the basis of theology; results attained by long struggles in the East are simply presuppositions to the West; but, for the most part, no independent interest attaches to them in the Western world. They are taken as involved in redemption from sin—in the Atonement, or in the sacraments. Belief in the Trinity is almost unbroken. Western Christendom wishes to call Christ God; even the Ritschlian school uses the wonted language in the light of its own definitions. For others, the Trinity is the accepted way of making that confession. It becomes of practical importance, according to S. T. Coleridge,[3] in connexion with Redemption. It passes, therefore, as a datum of revelation. In Christology the tradition has been more frequently challenged since the Reformation.
Harnack criticizes the doctrinal development. He considers that Christianity is best defended on the basis of the doctrine that Christ is a man chosen and equipped for His task by God. But in the Eastern Church the religious interest, as he thinks, points to Monophysitism. Dyophysite orthodoxy has sterilized Eastern Christianity, or thrown it upon inferior forms of piety. Of course this does not mean that Harnack considers monophysitism nearer the historic truth, or nearer the normal type of Christian thought. On the contrary, he would hold that the scholarly tradition of Antioch more nearly reaches the real historical manhood of Jesus. But if it be presupposed that the purpose of Christ's mission was to deify men by bestowing physical immortality, then we must assume, first, Christ's essential Godhead, and, secondly, the fusion of His divine and human natures. Whatever be the truth in the assertion that death rather than sin is the enemy dreaded by Eastern Christianity, and immortality rather than forgiveness the blessing craved, it is difficult to take the talk about deification as anything more than rhetoric. Did they not start from belief in one God? Was not polytheism still a living enemy? It is a more obvious, if perhaps a more vulgar, criticism of the great development to say that it was too simply intellectual—seeking clear-cut definitions and dogmas without measuring the resources at the command of Christians or the urgency of their need for such things. We are sometimes told that the councils simply denied error after error, affirming little or nothing. But the Trinity and the Hypostatic Union are vast speculative constructions reared upon slender biblical data. To complain of the over-subtlety of a theological adversary is a recognized move in the game; it may constantly be played in good faith; it proves little or nothing. The facts appear to be, that the Church embarked confidently on the task of blending philosophy and religion, that the Trinity satisfied most minds in that age as a rational (i.e. neo-platonic) construction, but that in Christology the data or the methods proved less tract- able. If two natures, divine and human, are added to each other, what can the humanity be except one drop in the ocean of divine power, wisdom, goodness ? The biblical authorities plainly set forth “the man Christ Jesus,” but theological science failed to explain how Godhead and manhood came together in unity. Fact and theory sprang asunder; for theory had done its utmost, and was baffled. Another admission ought to be made. Western contributions to the prolonged debate constantly tended to take the form of asserting truths of faith rather than theories. Yet what was the whole process but a colossal theory?[4]
One perplexity connected with theology is the question, How far does Christianity succeed in embodying its essential interests in its doctrines? The Orthodox Eastern Church might seem to have succeeded beyond all others. Factions of lay-folk, who quarrelled furiously over shades of opinion never heard of in the West, and scarcely intelligible to Western minds even if expounded, might seem to have placed their sincerity beyond all question. And yet there were at least two other developments which were important in the East and proved still more so in the West — the legal development and the sacramental. The name " Catholic " is one which Protestant Christians may well
- ↑ Harnack and F. Loofs describe them as belonging to the Homoiousian party—believers in the Son’s “likeness of essence” to the Father’s, not “identity of essence.” Bethune Baker vehemently denies that these great leaders were contented with Homoiousianism. Anyway, we must remember that radical theology had gone to much greater extremes in denial (Anomaeans—the Son unlike the Father). It was not by any means exclusively the “battle of a diphthong.”
- ↑ Spanish Adoptianism breaks up the unity almost without disguise.
- ↑ Cf. Aids to Reflection, Aphorism 2, Comment.
- ↑ A. M. Fairbairn takes the rather unusual view that Greek Christian theology was the climax of the process of Greek philosophy, and so far alien to piety, although he is far from banishing speculation out of theology. Christ in Modern Theol., pp. 81, 90, 183.
