Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/701

JESUS 671 forms of heresy partly by Jewish Ebionites, partly by Gentile Docetae. The Ebionites, the Nazareues, the followers of Artemon, the Alogi, and many sects allied to them in their main principle, denied the true divinity of Christ. In the opposite direction many of the Gnostic sects entirely explained away His humanity, either with the Basilidians supposing that He only became divine at His baptism, or holding with the Valentinians that Mary was only the channel by which He entered the world. To both these conflicting fancies the orthodox fathers opposed the simple statement of St John that "the Logos became flesh." But, as was natural, their opinions were as yet vague and even in some instances erroneous. Thus Justin Martyr thought that in Christ the Logos took the place of the human intelligence (Apol. min., ch. x.). Clement of Alexandria thought that the human needs and sufferings were only apparent, or by way of "accommodation" (Pied., i. 5, p. 112; Strom., vi. 9, p. 775, ed. Sylb. ). Origen had clearer views, and was the first to use the term God-man (6fdv6pcairos), as well as to guard against the double error of excluding the Logos from Christ, or of confounding the Logos with the existence of the human Christ (Horn, in Ezek. iii. 3; 0. Cels., ii i. 29). It is, however, important to observe that the existence of technical errors of theology in the modes of expressing this doctrine adopted by the Ante-Nicene fathers was freely admitted, and was not regarded as formal heresy. Their individual insight was not sufficient to enable them to arrive at those careful scholastic definitions to which the church was only guided by the collective wisdom of eecumenical councils after periods of long and painful conflict. The remarks of St Jerome on the real orthodoxy of the early fathers are both charitable and explicit. " It may be," he says, that they erred in simplicity, and that they wrote in another sense, or that their writings were gradually cor rupted by unskilful transcribers; and, certainly, before Arius like the destruction that wasteth at noonday was born in Alexandria, they made statements incautiously which are open to the misin terpretations of the perverse." We find a remarkable illustration of the extent to which the terminology was as yet unsettled in the fact that the council at Antioch which condemned Paul of Samosata in 269 also condemned the expression homoousios ("consubstan- tial"), which a century afterwards became the very watchword of Nicenc orthodoxy. 1 By the 3d century the Ebionizing heresies were practically dead, but the Docetic were still flourishing in various forms. Two sects had arisen ; one was that of the Patripassians, who so completely obliterated all real distinction between the first and second person of the Trinity as to lay themselves open to the charge of teaching that the Supreme Father had been crucified. Thus Praxeas taught that the same God is at once the Father and Son. Noetus of Smyrna, Avhen banished from Ephesus, tanght these notions at Rome, and even the Popes Zephyrinus and Callistus seem to have been imbued with them. Sabellius, a presbyter of Ptolemais, elaborated these opinions into a system in which Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were only three modes of manifestation, three names, three aspects of the divine monad revealing itself under three differ ent forms (Greg. Nyss. , Orat. c. Arian. ct Sabcll. ). The Monarchians, on the other hand, in their equal anxiety to avoid all danger of Ditheism and Tritheism, admitted the supernatural birth of Christ, but only saw in Him the holiest of the prophets ; these views were expounded at Rome by Theodotus of Byzantium, who was conse quently expelled from the church by Pope Victor. The heresies of Paul of Samosata, the vain and brilliant patriarch of Antioch, seem to have originated in an unhappy attempt to reconcile the views of these Monarchian sects by teaching that not the whole divine sub stance was manifested in Christ, but only one single divine power. He thus distinguished between the Logos and the human Son of God. He was banished and died in obscurity, but the sect, which was generally called Patripassian in the West and Sabellian in the East, continued to linger on for a time. All these controversies were but preludes to the great struggle of the church against Arianism. Hitherto she had condemned the Noetians and Sabellians for denying the hypostasis of the Son as distinct from the Father, and the Theodotians and Ebionites for denying His divinity. Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, admitted both the divine and the human nature of Christ, but by making Him subordinate to God denied His divinity in its highest sense. He was led to this error by the reaction against Sabellianism, and he ranked the Son among created beings, saying that " there was (a time) when He was not." Arius was deposed and excommunicated by a council at Alexandria, but since many bishops, and among them the distinguished Eusebius of Csesarea, and Eusebius of Nieomedia, interceded in his favour, the dispute assumed such wide proportions that Constantino was compelled to intervene by sum moning in 325 the first eecumenical council of Nice. By this council the doctrine of Arius was condemned, and it was declared to be a matter of the Catholic faith that the Son was not only of like essence (Jwnwiousios) but of the same essence (homoousios) with the Father. It was long, however, before the voice of controversy was silenced. 