{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/214/2140242.htm","path":"chr/ecf/214/2140242.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/214/2140242.htm","text":"Excursus on the Heresies Condemned in Canon I.\nIn treating of these heresies I shall invert the order of the canon, and shall speak of the Macedonian and Apollinarian heresies first, as being most nearly connected with the object for which the Constantinopolitan Synod was assembled.\nThe Semi-Arians, Macedonians or Pneumatomachi.\nPeace indeed seemed to have been secured by the Nicene decision but there was an element of discord still extant, and so shortly afterwards as in 359 the double-synod of Rimini p. 173 (Ariminum) and Selencia rejected the expressions homousion and hom\u0153usion equally, and Jerome gave birth to his famous phrase, \u201cthe world awoke to find itself Arian.\u201d The cause of this was the weight attaching to the Semi-Arian party, which counted among its numbers men of note and holiness, such as St. Cyril of Jerusalem. Of the developments of this party it seems right that some mention should be made in this place, since it brought forth the Macedonian heresy.\n(Wm. Bright, D.D., St. Leo on the Incarnation, pp. 213 et seqq.)\nThe Semi-Arian party in the fourth century attempted to steer a middle course between calling the Son Consubstantial and calling him a creature. Their position, indeed, was untenable, but several persisted in clinging to it; and it was adopted by Macedonius, who occupied the see of Constantinople. It was through their adoption of a more reverential language about the Son than had been used by the old Arians, that what is called the Macedonian heresy showed itself. Arianism had spoken both of the Son and the Holy Spirit as creatures. The Macedonians, rising up out of Semi-Arianism, gradually reached the Church\u2019s belief as to the uncreated majesty of the Son, even if they retained their objection to the homoousion as a formula. But having, in their previously Semi-Arian position, refused to extend their own \u201chomoiousion\u201d to the Holy Spirit, they afterwards persisted in regarding him as \u201cexternal to the one indivisible Godhead,\u201d Newman\u2019s Arians, p. 226; or as Tillemont says (M\u00e9m. vi., 527), \u201cthe denial of the divinity of the Holy Spirit was at last their capital or only error.\u201d St. Athanasius, while an exile under Constantius for the second time, \u201cheard with pain,\u201d as he says (Ep. i. ad Serap., 1) that \u201csome who had left the Arians from disgust at their blasphemy against the Son of God, yet called the Spirit a creature, and one of the ministering spirits, differing only in degree from the Angels:\u201d and soon afterwards, in 362, the Council of Alexandria condemned the notion that the Spirit was a creature, as being \u201cno true avoidance of the detestable Arian heresy.\u201d See \u201cLater Treatises of St. Athanasius,\u201d p. 5. Athanasius insisted that the Nicene Fathers, although silent on the nature of the Holy Spirit, had by implication ranked him with the Father and the Son as an object of belief (ad Afros, 11). After the death of St. Athanasius, the new heresy was rejected on behalf of the West by Pope Damasus, who declared the Spirit to be truly and properly from the Father (as the Son from the Divine substance) and very God, \u201comnia posse et omnia nosse, et ubique esse,\u201d coequal and adorable (Mansi, iii., 483). The Illyrian bishops also, in 374, wrote to the bishops of Asia Minor, affirming the consubstantiality of the Three Divine Persons (Theodoret, H. E., iv., 9). St. Basil wrote his De Spiritu Sancto in the same sense (see Swete, Early History of the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, pp. 58, 67), and in order to vindicate this truth against the Pneumatomachi, as the Macedonians were called by the Catholics, the Constantinopolitan recension of the Nicene Creed added the words, \u201cthe Lord and the Life-giver, proceeding from the Father, with the Father and the Son worshipped and glorified\u201d etc., which had already formed part of local Creeds in the East.\nFrom the foregoing by Canon Bright, the reader will be able to understand the connexion between the Semi-Arians and Pneumatomachi, as well as to see how the undestroyed heretical germs of the Semi-Asian heresy necessitated by their development the condemnation of a second synod.\n(Philip Schaff, in Smith and Wace, Dict. Christ. Biog., s.v. Apollinaris.)