1 Mansi, L 1001 ; Euscb., H. E., rii. 27-30 ; Epiphan., Ilxr., Ixv. 1. Many bishops still continued to be on the one hand Arian or Semi- Arian, while on the other hand men of gnat power and enlighten ment, like Marcellusof Ancyraand Photinus of Sinn him, slid back into dangerous affinity to Sabellianism. It was in consequence of a similar reaction that Apollinaris, bishop of Laodicea, in the desire to maintain the glory of Christ, fell into a new heresy and revived an old error, by arguing that in Jesus the Logos supplied the place of the reasonable soul. It is obvious that such a view undermined the doctrine of the example and atonement of Christ, and it was con demned in 381 at the council of Constantinople. The next great controversy arose from the refusal of Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, to apply to the Virgin Mary the term Theotokos or mother of God. In his endeavour to avoid the extremes which had already been condemned, he spoke of the union of the two natures in Christ as a connexion (crvvafyfia) or indwel ling (fvo iK-rtffis), but denied that there was any communication of attributes (Koivcavia. (8101 ^0.7 wv). He maintained, in fact, a mechanical rather than a supernatural union of the two natures. He w r as condemned in the council of Ephesus, 431, and died in exile ; but the schools of Edessa and Nisibis still maintained the Nestorian doctrine, which has continued in the East even till the present day. The last great controversy on the two natures was raised by Eutyches, archimandrite of Constantinople, who confounded together the two natures which Nestorius had separated, thus inaugurating what is known as the Monophysite heresy, which was condemned in the council of Chalcedon, 451. It is needless to explain the obscure heresies of Theopaschites, Phthartolatri, Aphthartodocetai, or to do more than name the views of the Mono- thelites, who strove to put an end to controversy by maintaining that though there were two natures in Christ there was only one will. The main results at which the church arrived cannot be better summed up than they are in an admirable passage of Hooker (Ecd. Pol., v. 54, 10) : " There are but four things which concur to make complete the whole state of our Lord Jesus Christ. His deity, His manhood, the conjunction of both, and the distinction of the one from the other being joined in one. Four principal heresies there are which have in those things withstood the truth : Arians by bending themselves against the deity of Christ; Apollinarians by maiming and misinterpreting that which belongeth to His human nature ; Nestorians by rending Christ asunder and dividing Him into two persons ; the followers of Eutyches by confounding in His person those natures which they could distinguish. Against these there have been four most ancient general councils : the council of Nice to define against Arians ; against Apolliuarians the council of Constantinople ; the council of Ephesus against Nestorians ; against Eutychians the Chalcedon council. In four words ai}f)ias, Tfews, aSfcupe rcof, a<Tvyxvr<as, truly, perfectly, indivisibly, dis tinctly the first applied to His being God, the second to His being man, the third to His being of both One, and the fourth to His still continuing of that one Both we may fully, by way of abridgement, comprise whatever antiquity hath at large handled either in declaration of Christian belief, or in refutation of the fore- said heresies." The result of these centuries of controversy was enshrined in the so-called Nicene creed " the holy symbol declared at Nice, established at Constantinople, strengthened at Ephesus, sealed at Chalcedon." When the church had thus rigidly defined the limits of Catholic orthodoxy, the decisions of the four oecumenical councils were accepted, and no further controversies rose on these subjects for about 800 years. The disputes between the Nominalists and the Realists, and the speculations of the Schoolmen generally as regards this sub ject, turned rather on the proofs or illustrations of the doctrine of the Trinity than on theories respecting the two natures of Christ. There are remarks and illustrations not only in the Schoolmen but even in the Reformers which might be regarded as questionable, but none of them were intended to diverge from the Catholic verity. Passing over the crude system of Servetus, we hear of Unitarian communities in Poland as early as 1563. In 1544 Lajlius Socinus had been obliged to leave Italy because hisopinions were known to be unfavour able to the divinity of Christ. On his death at Zurich in 1562 his nephew Faustus Socinus openly taught the opinions which he had learnt from his uncle s papers, and acquired a considerable following in Poland. The exegetic methods of Socinianism were so weak, and its rupture with Christian history so absolute, that the special views of the Socini which were that Christ, though miraculously born, was only the highest of men, and was deified after His death as a reward for His virtue have had an indirect rather than a direct influence. In 1611 three men were burnt in England for denying the doctrine of the Trinity, but in the middle of the 17th century we find John Biddle recognized as a leader of the Unitarians, and the spread of Unitarian doctrines led Bull to write his celebrated Dcfcnsio Fidei Niccnss, in 1685. The first Unitarian church in Eng land was founded in 1773 by Lindsay. The writings of Spinoza and of the English deists Herbert, Toland, Shaftesbury, Chubb, Bolingbroke helped largely to weaken the orthodox faith. But in later periods it has been rather undermined than denied.