\nApollinaris was the first to apply the results of the Nicene controversy to Christology proper, and to call the attention of the Church to the psychical and pneumatic element in the humanity of Christ; but in his zeal for the true deity of Christ, and fear of a double p. 174 personality, he fell into the error of a partial denial of his true humanity. Adopting the psychological trichotomy of Plato (\u03c3\u1ff6\u03bc\u03b1 \u03c8\u03c5\u03c7\u1f74, \u03c0\u03bd\u03b5\u1fe6\u03bc\u03b1), for which he quoted 1 Thess. 5:23, Gal. 5:17, he attributed to Christ a human body (\u03c3\u1ff6\u03bc\u03b1) and a human soul (the \u03c8\u03c5\u03c7\u1f74 \u1f04\u03bb\u03bf\u03b3\u03bf\u03c2, the anima animans which man has in common with the animal), but not a rational spirit (\u03bd\u03bf\u1fe6\u03c2, \u03c0\u03bd\u03b5\u1fe6\u03bc\u03b1, \u03c8\u03c5\u03c7\u1f74 \u03bb\u03bf\u03b3\u03b9\u03ba\u1f74, anima rationalis,) and put in the place of the latter the divine Logos. In opposition to the idea of a mere connection of the Logos with the man Jesus, he wished to secure an organic unity of the two, and so a true incarnation; but he sought this at the expense of the most important constituent of man. He reached only a \u0398\u03b5\u1f78\u03c2 \u03c3\u03b1\u03c1\u03ba\u03bf\u03c6\u03cc\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2 as Nestorianism only an \u1f04\u03bd\u03b8\u03c1\u03c9\u03c0\u03bf\u03c2 \u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u03c6\u03cc\u03c1\u03bf\u03c2 instead of the proper \u03b8\u03b5\u03ac\u03bd\u03b4\u03c1\u03c9\u03c4\u03bf\u03c2 . He appealed to the fact that the Scripture says, \u201cthe Word was made flesh\u201d\u2014not spirit; \u201cGod was manifest in the flesh\u201d etc. To which Gregory Nazianzen justly replied that in these passages the term \u03c3\u03ac\u03c1\u03be was used by synecdoche for the whole human nature. In this way Apollinaris established so close a connection of the Logos with human flesh, that all the divine attributes were transferred to the human nature, and all the human attributes to the divine, and the two merged in one nature in Christ. Hence he could speak of a crucifixion of the Logos, and a worship of his flesh. He made Christ a middle being between God and man, in whom, as it were, one part divine and two parts human were fused in the unity of a new nature. He even ventured to adduce created analogies, such as the mule, midway between the horse and the ass; the grey colour, a mixture of white and black; and spring, in distinction from winter and summer. Christ, said he, is neither whole man, nor God, but a mixture (\u03bc\u03af\u03be\u03b9\u03c2) of God and man. On the other hand, he regarded the orthodox view of a union of full humanity with a full divinity in one person\u2014of two wholes in one whole\u2014as an absurdity. He called the result of this construction \u1f00\u03bd\u03b8\u03c1\u03c9\u03c0\u03cc\u03b8\u03b5\u03bf\u03c2 , a sort of monstrosity, which he put in the same category with the mythological figure of the Minotaur. But the Apollinarian idea of the union of the Logos with a truncated human nature might be itself more justly compared with this monster. Starting from the Nicene homoousion as to the Logos, but denying the completeness of Christ\u2019s humanity, he met Arianism half-way, which likewise put the divine Logos in the place of the human spirit in Christ. But he strongly asserted his unchangeableness, while Arians taught his changeableness (\u03c4\u03c1\u03b5\u03c0\u03c4\u03cc\u03c4\u03b7\u03c2).\nThe faith of the Church revolted against such a mutilated and stunted humanity of Christ which necessarily involved also a merely partial redemption. The incarnation is an assumption of the entire human nature, sin only excluded. The \u1f10\u03bd\u03c3\u03ac\u03c1\u03ba\u03c9\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2 is \u1f10\u03bd\u03b1\u03bd\u03b8\u03c1\u03ce\u03c0\u03b7\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2. To be a full and complete Redeemer, Christ must be a perfect man (\u03c4\u03ad\u03bb\u03b5\u03b9\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f04\u03bd\u03b8\u03c1\u03c9\u03c0\u03bf\u03c2). The spirit or rational soul is the most important element in man, his crowning glory, the seat of intelligence and freedom, and needs redemption as well as the soul and the body; for sin has entered and corrupted all the faculties.\nIn the sentence immediately preceding the above Dr. Scruff remarks \u201cbut the peculiar Christology of Apollinaris has reappeared from time to time in a modified shape, as isolated theological opinion.\u201d No doubt Dr. Schaff had in mind the fathers of the so-called \u201cKenoticism\u201d of to-day, Gess and Ebrard, who teach, unless they have been misunderstood, that the incarnate Son had no human intellect or rational soul (\u03bd\u03bf\u1fe6\u03c2) but that the divine personality took its place, by being changed into it. By this last modification, they claim to escape from the taint of the Apollinarian heresy. 229\np. 175 The Eunomians or Anom\u0153ans.\n(Bright, Notes on the Canons, Canon I. of I. Const.)\n\u201cThe Eunomians or Anom\u0153ans.\u201d These were the ultra-Arians, who carried to its legitimate issue the original Arian denial of the eternity and uncreatedness of the Son, while they further rejected what Arius had affirmed as to the essential mysteriousness of the Divine nature (Soc., H. E., iv., 7; comp. Athan., De Synod., 15). Their founder was A\u00ebtius, the most versatile of theological adventurers (cf. Athan., De Synod., 31; Soc., H. E., ii., 45; and see a summary of his career in Newman\u2019s Arians, p. 347); but their leader at the time of the Council was the daring and indefatigable Eunomius (for whose personal characteristics, see his admirer Philostorgius, x., 6). He, too, had gone through many vicissitudes from his first employment as the secretary of A\u00ebtius, and his ordination as deacon by Eudoxius; as bishop of Cyzicus, he had been lured into a disclosure of his true sentiments, and then denounced as a heretic (Theod., H. E., ii., 29); with A\u00ebtius he had openly separated from Eudoxius as a disingenuous time-server, and had gone into retirement at Chalcedon (Philostorg., ix., 4). The distinctive formula of his adherents was the \u201cAnomoion.\u201d The Son, they said, was not \u201clike to the Father in essence\u201d; even to call him simply \u201clike\u201d was to obscure the fact that he was simply a creature, and, as such, \u201cunlike\u201d to his Creator. In other words, they thought the Semi-Arian \u201chomoiousion\u201d little better than the Catholic \u201chomoousion\u201d: the \u201chomoion\u201d of the more \u201crespectable\u201d Arians represented in their eyes an ignoble reticence; the plain truth, however it might shock devout prejudice, must be put into words which would bar all misunderstanding: the Son might be called \u201cGod,\u201d but in a sense merely titular, so as to leave an impassable gulf between him and the uncreated Godhead (see Eunomius\u2019s Exposition in Valesius\u2019s note on Soc., H. E., v., 10). Compare Basil (Epist., 233, and his work against Eunomius), and Epiphanius (H\u00e6r., 76).\n\u201cThe Arians or Eudoxians.\u201d By these are meant the ordinary Arians of the period, or, as they may be called, the Acacian party, directed for several years by the essentially worldly and unconscientious Eudoxius. His real sympathies were with the Anom\u0153ans (see Tillemont, M\u00e9moires, vi., 423, and compare his profane speech recorded by Socrates, H. E., ii., 43): but, as a bishop of Constantinople, he felt it necessary to discourage them, and to abide by the vague formula invented by Acacius of C\u00e6sarea, which described the Son as \u201clike to the Father,\u201d without saying whether this likeness was supposed to be more than moral (cf. Newman, Arians, p. 317), so that the practical effect of this \u201chomoion\u201d was to prepare the way for that very Anom\u0153anism which its maintainers were ready for political purposes to disown.\n\u201cThe Sabellians,\u201d whose theory is traceable to Noetus and Praxeas in the latter part of the second century: they regarded the Son and the Holy Spirit as aspects and modes of, or as emanations from, the One Person of the Father (see Newman\u2019s Arians, pp. 120 et seqq.). Such a view tended directly to dissolve Christian belief in the Trinity and in the Incarnation (Vide Wilberforce, Incarnation, pp. 112, 197). Hence the gentle Dionysius of Alexandria characterised it in severe terms as involving \u201cblasphemy, unbelief, and irreverence, towards the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit\u201d (Euseb., H. E., vii.. 6). Hence the deep repugnance which it excited, and the facility with which the imputation of \u201cSabellianizing\u201d could be utilised by the Arians against maintainers of the Consubstantiality (Hilary, De Trinit., iv., 4; De Synod., 68; Fragm., 11; Basil, Epist., 189, 2). No organized Sabellian sect was in existp. 176 ence at the date of this anathema: but Sabellian ideas were \u201cin the air,\u201d and St. Basil could speak of a revival of this old misbelief (Epist., 126). We find it again asserted by Chilperic I., King of Neustria, in the latter part of the sixth century (Greg. Turon., Hist. Fr., v., 45).\n\u201cThe Marcellians,\u201d called after Marcellus bishop of Ancyra, who was persistently denounced not only by the Arianizers, but by St. Basil, and for a time, at least, suspected by St. Athanasius (Vide Epiphan., H\u00e6r., 72, 4) as one who held notions akin to Sabellianism, and fatal to a true belief in the Divine Sonship and the Incarnation. The theory ascribed to him was that the Logos was an impersonal Divine power, immanent from eternity in God, but issuing from him in the act of creation, and entering at last into relations with the human person of Jesus, who thus became God\u2019s Son. But this expansion of the original divine unity would be followed by a \u201ccontraction,\u201d when the Logos would retire from Jesus, and God would again be all in all. Some nine years before the council, Marcellus, then in extreme old age, had sent his deacon Eugenius to St. Athanasius, with a written confession of faith, quite orthodox as to the eternity of the Trinity, and the identity of the Logos with a pre-existing and personal Son, although not verbally explicit as to the permanence of Christ\u2019s \u201ckingdom,\u201d\u2014the point insisted on in one of the Epiphanian-Constantinopolitan additions to the Creed (Montfaucon, Collect. Nov., ii., 1). The question whether Marcellus was personally heterodox\u2014i.e. whether the extracts from his treatise, made by his adversary Eusebius of C\u00e6sarea, give a fair account of his real views\u2014has been answered unfavourably by some writers, as Newman (Athanasian Treatises, ii., 200, ed. 2), and D\u00f6llinger (Hippolytus and Callistus, p. 217, E. T. p. 201), while others, like Neale, think that \u201ccharity and truth\u201d suggest his \u201cacquittal\u201d (Hist. Patr. Antioch., p. 106). Montfaucon thinks that his written statements might be favourably interpreted, but that his oral statements must have given ground for suspicion.\n\u201cThe Photinians,\u201d or followers of Marcellus\u2019s disciple Photinus, bishop of Sirmium, the ready-witted and pertinacious disputant whom four successive synods condemned before he could be got rid of, by State power, in a.d. 351. (See St. Athanasius\u2019s Historical Writings, Introd. p. lxxxix.) In his representation of the \u201cMarcellian\u201d theology, he laid special stress on its Christological position\u2014that Jesus, on whom the Logos rested with exceptional fulness, was a mere man. See Athanasius, De Synodis, 26, 27, for two creeds in which Photinianism is censured; also Soc. H. E. ii., 18, 29, 30; vii., 32. There is an obvious affinity between it and the \u201cSamosatene\u201d or Paulionist theory.\nThe theological views of Gess and Ebrard I know only from the statements of them in writers on the subject of the Incarnation, especially from those made by the Rev. A. B. Bruce, D D., Professor at Free Church College, Glasgow, in his work \u201cThe Humiliation of Christ.\u201d (Lecture IV.) The following passage (cited by Dr. Bruce) seems to prove his contention so far as Gess is concerned. \u201cDass eine wahrhaft menschliche Seele in Jesu war, versteht sich f\u00fcr und von selbt: er war ja sonst kein wirklicher Mensch. Aber die Frage ist, ob der in\u2019s Werden eingegangene Logos selbst diese menschliche Seele, oder ob neben dem in\u2019s Werden eingegangenen Logos noch eine becondere menschliche Seele in Jesu war?\u201d (Gess. Die Lehre v. d. Person Christi, ii. p. 321.) Bruce understands Gess to teach that \u201cThe only difference between the Logos and a human soul was, that he became human by voluntary kenosis, while an ordinary human soul derives its existence from a creative act.\u201d (And refers to Gess, ut supra, p. 325 et seqq.) For Ebrard\u2019s view, see his Christliche Dogmatik, ii., p. 40. Ritschl dubbed the whole kenotic theory as \u201cVersch\u00e4mter Socinianismus.\u201d","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. XIV: The Second Ecumenical Council: The First Council of Constantinople.: Excursus on the Heresies Condemned in Canon I.","type":"page"}